I finished the first draft of a thing I was writing yesterday. Today, I ate some wild berries I found (blackberries, they turn my tongue purple and the thorns hurt like... well... like thorns stabbing into your fingers, but the sweetness is worth it). Now, it is evening, and I'm feeling contemplative.
There's a bunch of big announcements coming up for me, and that's exciting but also scary. I'm sure I don't need to say this, but the world is kinda awful right now, and it feels weird to be announcing things and trying to feel excited when there's so much ugliness going around. I'm reckoning a wee bit with that feeling, of existing and creating art in fucked and scary times.
This is not a new feeling.
Writing has helped me through some of the darkest parts of my life. It was the thing that carried me through the pandemic. (Well, that and a whole bunch of delightfully unhinged preschoolers. The cubs in Blood Moon were heavily inspired by the kids I was chasing around a classroom in 2020). Heck, I don't think I would've finished university if I wasn't blowing off steam writing long, (and probably very bad) fanfic in my down time. Expressing myself this way has always been my outlet, and I'm so, so lucky to be able to do it... especially when others can't.
Like I said, this is not a new feeling, but still, it's a feeling, and I'm letting myself feel it.
I'm also letting my brain churn through some of the other things I want to work on. I want to finish Thicker Than, I want to write another novel, I want to figure out a bunch of real life stuff that I need to figure out. I'll probably post more about all of this in the next month.
But for now, for now I'm eating the last of the berries and remembering that humans are good, that they wouldn't have to try so hard to twist, and warp, and break us if we weren't... and that it's okay sometimes to have feelings about all of this.
