#writingdotcoffe

It doesn’t happen too often, but at least several times a year, I realise that I’m stuck. Really stuck. The symptoms follow roughly the same pattern every time, and I’ve learned to recognise them over the years. I know what I want to get done, but I seem to do everything I possibly can to avoid finishing that thing. And when I’ve pretty much exhausted all reasonable forms of procrastination, I spend hours and hours on end thinking about a solution, often backtracking and going in circles.

I hate being stuck. It’s overwhelming. I’m unable to focus properly on anything until I come up with a solution. The good news is that once I’ve realised that I am indeed stuck, I can usually dig myself out pretty quickly. This is how I do it.

But why?!

You’re stuck for a reason, but it may not be what you think. Instead of ploughing ahead to get to a solution by force, it’s much more effective to take a step back. Why is this such a big deal? Why can’t I figure this out?

Do I need to do more research? Am I trying to do too many things at once? Am I too tired? Bored? Worried that I’ll screw it up?

For me, the why usually comes down to a decision. I have to make a call, and none of the options is clearly better. I keep finding arguments for different choices and changing my mind.

I care a lot about what I’m working on and want to get it right. Whatever decision I make, I will have to live with the consequences. A single bad decision early on in a project could doom the whole thing. No pressure, eh?

Often, that fear is unfounded or completely irrational, but that’s hard to see when you keep focusing on solving the problem. That’s why looking at why are you stuck is crucial.

Recently, I got stuck while working on a big feature for Writing Analytics. I kept trying to find the perfect solution from the beginning which meant that it was so hard to make the first step. I wasted days procrastinating and sketching out different ideas only to return to square one every single time.

Instead, I looked at why was I so precious with getting it right. I went with one of the flawed ideas I had. And a few days later, after some trial and error, I found the solution for the flaw in the plan. I could’ve spent another month desperately trying to figure everything out upfront.

Sometimes, you just need to let go and hope for the best. You may find out that the thing that you’ve been looking for is right around the corner.

And even if I couldn’t make it work in the end, it would’ve been painful, but not catastrophic. I would delete the false start and go back to the beginning. That’s also something that happens. You may find out that you were terribly wrong and there’s no turning back now. That sucks. But what’s the alternative? Do nothing at all? You made the best decision that you could’ve made given the information you had at the time, and you should be proud of that.

Doing nothing is a decision too. Only when you decide to stay stuck, you truly fail.

Somewhere out people are making real hard choices – like who to hook up to a ventilator when there aren’t enough machines for everyone. So I should be able to sit down and write some fucking prose…

Want More?

My email subscribers receive a notification when I publish these posts along with a few things I found interesting or helpful on the literary internet every week. Click the link below to join the club.

SUBSCRIBE

(I won’t spam you or pass your email to a third party. You can unsubscribe at any time.)

Past Editions

#142: What’s Your Story Really About?, May 2020

#141: Architecture and Gardening for Writers, May 2020

#140: When Can You Call Yourself a Writer?, April 2020

#139: What Can You Do to Fail More?, April 2020

Writing is a confusing term. Why? On one hand, almost everyone in the developed world can write. Most people have been taught to make readable marks on paper in the first few years of school. It’s all good. On the other hand, only very few people can reliably produce dozens of books or thousands of articles throughout their lives. Yet both of these groups are apparently doing the same thing.

Running also suffers from similar ambiguity. The person who dashes the final 30 yards to catch a bus is running, as is the athlete competing in an ultra-marathon race. Almost anyone can do the former, but it takes several years of training and perhaps a lifetime of dedication to do the latter.

Nobody expects to be able to win or even finish a marathon without proper training. Yet there’s a lot of confusion about what it takes to write books. Writing a book is a marathon. And writing a best-selling book means finishing at the very front of the pack.

I’m not saying this to discourage folks — that would be weird from someone who runs a writing motivation blog. Plenty of people write amazing books, and it’s absolutely possible for you to do it too. But I feel that it’s important to have the right expectations coming in. I also don’t mean to elevate authors to a position of superiority over people who merely write. There’s nothing inherently noble about writing books.

The writing that we talk about when we talk about writing books isn’t an act. It’s a discipline. Doing it deliberately over and over again is at the very core of what it means to be a writer. I wish writing a lot of emails and shit would set me up for success as an author. Sadly, that isn’t the case.

