AW: Morning Blog 65

I feel like these entries are rambling garbage about ninety eight percent of the time. It's been a challenge to make time for them every morning. For some reason, it is easier to sit down with a notebook and write first thing in the morning than it is to type this up. I have a long term Umbrel Chronicles project that I'm working on that is completely stalled. A story 'bible' is this thing I heard of a few years back where you put pretty much everything you have into a single notebook. All of your world building notes, plot outlines, and character sketches all get shoved into there. I thought it was an interesting concept that could help me stay organized with this series that I'm writing.

There is one small problem. I have so much backstory and related information piled up in notebooks and on scraps of paper shoved into a series of folders, it is a major undertaking to put all that into one notebook. My legendarium for this series is prolific. I am struggling to find the time to do this work that would make the actual work of writing the books easier. I have some of this material online and I don't want to go through the work of hand copying everything.

I don't know how the pros do it. How do they stay on top of everything? Do they have a murder wall with sticky notes and string? Do they have a story bible? Is it a pile of notes that they just hope and pray stay organized as they work? All I know is that I'm finding the books are wandering away from the general outline for the series that I set up years ago. Plot is going in weird directions and I am not sure how much of the old material I can use now.

A part of me says light it all on fire and just go with what I have written thus far. I am that frustrated with it. Another part of me says I should save all of the material I have ever written revolving around this stuff because I can use it somewhere and somehow in my novels.

AW: Morning Blog 64

My kids are playing in the other side of the room and they're noisy. It is very distracting and disheartening that I can't muster up the focus to write while they are being like this. I am tired. It is just shy of nine in the morning and I haven't had my first cup of coffee. I feel drained and exhausted from going out to Thanksgiving dinner with Beloved's parents and siblings. I am at a proverbial spoon deficit right now. I need rest and time to recover from going out and socializing. Mood drop from that is craptacular and does absolutely zero for my productivity.

I feel cold and I'm sitting here with a blanket on my lap. It doesn't do a whole lot to warm me up right now. I'm not sure why I feel so cold.

AW: Morning blog 63

While my NaNoWriMo project has been frustrating me, I am getting ideas for how to wrap up book seven of the Umbrel Chronicles. I am also considering editing my NaNoWriMo project to fit into the world of the Umbrel Chronicles. It wouldn't take too much tweaking. It would be a separate story from the major story arc of the series. Still, I think I can get it to fit as a part of the 'history' of the series. I have to talk to a few people before I do so, because I have some concepts in here that are rooted in their gaming system and I want to make sure they are ok if I take the supernatural elements and use them.

AW: Morning blog 62

I haven't been happy with my writing and I have been stuck creatively in this negative feedback loop. It goes like this:

• Get an idea for a project
• Crippling anxiety that the project won't be 'good enough'
• Try to work on project
• Make some progress on project (get roughly to the middle)
• Anxiety slams into me again that no one is going to read this
• Try to work on project
• Plot goes off the rails
• Get depressed that I can't manage to stick with my plot
• Try to work on project again.
• Eventually finish project
• Anxiety nails me that my work isn't good enough
• Shove project into proverbial drawer
• Proceed again from point one.

This doesn't just happen with my writing. I am currently working on knitting a scarf for someone's yule present. I am not even halfway done with it and I'm anxious that I picked yarn with the wrong colorway and a pattern that is all wrong for the yarn.

I fucking hate anxiety. I force myself to keep working but it gets really hard when the depression stage kicks in.

AW: Morning Blog 61

I am at 94k on my NaNoWriMo novel. I am frustrated with it because the story is turning out nothing like what I had intended. I wanted to write a romance novel. What I have is a romance plot buried under a fantasy plot which is beginning to gear up to get more weird going forward. Characters that I thought were going to last for a little bit fall by the wayside as others that were literally just background dressing for the scene are beginning to come to the fore. I have hit the first major plot point that I had planned, but it took me almost 100k words to get there. And the second plot point has been pushed off for an indefinite period while I deal with what was subplot mechanics that have turned into major plot elements.

This is not the story I had planned to write. I feel like it is a bit of garbage and a pile of politics with some actual story buried in it. I went from having two main characters to three. And it looks like the number of supporting characters is going to keep shifting as I write. It is infuriating because I had a distinct idea in my head as to what this was going to look like. It looks absolutely nothing like what I had planned except in the most vague of senses. I feel poorly about this because I wanted to write a love story that had fairy tale elements.

Now I'm writing a fantasy story that has love story elements. I know I can write is more than one genre, but this feels like I am stuck in just one genre right now. 94k and no idea how I am going to wrap this thing up. Just shameful.

