Life update.

Dear Reader,

It has been a week since I posted. I've been busy with a new manuscript that I still have no idea what is going on with it. I started Camp NaNoWriMo a few weeks early and over the last few weeks I have written some material that's been emotionally brutal for me. I don't know if the end result will be something publishable or if it will reside in a drawer forever. Life has been challenging and difficult to find time to write.

Some of this is the fact that parenting is a full time job as is running a household. Some of this is the fact that I have been still struggling with depression. My mood is beginning to improve somewhat. I've tried forcing myself to write despite my mood disorder and all of the anxieties that goes with it. My morning pages have been ugly, folks. It's been rough going and I'm not sure how April will be at large.

I am still working on getting book four ready for release. It is far shorter than books two or three. It is definitely a novella length work. At the same time, I am anticipating that people will enjoy it because it is not as weighty as the other books. It marks the point where I am splitting the proverbial party. Books five, six, and seven are less jumping between major characters. It also is where you get more than a taste of supernatural shenanigans. I expect it to be ready by the end of May.

Book seven has gone in weird directions as I am trying to finish it up. I think that editing this is going to be headache. I'm not entirely sure what I am doing with this book. I honestly am concerned now that I may have to rewrite the entire thing.

Craft of Writing: Writing through Pain.

Dear Reader,

I'm struggling right now to keep moving forward. I am well and truly depressed right now. Seasonal Affective Disorder and Bipolar have teamed up to do a number on me. Writing as therapy is a fairly well recognized practice. There are tons of therapy writing prompts out there. In the end, no number of prompts are going to help you if you are not willing to put something painful down on the page.

I've been in some form of therapy most of my adult life. I was introduced to journal writing as a therapeutic tool back with my first therapist in college. It was hard at first. It was painful and distressing to write down the ugly things that were in my heart and head. I was half tempted to give up on it right at the beginning because I didn't want to read these things to my therapist.

I mentioned this concern to my therapist and I was told something absolutely liberating. I didn't have to share anything in my therapy journal with them. I didn't have to discuss or show what I had written. The journal was just for me to write about what I was struggling with and how I was coping. It completely changed how I approached therapy writing. Instead of viewing it as an assignment to complete and turn in, it became a space where I explored my Post-traumatic stress disorder and all of its permutations in my life at that time. It became a space where I addressed my chronic nightmares and attempted to make sense of the insanity of my life at that time. The stress of college on top of the stress of coming from a traumatic history made things very difficult. My therapy journal writing became my lifeline to sanity through those challenges.

My morning pages look more like that old therapy journal work than the short stories I used to write in my writing journal. That is alright, though, because there is no wrong way to do morning pages or therapy journal work. The fact that I am writing the pain down and processing it is what matters. Between my knitting for charity, my crochet for charity, and my morning pages, I'm beginning to make progress on getting to the other side of this depressive episode.

Perhaps some day soon, I'll get back to writing prose that is more fanciful and artistic. Right now, I am just shoveling manure from a sitting position. And that's ok as long as I keep writing.

Posted from my phone.

It is a superintendent's conference day. I may be going a little bit crazy right now. So far, I have been bombarded with what if questions about things ranging from "what if we get a free cat ..." to "what would you do if we had a whoopie cushion the size of the earth? " If I ever say that I am at a loss for absurd prompts for writing, somebody remind me I have kids who ask the weirdest questions.

Please be advised, content coming soon!

Dear Reader,

I haven't forgotten about you. I've just been really, really busy. Next week, probably towards the end of the week, I will be posting up some new content. I've some irons in the fire that are just about ready to be declared completed. I'm also going to start posting weekly writing stats on my current project. I'm cheating at Camp NaNoWriMo because the kids have spring break in the middle and towards the end of April is going to be really busy around here.

My posting writing stats is going to be a little different than previous times. This is because I'm writing by hand and I'm logging details for SCIENCE! If you're following me on Twitter, you may have recalled I rather rashly accepted a challenge of writing a novel by hand with a mechanical pencil. The goal is to see if I can hit 50k with just one pencil. If MythbustersJr  were able to hit that number with a robot, I'm determined to get to it myself or possibly a little past it if I can.

