what to write about when nothing is right
some melancholy, a few life updates, a sprinkle of gossip
It’s hard to feel like anything you write is worth something when so many horrible things are going on in the world and you aren’t able to do much about it. What others are enduring, the unnecessary violence being inflicted, the coldness of administration and those in power, the injustices, both big and small, being carried out on friends and people I don’t know but feel deeply for.
It also doesn’t really feel that there’s anything worth trusting or believing in these days, either. The news is more or less a write off, and you can’t even trust some good art these days because there’s a pretty high chance it’s AI-generated, and the flood of celebratory and positive pictures your friends put on social media are actually secret dopamine traps designed to siphon your own dopamine to them through the medium of likes and comments.1 Everything produced these days seems to encourage reaction, not contemplation. Even with books and releases, there is a baffling demand for condensation into neat little tropes and bite-sized consumption.
All this to say: there hasn’t been much to write about.
I’m still in exile from the UK for the most part, and it’s coming up on my one-year lol. Feels like we should mark the occasion in some way. Quite honestly, I hadn’t realised the creative and mental drought that this unexpected hiatus on life brought upon me until last month, when I got to leave the house for a bit and travel overseas for work and a holiday. Oh yeah, and I also parted ways (amicably) with my agent, simply because things just weren’t working out and I was becoming incredibly disillusioned with the trad publishing industry. It’s still a dream of mine to get published traditionally someday, but right now I need to step back and actually figure out what I want to write instead of chasing the ridiculous stereotype of being a young debut author :’)
Having emerged from this kind of mentorship scheme, in my experience unless you’re basically done with the finished product that is your book, there can be more confusion in getting an outside voice (with a very marketing/industry perspective) looking over your work, and you’re probably better off finishing the damn thing and querying like a normal person. I’m grateful for the experience I had with my agent and the work she put in, but going down the normal route would probably have been better for me personally, and if I come back to it in the future, that’s what I’ll work towards.
What have I been doing if not writing? Well, I’ve been trying to read more. Work is an omnipresent force. I’ve been dabbling more in making games and trying to learn how to work within different systems. Playing more video games and trying to get rid of the possible gacha addiction I somehow developed while trying to replace human contact with peers.
I also recently finished a somewhat informal IF trilogy about being in exile – I have more thoughts about the idea of being in Exile, but those are still percolating and I will probably write more about it in the future. If you’re interested in playing those games, they live at the following links:
I might do a postmortem of the creation of these & the thoughts tying them together if anyone is interested!
In the meantime, there is some semi-good news that I’m not able to share yet but will come out soon, maybe more thoughts about reading will emerge as I make my way through this huge pile of books on my side table, and hopefully there will be more pockets of brightness to come in this slow horror that is the world.
Here’s some media I’ve been consuming in the past few months.
✓ Three Ways to Unseat a Fairy Monarch by Emma Conner - a lovely folkloric tale with great writing and beautiful visuals.
✓ The House of Sleeping Beauties by Yasunari Kawabata - marketed as erotic fantasy, but I feel that it’s not so much an erotic fantasy than a fantasy of youth and the bag of bones that is the aging physical self. great translation and the intro from Mishima was especially intriguing especially when you know all about his weird hangups about his physical self.
✓ The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan - apparently there is some controversy around this book (I guess there always is with “pop history”?) but so far this is an enjoyable intro text. I had some vague understanding of the silk road thanks to my work with medieval spice trade during grad school but probably should have focused more on the historical side of things… anyway this may or may not be the start of some background research for a future project.
✘ The Big Bang Theory - started watching this for the first time to have something in the background while I worked, but this was just so outdated. I’m sure it’s a comfort show for many but unfortunately it doesn’t really hold up to the test of time.
Until next time!
I don’t actually believe in this, but having had a discussion with my partner about posting photos of us on Instagram and asking who on earth we are sharing these images for, besides close friends, I’ve come to the not-so-new conclusion that it’s quite likely Instagram is some kind of soul-sucking eldritch horror and I’m unlikely to ever post anything about my personal life there again unless it’s on my close friends story or if I need to promote something publicly lmao
this all really resonates with me—i too am going through a period of deep-seated melancholy that i can't shake, especially when it comes from so many fronts. sending love, friend.