Writing Diary 2026 #1 (December 31st 2025 - January 2nd 2026)

 I took a train back to the city on New Year's Eve. It was an Amtrak, which is the closest we come in America to genuine commuter rail. It was a four hour journey, give or take 30 minutes, which was bearable, until a random child sat next to me for the last hour. I didn't love that. Also I was running on about 3.5 hours of sleep. When the train arrived at Union Station (incidentally, I'd like to write a collection of short stories called Union Station, where all the stories meet at one point or another. Like a union station. It's basically a metaphor) I got to experience my favorite thing, which is walking up the narrow walkway between the train platforms and into the station proper. It feels like a remnant of the 19th Century, in a way that I find thrilling. 

I knew I was supposed to take the Brown Line north to the station nearest my apartment, but when I got to the platform, I saw only an Orange Line train. Luckily, I heard the robot announcer voice say "This is a Brown Line train to Kimball" and managed to jump on right before the doors closed. Apparently during weekdays, the CTA runs one Orange Line train backwards to act as an extra Brown Line train, to help address the increased demand of commuters. I'm still learning all the train lines so that's basically meaningless to me, but apparently it helps. 

Once I got home I said hi to one of my roommates who was watching the new Stranger Things in the living room, then I went to my bedroom and passed out. I woke up around six hours later, feeling marginally less tired, and got ready to go out for the holiday. 

Anyway, enough moment-by-moment. This is meant to be a writing journal.

I wrote 500 words of a story on the train on the 31st, assuming (correctly, as it turned out) that I would be too hungover to do much of anything on January 1st. The only problem is, I don't really like that story. Thinking about it, I can't find that one spark of excitement in the story that will drive me over the next few months to keep coming back to it. So I think a new story is needed. 

Elements I would like the new story to contain include:

• A mystery, preferably supernatural in nature.
• Some element of magic/manipulation of the world that the main character can learn the rudiments of.
• An old town where things are not quite as they seem. 

 And more than that, but those are the things off the top of my head that tend to keep me interested in stories. So I will try again, and try writing 1000 words today. Maybe I'll try non-linear writing, and write scenes as they occur to me. I've read about that method quite a lot. 

Anyway. That's enough blogging for one day. I'll try to update this site every few days with a summary of my progress. It might not happen though.