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!

Since the Move

It's been a while since I've updated my projects list to the right, and I think it'll be a good idea to go into a little more detail here. 

First off, I'm still working on DH01's Developmental Edit/Rewrite. This is going pretty well. I've been using the original draft as a guideline and filling in the stuff that I left out in that first draft. This story is turning out substantially different from the original draft, while maintaining the same plot arcs as that first iteration. For what it's worth, I plan on leaving the copies I have on Wattpad up there unless I get to the point of officially publishing the series. At that time, I'll decide if I want to leave the roughs up. Either way, I plan on giving the books new covers if they get that far.

I'm also continuing to work on the phase outline for the rewrite of The Prophet of Venjhelin 1 that I started a couple months ago. Right now, I've got over 200 phases on it and the ideas are flowing well. Originally, I intended to rewrite this as I am DH01, but that didn't want to go, so I tried the phase outline to see if I could get things moving, and it's worked quite well. My goal on this outline is to get 10 phases a day, though I haven't been as consistent with the daily aspect as I hoped. It's still progressing well, and I'm really enjoying fleshing out the characters and plot.

Most recently, I've started a phase outline of a story I completed in rough draft and have tried rewriting a few times since: Married to the Moons 1. Like with my usual first drafts, even with the outlines I used to do, the story was very much a candybar scene story. The phase outline is helping me flesh this one out too. I've already gotten 60 phases on it, in just one day of working on it. If you'd like a sneak peek of the outline for this one, I've excerpted a few of the phases in a post for my Patreon at the Bicycle level. 

Previously, I was working on transcribing Front: Or My First Completed Story EVAR!!! Since our big house move at the beginning of January, though, I haven't been able to work on it. I may try to do so within the next few months, even if I'm still stuck on my laptop, but I'm not making any promises. 

After the Hiatus

For anyone who's followed my blogs for any length of time, my hiatus since October is nothing new, but for those who are new, it probably felt like I dropped off the face of the earth. I typically go on an involuntary hiatus in the latter half of the year, and the end of 2020 was no exception. My sleep schedule going haywire was only the beginning. 

On November first, I joined Nano. This was not a well-thought-out decision. In fact, I'd already decided not to participate. After the past month and a half, I have no recollection whatsoever of what I wrote on for the event. It could have been anything from a mundane gay romance to my primary project, DH01. Just don't ask me. Maybe I'll remember someday. I just can't right now.

At the end of November, my wife, her sister, our friend Varick, and I began a frantic collection of funds in an attempt to move into better accommodations. Varick, Tess, and I were still in our government subsidized apartments, and Tess's sister, Kaitlyn, was in danger of being forced into homelessness. Unfortunately, we weren't able to gather all the funds, and so had to abandon our plans to move.

Following that catastrophe, I dropped into a depression that somehow included writing almost daily. I think I was using it as a way to escape things at the old place. It was cluttered, dim, and stressful for all of us, cats and humans alike. Not exactly a happy time, and my psych doc even stepped in to get me another medication and a light box to help boost my mood.  

Then, at the end of December—the 31st in fact—when we got word that the second Economic Stimulus Fund would be coming in early January, Tess and I decided to contact the complex we'd tried to get into at the end of November. We knew we could pay all the fees for the deposit with the additional $600 and still have enough to live on for the rest of the month. And, in the process of negotiating with the management of the place, they told us of a January move-in special where they cut the first month's rent in half. 

And thus our Great Move began. 

With all of us combining our funds, we got the three-bedroom apartment we wanted. Even better than the one we were shown in November, this one had a ramp down to the ground-floor apartments, which are actually half-buried in the ground. 

I'll include more details in my Patreon post, including pictures, for those who are interested. The lowest Tier, "I Lost My Kneecaps, So I Can't Crawl Now", will grant you the ability to read the post. Expect that to be up by the weekend. 

Haywire

It's fall here and I'm struggling to keep up with things. My sleep schedule is haywire again, and I'm on a nocturnal schedule again. This is getting to be a regular thing, not that I was exactly on a diurnal schedule before, but at least I wasn't sleeping until 22:00 and sitting up all morning. 

