Sluggish

It hasn’t been a great week.

There was that review, which knocked me sideways a bit. Then you lovely people pulled me up again – thank you for all your comments, support, and honesty.

I’ve since had another review on Web Fiction Guide, which raised similar concerns to the previous one but in a much less damning way. It felt more balanced (but maybe that’s just me).

On the plus side, I’ve been getting a load of hits through from it, and more feedback is great too. My overall rating is pretty good (looks like a 3.5?), and I’m happy with that. Happy enough for now, anyway.

On top of that, the CFS has been crawling up to smother me this week. I’ve been getting sleep (which is usually my toughest battle) but still waking up tired. Worse and worse each day, until yesterday my alarm pulled me out of the middle of a very vivid (and strange) dream. I am never dreaming at that time – I don’t remember the last time that happened. My body clock knows I get up at just after 6am, so I’m at least semi-awake by then.

Today, I got up feeling like lead. My glands feel like they’ve come up, and I’ve had cotton-head half of the day. I am currently subsisting on sugar and caffiene, and wondering just how little of tonight’s work Christmas party I can be there for before I can slip away. If the party wasn’t between the office and my house, I wouldn’t be going at all. Plus, I put a dress on today for the damn thing, so I might as well use it.

It hasn’t been a good week for writing. With those things tugging at me – in a downwards direction – it was really a bad time to tackle a post about a character in a dark place. The whole thing went sideways and ended in a position that I’m not sure I can recover from. I’m writing about ten days from the end of the blog, and there isn’t time to work with that. Luckily, I’m writing far enough ahead of the posts that I have time to fix it.

This morning, I abandoned the desire to surge ahead anyway, and went back to fix the post. Basically, I rewrote it with an additional element that I had originally intended to be in there, but had been unable to find room for the first time around. I started with the new element and made the rest fit in around it, and I think it’s going to wind up better for it. I’m itching to get it finished, but I’m so braindead that I can’t bring myself to review yet another technical ticket because it hurts too much.

Instead, I wound up procrastinating by registering the Apocalypse Blog on NetworkBlogs on Facebook. Another way to share the joy! I hear that it’s a good way to advertise, and while it may be a little late in AB’s case (as it’s ending soon), no harm in trying. Those of you on FB – follow, share, enjoy!

I’ve put off everything I had planned to do this weekend, except an evening out with a few friends. For the rest of the time, I will be resting and attempting to sort out the hash I’ve made of AB this week. Thank goodness for buffer. Oh, how I missed you, buffer.

Coming soon: AB’s next milestone, and news about the next blogfic on the horizon. It’s coming soon. Hopefully not too soon. In the meantime, wish me sanity and sleep.

Review blues

The Apocalypse Blog hasn’t had many reviews. I haven’t been pushing for them – the best way to get reviews is to review other web fiction, and knowing how little time I have, I don’t feel capable of putting in the kind of time it takes to do that. I felt bad asking for reviews, knowing that I couldn’t reciprocate. So it’s okay. I don’t mind. I get feedback from my readers and that’s fantastic. It’s more than I hoped to get.

Still, it’s always nice to be reviewed (especially when you haven’t asked for one). A couple of months ago, one of the editors over at Web Fiction Guide did a review on AB (I know I meant to link to it, but I can’t remember if I did or not). It was mostly positive but not entirely – which is to be expected, and, I felt, fair. I don’t expect my work to be flawless or suit everyone, and as I’ve said many times, I welcome feedback.

On noticing a spike of click-throughs from the WFG listing recently, I checked it out and discovered another review had been put up. This one was by the writer of the Blog Fiction blog, which is a great resource for blog fiction writers and readers. This review made me far less happy than the previous one did.

It has its positive points, all of which I am gratified to hear. The reviewer says my characters are realistic, the story is involving, the setting is engaging, and the site is “an example of how to put together a Blog Fiction site”. This is wonderful to read!

And then I got to the ‘cons’ section of the review. According to this reviewer, all of the above good points are let down by the writing. In summary: I tell more than I show, and it’s difficult for the reader to connect to the action or the characters.

I won’t lie – that hurt. The Apocalypse Blog has its flaws, but I had hoped that the writing itself wasn’t a huge one. I know I’m not perfect. I know posts have gone up when I’m less than happy with them. But still. It’s a knock to have it stripped down that way.

