I've spent the past year recovering from a hard burnout, something I discussed here along with my plans to recover from it.

When I wrote that post, I hadn't fully grasped the depth of that burnout or the causes. Gradually, though, I've come to realize that I'd been sliding into burnout for years, and not every factor of the burnout was within my control.

Be that as it may, I've had to take a hard look at my life and make some difficult decisions.

For one, I had to decide where my focus should be. Which stories should I write? Which pen names should I hold onto?

I'm not ready to discuss the depth of those decisions, but there's one thing I can share today: I'm letting the C.D. Watson pen name go.

What this means for now is that the stories published under that name will remain in print for the foreseeable future. However, the website will be taken down in a few days and I'll no longer be monitoring or posting to the associated Facebook page.

I stopped posting to the mailing list dedicated to that name a while back, but may send out one or two more newsletters just to bring over any superfans to other pen names.

When I first started writing under the C.D. Watson name, I envisioned it encompassing a wide array of Science Fiction stories. Instead, it naturally settled in the Dystopia and Post-Apocalyptic range.

Mostly, though, this was the name I used for those weird and varied short stories I love so much. My father insists that my short fiction is better than my longer fiction (though he enjoys my long-form fiction, too).

Looking through those shorts, I can see why. I published some really good stories under the C.D. Watson name. That's one reason why it was so hard to let the name go.

The other being, of course, that it's a version of my own name.

But to each thing there is a season, and the time for that name has passed. As I said, I'll leave the stories up for a while. At some point, I'd like to do in-person events where it may be easier to connect the stories with the right readers.

It's still a tad heartbreaking, letting those stories go. Earlier, with a great deal of sorrow and regret, I spent half an hour saving various blog posts from the website so my memories of those stories would be preserved somewhere. I may republish some of those posts here at some point, or I may not. It depends on where I go from here.

My post-burnout soul-searching has not come to an end. I'm still struggling to regain my full creative power, still struggling to write and publish. Leaving the C.D. Watson pen name behind was only one decision along that path.

It feels like a failure, having to let it go. A failed experiment. And it was in some ways.

If it must be considered a failure, then I have resolved to let it propel me forward to the place I need to be, as a person and as a writer, having learned something useful about myself and the stories I write.