Give or take.

It has now been a little over a year since my debacle with Wattpad removing my stories due to an issue in their algorithm. I learned after a series of back and forth emails that The Night Court was never meant to be removed. It had been an accident and one I used to finally bite down on the bullet I’d been savoring for a while.

You see, a part of me had already been debating taking my content offline. I thought it would be the kick I needed to shove myself into publishing, into trying to actually make something of the work I had bled over for 10+ years. I can say, a year later, with confidence that it most certainly did not. Since the last time we spoke, I started working more than ever, decided to move, quit my job, and became unemployed. Surprisingly, this has only had a negative effect on my writing. In 2023 I celebrated reaching my 50k goals on a new project that I didn’t completely finish until a month ago, a writing speed that greatly differs from the 200k-word first drafts I was completing within 6 months back in the 2010s.

The worst part? I find I’m not even very busy, simply occupied with idleness and a lack of energy to get much done. It’s the lack of progress I’ve made creatively only discourages me more from trying. This isn’t meant to be a pity party. The hostility the job market has shown me has at least served to push me further into wanting to write more. I’ve become both immune and all too sensitive to rejection emails. I imagine interviewers laughing me out of the room, and I imagine how unimpressive I come off as inadequate before the first question. If the endeavor seems hopeless, I get an excuse to hope for something else. Of course, I don’t believe desperation to be a very good motivator, but maybe feeling pathetic is.

When it comes to the projects I took offline, I flip back and forth on what to do with them. I’ve recently been throwing around the idea of a complete rewrite for the TSS trilogy, but a current reread of my drafts has been second-guessing. On one hand, maybe the best way to let those stories go would be to release them as is to the readers who have been waiting for them since I mentioned my exit, and I can focus on the projects that the current version of myself is more drawn to. On the other hand, the fact that these books seem so unlike my most recent work haunts me. I’m not sure which reality is worse but it’s clear that I’m stuck on the idea of making a choice, which was exactly what brought me to this point. I was backed into a corner before I pulled the trigger and took my work offline, and now I only regret it because I hadn’t thought of how isolating the writing experience would be without it.

I want to return with better news soon.