I’m not going to bitch and whine about it. This is what this particular reviewer felt when he read AB, and bad reviews (by which I mean ‘negative’) are part of this game. I can comfort myself by looking at the first review, which described the blog as “so well-written, so dark, disturbing, and emotional, that I had to stop reading”. But that doesn’t make this particular viewpoint go away.

So the question becomes: what do I do about it? This is one person’s opinion, which is valid (it’s his opinion and he is entitled to that) but not all-encompassing. I’m not going to beat myself up about it, or stop writing. I’ve had good feedback too. But it does make me nervous.

I could attempt to explain or excuse that the style the reviewer disliked: the blog format demands a certain amount of ‘summary writing’, and there simply isn’t time or space to go into every event in detail. For some of the events in the story, I didn’t want to go into a lot of detail about, because while they happened, they simply weren’t important enough at the time.

But excuses and explanations don’t tackle the problem. This is one person’s opinion, but just how widely is this view held? (I am of the view that when three people read a piece and two give the same feedback, a writer should listen, even if the third person disagrees.)

Did the writing hurt the blog? Did I summarise too much? Did I gloss over things that I should have gone into detail about? Did I focus too tightly on some things and not give enough story-space to others?

I’m not looking for a pat on the back. (Some reassurance that it wasn’t as catastrophic as the review suggests would be nice, though!) I started the Apocalypse Blog to stretch my writers’ muscles, to explore new avenues in my writing, to expand and learn new things. If it’s flawed, I want to know. I want to improve.

So, what do you all think? Feel free to answer here or leave your own review on WFG. I value your honesty.

The Apocalypse Blog is currently being read by the e-Fiction Book Club for review. I’ll admit to being more than a little nervous about that, especially after reading this latest review. I have my fingers crossed and my heart in my mouth. The rest of me is in other people’s hands.

NaNoWriMo: Achieved!

It’s the 29th November, and I finally hit 50,000 words. Whoo-hoo!

It’s such a relief. I have been struggling all week, and my wordcount graph reflects that. Work has been nuts, with the new guy starting – I had to be in charge of inducting him and training him – and interviewing another candidate for the new vacancy we’ve been allowed to recruit for. And I had a deadline to meet on Friday, which involved much squinting at complicated spreadsheets and trying to work out if all the figures were correct.

On top of that, I’ve been out a lot and, of course, the CFS has been biting down hard. I wound up collapsing on Friday night and giving myself the night off, even though I had barely written anything the day before (due to an unplanned evening at the folks’ place, thanks to breaking trains and a dad who needed a lift home).

Luckily, the write-ins have been great for my productivity. I entered the weekend with 8k to go – not exactly ideal, but not horrific either – and wound up doing almost 4k at yesterday’s write-in. Today, I managed to get my head down and push through those last few posts to hit 50k just after 6pm.

Aaaaand, relax.

In all of my previous NaNo adventures, I have hit the target with a week or more to go. The first year, I petered out and coasted through the last week, ending on about 56k, just glad I got through it all. Last year, I was determined to get to the end of the story and powered on through to almost 70k. This year, I’m just glad I made it at all. This really is a lot closer to the bone than I like to cut things!

I guess it’s a symptom of how my year has been. More than once I’ve been up late, desperately trying to focus on an Apocalypse Blog post properly so that I can get it edited, and then post it before I fell into bed. Once, I had to backdate the time slightly to squeeze it into the previous day, as it was almost 1am when it was finally going up. (One lovely reader noticed! Despite my sneaky fiddling with the posting time. It’s so good to know people are paying attention!)

I wish I could take a break now. But not yet! NaNo might be finished, but AB isn’t, not quite.

I’m about halfway through December. Only a couple of weeks’ worth of posts, and then I’m finished. I have tomorrow off work, to rest and recover from everything, so I plan to spend that editing the first half of December. Then I can focus on getting the last half of the month written, polished up and posted.

Almost there. Almost done. I can’t wait. I want to see the whole story, hold it in my hands as a complete thing. I’m looking forward to telling everyone: I did it. I got to the end, I got through a whole year and a long, winding story.

For tonight, though, I’m going to put my feet up, feel good about myself, and look forward with hope. It has been hard work, but it’s all working out nicely. That makes it worth it.

Milestone: 300,000 words!

Today, the Apocalypse Blog reached 300,00 words! Whoo-hoo!

(For those of you following my NaNoWriMo adventures, this is 300k in total since AB began, not just during November!)

