Life
So I guess I dropped the ball and missed a month, but I am having trouble feeling too bad about it. It’s been a crazy season that, for a while, only seemed to keep getting crazier. Thankfully, I have continued to tread water on everything (aside from last month’s blog post) and am continuing to do well in my professional program. I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel—only a little over two months left before the intensive portion is over.
Life at home is as insane as ever. We had a mid-night hospital scare with our 8-month-old, but fortunately he’s doing just fine now. Our 3-year-old has entered a new, very stubborn phase, and since he’s too young to have any capacity for logic, this has been pretty frustrating. Fortunately, we’ve been through this phase before with our eldest (although I’m not sure it was quite this intense with him), so we know it will pass with time.
I had the opportunity to share Bittersouls with one of my peers in the program, which was exciting for me. He had some very interesting thoughts on it and it was fun to discuss the book and writing in general with him.
As a coping mechanism during this time, I played through “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom”, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I know that some people were frustrated with the re-use of a lot of the surface worlds’ assets from the previous game, but the introduction of the Depths (an entire extra game world the size of the surface) really did a lot for the game to me. For some reason exploring a near-endless expanse of monster-filled darkness is extremely compelling to me (although I know some people felt it was more a pain than a joy).
Writing
You expected this section to be empty didn’t you? Didn’t you?!
Well… by some miracle, it isn’t. I actually managed to draft a short story this month (just finished it this past week!) that I am pretty excited about. It’s a pretty big diversion from my usual genre, in that it isn’t anywhere on the spectrum of sci-fi or fantasy, and might even qualify as what some people would call ‘literary’ in nature. I don’t know how to talk about short stories without spoiling them (there’s just so little, how do you not reveal the twist?) so I’ll just say that it’s entitled “The Neverstory” and invite those interested in reading it to comment below. It may be a couple weeks before I get it polished enough to send, but I’ll be sure to send it your way soon!
So with that written, I am in the process of deciding what to work on next. I did some outlining for another short story which quickly turned out to not be a short story (I have trouble keeping ideas from expanding into novels, what can I say?), and I know better than to attempt something like that right now. Realistically, I should find another couple small ideas that can be progressed a few hundred words at a time, like the one I just finished. That way I can be telling you all about them by this time next month!
As always, thank you all for reading. I promise to be more consistent, and as I keep telling myself, it’s only a few months more. Beginning of next year, the terrible time-constraints that have been keeping me from being as productive as I want to be will be gone.
I hope you’re looking forward to it. I know I am.
Cheers,
L.A. Morton-Yates