Rows and rows of big dark clouds

First proper rainfall of fall today, I think. Everything's shrouded in mist, all the autumn colors are muted. The streets are slick and shiny.

Less than a month ago I began writing the eleventh draft of The Dark Age—which I think will wind up with a different title, one I'll share if it sticks. It is, at last, the draft which feels most like the book I imagined I was writing when I began this project in...yikes, in 2020.

This morning I sat at my favorite little coffee shop—the only other two people in the place were, I think, also writers; a woman who quietly worked on her laptop, and a man who theatrically scribbled on paper, crumpled it, threw it, trudged over to pick it up, and repeated the process several more times—and a song full of memories came on. Writing this book—it's about enormously deep regrets, failures, irretrievable change, catastrophic mistakes—has already got me sludged in the past. My own, but not just my own. The past in general. What it's like to carry it with you, and how to put it down so you can live the present, and make a better past for your future self.

Or something like that.

It's a good thing to be willing to do the work, to recognize when you haven't been, to let yourself feel the friction of making change. It's uncomfortable and difficult and embarrassing and often very painful. And it's a strange thing to then put your characters through it as well. It's easy to feel like you just live in a place of self-interrogation. Which is a good place to visit frequently, and maybe a challenging place to live full-time.

I haven't really kept up with the blog lately, and I miss it. The internet isn't a place I recognize these days, and I don't know how to contribute to it in a productive or meaningful way. So much of it feels superficial, ephemeral, wrongly motivated. Perhaps it wouldn't be the worst thing to write here again, to remember what it used to be to write little things online.

In the meantime, it's raining. And I have a new hat. So things aren't bad, not at all.