On Saturday, September 19th, I went to SLICE’s last writing centric workshop of the 2026 season hosted by special guest Crystal Odelle. I have been waiting for this workshop because the premise “Writing to Recollect, or Time Travel 101” was so deeply ingrained in the ethos this book I’ve been working on given that this book largely exists because of SLICE, Sip & Scribe, and a million other small incidentals, it felt thematically appropriate. Plus, it forced me to slow down and let the things that have been sitting, actually shimmer.

The workshop did not end up producing the piece I thought it would. This was not the grand introductory statement I imagined it would be. It was however thematically resonant, and the more I sat with my set of three free writers and the more I thought about how the larger collection was the structure, the more I saw this sophomore piece take shape. The second piece ended up being a counterbalance to the second to last piece, something my mom wrote.

And as I wrote the final page, I laughed because when you make plans God laughs and because when I find what I actually needed from the ephemeral trust in the process, I can’t help but laugh.

The excitement of doing a thing consistently is one akin to mining. Digging deep and and discovering the novel. The excitement of making a collection is more like an elaborate puzzle. Finding all the pieces, putting them together, reveling in the final picture.

Now of course, this 40 page book isn’t actually final, but perfection is the enemy of good, and when you make something with the intent to distribute, you can’t be the final arbiter on its quality.

On Sunday, 9/20, I spend the mourning doing one final pass before branching off an Alpha Reader copy and distributing them. I don’t know how many readers is a good number of readers. I’m gonna go with a scattershot approach and try to get a wide net of folks. But This means we are entering the back half of the project. Creation and curation has finally finished. Now it’s time for editing and editing and editing and editing…

I’ve given my readers until the end of October. Which means, I won’t actively be working on the book, so Weeks 10-14 are gonna be probably gonna be something else entirely. I don’t know. Maybe, I’ll go back to the usual format for October.

Sometimes the act of creation is joy and satisfaction enough.