AW: Morning Blog no. 60

They say that having children is nature's birth control. They say that kids are easy when they get old enough to reason. These random people who claim these things might be right about the first point, but the second point is a lie. I'm ready to scream and I'm only an hour and one cup of coffee into my day. The kids have been back-talking me and giving me attitude over things like "eat your breakfast" and "pick up your toys". The problem child is not the younger but the elder. He's hitting the leading edge of puberty and this is going to suck.

Friends tell me that it'll be easier because I have boys. There's been enough drama over the last week that I feel like I'm living in a Latin American tele-novella. We lock horns over the dumbest shit. I ask the boys to do their daily chores and there's a great wailing and gnashing of teeth. School tells me how well behaved they are and such. It'd be nice if it wasn't the opposite at home.

They used to just do their own thing and not fight. They'd play together well. They'd be helpful and stuff. Now, they fight and get in each other's faces. They throw fits over who gets to have alone time in their shared bedroom. And good grief, do they get into arguments about how much who knows what about a given topic. All of this chaotic background noise makes it impossible for me to write.

AW: Morning Blog 59

It's really disappointing to re-read The Artist's Way and find how much classism and ableism is in it. I have gone through the process of working through the book now once a year for the last five years, maybe a little longer. At first, I thought that I was just too busy to do it properly because I was working on it with two small children running around the house. Then I thought that I was struggling with the exercises because I was doing too much to keep up with it. Now, I realize that I had a couple of things working against me here.

First among them is the effects of my mental illness and disability. Second was the expectation that I could just sit down and get rid of the effects of these things on my creativity and my writing in specific by working through this book. I have come to realize that a good number of the exercises that Ms. Cameron has in her book puts me face to face with the long term effects of growing up in a traumatic household.

It is exceedingly frustrating to realize that my problem is not a creative block but rather repressed trauma. Why is it so hard for me to make sketches and not feel guilty about it? Because I was regularly punished for "wasting paper."Why do I feel inclined to hoard my art supplies instead of using them? Because I grew up poor and there was no certainty that they would be there if I needed them in the future. Why do I feel so anxious about just doing some coloring in a coloring book? Because if my work isn't "perfect" then I run the risk of "ruining" the whole book.When that happened as kid, the coloring book got taken away and thrown away because "what's the point if you can't even do this right?"

AW: Morning Blog 58

Omnia's album The Naked Harp is absolutely perfect for the scene I'm currently working on in my NaNoWriMo project. The FMC and the MMC have just gotten married and they're at the feast celebrating the wedding. This is a plot point that I have been trying to hit for the last several thousand words. Ok, maybe several thousand is an understatement. I am at 70k words. I started at 20k. So, I have hit the magical 50k mark but this story shows no signs of slowing down. The plot that I started out with was simple. FMC arrives, MMC courts her, and they get married.

The plot I have now is complicated. The love story happens more in the background as these side characters I developed are stomping all over my plot with things ranging from:

• attempted night time raid on the castle foiled 
• boar hunt gone horribly wrong
• boar hunt gone right
• kidnapping of the marquess's falconing party
• ambush of the ducal hunting party
• rescue of the kidnapped falconing party
• SO MUCH POLITICS
• insane amounts of sass between secondary characters and MMC

The rest of the book is beginning to take shape. It looks like there's going to be another big fight between rival powers by proxy. The FMC and the MMC are going to have a weird relationship that's rocky in public to those who don't know them just because of how they relate to each other. They communicate in fluent sarcasm and sass. And the insane amount of politics is going to gradually wrap up as the FMC and the MMC get settled into their new roles.

I am realizing that some characters require names that I have been referring to most of the time by their title (i.e. Duke). I've been using that awesome fantasy name generator website to come up with place names and names that resemble legit old Norse and Irish names. I've been double checking the names and making sure that they're not vulgar words in modern languages as best I can.

The setting is pseudo-medieval England. There's elements of high fantasy that are just supporting details rather than features of the story. I think, however, the war by proxy is going to make that a bigger deal. I just hope that this story doesn't suck when I get it done and polished up.

Craft of Writing: First drafts suck.

Dear Reader,

There's a general rule about writing anything. Your first draft is going to suck. It may not suck entirely. It may just have whirlpools of suckage interspersed through the flow of the story that interrupt it. It may have characters that are useless sacks of meat that should be drop kicked into the nearest black hole. It may have too many "they thought" and "[character] raised their eyebrow" to make it seem like the character is mentally constipated and have an infinitely high forehead.

