Lexical Gap No. 62: Smother-Fart
April 2025 summary
April was simultaneously quiet and full.
Early in the month, both my parents and my in-laws came to visit me and Bear and the dogs in what has now become a yearly tradition. I love both sets of parents dearly and I love hosting them, and they enjoy hanging out with each other, but what I don’t love is meal planning. I don’t know how parents of young children do it; I eat the same thing everyday and Bear mostly eats at the hospital where he works, so if I do cook for us, it’s maybe two to three times a month at most.
While my parents and in-laws were here, I cooked three different meals per day for a week.
I actually enjoy cooking for others; there’s something about the act of feeding people that deeply satisfies my Cancer sun. But what I don’t appreciate is thinking this hard about food. A privileged problem to have, I know, but my executive dysfunction struggles mightily with planning. And grocery shopping. If there are two adult tasks I would happily never do again, it’s grocery shopping and putting away clean laundry.
And somewhere in that time, I earned my second degree black belt.
It’s funny, I think the thing I enjoy most about going to taekwondo are the teens. I’m not the only adult in class, but I am the highest ranking adult, which means that I am more or less at the same belt level as a bunch of 13-year-olds.1 As such, they frequently treat me more as a peer than anything else, and it’s such a gift. They make me laugh and yes, keep me young. I frequently like to remind them just how old I am, and regale them with tales of pop culture from the 2000s that I lived through. Many of them are readers and some of them have read my books, and it’s always such a joy to play around with them.
Later in the month, this time I joined my parents on a long-planned vacation to Los Cabos, Mexico. I won’t deny that there was some trepidation about traveling internationally as a visibly non-white person, despite the fact that I am a US citizen who was born in Los Angeles. Thankfully, I did not run into any issues, but I couldn’t help but think of what I would do if I were detained without due process. If I could do anything. Best believe that this topic has been added to the daily haranguing of my elected representatives.
Despite that, I had a lovely time third-wheeling my parents. Perhaps it’s because I was born and raised in Los Angeles, but there is something…familiar and homey about Baja Sur. The food, the climate, the water, the people. My Spanish is not what it once was, but it was enough to get by without needing English. It made me homesick, in a way.
Back home, Bear and I have continued taking Castor and Pollux on weekly hikes through North Carolina’s state parks. Depending on how quickly it gets hot, we may take a pause in the summer, but we are determined to visit every single one with them. The boys now know Sundays are fun days, and it’s cute to see them get excited about wherever we’re going next. Dogs are great.
And in between all that, I have been working on my next project. I’m superstitious, so I don’t like talking about what I’m working on publicly (especially when it hasn’t been sold), but I’m in that deliriously delicious stage where I’m playing with possibilities without having to commit anything to paper. This is my favorite part of writing — the play. I love to play. And none of this is work. Yet.
In this issue
1. JJ’s magical world
2. Lexical gap
3. This creative life
4. What I’m reading
5. What I’m watching
6. Other things of note
lexical gap: 🧩
I’m a child. FART.
this creative life ✨
The thing about writing is that ideas always come upon you at the most inopportune times. The first glimmer of this idea, which I’ll be calling ROPE for now, came to me on a drive to Asheville when I couldn’t pull over and write anything down.2 I had been mulling over a rather popular movie franchise that hadn’t worked for me and was trying to figure out why, despite the premise being something entirely up my alley. So it goes with ideas sometimes; mine don’t appear as What Ifs so much as they are little irritating pieces of grit in an oyster’s mantle that eventually becomes a pearl. An idea, a hook, an image that I ruminate with layers of nacre over a long period of time until I have something I can handle.
I was working on Zhara at the time, but truthfully, I find it best that I don’t jump to work on ideas immediately. Often times, there’s simply not enough of it to grasp yet — a wisp that dissipates if I handle it too soon. So I let it sit in the attic of my subconscious, along with other wisps that have caught my attention, until there’s enough to gather into the seed of a story. I’m always collecting wisps — bits of dialogue and characterization — so there’s never a shortage of inspiration to pull from.
Ordinarily I give myself time between projects, but this time I jumped straight into working on ROPE after I turned in the first draft of GUARDIANS 4. I’m not sure why, only that having removed most of social media from my life, I suddenly found myself with an excess of brain space. Boredom, as you know, is my nemesis, and I had gotten in the habit of journaling through my creativity every morning. Working through the characters, the premise, the structure, the vibe, and what I want to say.
I start with vibe.