I never thought I’d ever reach a number like that. When I stop and think how much I have struggled to write novels (or to finish them, at least), the fact that I have sustained the AB story for so long, through so many adventures, and clocked up the kind of wordcount – well, it’s boggling. It’s true that you really can surprise yourself if you set your mind on something.

Wordcount wasn’t something I was aiming for when I started this last December. Honestly, I had no idea what to expect when I set out – my goal was a post a day (at least) and that was it. I figured there’d be smaller ones and larger ones… but it turns out that there are a lot more large ones than small! Well, that’s okay. I hope that there isn’t too much fat in there – while it hasn’t been as edited as I would have liked, it has been edited!

I guess we’ll find out next year when I look at rolling AB up into an e-book. Or, considering the size of it, possibly three e-books. Who knows?

300,00 words. I’d like to say that I’ll top that one day, but… well. I’m going to enjoy how this feels first and worry about breaking records another time!

NaNoWriMo: Into the last week

I had planned to update this every week during NaNo at least, but once again, time has run away from me. Good intentions and all of that. Bah!

NaNoWriMo is going better and worse than expected. The ML side of things is going fantastically – we have three to four events per week, and people turning up to all of them (!!!). It’s much better than last year, and I can’t say enough how grateful I am to have help this year. I couldn’t have done a lot of this stuff without my fellow MLs.

The best part is the the wrimos have noticed and are also grateful. I’ve had lots of comments about the write-ins and other stuff we’ve got going on, all of them positive. It gives me such a boost to hear stuff like that; it’s always nice to know that your work is appreciated and that you’re getting stuff right. We do all these events so that people come together, write, socialise and, most importantly, have fun. If that’s happening, I’m a happy ML.

I am, however, rushed off my feet. There were two write-ins this weekend, and I was due to be at both of them. I wound up pulling out of today’s, knowing that there would be other MLs present to pick up the stuff I usually do there. The Chronic Fatigue is biting pretty hard at the moment, which isn’t a surprise considering how much I’m running around at the moment. Also, I wanted to get my head down and do my own writing; it’s very easy to let all the ML duties distract me from NaNo itself and writing my own novel.

My writing isn’t going to plan. I’m getting plenty done on the weekends – especially since I started taking headphones to write-ins so I could zone out and write, rather than monitoring the meeting and joining in with every conversation (I’m a social butterfly, what can I say?). However, during the week, I’m not getting as much done.

The thing I was afraid of is happening. I’ve been in such a routine with my writing this year – writing a post a day, editing, and posting it up – that it’s hard to step up the pace and write more. I should be doing two posts per day if I’m going to hit my target of getting everything up until the end of December written. Couple that with a crazy work situation – the Team Leader stuff continues, quieter than before but still busy enough that it’s sucking up a lot of my mental energy – and it doesn’t leave me with much impetus to write more per day.

My attempts to make writing time have frequently been thwarted. I managed to get out of work a little early and hoped to get in a couple of hours’ writing when I got home, and I got to the train station to find that all of the signals in the city centre had broken. I waited nearly an hour for a train, and it crawled all the way home, stuffed to the gills with frustrated commuters. By the time I got home, I was so tired and hungry that I wound up just editing and posting, then cooked and zoned out in front of the TV.

I’d hoped to have a full day to write today too, but I was so tired after being out all day yesterday at a write-in that the morning was mostly pottering around in a daze. Plus I had to sort out all my weekly chores so that I have clean dishes and clothes and food and all those small, essential things that get missed when you’re out all the time.

I swear, I need a maid. A very cheap, invisible maid. …hmm, maybe that’s an idea to shelve for a future short story.

So, it’s been a struggle. I’ve been playing catchup half the time, which is a stressful situation I have managed to avoid in my previous NaNo ventures. However, it’s not all bad news.

I’m on track with my wordcount. Almost 39,000 words now, which puts me a day or so ahead of target. If I keep going as I am, I’ll make the required 50k, probably by the skin of my teeth.

I’m not doing so well with the post count. I should be halfway through December by now, but I’m only up to the 5th. I might wind up having to write post-NaNo to finish things up. That’s not a disaster, but it leaves me with less of a break before I start the next blogfic. Or possibly no break at all – it’s hard to say yet.

What this means is that the posts have swelled – as NaNo kicked in, I became more verbose, and it has been a struggle to keep the post lengths down to a reasonable level. I’ve had to split a few of them up into more manageable chunks, which isn’t ideal but it has helped fill in the posts. My rough average for a month’s posts is about 25,000 words, but November finished up at over 33,000. Whoops. Not exactly what I had intended to do!