Writing isn't going. Having a haywire schedule means not a lot of writing gets done. In fact, this blog post is the first writing of new words I've done in over a week. Honestly, I really hate having to write posts about me not writing, but I'm trying to keep up with my blog, so here you go. 

Crafting isn't even going. I can't make COVID-19 masks. Quilting doesn't appeal. Crochet is out of the question because I don't have any of the things I need for that. I'm relegated to reading the Help files on Etsy for setting up my store and sitting here doing nothing because I want to work on my writing but the only thing I want to do (work on worldbuilding for a NewShiny), is something that isn't on the list and won't be added. 

I don't put doing these blog posts on my task list because I know I need to do them and I don't want to feel pressured over it. When I feel pressured over something, I avoid it and it eventually doesn't happen unless someone intervenes. There were quite a number of research papers and essays and such that almost didn't get written when I was in school because I procrastinated on them until someone sat me down and didn't let me get distracted so I could finish them. 

Because my sleep schedule is haywire, I'm having trouble taking my meds on a set schedule, and that's really essential for me feeling motivated. Though I only recently learned this the past few months, it's something I really need to pay attention to. I'm not sure how to get on a set schedule again, or precisely what schedule I want to be on. But I'll figure everything out. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

Sleep, Writing, and Crafting

 I haven't made as much progress as I wanted on my two stories. This is mostly because the level of my motivation has fluctuated over the past couple weeks. My sleep schedule has gone wonky, and I'm learning to settle into playing Pathfinder on Friday nights, two things that mess with my motivation. Honestly, though, it's mostly the sleep issue. Insomnia sucks.

This year, I'm tempted to enter Nano. To do that, I'd have to work on something I've got enough of an outline on, and that means it would be the gay romance, and I'm afraid I'll burn out on it. It's something I'm thinking about, though, and it would be kind of nice to do this rewrite during Nano since the original draft was written in November during the first week of Nano, even though it wasn't an "official" Nano project.

Either way, I'll be getting my words on DH01 and DOTSC01, and transcribing Front. Oh, and that's coming along quite nicely, that transcription. It's both just as sucky and not as sucky as I thought it was, in different ways. Most of the non-sucky parts come in the form of my technical skill with the story. Though that's definitely improved (along with everything else) over the years, I'm consistently surprised by how well things are written in Front, for one of my earliest works.

Otherwise, the crafting bug has bitten me. I've been working on a new quilt (yeah, I started another project—but this is normal for me) that I found a tutorial about online. It's called Pins And Paws, and comes from a quilt company based in Missouri. I find that interesting, because that's where my dad was from. It's funny how things circle around like that. 

Many Tasks at Once

 So the past month has been more successful writing-wise than previous months. I think this in part is because I've trimmed back my writing to a minimum of 250 words and no more than 500 per session. Before, I was writing as much as I wanted. I blasted through scenes and would write for two, three, four days in a row, be dry for the next week. Keeping my wordcount to a low range helps me remain interested without burning me out.

Another thing I think that's helped is that I've added other writing tasks to my roster. 250-500 words a pop on one project wasn't really enough. It felt like a warm-up, so I added a second project. The second project, DOTSC01, has the same range of wordcount as the first, which works well. It also helps prevent bouncy brain where I hop from one project to another in an endless round of distracted writing. 

That worked so well that I decided that it may be a good idea to add another writing task to my list. Hence working on the handwritten story from years ago. This tale of yore is called, Front, or My First Completed Novel Evar!!!, and it has the seeds of my current writing in it. I'm transcribing it directly—not making any corrections—and adding commentary that makes me laugh at least.

And, as if that wasn't enough to have on my list of writing tasks, I decided to rework an old gay romance I wrote years ago. I think I wrote the original draft of this particular story in November of 2009. At the time, I was not participating in NaNo, but I managed to slam out just over 80k words in about 6 days, if I remember right. It's got some major issues. At the time, I didn't know how to handle conflict, hence this reworking of the story. I'm outlining it in Scapple right now. 