Want to write a book? Expect to work hard and train regularly. Expect to be exhausted and out of breath. Expect to be wanting to burn the bloody thing (good thing that I don’t live in a posh place with a fireplace). It may take years before you finish one and many more before you go on to write a bestseller.

If none of the above deters you then welcome, stranger, you’re among friends. We’re delighted to have you.

Want More?

My email subscribers receive a notification when I publish these posts along with a few things I found interesting or helpful on the literary internet every week. Click the link below to join the club.

SUBSCRIBE

(I won’t spam you or pass your email to a third party. You can unsubscribe at any time.)

Past Editions

#128: How Much Should You Care About Your Story?, February 2020

#127: Doin’ It Right, January 2020

#126: How Long Does It Take To Write A Book?, January 2020

#125: Journaling As a Form of Time Travel, January 2020

The numbers of writing and publishing books can be pretty disconcerting to see.

Most people admit that they would like, at some point, to write a book. Cool. But most people, who set out to write a book, also never finish one. Out of the few that do finish a draft of their story, most will never see it published. And those who do get their books published will never see them on the bestseller lists. Only a fraction of books will earn out their advance. In fact, most published authors will never be able to write full time without supplementing their income somehow.

Doesn’t the writing life sound fantastic? And yet, we’re still here, stringing one word after the other, early in the morning and late at night, between shifts and on our lunch breaks. We want to share our ideas and stories with the world and writing is the best way to do that.

We’re not here for the money, that would be silly. At the same time, we’re still hoping to make it one day. To see our work recognised, and to be able to do more of it.

Writing is hard. Facing the blank page, the agonising edits, all the rejections from agents and publishers, the mean reviews from readers. Why put yourself through all of that when you could be doing so many other things? Like writing? Shut up and get yerself a law degree, kid.

It’s entirely possible, quite probable even that writing won’t be for you. But unless you really try and go for it, you’ll never know. That’s the hardest part. Stephen King wouldn’t be where he is now if he wrote casually every other weekend for an hour. In the early days, when he was grinding and nailing the stacks of rejections slips on the wall, he had no idea that he would go to become one of the world’s top selling authors. He had a family to take care of and worked as a teacher.

At the end of the day, someone will become the next Stephen King and J. K. Rowling. Someone will be the next Tolkien and Christie and Austen and even Shakespeare in a few hundred years. I wouldn’t necessarily count on it, but it might just as well be you.

For the rest of us, who says that being a mid-list, self-published or even unpublished author writing on the side while earning your living in other ways is a bad life? If you like telling stories and writing good sentences, not having to rely on your words as the primary source of income will give you the ultimate freedom to write what you want and do what you want with it.

Besides, so many skills and habits that you pick up while pursuing your passion for writing are instantly applicable in a range of other career and life situations as well. Writing sharpens your thinking and can be beneficial to your mental health. Learning how stories work is learning about life. In its essence, writing is a form of communication. If you can think clearly and write well, plenty of opportunities will come your way.

A career in writing can seem pretty bleak on paper, but if you have the bug, I encourage you to go for it. Give it all you have and remember that you don’t have control over everything. Whatever happens, you will be a much better person at the end.

Good luck ❤️

What I Am Reading

I’m still a bit behind on reading, trying to catch up. I’ve read a couple of rather dry technical books this week and found out that I have four unused Audible credits on my account. Any audio books that blew your mind recently? What should I get?

Want More?

My email subscribers receive a notification when I publish these posts along with a few things I found interesting or helpful on the literary internet every week. Click the link below to join the club.

SUBSCRIBE

(I won’t spam you or pass your email to a third party. You can unsubscribe at any time.)

Past Editions

#109: New Things Coming, September 2019

#108: Keeping At It, September 2019

#107: What’s in it for the reader?, September 2019

#106: Ship Your Art, September 2019

When I read books, I leave behind a trace of sticky index tabs that I use to highlight passages that I like without marring the pages with a pen or pencil. I use several thousands of these every year. In case someone else would like to read the book after me, I can always peel them off without a trace.

One of the things I started doing this year is going back to books that I loved. I don’t necessarily re-read them, but I leaf through and re-visit all the highlights that I’ve made to refresh them in my mind.