My husband has declared me to be bananas and a dork. He might be right on this one.

Break in posting.

While I am eyeballs deep in editing a project and juggling a number of other things, I am putting this blog on hold for a few weeks.

I may post updates on how the editing process is going or some of the things I'm juggling here are falling out of my hands. Right now, I'm working on major spring cleaning, trying to get my household affairs organized again after the disorganization that came from a recent depressive episode, and there's the business of just day to day stuff going on that is getting in the way of blogging here.

In other news, I think I like KDP's platform more than Lulu's right now. I've been having some difficulty getting Lulu's cover creator to function properly on my computer. It claims I have the wrong version of Flash on here, but I know that Chrome updates it all the time. If I still had the other computer running, I'd use it to handle stuff like that because Lulu didn't give me grief. Alas, the desktop computer is stone dead and awaiting being shuffled off to get recycled into gods only know what next.

I'm now on Instagram. I'm still figuring out how to use it. I hope to be posting material up there and providing literal snapshots of my work space. Little insight into the madness of how I make things work. The problem is Instagram is mirroring all of  my pics right now. It's a bit annoying. I'm going to try to tinker with it to fix the issue. Hopefully I won't break something in the process.

The Iron Lily: Part 24 – Road of Bones

The shambling skeletal remains of the two armies that had clashed generations before on the field lurched towards Halthor and Freystein. "STAY BEHIND ME," the mountain troll commanded. Deciding that it was better to stay behind a mountain troll swinging a branchless tree trunk as big around as he was, Halthor moved to rear gaurd position. Freystein walked forward. With a mighty swing, skeletons were shattered and sent flying. Those struck by Freystein's blow did not reform. Those struck by the flying debris and were damaged, did.

"NECROMANCERS ARE NOTHING BUT TROUBLE, YOUNG HALTHOR," the mountain troll said matter of factly, "ALL OF THIS BECAUSE OF A NECROMANCER'S DEATH CURSE." They had advanced a good ways into the field when the undead began to surround them. Halthor crouched and moved backwards with his back to Freystein. "WE MUST FIND THE LICH AND DESTROY THEM."

"The what?" Halthor said, unnerved by the fact that despite how Freystein was knocking down vast swaths of skeletons, their number seemed undiminished. A skeletal hand grasped at Halthor. Halthor struck with his hammer and the sound of thunder filled the air as lightning split the sky. Smoking ashes remained where the skeleton was and a good number about it had been thrown back by the blast. They were not getting up off the ground, unlike the ones they ran into and knocked down.

"THE WIZARD SKELETON KING," Freystein answered, looking over their shoulder to watch as Halthor struck down another grasping skeleton. "OH, THAT WILL DRAW HIS ATTENTION. GOOD THINKING."

"Draw his attention?!" shouted Halthor in dismay, "I thought we were trying to just get out of here."

"WE CAN NOT LEAVE A SKELETON ARMY TO RAMPAGE THE WOODS. THAT WOULD SIMPLY BE RUDE OF US TO LEAVE SUCH A MESS," Freystein said, "THE BLUE LADY WOULD BE MOST DISPLEASED WITH US." Halthor shoved a couple of skeletons into each other with the shield and watched as a shockwave moved through the press, many falling. "I LIKE THAT. YOU SHOULD DO IT AGAIN BUT THE OTHER WAY." Halthor dodged another grasping hand and smote the skull attached. Lighting flashed, thunder crashed, and bones were dashed to pieces.

"What other way? They're coming from everywhere, Freystein!" Halthor shouted. A skeletal creature, which Halthor could only assume was once a horse, attempted to bite him. Halthor swung his left arm up and staggered back with the force of the blow against his shield. Halthor felt something pushing and attempting to pull on the shield. Fixing his shoulder against the shield, Halthor pushed back as hard as he could. He nearly stumbled as the resistance fell away. He looked over the top of the shield for a moment. The builder could see the forces marshalled against them attempting to swarm over them again.

