Portland had our first snowfall of the year over Valentine’s Day, and I am grateful for the days it gave me to stop and breathe.

The writing community talks about the bravery it takes to send your work into the world. Sharing with beta readers, hitting that submit or publish button the first time—heck, the first 50 times—is nerve-racking. What I hear talked about less is the bravery in writing itself, and why (especially now) that is so crucial to remember.

Halloween is over. For a lot of people, that means the costumes get put away or donated, the decorations come down, and the question of what do we want to be doesn’t come up again until some time next September.

Building a world is one of the best things about writing fantasy. It’s a chance to let our imaginations run wild, to rewrite the rules that constrain us in reality, or to create a place inspired by something we’ve seen and wish to live in. There’s an easy trap to fall into during worldbuilding, though, especially in an original secondary world: getting too attached to the brainstorming phase...

Read that title again.

If you ask me, this is one of the most important things to remember when sending your writing, or any kind of art, out into the world, and it’s one of the easiest things to forget when facing rejection and criticism. There is a little piece of an artist’s soul in everything they make. Even if it is not a reflection of their experience, it is still many hours of time, effort, and more than likely cycles of falling into and overcoming self-doubt and imposter syndrome. So when the feedback, form rejections, or reviews start rolling in, it can be really easy to drown in the negatives.

Burnout is an insidious beast. It stalks through the grass, undetectable except for that prickle down your spine that means you better keep moving, keep moving, keep moving, past the point where you know you ought to lie down and rest but you know you can’t, until suddenly you collapse. The monster eats you up and spits you out, and you vow never to let this happen again, thinking you understand its hunting patterns. Then the damn thing shape-shifts.

It’s been one year since I had my endometriosis excision surgery, and I wanted this to be my first ever blog post, both to bring awareness to this disease, and to help process the crazy whirlwind of the last year. I hope that, even if you don’t identify with the medical aspects here, you can connect with some piece of what it’s like being a creator in a world that prioritizes productivity at the cost of everything else.