Life and Current Writing Projects

I discuss my creative projects!

Things have been hit and miss lately. I ended up dropping my Math class this semester, but I will be back in school full-time in September, and I will be starting my Computer Science degree. I am done studying English for my AA. I am not happy about dropping the class, but my psychiatrist says I’m in the middle of a period of autistic burnout. Trust me, I feel it. So with my time off from school, I have been focusing on my writing. And it’s going great!

I am very close to finishing the final draft of a Literary fiction book. I have about half of the book edited to a final draft. The rest of the book is one small polishing pass away from being as good as I can get it. I have to rewrite 2-3 chapters towards the end, but the writing of them has been going quickly and easily. I am planning to hopefully give it to Beta readers in about two weeks, and my plan is to start querying on September 1st. I feel really good about where this book is and where it is going. I also feel good about querying because I have already found a few really good matches for this book.

I’ve been writing a lot all week, and editing has actually been a little fun. This book is a literary fiction novel that I’ve given the code name “GOTS”. I am now able to share details of it: "GOTS" follows fifteen-year-old Elvi in 2004 - 2006, who becomes obsessed with a mysterious girl's LiveJournal, leading her down a dangerous path of online stalking and self-destruction. It's a coming-of-age story about mental health, early internet culture, and the blurred lines between digital fantasy and reality. This is a story I’ve wanted to tell for a long time, and I’ve been writing it since 2022. I am also happy that my main character is autistic (although it's never explicitly stated or defined) because I have wanted to write an autistic character for a while. I think this book might be something that people can relate to, though, even if they are not neurodivergent.

I feel like early internet culture is rarely talked about in books, and obsession is a theme that runs through a lot of my writing. I also love being able to write a very imperfect character and rise to the challenge of making an unlikeable person someone readers still want to read about and maybe even someone they want to root for. I also found it fun to write a teenage main character, teenagers are fun because they are messy. So I feel pretty good about this book, where it is headed, and even the scary process of querying. I am expecting a lot of “no’s,” and if I can’t get an agent, I do plan to self-publish, but I want to try querying. I have the perfect Beta readers, but I am looking for more if you, reading this, are interested (I only need like 1-2 more people). So that project is going well.

The other project I am working on is a Literary Dystopian with the code name “Jarvis” ( boring, I know). I am far enough along that I feel comfortable sharing details about this project as well: “Jarvis”: After a chance encounter with a mysterious young woman, low-level government auditor Jarvis is sent to investigate a remote military base, which forces him to confront the true horror of the regime he's been blindly serving. As he's drawn deeper into a web of resistance and obsession, Jarvis must choose between the safety of complicity and the dangerous path of moral awakening. This is a project I’ve been working on for a very long time. This was the story that my Creative Writing professor told me I had to finish and publish. It’s taken me some time, but it is getting really close to being a complete 1st draft. I have probably 2 chapters left to write, and I want to rewrite the first three chapters as they are things I wrote a while back. I think a rewrite in my current voice and skill level is necessary to make the beginning as strong as the rest of the draft. I’m proud of this book, and I think it’s “the” book I’ve written. This book is book one in a series of three books, and I am so excited to write the rest of the series. Jarvis, as a character, is one of my favorite characters I’ve written, and I think his journey is interesting and his differences from the typical dystopian protagonists are a strength, I think. My goal is to finish this book as a final draft by the end of the year, but it’s going to be a little harder because I will be back in school full-time. I wish I could just write full-time from now on, but I know school is my ticket to security while I develop my writing career. Also, I want to have a day job at least for a little while to pay off a small amount of debt.

But yeah, my goal is to have one book querying and another complete and ready to query by the end of the year. And I feel like this goal is attainable! I’m very close with both books, and as long as I’m reasonably consistent, I should be able to do this. This is the best I’ve felt about my writing in a long time. I know there is going to be a lot of rejection, that’s just part of the process, but I feel like these two books are going to find their place, wherever that may be. I feel comfortable sharing these goals because I am so close to meeting them. Also, sharing goals helps motivate me and hold me accountable.

In other news, I have been continuing to put together my home office/art room. I’m happy with how it's coming together. The office is a completely different style from my last art/work room. My last room was pink, white, dolls, flowers, and cute art like Alice Snow and Gea hung up. It was cute and very girly, but I felt like with the new room, I wanted to be totally different. My cat Ivan, who was my soulmate, got so sick that he had to be sequestered to my room at the end of his life, and the old decor reminded me too much of him passing away, so I not only switched rooms but also changed my decor completely. The new room has very dark grey walls, vintage warm woods, and industrial details. There are accents of brighter colors like orange and red, and I’ve begun collecting toys made in the Soviet Union to fill out the space on my new shelf.

I donated a lot of my dolls, and some of them had strange sun damage, so I had to just toss them. I kept my favorite dolls for the new room and packed a few others away. I also passed on a lot of art supplies to my dear Sako Tumi (read her substack and work if you don’t already!!), and I donated some other supplies and disposed of my oil paint and brushes. I am hoping to find some stuff to give to my friend Ren as well. I am also going through my clothes, memorabilia, and photos. I had thousands upon thousands of photos, and it’s been really freeing to go through them and downsize photos that don’t mean anything to me, but also rediscover photos I had forgotten about. My memorabilia is a little trickier because I want to start doing collages again, and many of the things I have kept over the years could be great for junk journaling. But I’ve made a commitment that if I don’t use them in the next year, I’m going to find a new home for much of it. I also have so many postcards that I have collected that maybe I should pass on to my pen-pal group, which I’m a part of. Lots of movie tickets, some going back many years. I also have a hackey-sack and my corsages from high school dances, there is a lot of random stuff like that. But I’m downsizing because the room I switched to is half the size of the last one. It’s definitely a process. I might show some photos when the room is done! It’s so dark and cozy so far.

A strange thing that has been happening is that while I’ve been writing and organizing, I’ve been constantly watching/listening to Kitchen Nightmares. There is something weirdly calming and comforting about it. I also watched Tales of the Night, which I will be writing about for Kraft Paper Muse magazine. KPM is a unique and fun publication I am glad to be a part of recently. I wrote my first columns for the last issue, and the next one will be out on September 1st. Go check it out! There is a little something for everyone in KPM.

So even though my Math class didn’t go so well, other things have been going very well. I also had testing to re-diagnose my dyscalculia ( I don’t have a recent diagnosis, the last time was when I was like a junior in high school) and test for other learning differences. So I’m hoping to get some accommodations to help me with this final Math class (other than discrete math, which I’m not worried about because I like it, and statistics, which I don’t know how to feel about).

So overall things are still going, even though I am disappointed that my burnout and learning issues didn’t allow me to finish my Math class this semester, I am still doing things! I will update this Substack sooner next time, and I hope you all are doing well!

-Aisling!