Halthor accidentally struck the shield with his hammer. A noise like the toll of a great bell sounded. From where Halthor stood, a wave washed over the foes he was facing. The skeletons disassembled themselves and fell lifeless again to the ground. Realizing that striking the shield was what did this, Halthor turned to the left and did it again. Again a vast number of skeletons dropped. He turned to the right and repeated the process. "Freystein, let me in front," Halthor said.

"NO," the mountain troll answered, "TOO DANGEROUS."

Halthor tried to look around Freystein and saw what appeared to be a gaunt spectre towering over the moutain troll. "Suddenly, I have the greatest desire for fowl," Halthor said. The mountain troll paused in mid swing.

"WHY ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT FOOD AT A TIME LIKE THIS? I TOLD YOU THAT YOU DID NOT EAT ENOUGH EARLIER."

"Duck, Freystein," Halthor said. The mountain troll turned, looking at Halthor in confusion. As they shielded their charge with their body, Freystein stooped to try to hear him better. Realizing that he had the space to throw the hammer at the specter, Halthor did so. The hammer spun through the air before it slammed into the filmy gauze that remained of the necromancer turned lich's clothes. As it struck the skeletal remains of the specter, lighting cleaved through the air and the clothes turned into a ball of fire.

An inhuman scream of agony filled the air. And then everything stopped. All of the skeletons collapsed to the ground. Halthor held up his hand and Freystein turned, only to duck quickly as the hammer whistled over their head and back to Halthor's hand. The mountain troll reached up a hand to pass it over their head where the hammer just missed them. "BE CAREFUL WITH THAT LITTLE HAMMER, HALTHOR," Freystein warned, "IT CAN SPLIT MOUNTAINS IF NECESSARY."

Writing through tears.

Dear Reader,

I'm clawing my way up out of a depressive episode. It's been brutal for the last month. I didn't realize how bad it had gotten until I hit the bottom of this low. I was laying in bed last Thursday night, wanting to cry but just not having the energy to do it. As I was there, Beloved was reminding me how I wasn't a failure, a disappointment, or a bad human being. I lay there thinking, "Wow, I am really depressed." I didn't feel much shock through the numbness of the depression.

But, I laid there in bed thinking about how much I wanted to write. And how hard it had been to write because the imposter syndrome had me around the throat. Because when I get into delusional thinking due to depression, I have delusions of being not good enough for anything. It's pretty rough. And finding the dividing line between imposter syndrome and mental illness is really tricky.

Now that I am coming up out of that morass of misery, I can recognize imposter syndrome a mile off. It's that annoying thing that nips at my ankles daily telling me I'm not qualified to do any of this stuff. It's a daily irritation that wears me down just as much as a couple of kids who're having a bad day does. Can I work through it? Yeah. It's not fun, but I can force it aside and work.

Depression, that's a whole other ball of wax. That sucks the creative energy out of my head and spins it up into nightmares, waking existential horror, and endless worry. It is really hard to reclaim your creative energy when you've spent it all on other things decidedly more unpleasant due to malfunctioning brain chemistry.

Depression is one of my limits. It is a brick wall that I can't force my way through. I just have to wait and do the mental yoga of journal writing until it decides to go away.

On the flip side, there's hypomania. I can write about a book in a week when I'm hypomanic and I don't have distractions. The problem is, I have the attention span of a squirrel on a metric ton of coffee and that squirrel outside the window will be a distraction. Except for organizing things. Hypomania makes me super organized. I get so organized that I clean and stuff. I put EVERYTHING away.

The problem is, when I come down out of hypomania, I don't remember where it is. It's nice to have a spotless kitchen. It's tough when you can't find the measuring spoons or the ingredient you need to measure to make dinner. I'm currently moving towards hypomania. That means you'll see more posts soon. Some of it may be a bit weird. Life with bipolar it weird with bouts of normalcy.