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Greetings and salutations. It is I, Graham.

It’s been quite a year, and here we are, just past the halfway point. We finished the rough draft of “Shadow’s Reality” back last year, and things were really looking up. We had a self-imposed goal, deadline, whatever you want to call it, an expectation based on prior results, to have the rough draft to book three, “Revelation of Shadows”, completed by the end of March.

So about that.

I fell sick around Thanksgiving, turning into pretty much bedridden by Christmas. Hospitalized in January, then again in February, which is when the discovered stage two colon cancer and a required surgery with all of its atrocious side effects. Add to this an uptick in my mental health, completely crashing down around my ears, and this has been quite a year.

Oh yeah, and I haven’t been able to write.

I pull up a blank document in my word processor, and then sit and stare at the white screen. Or worse, I pull up a chapter I started already, reading and rereading it, trying to write the next sentence. I usually know how I want it to read next. It’s not like I am stuck for ideas. But every word I try to type feels wrong. It feels forced, and it feels like it doesn’t belong in existence, much less in this book.

Is it impostor syndrome? I don’t think so. It’s not actually about the quality of the words.

Is it writer’s block? I don’t think so, either. It isn’t that the creativity isn’t there.

Obviously, we blew past our March deadline. Clevenger was going through a lot of things with work, and was swamped with pressure and other stresses, saying nothing about worrying about a certain friend dealing with a cancer scare.

Eventually we did a really smart thing, set the writing aside completely, and went back to begin editing “Manticore’s Shadow.” It may not have moved as quickly as we would have liked, we got our primary edit out of the way. We started by making small changes here and there, adding details, fixing POV issues, things like that. We even isolated sections that had either been poorly written the first time, early on when we were still learning our writing skills, or just flat out needed to be expanded upon. We were able to write entire scenes, or partial scenes, to be added to the book. Whatever the block was, both of us were able to get some good writing in. One more week until we get to collect all of our beta read feedback, and see how things look overall. We have had a small bit of opinions trickle in, and they have already started us thinking in different directions as to how to describe and pace certain sections.

But now that the editing is done for the moment, guess what? I haven’t been able to write.

Have I been stuck in editing mode? That is possible, and Clevenger thinks that is part of the problem. There is such a huge difference between writing and editing, no matter that both are typing words on a screen. So I stare at the screen. I scroll through Tumblr a bit and feel guilty that I am not writing. I posted some short stories written years ago online, unfinished stories, and received feedback that people want more. I busted out the last unfinished chapters, and low and behold, I added to their stories. I was able to write again.

But now I felt guilty that I was writing on projects that weren’t our actual book?

Talk about a catch-22. But as Clevenger tells me often and forcefully, if I am writing and enjoying myself, then it is not wasted time. And so now I pull up a chapter of Revelation of Shadows and have it sitting on a side screen, teasing me as I write other stories. But there sits Jesse, or Rhon, or Emaly, depending on what unfinished scene I have up that day, right there in my peripheral vision as I tease, a reminder, a siren song, calling me back. So I added a few sentences to one chapter. I wrote another 500 words in a different scene. A third scene is nearly finished. It’s no 3500 words hammered out over six hours, but it is baby steps.

I can write again. So let’s see whether it sticks. Until next time…

Don’t forget to love one another.

Graham