Last week, I went over Atomic Habits by James Clear, which I read back in March. It’s a fantastic book, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

My copy is littered with index tabs. As I went through them, I felt that one particular idea would be worth highlighting here on the blog — the idea of decisive moments.

Every day we encounter a handful of moments that will decide whether it will be perceived as success or failure. The alarm clock rings. You can either snooze for 10 more minutes or get up and fit in a writing session before starting your day. Later on, when you come home, you can either pick up a book to read or binge-watch something on Netflix. James Clear’s decision tree from Atomic Habits illustrates this perfectly:

These moments are critical, but they’re also easy to overlook in the whirlwind of the day. That’s when you need the most willpower to do the right thing. Once you’re in the editor, things get much easier.

The diagram also shows that you don’t have to do everything right and use every second of your day productively for it to be a success. The key is to make a few right decisions. Over time, they will add up to a major difference.

When you finish reading this post and scrolling through your timeline, you might be faced with a little choice. What will you choose?

What I Am Reading

It took me a good while, but I finished Lethal White by Robert Galbraith (also known as J. K. Rowling). As I said before, the book started off a little slower. It did pick up pace towards the end, and I did quite like the ending. I’m a big fan of J. K. Rowling’s characters across all of her books, and that was what made me read through this one too.

I also finished a collection of short stories by Chuck Palahniuk called Make Something Up. As the subtitle — Stories You Can’t Unread — suggests, this is on the weirder side of the literary spectrum.

Now, I’m reading Overclocked by Cory Doctorow — another collection of stories, although these are quite a bit longer at about 50 pages each. And I’ll also be picking up the biography of Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson which I received as a gift last year. The book itself is a beautiful object — quite a hefty tome printed on an unusually high-quality paper. I can’t wait to read it.

Short Stories

I read the following short stories this week:

Tunnel of Love by Chuck Palahniuk

Inclinations by Chuck Palahniuk

How a Jew Saved Christmas by Chuck Palahniuk

Printcrime by Cory Doctorow

When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth by Cory Doctorow

Anda’s Game by Cory Doctorow

I, Robot by Cory Doctorow

Want More?

My email subscribers receive a notification when I publish these posts along with a few things I found interesting or helpful on the literary internet every week. Click the link below to join the club.

SUBSCRIBE

(I won’t spam you or pass your email to a third party. You can unsubscribe at any time.)

Past Editions

#91: Writing and Life, May 2019

#90: Favourites, May 2019

#89: Libraries, May 2019

#88: Brain Surgery for Writers, April 2019

I loved libraries as a kid. The first one I remember was a small branch in the suburb where I grew up, no more than a single room. I would come in on Wednesdays after school when they were open. I could only take home three books at a time, but I really wanted all of them—from encyclopaedias to novels. After the librarian recorded the loans in her paper register, I’d put the books in an old plastic groceries bag and skip back home to read.

Later on, I started taking the tram to the main branch in the city centre. It spanned several floors of a historic building just off the main square. The parquet floors creaked under my feet as I passed through a dozen heavy doors that separated the different parts of the collection until I found the nook with all of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, hoping that one that I hadn’t yet read would be available.

At university, I used the on-campus library focused on literature related to computer science. Back in the public library, I had my favourite sections. Here, I wanted to read everything. Each book was interesting in its own way and an opportunity to learn something new. We used to hang out in the reading rooms with friends and work on coursework together.

I graduated and moved countries and got a full-time job. For the first time, I was lucky enough to be able to afford to buy all the books I wanted to read—from second-hand and regular bookshops. Having books delivered right to my doorstep and not having to worry about returning them was pretty convenient. I hadn’t even signed up for a reader’s pass. I no longer needed the library.

About a year ago, I hit a wall editing my novel. I found it more and more challenging to focus at my home. So I Googled ‘places to work from for free in London,’ as one does. British Library came up first on the list. It dawned on me that I hadn’t been to the library for years. I thought, Why not?

I signed up for a reader’s pass and went in the next day. It might have been one of the best things I did last year.

Contrary to popular belief, lots of people that come to the library aren’t there for the books. They come in to study or work on their manuscripts and research papers and even businesses. The best bit is that you’re surrounded by people that are working hard, and even though you don’t really know each other and can’t talk to each other in the reading rooms, an unspoken connection hangs in the air: we’re in this together.