These points can make you feel a measure of despair that your entire work is garbage. Writing the first draft of a story is shoveling a pile of shit into a pot with a few seeds. The word vomit portion of writing is the pile of shit. The ideas behind the word vomit portion of the writing are your seeds. The whole contraption is going to smell awful. It's going to make you feel a little sick looking at it, depending on just how the word vomit portion of writing went. There may be a brief rush of glory because "behold, I hath birthed a book/poem/etc."

Don't let that rush of glory in the completion of the first draft fool you into rushing to publish immediately. It's still a pile of shit in a pot with a few seeds, not a rosebush yet. Set the manuscript aside, even if it is for only a month. Then bust out that infamous red pen of doom. Sit down with your manuscript and read it critically, as if you are going to be graded on it by your evil high school English teacher who kept the meter stick handy. Don't feel bad if your manuscript comes out looking like it was part of a murder scene. You're doing surgery on your story and surgery gets a bit bloody.

Rewrite your story with your edits. Save that ugly first draft to reference when you are not sure about a character's name on page whatever. Repeat the process of letting it marinate in the dark of a desk drawer, bloodying it with your pen, and rewrite. Do this as many time as you need to until the real story, the ideas you are writing about, shine clearly. The entire process of editing and revision takes that black hole of a manuscript and turns it into a star through alchemy, sweat, and heartache.

Don't give up on that pile of shit in a pot with a few seeds. Love and care means that editing mercilessly and revising the whole business will get you that rosebush you were looking for. And remember, seeds need to have time in the dark to germinate and grow.

AW: Morning Blog 57

I'm not very satisfied with how NaNoWriMo is going right now. I feel like my story just jumps from scene to scene. I know that I can clean up the transitions and what not when I am editing it later. But I am not thrilled with it. I had a wedding scene I was looking forward to writing and the grand banquet that followed has turned into nothing but politics. I am annoyed with this. The focus of the fanfic this started as was the two main characters falling in love despite their differences.

That's sort of happened but I feel like it isn't very clear in the story. Again, this is something that can be fixed in the revision process. I just feel disappointed. I wanted to write something beautiful and heroic. A fairy tale of sorts, if you would. I don't appear to have captured that energy. There's a lot of grand, ripping adventure going on. But the otherworldly qualities of fairy tales just kinda fell out of my plot. Instead, there is a mass of courtly politics and violence.

I'm frustrated because of late, I sit down with an idea and the end result is completely different from what I started with. I have reached the point that minor throw away characters have turned into lynch pins for plot devices. I can't seem to force the story back onto track. I don't know if this is a good thing or not. I am just irritated that characters are moving out of their appointed spaces and changing plot. Granted, I did not have a firm plot in mind, but I did not plan a royal hunting scene to turn into an ambush followed by a raid on the bandits who did so.

It is like if I get stuck on something the solution is to throw violence into the story and see what happens. I don't know if that is going to make this a good story or just garbage. Hence my feeling dissatisfied and a little nervous about this story. I'm at 70k. I started at 20 because I decided that NaNoWriMo was going to be about finishing stuff I had started on random files in the laptop and that was the biggest filed I had. This thing is no where near finished and I have no idea when it will be done. I could just drop it and pick up another project. But I want to finish something this year.

AW: Reading Notes - Week One

Once you get past the syrupy positive thinking pablum of this chapter, Ms. Cameron presents a few concepts that are interesting. Unfortunately, she doesn't comeback to revisit them very much in her later chapters. The first concept is that the creative block that one experiences is a result of some form of emotional trauma with respect to their creativity and work. She delves pretty deeply in this chapter into exposing the trauma and the effects of it. Her 'time traveling' exercises are effective. They are, however, not to be undertaken lightly.

In some cases, the time traveling exercises will open one to deep trauma that is unrelated (at the surface) to the creative block. As one may have noticed as I work on my morning blog posts, at times I talk about traumas that I have experienced that are not "This person told me that my work was bad when I was vulnerable." Ms. Cameron has a somewhat cavalier approach to working with trauma and seems to operate under the assumption that creative blocks only stem from when an artist is criticized harshly in their formative years. It is a dangerous approach for people who have suffered deeper traumas such as sexual assault or severe bullying and harassment. One can not recover from these deep traumas with mere positivity and proverbial letters to the editor rebutting negative feedback.

The next concept that Ms. Cameron presents discusses 'blurts' and negative habits of thinking getting in a creative person's way of expression. She explains 'blurts' as one's reflexive denial positive arguments and affirmations regarding their work. She encourages the person working through this chapter to list their 'blurts' and then rephrase them as positive statements. If it is not possible to rephrase the 'blurt' as a positive statement, one is instructed to replace it with the appropriate positive rebuttal to this reflexive argument against their creative work's value. This is a practice used a great deal in cognitive behavioral therapy and is highly effective. 

