new year, third draft

a mini-update

Happy 2025!! The end of 2024 was a whirlwind. I went back to China to visit my relatives and wound up unintentionally getting cast in a contemporary Chinese wedding ceremony. I’m still processing my emotions about the trip, which I’ll discuss in a future essay/video, but I will say—Chinese wedding capes go hard.

The cape weighed 20 pounds, and the photographer kept on telling me to lean back because I was leaning forward too much—as one does when pulling a heavy weight on one’s back!!

I got back to the U.S. right before Election Day and spent a good week reading more analyses about what happened than was probably healthy. By the time my editor sent me a proposed deadline for my next draft, I realized I’d been wallowing for too long—and now had to aim for 3000 words a day to meet the deadline. (For comparison, I averaged 844 words per day in my first draft.)

Needless to say, I gave myself gastritis from the stress of it all.¹ But miraculously, I pulled it off. For those of you who like tra…