The days are definitely shorter, and colder. I woke up the other day freezing because the blankets had all fallen off the bed, which I haven’t felt in months. When I leave work at night it’s actually dark. And I feel the closing in of my mind in association with the days of dark, a kind of mental shutdown to protect myself from the gloom that is becoming pervasive from sunrise to sunset.

That being said, I’ve been productive as of late. I’m stalled a little bit on a difficult chapter, but I’ve written over 30K words in the past few weeks for The Broken, and have around nine chapters left to write. I’ve already lined up a couple of beta readers whom I’m excited to get the book to for feedback, and I’m hoping to get the manuscript (in its first form) finished by the end of the month.

Having said that, I know damn well that as September progresses into October, I’m going to find it increasingly difficult to focus, to find motivation, and to simple want to do anything. For me, it’s the natural state of autumn; as the world dies outside, I die a little inside. I like it – it’s a comforting feeling, a sense of coming home after a long trip, or of finally coming to rest after a long year of agitation – but I know it’s going to impact my productivity.

That means that I really, really need to focus and buckle down now, because if I don’t get this book finished by the end of September, the odds of it getting finished this year grow increasingly slim. I really, really want to get it to my editor for year’s end, and have an early launch in 2021 (I originally intended to have this book released in 2019, so we can see just how far behind I really am), but if I can’t get to the end of the book in the next few weeks, that’s really unlikely to happen.

So here I go, diving into pumpkin spice and all things nice, and I’m going to spend as much time as I can today working on this annoying, difficult chapter, so I can move on to the more exciting stuff to come – and get the damn thing finished!