Words Deferred

Hypericum — Read Report

By Manuele Fior (Translated by Matt Madden)

Buy (affiliate link)

Hypericum is one of two graphic novels by Italian authors that I picked up in my recent library excursion. Both involve Italians traveling overseas in the ’90s. Obviously Italy has artistic traditions spanning millennia, but Italian comics are a complete blind spot for me. After these two examples, I’m inclined to seek out more.

Manuele Fior tells the story of Teresa Guerrero, an Italian student who has come to Berlin in the late ’90s to intern as a scientific assistant preparing an exhibit on king tut’s treasure. Teresa leads a charmed life, one where each event seems inevitable, running, as she says, in “a straight line.”

A chance meeting with fellow Italian expat Ruben breaks that straight line. Teresa thinks a day of exploring the sights of the city is just a dalliance, but she soon discovers that a mix-up has left her without living arrangements. With no other place to turn, she calls Ruben.

Ruben turns out to be a carefree punk, squatting in a building with other like-minded young people. Teresa moves in, thinking it will only be temporary. Instead, things get physical, and they enter a relationship that Teresa finds exhilarating and frustrating in turns.

Teresa has a dark side. She suffers from chronic insomnia. By day, she walks through life like a waking dream, working on Egyptology and her exhibit. At night, awake and exhausted while everyone else is recuperating and peaceful, she becomes depressed and miserable.

Ruben’s glib attitude frustrates her, especially when she discovers that his counterculture lifestyle is actually funded by the family he is constantly complaining about.

The story culminates in a reckoning over their relationship and Teresa’s successful exhibit, which comes with a full-time job offer and a choice about whether to stay in Berlin or to abandon her life in Germany and go home.

Hypericum is informed by Fior’s own time in Berlin, and the backdrop of a freshly reintegrated Germany is rendered as drab and dark or bright and sexy in turns. The characters are slightly stylized, skewing ever so slightly toward cartoony, but never childish.

Alternating chapters follow Howard Carter and the original excavation of Tutankhamen’s tomb, desert scenes blown out with bright sun, underground scenes saturated in darkness.

Teresa’s connection to the excavation goes beyond the exhibit. Within the tomb, Carter finds traces of small yellow flowers that once adorned the king. Called Hypericum by the ancient Greeks and St. John’s Wort in modern day, they turn out to be the one form of medication that may actually help Teresa’s insomnia.

Hypericum is a little bit of history, a little romance, and not quite a fictionalized travelogue. It makes great use of the medium of comics for a story that feels like it wouldn’t be quite the same as a traditional novel or something made for the screen. It’s a great showcase of what modern comics can be.

Week 41 — Year of Short Stories 2026

2026 is another year of short stories. In this weekly series, I track my short story writing, from idea and draft to submission.

This is for the week of Oct 12 – Oct 18.

Stats for the Year

Stories Finished: 3
Submissions Currently Out: 7
Submissions Total: 38
Rejections: 33
Acceptances: 0

Submissions and Responses

It was a quiet week. No new submissions or responses.

Goals

My goals from last week:

Revise The Magpie
Write Mother Night

My kids had some school holidays this week, which seemed as good an excuse as any to take two days off myself. That gave me more writing time than usual, and as a result it was a fairly productive week.

Mother Night was one of the stories that I started from my brainstorms doc without having a full outline. I’ve started on several of these, just to see where they take me. I tend to abandon them after a few hundred words if they don’t inspire me. This one turned out to be one I enjoyed, and the plot was straightforward, so nothing really had to change in the writing. I banged out several thousand words and finished the first draft.

I also made some progress working through the critiques on The Magpie, so I could feel productive on the revision side as well.

Thinking About Zines

I try to keep Words Deferred focused on writing, and but I do occasionally talk about the ol’ vidja games, especially in the context of interactive stories. I’ve mentioned the video game documentary crew noclip previously, and for their 10th anniversary they’re reinventing themselves a little bit.