Having a number of tasks seems to be working well for me. My writing mind is calmer than it's been for years, and I feel like I'm making progress on everything. I'm having fun too, which is important to me. And, best of all, writing slow brings out detail I wouldn't otherwise be able to include. I'm quite pleased.

So that's where things stand in the writing world. My mental health is doing well with regular dosages of all my psych meds, which is good, and I'm very faithful with taking them at a regular time. I'm also looking into other ways of earning money, primarily by hawking my handcrafts that I make with sewing and crocheting. Things are going well!

A Wild Month

 It's been an interesting month-and-more here. My sleep schedule went haywire, and it threw off a whole lot of other things and I ended up falling into a depression.

Part of the past month, I've been working on the dreaded gay romances I love to hate. I think I'm noticing a pattern with these. Anytime I fall into a depression or struggle with my mood status, I turn to writing the gay romances. It's something I've only just realized happens. When I'm stable and not depressed, I find it easier to focus on my speculative fiction and rarely touch the gay romances.

Also over the past couple months, my wife and I entered into debt consolidation. We weren't horrendously deep in debt, but it would have taken a lot longer for us to crawl up out of it than it will be with the new—single—bill to pay off our debts. I'm looking forward to having this all taken care of within the next few years now. 

One of the things I'm looking into is starting up an Etsy store. I'm going to sit down with my wife, who has far more experience with businesses and such, and see about hammering out a business plan. This is in place of me getting a job with another company. Why? For several reasons, one of them being I need a more sedentary position because my body just can't handle me being on my feet all day. I'll keep y'all updated on progress here and provide more details in my Patreon posts. 

So that's where things stand right now. 

Big Depression Equals New Medication

I feel I owe y'all an explanation of my absence over the duration of July. I know I mentioned prior to July that I was experiencing a depressive phase that was more pronounced than usual. Well, it continued through most of July. It got to the point, in fact, where I spent most or all of some days in bed. Literally. I didn't feel like getting up to do more than use the bathroom and eat. Going to bed got difficult as well, and I was sitting up all night sometimes three nights out of the week every week. See, the depression made me afraid to go to bed, because I didn't want to end up spending the day in bed again. It was just a vicious cycle. But that's what depression does. It locks the person who has it into a vicious circle of tactics to avoid or deal with it, and rarely are they healthy methods.

When I had my video appointment with my psych doc a few weeks ago, I explained to him what was going on. He wanted to be cautious. Instead of replacing one of the psych meds I'm already on, he suggested introducing a new one, to which I agreed. The reasoning behind this is that my mood stabilizers were working fine before the big depressive drop, and he doesn't want to meddle too much with established meds. It's actually easier to add a different medication on top of what I'm taking than take me off of one of my current meds and run through a list of others until we find one that works. And, besides, he could assign a medication specifically to deal with the depression, and go from there. I don't know what other plans he may have for my medications, but I'm glad to say this first one worked.

My psych doc put me on Wellbutrin, whose generic name is bupropion, which is actually the name that appears on the bottle. We were hoping for some improvement in my depression, but this medication just totally wiped it out. Before the heat wave hit, I spent a week being productive. It was fantastic, and if not for the heat wave, I'd have spent the past two or three weeks on an all new schedule. Sleeping at night. Awake during the day. I loved it for the week I had it.

Oh, the heat wave is important, because it messed up my sleeping at night. When the daytime temps hit about 95°F and above—and for about a week and a half, most of our days were over 100°F—I have difficulty staying asleep. I get hot at night and wake up. The window unit air conditioner in the bedroom just could not keep up, and we had nothing in the living room to help it. At times, I woke up to wipe sweat off myself with my sheet. 

That's part of the reason why I spent last night up. I slept all day yesterday—or may as well have been all day, to catch up on missed sleep leftover from the heat wave. From about midnight the night before until 13:00 yesterday, then I laid down for a 2.5 hour nap at 15:00. Even taking my night meds last night didn't help. 

We're getting a new window unit that's supposed to be delivered today or tomorrow, for the living room. With that in place, things should get back on track. I'm looking forward to that! 

