time itself is disintegrating
from this blip of a January, I’ve realized that change is inevitable—in writing, and in life
I keep seeing mocking posts on the internet along the lines of January lasted 87 days. While January was exhausting, I can’t say I agree with the sentiment… I find myself wondering, Where the hell did January go!?
My family started the year with two weeks of influenza and then closed out the first month with RSV and a double ear infection. I honestly can’t tell you what happened in between. Other than, of course, democracy falling apart.
I feel like the world is disintegrating into sand that’s slipping through my fingers.
While my daughter’s been home sick the last five days, she’s picked up several new words (shoes, cheese, and up to be specific). Somehow she’s now closer to 18mos than 12mos. Recently I read some post or reel or something that said, Today your kid is the oldest they’ve ever been, and the youngest they’ll ever be, and I can’t stop thinking about it. I knew having a kid meant that my relationship with time would change, but damn.
The ridiculous sense that time is melting away hasn’t been helped by our weather. It’s 60 degrees today in Colorado, in February. 60. Apparently we just skipped winter and raced straight to May, and the whiplash is so nauseating (not to mention anxiety inducing, because… fires). Before I entered the writing industry, I worked in farming and climate justice spheres. I spent my college years lobbying for climate measures, desperately believing we could turn things around. Now, those hopes feels absurd. Climate is barely on anyone’s lips anymore, even while LA is on fire. We have a million more horrors to face. Yesterday I had the terribly grim thought that, Today the earth is as warm as it’s ever been, and as cold as it’s ever going to be.
Then, of course, amongst all this depressing chaos, my government is crumbling beneath a burgeoning dictatorship that I’m starting to realize my country’s democracy can’t survive, at least not in its current form.
Fuck, right!?
Okay, I swear I didn’t come here to depress you with shit you probably already know and that’s already dragging you down. (Though it did feel good to vent a little bit).
My point, is that from this blip of a January, I’ve realized that change is inevitable.
I swear, this relates to writing:
In my spliced up free-time this month, I’ve both a) started my final read through of Up In Molten Lights, and b) started playing with pages of a new story. How did I GET here!? Wasn’t it just yesterday that Up In Molten Lights felt impossible? This time last year I didn’t have a single page written… and now it’s done!?
You can pre-order Up In Molten Lights, the second and final book in The Crimson Curtain series, here now!
A writing friend who is in the exact same boat with me remarked the other day that she can’t wait to be in the final polished stages of her new project—and I laughed that we are in that stage with our previous projects. I’m realizing that, for many of the authors I speak to at least, there’s a bitter sweet, discordant feeling at the end of a work. You’re so freaking tired of it (and excited for something new) that you want it to just be done. At the same time, you’re so relieved that it’s finished and (hopefully) proud of it, while also wishing you could tear it to the bones and start over again with all that you’ve learned in the process of writing it. Publishing a book requires letting go, which requires admitting that there’s no such thing as a ‘perfect’ piece of art. I’m immensely proud of Up In Molten Lights and I can’t wait for readers to take ownership of it (I really hope you love it at much as I do!!), but at the same time I feel so strangely aware of the fact that—like Behind the Crimson Curtain—this book will now be frozen in time as a representation of who I am as a person and a writer, right now. I’m struggling to let it go.
But change is inescapable.
My daughter will grow every day.
The earth will warm every day.
Politicians will make choices with ripple affects every day.
I will continue to grow as a writer, leaving pieces of myself behind frozen in time.
All month I’ve wanted to cling to time and make it stop. But that wouldn’t bring me the joy of putting another story to paper, it wouldn’t fix the horrors of this world, it wouldn’t show me what a beautiful human my daughter will grow to be.
Time moves on. Things change.
All I can do is embrace it, and maybe try to influence the direction that change occurs in. Maybe it doesn’t have to all be loss? Maybe it doesn’t have to all be bad? Maybe I can do my best to change things for the better?
I’m so excited to watch my daughter embrace language over the next 6mos. Her voice is my favorite thing in the world right now. I’m going to soak up the sun with her (no matter how depressing it is) whenever I can. For my next project, I am determined to find more joy in the process than ever before, and take my writing skills to another level—all while celebrating Up In Molten Lights as much as it deserves.
And I’ll be damned if I let these assholes change my country without doing whatever I can. I may be one person in a relatively blue state, but I can leave a hell of a lot of voicemails for Congressman Jeff Hurd (R) and thank you voicemails for my Senators. I’m going to show up for my local dems reorganization meeting, support my local school board against book bans and attacks on diversity, and donate to my local immigrant resource center.
Just because everything is changing doesn’t mean I have to gape helplessly in the wake of time.
I still have the power to choose how I show up each day, how I treat the present moment, and what ripple affects I want my actions to have.
For now, it feels like a small comfort.
Psst… New here? 👀
I’ve gotten SO MANY new followers from substack this week! If you’re one of them, please say hello in the comments. My name is Emily (aka. E.B. Golden) and I write dark, romantic fantasy novels that will keep you up all night. My recent debut, Behind the Crimson Curtain, is about an ambitious con-artist who is rebuilding her life in the ashes of a revolution, and the constable she can’t help but love. You can snag it on Kindle Unlimited, ebook, and paperback wherever books are sold.
