Everything is on fire
You know what this is like. We all have weeks where the best we can do is prevent our little world from turning to carbon.
I don’t write about it much because it’s not terribly relevant to my work here, but my full time job is trying to get a podcast production company on its feet. This last week was an inflection point, where there really wasn’t any option but to work, non-stop, all through the days and some nights, to get several different shows ready for launch.
More details will, unfortunately, have to wait.
In the weeks leading up to this, though, I didn’t manage my time well to have material ready to publish. Nothing on
, and nothing for Arch/Eternal.When I have had a little time outside of work, I’ve been too depleted to do anything but childcare or videogames (which is basically inner-child care). I haven’t even had the energy to read.
I’m not complaining! I don’t think I’m even apologizing, actually. I’m just explaining. Because it feels much better to do this than not to do it.
Because I’m worried about you
All week long, my anxiety over neglecting you, dear reader, has added to the robust chorus of stress. I know you’re not upset. It’s unlikely you even noticed I was absent from your inbox.
But I made a commitment, dammit! And whether you care or not, you are the substance of that commitment. Without you, it wouldn’t have mattered much at all. It’s one of the reasons I started Dispatches, to have a reason to keep commitments. Accountability to people I care about, people I respect, people whose respect I very much want to earn.
And so, during one of my brief episodes of intense worry over you, I came to a decision: I am going to stop publishing chapters of Arch/Eternal until the current draft is finished.
The main reason for this, frankly, is that I think the novel will be better off if I can work on it a bit less linearly. Trying to make sure that every decision I make in the current chapter won’t torpedo what I have planned (or have already written) in later chapters has been hamstringing my creative flexibility, and slowing progress down to a crawl — to the point that the thought of putting another chapter together every week has become almost paralyzing.
So there’s that.
And then there are all the other things I’d love to write about, like the fact that this last Thursday, I completed my first 5-day water fast. Or a much-belated opinion piece on the whole AI craze. Or how I’ve been going doing the UFO rabbit hole for one of our companies biggest projects.
Or, you know, a short story maybe, every now and again.
I mean ffs, I didn’t even have time or bandwidth to celebrate Shadowloss getting tapped as a runner up in the most recent
. (Thank you , et al!)But the thought of NOT finished Arch/Eternal is totally unacceptable. So instead of continuing to serialize an unfinished draft, I’m instead committing to finish it by a certain date.
And that date is….
Wait hang on
My plan is to actually to publish one more chapter, this coming Friday, with a nice, precipitous cliffhanger, and shortly thereafter announce the date of return.
Sort of like the next season of a TV show that’s already in production. We love that!
Alright how do I end this? Probably by telling you that I wrote this whole thing in less than 40 stolen minutes on this beautiful Saturday afternoon, and I am now in fact out of time.
<3
Oh, I absolutely noticed you were missing.
And I was missing:
Your short stories
Your essays
Your photogenic face peeking out of your logo (sometimes... it's not there today, but no biggie.)
Whenever you want to show up is okay by me.
[Insert Brad Pitt gif here.]
Best of luck with your projects at your side gig. Because we all know this is your real job.