Every now and then, someone starts questioning the funding that public libraries receive. Why do we even need libraries when everything soon will be on the internet?

I, too, used to think that libraries were for borrowing books, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Libraries are places to be amongst books and book lovers. They have all you need to know to get started working on something and give you space to actually start working on it.

These days, if I ever get anything productive done, it happens in the library.

This essay first appeared on radek.co.

What I Am Reading

I’m still working my way through Lethal White by Robert Galbraith / J. K. Rowling. In addition to that, I picked up this rather spiffy Barnes & Noble leather-bound edition of Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales.

Most of them are surprisingly short. I recognise so many of these folk tales that have been told and retold many times since Brothers Grimm collected them in the 19th century. And although the versions that I read as a child differ considerably, it’s fascinating to read these.

Short Stories

I also read these short stories:

Cut by Catherine Lacey

Northeast Regional by Emma Cline

The Escape by John L’Heureux

Poetry by Greg Jackson

New Rose Hotel by William Gibson

Phoenix by Chuck Palahniuk

The Winter Market by William Gibson

Want More?

My email subscribers (also known as persons of the most distinguished taste :D) receive a digest of what I published or found helpful in their inboxes every week. Hit subscribe to join the club.

SUBSCRIBE

(I won’t spam you or pass your email to a third party. You can unsubscribe at any time.)

Past Editions

#88: Brain Surgery for Writers, April 2019

#87: A Walk From the Library, April 2019

#86: The Person Behind the Story, April 2019

#85: Airplane Mode as a Way of Life, April 2019

Is that a word? It should be a word, shouldn’t it?

I used to be quite a strict one book at a time kind of person. I would bring the one book I was reading along with me everywhere I went. Everything else had to go on the to-read pile. A book I was particularly excited about would go to the top, but I would never take a break away from the current read just to start something else.

‘These people,’ I’d say and shake my head every time I came over a Goodreads profile of someone with 15 different books marked as currently reading. How can they even remember what they’re reading? Let alone the different storylines. Surely, staying focused keeps you more engaged. You retain more and finish each book faster.

Sometimes, reading would feel like a chore, but I paid no attention to that. Reading a lot in the face of all the life’s distractions takes conscious effort, doesn’t it? I’d alternate between fiction and non-fiction books to keep things interesting, and that was that.

Late in October last year, I decided that I needed to read more short stories. I didn’t want to interrupt my book reading habits, so I figured that I’d read one short story every day. In the beginning, I read online journals and classics in the public domain. Later on, I found a few collections and started reading those.

Then over the holidays, I got tired of podcasts and switched to audiobooks instead. I listen to audiobooks while I make coffee in the morning and as I walk to the Tube station. I listen to audiobooks when I run, and when I brush my teeth before bed.

I’ve read over 120 stories and listened to 4 audiobooks so far. But hang on a minute! Shouldn’t this be confusing and terribly inefficient? I’m reading multiple books at the same time. An utter blasphemy!

And so have I disproved my own hypothesis. I don’t get lost or confused. Something in the human brain pulls me right back into the story of whichever book I pick up. In fact, I never enjoyed reading as consistently as I do now.

Previously, I’d sometimes fall into reading slumps ranging from a few days to a few months. When reading specialised non-fiction or a more laborious part of a novel, I would resent picking up the book and read things on the internet when I wasn’t feeling like it. I kept putting off starting certain books even though I wanted to read them, fearing that I would get bored and stuck.

For example, I would never switch to only reading collections of short stories instead of novels for a few months. But I look forward to reading one short story every day. Different moods and energy levels call for different reading material. Not insisting on reading one book at a time helps me to power through chunky classics that would otherwise bog me down. Right now, I’m reading a book a chapter at a time only on weekends.

Overall, I get to read more things, and it no longer feels like a chore. As it turns out, the best strategy to read more is to read whatever you want, whenever you want. It’s safe to say that I’m now happily polynovelous!

What about you? Do you read multiple books at the same time or remain faithful to a single one until you finish it?