One of the things they’re doing is introducing little eight-page monthly zines, delivered by snail mail. If you’re not familiar, zines are homemade or DIY magazines, often small and designed for a small, specific audience. This announcement reminded me that I recently saw a few tiny “lit mag” zines in a local indie bookstore. Are zines making a comeback? Or were they always around and I just haven’t been seeing them?

Eight pages is more than I would have guessed could be crammed in a standard single-stamp letter in US mail. That got me thinking a little bit about the kind of short-story-length work that could be put into the zine form factor and distributed for pennies. While I’m not going to stop submitting stories to traditional publishers, I have been wondering what I might do after this year of short stories is over, and a zine (or series) might be a fun thing to try.

Next Week

Goals:

Revise The Magpie
Write more from the idea doc.
Think about zines?

Weeks 39 & 40 — Year of Short Stories 2026

2026 is another year of short stories. In this weekly series, I track my short story writing, from idea and draft to submission.

This is for the period of Sept 28 – Oct 11.

Stats for the Year

Stories Finished: 3
Submissions Currently Out: 7
Submissions Total: 38
Rejections: 33
Acceptances: 0

Submissions and Responses

I received two rejections this week, one for Beneath the House at Caen, and one for Taco Cat.

I also gave up on two submissions: one to a publisher that only responds for acceptances (Caen) and another that supposedly does, but never replied to mine—or it got lost in the spam filters (Taco Cat).

This left both stories in a totally unsubmitted state, which is anathema to the working writer. I found one publisher to send Taco Cat and two for Caen.

Goals

My goals from last week:

Start Magpie revisions
Continue idea writing

In my last entry, I was happy to be picking up some steam and writing regularly. The past two weeks, I’ve been struggling to get much writing done at all. Fall is packed with kids’ school activities and chores to get done. I suppose it’s that last gasp of life before we burrow in for winter hibernation.

The Magpie is still waiting for its revisions, and the little blurbs and snippets in my ideas folder are still, at best, half-baked. There is one idea in particular, which I’m currently calling Mother Night, that I think has potential. I plan to work on that in the upcoming week.

Next Week

Goals:

Revise The Magpie
Write Mother Night

Trouble! at Coal Creek — Read Report

(affiliate link)

Trouble! At Coal Creek is a historical fiction graphic novel that tells the story of the 1891 “Coal Creek War” through the eyes of a mining family. It follows in the tradition of books like Maus and They Called Us Enemy.

At this point, I would almost classify this style of book as its own sub-genre, fairly distinct from both mainstream graphic novels and traditional historical fiction, with its own style and tropes. Weirdly, after decades of comics being snubbed by the mainstream as childish, the books that managed to cross over have lent a patina of prestige to this particular combination of format and subject matter.

Trouble! was published with grants from no less than three art and education foundations and funds. The author, Austin Saurbrei’s bio describes him as a community organizer with strong union ties. My own political leanings are pretty pro-labor, but I think it’s fair to say that the book is happy to take sides and isn’t trying for a neutral viewpoint. On the other hand, the maltreatment of coal miners in the 1800s was so incredibly nasty that I hope most people with modern sensibilities would find it hard to side with the coal barons.

The story is told by an unnamed narrator whose parents emigrated from Wales to eastern Tennessee, hoping to use Pa’s experience as a miner to build a better life. Ma, Pa, narrator and Sis are sucked into the biscuits cycle of work and debt that mining towns and “the company store” have become synonymous with.

When Ma and a third child die in childbirth, Pa gives up hope of a better life, spending his paltry pocket money and free hours drinking. Sis escapes via marriage into another mining family. The narrator—forbidden from the mines by Pa—gets a job at a local general store. The store happens to be run by a local member of the Knights of Labor, one of the earliest precursors to modern labor unions in America.

