What am I working on?

I keep talking myself out of it when I think about writing this post. 

No one will read it.

The world has much bigger things to pay attention to. 

If I can write the post, I could be writing the actual work instead.

It's just going to end up being a long ramble.

Part of my trauma recovery has been learning to take more of a "yes, and" approach with myself when I think like this. Something that sounds similar to voices from my past saying, "Let's just pretend for a minute that what they said is true...", but less politely hostile and more genuinely concerned.

Even if everything my mind raises as an obstacle is true, I should still write this post. Yes, this blog is a way to put out information about my work. That's not all it is, though. That's why I said in the beginning that I'm not doing a schedule, and that it's me talking myself through things while others are welcome to follow along. If it's going to be a mess of mental rambling, that probably means I need to explore it. 

So what am I working on? I guess the answer depends on how you define "working on" things.

Poetry continues. I've realized that's one of the few things I let go of to mask my weirdness. I've never been mistaken for normal, but I have sometimes softened an edge or dimmed a light in order to make my weirdness fit a little easier into the spaces I was told I wasn't expected to fit into, but I knew what would happen if I didn't fit. I never just happened to find people who love poetry like I do. Most people I've known will tell you poetry isn't their thing. Others were looking to intimidatingly impress people with critiques of poets who died before those doing the critiquing were born that would show only they were enlightened enough to understand why all of the famous poetry was cheap crap.

I don't think poetry should only be for highly educated modern philosophers. I just love poetry. So I'm writing it and sharing it. I'm reading poems other people are writing. I'm using the Unwind: Poetry & Writing app. It's like a social media platform where it's all poetry and short stories. Instead of directing people to your work somewhere else, you share your writing right there. I haven't looked at the short story side of it, but I'm enjoying having a space for reading poems and sharing my own. 

I'm also working on a book I might finish this year. I'm not set on that as a goal, but I'm having to spend less time on social media for my mental health and it's not time to start planting this year's vegetable garden yet. I've got a lot of time for writing.

The Lovecraftian Mythos story I was working on has been pushed aside. I'll go back to it eventually. I've built the foundation for the story, and it spawned a side project of making a physical version of the main characters weird sort of art journal/channeled grimoire. It's a different experience than my own art journal because everything I draw and write in the one for the character is planned in advance. Which is kind of funny, because the character doesn't plan it. In fact, she doesn't even know she's doing it at first. She wakes up and there are pages she's filled with a bunch of things that make no sense to her.

The story is at a point where I can let things simmer in the back of my mind for a while and return when it's ready to be stirred. What I'm currently working on is a retelling of several fairy tales. It's a different world from my stories in Forest Tales, but I think the characters would understand each other's worlds. In fact, I have wished there was a way to connect them because Auntie Rheinae from Forest Tales would get along so well with some of the characters in my current work! I've given it some thought, though, and have decided these worlds need to be kept separate.

Instead of writing the retellings as short stories, I'm telling them in ways that weave together. Some characters are getting renamed (there's a whole process for how Pinocchio became Kiefer and Geppetto became Zef), and some of them are getting names. I'm not listing "Mama Bear", "Papa Bear", and "Baby Bear" in the Royal City's tax records. 

I'm not really good at talking about my stories online while I'm in the process of writing them. There's so much that might change along the way. I am participating in #WIPSnips on Bluesky, though, so you can get little glimpses of dialogue and narrative. I know how these tales go together, and I know how I'm giving different meanings to familiar tales, and I'm going to ask you to trust me with this. I'm always passionate about stories I'm writing, but it's a different passion this time. I'm enjoying the work in a way that my younger self hoped it would be. 

Now that I'm thinking about it, I think some of my resistance to talking about works-in-progress is not wanting to give too many spoilers. Yeah, please trust me for now.

I'm continuing with doing things in my weirdbook this year, which is what I call my art journal. I have "explain the weirdbook" on a list of things I intend to write about here. I also have a more specific type of art journal in mind that I'm not ready to talk about yet. I want to get more of a feel for what it will be before I say anything about what I'm doing with it.

As far as what I'm reading goes, I'm not caught up yet on everything I intended to finish reading last year. It's not likely that I'll be wondering what I should read next anytime soon.