Starting Strong with Procrastination (#01)
the one where CJ almost forgot he started a newsletter
I want to let y’all know that when I said “soon, there will be a newsletter here” back in July, I really did intend to send one in July. Instead, thanks to the combination of ADHD time blindness and the decline of Elon Musk’s Twitter, it has come to my attention that I haven’t been yapping online as much as I thought I was. I was under the impression I was a devout social-media poster, when in fact, I’ve become non-practicing. So, here we are 164-ish days later, and I have a lot to catch you up on.
Here’s the run down on the past few months, and next few months.
summary: two projects coming next year, had surgery in September, and feeling better about the future of my writing career thanks to Romance Con.
THE PAST FEW MONTHS
After spending the summer watching the Olympics and freaking out about my main Work In Progress—an adult Summer Olympic Games romance—realizing I’ll need to overhaul it entirely in the next draft, I was feeling a bit worse for wear as a writer. The CJ from 2021 was naively optimistic and ignorant to the lengthy timelines of the publishing industry. I was convinced that my WIP would be published around the time of the XXXIII Olympiad, so readers could follow the story’s calendar in real time. I knew well before then that I was several large, crucial steps away from that possibility, but watching those dates pass by with only a draft in hand, still had me feeling every type of imposter syndrome psychologists know of.
It’s been a pure delight watching the friends and colleagues I’ve made in the Writing Community achieve their wildest dreams, and I’m filled with pride when I look at the overflowing shelf I keep reserved for my friends. For a few months, I let my insecurities get in the way of being truly happy for them, weighed down by the thought that I’d somehow failed by not already accomplishing the same things as others. I was warned that comparison is the thief of joy and still fell face first into its trap.
In September, I travelled to Milwaukee for Romance Con, a weekend-long convention for romance authors and readers, with my partner and my best friend. Not only was it a delightful weekend, but I also think it cured me a little bit.
I met dozens of authors from all stages in the process: authors with multiple New York Times best-sellers; debut authors with a single book in hand; authors with one or two books but also a movie in production; self-published authors with multiple series; hybrid authors who write traditionally-published IP work and self-published original work. Also, whoever said “never meet your heroes” was wrong, I met two of my all-time favorite authors—Julian Winters and A.L. Graziadei—and they were both so wonderful.
The looming feeling of dread I had been shouldering over my inability to make a polished draft dissipated when I met all of these authors face-to-face, and remembered that we’re all straight-up normal people who write because we like to create, and we have a story to tell. Of course my first drafts can’t compare to their thrice-drafted multiple-rounds-of-edits finished product.
I spent the train home dreaming about hybrid-publishing and what my writing career could actually look like if I wasn’t so hard on myself, and wrote simply because I want to. Funnily enough, I seem to have a similar realization every few years, but this one seems to have stuck in a different way.
At the end of September, I had top surgery! Yay! Yippee! Wahoo! I had six weeks of recovery, where I wasn’t allowed to lift anything over 5lbs, or lift my arms above my head. I was able to take that time off of work through donations from kindhearted friends and strangers, and spent most of it playing Stardew Valley, and quilting. I had prepared to be laid up and sore, but I honestly felt relatively normal after two weeks. I don’t know if I can express in words yet how important and wonderful this change was for me, but I feel perfectly at home in my body, and I can’t remember ever feeling that before.
THE NEXT FEW MONTHS
My first personal publication is coming next year! The announcement detailing this project will be coming this week, so I will save the waxing poetic ‘til then, but know this project is very special to me, and I can’t wait to share everything.
I will be part of an anthology publishing in February! Alongside a host of talented flash fiction authors and poets, I will have a short story featured in Reverent: An Anthology of Divinity, edited by Quinton Li.
A collection of stories, poetry, and non-fiction dedicated to the divine.
Divinity exists in everything. Divinity exists everywhere.
In the past, present and future. In the minuscule and the grand. From fantastical realms and worlds of depth to what lives and suffers in our very own reality. From the gods above, to the girl sitting by your side. Divine.
It's all divine. And this anthology is but a capsule of what divinity means in the interpretations and eyes of these authors.
This project has been already been wonderful to participate in, so stay tuned for more information on my piece, a confirmed publication date, and how to purchase! In the meantime, you can add Reverent on Goodreads or StoryGraph, or if you really can’t wait until February, you can apply for an Advanced Review Copy.
alright! that’s all I’ve got for now!
oh and, as a side note—
there will be another one of these super soon. not the five-months-ago soon I said last time, more like hopefully-this-week soon. in the future these newsletters will not be this close together.