#rosesvignettes

I'm writing a novel, and have been since August 2024. I finished draft one in December 2026, fourteen months later. I wrote 35k words, and it was hard. I remember having to take breaks, having periods where I didn't know where to take the story, where writing one sentence in the draft felt like torture. On 1 April 2025, nine months in, I had written over 21.5k words and was in chapter eleven. Since starting draft two in January of this year (2026), I've written just over 8k in eight months, and that feels absolutely pitiful to me.

But then the part of me that is aggressively patient and kind, to me and my friends and the stranger in the other lane of traffic, grabs me by the shoulders and says, "Stop. Think. Why haven't you written as much? Give me an actual answer."

And then I do, and I remember that summer is the time where I work on my more tactile creativity: crochet, knitting, and drawing. It's the time where I explore more of who I am as a person, where I'm not sitting in classes or working most of the day and taking breaks to hash out a few sentences. I remember that I've been taking opportunities, traveling with my family, learning social skills that I missed when I was younger, bonding with my extended family, and developing interests new and old. I remember that summer is hard for me: a time of lower focus, a time of "hurry up and wait". A time where I'm just trying to vibe, rather than get things done.

Autumn is a time to reap what I sowed in the spring, to realize the plans I laid and reap the benefits of what I tried over the summer. Winter is a time to be cosy, to get things done slowly but surely to earlier dusks and later dawns. Spring is a time to wake up, to get excited, to bloom with all I've created. And summer is the time to let myself grow quietly, without fanfare, without pushing myself to do it in the daylight or late into the night.

I don't remember much of my freshman year of high school, except that it was hard. New environment, new people, new dynamics, new everything. I remember taking a geography class from a teacher who, in hindsight, did not teach that class in any meaningful way, but I met a senior guy in there who became a dear friend and helped pull me out of the difficulty funk. I remember him inviting me to sit with him and his friends in the mornings before school, and wanting to slap sense into at least four of them, but it was silly and lighthearted and I learned how to survive high school at their metaphorical hearth.

The end of the year was especially hard, and I remember one day, the second-to-last week of the school year, where I was in an especially harsh mindset. I felt as though I was unworthy of life, of learning, and of anything I had earned, and I was one more hard fucking day from making a plan to survive sophomore year and convincing my parents to let me drop out. I sat in the common area, mind elsewhere and waiting for my dad to pick me up, when one of those guys sat down next to me. He just sat there for a minute, which struck me as strange, because he'd always been the type of guy to make a dick joke or inundate the conversation with weird World War II facts or anime references. Instead, he started telling me about his plans for college, what degrees and programs he'd considered before he picked one, and how he'd worked on it. When my dad texted to let me know he was in the pick-up line, the guy stood up and told me that it was going to be okay, and if he could do it, I could too, before leaving from another door.

There's something to be said about being powerful and aggressive, but there's something equally important to be said about being gentle and kind.

Today, I changed my sheets, and I thought about my partner while I did it. She's a wonderful person, and I am far better for knowing her at all. I wasn't thinking about our party, or how we'll have to deal with drama when we finally get to see each other steadily for the first time in three months. Instead, I was thinking about doing this in our own home, someday in the future. Walls painted a soft grey, maybe, and shelves full of well-loved books. Windows looking out onto a garden, or the windowsill crowded with plants in pots we painted together. Their art supplies on a table, and my yarn sitting next to it as they write on the couch or at their desk, and I do laundry because it's my turn to do it.