Taking time off to recuperate.

 Dear Reader, 

I put my back out last Wednesday and I'm not doing very well. The doctor put me on some unpronounceable medication with a name that looks like Scrabble tiles thrown out a window by the handful. It's supposed to help my spasming back relax. I go to my family doctor for my diabetes follow up on Friday. This back issue will be getting brought up if it isn't resolved by then. I am really hoping that I don't have to do physical therapy again because that sucked.

I'm not thinking very clearly at the moment. As such, I am not going to be blogging while I've still got this medication making me fuzzy headed. I don't want to accidentally post something stupid or completely ramble about stuff unrelated to anything of importance. I'm working on the Lokean manuscript on paper right now because it's more portable than my laptop. Also, I can lay down and still work on it. I can't exactly do that with the laptop.

Emotionally, I'm a mess because my c-ptsd got triggered by an argument with one of my sons. The fall out is still happening even though it's been half a week since it happened. I'm trying to get that under control. The muscle relaxant making my head a bit fuzzy helps to insulate me against the full brunt of the pain of the memories that keep coming up and the distress it causes me but I'm not doing well on that front. Again, something that makes it hard for me to focus and write up quality content. Right now, I just want to go cry where no one can see me but I feel like I can't cry because that would be weakness. (Thanks, toxic upbringing for the lose.) 

So, there's a lot of stuff that's not going right at the moment and getting in the way of doing other things. Once I'm off of the medication that's got my brain feeling like Jello and I'm thinking clearer instead of caught up in this emotional hellish merry-go-round of trauma memories, I'll be posting again. Hopefully it will be a few days. I don't know. 

Craft of Writing: Custom musical playlists for projects vs. generalized playlists for writing.

 Dear Reader,

You have lots of musical options to accompany your writing session. You can create custom playlists for each project. (Here is the newest playlist for The Umbrel Chronicles of Evandar, the old one that I had on my old computer vanished when everything transferred over to the new laptop. I have since taken to making them on Spotify so I can access them on different devices than just the laptop.) This allows you to set a given track on repeat as you write scenes choreographed to it. Or, you can pick a playlist that is just random music for writing to, such as this one. You could easily open up any music streaming app and put the word 'writing' in to the search feature and find literally anything to suit your genre of music. 

In my experience, the custom playlist is helpful for staying on topic and visualizing what I am writing when I am working on a fiction piece. Thanks to my nifty headphones, I can put a single song on endless repeat as I am working out a scene with out disturbing anyone in the room. Generalize playlists of music that just hits me as interesting to write to are more effective as background noise filters when I am working on non-fiction. By searching through other people's general writing playlists, I have found more interesting music to put into my project related custom playlists. 

Or a song will come on the radio and I'll look it up to add it to a custom playlist. Either way, I will let generalized writing oriented playlists run in the background as I am doing journal work, blogging, or working on a non-fiction project and occasionally have something novel catch my attention.

Locales and the Flora & Fauna posts are to be merged!

 Dear Reader,

I know that you are probably wondering when I am ever going to post the progress I am making at drawing the roots of plants. And I am sure that you are also wondering when I am ever going to be posting details about new locations within the universe of the Umbrel Chronicles of Evandar. This is going to be happening on Wednesdays because these two topics are being merged under a new heading: Worldbuilding. 

The Worldbuilding topic is going to cover more than my bad plant sketches and long winded place descriptions. It will also get into techniques for character development planning and mapping out story elements like artifacts of importance. I haven't yet decided what will replace the Flora & Fauna topic of the day. I will update you when that brainstorm happens.

Look for an update to my serial stories later today. I have to find my idea notebook and clean up a few concepts before committing them to the internet. I'm going to attempt to update both Dacia's War and The Iron Lily. The trick to all of this is getting it done before my kids get home from school. Because, yay! Today is the first day of school and I can get back into a little more focused writing.

Craft of Writing: Audio Noise Filtration Is Your Friend

 Dear Reader,

If you're in a situation like I am, you have a young person in the room with you digging through a bin of blocks, Legos, or something equally obnoxiously noisy despite their very efforts to be quiet. Now, Beloved bought me a pair of noise cancelling headphones. They work alright except for the fact that the sound of my youngest son digging into a bin of Legos manages to be at a pitch that it cuts right through the noise cancelling effect of the headphones by themselves. This is where coming up with some kind of audio noise filtration is vital.

White noise is a popular method. I find it gives me a headache if I listen to it for too long. I use the sound of rain falling on a tin roof at about 85% volume. It gives the effect of sitting on a porch listening to one hell of a rainstorm as someone is doing stuff inside with a window open. There are a ton of playlists that work for background noise to filter out ambient sound. Beloved finds Lo-Fi Hip Hop music playlists to be really helpful at work to cut down on the audio distractions of his environment. There are other writers I know who put on classical music.

There are free resources on the internet that allow you to play an ambient atmosphere on loop that can act as your audio filter. I like www.ambient-mixer.com. That link takes you to the atmosphere that I use the most and find to be the most helpful for keeping me focused. (I confess, I am currently using it because there is the construction of a Great Work in progress by the master builder of the household.) Music streaming services also offer ambient playlists that can help mitigate the noise of the environment. You can stay in the same room as your noise factory and work with the help of the right sound-scape. Just remember to take the headphones off from time to time to check on your environment to prevent you missing something important happening, like the announcement of your child's latest building masterpiece.

Working on future content.

 Dear Reader,

Life is finally settling down after a month and a half of chaos. Things are slowly improving for my sister-in-law and her husband. If you have been keeping them in your thoughts and prayers, thank you and please keep doing so. 

School starts next Tuesday. I'm hoping to have the regularly scheduled posts up through next week since the kids won't be home causing mischief and chaos when I'm on the computer trying to work. I've started prepping for NaNoWriMo. My plan is to finish of book 7 of the Umbrel Chronicles and to write another one for the urban fantasy series that I have been working on for a friend of mine. (I finally have titles for the books! That was the hardest part after line edits.)

Don't worry, the serial stories will be getting updated again. I may even be throwing in some more science fiction for laughs over the next few weeks. But, I am at the planning stages for next week's work and I am finally making progress. Which is satisfying after such a long time of not having time to write any thing more than a grocery list. (Which I have to go and do now.) But, here's a quick update and life's improving over here for us. Hopefully, all y'all are doing well too.