The rest of the book chronicles the escalating dispute between coal miners and mine owners. A labor strike is countered by bringing in (largely black, questionably prosecuted) prisoner labor. Miners riot and force out prison labor, only for the Tennessee government to bring it back it through new laws and militia protection. The conflict is shown through the narrator’s family as he and his sister fight for the miners, while their father, oddly, stays loyal to the company.

The book ends on a positive note, the rebellious miners using dynamite to crack open the stockade and free the prisoner-laborers. But the page-long afterword makes it ring hollow, describing how the fights of 1891-1892 weren’t enough to stop convict labor, which continued in some form for another 75 years.

The black and white art is often moody, alternating white and black framing. Recreations of maps, telegrams, posters and newspapers are interspersed with the illustrations to lend verisimilitude. However, despite the often violent subject matter, the book shies away from grit and gore. I suspect it was kept in the PG range to make it an easier sell for classrooms and school libraries.

There is little dialogue in the book. Most of the story is told through voice-over narration, even when the narrator is in the illustrated scene. This, along with the minimal characterization (none of the family have names), gives the story a little too much distance from the fictional characters.

They are there to add some pathos and personal stakes to the historical story. However, that distance makes it hard to be too invested in their plight. Since the rebellion is largely successful in the time period covered, it never really feels like they are in life-threatening danger.

Still, the book is a very easy way into an interesting period of American history; events that I didn’t know in detail, and I expect most Americans aren’t familiar with. The topic is especially salient now, when wealth disparities and the rights of labor are once again a major issue in our politics.

Then again, maybe that could be said for every decade between the Coal Creek War and today.

Hogbook and Lazer Eyes — Read Report

(affiliate link)

I recently went to the DMV near my house, which happens to be in the same government center as a big library. My government-mandated waiting room time was relatively quick, so I walked across the building to browse.

It’s been a while since I’ve been to the library, so I decided to wade into the comics section and see what was on offer. I’m still surprised by the sheer variety in graphic formats these days. There are now shelves and shelves of non-superhero comics. (Not that I’m opposed to superhero comics, but it’s nice to have variety.)

I decided to pick out a few things I might normally skip over, and the first of these was Hogbook and Lazer Eyes by Maria Bamford and Scott Marvel Cassidy.

I recognized Bamford as a stand-up comedian, but I don’t really know her work or Cassidy, her husband. The book bills itself as the story of their relationship, as seen through they eyes of their pet pugs.

Their connection via online dating app and subsequent relationship are the topic of the first third of the book. After that, it’s…stuff that happens to them. Their habit of adopting elderly pugs results in at least half a dozen being introduced through the story.

The story is autobiographical, but unfocused. It doesn’t center on a particular aspect of their lives; just a series of largely unrelated vignettes. It reads a bit like the authors were asked to summarize their lives in a set number of pages.

Most of the problem for me was the narration. The dogs aren’t really given distinct personalities, so it’s hard to say if they’re narrating or not. The narration is largely clinical: what happened and when.

For example, when the pair briefly break up and get back together, the entire explanation reads: “Maria and Scott reunite with help from Sheryl Hirsham, the excellent therapist with silver hair. Communications and emotions resume. Dogs, cats, and other creatures are on board.” It’s accompanied by an abstract illustration of a space council of dogs.

It sounds like there might be an interesting story in there somewhere. I have to assume it was a rougher patch than this glib paragraph suggests, but there’s no detail to be found. Two pages later, they’re engaged.

Perhaps Maria and Scott were uncomfortable airing their dirty laundry in comic form. That’s totally understandable. I certainly would be. But if that’s the case, I would have advised them not to try to write and publish a comic about their relationship.

The art is a ink-heavy, realistic style with muted colors—a bit like early DC Vertigo, minus the horror sensibilities. Half of it is pugs, very faithfully rendered in all their puggish glory. The humans all have a melancholy, slightly pained look to them, regardless of what’s happening in the story.

I’m not sure what to make of this book. I expected comedy, and there was surprisingly little. I expected relationship drama, and there was surprisingly little. The amount of pug content was high, as advertised. If you love pugs or Maria Bamford, you may get more out of this book than I did.

