January 2026

The progress tracker is serving its purpose.

There are a lot of reasons to not make it to the desk right now, but I have found starting each day with focused attention on a creative project to be grounding, clarifying, and an antidote to the fruitless kinds of anxiety that lead to feelings of helplessness. There is a feeling of self-efficacy that comes with showing up, and now more than ever we all need to believe we can effect change.

I’m aiming for an hour and most days it happens. This month, I have spent that hour either working on the novel — mostly revising scenes that aren’t working — or reading for the novel. I have a thick stack of books I consider “novel research” and if I don’t know where to start in the morning, I’ll read until I feel pulled in a direction.

This month I read and loved American Modern: Architecture; Community; Columbus, Indiana. It tells the history of the architecture of Columbus, which has been a sideways inspiration for my glass house novel from the beginning. Now I am reading The Edith Farnsworth House, a newly published history of another of my glass house inspirations. A few years ago, during an astrology reading, Zoe Anderson told me to “dream into” the novel. I keep thinking about that phrase. Dream into it.

Creation and destruction are both choices. Nothing is giving me more hope right now than the people of Minneapolis singing to their neighbors.

Keep going, keep going, keep going,
Shayne