Grinding Pressure; March 20 2023

You know what’s stressful? Having people come into your home, your space, numerous times a day to judge whether or not they want to buy the house you’re renting.

That’s been my reality for the past few weeks, and we think the house has been sold now… But we’re likely going to have to move as a result. It’s been giving me nightmares and stress migraines. It’s been a time.

I’ve also been trying to write daily, with a goal of completing this manuscript by May. It’s a lofty goal – I’m currently sitting at about 20,000 words of this book (I’m hoping it’ll wind up around 80,000, so. One quarter isn’t bad, right?) so I have to really dedicate myself to my work. This is probably the least amount of plotting I’ve done for a book beforehand, though, so who knows how it’s going to turn out?

Meanwhile, I continue to query my novels and short stories, and I’ve accumulated more rejections. This is especially demoralizing because I wrote the short stories specifically for themed anthology calls, and I thought they were quite strong pieces. Their acquisition teams obviously disagreed.

What I’m getting at is, I’m tired. That’s no surprise, but wow, is exhaustion ever taking over my life.

There is one thing I’m feeling good about, which is my fantasy trilogy – namely, that it’s been on my mind more often, and I’m falling in love with the world and characters all over again. I worried I’d lose interest just because it’s been so long since I’ve written anything for it, so that’s exciting to me!

One character especially has been on my mind, but I think I’ll wait to write down my thoughts about them. They feature heavily in the second book and I want to share some behind-the-scenes info, but why do that when book one isn’t even out yet?

That’s all for today. I hope life is being gentle to all y’all out there!