Hello again. Happy new year. Let’s talk about the future, shall we?

Thanks to the spare time that I had over the break, I did quite a bit of thinking in terms of where I wanted to go after having successfully survived (mentally and physically) my final semester in grad school. As I traded strongly-worded emails with sketchy online stores advertising ugly Christmas sweaters, I reflected on 2021 as a whole from my perspective of a writer. Unfortunately, aside from a handful of amateur poems that probably will never see publication through any literary magazine, I hadn’t done much writing. So, I knew that something had be done—y’know, the whole “New year, new me” sort of ultimatum.

And from there, by the time the new year came in, I knew what I wanted to do after identifying pressing issues on my end as a self-proclaimed writer: (1) I wasn’t reading enough to keep myself fresh in the world of literature and storytelling as a whole, and (2) I wasn’t writing enough. So, I devised a regimen and, at the time that I’m writing this (two bottles into the weekend), have stuck to that daily routine to strengthen my writerly muscles.

My proposition was simple and is coming along smoothly. I want to read daily and read a lot—so I’m making myself read at least one poem, one short story, and one chapter of a novel every day. However, please note that this regimen is meant to begin gradually and I’m currently able to handle one poem and one short story, and I hope to start reading a novel soon (within two weeks). Conversely, alongside my daily readings, I’ve also been making myself draft one poem a day. Now, of course, I’m not nearly industrious (yet) to be able to write one short story a day so, at the moment, I’ve been working in small but accumulating bursts every day with new short fiction with aspirations for trying to draft my first novel by the end of this year. We’ll see where all of this goes in due time but I’ve got a little bit more hope within me thanks to stable income and 5-HTP helping me having a regular amount of serotonin in my head at the moment.

Now, if any of you are still trudging through my ramble, you might be asking what this means within the context of The Morning Owl. Well, the good news is that I intend to keep posting weekly. The bad news though is that if you found this newsletter and stuck around for fiction and creative prose, I’ve decided to withhold any further posting of those sorts of writings. It’s all for a fair reason though. Because with the rest of my life ahead of me, I want to be able to call myself a published writer as soon as possible. And in order to do that, because of industry standards, it would be within my best interests to not post those sorts of prose here (at least, not yet). Old posts will remain here as prototype versions of stories that I plan to submit to journals but consider them as demos rather than final products. Again, sorry for those who may feel sour after reading this announcement. I’m not certain that any of my writing will be published but I’ll be sure to let y’all know if I do manage to make my debut this year. I’ve a decent optimism about it all though considering that I may have my hands full with a couple of writing groups this year (I’ve my fingers crossed for one of them at the moment as I’m currently waitlisted for one).

So, what the hell am I gonna post here? Writing updates, mostly. Occasional essays on my thoughts on the writing process as a whole. Stuff like that. For film fans, Oscar season is coming up and I’ve been thinking about using this platform to post film reviews, extended and uncut, as I intend most of them to be. For context, I used to write film reviews for Towson University’s newspaper and the experience left me bitter (the one fan letter I received in the three semesters that I wrote for the paper was nice though). Oh, and really random essays are on the horizon, I just need to get off my ass and organize stuff for a video game related project I want to get to soon (no spoilers).

In the meantime, here’s a playlist to bide time and be sure to keep your eyes open for what’s coming next.

Never Too Much Luther Vandross Western City Pop by Tyrone B.

Thank you for reading this edition of The Morning Owl. If you liked what you saw here, please leave a like, subscribe, leave a comment, and share this newsletter. Until we meet again, do take care.

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