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Sideways to meeting my goals, part two

Posted on January 11, 2026 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I’m back with more musings about my three main goals. I caught up on my writing (as far as an hour a day), and I have decided that I’m going to move Point B to the second book. What am I talking about? Well, I mused about it in the prior post, which you can read here.

In my murder novemoir, I had the central mystery plotted out in my mind. I didn’t know who the perp would be (which is unusually for me. I usually know it from the beginning), but I had the vic and the basic plot points.

Last night, I started writing about a second major mystery that I had seeded the night before, which was much more interesting to me. My impulse was to set it aside, but my brain said, “Nope. We’re going to keep on writing about it.” I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I knew the smart thing to do would be to put it in the sequel, but I’m stubborn if nothing else.

Now, though, I think I’m going to set it aside for the second book. It’s too meaty to do it in tandem with another major mystery. I have decided that the hour a day can include the time it takes for me to research a topic or rereading what I wrote before. It includes thinking time and anyithing that is related to writing. Once I’ve done that for the month of January, then I’ll think about making it two hours.

I am very glad that I changed it from writing 2,000 words a day to writing for an hour a day–and now saying doing anything writing-related for an hour. The goal right now is to get myself back into writing fiction on a daily basis. I still have it in me; I just need to apply myself.

Side note: This is another thing that I found out about neurospicy people–it’s not just laziness. What I mean is that sometimes it feels literally impossible to force myself to do the thing I need to do. Even if it’s something I want to do.

When my bestie used to live here, we would make plans to get together once a month or so. I always looked forward to it, but I had to drag myself to get dressed and drive to her place. She would not be ready when I got there (a long running joke in our thirty-year friendship), and we used to commiserate with each other about how weird it was that we had such a hard time getting ready for something we really wanted to do.

Sideways to meeting my goals

Posted on January 10, 2026 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

Hello. We are a week-and-a-half into the new year, and I want to do a check in as to how I’m doing with my goals. I haven’t looked into Asian queer/genderqueer groups, so we’ll set that aside for now.

Writing: I have been doing ok with writing one hour a day except my sleeping schedule is fucked. I mean, it’s been fucked for most my life*, but it’s seriously fucked now. Plus, I fuck around too much. I need to buckle down and just get to it.

Still. I’ve managed to do the hour of writing every day but one, which isn’t bad. I’ll be honest. I thought I would struggle more with it than I have, so I’ll take it. I’m going to make up that half hour today and get back on track.

Am I happy with what I’ve been writing? Not really. It’s not great. It’s not terrible, mind. My writing is decent. It comes out decent. It then goes great or terrible, depending. Since I’m still in the explanation phase of my novemoir, it’s just fine. It’s difficult, though, because I have to go back and reread what I previously wrote to keep caught up on the main thread. My memory is shit now, and, yes, that’s something I can blame on my medical crisis.

One interesting thing is that while I had the main mystery planned before I started writing (that’s always how I do), a second murder, completely separate from the first mystery, is emerging. It’s not something I wanted to happen, but who am I to stop it?

Here’s the thing. With this novemoir, I’m in new territory. Normally, when I write, I have an outline of what I want to do. I go from beat to beat and rarely diverge from the road (less taken). Sure, the details may be emergent, but they don’t usually surprise me–much.

Plus, it’s usually follows in a chronological fashion. “Point A happens first. That leads to Point B, which trips off Point C.” In this case, Point A is tangential to Point B, but they don’t directly influence each other. Sure, I can make it so they intertwine, but I don’t want to do that for a few reasons. One, it’s too much of a coincidence. Two, it would get too messy. I’m fine with a fair bit of mess, but this would cross the line. Or rather, I don’t want to create that kind of mess.

The smart thing would be to not introduce Point B at all. It has nothing to do with Point A, and it would make things more complicated. The really smart thing to do would be to save it for the sequel. I like doing trilogies because I think it’s a shame to create a character I really like and then abandon them after one book.