Moving Along Slowly

In the past few weeks, I've made some progress. There's about three or four drafts of the To Do list I planned on making, mostly adding things to it. I've also realized that with things going as they have been with Covid, my job hunt may never get started again. A lot of companies are moving their employees to home-based working, and that's not really feasible right now for me, even if I could qualify for the well-paying jobs I'm seeing. Not only that, I'm seeing light at the end of the tunnel with other methods of making money. Ideas I've had before, but never had the courage to consider doing seriously. So, if things work out, writing won't be my only income stream—and it really shouldn't be anyway. 

About that To Do list. I think I have it finalized at last. My attempts at starting on obeying it have failed previously, in part I think because of the depression that is still very much with me, but also in part because I didn't really give myself time to mentally prepare for starting to align myself to it. This week, though, I finalized the list and started on a "schedule" for it starting Sunday of next week. One of the things I'm doing is listing minimum times to do the things on it, usually an hour-range, but sometimes something like a wordcount (for writing) or minimum chapters (for reading). I'm not going to be working on a couple-odd things on it for the first while or so, because I need to get better equipment for the work, and I won't be able to do that until I get all the fabric I need for the quilting projects I'm planning. Writing is definitely on it, though, even if the goal count won't be very high, mainly because if I throw myself into high wordcounts right away I'll burn out and end up not writing at all for a few weeks.

I'm happy to say I'm getting some ideas on how to handle DH03 now. Suffice it to say that some major plot points may change. Beyond that, I'm not going to go any deeper into detail. Overall, I'm enjoying writing and am excited to get back into doing it regularly, so I'm hoping the next several days of psyching myself up for getting into my new "schedule" will work. 

Yes, I'm up awfully early. I slept until around 16:30 yesterday. Was just so tired. I'm probably going to take a nap today, then go to bed at a decent hour. Whatever I do, I'll be setting an alarm for Thursday and getting up when it goes off. I can't get myself on a decent schedule unless I organize my sleeping hours into a much better nightly habit than it has been up to this point. Whatever else happens today, I intend to do some housecleaning and perhaps some quilting—as well as reading through what I have of Géta's scenes so I can figure out how his next scene should go. 

And that is all!

Depression Sucks

Nuff said.

Where Things Stand

My writing is on hiatus again. I've gotten obsessed with quilting, which I've been wanting to do since before January but didn't have most of the equipment for. Right now, I'm mostly going with the flow, though I'm trying to be less focused than usual. This is, I feel, the first step to bringing writing into my non-writing obsessions and vice-versa, so I'm deliberately putting things aside and focusing on things around me and spending time with Tess. I want to have a better-balanced life, and it won't happen without me applying some discipline to it.

I'm still in the highly mixed state I was in when I wrote my bipolar post. Also, I've moved to a mostly nocturnal schedule, where I don't usually get to bed until after dawn. It's what's working for me right now, and I'm not sure if it's totally just what feels right for me or if the bipolar may be involved. All I know is that I'm enjoying being up all night. 

All I can really say is that I'm glad I got done with the Patreon setup before my mind switched gears. I'm sure finally getting a cutting mat, rotary cutter, and quilting ruler set is what jerked my mind into full-on Quilting Obsession. Depending upon how long this goes on, I may be able to establish better balance to my life. 

My job hunt is on indefinite suspension. I'm both sad and relieved about this. The main problem is that I need a job that pays at least $13.00 an hour, and I need to have a job where I'm seated most of the time. Being on my feet is just too hard on my right foot, and I really don't want to be in a medical boot for the rest of my life—or to have to undergo surgery to correct the problem because I've spent too much time on my feet. About the only job I qualify for that's seated is working in a call center, and all of the few I've found that pay $13.00 or more require knowledge of computer programs I don't even have access to right now, never mind training with. Most of the rest don't list wages at all, and those that do usually offer less than $10.00. If I'm going to get a job and thus lose part of my government income by making "too much" money, I need something that's got a halfway decent chance of supporting me and my family after taxes is taken out, and jobs for less than $10.00 just won't be able to do that.

So that's where things stand at the beginning of June 2020. 

My Patreon is Now Fully Live!

