Hi everybody.
In January, I retired this journal (and my involvement in fandom) because I made a committment--a New Year's resolution, in fact--to write a new draft of my novel from start to finish. I started the novel in 2006, when I was still unemployed, living with my parents, and had no prospects of anything but a short, miserable life smoking myself to death in my parents' backyard.
So, even though it's 4 am and none of you are awake and I'm too tired to say this properly, I wanted to tell that a few minutes ago I finished the novel, two months before my self-imposed deadline. For a long time, I never really expected I would get to this point. I suspected I didn't have it in me to ever finish anything that mattered. But then it happened, so I guess I do.
I wouldn't have been able to write it if I hadn't finally, two years ago, risen out of the mire and found a job that suited me and an apartment away from my parents. And I would never have done that if, through this journal, I hadn't found a community of people who buoyed me through the isolation and self-loathing of pretty much my entire early twenties.
A number of you followed me over to bnharrison, my writing journal, and I continue to be grateful for your support there. Some of you didn't, which I understand, so I wanted to tell you that I miss you and think of you often, and consider you to have played a part in the general not-suckiness of my life as it is now.
I'm taking a break to let the novel percolate before revisions, and while I know that there may never be a time in my life when I will have room to participate in fandom the way I used to, I do have some fic that, after two years, still seems to want to be written. So I may be posting some stories in the near future. Harry Potter, it turns out, is the one fandom I seem destined never to leave quite behind.
Anyway, I just wanted to share the news. I hope you're well.
So, even though it's 4 am and none of you are awake and I'm too tired to say this properly, I wanted to tell that a few minutes ago I finished the novel, two months before my self-imposed deadline. For a long time, I never really expected I would get to this point. I suspected I didn't have it in me to ever finish anything that mattered. But then it happened, so I guess I do.
I wouldn't have been able to write it if I hadn't finally, two years ago, risen out of the mire and found a job that suited me and an apartment away from my parents. And I would never have done that if, through this journal, I hadn't found a community of people who buoyed me through the isolation and self-loathing of pretty much my entire early twenties.
A number of you followed me over to bnharrison, my writing journal, and I continue to be grateful for your support there. Some of you didn't, which I understand, so I wanted to tell you that I miss you and think of you often, and consider you to have played a part in the general not-suckiness of my life as it is now.
I'm taking a break to let the novel percolate before revisions, and while I know that there may never be a time in my life when I will have room to participate in fandom the way I used to, I do have some fic that, after two years, still seems to want to be written. So I may be posting some stories in the near future. Harry Potter, it turns out, is the one fandom I seem destined never to leave quite behind.
Anyway, I just wanted to share the news. I hope you're well.