For Readers of Every Other Midnight,

It has been five years. Five years since I’ve posted on this blog and five years since I updated EOM. I want to say the world has changed, and in many ways it has. Some for the better. Chapter 83 (where James finds out getting a marriage license is impossible) was written before gay marriage was legalized in the United States. So hurrah! (It would be a surprise to no one who reads EOM that real-life issues inspire many elements in the story.)

But more obviously, the world has become a darker place. I am from the United States, and while the world as a whole is dealing with Covid19, here there has been a steady dissolution, or hollowing out, of the institutions that make democracy possible.

In the last few chapters of EOM, we saw specific groups in society arrested with no provocation and often killed in the process–those in law enforcement facing no consequences. This has not changed in five years.

In chapter 83, a panellist on a radio programme said, “Wizarding world for wizards,” and that muggleborns should be locked up or not allowed entry into the wizarding world. This was written before Donald Trump’s presidency. White nationalism was already alive and thriving, but the Trump presidency has invigorated and (seemingly) legitimized it. But this is a post for another time.

Also, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize now for future chapters. I took a five-year break. An athlete who does not train her body for five years will not perform at the level she did at the peak of her career. So it is with me. 

I wrote most of Chapter 84 a long time ago, and it (and I) got stuck in a dark place. Azkaban is not a happy place for your mind to be stuck. (Spoiler alert- dementors = depression. That feeling like you’ll never be cheerful again? And I could no more write my way out of that chapter than I could write my way out of depression. Indeed, I’m still in Azkaban, I’m pretty much always in Azkaban. 

Just some days the dementors are nearer than others.

But mental health is also a post for another time.)

So at the time of publishing chapter 84, mostly old work, I was struggling to write the chapter that is to follow. My writing is weak— my creative muscles are barely capable of lifting a pen. I know I’m a worse writer than I was five years ago. 

Blogging will be my cross-training—reflective non-fiction to do in between daily prose sprints. (I’ve also started running during the pandemic, and I’m afraid the mindset is leaking into my other pursuits.)

I often fear that two fanfictions, EOM and Professor’s Discretion, will be the best work of my life. I’m certainly proud of PD, it’s the only writing endeavour I’ve ever finished and been satisfied. I’ve never gone so deep—politically, emotionally, and in terms of plot— in my original fiction as I have with those two. But those characters were already formed, people’s attachment to them already steadfast. I cannot create that from scratch, nor carry over the care I took with those. I don’t know that I can do it again, even now. 

And as I was going back through previous chapters to prepare to work on the next, I was surprised by my own writing—everything I’ve written recently is so staid and colourless. I was actually impressed with past me, at the description and the depth and the intricacies of it, and disappointed with the present me. I tried to write up the rest of the chapter but couldn’t. I tried multiple times. Somehow, I couldn’t get any traction, couldn’t find any footholds. I just couldn’t get a purchase on the story to pull it, and myself, forward.

Until one day (yesterday, as it so happens), by some miracle, I found the old falling apart notebook in an old backpack that had fallen apart, but I hadn’t been able to bring myself to throw away because it had given me ten years of faithful service and I kept telling myself I’d find some use for it. The notebook inside contained 76 pages of chapter 84 and parts of Chapter 85. 

• 

The notebook itself I bought in Serbia and I’d taken it with me all around the Balkens. Inside the old thing was a single-page print out map of a city where I had stayed—Prizren, in Kosovo.

It was folded and tattered, but I opened it, and on the back, in blood-brown ink, was part of what will be the next chapter. And I suddenly remembered. 

In Prizren, there is a tall hill. Near the top, was a cafe, perhaps there still is. I had had spent the better part of an afternoon hiking up it. My plan had been to tarry in the cafe a while and write, but I finally got there only to find I had somehow managed to come all that way without my notebook. I had the map of the city though, and filled the page with tiny handwriting. 

I can’t believe I used to write it longhand. I have written over half of EOM with pen and paper. Half a million words. So many notebooks. Where are they now? (I know one is in Saldanha Bay, South Africa, when both notebook and I took a tumble into the drink.) 

Did my hands used to cramp? I don’t remember.

I have therefore decided to write EOM in by hand, rather than on the computer. It might solve part of the problem. 

Another might be that I’ve always written elsewhere. Travelling and writing were part of the same process. If I travelled, I wrote. If I was writing, I was travelling. But now I am implacably stuck at home. No real possibilities of the yonder.

At least I know I’m not alone with this.

In any case, here’s to trying again.

~Kathryn

Let me know in the comments below any questions or topics you’d be interested in hearing about! (I can’t promise to answer all questions completely, but I’ll do my best!)