Following about a week of work on my Patreon and its accompanying Discord server, everything is finalized and live! Hit the Patreon button in the sidebar to check it out. If you'd like, sign up for one of my tiers too!

After I did the original setup of my Patreon, I came up with more ideas for rewards. Since I wanted to expand the tiers and the numbers of rewards they offered, this was good. As much as I wanted Patrons when I first set things up, I'm glad I didn't have any. Right now, as things are, I see the Patreon page as its final version. If I change anything besides posts, it'll most likely be the Goals bar. However, I'm not really planning on changing anything, so there's that. I really don't want to.

The Discord server that goes with my Patreon page is called AEP's Hall of Patronage. Right now, it has a few honorary members, simply because they've all supported me in various ways for years prior to me setting up this Patreon stuff. I have two moderators, which eases my mind, especially since Jam—thanks for agreeing to be a mod!—is usually signed into Discord whenever they're online. My wife Tess is also a mod, but she's not always on, so I need to discuss that with her, though I won't force her to be constantly on Discord if she doesn't want to be; I mainly enlisted her aid in verifying and setting up things for the Discord.

Now for a little trivia: My favorite tier title is the fourth one, though the second one is a close second. #4 always brings a bit of a smile to my face though. Go check and see what they are! 

Changes are Afoot

Well, though I'm not actively writing on Discordant Harmonies 1, I'm still making progress on its background. Due to some worldbuilding I've developed over the past week or so, I've changed Chraest's name to Aelyshthar, finally given the star system it's a part of and the indigenous race names, and conlanged just enough to make what I have of things linguistically logical. 

This meant I had to create a new alphabet, which you can access by joining at the "Boy My Feet Are Really Worn Off!" level of my Patreon; the link is in the sidebar. I'll be posting something a bit more substantial for the "Why Don't Airplanes Wear Capes Too?" level and above later on, hopefully this morning after finishing this post—if I can just remember what the heck I meant to post in the first place. (And I've been so excited about posting my first higher-level Patreon post, too!) 

In addition to these changes, I've started preparing articles for posting to an interactive wiki-type web app called Archivos. At this time, I've got two articles written and am doing research on volcanoes to bring a little more realism to the worldbuilding of the planet. My friend J.A. Marlow is helping with what knowledge she possesses and suggestions for interesting and informative documentaries for me to watch, and I plan on researching more and looking up some books about it—ebooks from the library if I can find them. I'll be adding this information to a more mundane wiki as well, but the user interface is a bit more difficult to figure out and I don't want to start setting that up until I've got a number of good articles written. Neither of these will be accessible until after the launch of at least book one of my DH series. 

Oddly, I'm really enjoying this hiatus away from my story. Yes, I want to get back to it, but it's not tearing me apart this time around. I'm not sure how well I'll keep up with this blog, my Patreon, Twitter, and my articles for the wikis when I'm interested in my story again, but I'm determined to do better about it this time. And no qualifiers like "We'll see how that goes." I'm going to keep up with things this time. 

Patreon!

So, after years of considering getting a Patreon account, I've done so. My page is up, and I've got one Patrons-only post so far. 

I've been kind of looking forward to this step in my writing career. Years ago, I knew I wanted a Patreon account, and I've held off 'cause I haven't felt ready for it on a mental/emotional level. This is a lot of responsibility for me to take up. But here it is—just scroll down a bit to find the link in the sidebar. 

How Depression Affects My Writing

I mentioned in a previous post that I'm dealing with a depressive phase of my bipolar disorder. This affects my writing to some extent. Even with these posts and recreating this Blogger account, I'm having to fight through feelings that my writing isn't any good and that the blog is pointless. This is even more pronounced with my fiction writing. I haven't touched DH01 in days, and in fact, I haven't touched it since the 7th of this month.

Depression doesn't so much block me as make it harder to connect to the ideas I have for my writing. This is true whether I'm pantsing the WIP or have an outline for it. It's frustrating to be able to see the ideas, but have an inability to "grasp" them well enough to write them out. Back in the past when I got like this, I'd try to force the words out, following advice that it's best to write every day regardless of mood, and that didn't end well for me. Sure, the words were as good as they would have been if my mood wasn't down, but I hated what I wrote and ended up abandoning the project for a few months. Not days or weeks. Months. So now I don't try to force the words out when I'm depressed. I go with the flow instead. 

