Here to lie flat facedown on the floor because I finished a book, hallelujah.

It occurs to me that when I say that, I have to specify reading or writing or else people get confused. But yesterday I finally glued my ass to the chair and finished writing Fairytale.

I don’t know why endings are so hard for me— or well, I guess I do. I tend to second-guess myself a lot when it comes to endings. I don’t have a lot of confidence for being able to land the plane well, which leads to a lot of planes in suspended animation, just sort of hovering until they fall out of the sky.

Which is to say, I realized I’ve developed a very bad habit of getting 40k-80k words into projects before jumping ship and abandoning them for shiny new WIPs. I’m trying to stop doing that because where at first I thought it was a manifestation of different interests, now I mostly think it’s a manifestation of fear.

The end is usually pretty close whenever I decide to jump ship. Maybe it’s just hard to make decisions. Saying yes to one fork in the road means saying no to all the others, and the closing of possibilities can seem scary—but it doesn’t have to, right?

This is just a stray thought that I’m marinating on, but I think I’d like to do some kind of personal challenge for the year. Maybe I can call 2024 The Year of Endings if that doesn’t sound too horrifyingly ominous. I’d like to make my peace with endings. Maybe I’ll try to finish as many things as I can. Sounds kind of uncomfortable. I better get some gold stars for this. (Literally, I’m going to buy stickers. I’ve had some galaxy-themed star stickers in my Amazon cart for ages now.)

Because it’s not just fear of choosing the wrong ending, I think. I avoid endings even when I’m reading, even when I’m watching things. There’s just something in me that squirms away from a certain kind of emotional discomfort, and I’m really so sensitive when it comes to fiction. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, but I do think I want to get a little better at holding my hand to the fire. I want to know how things end. I want to stop keeping myself away from things I love because of some inchoate fear.

Anyway! I felt guilty for not writing today for all of a hot second, but since I just finished writing a novel yesterday, I think I actually deserve a break. On the subject of endings, I picked back up a danmei I had paused in reading, Evil as Humans, which I’m really liking and I’m about halfway through. I’ve been reading it all morning, and I have a small pot of jook simmering on the stove.

I think I feel pretty good today. Kind of hopeful. Maybe I’ll do a little bit of sketching later.

There are still some extras I want to write for Fairytale, but I think I will save that thought to percolate for another day.