Week 38 — Year of Short Stories 2026

2026 is another year of short stories. In this weekly series, I track my short story writing, from idea and draft to submission.

This is the week of Sept 20 – Sept 28.

Stats

Stories Finished: 3
Submissions Currently Out: 8
Submissions Total: 35
Rejections: 29
Acceptances: 0

Submissions and Responses

After a flurry the past couple weeks, no new submissions or responses this week.

Goals

Last week’s goals:

Start Magpie revisions
Continue idea writing

The Critters critiques are in for The Magpie. I received 17 in total, and I’ve compiled these into a big document. I’ll proceed to whittle them down until I have a list of revision bullet points, and then I’ll pop open the gearbox and start banging on things.

I continue to hit my word count quotas by writing snippets of stories from my brainstorms list. This has resulted in a few fragments, but I think I may have found one that will end up as a full story.

Next Week

Writing is going smoothly lately, and I’m still working on getting caught up to my quotas, so I’m not changing anything. Steady as she goes.

Goals:

Continue Magpie revisions
Continue idea writing

Global Frequency — Read Report

(Global Frequency Deluxe Edition at DC.com)

The version from my local library is the Deluxe Edition, containing all 12 original issues from the 2002-2004 run. As an early 2000s title, I’d say this is on the tail end of non-superhero books working their way into mainstream culture. So there is no spandex and no superpowers (at least by that parlance), but Global Frequency does dabble in super-villain sci-fi and supernatural stuff on roughly the believability level of The X-Files.

The Global Frequency is a semi-secret, global and unaffiliated spy organization, 1001 specialized experts recruited by a woman who calls herself Miranda Zero. They live in a heightened version of the real world at the turn of the millennium, and they find solutions for crises big and small.

Each issue is a self-contained story, “monster of the week” style. There is no broader arc or big bad pulling all the strings, and no significant final wrap-up for the series. Miranda Zero and her central radio operator Aleph are the only recurring characters. Everyone else is a day player, and therefore sometimes expendable.

Each issue sets up a high stakes problem with many lives on the line, then places Global Frequency members with interesting skills nearby to solve that problem. Sometimes “interesting skills” means hacking into anything and everything. Sometimes it just means a lot of punching and shooting. Sometimes it’s being a super-detective or having a bionic arm or being a magician or building your own civilian space agency.

Some of the impending catastrophes are varied, like a memetic alien mind virus or an apparent angelic visitation that drives a whole town insane. Unfortunately, about half of them boil down to a big bomb. And by big, I mean at least three separate instances of nuclear weapons, and one orbital railgun that would only be similar in effect to an atomic bomb.

2000s Edgy

The series is very of-its-time, on the bleeding edge of what was cool in 2002: parkour and UAVs and satellite imagery. The Matrix was only a couple years earlier, and the Internet still felt new. I don’t begrudge the high tech that seems mundane from a 2020s perspective, or the hackers that get into any computer in five seconds flat. Some of the early web slang, spoken aloud by serious characters, is a little harder to forgive.

The biggest problem, however, is classic Warren Ellis: the series seems to want to play with the literary big boys, but it comes off as adolescent a little too often. It’s William Gibson by way of Hot Topic.

Oh, there are cultists with a bomb and hostages? And the bomb is connected to their heart rate monitors? And they took a slow-acting poison? It’s a delicate situation. Better send in a pair of action heroes to shoot them all, and shoot the remote before the leader can push the button. Good thing the heart monitor bit was a bluff.

Then, of course, the action heroes who have been at each others’ throats the whole time can immediately go offscreen to get it on. Its violent and sexy and there are naughty words, and that makes it adult.

I don’t mind these kinds of shenanigans. They’re why people still love over-the-top 90s action flicks. Heck, Netflix is still making a few of those movies per year, with big actors and eye-watering budgets. It works when the story doesn’t take itself too seriously. But Global Frequency sometimes feels like it’s trying a little too hard to be cool.