She fails, however, to introduce the third part of this process which is called 'thought stopping'. When one becomes aware of an unhealthy thought process, in this case what Ms. Cameron describes as a 'blurt', they are actively encouraged to envision something like a stop sign and shift focus. The failure to include thought stopping in the process of dealing with negative or unhealthy thought processes can lead to persons who have cascades of these sorts of thoughts feeling like a failure for their inability to rapidly switch gears. There needs to be the pause where the unhelpful/unhealthly/negative thought is recognized for what it is. This is what thought stopping is for. It is a check-in with oneself to determine what their mental and emotional state is before proceeding. This allows them to uncover the correct replacement for the undesirable thought by correctly identifying the source and nature of the undesirable thought.

Ms. Cameron's work on positive affirmations is dated. It is also vaguely Christo-centric which makes it a bit off putting for people who are not interested in the conventional overculture approach towards that deity being the assumed source of all things. It is still a good template to work from for one to develop positive affirmations that works for them. She also does a reasonably good job of presenting how the regular repetition of positive affirmations can help train one's mind to be more positive and self-affirming.

The exercises at the end of this chapter are not the best. Again, there is the question of if a person has the time to complete them and the means to do so. It is clear that Ms. Cameron is writing for creative persons who fall within the middle-class part of the socio-economic spectrum. Some of the things she suggests, like the imaginary lives exercise, can be completely out of reach for some people to accomplish. The example that she provides of being a 'cowhand' and encouraging the reader to get horseback riding lessons is a fine demonstration that she failed to consider that there are struggling creatives who barely have enough money to put food on the table. Equally tone deaf to this part of her audience is the suggestion that the struggling creative person decorate their creative work space and acquire nicknacks and toys. There is a significant population of struggling creatives who simply do not have the space, time, or money to engage in this practice (which she encourages through out the book).

AW: Morning Blog 56

I literally have 71k words in my NaNoWriMo manuscript and no idea what the hell I am doing. But I finally hit one of my plot points. I still feel like I am in the middle of this thing and I don't know if I'm going to be at that point when I hit 80k or higher. Some writing projects, being in the middle isn't that bad. I just plug away and keep working through my plot and outline. The characters don't go off the rails too much. It is a relatively easy thing to get the big word counts for the day and still feel motivated to keep working.

I haven't been doing much writing by hand this month. I haven't even updated my planner because I have been so focused on NaNoWriMo. Today is not going to be a big wordcount day because today I am going to be fixing my planner. It is this cross between a bullet journal and diary. I keep a diary as well, but the planner gets more frequent updates. My mood is still being garbage because of Seasonal Affective Disorder despite the fact that I now have a light therapy lamp. I'm still working on figuring out how to use the thing most effectively. As such, I think that I am not getting optimal results because I don't have it positioned correctly.

It has been a melencholic couple of weeks. I have found myself thinking about friends that I have lost over the years and the good times that we had before that won't come again. I know part of this line of thinking is my depression. It is also because I still have mutual friends with those people that are still living. So, I still hear talk of them and see evidence of their presence in those mutual friends' lives. It's painful but once bridges burn, you can't go back.

NaNoWriMo Update

I started with 22k and the hope I could finish the stupid fanfiction piece in 50k. IT IS NOT HAPPENING! *cries*

The above meme in its majestic glory is my characters. To hell with my plot.

AW: Morning Blog 55

I struggle with feeling like my work is legitimate enough. My self-confidence is a bit hindered by the truckloads of trauma that I have been dealing with. Seasonal affective disorder on top of that just makes me feel even more certain that my work is awful and I am engaged in pure vanity. Scumbag brain is a real ass at times.

I've taken to writing poetry again. I feel like it is awful but I am still doing it. My hope is to eventually put together another book of poetry and maybe sell it. I don't think I'll make much selling my poetry, but it would be nice to have a few more pennies in the bank. I feel like I am not smart enough to figure out how to make marketing work. I start reading and researching it. I get overwhelmed and then I have a minor panic attack. After that, I start at square one and the cycle repeats itself.

It is improving as I am getting a better handle on my anxiety. I don't know how much of the problem is my anxiety pissing all over the place like a terrified chihuahua and how much of the problem is trauma informed programming. When I was young, I was told repeatedly that I wasn't going to go anywhere in the writing industry with out my domineering mother as my marketing agent. For some reason, she thought that I was going to do as she dictated in my writing and then she was going to sell it and profit off of my work. Because you know that marketing agents get a 60-40 split on the revenue. Or at least that's what I was told over and over again when my parents realized that I actually had some talent.

