Pneumonia = Interruption of Service

I went to the doctor this morning, because my fever is still high and my chest is bad. He sent me straight off to get an x-ray, and within an hour and a half, told me that I had pneumonia. 

What the hell. I don’t know what to think right now. He put me on a couple of antibiotics and told me to come back on Monday. If I get worse, I have to go straight to hospital. Holy shit. 

Wasn’t what I was expecting. As my dad says, ‘Trust me to get pneumonia in a subtropical climate.’ It’s more scary than I had thought it would be.

The doc said I won’t get better for a couple of days at least. So here I am, keeping on keeping on. Hoping I don’t have any hospital time in my future.

Needless to say, going to be a bit of a bump in AB service. I have another couple of days’ worth of posts I can get up, and after that it depends how I’m going. I’ll be back, my faithful readers. 

Talk to you all soon.

Handwriting

This week has been better. It has been up and down but, on the whole, better. It feels so good to be able to say that.

It got off to a bad start – the CFS has really been pulling me down lately (as I’ve complained about a lot), and last week was a mess. But the energy levels shifted about mid-week, and the braindead turned into brain-active, which is always nice. The body is still sluggish, but at least the mind appears to be mostly working. I got a lot more achieved at work and have been able to attack some other stuff that I’ve been meaning to do. Go me!

I managed to get the next instalment of Writing Tips done this week, too, but managed to forget to email them to myself. I’m going to need to VPN in to work to get them (not that I was writing them at work or anything – lunch hour writing! It was!). I will hopefully get that posted tonight or tomorrow.

The AB Cast page has been updated and expanded, including past cast members and proper links to character-centric posts. I haven’t finished tagging up all the existing posts yet (there are a lot of them!), so that job isn’t complete, but the framework is all there. Big fat tick.

I’m getting a lot of ideas for the Apocalypse Blog, which is always good. Thanks to my current technical issues (stupid laptop battery making it impossible to write on the train), I haven’t been able to get them all written the way I wanted. By the time I get home, I’m way too tired to be able to concentrate on writing properly, so my commute is really the best time for me to get stuff done during the week.

I gave up trying to use the laptop halfway through this week and switched over to paper-and-pen writing. It has been a rude reminder of why I don’t like to write that way. My brain is always six steps ahead of my hand, I keep thinking of stuff I want to add in or have missed, my handwriting is a mess, and the writing itself comes out sounding so different to the way I usually write. 

I’m going to have to heavily rework the posts I’ve done on paper to keep it sounding like Faith. I’ve managed to get today and tomorrow’s posts all edited and up, and I should get a couple more sorted out today. I wound up writing stuff a bit out of order this week, because one post went sideways and needs to be split up into two very separate ones, and there were events in the middle that I had missed out, and… yeah. This week hasn’t been my most organised and together. 

I’m going to persevere with the handwriting, though. I have to do a lot of work on what I end up with, but the basic material is still there. It’s giving me a base to work off, which is much better than a blank page. It’s better than last weekend, when I wound up having to write a lot of the stuff from scratch and post it all in one go. The time spent concentrating on AB gives me more time to think things over and work ideas through. I even spent one train journey just writing down notes of the plotpoints and conversations I wanted to cover because so many things kept coming to mind. Those notes should help me get the next week’s posts in the right order and progression.

For the time being, I think I’m going to have to restrict myself to one post a day. I know I keep saying that I’m aiming for that, but I’m going to be strict about it now. It’s turning into so much work to get everything done that I’m struggling to keep up. Yes, I am going to bite the bullet and order a new battery for the laptop – normal service will return once I can write ‘properly’ again. Which means me and the laptop on the train with ears plugged into an iShuffle.

It has been an interesting experiment, this handwriting endeavour. It’s making me much more aware of how I write and when. Anyway! Back to editing AB posts. Mustn’t get too distracted by my own musings. More later!

Centenary dance!

Just a moment ago, the 100th post went live on the Apocalypse Blog. WHOO-HOO!

It feels like a real milestone. It turned out to be luck that there was a bit of a resolution in it (with Matt finally joining the group and leaving the nasty sharks behind), and that pleases me immensely.

I’m two months into my (goal) year of AB, and it’s still fun to write. I still sit down with loads of ideas and so much stuff that I want to do that I struggle to fit it all into the posts. I still have a pinboard full of notecards, marking out the places I want to go with it.

There’s lots, lots more in store. It’s hard (particularly for me at the moment, but I’m not going to go on about that right now, because YAY), but I am loving it. I hope you all are too!

100 posts. Wow. Picture me dancing.