Missed Opportunities

That said, the series could have really benefitted from another 12 issues, and I would have been happy to read them. The run is short and it sticks to the anthology- style disconnected stories a little too much for my tastes. There are two things that more issues could have given breathing room for: a multi-issue arc, and an opportunity for failure.

The Global Frequency is a sort of an organizational Mary Sue. Their funding and equipment is never really explained. All their members are experts in their field, and everyone is fully aligned with the mission, whatever that might be. There are no moles and no traitors, despite their many enemies. In a spy series!

I would love to have gotten a little more background, and that could have very easily played into some kind of SPECTRE counter-spy organization or villain with a bone to pick. It would also have allowed for the Global Frequency to fail. Because they never really do. Individual members may die in the line of duty, but they always save the day.

Art and Extras

The art is solid and varied. Each issue has a different artist, so there’s always something new to look at. The angles, panels, and framing are occasionally unexpected, but there’s nothing especially crazy or unusual going on for this era of DC. There were a few places where the action was muddied, mostly in a specific issue that is almost entirely taken up by a big one-on-one brawl.

The book ends with two Deluxe Edition extra features: the original proposal for the series as submitted to DC, and a script for one issue. These are interesting for those who want to work in comics, and those who just like to see how the sausage gets made.

Weeks 36 & 37 — Year of Short Stories 2026

2026 is another year of short stories. In this weekly series, I track my short story writing, from idea and draft to submission.

These are the weeks of Sept 7 – Sept 20.

Stats

Stories Finished: 3
Submissions Currently Out: 8
Submissions Total: 35
Rejections: 29
Acceptances: 0

Submissions and Responses

I had three form rejections and no new submissions over the past two weeks.

Goals

My goals from last time:

Keep up with critiques
Think about process

My horror story, The Magpie, is currently out, and the critiques are trickling in. I’ve glanced at a few, but I’ll wait for Wednesday (the end of the Critters week) to start compiling all of it together for the next round of revisions.

After numerous false starts, I’ve been writing fairly consistently over the past week. After being behind on my self-imposed quotas for a couple months, I’m now clawing my way back. Last time, I said I was thinking about my process, and that’s beginning to bear fruit.

Idea Work

In an effort to get more stories ready to send out, I have spent roughly half the year focused on revising completed or nearly complete drafts. This is logical if you’re working in the story factory and want to increase output—finish the things that are closest to being done. Unfortunately, “closest to being done” isn’t always easy to assess.

Some stories refuse to be completed in an orderly manner. T.I.M. is a story that I’ve now finished, torn apart, finished again, and decided I still wasn’t happy enough to move forward with. Other stories seem to come together relatively painlessly. Beneath the House in Caen was a concept that I wrote in a single sitting, the same day I thought of the core concept, and the overall structure didn’t really change through revision.

Trying to force those difficult stories through to completion hasn’t proven effective. I have been logical, but I’ve been ignoring the emotional aspect of storytelling for too long. I need a certain level of excitement about a story to get through it, and that can’t be forced. I also need to refill my reserves of creativity periodically.

My writing time has taken two forms over the past two weeks. The first project I worked on was more brainstorming around Solarpunk. This is a genre that I’ve been interested in for a while (see Solarpunk 101 and Solarpunk Syllabus) but I haven’t been able to find my way into yet. This is pure idea work—writing down ideas and snippets, thinking about technology, coming up with potential characters and conflicts. No story has come out of this yet. It’s the compost heap, and I’ll keep throwing stuff onto it until I get enough rich black dirt that something sprouts.

My other tactic is a different kind of idea work—looking through the many documents where I keep story snippets and ideas, picking a fun-looking one, and trying to write it. I don’t worry about a complete outline. This is a rougher version of what I do for some of my Story Idea Vault posts. I start wherever I think to start and see where it carries me. If it runs out of steam, I pick a new one. This is where my improving daily word count has come from.

