Changing worlds

 It says I haven't posted in some weeks, but unlike a lot of other times this year, I don't have to invent writing that I was thinking about doing. I don't have to wonder if thinking about writing is the same as actually putting words down, if editing and brainstorming and outlining well help throw off the specter of stagnation. Seven weeks ago I felt good about the critical mass of story notes and setting detail and decided to see how far into it I could get. The story was kind of a continuation of a short story I penned last year. I cannot recall what the impetus was for that piece; honestly, I will admit that I don't even know where I saved it. Regardless, it had a similar premise, and it got my attention because despite everything else that was going on, it kept my attention. And now I am working on chapter seven. 

It felt really good to read back through everything, adjust the outline, flesh in some notes, make some decisions, and some gambles for the long term, and start a master file. A month and a half turned out to be over 15,000 words and some thirty pages. It reminded me of people starting NaNoWriMo early, and like usual, I have lost the ability to keep apace with that kind of output. I sent it to one person, the only person I had spoken to who was not reeling from the surprising vortex the pandemic produced, of time, of energy, of sanity. I personally can't do the math. My schedule is hybridized, and compared to how things were before, I have at least three extra hours a week by virtue of not commuting. But it just doesn't add. So, I may wait for that feedback before pushing on, I may not. The biggest determinant will be whether I can untwist the next knot of the narrative I'm building. It's kind of grandiose science fiction, and I am all at once proud I am not shying away from the demands and terrified that I am missing something, not accounting for something. 

And that's not all. A perfect storm of creative productivity and positive vibes had me making an Instagram account. Someone I know, who it turns out didn't even use the service, told me she thought it was a place where people went to find artists. Another person I had befriended told me it was a place where lots of people came together and had really high traffic numbers. The truth is that it is a phone-based application, so a laptop user like myself that mostly uses his camera for remembering things and his phone for youtube is way behind the curve. I had some days of intense frustration that I couldn't upload things from other devices, that there were no clear labels for anything, only unintuitive symbols, and there were no instructions in the interface at all. Ultimately what I had earned was a new challenge, and once I had wrapped my head around that, it was fine. I am using it to deposit my poetry, new and old. Because it is a visual medium, I have chosen to decorate the pieces with artifacts and setting that hopefully further enhance the words. I came up with the hashtag PicturesaboutPoetry. Then I learned that making up your own hashtags is not effective. 

In other other news, I continue to have great conversations with my cover artist. His growth is really encouraging. He seems to be wrestling with the conundrum that with time, his work will only improve in quality, but waiting will not produce any work. I know how that feels, and yet I do not have any words to help him stumble any less than I did. I look back at entire books I wrote, which I thought highly of at the time, but now they seem more like practice, or preparation, I had to enact to be able to write the kinds of stories I am working on now, and might be able to reach later. I have mixed feelings about that, and even then, I could just be flat out wrong. Time is funny that way, how incredibly wise it seems from how it can teach so much. 

I guess the last bit is I am applying for yet another opportunity to write for a company. I have always enjoyed games with great story, and being able to contribute to a project like that has always seemed very fun and fulfilling and educational. Because of the times, more and more opportunities have focused on people of color as applicants, and my friends have been very supportive about sending any and all such my way. In consecutive seasons now I have applied and not heard back and applied and not heard back. My method for such is to fully commit myself to the application process, then blissfully forget I even tried. Maybe that's safer, or maybe it's just foolish. I'm old enough now that I can look to the left and the right of my path and squint and trace out in the distance where I might have ended up had this or that opportunity turned out differently for me. There are so many different worlds. I am consistently in awe of the possibilities, that with every step forward, new ripples form.

All of that is to say I'm still here. And I've been traveling.