Low

I looked into getting the laptop fixed, and the Apple store wants to diagnose it first because it might not be the battery causing the problem. Even though it only acts up when it’s running off the battery. Money is so tight that I’m wary of buying a new battery in case that doesn’t help, and I’m stuck with the same issue and less cash.

So frustrating. I don’t know when this money issue is going to sort itself out. As soon as it is sorted, I’m going to pick up a mini notebook to write on anyway, so the new battery seems like a waste of money.

Except that it’s driving me nuts. I lost a chunk this afternoon (despite compulsive saving every two seconds) and it’s almost down to 20mins before it cuts out now. Hardly worth lugging it all the way to work and back for that. I can’t get a post written in one sitting and I’m worried that that’s starting to show. I’m sure that I’m forgetting stuff and worried that it’s sucking more than it should.

I certainly can’t keep up with AB like this. I think I’m going to try switching to pen-and-paper for the rest of the week. I don’t particularly want to – the posts will come out differently if I do, because I write differently when I handwrite. Hopefully I can tidy it up enough in the typing/editing. 

Bear with me, my kind readers. I shall attempt to reduce the level of suck and keep the Apocalypse Blog rolling along.

In the meantime, I added a Cast page to the blog so you can keep track of who is where and why. I’m planning to expand on it and make proper use of tags to mark up the character-centric posts. I have a lot to go through, so bear with me. 

Now if only I can get some more sleep. Where can I get more sleep? Anyone? No. Oh well. 😉

Destination achieved

I got all of this week’s posts sorted out yesterday – rewritten, tidied up, and scheduled properly. Huzzah! It took all of Sunday afternoon to get it done, but it’s sorted out now. And, even better, I have a couple of ideas for next week as well that I’m itching to write (I was afraid I’d be a bit burned out after a weekend full of AB-stuff, but apparently not!).

Unfortunately, the laptop battery is down to 20-25mins of life before it cuts out on me, so I could only get down a fraction of what I wanted to write this morning. I’m going to check out a possible battery supply store here in town at lunchtime – I don’t want to buy one until my current money situation is sorted out, but this is ridiculous. I think I’m just going to have to bite it and do it.

Got the emails sorted out for the writing groups as well, so that’s one more thing off my list. Not sure what to prep for the novelling group yet – we shall see! We probably don’t need anything this time around, but I’ll see if I get ten minutes with my writing books before the meeting.

I was going to do another writing tips entry this weekend (I have one I’ve been poking at since last week), but I didn’t get to it yet. It’s on my list – hopefully I’ll get the chance to sort it out in the next couple of days. I have an aunt visiting, so doing it in the evenings isn’t really possible at the moment.

I think that’s it for this morning. Time to get my head down and sort work out. I am feeling better about things. This is nice.

Sanity, check?

Not such a productive day today. I’m a bit burned out after this week.

Last night was my writing group meeting. Great fun, as always! I had 16 people turn up – I think that’s the biggest turnout yet! I had forgotten what it was like to have so many people to handle. I enjoyed it, though, and got some good feedback on the piece I had turned in. Big group of us went to dinner afterwards – it’s good to get to know my writers more!

Today I struggled to get the AB posts up. I decided that I had a better idea for how today’s posts should go, so I wound up rewriting them. Which means that I also need to rewrite tomorrow’s, and probably Monday’s. Ahhhh.

I’ve got one of tomorrow’s posts sorted out. That should give me enough time to get the rest up and sorted. I think I’m going to call it a day for post-writing, as my head really isn’t in the right space. I know what I want to do with it, and I don’t want to ruin the momentum and feel of it because I was tired when I wrote it.

I managed to get the Chronology page up today, though, so that those new to the blog can see what comes where. Hopefully that’ll be useful. Almost come to the end of the Family section now. I have the name of the next one in mind; hopefully that’ll kick things up a notch, too. Not that the blog is lacking in excitement, I think (and hope!).

Today I got to the first marker on my pinboard for AB’s plot. Huzzah! I have been trying not to rush to the plot-markers I have already planned out, letting the story take its own path there. I didn’t want to rush past other things on the way, but tried to keep up the momentum at the same time. Two months in and we’re only just getting to the start of the stuff I’ve had in mind since we started this adventure – my goal of keeping it going for a full year is seeming possible at the moment. 

The next marker is much closer than 2 months away, though. Going to be time to throw some more (different) complications at them soon. Ahahahaha.

The Two Sentence Story competition for this week ends tomorrow. I’m curious to see what happens! My first entry is still doing well – it was in third place the last time I checked. Cross your fingers for me, or better yet, go give me lots of pretty stars! 😉

My aunt is coming over from NZ tomorrow. Have to get more AB written and scheduled. It is entirely possible that my head might explode.