What I Am Reading

I finished The Good Immigrant this week—a collection of essays from minority writers in the UK, sharing their sometimes funny but often difficult experiences of racism and xenophobia. Living in a liberal bubble in a place like London, it’s easy to forget the deeply rooted irrational animosity that still brews in the shadows of today’s society, but that people of colour have to live with every day.

I have no respect for people who judge others based on how they look or where they’re from. As an immigrant myself, I sometimes feel the tension too. But my accent is neither too strong nor stereotypical which makes it hard to place, and as a white male, I realise that I’ve been playing the easy mode of this miserable game for sure.

Next, I’ll be picking up another collection of essays — A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway in which the author recounts his experiences of his life as an unknown writer in 1920s Paris.

Short Stories

I also read these short stories:

Answer to Prayer by H. G. Wells

The Queer Story of Brownlow’s Newspaper by H. G. Wells

The Country of the Blind by H. G. Wells

The Identity Parade by Gillian Walker

Mr Salary by Sally Rooney

Bad Brass by Bradley Denton

Heavy Metal by Cherie Priest

Want More?

My email subscribers (also known as persons of the most distinguished taste, lol) receive a digest of what I published or found helpful in their inboxes every week. Hit subscribe to join the club.

SUBSCRIBE

(I won’t spam you or pass your email to a third party. You can unsubscribe at any time.)

Past Editions

#77: In Praise of Bad Fiction, February 2019

#76: The Negative Review Paradox, February 2019

#75: Winter, January 2019

#74: Audiobooks, January 2019

I spend a lot of time on Goodreads deciding what I will read next. Probably longer than I should, anyway. If you use Goodreads, you might have noticed this rather peculiar phenomenon: the top three reviews on any book are often negative. This is the case even for books with high average ratings (close to or above 4 stars). But why?

The Goodreads algorithm orders the reviews based on a number of factors like the length, date of posting, number of comments and thumbs up. Generally, the more popular the reviewer the higher their review will be on the list.

Just for the hell of it, I went through the top reviews on a couple of books I read recently. They’re not the sorry-not-for-me kind of reviews. The top three are often meticulously written long-form posts with images, quotes, even gifs. The reviewers recount in great detail why they didn’t like the book. Sometimes they mock the author or the people who happened to enjoy it. These elaborate posts often have thousands of thumbs up and hundreds of comments below them.

The Handmaid’s Tale is an excellent example. Two out of the three top reviews are 1/5s with over 1,000 thumbs up each and hundreds of comments between them. The book has over 1 million ratings, averaging at 4.09. The majority of those are 5-stars.

Books are highly subjective—different people like different things, of course. Goodreads is an open platform. You can request virtually any book to be added and review it. I’d expect communities of like-minded people to form around the books they liked, discussing their favourite parts. Instead, communities seem to be forming around books that people hated, commiserating with each other.

To me, this is really counterintuitive. But I guess it makes sense in retrospect. Readers that had a bad experience are more inclined to share their thoughts in the first place. They expected something the book didn’t deliver. In a way, the reviewers disagree with the author. That creates conflict, and conflict makes for a good story. The same rules that apply to writing stories apply to writing reviews after all.

Sites like Goodreads seem to reveal as much about society as a whole as they do about the books that are being reviewed.

What I Am Reading

I read Artemis by Andy Weir. It was well written and quite funny. I liked the world building and snippets of popular science. However, it wasn’t as good as The Martian which I’d blame on slightly weaker characterisation. The author’s voice was a perfect fit for Mark Watney stuck on Mars. It didn’t work as well with Jazz—the female protagonist of Artemis. I’d still recommend it as an entertaining sci-fi read, though.

I also finished listening to The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. All I can say is that it blew my mind. A masterfully told story that made my skin crawl. A book doesn’t need loads of graphic violence to be disturbing. The Handmaid’s Tale is a perfect example. The writing was excellent, and the last chapter was a nice touch.

Somewhat randomly, I chose Warcross by Marie Lu as my next listen. The premise seemed quite compelling, and I guess I liked the cover. It’s a YA sci-fi with a diverse set of characters which is great. I had mixed feelings about the inciting incident, but the writing is good. The plot seems to be heavily targeted at the female YA crowd. I never realised how carefully this can be done.

