Week of: 8/1/26, & Summer Reading Update!

So it turns out that writing is a slow process.

I mean, I already knew that. But committing myself to regular updates here has the feeling to me of watching the status bar load. You get arbitrarily stuck on 35% for a long time for whatever reason, and then 72%, and don't even get me started on 99%. You'll be on 99% forever, and a watched status bar never loads.

But hey: I did in fact finish the draft of a story and submitted it this week! So, huzzah, lol. Of course, stories aren't ever actually "done." They're just, well, submitted... and sometimes sold, or so I've been told. But there's never a point, in anything I've ever written, where I've felt like, hey, I did it! It's over! Never a time I've read one of my stories and not made some tiny alteration, at least, or wished that I could do it over again, do it better.

Reading does offer that advantage: you do finally reach the last page. You do finally close the book with a sense of accomplishment. So I can report here that I've finished reading all ten of my chosen summer reading books! A month early, no less.

Or... I've "read" them, if audiobooks also count? Surely they must. Though I must report that the experience of reading a physical copy and listening to a book are markedly different for me. Just to clarify, I listened to Babel and Beloved, but read physical copies of all the others (which were: A Deadly Education, The Night Circus, Gwendy's Magic Feather, Middlemarch, The Prophet, Love and Video Games, Mother Night and Anna Karenina, though not necessarily in that order).

Of course, when you finish writing a story, you start writing the next. (At least, that's how I mean for it to happen -- starting tomorrow, lol.) And when you finish reading a book...

So, I'm already starting to think about my next reading project. Maybe starting next month for "Spooky Season"?? I've already plunged into another two novels, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and Stephen King's Under the Dome, because I have no ability to allow myself to rest.

Week of: 7/25/26

Not much to report. I've finished the first draft of my new story, now looking to edit it into a slightly better shape before sending it off by the end of the month.

Also, reading. Always reading.

Week of: 7/18/26

Status quo. I'm reading far too many books right now -- with more on the horizon as I try to stay ahead of whatever's going to be due back at the library soonest. So, in addition to Middlemarch and Dungeon Crawler Carl (the first of which is plenty), I'm listening to Babel, reading The Philosophy of Freedom by Rudolf Steiner at the behest of a friend, Gwendy's Final Task, and The Judas Goat (one of Robert Parker's Spenser detective novels).

So what did I do this evening? Grab a few more books from the library, of course!

For writing, I'm working on editing a draft for a story that I hope to submit by the end of this month.

Week of: 7/11/26

A quiet week, not much to report. No rejections (knock on wood), but that's certainly balanced out by the week prior.

In reading news, I've been reading a lot -- maybe too much. Alongside my Summer Reading project, I've also taken up Dungeon Crawler Carl, which I understand to be the current hotness. With that project, I've begun upon Middlemarch. I'm sure I'll have more to say on it later, and after I've finished, but thus far I can simply report that... I'm not sure I quite get it. Oh, it's fine, I suppose. There are characters having conversations, etc., and it's fairly cozy. I'm not hating it. But at the same time, I'm not sure I yet understand its great and enduring appeal. Perhaps that's an insight yet to come.

Week of: 7/4/26

Lots of rejections this week, what fun!

Sometimes I feel a bit like Eleanor Rigby -- writing here, writing the stories I do, and sending them out. Who is it for, I wonder? Though that's a more negative energy than I'd ordinarily like to maintain.

In a slightly more positive light, I showed up to my one-time writing workshop group, the Wordos. It remains to be seen whether I'll keep that up, but it's a nice idea. I've been reading yet another how-to-write book, Bird by Bird. And speaking of reading, I've finished Anna Karenina (and then I started and finished Mother Night)! So even if nobody buys my stories, or gets to read them, hey, at least I'm doing my part by continuing to read!

Week of: 6/27/26

Hooray! I got my first rejection from Writers of the Future since I've taken all this up again! There's a real sense of accomplishment in that, like the soreness after a workout. A physical reminder that you're a true participant, once more. Sure, it would have been nice to have won instead. Of course. But we're being realistic, here, and patient, and we will take what we can get.

I'm still working on stories. I've picked up a bad habit over the last several weeks (or longer) of starting one story only to interrupt myself by starting a different one. Soon, I'm going to have to go back and put paid to all of them, in something like a recursive loop (it also calls to mind a sequence in Gaiman's Sandman comics). But let's not bury the lede here: I continue to write. Everything else, finishing my stories, submitting them, selling them -- they're all further down the line.

The fundamental matter is to write.

Week of: 6/20/26

A day late, today, though hopefully not a dollar short.

Well, that too, I'm sure.

Writing-wise, I didn't have my most productive week ever, though I did start work on a new short story... and I have plans for another, which I might have to try to bang out, first. I'm really leaning into my Summer Reading project, and trying to take big bites of Karenina -- the only way I feel I have a real shot at completing it.

Speaking of which, I'm going to wrap this up to go read so I can get that time in before the family wakes. Writing isn't just writing, you know? It's writing in context, the context of one's life. It's like in martial arts -- and how you can't (or oughtn't) throw an attack without keeping yourself balanced. Or maybe I don't know what I'm talking about and just need more sleep...

But that's just it. Sleep. Food. Reading. Family. Friends. Work. All of the things that come up on a day-to-day basis, all of the little challenges along the way -- that's the true test of writing, beyond whatever it is that makes it onto the page, and that the reader will never know, never see, except in the myriad ways it becomes transformed into plots and characters and the rest. The story is only the beginning of the story.

But I'm putting my reading off. Till next time.