In both cases, I find this work refreshing. Coming up with ideas has always felt like the most raw fun in writing for me. Putting all those disparate bits together into a coherent story is satisfying, but it’s hard, too. This is writing without consequence, throwing the spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. And if nothing sticks, I make more spaghetti.

It’s not efficient from the purely logical perspective, but the pure logic wasn’t working for me. This is what I need right now. And if I can hold on to that energy and fun, I have confidence that it will ultimately lead to more stories.

Next Week

Goals:

Start Magpie revisions
Continue idea writing

The Truth—Read Report

Book | Ebook | Audiobook (affiliate links)

There aren’t many authors who put out 40 books in the same world. It requires not only an audience that maintains interest in that world, but also an author who is both prolific and continues to find that world worth writing about.

Discworld is an interesting case because it is a comedic fantasy world, which allows it to be big and complicated and strange, but also do some occasional hand-waving when Pratchett wants to do things without the sort of rigorous justifications that a more “serious” world might need to appease its audience.

Of the 41 Discworld novels, I’ve read roughly half, and I haven’t gone in any particular order. However, there are still some clear trends in the topics and characters Pratchett chooses to focus on over the years. There are seasons of Discworld.

The Witches and Wizards show up frequently early on, and topics are fairly typical for fantasy: magic and royal lineages and the occasional dragon or world-threatening calamity. The season of Death and his family goes deep into folklore and myths, the nature of what people believe in and how that shapes the world.

It’s pretty clear that at a certain point Pratchett lands in the city of Ankh Morpork, a fantasy London analogue, and decides to spend most of his time there. There is still room here for Wizards at the Unseen University and twisted plots—usually involving the perspicacious Lord Vetinari, the Patrician who rules the city. These also frequently involve the steadily growing cast of the City Watch and their leader, Sam Vimes.

However, the stories set in the city soon start to feel more modern. This world is undergoing something of an industrial revolution, and the cultural revolutions that come along with it. The Watch becomes less medieval guards and more a police force, while reckoning with multiculturalism through the lens of dwarfs and werewolves. The semaphore “clacks” tower network jumps from telegraph to pseudo-internet in the span of a single book. Photography and rock music come to Ankh Morpork.

Through these real-world-adjacent changes to Discworld and Ankh Morpork, Pratchett finds back doors for critique and commentary that feel applicable to the everyday mundane world without ever coming across as overly political or preachy.

The new technology at the heart of The Truth is movable type and the printing press. In classic Discworld historical compression, the idea of the newspaper and the investigative journalist follow mere hours behind. The reporter is William de Word, who accidentally falls into the job when his monthly paid newsletter for royals quickly morphs into a daily broadsheet read across the city. William is the youngest son of a nobleman with very particular ideas about how society should be structured. William disagrees and has chosen estrangement and a life of poverty rather than compromising his principles.

The city’s ruler, Lord Vetinari, is accused of attempted murder under strange circumstances that look suspiciously like a frame-up. Unlike a typical fantasy tyrant, this is actually a problem for him in the semi-democratic system of modern Ankh Morpork. The mysterious cabal behind the plot want Vetinari out because he’s allowing the modernization of the city. Technological and cultural. These shadowy plotters want a return to traditional values. They want less immigration. They couch it in polite language. They stink of old money. It’s all very familiar.

The printing press itself is the work of a group of dwarven immigrants. The paper soon employs a troll for security and a vampire as their photographer. William has the luxury of slumming it, choosing a pauper’s life with the knowledge that there are mansions and titles waiting, should he have need. But his friends and coworkers are legitimately poor, and members of groups that many in the city look down upon. The stakes are real for them.

While the big bad lurks in the shadows, ground-level villain duty falls to a pair of thugs, Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip, who collectively call themselves The New Firm. One of Pratchett’s under-appreciated skills is crafting exceptional villains, and these two are no exception.