Yesterday, I finally got to the end of November’s posts. That was such a good feeling – I could breathe again. I knew that once I started on December’s posts, I was on the downhill run – that was my own personal halfway mark. Today, I spent the afternoon writing out the first few posts for December, making a dent in the backlog. It still feels strange to finish a post and then move straight on to the next one; I keep wanting to pause and edit. While it is a good habit to write every day, it has its down-sides too!

This evening, I went over the posts for November that haven’t gone up yet. This is one bit of really good news: they are all edited and scheduled. I don’t need to do any of that over the next eight days. No more stopping to sort out the day’s post; I can concentrate on writing now. I can’t say how freeing that is (partly because I’ve only just finished and haven’t enjoyed an edit-free day yet) but I am looking forward to it! With luck, I can get my head down and make some decent progress through December’s posts between now and the end of NaNo.

Also, I think the plot is on-track to get where it needs to go. I have a good idea of where I need the group – and the story – to get to, and I know roughly what the last post will look like. So far, it’s lining up (allowing for the ridiculously long travel times that happen in the Apocalypse Blog). It’s hard to judge exactly how it’ll pan out, but I think I have given myself enough leeway to make it fit. Fingers crossed!

Right. I’m tired and have to be up early for work tomorrow. My brain is shutting down (it’s possible it did that before I started this post, but shhh, don’t tell anyone). Time to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything and hit the sack. Oh, and I have another milestone turning up soon – I must look up when that is. Whee!

Another crazy, event-heavy week coming up. Catch you all on the flipside. Wish me luck!

Week One: Survived

The first week of this year’s NaNoWriMo challenge is done. Wow. It feels like it has been so much longer than that already!

I usually take some time off work at the beginning of November to give myself a bit of a headstart. I love to dive in headfirst and just go for it, get that initial rush of creativity out without impediment.

This year has been different for a few reasons. Firstly, I had to use some of my week off work for family stuff before November. Secondly, we were all organised with the write-ins before NaNo started and kicked off with them as soon as November popped up on our calendars. So I went from family stuff straight into events and… haven’t stopped since.

I think out of a full week, I had one clear day to just sit and write. If you look at my pretty wordcount graph, you can guess which day that was (under NaNo Stats).

On Wednesday, I had a write-in at my house. Awesome turnout – I think we had about 15 people there at one point. I had borrowed an extra table and outdoor chairs from my folks, and wound up having to take my dining tables and more chairs outside too. My gazebo is fantastic and everyone had a good time – I had lots of bouncy responses on the NaNo forum about it.

On Thursday, I went back to work. I was so tired. Got some bad news there (those of you who follow me on Facebook probably heard about it – I won’t go into it here) and spent the day catching up and trying to sort out fallout.

On top of all that, I have spent the last few days struggling over a particularly gnarly plot convergence on the Apocalypse Blog. Finally, the threads I’ve been spinning out for the past few weeks are coming together and Stuff is happening. It’s been a struggle – there was a lot to get in there, so many pieces to fit together and balance. A single event has taken 4 posts to get through, and I still haven’t got to the end of it. Almost!

Not exactly the most conducive way to start NaNo – I like to get myself ahead of the game in the first week, so I can breathe a bit easier for the rest of the month. Gnarly plot wrangling means writing slower, which means I’m not as far ahead as I’d like. Last year, I was up to 20,000 words by the end of the first two days. This year, I’m at 15,000 words after the first week. Still ahead of target, just not as much as I’d like.

I shouldn’t forget that I have some additional challenges this year as well. All up, I’m doing good!

I am on track with posts. I’m aiming for two a day (so I can get through November and December’s posts in NaNo), and I just finished next Saturday’s posts. I have a buffer again. Wow that feels nice! It’s been so long that I had forgotten what it was like!

Another big write-in tomorrow. I’m past the really tricky plot stuff now, so hopefully the posts will flow a bit easier now. With luck, I’ll be able to hit some kind of groove in the coming week.

In the meantime, I have to return the table and chairs to my folks. Then edit and post today’s fun-filled AB instalment. The fun never stops here!

Kicking off NaNoWriMo

Wheee. Well, it’s 2nd November and I’m way overdue with a post about this. My poor chronicle of my writing activities is sadly lagging behind my reality.

