December 2021 Update

 Well, it’s been quite a long time since I posted here, hasn’t it? The short explanation is that real life got in the way. If we take the scenic route through the past several months since my last post, there’s quite a bit to tell y’all imaginary readers. 

In my last post in August, I talked about getting a job and a couple of my initial posts. Well, I’ve seen two or three other posts since then, and have finally settled at one. I’m guarding for an organization that helps college students in particular majors get work experience and earn money while going to school. Since the office is mostly empty right now, it’s a pretty easy spot to be in. My shift runs in the afternoon, and I leave after 20:00 at night, and my desk is in the HR office, so when this office clears out, I’m alone down here on the ground floor. I patrol the 2 floors of the building where the organization has offices every 90 mins, watch cameras, and generally get to do whatever the heck I want while seated at the desk. This means I can write during the day. 

Due to this ability to write, I’ve adjusted my writing goals. I now write every day, and I’m using the Nano site to help me stay on task. My current goal is 325 words on any Archivos article for Aelyshthar that I happen to be working on, and it’s going well. 

While I’m doing that, I’m also doing series plotting for my Masters of the Schism series, and the Discordant Harmonies series. Final task is going through a general fiction coming-of-age-through-some-adulthood story to figure out where my scene written/outline counts went wrong.

And about my DH series. I’m doing a full rewrite of the first three books. The first novel is going to lengthen a great deal. Different characters are getting sex/gender changes, including Géta. I’m adding more foreshadowing and I have a much better idea of what’s going on behind the scenes of this conflict on Ruphlan’s border. There are hidden agendas everywhere, which means lots of political intrigue. I’m excited about this project and look forward to getting it together. 

The series plotting for MOTS is going well too. Right now, I’m pretty much just plugging things into a spreadsheet to help me see all the threads of the characters’ lives and the plots I have going in this thing. This is working up into a complicated series, and I still don’t know how many volumes I’ll end up writing. However, it is good to get going on this project, and I’m having a great time doing so. 

Eventful July

July was an eventful month, between my new job and attempting to participate in July Camp Nano. It began with me losing my first position due to the client's desire for a guard with a law enforcement or more extensive military background. He's done this to my boss before, requesting to have such a guard sent out, but refusing to pay the money they're worth. You know what I was getting at that position? $11.15. Peanuts, for a security guard. Granted, the wage I was first offered, $12.50, isn't much better, but it's not bottom of the barrel. 

Anyway, that one fell through after my second day due to the client's demands. I was not unhappy to see it go, even though it pretty much left me unemployed until my boss could find me another position. She did so quickly, and I've been working steadily for over a week now. My first full week even included a day of overtime, and I was not unhappy about that! 

So, work is going well so far.

Writing, on the other hand, hasn't been going so well since my new position started up. The first week or more, between my transit schedule and my work's hours, I wasn't able to get any writing done at all. I eked out just a bit in longhand a couple days last week, but it wasn't enough, and it didn't feel like writing, because it was in longhand, not typing.

However, I've now got permission from my on-site boss (not the same one who found me this post) to bring my laptop and accompanying peripherals. So that's what I've done. I'm typing this up on August 3rd at around 05:50 in the morning while at work, in fact. If things go well, I'll be posting this on Thursday night while I'm at home after another week with overtime. 

As always, there's more detail in a post on my Patreon. Just sign up at the "Kneecaps" level.

Major Life Change

I think it was in 2006 or 2007 when I applied with Social Security for their Disability income. At the time, I was misdiagnosed and on the wrong medication, and I was having difficulty holding down any job, never mind one with a decent wage. I really needed the boost, and my mom found a Social Security legal advocate for me. He came to my apartment and "helped" me fill out the application for disability. Basically, what he did was ask me a series of questions so he could fill in the blanks himself. It was due to his advocacy that I ended up being approved for SSDI. Even when I was sitting in my living room answering the advocate's questions, though, I had in the back of my mind the promise to myself that I'd be on SSDI only as long as it took me to get mentally stable and back into the workforce. 

