Exciting news this week! The (first round of) developmental edits for Wilderlands is complete! And look! I even managed to land on a consistent spelling for the title. No more space here, no space there. This is it. Wilderlands.

Finishing this editing project has got me walking on air for a few reasons.

1. Finishing a project involving a manuscript is a big deal, and I don’t want to lose track of that fact. It’s a freaking novel!
2. This project has been a long time coming. I started developing it before I started my Masters in 2020!
3. I’m feeling this manuscript more than anything I’ve written in a long time.
4. It’s been a looong time since I’ve gotten this far with any writing project.

A lot of those overlap, so allow me to explain more. See, when I was in high school, I used to churn out one or two books every year. And yes, there’s much to be said about the quality of those books, the effort I put in at the time, etc., etc., but the fact of the matter is that I was always chasing that high of having finished a novel. But as I got into college and really started to refine my writing, my writing process slowed down. Then, life got more stressful. Grown-up things like jobs and responsibilities began getting in the way of fully immersing myself in a project until completion.

By the time I graduated with my Bachelor’s, I had several half-written manuscripts, all abandoned, and one series that I just couldn’t find an ending for.

I spent a lot of time on that series. A lot of time. And I held it in a death clutch for years, thinking it would be the series that got me published. I spent months and months querying for it and never got further than a partial read request. And all the while, I never really finished another project because I was devoting what little free time I had to pursue that series. I can count on one hand the novels I started writing during that period, and I didn’t finish even one of them. Not really. Sometimes, I forced the story to have some unsatisfactory ending, then shelved the manuscript and never looked back. But I didn’t actually finish any of them.

Wilderlands isn’t finished either—not yet. But it’s hit a milestone that I haven’t reached with any project since that series. It feels exciting and new, like it did years ago. On a much lower note, it reassures me that I haven’t lost that ability.

Because it wasn’t really my focus on the series that kept me from finishing any other projects. I just used that as an excuse and dragged out what I knew was inevitable with it so that I didn’t have to face how burnt out and uncreative I was feeling. I knew years ago that that series wasn’t as interesting as I had hoped and didn’t have what it took to get traditionally published. But I was afraid it was the best I could do. And everything else I’d written in the meantime couldn’t measure up to that, so it felt like that was the only chance I ever had at getting a traditional publishing deal.

And I won’t lie. I’m not exactly immune to such feelings now, but I’m feeling better overall. I’m feeling more confident in my writing, I’m getting ideas again, and I’m actually enjoying the writing process.

This is partially because the world of Wilderlands has positively bloomed over the past couple of months, and partially, this is because of everything I’ve been doing to help boost my creativity. Getting back into the artistic activities that I used to do so much of. Painting for fun, not to make something great. Doodling. Playing with designs. And spending a lot less time idling my time away, lost in spiraling anxious thoughts.

And let’s be honest, I think this has a lot to do with finally getting diagnosed as autistic and ADHD, getting back into therapy (with a therapist who actually understands and supports neurodivergent people!), and getting onto Adderall. I know that simply knowing about and making accommodations in my life for myself has cleared up a lot of chronic health problems that I previously thought I was just forced to live with.

Life is still really stressful for many reasons right now, but my mind feels clearer than it has in a decade or more. I’m feeling creative again, and I’m excited to see where my progress with Wilderlands leads me.

Here’s to a fruitful summer, blooming creativity, and, of course, more edits!