August 2025 Writing Update

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Hi Everyone,

This is the August 2025 Writing Update where I’ll talk about my writing accomplishments for the month of July 2025 and detail some of the projects I’m currently working on at the moment and discuss potential plans for upcoming future projects. I’ve tried weekly versions of this type of post based on Brandon Sanderson’s weekly updates, but I’m not set-up for weekly updates. I basically work from month-to-month and then can tally my accomplishments on that schedule. In other words, that’s what seems to work best for me, so going forward, I’ll try to update these on monthly basis, so you should see about 10-12 of these per year. Not sure if I’ll do a “yearly” update of these; I’ll see how I get on towards the end of the year.

Short Story — Project Wall (COMPLETED = 4100 WORDS INITIAL DRAFT = 4900 AFTER 1ST REVISION)

Okay, so this was an absolute blast for me to write (which probably means that it won’t sell). I’ll discuss more on this later, but creative writing on Saturdays seems to be my “superpower” and creative writing on weekdays seems to be my “Kryptonite” (to steal a metaphor from Superman). I was able to generate a solid “Working Draft” of about 4100 words. I took an older “rough draft” and merged it with another “rough draft” and that basically formed my “zero draft.” I’d estimate that the zero draft was about 750-1,250 words all together.

I broke that zero draft into 3 parts: Beginning, Middle, and End with about 350-400 words in each section, although the middle had the most words and the beginning and ending had about the same number of words.

From there, all I did was expand on those sections and dramatize them with character actions, character feelings, character motivations, scenery, and dialogue. Every Saturday in June and July, I worked on it, a little at a time, until I finished the story (4th weekend in July, I think). For the fifth weekend in July, I put it aside and worked on revising Dire (more on that below). Then for the first weekend for August, I picked up Project Wall again and revised it, adding more scenery, context, and character actions. I also refined the dialogue in some spots and changed a couple of the characters names and titles. I tried to find an epigraph to put at the beginning of the story, but the only one I liked came from Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, but with a 1952 copyright, I can’t use it because it isn’t in the public domain. Malcom X had a couple that I liked that weren’t quite what I was looking for, but could work. Shakespeare also had a quote in Hamlet that could fit the bill (that’s definitely in the public domain), but I’ve not yet decided if I want to go with that one or just go without one for this story.

I’m going to leave the title as “Project Wall” for now for the blog, but will reveal the title in another blog post when I: 1) submit it to its first publisher and 2) do an Author’s Note blog post where I talk more about the genesis of the story and give a bit of the context for the story (both will coincide with each other).

Learning More About My Writing Process (July 2025 Edition)

Yep! I now know that Saturdays are my “creative” days. I haven’t missed a writing session yet since I moved to Saturday evenings. I’ve (so far) managed to finish one story and revise another in the span of about two months — which is fantastically prolific on my part by the standards of what I have been doing over these years. Now, the big test is whether or not I can keep this up once the demands of a full semester start. This will be a good time to experiment — I know I can be creative and productive on weekends during the summer, but can I continue this throughout the year, or is it only good through summer. August, and especially September and October, will put that to the test.

I didn’t really get a whole lot done on my larger project. Sundays just doesn’t seem to be as conducive to writing, even if it isn’t purely creative in nature, as I struggle to get blog posts done on Sundays, let alone the Short Story Collection that I was working on.

Project Short Story Collection

So, this hasn’t gone well. I’ve not yet been able to get back to the short story collection in any meaningful way. I’m going to try to move this away from Sundays into the Saturday slot once I revise “The Runner.” I think I might make progress then. I’m hopeful that I can perhaps work on two or three stories and then maybe plan out my next short story (either on that Saturday or maybe write on Saturday and plan on Sunday), but I think Sundays are a “bust” for any type of creative writing as it seems like more and more of these blog posts are getting done on Mondays and uploaded on Monday or Tuesday.

Dire and The Runner

Dire: So, this will be a much shorter update, but basically, I went back and revised my werewolf short story, “Dire.” I changed a few things, deleted some things, added in more things (more about their blood and their history). I added in the idea fur curling into dreadlocks, to mimic Black hair for men, and also tried to be more specific about the two important werewolves who have their climatic confrontation at the end of the story. I also renamed a couple of characters. I sent it off to the publisher. I was feeling good about it until I realized that I missed one instance of a character’s old name not being changed to the new name in the first section after I had already submitted it to the publisher. Is this one mistake enough to sink the story’s chances? Who knows, it depends on how forgiving the editor is (although I would have obviously preferred to fix the error — which I did on my end — and send in a new copy, but there was no easy way to have them rescind the old copy even if I sent a new copy, so I’ll just have to let it ride). I should now in approximately 45 days (perhaps sooner), but I’ll hedge my bet and find another publisher who might be interested as “back up.” Anyway, even if the publisher doesn’t take it, the “corrected” version will go out next time, so hopefully I will have only sabotaged the story’s chances for one market (if that). I think the story’s good and the editor does want stories of “gods and monsters,” which does seem to fit the bill of Dire, so we’ll see.

The Runner: So, this one is an “upcoming” project, but I’m hoping to do the same to The Runner as I did to Dire. Revise it and find a new publisher to send it to. I have far fewer things that I feel like need to be changed with this story as I’m pretty happy with it as is (even though it isn’t selling for some reason — although, to be fair, it was a finalist for 2 out of 2 competitions that I entered it in, so I feel like it’s right there, but hopefully I see something in the revision process that pushes it to the next level). Hopefully, I’ll have more to say about this one next month.

Well that’s it for me! Have a great week!

SidneyIn-Progress — CreativeThe Runner (Fantasy — 2023 Revision) (Fantasy Story: 4100 words)Status: (In — looking for a market)Dire (Urban Fantasy — 2024) (Fantasy Short Story: 5100 words)Status: (Out — to a market). Avg. Response time = 45 days (Out for 8 days)Project Wall (Science Fiction –2025) (Science Fiction: 4900 words)Status: (In — looking for a market)PUBLISHED WORKS of Sidney Blaylock, Jr.

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Chapter 3 — How Nichelle Nichols’ Uhura Inspired the African American Female Character in Science Fiction 
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