I did not indulge myself in NaNoWriMo this year for a few reasons. I’m doing some non-writing things that take up a fair chunk of time, and I don’t think I’ve ever produced anything worth reading during those “just git it done” sessions. That’s not my process. I know people are like, “Well, it doesn’t matter, long as you wrote a novel,” but I’m my own first customer. I’m the first person I need to sell the idea to, and I need to believe in what I’m doing if I’m going to make real progress at it. I need the luxury of crossing out yesterday’s progress if necessary and still being able to make deadline. I need to be able to go five days without progress so that I can find a solution that’s going to put five thousand words on the page on day six.

I’ve also written a lot this year. For the longest time, I’ve been looking for something that I can write in the “serial adventure” format. I seem to work best in the 25,000 word range, which is a challenging sale. Most serial adventures seem to be geared toward young adults, as well, and I wanted to work blue.

I got the idea for “A Wolf In Time” after reading about fifty Doctor Who novelizations in a row, which I suppose makes it one of my more shameless pastiches. Fear not, though; this is no fanfiction. Bartholomew is a werewolf from a future where time travel has basically ruined civilization, whose job it is to set things right. He can’t go back in time and stop other time travelers from doing nefarious things, so his missions involve bending a damaged timeline back to its original shape. Leon Oates is a bewildered human passenger basically brought along as ballast.

I’ve been thinking about how to present unpublished work, and brainstorming ways to use my current social media platform to put these stories in front of an audience. Hopefully by January I’ll have something productive to show off.

It probably doesn’t look good for any writer to head to the monthly blog space to announce that he has several projects he’s nearly finished with, but polished, developed stories do not flow from disorganized minds any more than healthy, satisfying meals emerge from kitchens that look like disaster zones. My old, gray-haired father, the wacky inventor, occasionally creates the most clever constructs, but they emerge from a basement that looks like a landfill.

Notable events that happened in May largely happened out of my hands. Khaki put the cheerful catastrophe story “Weasels of the Apocalypse” on “The Voice of Dog,” hitting all the right notes. The story landed in two parts, and involved a suspicious melon and an exciting potato.

The undisciplined mind goes where it’s comfortable. If the writing hits a wall, why distress myself by trying to tear down the wall when I could just go write something else and be comfortable again? May’s result: four stories begun, none finished. Of course, it could just mean the story isn’t working, but it’s too early in development to tell. Generally, I haven’t put in the hard work yet; that’s the true test.

And for some reason there are books all over the house with bookmarks on or near page 107 that I never get around to finishing.

I’m going to try to dedicate June to just jotting the occasional impulse onto a whiteboard and trying to harvest the seeds planted in May. But first, I have to finish this idea I had for “Roadhouse Boys.” And then I should look at that short story I was writing the other day. But there’s that video I need to post to my YouTube channel. And should I start using that Patreon for something…?