I'm not talking to my parents now because things are just ugly between us. And I am realizing that I just don't have the spoons to go through the emotional gauntlet of games that my parents play for the sake of feeling like they have power over me. It's hard this time of year to continue the practice of no contact. I know that they're getting up there in years and I doubt that my brothers are going to step up and take care of them. My brothers are not the most reliable of people at times. When my second book came out, my parents came around complaining about their financial woes and the pains of aging. I knew they were sniffing for money.

I guess they assumed that I had a book contract or something. I stonewalled those efforts and felt awful for about a month after. I'm sure that they're sitting there, pissed off that they couldn't retire at 60 and just rest on their laurels. Nobody told them that children are not a retirement plan, I think. Anyways, they poisoned that well with the head games they played with us until we were out of the house. They still play head games. For a while, I was trying to make things work with them. No one told me when get togethers were happening. I was expected to just show up and spend time at the farm whenever I wasn't working or something. I don't know. All I know is that I became the bad guy for not showing up for family gatherings that I was never informed of.

I recently read something about the artist Enya. Apparently she is estranged from her family. There is some resentment from her relatives and they said in an interview something to the effect that she was 'off living like a queen in her castle.' That struck a chord when I read that. I realized if I had gotten a big book contract and I didn't share any of it with them, my parents would make that argument. They'd say that I was being selfish and ignoring how much they sacrificed for me. But, here's the thing, I didn't ask them to sacrifice anything. Even after I got disabled, I didn't have them sacrifice a thing. I had my student loans forgiven due to my disability. When money got hard, I didn't go to them with my hat in hand asking for help. Because I know that any help from them comes with strings and obligations attached.

I'll make this work on my own. I'll find allies in the writing community. I'll find help from other places. I'll be damned if I go back to them for anything. All they'll want to do is tear me down and try to break my will.

AW: Morning blog no. 54

The empty page is intimidating. The page that is half written is more intimidating, to be honest. Because I sit there going 'how the hell am I going to finish this?' as I stare at the screen. I'm listening to rain noise not because it is raining outside but because I put that nature sounds thing on loop to drown out the noise of both of the kids digging through the legos. I'm still working on my NaNoWriMo project. I was foolish. I thought that I was going to get it done in 50k. I started out with 22k and figured I could finish it within a week. I'm at 53k and the plot shows no signs of wrapping up. I honestly have no idea what is going on with this story.

Editing it is going to be a nightmare, I just know it. Editing is the part of writing that I dislike. Not because I mind killing my darlings. It is because it takes twice as long than the act of writing. Once I finish one project, I am ready to move on to the next project and get it done. I can't stand pouring over the finished draft a billion and one times to get it ready to print.

But, because I am broke, I am the editor in chief. I suck at copy lay out. I struggle to get things to look good on the page. I can crank out material like its no big deal. It is when you get into things like making sure that there's a good balance between text and white space that I struggle. I realize, however, a straight up wall of text is a bad thing. So, I try to make sure I put in paragraph brakes and make my paragraphs varied in length. But when I am seized with an idea, I write until the idea is spent. That can make for some very long paragraphs.

I'm trying to stay on top of blogging but my brain is sucked up in trying to finish this goddamn fanfic-based fantasy novel. It's not set in the world of Evandar. It's not set in my goddamn science fiction universe. So it doesn't fit with what I have going on here except that it is fantasy. Sword and sorcery fantasy with more emphasis on the sword than the sorcery right now. Set during the era where Christianity is beginning to influence pagan England (even though I don't call it England). I've got this weird mix going on where the Duke is a pagan and his brother the Abbot (who literally lives just down the road) is obviously Christian. They have this agree to disagree pact between them. The Abbot prays for the Duke's soul, the Duke guards his brother's welfare because he is his brother. Stuff like that going on in the plot. I do have a few bible-thumping characters who got put on notice by the Duke to save that for when they're in their own fiefdoms.

Lots of potential for conflict and plot twists and such. And I find myself writing boring politics. It is tiring. I just want to finish this damn story and move on to something else.

