Unrested and Disillusioned: Journal Entry, 11 June 2026
I must feel like I don't have enough problems
I am at that classic crossroads where I have finished one project and while in the doldrums that follow, I am unable to rest my mind. So now I have taken up five projects.
You haven’t misread that. Five. I said FIVE.
But they’re not all futile and my ADHD brain (self-diagnosed, I must mention) has a plan. I will make a separate list for all June Writerly Things like the one I made for the month of May. I realise that May was also a lot about complaining about my writing workload. But you were so warned.
So today is just about WIPs.
Half Written is still in the query trenches, and since a couple of fulls have only very recently been sent out, I imagine it will be in the trenches for quite a while. Progress on the now-primary WIP, an upmarket speculative fiction called All Our Goddesses is full steam ahead and I’m not stopping till I get it into the hands of beta readers. There is a third novel-in-progress people (see I told you, I was insane), which is a coming-of-age story, but all I’ve done with that is come up with a two-paragraph summary and the title Here Be Tadpoles (a working title, people, don’t scold me, I will cry). My short story The Gifter is now being peddled around to literary journals in the hopes of finding a loving home. The other short story My Brother, Dara is still unfinished and way beyond any word count socially acceptable. I could turn it into a chapbook if I had the skill. But I don’t. I do realise I have ignored my shorts writing skill a bit, since the last short story I released was Captain Asterix over a year ago (!!!). The novel has clearly taken up all my time.
But if you think I find the paragraph above exhausting to me (I mean, to an extent I did release a sigh while reading through it), then you’d be mostly wrong.
Because this is what I want.
I want the exhaustion of living in a life drenched in literature. Creative words, short stories, bunch of poems lovingly (or in a deadlined frenzy) hand stitched together, plot beats, mangled similes that don’t land, spelling and grammar atrocities, language. A life in stories and writing and reading.
I have recently discovered…no, wrong…realised that I am only capable of writing difficult stories. So naturally, I changed all my social media taglines to reflect this truth. I want to write something cozy, lovely jubbly, aww-so-cutesy. Maybe in the next life.
But the major project of all, and one that should be of real interest to you, reader, is The Deep List.
I have helped run Oratoria for a bit now, as its Fiction Editor, and while we have struggled to keep the magazine out through the pandemic, we are glad to announce some finance backing that is helping us launch The Deep List. there are more (sooper dooper interesting) plans for Oratoria in the near future, but let’s talk about The Deep List for now.
We are excited to start featuring debut and established authors who have been published by small presses and indie publishers on a mixed platform of interviews and podcasts, and we will extend the interview features to self-published authors who have put out exceptional work. We feel like coverage on brilliant work from this part of publishing is often thin and simply put, we want to put the spotlight on it. I will write more about The Deep List in detail in the June dispatch of things, but this is one more thing on my list that will quite possibly drive me crazy, which is exactly where I want to be.
For now I’ll add another paragraph to Here Be Tadpoles and call it a night! Unrested, disillusioned, yes, yes, yes.