Paper Fruit

What did I publish this year? Not a whole heck of a lot. And that’s okay.

In the early months of 2020 I realized I was experiencing textbook symptoms of burnout. Writing–my refuge, my obsession, my passion, my life!–felt hard and sometimes even aggravating. I avoided it for no reason. I wasn’t happy. I was looking forward to seeing my trilogy conclude once and for all, given how fraught it had been for me creatively, emotionally, and publishing-wise. I started working on my dream project (still am), but it wasn’t gelling. I pivoted to working on a novella, which I set aside. And then the pandemic hit, and nothing felt good… except for when I turned my eyes to my manga adaptation work. There, I could let go. I could freely compose and correct without the same sort of anxiety I was experiencing when working on my own stuff. It was glorious weightless, like floating in a warm deep bathtub.

It was hard not to get angry with myself. “I used to have so much to say, what happened!” “What’s wrong with me, everyone else is cranking out pages and pages of prose!” “I have so much time on my hands, what am I even doing with it all!?” These sorts of thoughts did not help me at all, of course. And they weren’t even true, not really. When things clicked, when I was hard at work on my new novel, I felt great. But I couldn’t stay in that place. I fell out of it so easily. The world was the world, endlessly distracting and dismaying.

It wasn’t until I hurt my high hamstring that I finally realized I’d been missing a piece of it all. To rehabilitate my hamstring, I had to take time off to let it heal, and then I had to get back into yoga slowly, gently, compassionately, without judgment, without pressure. I had to notice when I was in pain and back off immediately, baby the injury, and then try again when it felt better. Because I did all that, I’m back on the mat–with caution–and feeling good. My high hamstring still gives me guff, but I can work with it and work around it. And I’m doing better at incorporating supportive therapies too, like walking and pilates.

Thinking about all of this made me wonder if I could apply this process to my brain, too. At first, I resisted a little–my hamstring is a physical part of my body, it can’t be reasoned with. But the truth is, my mind is a physical part of my body too.

I have a lot of things coming out next year–the re-release of my backlist through Word Horde, a novelette in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, a bunch of manga adaptations. I hope to finish my ongoing novel, and to get back into regularly working on shorter fiction. But we’ll see what happens. I thought I had plans for 2020 but really it was 2020 that had plans for me. So I’m approaching 2021 with caution.

Anyway, my two original fiction publications this year were:

Creatures of Charm and Hunger. John Joseph Adams Books/Mariner, April 2020.

“Summer Camp Would Have Been a Lot Cheaper.” In Evil in Technicolor, edited by Joe M. McDermott. Vernacular Books, October 2020.

Manga-wise, you’re seeing it. The Drifting Classroom, vols. 2 and 3, Levius/est vols. 6 and 7, and Super Mario Manga Mania.

See you in the future, y’all.