AW: Morning Blog No. 53

I am writing some kind of medieval fantasy novel based on fanfiction I have written. I have no idea what I am doing and this annoys me. Minor characters are making pains out of themselves and taking up more space than I feel they should. I don't feel like I'm handling the pre-Christian versus Christian elements of the story very well. It is a rambling mess. I'm tempted to just drop it because I did hit 50k. The duke's a man who doesn't care what gods you believe in as long as you follow his law and do your job. In his household, there is peace between the Christians and the Heathens. Not because they are naturally in harmony but because the duke wouldn't tolerate anything less.

I think I am beginning to come down with another cold. My blood sugar has been running high in the morning and I've made no dramatic changes to my diet. Also, my sinuses have been bothering me. I really hope this doesn't turn into another sinus infection. That sucked up half of last month in my attempt to recover from it.

AW: Morning Blog no. 52

Today is my birthday. Yay, go me! I'm officially 41 years old. Old enough to give zero fucks about anything, right?

It's trying to snow outside right now. The weather is just gross and wet. I think that the winter weather is going to move in early this year. My real concern is that the roads tonight are going to be icy and I worry that Beloved is going to have a difficult drive home from work.

I'm still cheating on NaNoWriMo. I hit 50k yesterday. My story is a hot mess and I have no idea where it is going. I'm trying to follow grammar rules and keep things real. But this fanfiction turned fantasy novel project is frustrating me. I just want to finish it but new plot devices pop up as I am writing and I can't just end it. Well, I could just end it but then it would bother me that I haven't finished the story. I have notebooks full of incomplete stories that I just don't know how to bring them to the finish line.

It's like bad sex. You work at it, start to get some enjoyment, and then everything fades and you're left wanting. Or, in the case of some writing projects that are not complete, it's like horrifically bad sex. You work at it, start to get some enjoyment, and then a psychological landmine goes off and you're thrown into a complete panic attack. Trauma writing sucks some times. Especially when your c-ptsd is just on high alert because it's that time of year for you to have multiple trauma anniversaries waiting for you.

Have I mentioned how much I hate having c-ptsd? I really do hate it. If I could throw it into a volcano and sacrifice it to the old gods, I would. But I can't so I don't consider it an option. Still, I really hate having a sick brain.

AW: Morning blog no. 51

I've taken to listening to music in languages that I don't understand. Then I look up the translations. It slows down my writing process but it helps me to fit the music to what I'm writing. I am tired right now. I slept poorly. I kept having nightmares that my family was injured somehow and I had to help them. Nothing quite as disturbing as the dream sight of your beloved spouse bleeding out and you're helpless to stop it.

I don't know what my subconscious mind is telling me. I'm half tempted to throw some tarot cards to help interpret that dream. At the same time, I suspect that I will get a fist full of major arcana and court cards. Which is almost always a pain in the ass to interpret. I've fallen behind in my journaling and my logging of things like what I eat and my blood sugar levels. My planner is an absolute mess and doesn't even have pages in it for this month.

I'm sick and tired of being sick. I am tired of having to count carbs for every meal. I am tired of having to write down everything I eat or drink. It makes me feel even more limited in my dietary options. And I am so tired of finger sticks and blood testing every day. If I let myself, I'll find more excuses not to do these things. I was sick for about the entire month of October. I'm well now, I really need to get back to these things.

Aside from the challenge of NaNoWriMo, I have my blogging to get back to doing on the daily themes. I have to get my rear in gear focusing on Yule presents. I have nothing finished for anyone. I feel a bit guilty about this and worry some that I am not going to have time to finish everything for everyone. I am tired. I am stressed out. And I am dealing with seasonal affective disorder. Throw on top of it some hormonal misery because my body is hitting perimenopause and all out of wack, and I'm not having a great time. But, I am going to finish my NaNoWriMo project and get all of this other stuff sorted out. Because if I don't, I'm going to feel worse.

AW: Morning Blog No. 50

I discovered that yet more of my writing music has vanished off of my computer. I'm highly annoyed with this development. I have the cds and I can rip them on to the computer. I just don't like the fact that somewhere, somehow some AI decided that my music library should be edited with out my permission.The whole thing makes me want to go out and get a cheap cd player just to use for my writing.

I'm in a grumpy mood. An appointment I had turned out with negative results. Nothing disastrous, but it was highly irritating. I have a migraine right now. But I can't rest because the wind is blowing like there's one hell of a storm getting ready to blow in. The windstorm last week blew down some branches onto the back deck. I haven't gone out there to pick them up. I was thinking about doing it today but not if the winds keep up like this.

I am not sure what more to write. I'm irritated with everything right now because my head hurts. Perhaps this is not a good day to be on the internet.

Flora & Fauna: Dragons revisited.

