Update January 2023!

Ahhhh it’s a whole new year! Reminder that this is mirrored from my Patreon, which I encourage you to check out and subscribe to if you’re interested in more details about what I’m working on and lots of chatter about writing in general.

I usually seem to hit the ground running in the new year. It’s such a great time to make lists, review and assess plans, and get going on them. I’ve already finished reading a whole book, Also a Poet by Ada Calhoun, which is extraordinary. It’s a memoir about writing the actual memoir you’re reading. I loved it so much and highly recommend it. I’ve also already sent off a new short story, one of the three I wrote in December. (And…it just got rejected. Just got the email. Welp, time to send it right back out again.)

Great, right? Mind you, I usually crash by the time I get to March, when some of the plans start to go awry and I’m staring down the barrel of the rest of the year. I’m telling myself that recognizing the pattern is half the battle of dealing with it. We’ll see how that goes.

This month’s lesson: How to start. I mean this to be really basic: how to start when you’ve never written before. Every now and then I talk to someone who tells me they have ideas, their mind is full of stories. But they’ve never written. They don’t know how to start. I’ll offer some suggestions.

Work: Started a new thing. I spent all last year making notes and it and it’s taken awhile to find my way into it, but I finally did. I also have two more short stories to revise. Let’s see what else I can get out the door this month.

Two of my succulents are blooming. Woohoo!

A couple of announcements:

The fanzine Journey Planet invited me to write for their special issue all about Andor, which I was happy to do. It’s free to download, check it out!

I’ll be a Guest of Honor at Bubonicon in Albuquerque in August.

I almost went to see a movie and then I didn’t. Attention span still wonky.

TV: We really are living in a new golden age of fantasy, aren’t we? I’ve now had the same realization I had with superhero movies a few years ago: I don’t have to see every single one. I used to make such an effort to see them all, remembering the times we didn’t have any. Well, now it’s that way with epic fantasy. I can entirely skip House of the Dragon and Wheel of Time and not feel bad about it at all. Instead, I binged The Witcher: Blood Origin, which was…abrupt. Only four episodes, so just when I got attached to all the characters, it’s over. Minnie Driver makes a shockingly cool elf, though.

I’m adoring Willow. It’s so weird! I love how teenager-y the teenagers are. I love how it’s lining up tropes and shooting them down. I love the modern music. (I’m also the only person I know who loves the soundtrack to Ladyhawke so there we are.) I love the callbacks to the movie. I’m so pleased to see a sequel when everything else has been prequels. (Even Andor. As much as I enjoyed it, it’s rather elegiac and sad since we know how Andor’s story ends.) I’m just really enjoying it and sometimes that’s all I need.

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