Some massive breakthroughs this week in my head but not much to show for it on paper.
Last week I finally was able to grab some time with my friend who is a tax law genius expert. I was so so happy to be able to chat with her and she gave me an invaluable resource to help me with my Tax Law Picture Book edits. I totally geeked out over how beautifully everything was structured in the resource she gave me and it reinvigorated my excitement to finish writing the book. I have finished writing all the major portions but now I need to edit, add, restructure and finalize. I’m giving myself to the end of this year to do this.
I am still writing Harlem Row every morning. We’re finally coming into the major conflicts so I am mentally preparing for the discomfort of writing about it. I have no idea where this writing will go or why I am writing it aside from “I feel like it”. I still have a far off dream of maybe turning it one day into a limited TV dramedy series.
Paid work is generally a bit up and down since my first contract finished but this week it was steady so I am grateful for that. The legal project I worked on went well (I think) and my portion was officially complete as of last week (though I haven’t really been working on it in earnest for weeks now). I am hoping to get another major contract come October to do more consistent marketing writing.
And of course, the biggest hurdle I have: Book People. This week, I did not make much significant writing progress but I do feel like I made some “thought” breakthroughs. Right now my piece is a bit all over the map and I am hoping that the time I dedicated this week to thinking through the theme and coming up with a central idea will help me organize the piece. Also my teacher came back to me with comments. I am SO GRATEFUL for this because I really needed the feedback, I have been feeling so stuck. I have to dedicate some time to focusing on processing the comments. I was thinking I’d do this today but lets be honest I rarely get intense writing done on Fridays so likely it will be tomorrow and next week. A more realistic goal for today would be to bang out a couple more pages of tax since it’s less mentally exhausting. Funny how writing about tax law is fun for me. I never said I make sense.
I also signed up yesterday for two self-study classes with Catapult. One is called Landing Your Dream Literary Agent and the other is called the Book Deal Tool-kit. My goal is to start on these classes this week (yes I recognize it’s already Friday but I just need to open this thread).
Plus, work is still slowly progressing on updating my website.
All this to say I feel like I am still very much in a hurry to try to get somewhere. Perhaps it is feeling like I lost essentially a decade to another career and I need to make up for lost time. I honestly know that it will probably take me another decade to feel settled into this career. I mean, it’s been five months since I quit my last career. I know I need to just calm the fuck down but it’s hard when I feel like I should be so much further along. Sigh. I think I have to just tell myself every day to calm down.
Also, this week, I got off WhatsApp in the mornings and deliberately guarded my mental space. I realize I am really tired of conducting friendships online and tired of this pandemic and especially tired of all the negativity. It’s like a drinking from a fire-hose of constant disaster and I need to just tap the breaks. This is especially true for certain people I know who remind me of chicken little. Yes the sky is falling, it’s been falling for years. What else is new.
Maybe I will emerge from this pandemic without a single friend, that would not be surprising considering just how misanthropic I am. For now we’ll just tap the breaks so that I can conserve the little tiny bits of positivity and energy I am trying so desperately to cultivate.