In 2026, the single biggest step I have taken on my journey as a writer was simply the act of starting again.

I’m currently in the outlining and brainstorming phase of writing my first novel, codenamed Orpheus, and I have roughly 1,000 words of extremely rough drafting done aside from dozens of lore entries scratched down in a Scrivener binder. Prior to this, I hadn’t written a single word in almost 10 years.

Crazy, right? I’ve been a writer since I was a small child. Just about as soon as I learned how to read, I wanted to be a writer. I started writing fan fiction about the first chapter book I ever read and my love of writing only grew since then. I focused my studies in college on writing in every form I could, majoring in English literature and minoring in the dying art of print journalism (which was already dying back then but is really on life support now).

But after my multiple creative writing courses in college, since graduating and joining the workforce, I haven’t written anything aside from my daily journal. That’s been gnawing at me.

Recently, a fully formed story idea came to me. I wasn’t thinking about it, wasn’t lookin for it, but there it was. A plot line with three act structure, characters, and ideas for an entire world for them to inhabit came unbidden to my mind. And the beauty of it was I could just start writing.

When I was in high school writers’ club, I was known as the person who wrote horror. Gory, messy, toe-curling horror, body horror, psychological horror with a nice helping of religious trauma. The good stuff. But for some reason, I stopped writing horror in college. Maybe the assignments didn’t lend themselves to it, or maybe I got it in my head that to be taken seriously as a young writer that I would need to write the vaunted contemporary fiction and narrative non-fiction like every other tool who has ever submitted themselves to Poets and Writers.

Imagine my delight when after a decade of struggling to come up with a compelling enough story to write a novel out of, I rediscovered my love for horror fiction and could just write again.

So here I am. I wanted to start this blog to chronicle my progress and hold myself accountable while I try to do the thing that I’ve dreamt of for nearly 30 years of my life: writing a damn book! I also want to connect to new writers, aspiring authors like myself, and study the craft of writing in public.

For now, I’d love to hear any helpful advice on how to incorporate writing into my daily routine. I think we all struggle to fit our “hobbies” into our daily lives between work, spouses, social functions, and doing laundry (again).