At the same time, I also have a very poor opinion of my writing. I know I write well, and that I can create engaging characters and entertaining stories. Consciously. Logically. But the depression tells me all my writing, especially the fiction, is crap. This is part of the reason why I don't touch projects I force depression-phase words onto after forcing those words. 

If I'm lucky, I can look at my stuff to edit it. This time, I'm not lucky. I've been using this down period where I'm not writing to get to know ProWritingAid software again, using their web editor one paragraph at a time. It has few complaints for the most part; I've spent long enough writing to eradicate most of the issues it highlights. The "Repeats" checker section, though, always "confirms" the depression's opinion of my writing, so I don't end up doing any editing. I'm trying to figure out how to get ProWritingAid to work best for me, and this is not helping. At this point, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. 

The worst thing about pronounced depressions like this is that I don't know how long I'll be in it. It makes me not care about my writing, and if I had a deadline, that would only exacerbate the disinterest. Even if I were inclined to pursue traditional publishing, I wouldn't be able to because of these depressive phases so it's good I've latched onto the independent/self publishing track like I have. This depressive phase may last another day, a week, a month—or longer. I don't know. All I can really say is that I'm glad I don't have these phases more often. I'd never get anything done.

What I'm Doing with the Discordant Harmonies Series

Clipped Header Designed by J.A. Marlow

Years ago, when I finished the third book of the Discordant Harmonies series, I thought I was done-done with them as well. I never felt like they were what I wanted them to be, but I couldn't figure out how to fix them to make them what I wanted them to be, so I went ahead and posted them on Wattpad. And then I proceeded to ignore them, not even reading through them because I have this issue with reading works I don't feel fit my image of them. 

Well, back in March, I figured out what the issue is with the series. DH01, A Pitch of the Scale, is, plain and simply, incomplete. I employed a lot of handwavium and Because I The Author Said So to complete that story as well. There's a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense—like, an institution as old and well-established as the Temple of the True Gods in the Édalain Empire would, long ago, have set up an intake process for new members of the Temple. I also needed a better excuse for Géta not to report the bullies' attacks on him, and I needed to set that reason up well. 

I'm not sure about DH02, Severe Notes. It may be fine pretty much as it is. I'll take a look at it when I get to it. One thing I do know for certain is that I'm going to move some of DH03 to the ending of DH02 so it's not such a cliffhanger. What appealed to me in the first draft no longer fits the vision I have for this story.

And DH03, Measure of Resistance, is, really, quite bloated. I need to condense it, cut stuff, and generally rework the entire book to make it less cumbersome. 

So this has led to me starting the process of performing a developmental edit on the entire series. I'm changing quite a bit. Some characters are getting sex changes. Others' names are changing. I'm bringing forward characters who don't actually appear until the next book in the forms of letters they 're writing to Asthané and changing things in Géta's background, as well as setting up events for future books.

Oh, and I've finally realized "DH04" was never meant to be. At least, not as the series was originally conceived. There may be a DH04 after I'm done with the developmental edit, and the books afterward have changed substantially enough in mere conception that I'll be kicking off a brand new series to handle those stories. 

As of the writing of this blog post, DH01 stands at I think ~52k words in its developmental edit. I'm having fun with this, and feeling enthusiastic about working with Géta and Asthané again. I'm not much referring to the original draft and am focusing on fleshing out and showing more of the stuff that I glossed over and merely told in the first draft. Aside from that, I'm writing scenes that I want to keep from DH01's original draft from memory, using them as signposts on the way through this new draft. 

Overall, I'm happy with what I've got. It's a much more interesting story so far. To those who are wholly wedded to the original drafts of this story, I'll be leaving those versions up on Wattpad indefinitely for you to revisit whenever you want. The new books will have all-new covers and, I hope, will be published for sale once I'm done with them.