Mr. Tulip is the muscle-bound brute. He wants to have a drug problem, but doesn’t know anything about drugs, so he spends the book snorting all sorts of innocuous white powders. What he does know about is fine art, and he waxes loquacious about paintings, sculptures, and candelabras.

Mr. Pin is the brains of the operation, cold and calculating and quick with a knife. He’s haunted by demons that progressively strip him of his sanity as events unfold.

The Truth is not my favorite Discworld book, but it’s a solid entry in the series. As usual, there were several places where I was delighted by Pratchett’s use of language. Comedy writing is rarely taken seriously, and Pratchett’s pure writing chops deserve more praise than they get.

If the book has a weakness, it’s that it underuses its recurring characters. Were used to seeing Vetinari and Sam Vimes chewing up the scenery when they’re on-stage. Here, they sit in the background, prevented from doing anything interesting because this is William’s story. I would have loved for each of them to have more clear and interesting roadblocks to justify the space William is given to swoop in and save the day.

William himself has a nice arc as the unassuming lesser son of a noble family who hates all his relatives and wants to make his own way in the world. The interesting twist is that he ends up embracing the noble haughtiness that his birthright, but deploying it for the good of the city, his friends, and his fledgling newspaper.

If you’re just starting on Discworld, this wouldn’t be my recommended entry point, but if you enjoy Pratchett and his fantasy-comedy shenanigans, The Truth will give you everything you’re looking for.

Week 35 — Year of Short Stories 2026

2026 is another year of short stories. In this weekly series, I track my short story writing, from idea and draft to submission.

This is the week of Aug 31 – Sept 6.

Stats

Stories Finished: 3
Submissions Currently Out: 11
Submissions Total: 35
Rejections: 26
Acceptances: 0

Submissions and Responses

I received two form rejections this week, for Red Eye and Taco Cat. One of these was from Clarkesworld, which I submitted to because I knew I could be confident that I’d get a response within a week and be able to send to another publication with a relatively near-term deadline. I honestly don’t understand how Clarkesworld can pay pro rates and still respond to the onslaught of submissions so quickly, but I do appreciate it.

I ended up sending two new submissions for Red Eye and another for Taco Cat. If nothing else, I am keeping my stories circulating.

Goals

My goals from last week:

Keep up with critiques
Hit writing/editing quotas every day.

Critiques have been going well. My horror story, The Magpie, is set to go out to the Critters in two weeks, and I hope to have it ready for submission in early October.

Writing quotas have not been going particularly well. I mentioned that I would be working on editing T.I.M. and writing Arbor Grove. What I really ended up doing was stepping back and thinking about process.

Considering a Writing Reset

Life is busy, and I struggle to write during the week. Even when I have time, I rarely have the energy. Part of this is my own fault. Like many people in the modern world, I have terrible sleep habits. I’m usually progressively more sleep deprived as the week goes on. That leaves me in a half-zombie state where I don’t feel up to creative work like writing, so I end up doomscrolling or watching garbage on streaming services. That leads to staying up too late again…and so on. A vicious cycle. That’s certainly something I need to address for my quality of life.

I’ve also been facing some roadblocks with my current batch of stories. T.I.M. is a story that has been through an unusual amount of revision for me, and has a completed draft. Unfortunately, I decided this week that it needs to go back into the trunk for now. There is some spark missing from it, and I think that doing justice to the main character will require some research to really get into the POV. I plan to do that, but it means the story won’t be ready anytime soon. The other story I’ve been working on, Arbor Grove, is a loose collection of ideas and scenes that I haven’t quite found my way into yet.

The whole Year of Short Stories thing has been great for my submission rate and overall productivity, but it has also made me more myopic. I’ve been focusing on getting the current work done and out the door, and probably not thinking as much as I should about what the current work should be, or how I should be doing it.

So, I’m going to take this next week to think about process. How can I get more writing done with less stress, and what should I be working on as we enter the final third of the year?

Next Week

Goals:

Keep up with critiques
Think about process