Manga drawing from Orly's Journals
A scene from Orly’s Journals Entry 33: “Hanabi”

Since my last post, I wrote two more short stories. The first, entitled Yote, is about my childhood best friend Gote. I wrote it in response to a call for submissions by The Sun for stories about nicknames. I felt so good about the story that I submitted it to two other journals as well.

Inspired by the No Kings protests, I wrote another story entitled Five Years. My beta reader and ChatGPT had strong, positive reactions. I haven’t sent it anywhere yet but hope to next week.

In an attempt to cheer myself up, I commissioned a manga artist to do a drawing from Orly’s Journals. I just saw the final yesterday and am very happy with it.

Speaking of Orly’s Journals, I’m currently 10 weeks ahead, and am currently writing Entry 66. I also added two new perks to my Patreon. The first is that I’m now posting screenshares of me writing, to show my writing process. The second is that I’m now calling out my favorite sentence/passage posted during the month and explaining what it means to me.

So, if you’re not part of my Patreon, I hope you’ll check that out. I hope you’ll also wish me luck with finding a publisher for my two new stories. Finally, I hope you like the manga illustration from Orly’s Journals Entry 33: “Hanabi.”

In my last post, way back in May, I said I chose to write and began writing Forever Candy as a novel. Today, in August, I’m letting you know I stopped. It fizzled out weeks ago. The voice I was writing in just fell flat. It didn’t feel authentic. I considered starting over in a different voice, but right now, I think I must walk away from it. Maybe someday I’ll try again.  

I finished my first UCLA Extension Creative Writing class, but I dropped the second class.

In the weeks since I stopped writing, I’ve become depressed. I feel adrift and without purpose. But I’ve been putting in a lot of effort in my sessions with my psychologist. I recently began considering writing about my childhood best friend. In the preceding post, titled Pushpins, our story is laid out in the fourth row of note cards and is something I intended to weave into another story I refer to as Candela.

Writing about my childhood best friend is something I think I can only write privately, without the intention of anyone ever seeing it. I think it’s essential in order to tell our story honestly. 

So, for the readers I do have, you may not get anything new from me for a long while.

Delete TwitterI deleted my Twitter accounts. I think Facebook will be on the chopping block next. Social media has proven to be more detrimental than beneficial for me, and after being off it for over 180 days now, the feelings of FOMO rarely surface.

I feel like disappearing. 

I told my psychologist that by my next session I would open a new Scrivener document and save it for the new writing project. That next session is tomorrow. I’ve been struggling with what to save it as for a working title. I could stick with calling it Candela, but I feel like I should start fresh. I’m leaning toward saving it as I Was Mistaken.