As many of you will know, November means NaNoWriMo for writers. Crazy wordthrashing for one month out of the year, possibly resulting in a manuscript to spend the following 11 months editing before you start it all over again. It’s nuts, it’s fun, and there’s a great community that get involved.

Needless to say, I’m doing it this year. And as for the past two years, I’m also MLing (ML = Municipal Liaison = crazy person who not only tries to write a novel in a month, but also organises events and competitions for the local writers also involved). Thank goodness, I have some solid help this year and don’t have to do it all myself.

So, of course, we got all ambitious and have arranged all kinds of things. Goodie bags for giving out to writers. Sponsorship from local business to get prizes for the competitions we want to run. Two (or more!) write-ins a week. I was even interviewed on the local radio! (Terrifying, by the way, and thankfully not live.)

That’s one reason why the last couple of weeks have been nuts, as I’ve been trying to do my part in getting all of the pieces together. That, and a family reunion at which I was expected to show my face a lot around work and other commitments. Oh, and I had to keep up the Apocalypse Blog posting.

The good news is that it’s all working fine. We had the big Kick-Off Party on Saturday (I had to do public speaking and wrangle 50+ slightly loony writers) and an astounding write-in yesterday. Everything seems to be falling into place. I haven’t missed an AB post and am set to never miss another one again.

I paused and pondered this year’s NaNo a while ago, and knew that I would never be able to handle another writing project this year, especially not one as concentrated and life-sucking as a NaNo novel. NaNo is all about diving in and running with something, and that doesn’t work when you have to stop and write 700-1200 words a day for something else.

So I looked at my stats for AB and the goal I set myself when I started it. It runs to around 25,000 words per month (and more than that lately – I think my posts are creeping longer again), and I have two months to go. It’s not rocket science to work out that I have a NaNo novel left to write right there. So why make things difficult for myself?

This year’s NaNo effort is therefore going into writing the final instalment of the Apocalypse Blog. I’m going to steam through November and December’s posts and bring the whole thing to a sweeping (and hopefully half-decent) conclusion. Whee! What could possibly be better than that?

Of course, I didn’t realise until after I was committed to it that there might be a flaw or two in my plan. First of all, I’m in a rhythm with the blog – one post a day, lalala, off I go. I have to double that – okay, I can do that. No problem.

Secondly, I have to edit. I realised this yesterday, and this presents a couple of extra NaNo-related challenges. You see, you’re not supposed to edit during November – it’s all about pushing past the urge to edit and just writing anyway. Whoops.

Editing reduces my actual writing time, as I have to read over and edit posts before they go up (I always do this, of course, I had just forgotten that it would also apply during November). I often cut things out when I edit, which will impact my wordcount.

Because these posts are going up live (as ‘finished’ articles), I can’t pad them out with extra babbling and tangents. I also can’t use other NaNo wordcount-raising tactics, like throwing in extra adjectives or avoiding the use of contractions.

Not only do I have to write 50,000 words, I have to make it coherent and of a quality decent enough to post. And I’m pernickety about these kinds of things. It’s possible that my attempt to make NaNo easier for myself this year has, in fact, made it a rather different challenge. Whoops.

Oh well! I’m off to a good start (today wasn’t so great, wordcount-wise, but I’m ahead of the target so far), and hopefully things will fall into place more solidly soon. I know where I’m going (mostly) and have a couple of days to get my head down before I have to deal with work again.

Wish me luck! And good luck to all of you out there also attempting this wonderful challenge.

Killing my boys

I started writing this post a couple of months ago (has it really been that long?), when the deaths were fresh and my reasons clear. Unfortunately, I got distracted by numerous things and put it on hold. Now I’ve had the chance to actually finish it up and post it, so here we are.

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As I said in my post on killing characters, I never kill off a main character lightly. Recently in the Apocalypse Blog, two of the original central cast have fallen down: Ben and Dillon. Of the two of them, Dillon was the hardest for me.

I’ve given a lot of thought to how and why I killed off these two characters, both before and after I wrote the posts. As this blog is partly a chronicle of my AB writing adventures, I wanted to put those thoughts down here.

Ben

Ben was earmarked for a violent end when the nature of what he was became clear, and I had that in mind almost from the start of his relationship with Faith. Because of the way he was killed, setup and preparation were required to make sure it made sense, for all the characters involved.  There are elements of the lead-up planted pretty far back – it was a tricky balance between laying clues and not setting up any flashing neon signs.