Over the years, especially since around 2018, I've made efforts to get back into working. For various reasons, my efforts failed. The biggest reason was that I was not as ready to do so as I thought I was. I'd put applications in places, but never follow up on them, and rarely received calls back from those applications. After a few weeks, my enthusiasm for working would wane under the influence of fear of working again, and I'd give up for a few months before something would inspire interest in working again. 

All of that has ended now. On the 29th of June, I applied with a company that provides solutions for clients seeking to protect their premises and such. I've done security-guard type work a couple times before. Once in the mid-late 90's for a company in North Carolina, after I graduated from Job Corps; I had to quit that job unexpectedly due to my living situation imploding. Later, in the Navy, I performed watches and such that included making patrols and logging events. I've always found security officer jobs rather easy, but not so boring that I'm falling asleep on the job, even if I'm up on a third shift after being awake all day the day before. 

I'll be starting my shift on Monday, and it's a full-time position. This is going to cut into my writing time a great deal, so it'll take me a few weeks at least to get into the habit of coming home and settling in to write. I'm also considering switching my writing time to the mornings before work—basically getting up at 03:00 or so to work until 06:00 before I have to start getting ready for work. We'll see what happens. I'm hoping to be able to at least keep up with the new writing schedule I set up since I was hired on at the security company.

As always, if you want to know more about what's going on, I'll have a post on my Patreon blog for those who are willing to sign up for the "Kneecaps" level.

Long Time No See

Keeping up with my blog (and the posts on my Patreon, for that matter) kind of fell off my task list the past couple months. I've been struggling with my writing since February. 

First, my rewrite of DH01 went off the rails. It got bloated and meandered a lot, and I finally stopped writing on it. When something goes that bad, I usually cut to the last place where I feel the writing did everything I wanted it to, but I wasn't pleased with any of it. 

At the same time, I was working on phase outlines for two or three other projects. Those were going better, but I wasn't happy with those either. My displeasure with these was a little harder to pinpoint until I realized that they seemed too long. I was using the phase outline system that my friend Zette usually employs in the writing of her stories, and while it was easier to progress with this system than it was with the plot-card system, I found I missed the plot cards and eventually gave up on those.

What enabled me to give up on all these projects was my friend J.A. Marlow's Twitch streams. Jam started streaming a couple months ago, and in one of her streams, she shared her plotting spreadsheets. She very kindly shared them with me when I asked her to, and I've been plugging my stories into them since then. Thanks to the plotting spreadsheets I feel I finally have a handle on my stories. 

But doing all this plotting means I'm not writing fresh fiction right now. To fill that need, I've started work on creating a story web in Archivos for my Discordant Harmonies series. It's been going well so far. The pages for each element require a summary and a full article, so I've been setting up files for it in an Archivos Scrivener for the things I need to write in. I don't have artwork for the elements yet, but I have plans for getting it. I'll be posting these on my Patreon, so if you want a sneak peek, come support me!

Some Blog Changes

So, ever since I restarted this version of my blog, I've been trying to come up with a better title. "Pen and Keyboard" didn't really fit any longer, in part 'cause I rarely write longhand any more. I wanted something more descriptive, if possible, and definitely wanted something that better fit how I felt about my writing in general.

"Impostor Syndrome" was it. 

This title originally came up in chat on FM a few nights ago. We were joking around and chatting about writing, and I mentioned that my version of the common writers' issue of Impostor Syndrome rears its head as "What if I never actually finish anything and publish it?" We continued joking after that, but I forget what else I said. However, "Impostor Syndrome" stuck around as a decent title for something so here I've put it. 

I'm also going to be changing the blog's template here too. I've started this tonight, and hope to get back to it soon. In the meantime, I like what I've got!

Like usual, there's more on this topic posted to my Patreon. Sign up for the "Kneecaps" level, and you'll be able to read more!