Dear Reader,

In my previous post regarding dragons, I spoke predominantly about the lesser wyrms. I didn't cover much about greater wyrms except for a few by notes on how they have exerted influence over humanity and the elder races, shaping the course of history. The greater wyrms are beings of pure magic. This lends them towards what a certain gaming system would call a true-neutral alignment. They are generally indifferent towards humanity which these ancient creatures consider to be a young and developing race.

Some have taken an interest in guiding the development of the human race but most are more concerned with preparation for the coming of the next great Age of history. Dragons are perhaps the oldest of creatures. The greater wyrms are the direct children of the god Kaileth. The lesser wyrms are the accidental result of their incarnation having an 'echo' effect. That is, when the greater wyrms took on bodies in their true form, the magic radiated around the area and stones beneath them were transformed into eggs. From these first eggs that were not the result of greater wyrm reproduction, came the hatchlings that grew into the lesser wyrms.

For a period of time, the greater wyrms and the lesser wyrms had a symbiotic relationship. The greater wyrms provided protection for the  more vulnerable lesser wyrms as the lesser wyrms foraged and brought back food for the first clutches. Then the lesser wyrms began to grow aggressive. The greater wyrms, concerned for their own broods, moved away from the lesser wyrms to protect their hatchlings from the predatory behavior of the lesser wyrms against hatchlings of other broods.

In the time before humanity and the elder races, the greater wyrms had a society of sorts. They had their own written languages. Because they had always been creatures of magic, they possessed the ability to read any language or understand any spoken word because they were the keepers of the primordial language of creation. With this primordial language of creation, they could manipulate the fabric of reality. Thus, a greater wyrm could warp physical space to fit their enormous form or shift time's flow within a given location.

AW: Morning blog no. 49

I'm not sure what to write this morning. It is cold and I find it painful to be out in it. I'm glad that the kids have school today. I didn't enjoy waiting for the bus with my youngest because it was too chilly for me to be knitting as I paced the front walk for twenty minutes. He was gleefully riding his bike around and around the yard. I would have had him put on gloves but I forgot about it. He was, however, wearing a hat and a heavy jacket. So, not a complete mom fail.

My NaNoWriMo project just broke 30 k last night. I started the whole thing at 22 k. So that's a bit shy of 10 k over the last three days. Provided that over the last three days I had a lot of distractions, that was a good amount of work. I'm going to push to get higher daily numbers this week despite things like appointments. I'd be carrying around a notebook except for the fact that what I write in the notebook would need to be typed up and I'd basically be doing the work twice over.

I am flying by the seat of my pants on this project. I honestly have no idea what I am doing. I am just following the story and trying to hit word count for the day. It would have been nice if the NaNoWriMo site had programmed their 'words needed for today' to have that 1.7 k stay up there even when you are way past the wordcount that would be needed to stay on track to hit 50 k by the end of the month.

I think I'm writing a romance novel, but I am honestly not sure. It started out as fanfiction and then took a sharp turn to the left. When I get it done, I'm going to talk to P. about it and get his thoughts as to if I should consider publishing it or not. While the characters are original, the setting is pretty heavily based in what he developed for his game system. I admit, it would be pretty cool to be writing some companion books to go with what he is working on and help flesh out characters and such. I really like the idea of collaborative writing. I just haven't had the opportunity to do so in about twenty years. It's kinda sad to be honest because I miss it.

I am probably going to pick up a second project as soon as I finish the first one. My goal is to write every day this month on some novel project. Beloved tells me that I am always working on novels but he doesn't realize how much of my writing is just disorganized verbage that I haven't put into any sense of coherence. I don't want to tell him that, because I am concerned he'll be disappointed with me. He's so proud of my writing and I don't want to let him down.

I have a Filianic text sitting on hold right now. It is approximately 3/4 of the way complete. I might finish that after I finish what ever this thing is that I am working on right now. I haven't completed my transcription of the Filianic scriptures yet either. I want to get copies of the other alternate versions of the texts. I have a project that I am planning. I am going to sit down and take these different versions of the texts to examine them. Then I am going to put together a version that cross-references all of them. It doesn't sound like an overly ambitious project because the core texts are approximately 30 pages. There are, however, at least four versions floating around. I work best from paper when I'm doing this sort of stuff. Some of these copies are close to $60 used.

It makes me wish I had a working printer so that I could just print off the PDF versions that I have found. Research, however, will still happen.

Craft of Writing: The secret to good writing.

There's one or two secrets to good writing. The first one is the most grueling. What is it? Show up and write. Having a bad day and not feeling motivated to write? Still make at least fifteen minutes for it. Sick as a dog and barely awake enough to write? Still make at least fifteen minutes for it. Locked in a cage and your laptop is across the room? Ok, maybe that's a bit too complicated to make fifteen minutes for writing when you're trying to escape the cage.

