Writing a novella is harder than writing a novel, fight me!

 Dear Reader,

I am ready to bash my head against something hard until I pass out because I am so frustrated with the novella I'm working on. I literally can't gauge a good stopping point. So many plot bunnies come out of the woodwork and nest in the storyline it is bonkers! I still haven't come up with a pen name yet for this project. I'm one step away from going with a random name generator. 

Each time I think that I have hit a good ending point, more plot reveals itself. More stuff needs to be resolved from previous plot elements. Characters that were originally just background set pieces suddenly become important plot elements and integral to the story. It's just very exasperating. This is why I don't write short form fiction. I sit down to write a short story and next thing I know I'm passing 30k words with no end in sight.

How the hell does Chuck Tingle do it? He's the most prolific e-book author that I've seen out there and he's writing stuff that's a hell of a lot shorter than what I've got. I keep thinking if I can manage to figure out the formula or whatever witchcraft that man is using to keep his word count relatively low while still telling a full story, maybe I can get some decent e-books out there. Some theorize that he's got a formula down. I don't know. All I know is being able to pull off an e-book in the span of two weeks is an impressive feat. To do so in such a manner that you maintain a large fanbase and keep the story quality high enough for the fanbase to come back book after book is equally impressive.

Editing this novella is going to be a headache, but it's going to be worth it. Now, if I could only figure out a pen name. That, aside from the ever growing word count, is my biggest problem here.

Seasonal Affective Disorder Sucks.

  Dear Reader,

I have Seasonal Affective Disorder. This is also known as seasonal depression. It's such a lame disorder that the acronym in SAD. This and my most recent Bipolar depressive episode has been getting in the way of my accomplishing much of anything on any front right now. I feel pretty awful, to be honest. It's been bringing up some trauma memories on top of it all. I'm doing my best but I feel like my best isn't good enough.

Scumbag brain is telling me that sharing this is a vain attempt to get the internet to throw me a pity party. (Quips from my ancient past arising again, yay complex post-traumatic stress disorder.) But, I've got two deities leaning on me saying that I should talk about this. Something about mental health is not a stigma and it'll help me push through the lies that are being recycled on loop in my head about it.

I grew up in a household that didn't believe that mental illness was real. They decided that depression was laziness and anxiety was being a drama whore. It was harsh, especially as I hit puberty and depression got really bad. I still struggle with the concepts that were (in some cases literally) beaten into to me. When I get depressed, I have a hard time seeing that my value is more than what I can produce or what the sum total of my parts may be on the black market. It's been part of a mental loop that I've had stuck in my head since about the age of ten.

I am not suicidal. I am still taking my medications and they are helping. But the medications are not "happy pills" they are just enough to keep my depression from sinking so low that I start having problems with psychosis. Because my flavor of Bipolar II comes with psychotic features. I don't have psychosis symptoms when I am manic but when I'm very severely depressed. And then, it is reliving the abuse that I grew up with. It's auditory hallucinations that get so realistic that I could swear that the person speaking is standing right behind me one foot to the left. Due to how much I was gaslighted as a kid, I reality test anything weird that happens. So, if I am sitting with my back against a wall and I'm having a hallucination, I know it's not real because there is a wall behind me.

I have been told that my ability to distinguish when I am having hallucinations is highly unusual. I had a brief period where I thought they were real. Then life circumstances changed and I realized with horror that what I had thought was neighbors screaming in the next apartment over was a hallucination. It just got worse from there and I had times where I was shaking from the effort to ignore the hallucination and continue on with my day. I'm not at that point in my depression right now, thank gods. I fear having hallucinations and the prospect of being hospitalized again due to depression.

Right now, I'm pushing forward on the grim hope that things will get better. I tell myself every night before I go to sleep that tomorrow will be better than today. I try to make it happen. It's exhausting. Some days, I don't get very much done at all. Other days, I have the energy to do the bare minimum. But I wake up everyday with the intent to come on here and post. It's just been really hard to find the energy and the mental focus to do so. Please bear with me as I am working through this.

Nope, not at the halfway point of edits. Send HELP!

 Dear Reader,

My Beloved is helping me with edits on my current non-fiction project. I foolishly thought this was going to be a straight forward and simple project. Something I could complete in a month or so. I was woefully wrong. I managed to get most of the comma splices and semi-colon splices out of the way. At the same time, I hit a level of fatigue in the process that I missed just how many sentences began with the word 'and' as well as a lot of sentence fragments. Thankfully, Beloved is eagle eyed and catching these things.

I'm beginning to think this is going to take much longer than a few months. This might be a year long project. You might ask why. Well, it's kinda complicated. There's a lot of false archaic language that has to be cleaned up and removed. There is an embarrassing amount of just plain bad language used. I'm not saying it is vulgar as much as there is enough poor grammar that it's painful to read in many places. Also, it is shocking how many times the word 'and' got used to splice things together. 

At the same time Beloved is helping me plow through this document, I have been working on a novella to be published as part of a series of e-books for a Live Action Role Play (LARP) game that I love. The author of the game took a look at my fan fiction and said, "Hey, how about you write a few e-books that can be companions to the game!" To say the least, I went squee at a pitch that disturbed the neighbor's dogs and began writing. I am roughly at the middle of the novella. This is always the point where I question everything about the work. 

As more things develop along that front, I will keep you appraised. If you're curious about the game, it's really easy to play and is based on Arthurian mythology. It's called Arthur's Legacy. You should pick up a copy, grab some friends, and play it. It's like a superhero LARP crossed with high fantasy. And, the best feature if you're mathematically challenged like me, it's diceless.

At the halfway point of editing, yay?

 Dear Reader,

I believe I am at the halfway point of editing this non-fiction text. It's almost as painful as editing papers from college, to be honest. But, I think that I am about ready for beta readers. I think this thing is almost ready to get polished up for a test print run via Lulu. It is a little frustrating to have to convert the document to a .pdf to publish it on Lulu, but I still have to say that Lulu is pretty good. I will be taking another swing at getting edits done on book V. My plan is to spend October editing so that I can spend November writing. All of this being dependent on school staying in session and everyone remaining healthy.

*knocks wood*