Despite all the planning, Ben surprised me. His reactions to his own situation and the monster he was becoming weren’t entirely what I had anticipated, and it would have been nice to spend more time investigating the nature of that. When you live with a character for months, they have a habit of taking on their own paths – it’s part of what I find fun about writing this way, in this form.

But at the same time, I didn’t want to drag out Ben’s story forever. He’s a very internal character, the kind that lives in between the lines, and Faith was constantly trying to pull him out of that space. I think much of his conflict came through anyway, especially in his suicide-by-cop ending. It was no accident that he attacked Matt and forced Faith’s hand; he wanted to be stopped, permanently. He wasn’t the sort of person to go stand out in the rain and let death come – he was angry and begged for a more violent end. And maybe, just maybe, he was hoping that someone might be able to save him in the end.

He represented a tough choice for Faith, a test of her nerve and character, with repercussions that she is still working out. She has struggled with the violence of her broken world since the blog began, escalating up through incidents such as Kirk and the knife. How she comes to terms with what she has done will determine who she becomes, and I’m not sure how she’ll react in the next violent encounter – kill again, or hold her hand back and hope for the best to avoid more blood? That’s part of what’s fun for me – finding out which way they’ll jump next.

Dillon

Dillon, however, was not so straightforward. His wasn’t a death I had planned for months in advance. I had it in mind for some time before it happened, but only as a possibility, one that I wasn’t sure I could carry through.

I could easily have let him survive to reach his family and have a bittersweet farewell with Faith and her friends. Whatever happened, there would have been a parting of the ways when they reached his family’s location. (I could have had his family missing or dead so that he would stay with the group, but it would have seemed forced and overdone – we’ve already been through that with him once (when they reached his family’s home) and to do it again would have been lame. So, his family had to be there, and there wasn’t a good reason why he wouldn’t stay with them.)

We’d also just been through a major parting, when the current Seekers left the university and some of their core members behind. The situation was ripe for something different (I try to avoid repeating things where I can), something more.

And every now and then, I like to put in a reminder that this world they’re walking through isn’t safe. It’s hard and dangerous, and people die. Ben was an internal threat to himself and the group, but the external ones are worse and shouldn’t be forgotten. It begins to strain the credibility of the story when the core characters all stay intact while everyone around them falls – that sort of thing annoys me in stories, so I try not to let it infect mine.

Coupled with that, I wanted to give Dillon a chance to have one last, bright moment before he left the story. He died defending his friends – the littlest, youngest one of the group got the hero’s death. He is, in many ways, a reflection of the best parts of the Seekers, so that seemed fitting for him.

When I first considered Dillon’s fatality, the image I had in my head was of Faith walking up to the steps of his family’s house with him in her arms. I knew that she would push on even if he wasn’t going to make it, and that seemed important. She finished his business even when he couldn’t, and she took him home. I think that’s important for the Seekers – they keep their promises, even if it takes months (and let’s face it, some of this stuff has taken months to get to). They keep pushing on even if it seems pointless, because the important things aren’t always obvious.

Unlike with Ben, I wasn’t sure I really wanted to kill Dillon off until I was writing the scenes. I had all those good reasons to do it in my head butting up against a deep attachment to the character. Everyone likes a happy ending and killing Dillon was like killing a puppy. I felt so mean. On top of that, I was afraid that it would be an unpopular choice with my lovely readers.

At the end of the day, I decided to brave it out. Take the hard choice and run with it, and make it as bright and fitting as possible. I didn’t want to shy away from something I thought would be good for the story just because it might not be popular – it was a chance I wanted to take, and it was so worth it. Luckily, it was well-received, far more than I was expecting (I love my readers so much).

It was difficult to write. It’s one of the few parts of AB that has actually made me cry when writing it. Poor Dillon. Ben’s death was difficult to get down because of the logistics of it, making sure that everyone’s actions were natural. Dillon’s death was difficult because it was upsetting and I was determined to do the puppy justice.

Good Grief

The grief of the group – and Faith particularly – was different for each of the boys, too, and that was also part of what I wanted to show. With Ben, it was tainted by resentment, horror, and a hefty slab of guilt, largely but not entirely due to Faith’s finger being the one on the trigger. The aftermath of Dillon’s passing was cleaner – still painful but far less complicated and weighed down with other issues. They could all grieve openly for him.

