A. M. Shilling

I can’t believe September is over already! The past few weeks have been a blur while I hustled at my new job. After spending the first two weeks getting accustomed to my new team, role, and responsibilities, I quickly accumulated tasks for various projects. I’m in meetings all day and writing in between them, so, needless to say, my hunch was right—my writing progress will be a lot slower going forward. I’m glad I already made peace with and accepted the idea before my new job started; it helps I’m at such a late stage with The Devouring, too. Speaking of which…

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Writing update

I finished retyping the manuscript for The Devouring on September 13, officially creating Draft 4. Despite how crucial and useful the whole process was, it was definitely a slog; I have a feeling I’ll dread this stage for every WIP, even though I’m so pleased with the results. It didn’t help that I was feeling the pressure of my arbitrary deadline the whole time, desperate to finish retyping before the end of the month so I could have Draft 4 in beta readers’ hands on October 1 at the latest. I was nearing really bad burnout on the last day. Fortunately, because I refuse to give myself these deadlines in the future, I anticipate retyping future WIPs won’t feel so stressful.

But yes, because I finished earlier than anticipated, I was able to post beta reader sign-ups and choose from the pool of volunteers well ahead of October. I already sent out copies of the manuscript, and three people have begun reading. Receiving email notifications of new comments on their copies is a different kind of dopamine rush I crave every single day. And since some haven’t even started reading, I anticipate many more awesome and helpful comments reaching my mailbox over the next few weeks.

This month, I participated in #Septopolis on Bluesky, hosted by Khonri, and used it as an opportunity to flesh out one of the settings of “SpaceWIP,” a massive fleet of spaceships that the MMC calls home. This has the unintended side effect of making me want to work on “SpaceWIP” instead of Sharp of Fang, Long of Claw for the November writing challenge, so after taking a break from writing for a couple of weeks, I revisited my ideas for it and started fleshing out the plot. My plan for October is to dedicate the month to finalizing the plot, figuring out the chapter outline, and starting the zero draft.

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Recent delights

• Every year, my husband and I watch the newest season of The Great British Bake Off. It’s our comfort show while the weather starts getting colder and the days start getting darker. There’s something so relaxing about watching a bunch of wholesome people bake delicious-looking and beautiful food. Of course, it makes me want to eat a bunch of baked goods, too!
• I spent a lot of September beta reading, which often leaves me unable to read published books in the meantime. However, I did squeeze in Spread Me by Sarah Gailey in the last few days of the month. Actually, I read the whole novella in less than 24 hours, because it was so unexpected and horrifying and well-written that I couldn’t put it down. I highly recommend if weird, monstrous—dare I say eldritch—horror is your thing.