Thursday night. Here I am at the Cantina. I was going to go to the pizza place for their party but it was too hot and there were no tables available. So now I am here.

I did not go out with that random guy last night. Good for me. I made a good life choice. Sure, I had to coach myself through it, but in the end I decided it was best just to ghost him. I just don’t think anyone who wants to go on a first date to The Wolf is going to be someone of quality character. It is what it is.

Instead, I went to the health cafe and got myself a salad and a juice. I sat there and wrote for awhile, then went home to watch Emily in Paris. It was boring, sure, but I woke up bright and early in the morning with my memory fully intact and no regrets about the previous night. Well done, me.

The heat warning was crazy today, so I did not leave the house. I stayed in my cozy little studio cave, hacking away at my manuscript. I charted out the plot the way I learned to do at the Paris Writing Workshop. Now I’m sitting here trying to make some creative decisions about the characters and major plot points.

Yes, it is based on my life, but I also have to be willing to cut things that don’t fit into the neat little journey I’ve neatly laid out on the page. It does need to be commercially viable. Sometimes that means cutting out things that aren’t going to be relatable or just don’t quite fit into the story I’m trying to tell.

This is why I keep an Island of Lost Guys. Who is going to make the Final Cut? They can’t all be in there. Not all of them are relevant to the plot. Some of them were just one night stands! Like the Russian. Look at us over here desperately grasping for straws to make this guy someone of interest and substance when he’s nothing more than a fuckboy sailor with girls in every port. Who cares if he can wrangle a crocodile and ride a motorcycle? It’s not important to the plot!

There’s one guy very early one I’m debating cutting right now: Levi Gene. I feel like it’s too much. It’s not really necessary to the plot. Like it’s a whole side show that can be replaced by a magical plot device called “a check for $50,000 magically appears out of nowhere.” Did this happen in real life? No. Does it move the plot along without adding this unnecessary clown show that I’m not actually proud of to distract us from the main point? Yes.

Levi Gene is the Tom Bombadill of this novel. It’s an interesting little side show in the bigger story, but when it’s time to make the movie, he’s going straight to the cutting room floor.

I am actually trying to write this as if it will be turned into a Netflix show one day, so I am going to take a lot of liberties to make it commercially viable. It needs to be vague enough to be relatable. Sometimes, a lot of times, most times, I do a lot of dumb fucking shit that normal people can’t relate to. This has to be a story people can see themselves in. They have to be able to put themselves into the shoes of my character. That means she has to be relatable to bored housewives, corporate career women, university students, bartenders with a degree from the School of Life, and everyone else in between.

No pressure. I was built for this. I’ve trained my whole life for this. This is my Destiny. This novel was meant to be written. Everything I’ve ever done leading up to now has been all for this moment. I can totally do this.

No pressure at all.

See? This year was not wasted! I got a whole novel out of it! That’s exactly what I said I would do when my first HK job didn’t work out. I said, “Okay, the universe is clearly leading me in a different direction than I intended. Let’s follow the path and see where it takes us. In the end, I’ll write a book about it.”

And now here we are, writing a book about it.

It’s always been my dream to live and write abroad. And I did it! I finally did it!

I don’t need anyone else to be proud of me today. I am proud of me today. I am out here doing the goddamn thing.

I did it. I really did it. I lived abroad for an entire year and now I’m writing a book about it.

I can’t believe I finally did it. And I’m celebrating like this? Nah, fam! We definitely need to throw a bigger party this weekend.

I never, ever, ever thought in a million years I would ever get the chance to live in a place like Hong Kong. Wow. I truly feel like the luckiest girl in the whole world right now…