October, Writing Furiously

(Happy lunar new year! I first wrote this post in October of 2025 and forgot to hit publish. Since October my hairstyle has changed about five more times.)

Everything has changed in October.

First, I’ve chopped off my hair! I don’t understand how some people can keep very long hair for years and years. Once my hair hits a certain length, it goes up and stays up, and then I realize up is really no fun at all. Then it goes short, then shorter, then very very short, and then I realize I want to go long again.

What do you call this? Bangs, pixie, bixie, not sure. I never like to tell the stylist what to do; I just tell them a length and give them as much freedom as possible. Maybe it’s my way of avoiding responsibility for a strange style…

The more exciting development is that finally I am writing with purpose again. After starting then pausing two different book projects over the past year, I finally realized at the start of this month that I was more interested in the backstories and memories of two of my characters. I would write pages and pages of the past; and when I returned to the present I just lost momentum. I decided to step back and start a new version of the characters’ story, set years prior. An entirely new book.

In three weeks I have written more of this novel than either of the other projects. Possibly combined. Whereas with the other drafts I’d drag my feet, convincing myself that I needed more research, or more reading, a better chair, a new routine, with this one I am writing in the morning, at night, in the waiting room of my daughter’s ballet studio. I’m exhausted. Yet somehow I keep finding endless reserves of energy.

I’m not saying it’s very good; it’s a developing draft, after all. It will change, likely drastically. I guess what I am sharing is that finally, for the first time since working on Shanghailanders, I have found a project that really excites me. I am having fun!

So what does this mean? Does this mean that I’ll only receive a bolt of true inspiration every five years? (I started Shanghailanders in 2020.) That I get two or three years of good writing per decade? Does this mean that I am one of those writers who needs to receive ideas like flashes of lightning? That I need fun, and speed, rather than pushing through the pain? Maybe it was the hair all along…

More writing updates as/if they come, hopefully in realer time.