After the gothic heaviness of Wintersong and Shadowsong, I wrote Guardians of Dawn as a light refresher. Something more lighthearted and joyful and wholesome, and while that has been a boon in these trying times, I think I’m ready for a little darkness again. And something perhaps a little bit more…romantic? sexy? It feels strange to talk about ROPE in this way when it doesn’t yet exist as a fully-realized book, but I do find I write from a mood first. I’m not really a Pinterest person, although I do sketch at this stage.
Then come the characters, although my characters actually arrive first. I don’t spend as much time on them because they frequently show up full-formed and ready to yap my ear off. I listen as they tell me their histories, and figure out how their interactions will build my story. I know their emotions; it’s just a matter of finding out how to showcase them.
At the same time, I think of structure. I see the trajectory of my story and figure out the landmarks — usually the inciting incident, the end of the first act, the midpoint, and the ending, all of which grow progressively more vague. From there I start pulling out my hair as I struggle to give my characters things to DO. Plot has always and ever been my weakness, and I realize it’s because I struggle to concretize moments of change into tangible action. There is a reason all my first drafts are Bodiless Voices in Featureless Rooms. Everything exists in a realm of abstract feeling, and the only way I can access anything concrete in my work is through embodied emotion. I envy my friends who say they see their books play out like a movie in their heads. Despite being a visual person, I only ever catch glimpses, like faded photographs in an album.
I have, of course, learned a lot from craft books. For me, the most useful rubric has been the Eight Sequences method, which I have worked with ever since writing Ami. I don’t follow craft to the letter; I mostly use the Eight Sequences as scaffolding, a way of thinking of my story in smaller, more manageable chunks. Right now, I think I have broad strokes of seven of the eight sequences mapped out, but there’s a giant hole in Sequence Five where the romance is supposed to be. Despite feeling comfortable with emotions, I find romance the most difficult thing to write. To concretize. To make embodied. I’ve read quite a few romances, but as an ace person, I find that the sexual attraction part doesn’t resonate with me, which frequently leaves me scrambling for other ways to think about it. (Speaking of which, if anyone has resources for how to write a good romantic storyline — not romance as the HEA is, uh, not guaranteed…in this book anyway, please send them my way!)
I hope to start writing my Zero Draft soon. But until then, it’s still fun. I’m still playing around.
what i’m reading 📖
Story Genius by Lisa Cron. I picked this up in the hopes that it would help me with plot, but unfortunately it leans more heavily on characterization, which is less of a problem for me. However, it did give me a useful way of thinking of cause-and-effect in my story, which I hope to be able to incorporate.
The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne. This was much more helpful in terms of helping me concretize events, although I found it a bit prescriptive for my tastes. I do, however, think the methodology employed will be incredibly useful during the revision stage.
The Plague of Fantasies by Slavoj Žižek. I am not well-read enough in Hegel, Lacan, or Marx for this. I picked this up because I’m familiar with Žižek’s work, and because I’m curious about fantasy — not the genre — and how it plays into our need for story. This is definitely not that, but it was interesting to read Žižek’s take on why fantasies exist, which gives me something to mull over.
what i’m watching 📺
Adolescence. Oh god, this was so hard to watch. I bawled at the ending, and I’m not a parent, so I can only imagine how much more difficult it would be to watch if you are one. It also feels a bit…preachy (not quite the right word) and I think it’s definitely geared toward parents, not children. Recommended, with caution.
Andor: Season 2. This show is the best of the Star Wars TV universe. And a little too timely right now.
other things of note 💾
Conover, Adam. “How Capitalism Killed the Movie Star.” Adam Conover, YouTube, Mar 2025.
Flight, Thomas. “Why Severance is One of the Best Looking Shows Ever.” Thomas Flight, YouTube, Mar 2025.
Collins, Suzanne and Levithan, David. “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Scholastic Interview.” Suzanne Collins, May 2020.
Earl, Jessie. “The Revolutionary Spirit of Andor.” Jessie Gender, YouTube, Dec 2022.
Earl, Jessie. “The Stories Fascism Fears Most.” Jessie Gender, YouTube, Apr 2025.
Sparkly Kat, Alice. “They Are Not Scared of You.” Alice Sparkly Kat, Apr 2025.
Le, Mina. “does originality still exist anymore?” Mina Le, YouTube, Apr 2025.
Yours entire,
I attend an adult class, which means 13 and up, although there are a few high ranked black belts in there who are as young as 10, as they were promoted from the kids’ class. The other adults I see are mostly at the beginning of their taekwondo journey.
Despite having been told multiple times to leave myself voice notes, I just can’t seem to work that into my process.