But, the first secret to good writing boils down to make time to write. And try to make sure that you are writing more than a shopping list on a regular basis. It may be bullet notes of a story outline you want to write some day. It may be a daily journal entry that is full of your laments about the stress of your job. It may be sneaking in a thousand words on a cherished secret manuscript. Making writing a priority leads to good writing.

The second secret to good writing is just ugly. It can be gut wrenching and heart breaking. The second secret to good writing is editing and revision. Editing is tedious and painfully boring. It takes many rounds of editing to take a really rough manuscript and clean it up. Revision is the process of rewriting and including all of those edits. It can take so much energy and effort that it feels fruitless. It can lead to the elimination of cherished scenes and characters. (Just remember when you remove those things, they can be recycled into another work. Nothing is lost if you keep notes.)

AW: Morning Blog post no. 48

I have a playlist that is exactly fifteen minutes long. I use it to filter out the noise of the household as I am attempting to write. I also use it like a timer to measure how long I have been writing for. I am not giving up on NaNoWriMo. I'm just being a complete NaNo rebel. I am working on a manuscript that I started last month and had 22k on it to begin with. It's made my numbers look real good for daily word count but I am not going to worry about that. I am just going to focus on getting the novel done by the end of the month.

I don't even know what kind of novel this thing is going to turn into. It is based on fanfiction I had been writing. I started it as a speculative bit of backstory for the two characters. Now I have 27k worth of writing in on it and no clear idea what direction it is going in. I'm just going to follow the story and see where it leads. This version of the characters from the fanfiction I was writing is entirely different from the fanfiction version of the characters. There is just vague mention of the strange gifts and magic that is in this world wielded by the knights and nobles.

I think that is going to be coming up more as the story progresses. I also think that this is going to be longer than 50 k words. I feel a little foolish using something I started as fanfiction for this. But, I have the feeling that I can turn it into a reasonably good story. It will take some editing when I get it done, but it will be a fairytale of sorts that I think will be a bit lighter fare than what I usually write. Which would be good because I'm kinda tired of writing super dark stuff and writing about traumatic experiences.

Speaking of traumatic experiences, my son has taken an interest in the events of September 11, 2001. (I refuse to call it 9/11.) I tried to read the book he signed out from the school library to make sure there was facts and not propaganda in it. It opens with the accounting of what happened on the planes and at air traffic control. I got about four pages in and I had to close the book. I was almost ready to start sobbing. Every time it comes up, and it has been coming up a lot since September, I feel this overwhelming urge to weep. It doesn't help that I had many friends who lost family in the events of that day. Some were in New York city and some were at the Pentagon. It doesn't help that I watched the towers collapse on live television and heard the city's scream of anguished horror. It is a scream that was echoed in the dorm sitting room where we were watching it happen. It is a scream that haunts my nightmares.

It doesn't help that I met one of the hijackers of the plane that was flown into the Pentagon just a week before and thought he was just another college student who had shown up for a dance being held at the college I attended. I remember him telling me that I was going to make someone a good wife someday. He said it with such a tone of regret. I thought it was because I had turned down his request for a date. Looking back, a part of me wonders if I had taken him up on that offer for dinner if he wouldn't have been so quick to have carried out that 'mission'.

AW: Morning blog no. 47

I want to cry right now. I want to do NaNoWriMo but I have no ideas. I just have this mishmash of trauma memories and this ache in the bottom of my heart because Liz D. isn't here to chat with anymore about this stuff. NaNoWriMo was a thing she and I kinda did together. It was an escape from the stress of life and a chance to work on my epic series with out feeling guilty.

For the last two years, NaNoWriMo and Camp NaNoWriMo have been word vomit of trauma from my youth. I can't see a good way to finish book seven and I need to complete book seven before I start work on book eight. I am so upset right now that I have tears streaming down my face for no apparent reason. I'm afraid that my thirty book series is done at six and three quarters because all I can manage to write right now is about how awful my childhood was.

It shows up just about everywhere. So, the simple logic is write about it until it stops haunting me. Kinda like I would with any other plot-bunny. The more I write, the more comes up to the surface. This is a bad time of year for me because I have flashbacks to trauma and seasonal affective disorder. I haven't slept well in about a week.

I just feel like I am broken and that there is no hope for me. I know this is my depression talking. I know this is my pain talking. It doesn't change the feeling that there is no point to attempting something that I was looking forward to all year.