I want a big life, but I also want a nap. Like, I have dreams. I have things I want to make and a whole book I’m trying to write. But I also have kids and a nine-to-five I don’t really like, and sometimes I’m just fucking tired.

I like to write on the side, which sounds so simple when I say it like that. Like, oh, I work and have kids and do a little writing. Meanwhile, I have a whole story in my head that I’ve been working on for the past year, on and off, and I’m still trying to get it to come together.

I know the main plot. I have my characters, their backgrounds, and how they interact with each other. But then I’ll get another idea and start adding shit. Then I take something away. Then I rearrange something, and now a chapter has multiple versions and I have to figure out which one actually belongs in the book.

And I have ideas for other books too. I haven’t even touched those yet because this one is my baby. I want to give it the time it needs. I want it to be written well. I care about these characters and what I’m trying to say through them, even when I’m struggling to explain what the fuck that is.

The main concept is being pulled toward someone. That feeling of being drawn to a person and trying to understand it. There’s spiritual stuff in it, but there’s also human behavior and emotions, and I want people with different beliefs to be able to get something from it.

And then I get in my head about whether people will understand.

Like, is it too woke? Is it not woke enough? And I don’t mean politically woke. I mean the woo-woo kind of woke. The spiritual shit. I wonder how someone religious would read it, how someone spiritual would read it, and how someone who isn’t either would read it. Would they still connect with the feelings? Would they understand what I’m doing, or would they judge the whole thing before they got there?

I want there to be room for people who are interested in human behavior and emotions too. You don’t have to believe the exact same things to understand a feeling. But trying to write that in a way that makes sense without explaining every little thing is something I keep thinking about.

Then there’s the perspective of the book itself. One of the characters is narrating, and there’s this surprise involving who’s reading and the story they find. That “oh, so it’s them reading this” moment. So I’m thinking about the main story while also thinking about what the person reading it knows, what they think they know, and when something is supposed to click.

Which is a lot of shit to keep organized when you’re already unorganized.

I have ADHD, and an idea for the book will come to me randomly. It doesn’t show up politely in chapter order. I’ll think of something and put it in my notes app because I don’t want to lose it, but I don’t always know where it goes yet.

So now I have multiple versions of different chapters, random ideas, things I might use, things I changed, and things I need to move somewhere else. My notes app looks like a mess because it is a mess.

I ended up using AI to help me organize the timeline while I write the book chapter by chapter. I made a flowchart with it because a bitch is extremely unorganized, and I need to be able to see what’s happening and when.

Otherwise, I’ll have a character doing the same fucking thing again and not even realize it. I’ll be trying to move the story forward and somehow end up talking in circles. I tend to repeat myself. I can know what I mean and still lose track of whether I already said it, or whether the character already had that conversation three chapters ago.

Having the timeline and flowchart helps me keep track of my own ideas. I can look at them and figure out where something belongs instead of trying to hold every version of the book in my head.

But then I feel guilty that I need the assistance.

Because now I’m also thinking about whether it’s morally right to use AI when it comes to writing. I have the plot, the characters, their backgrounds, their relationships, and all these ideas I keep coming back to. I’m writing the chapters. And I still question myself for needing help organizing it all.

I don’t have a neat answer about how I feel about that yet. I know why I’m using it. I know what happens when I don’t have something helping me keep track. But I still worry about what needing that help says about me as a writer, and how other people would see it.

Which means I can sit down to work on this book and end up thinking about everything around writing the book. Whether people will get it. Whether they’ll judge it. Whether I’m explaining too much or not enough. Whether that scene belongs here. Whether I already wrote a different version that I liked better and now have to go find.

And somewhere in all of that, I still want to write the actual fucking book.

I want to finish this one and eventually get to the other ideas too. I want to see what I can make when I give myself a chance to keep going. But I’m doing that while working, raising kids, and having days where I would love to use my free time to write and would also love to close my eyes.

Sometimes the ideas are there and the energy isn’t. Sometimes I have the energy and spend it rearranging things. Sometimes I come back after a while away and have to figure out where I even left myself.

This book is still my baby through all of that. Even with the messy notes and the different versions and the flowchart I need to remind me what everyone is doing.

I want a big life. I want time for these stories and a chance to find out what they can become.

I just wish I could get a nap in somewhere too.