it's a struggle

 09/10/2025

     It's been a struggle recently, for some reason my brain seems to have fully jammed while trying to write my upcoming novel/novella, the characters I was so attached to have been swimming just outside of my grasp, inspiration darting away with such frustrating ease that it's made me really feel like I'm stumbling around incompetently :(

    No mind, the best thing for writer's block when all the last things to write are the droll connecting scenes and not the punchy action or sensory daydreams (I always write my favourite scenes first, that's why the last few months are always so hard) that I can slam out in 4 hour writing fugue states is to write or read something completely different! 

    I just finished ready The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, it was on my shelf for ages while a faffed around buying more and more books. I can't really say anything more on this masterwork, deft and emotionally rich without being bogged down by sentimentality breathes life into a vividly, cruel world that really anyone who is non-white can sympathise with, recognise our own internalisation of white-supremacist beauty ideals and begin to dismantle the white gaze reducing them to 'less than', 'ugly' and 'ashamed'. Her writing is so fine, so weighty and yet effortless that I'm left again in awe and envy. 5/5 stars.

    I also started outlining two other works: both a lot more ambitions than tlbd and MoF if I do say so myself but the one I'm really excited to start writing is a xianxia inspired story set over the course of a year. The other one I think will be marinating for a while as I further develop my writing and editing as I want it to have the emotional punch I'm looking for without falling into my usual trap of overwriting and purple prosing :)

    Finally, I've been going through a copy of TLBD with a red pen, underlining all my favourite lines and leaving notes in the margin. It's strangely therapeutic to see this finished work and read through it and remind myself that, just like riding a bike or swimming, since I've finished one book I can finish another.

    Hopefully, soon my updates can be a little more proactive :)