I cannot believe it is already NOVEMBER?! The first week or two of November are typically the best weeks for fall colors where I live in North Carolina, and this year is proving to be no exception. Although I am bummed that this will be the first year in several, several years where I cannot make it out to the mountains in the fall, I am grateful that there are so many beautiful colors right around where I live.
The fact that time passes faster and faster with each subsequent year of my life does slightly terrify me, but I am also finding comfort in the fact that I will live through many, many more falls. This fall might revolve around eight-month-old twins and law school graduation and bar prep, but I know that not every fall will be like this. The speed at which time moves really is a double-edged sword!
November marks my last full month of law school, so I spent the last week of October wrapping up a few personal things to prepare for the crazy month ahead. I finished editing an updated version of my first book, and I look forward to hopefully re-publishing it soon. There is a publisher that is interested in the manuscript, but if they end up declining, I will simply proceed with re-publication, so stay tuned!
In the process of editing the book, I have discovered that I actually never really “stopped” writing poems like I thought I had. Instead, I began to find poems I had written over the years everywhere— on the notes app on my phone, on scrap sheets of paper shoved in textbooks, at the bottom of Word documents I forgot even existed. Although many of them were not very good, several of them were, and it was a good reminder of a truth of writing that every poet and author needs to hear: you can’t write anything good if you don’t also write shit. You just can’t! It’s impossible to sit down and write an amazing poem or short story every single time, and you also can’t sit around and wait to feel inspired, either. The only secret to writing something good is to write, write, write.
That being said, my plan going forward is something like this:
- Wait to hear back from the publisher considering my poetry manuscript, and if they decline, publish Seasons of Becoming before the end of 2026.
- Read one poem and one short story a day, and write one short story a week, for the foreseeable future. The plan is to do this even throughout bar prep, but obviously bar prep takes priority, so we’ll see. This is an exercise known as the “Ray Bradbury challenge,” based on that author’s belief that it’s impossible to write fifty-two bad short stories in a row.
- Continue to write my weekly Sunday newsletter on Substack. I must confess, this has become somewhat of a drag, and is my lowest priority. But… I am extremely stubborn, and want to make it to Sunday #52!
- Work on my second book, a memoir, as I have time, and then full commit to it in between taking the bar (February 23, 2027) and finding out results (the first week of April). I am 50/50 on whether I want to pursue traditional publication for this book, or just self-publish. I’m waiting to see how it turns out.
- Continue to submit short stories and essays for publication in literary journals. Acceptance rates these days hover between 1% and 3%, but all I need is one yes! We’ll see.
- Slowly start working on poems for my second collection of poetry (book #3). I want this collection to have a very cohesive theme—motherhood, postpartum, parenting—and am about 80% sure I will pursue traditional publishing for this book. If you know of any small presses that you love, please let me know!
It’s a long plan, but all of this has given me the outlet I so desperately need as I trudge ahead in school. I am someone that thrives off of a heavy workload, a busy schedule, and multiple side quests. It’s just how I am, and learning how to balance it all brings me so much joy!
Saturday was a big day: Kevin and I went through the temple for the first time! It’s hard to put into words how much this experience meant to us. We have been looking forward to it for so long, and yet I know that this is only the beginning. I spent so many years away from any church at all, so I’m still getting comfortable talking about my faith. Through it all, I have been so, so grateful to have such a supportive husband who not only supports me building a relationship with God, but cares about having his own relationship with Him, too. My husband teaches me about Christlike love every day, and there is no one else I would rather be on this journey with!
That evening, we celebrated the twins’ first Halloween! My ex-husband brought my daughter over to my parents’ neighborhood, and my husband, ex-husband, three daughters and I all went trick-or-treating together. Being divorced sucks sometimes, and blended family dynamics can be complicated, but I’m so grateful that we are able to make memories like this together! My husband’s two kids have not been able to come trick-or-treating with us in over three years, which is hard, but I am proud of how we continue to move through the pain when it comes to holidays. Now that we have twins of our own, it’s going to be a whole new ballgame!
That’s all for this week. I would write more, but I have to go finish putting ornaments on the Christmas tree… and I’m not even sorry about it!
