The world has been slowly recovering (kind of?) from COVID-19, which means we can all go back into the wretched outdoors again… and that I’m back in the office. *Confession bear meme* I know that many people suffered from COVID-19, people who lost loved ones, lost income, caregivers and hospitals workers who went through living hell, and my sympathies go out to everyone severely affected by the pandemic.

But with that being said, the pandemic was nothing but good to me.

I had the opportunity to work from home which allowed me to spend more time with my family, gave me more personal time, made me insanely more productive in many ways; I lost like 30 pounds; and realistically, I never want to leave my house anyway, so for me, it wasn’t as big a deal as it was for many people. But one area did dip for me, and that was writing productivity.

SO. Now that I’m back to the daily in office grind, I’m hoping to get back on track for writing as well. Anyone who works full-time knows that’s hard, you have to find those little moments during the day to take a break for a few minutes and put some words down. I’m slowly getting back into the motion of doing that, which made me consider the idea of “momentum.”

How is it that writing is so heavily dictated by “momentum”? On paper, that doesn’t really make sense. To the layperson you either write, or you don’t write, there’s nothing about whether you did it the day before that should matter. And yet, it is becoming increasingly clear to me how necessary momentum is to the writing process. If you write every day for a week, then come back after a week’s break, that first day back is going to heavily affected (negatively) by your time away.

By why does that make a difference? I don’t know!

Some say it’s staying in the habit, some say it’s the mindset. And I can see both of those being plausible explanations, but I’m inclined to believe that there’s some part of our natural drive that makes things if we perceive forward progress–which comes from actually working and succeeding.

I ran across a wonderful set of three videos today where the legendary Snake Eyez beat all five members of team NorCal in Street Fighter IV and SoCal regionals a few years ago. The commentators talk about how Snake Eyez is a player that thrives on momentum, the more you let him win, the better he’s going to play and I couldn’t help but chuckle at how that relates to momentum in writing too. Maybe more of our lives is dictated by the concept of momentum than we think? Who knows.

In any case, I’m picking up speed on book 2 again. Getting closer to a readable draft for alpha readers. That’s exciting because I love feedback, but especially because the process of writing this one has gone so much faster and smoother than book 1, and I anticipate even after reader feedback it going even quicker.

Still submitting to agents for book 1. I got my first rejection! So that was a good feeling–I’d so much rather receive a rejection than get radio silence back, which seems to be the most common response from agents. I understand they’re busy, but even just a scripted response is better than nothing.

I read the first book in the Rivers of London! It was pretty good. At least, good enough that I think I’ll be picking up the second one sometime. That one was interesting because I was not engaged by the premise, (cop joins the one man “magic branch” of the London police and investigates MAGICY things… very trope-y, also, I abhor police procedurals), but all of the magic/world building elements really worked for me. Worth a second peek at the very least.

And that’s all for today!

For those of you who want to see the legend Snake Eyez in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMhIT-TqxzI