Next week, I’ll be reading Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney who has been called the first great millennial novelist. Her second book was long-listed for the Bookers last year and won the Costa Book Awards this year. Not too shabby. Let’s see whether all the critics can be trusted.

Short Stories

I also read these short stories:

Bruce and the Spider by James Baldwin

The Lord of the Dynamos by H. G. Wells

The Valley of Spiders by H. G. Wells

The Story of the Late Mr Elvesham by H. G. Wells

The Man Who Could Work Miracles by H. G. Wells

Tawny Petticoats by Michael Swanwick

Provenance by David W. Ball

Want More?

My email subscribers (also known as persons of the most distinguished taste, lol) receive a digest of what I published or found helpful in their inboxes every week. Hit subscribe to join the club.

SUBSCRIBE

(I won’t spam you or pass your email to a third party. You can unsubscribe at any time.)

Past Editions

#75: Winter, January 2019

#74: Audiobooks, January 2019

#73: The Third Draft, January 2019

#72: Getting Started, January 2019

Welcome to another Writing Update—a weekly journal where I document the ups and downs of my writing life. Did I say that I would finish the second draft of my novel this week? 😅 Well, I didn’t. I got stuck on a 500-word chapter which I expected to rewrite in about an hour. This one is a brief interlude from the POV of the antagonist. It turned out that I didn’t know enough about what was going on inside the character’s head to be able to get this right. It took forever to do, and because of that I only managed to edit two chapters this week.

Sometimes you hit your deadlines. And sometimes you don’t. With only two chapters to go, will I finish the next week?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Today, I’d like to share simple, practical tip for all of those that are deep in the writing or editing trenches:

Never Stop Writing at the End of a Chapter.

Chapter breaks seem like the perfect milestones for measuring your productivity. Maybe your goal is to edit two chapters every day. When you finish early, it’s tempting to call it a day. If you’re running late, you want to push a little harder just to get those last 250 words done to feel good about hitting your goal.

That, of course, is the wrong way around. Let me explain: your output over the course of a writing session isn’t constant. You start off slow, building up momentum and write most of your words in the final stretch just before the timer goes off.

Every time you sit down to write, you have to push through a certain amount of resistance. It takes a while to focus and to immerse yourself in your fictional world. The faster you’re able to beat this mental block, the more productive your session will be.

Say the last thing you did yesterday wes to finish a chapter. Today, you’ll be starting with a blank page. Your brain will have to build momentum while figuring out where to even begin. And that’s why people get stuck.

On the other hand, if you stopped 250 words before the end of a chapter, you can go back and read the last couple of paragraphs, cringe at that horrid first-draft prose and get on with it. Your mind will pick up from werever you stopped. When you finish, you’ll have much more momentum to help you figure out exactly where to start the next chapter.

The next time it’s the end of the day, and you’re close to finishing a chapter, stop right there. When you come back in the morning, you’ll finish the few hundred easy words before having to face the blank page. If you decide to complete the chapter today, don’t stop there. Use the momentum that you’ve built up to write a few hundred words out of the next one.

The future you will thank you for it.

Books I am reading

This week, I read George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London — a first-hand, autobiographical account of poverty in Europe’s largest cities in the 1930s. At times hilarious, often poignant and grisly. This was Orwell’s first published book, and it really resonated with me, perhaps because the situation for the most impoverished people hasn’t really improved much over the past 100 years in spite of all the wonders of technology.

This week, I’ll be reading this ancient copy of Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler that I picked up in a charity shop somewhere. Should be good.

Short Stories

I’m still doing my November Short Story Reading Challenge. Here are the stories I read in the past week:

Queenie by Alice Munro

The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere by John Chu

The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Alan Poe

To Build a Fire by Jack London

The Traveller and the Book by Ian R. MacLeod

The Cactus by O. Henry

The Words of Flesh and Soul by Ruthanna Emrys

Get on the List

My email subscribers (also known as persons of the most distinguished taste, lol) receive a digest of what I published or found helpful in their inboxes every week. Hit subscribe below to join the club. (I won’t spam you or pass your address to a third party. You can unsubscribe at any time.)

SUBSCRIBE

Past Editions

#64: The Problem With Writing Books, November 2018

#63: The Joy of Early Mornings, November 2018

#62: Reading a Short Story Every Day, November 2018

#61: Letting go, October 2018