anticlimactic

has gotta be the worst title for a blog post after a five month wait, probably!

But I'm here! I sat down and put on a Writey Playlist and got my Writey Tea and even put on my Writey Fingerless Gloves because it's chilly in here.

I won't lie, over the last five months or so while I've let myself "hibernate" from writing, I mostly played a lot of Pokopia (spring) and got seriously into knitting (August to now). I'm shamelessly proud of my first sweater, which I'm wearing now. I know we've known how gnarly wool is for forever but it's all I want to wear for forever. I'm also a little inspired by my Oma, who talked about growing up on a farm in northern Germany as a little girl, being "dressed like sheep" to stay warm.

I both wish I had sheep, and wish sometimes to be a sheep. Wearing a bunch of wool is the closest I'm gonna get to either.

Anyway... after collecting a carry-on suitcase worth of yarn, stumbling through the beginnings of a SSHRC application, barely surviving the back-to-school rush tabling with garden work and the harvest season, and hobbling together drafts to send in for the two workshops I'm in right now (Writing for Children and Speculative Fiction 2!) I'm finally, finally, writing again.

Or am I procrastinating it by writing this post?

Here's the truth of it. I have a short story that's been festering since August (that's not really that long but since mid-August feels like two years right now), two poems showed up out of nowhere a couple nights ago (I say nowhere but it was directly after reading slush and one of them was born from a notes app epiphany), have a novel I need to edit to send to an agent who gave me their direct email this summer (they said "take 2 years if that's what it takes, it's an open door" and I said "I don't want to take longer than two weeks" so naturally, I'm being haunted by no one but myself), and a novel I agreed to workshop and swap with someone in my cohort, plus my thesis, which is just kinda... hanging out... but I mostly don't need to worry about it except as it pertains to SSHRC and my wonderful spec fic class.

So:

1 short story that needs writing (it's in the Festering Cauldron rn)
2 poems that need editing, one of which might be a Poem-To-Pay-The-Rent
1 novel that needs a last round of consistency edits
1 novel that needs a complete reoutline + rewrite into a diff. perspective and genre
1 SSHRC application
(1 dungeons & dragons campaign I'm DMing weekly... when we actually meet)

and the rest of my classwork. Which honestly has not been bad. I'm a little grateful that my poor budgeting forced me to drop a class, because a third class might have tipped me over the edge. Idk what that edge is. But something. To be blunt, September was reckless. I felt reckless with my life. Not great. And Terry noticed! Isn't it great when you have suspicions that are confirmed by your partner during a heart-to-heart? I'm only half joking. We celebrated 15 years on a camping trip and it was great. I feel a lot better now that I've refocused on my projects and my writing.

Also knitting is a better alternative to doom scrolling. And I'm finally reading Greenwood, 3 years too late.

welll time to go write an outline, wish me luck.

PS. right, I remembered why I titled this post anticlimactic. After all the stress applying for MFA programs, I'm just doing it now. It's not a bad thing. If anything I'm relieved it just feels chill. At least right now it feels chill. SSHRC feels less chill, but I signed up for that, so whatever. I'm sure next year I won't be feeling so chill but right now we're mostly cruising.