Overall, I’m happy with how they came out. I hadn’t planned to lose two major characters so close together, but I think that the deaths were qualitatively different enough that they didn’t blur together, or overshadow each other. Reader reactions matched – and even exceeded – what I had hoped for.

I haven’t got any more major character deaths lined up for the immediate future – which isn’t to say that they won’t happen. I have to keep us all on our toes, after all.

Picking up

I’m doing better. My last post was somewhat dire, but it needed to be said. I had been silent too long. I am immensely grateful to all of those who responded, publicly or otherwise.

At the moment, I’m in the process of disconnecting emotionally from all of that stuff. It’s not an instant thing – it’s a gradual separation, and I have to remind myself sometimes that this thing doesn’t matter, and that thing isn’t quite so important. I’m dealing with the fallout and attempting to reduce any further damage to myself or anything else I still care about, but I’m getting there. I’m like a buoy that has remembered how to float again.

I’m also sleeping better. The chest pains still come and go, particularly if I get wound up (they’re one of the more extreme and unpleasant symptoms of CFS, and only turn up when it’s particularly bad for me), but I’m starting to come back to a more even keel. It’s never great, but at least I’m not as shaky and emotionally strung-out as I was.

As I’ve said a couple of times over the past few days – I prefer my drama on the page rather than in my life. Let’s put it back where it belongs.

So, I’m picking up the Apocalypse Blog and slinging it in a new direction. Both the blog and I needed a change and a bit of rejuvenation.

I allowed a post to get a little bit romantic, after fighting to stop it from becoming sappy. I think I rearranged it about three times before I was happy. It was fun! It has been ages since I’ve had the chance to do something like that, mostly because I’ve been beating Faith down with very unromantic stuff. But it’s still there, bubbling under, and Faith deserves to have a bit of a break from being pounded on emotionally.

The other plot-stuff relating to Haven is also coming up towards a turning point. It has been a long climb, and it’s almost time to run down the other side. I just have another thread or two to get in place, and then we’ll see what the shape of it all looks like. Now that I have more mental energy to devote to it again, I’m looking forward to seeing how it all comes out.

I had two bits of bad news today. The first was from an old friend of mine, someone I haven’t spoken to in a while due to various life stuff on his end. I didn’t know how bad it was until he spoke to me this morning. I’m helping him out where I can, though it’s difficult when he’s on another continent. We worked something out, and hopefully he’ll be able to get himself and his fiancee in a more comfortable position now. I’m relieved that I was in a position to help him out.

I came across an inspirational quote earlier, which made me think of him: “Emotional security is just as important as financial security.” (P.K. Shaw) I think he’d agree with that.

It relates to the second bit of bad news I got today, too. It’s family-related and I don’t want to get into it right now, but it’s more saddening than stressful. I’m doing what I can to ease things, even if it’s just being an ear when it’s needed, and offering a spare bed. It’s not a problem I can solve but that doesn’t mean I can’t help the people I love.

If it’s not one thing, it’s another at the moment. But I’m okay. I’m healing. Things aren’t great, but they’re getting better.

If you want an image to take home with you: My heart is as big as a star and covered in bandaids. They’ll fall off when they’re ready.

Bruised

The last two weeks have been hell for me. I can’t remember the last time I was this stressed, strung out, hurt, and inclined to cry.

As I’ve mentioned before, the team leader I’m replacing at work has been having complications with her pregnancy. The week before last was a huge deadline for us – the delivery of a three-year-long project. In the middle of it, the TL announced that she had preeclampsia and had to go into hospital straight away.

The good news is that she’s doing okay – she was due to be sent home this weekend, still pregnant (she’s at about 31 weeks now). I went to see her the other day and things are going okay there. Everyone is relieved about that.

Still, I was left holding the can to deliver this project’s work, with barely a clue about what was required as the TL was training me as we went. So the week involved a lot of scrabbling around for me, desperately trying to make sure that a) I knew what needed to be done and b) someone was actually doing it.

We made it. I can hardly believe it, but we did. I have an awesome team there. Big huge relief, big fat tick for all of us.

But I couldn’t relax. The TL had been training me on the delivery process, but we only do that once every few years – all the stuff that comes in between was going to be handed over after the deadline. Which meant that last week I had to figure out what the hell to do next, because nothing had been handed over to me. There are lots of tiny pieces scattered around that I have to make sense of.

The TL was good enough to email me from hospital, sending me stuff that I needed to know. But still, it was stress city. I’m still not sure exactly how many balls I’m supposed to have in the air there, apart from ‘a lot’. I feel like I’ve had no breathing space.

