When all you've done is all you can do
There’s a particular image in my head that I’ve been trying to work into a story since May. Nibs and I moved to into an apartment in NYC in May, an odd little C-shaped pre-war place in Queens. Our front door stares at another door, which also is to our apartment—a weird closed loop. Maybe it’s a safety regulation? Or maybe this was originally two apartments? All I know is that my front door’s peephole looks directly at the door to my bedroom, and I have a creeping horror of one day looking and seeing the door—which stands only a couple feet from where I sleep at night—standing ajar.
It’s such a good image! (In my head, not this half-assed phone photo.) It freaked me and Nibs out enough that we had trouble sleeping here at first. But I consider that a good thing. That means it has teeth; I can’t shake the shivers that the idea gives me.
I have no idea what to do with it. It haunts me, thwarting every effort I’ve made to assign it some sort of meaning. It’s made an appearance in one as-yet unfinished novel and another equally unfinished novella. It’s scratched into the margins of a fanfic and the outline of a YA novel. Nothing sticks.
2020 is the year writing got hard again. Unsurprising, given all of this, and I still managed to write some things (more on that below), but damn, I miss actually being able to write THE END on projects. Aside from the stalled novel and novella, I’ve failed at writing at least three different fanfics, a short story, and two essays.
As a teacher, I try to emphasize that failure can be enriching, both as experience and as fodder for future projects. Every abandoned idea goes back on the brain’s compost pile.
As a writer, obviously, I think I should be the exception, and that every effort must produce something worth showing others. Otherwise, why do it? Insert something about Shakespeare writing King Lear or whateverthefuck during the Black Plague.
Someday, maybe I’ll get better at allowing myself the grace I suggest my students show themselves. Maybe that can be the goal for 2021.
NEWS, SOME OF WHICH ARE ACTUALLY OLDS:
BEHOLD the cover and a pre-order link for DEFEKT, the sequel to FINNA. GAH, I love this cover so much. I’m also amazed that this novella happened at all, since I started writing it a week or two after lockdown started.
Homesick, which was nominated for the Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy awards, is currently 20% off at the publisher’s site with the code 2020SNAG. Their sale is storewide and goes through 12/31. https://www.dzancbooks.org/our-books/homesick
Voting is open for the Nebula Awards! If you’re a member of SFWA, you can nominate here: https://www.sfwa.org/forum/ballots/. FINNA is eligible for Best Novella, and I’d be over the moon if it was nominated.
Uhhhhhh if you follow me on Twitter, maybe you know this, but I proposed to my beautiful, amazing, wonderful partner during a D&D game.
Before that, we adopted a cat after his shitty owner abandoned him during lockdown. Happy to report that with some dental surgery and a lot of forehead smooches, he’s the actual best-ever cat and has his own hashtag on Twitter. Morty invites himself onto literally every Zoom call I make and lets out silent-but-deadly farts while I’m workshopping student stories. What a perfect creature.
I don’t celebrate any winter holidays, but if you do, I hope they’re good, and that the end of 2020 is, if nothing else, quiet and peaceful for you and yours.
