Progress Updates
Engaging writer brain/ filling the well: An ongoing effort to make space to recharge is that I'm trying to have weekends rather than letting freelance work slop over into all the days. On Saturday and Sunday I am supposed to ignore my regular work and spend time however I choose. Saturdays tend to go to house things. Sundays are church, napping, and watching things on streaming services. The key is to deliberately rest my task brain and switch modes. I don't always succeed, but the effort helps.
XDM2e: There are only 211 packages left to ship. They all have sketched books in them, so I'm waiting on Howard to get the sketching done. These will go out in small batches over the next several weeks. I'd love to get them all done and mailed before the Writing Excuses retreat, but we'll have to see. That will just leave the audiobook recording to manage.
House in the Hollow: I'm inching toward picking this one back up. Hopefully I can spend some significant time working on it during the Writing Excuses retreat.
Structuring Life to Support Creativity Workbook: I did a little bit of work on this during the week prior to Gen Con, I'm hopeful that I can start working on it again this week.
Community Building: While I was at Gen Con I met with Maurice Broaddus who is a community builder extraordinare. I want to pin him down and have him map out his overlapping communities, and ask him how he manages to maintain all those connections without feeling overwhelmed or entangled by him. I came away with thoughts pertinent to the work I'm doing with event organization, my own creative community, my church communities, and the discord community we're running. Gen Con itself was an exercise in remembering why our creative work matters, because I could see people's faces and realize that our existence as creators changes the world. I really should try to catch more of these thoughts into a blog post.
Fernweh story: This is an epistolary story about a disabled woman who longs to travel and revisit a place in her childhood both physically and emotionally, but she can't, so she learns how to summon the place to her instead. I've finished round one of feedback. Round two is only about a week away, so I need to complete this and revise.
Patreon: I'm sadly behind on all of my commitments here. This does seem to be a regular occurrence that makes me extremely grateful to those who stick around. You're all supporting everything in this project list. I just want to do better at doing some work that is specifically for you. If you'd like to
become a patron click that link.
Schlock work: So far no covid post Gen Con. Yay! Up next is meeting with the Backerkit folks to talk about launching a crowdfunding project for Schlock book 17. Howard needs to put in time to finish and release the Shafters Shifters novellas. I need to clean up the XDM2e shipping mess and the post-Gen Con mess over at the warehouse.
House: Right now I need to get the piles of unpacked stuff from Gen Con out of our living space and catch up on laundry. After that, I'll look at more gardening and home improvement work.
Short form writing: I hope to write between 12-20 short stories (or poems or essays) this year. Current count is Zero, which is a discouraging number, but it is what it is.
One Cobble blog: 3 posts in July. Will try, but August and September have so many other things in them, I think I'm unlikely to hit my six-posts-per-month goal. You can read posts at
onecobble.com Newsletter: You're reading it!
Online Lectures/setting up for freelance consulting:
There is a tentative plan for me to do some online lectures in the next few months. One of my tasks for this week is to get these scheduled.
Back Burner
The Mads: idling, but possibly will be worked on as I work on other picture books.
Old Fashioned Irma: In rough draft stage.
Anxiety Boy picture book: Excited for the possibilities with this one, but it is idling too.
Additional Picture books: I have fragments for another 2-3 picture books. I want to get them drafted.
Crafting: Picked up crocheting this month, but I don't have a fixed project. I'm just noodleing.
Picture book about Amy's mommy: It needs tweaking, but probably not massive revision. Mostly this one is resting while I'm saving up money to hire an artist then run a Kickstarter.
Herding Wild Horses: Serious doubts about my qualifications for writing a parenting book. But my doubts don't matter much right now since this project is far back in line behind other things.