Somehow (ha) I am busy. A little bit with work,[1] but mostly personal projects. Some of it being the "author work" mentioned in the last post, some of it being regular, run-of-the-mill "writing work," a lot of it (including some of the aforementioned) being just straight-up dev work. For example, one of the "author work" / community-building projects I’ve got going (I like "community building" better; let’s go with that: it’s more true anyway) needs a website, or at least a mailing list.[2] It’s not that big of a deal to slap a basic website together but, since I am who I am and feel like it doesn’t count unless I build the thing myself,[3] it’s a bit more involved. Partially this is good practice for my "job" (i.e., building a bunch of different Django backends has to be good experience, right?), partially I just do enjoy it, and enjoy not paying for things and not making people give me emails that, by giving them to me, are actually secretly just also giving them to some hosting platform or other.[4]

So I’ve got a lot to do, even outside of trying to just figure out how the fuck to describe my manuscript and catching up on "contemporary fiction" to get comp titles (if you have any tips, PLEASE, I will take any help I can get).

And writing.

And riding my bike.

But[5] the point of saying all of this (aside from, you know, taking a break from fighting with a CI pipeline I don’t have enough access to fix at work), is to say that I really miss just working on the novel! And only on the novel!

I find myself back on social medias, trying to figure out if that’s a thing I need to do,[6] I find myself diving back into organizing lit things,[7] and I find myself having to face the mountain of ideas and project I’ve been dreaming up since late July but have studiously put-off in the name of "focusing on the one thing." And it’s an exercise in project management and juggling that I’ve not really had to do for myself in a long, long time. Like since grad school, or maybe even undergrad.[8]

I was beginning to feel overwhelmed by this a few weeks ago (and to be fair it’s only gotten worse since AWP), but as Alia pointed out: it at least means I’m excited about things, that I have a lot of things I’m excited to do.

So: deep breaths, Danny. And still more or less do things one at a time.

What this means, however, is that I’ve got to think about breaking things up into chunks again, doing the "agile" Kanban kind of thing to keep track of shit, or at least think that way (I’m not actually going to turn my corkboard into a Kanban board again: it’s never actually worked the times I’ve tried it). I’ve got this sort of working for a CLI writing project management app I’m nearly ready to open up for beta,[9] and I’ve got the in-flight writing project(s) more or less chunked up, at least mentally, in ways that I can pick at them in pockets.

The thing is that though I’d love to dive back into the next Novel,[10] I’m not really ready for that yet, both in terms of the anticipated subject matter and even more so in terms of the expected formal constraints I’ve got planned.[11] And I’d like to get this first one published (technically second: but we don’t count work done before age 25, say). Like, I’d really like to.

So really I’ve just got a lot of reading to do…​ and then figure out how to succinctly explain the form…​ and figure out how to explain what it’s about…​ and then go find someone who wants to publish it…​ how nice.

Happy Valentine’s.

On an unrelated note: check out my brother’s band’s shiny, very good new album. They’re going on tour soon,[12] also. See you at the Boston show.

1. But not too much, really, since I have for now given up the reins of my project-baby to the person whose project-baby it was supposed to be in the first place, which seems fair.
2. Actually, a few of the projects I’ve got going need new websites, now that I think about it…​ including a backend for this one.
3. A stupid thing to feel, really.
4. I’m sure that MailChimp and whoever don’t actually dip into their users' lists, but I’m also sure that I’ve never actually read the licensing and privacy agreements.
5. Like in jazz, you riff on the third: and and but.
6. I don’t really want to do it. I know it’s possible not to, and yet —
7. This, I like, at least
8. I was, looking back, more or less able to focus on one school-thing at a time in grad school. Part of the blessing of the two-stories-a-semester fiction workshop, even though I think I would have benefited greatly from having had to write more, even if the stories weren’t workshopped, but I digress.
9. Think Scrivener but shittier, but also open-source, text-based, and eventually much more extensible/customizable.
10. "Capital N."
11. If it’s easy to do and you don’t learn anything, why bother?
12. Oh shit, like, this week.