The Christmas season is upon us once more! If you were following this blog last year, you probably know that I am already deep within my yearly movies and shows list, including the mandatory watches every year, the high priority ones, and the ones we only watch occasionally. Last year, I hit the ground running in April and didn’t stop until February of this year. I wrote over 60 articles back-to-back-to-back and had so much fun with all of them! I sorely miss writing for this blog, but with the amount of stuff I have been cramming into my time, writing here consistently is currently not a sustainable activity. I hope to return someday, as I have plenty of things I still want to review and topics I’d love to cover, especially now that I have been writing again.
For now, I’m taking some time to reflect on the year. My goals last year were absolutely stomped (in a shockingly positive way) by the reality of 2025. The only ones I talked about here were a list of video games to play. I did not finish that list. I barely scratched the surface. Because I was only focused on it for about two months before my life changed, likely forever.
Rediscovering my passion for writing in February was one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I have learned and grown so much since sitting down in March to a blank Word document and making the decision to write a novel from scratch. 9 months and 3 books later, I am so excited about my writing journey.
Plans as a Novelist
In February, I sat down at a blank Word document and issued a challenge to myself. Can I just… write a book? My entire life, I’ve wanted to be an author, and I have written one novel that has since been shelved (for now). I have always kind of felt like I was full of good ideas but wasn’t sure if I actually had the gumption to put them onto the page. An ‘idea guy’ doesn’t get much to do without qualifications, so I’ve spent the last four years accepting the fact that I was probably never going to be an author. That I would have written one mediocre book and it’s fine that I didn’t do anything else.
On February 28th, with Brandon Sanderson’s writing lectures fresh in my mind, I set to the challenge of writing a novel. That month was a blur of writing, and I wrote a 120k word novel in 29 days. It still has a lot of work left, but it taught me the most important lesson I have learned in my writing journey: I can write a book. Book 2, tagged Gauntlet, written in the summer, taught me that I can write books. Book 3, tagged Vault, was written in the fall, and now the past two months have been spent doing a major revision of the book I wrote in March, which I have tagged Dragon.
So let’s talk details. Dragon is now in its third revision – the first draft was raw prose, the second draft (worked on from April-May) was tightening plots and prose. The third draft was a major restructuring including massive chunks of rewriting from beginning to end. I am currently sitting on two parts completed in draft 3, with one daunting part left to dive into!
My hope is to have Dragon, version 3.0 finished before the New Year. From there, I will be giving it to a few gamma readers (I did betas with Dragon already), get their feedback, and use that to produce Dragon version 3.5. Hopefully at that point, I will be ready for a proofread of the novel, wrapping up my season of Dragon at version 4.0, which will be the first novel I query! Now, I know that it’s rough out there for querying hopefuls, so while Dragon is being queried, I will be working on a fifth novel. Then, after that book is finished, I will be revising Gauntlet! From there, it’s going to be a mix of revision and new writing until I either get an agent or decide it’s time to explore the avenue of self-publishing.
Either way, I will get these books on the market. Even if they don’t end up being the four I’ve written so far, publishing is no longer a hypothetical for me. I am comforted by the fact that holding my novels in paperback and hardcover form is a certainty, one way or another! And if I end up publishing my books just for me and my family & friends, I can live with that. For now, I’m just going to keep producing – keep putting words on the page over and over and over again until my backlist is enormous. My hope is that every novel continues to be better and better, and based on my current progress, that’s where I’m headed.
A Reflection
I am looking forward to continuing in this writing journey! Unfortunately, I have sacrificed this blog on the altar of productivity (as well as most of the time I used to spend playing video games!). I miss writing here the most though. I didn’t get to review much of my DC list, and still had a lot I wanted to talk about in Books for Readers Young and Old. Someday, I hope to reclaim some time to pick this back up regularly – maybe as I get some novels published and have a bit more of a cushion in the amount of time I’ve spent grinding on these projects. I particularly would love to return to my Deep Cuts series. That’s probably what I miss the most from this blog – those were so much fun!
There are still a lot of blanks to fill in on this blog, including my Season-by-Season series that I started, and a few other things I had planned. So I’ll be back, someday. For now, though, these posts about writing are probably going to be my primary content here, sporadic as it is. As well as, I guess, reviews of things I really want to talk about like Superman.
In the Classroom
(apologies for the poorly photoshopped-out name and the wonderful handwriting)
I teach Middle School, grades 7th-8th English and Literature. As I’ve become more confident and open about my writing process, I thought it might be fun to give them a glimpse into the world of an aspiring author. So I have my whiteboard sectioned off like this! This includes the novels I’ve written, their word counts, my current WIP (Work in Progress) and my progress tracker. My hope is to show with transparency the entire writing journey, including queries, rejections, and WIPs as I continue to build my portfolio and query agents! This is a unique process that many students never get to see, and I love teaching/talking about creative writing, so this is a little bit of put-my-money-where-my-mouth-is for them.
Final Thoughts
I guess I should stop procrastinating and get back to Dragon! Perhaps next time I return I’ll be talking through the querying journey, or maybe I’ll be back to review something random! This blog is currently in ‘whatever calls to me’ mode, which I am fine with for now. Might go through some of the games I DID play on The List for 2025. And I will still be making a list for 2026, even though I know I will not be playing a ton. I am looking forward to continuing this journey and hopefully sowing the seeds of publication in 2026!
A Thinker in Space 
What do you think?