I just realised that throughout the entire year, I haven’t written a single word about the current pandemic. (Not that I’ve blogged an awful lot to begin with, but still.) It’s not like it hasn’t affected me. I’m currently an essential worker, so it has meant a lot of overtime and commuting by bike instead of taking the bus as I otherwise might have done. So far so good, more strength and money to me (even though energy and time enough for actually having a life have sometimes been hard to come by). But I’ve been affected on a more personal level as well, in ways too painful and private for me to feel comfortable sharing here.
Shit sucks, I guess most of us can agree on that. Shit sucks, and sometimes there’s absolutely nothing to be done about it. But you can only sit idle shedding tears for so long. Sooner or later you have to work with whatever you’ve got left, and do something. I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this year, mind you. I desperately need what’s left of my sanity intact for now. But I picked up my old fantasy trilogy that has been gathering dust on a digital shelf for the past few years. Long-time followers of my blog might recall when I started writing the bloody thing way back in 2012.
It’s been through one round of thorough revision, not to say complete rewriting, already. And some kind and loyal friends have read through the entire thing and offered their feedback. But I’ve been putting off going through it one final time, because that would mean it just might be finished enough to send to a publisher, and that’s scaaaary. But this time it’s finally, actually happening. I’m gonna revise the shit out of that story to the bloody best of my ability, and then I’m going to send it to publishers even if it’s still shitty. It’s the very least I can do for a story that’s been stuck in my head for so long. Perhaps it doesn’t work out, but then at least I will have tried. Then I can finally move on, and be free to work on new things.
It’s going all right so far. At this pace I’ll be done just before New Year’s. I’m even having a little fun with it. It’s nowhere near a Tolkien in either ambition or quality, but I’m not constantly going “oh gods, what kind of idiot wrote this?” either. And the good thing about picking up a text after having let it rest for so long is that I’m not too emotionally attached to it. I can cross out or change things without my ego going “aw, come on, I worked so hard on that!”. But the distance I’ve acquired isn’t quite big enough that I don’t care about it at all.
I have many and mixed feelings about this story that a so much younger version of myself began once upon a time. I think that’s only natural. What I want most of all is a sense of closure, I suppose. I feel I owe that to the aspiring author I used to be, and who might still long to be resurrected. So I’ve set myself a goal, and I am steadily working towards it. I promised myself that when I finished going over book one I would bake a cake, and so yesterday I did.
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Coconut marzipan cake with mango/banana/cream filling,
decorated with pomegranate seeds. Vegan, of course.
That’s what my flatmates have to put up with. Me locking myself inside my room to write for hours upon end, and then occasional cake. And who knows, some day possibly the bragging rights of having lived together with a published writer.
Love and cake,
Winterdragon