On top of all the work stuff, the communal writing project I’ve been putting together went sideways. Badly.

The day before the TL went into hospital, one of the project’s writers attacked me in a meeting. I won’t go into detail, but suffice to say that a couple of members of the group believe that they should be able to do whatever they want and to hell with the rest of the group, and they didn’t like it when I said that wouldn’t fly. Rather than trying to tackle the problem and work out a solution, spending two hours trying to shout me down was the option they chose.

I was shaking by the time they left. I don’t give under that kind of pressure and I don’t put up with bullying, but I wasn’t in any shape to handle an attack like that emotionally.

If it had just been one of them, I think I could have dealt with it. But it wasn’t. I spent the rest of the week in isolation – two of the group decided to stop talking to me in favour of the ringleader. It wasn’t a good week for me for so many reasons.

Then it got worse. I tried to speak to the ringleader to straighten things out and he refused to talk to me. I had the other two ambush me after work, so that they could tell me about how selfish and unfair I’m being, and how unhappy they are. They weren’t interested in my side of things. It had turned into a whole drama of the sort I thought I’d left behind at secondary school.

It was all way more than I was prepared to put up with. I spent half of last week worrying about what would fall on me next, where the next attack would come from. My CFS was so bad that I was having chest pains most days – stress makes it worse and this was a pressure on me all of the time. I felt like I hadn’t smiled in forever. Worse, it was showing – I don’t tend to show that kind of stuff in public, but people noticed. I was just too tired to pretend any more.

I put a lot of work into that project. I set up the world, the concept, the wiki, the forum, and the website, organised meetings, and helped others plan characters and plot stuff. I did it because I love writing and I had a group of friends I wanted to share it with.

It had got to the stage when I dreaded someone bringing it up in conversation. I didn’t know what was coming at me next, what other thing would go wrong. This thing that I love wasn’t fun any more – it was so terribly far from fun. I couldn’t see a way to salvage it, and I really didn’t want to try. I don’t give up on things easily – I work hard to make things go, but this wasn’t worth it. It just really wasn’t worth it.

I waited until after my Creative Writing Group meeting on Friday night to end it. Most of the group was there and I was determined to do it right. I wanted to do it in person, not by email, which can be read in so many ways. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I was trembling before I even started. I got through it, even though the ringleader walked out halfway through with great protestations. I said my piece, I explained my reasons, I named no names (in an attempt not to make it worse), and I almost broke down.

I had intended to come straight home afterwards – I knew I’d be a mess – but the half of the group not directly involved in the drama insisted that I stay. They made sure I was okay, and it took a while for that to happen. It felt like an hour before I stopped shaking and teetering on the edge of crying at any moment. But they were so good.

They didn’t know a lot of what had happened – the last thing I was going to do was drag more of them into it and make it a huge fight between all of us. I don’t play those kinds of games. That’s why I stopped it when I did – to preserve what little was left between us all. They had seen enough in the meetings to know what had caused it for themselves. By the time I came home, I felt a lot less alone in all of this. I am so grateful for them.

Now all that’s left to deal with is the fallout. Those involved in all the bitching that went on behind my back say that they don’t want this to ruin any friendships. Again, that’s why I ended the whole thing, but it’s going to take some work from everyone to mend what’s been damaged.

I’m bruised, all the way through. Every time I think it’s finished and I can start to move on, something happens to poke the bruise again. The stress has made me so sick that I’ve spent most of the weekend on the couch, attempting to recover – and even in that there has been poking. I’ve lost a project I cared about, and friends have turned against me. I just want a break from the pressure now. I want it over.

I know that this crap has been affecting my writing, and that makes me feel even worse. The Apocalypse Blog has been strained of late – I almost missed a few days, but it has been my one escape through all of this shit. And I was determined that they weren’t going to fuck up my perfect record for me.

It’s been really hard to get into the mood to write – even today, I’m writing this because my brain doesn’t want to click into Faith mode. Sometimes it has been the one time when I didn’t think about the project and all the crap that was being slung my way. Other times, it was hard to see past the pile of crap to the blank page. Most of the time, I struggled to get something down.

I’m hoping that this week will be better. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to sleep properly tonight, and that AB will come back on track and pick up pace again. I have so much planned for it. I’m hoping that this whole unpleasant business can be finally put into the ground and we can all move on.

Hope with me – I could use the help right now.