It never goes smoothly

Yesterday was an exercise in frustration. I was overtired and restless, and couldn’t settle to anything.

I tried to write AB posts, and managed to get one down. But my brain didn’t want to focus on being creative, so I left it alone before I wrote something awful. I’m wrangling my way through a big and important encounter for Faith, and I don’t wany my restlessness to suck all of the emotion out of it. I managed to do most of the second part of the encounter this morning, before my laptop battery crapped out.

Which leads me to frustration number two. I’ve checked out a few utilities (thanks Ann for linkies), and they all tell me that the battery is not well. I tried to do a bit of manual reconditioning, but that requires being able to fully drain the battery, which I can’t do (the computer switches off when it hits about 72% charge remaining and won’t stay on until I plug it in). I reset the PMU a couple of times, but that made no difference. According to the stats I found, it hasn’t done the cycles that would be expected of this type of battery before replacement, but it’s over four years old now.

I think the only thing for it is a new battery. Which is perfect, because I really can’t afford it this month. I’m gonna have to just cope with about half an hour of frantic typing on the train before it switches itself off on me (I save very frequently, so I don’t tend to lose work). It’s not long enough to do a proper AB post, but better than attempting to do it longhand. I might see how I go with writing posts in the evenings as well, but that depends on how drained I am after work.

I also tried to set up my computer at home for VPN access to work. Got everything installed okay, but despite checking with the tech guys twice, I still didn’t have all the logins required to get into the system. I’ll have to try to get that out of them today so I can test it out tonight. Also, someone switched my machine off in the office, which meant that the VPN wouldn’t have worked anyway, as it has to be on for me to log into. Rrrrr.

On the plus side, I decided to ease my technical frustations by putting together a test-site for the next fictional blog I have percolating in the back of my head. Definitely not going to start writing it until AB is done (because my head will explode), but it’s nice to have the site all tidied up and sorted. Spent an evening fighting with CSS code, and came out mostly victorious. It doesn’t display completely right on Safari, but it looks fine on a Windows machine.

And now, here I am at work, using up some lunchtime to post. Haven’t had a very productive morning, but hopefully this afternoon will be better.

I love lists

I had a time management course at work a couple of weeks ago, learning how to make the best use of my time, how to plan, and so on. Useful stuff! Nothing I didn’t already know, and most of the stuff I do already. I do like to be organised when I can be.

Lists are a good thing. All those bits that I have to get done laid out, and can be ticked off in a productive manner. It gives my OCD side a happy glow. 

So far today I have edited and scheduled up this week’s AB posts, poked Twitter with a stick and tweeted like an overcaffeinated loon, and sent out emails to my two writing groups to prepare for this month’s meetings. 

Last night I did the final edits on my novel and sent the submission in to the Debut Dagger competition. Thanks to everyone who gave me feedback on it and helped me pull it into shape!

Still to go this weekend, I have to set my PC up for VPN access to work and test it. This is in case the rail strike goes ahead on the 16th Feb, as it is currently scheduled to do. No way I’m getting to the office if that happens, so I might as well work from home!

I also have to read and comment on a couple of writing pieces for my mum, take apart the vacuum system built into the house so I can clean it out, and plan the writing group meeting on Friday. I want to get a few more AB posts done, too, to give myself a bit of breathing space.

I’d like to start putting up some of the writing info that I amass for my writing groups on here. I’m finding that a lot of the same issues come up when we do exercises and workshop pieces. I’ve already got one piece up on the local writing forum, but there’s not much activity there at the moment. I think I’ll put them here too. No harm in that, right?

Right. So there’s my list for this weekend. Best get on with it, I suppose. 😉

Posts – check!

Just finished scheduling up the next week of Apocalypse Blog posts. It seems like my regular Saturday activity! 

I’m trying to do things a little bit differently this week. Not hugely different! Don’t fret. But as the posts are getting longer, I felt that something needed to be done.

Now, I don’t want to start cutting back on the content. I don’t go off on many tangents (not half as often as I’d like), but there’s a lot happening right now. Tensions within the group, characters causing friction – and explaining that friction takes time (and text). But they have more to worry about than being annoyed with each other, and I don’t want to lose sight of that. The last thing I want is for this to turn into a soap opera. So I have to throw in external issues as well, to give the whole thing some perspective (and excitement – let’s not forget about that).

Rather than cut back on the content, I’m breaking it down into smaller chunks. That means more posts on the same topic, but that’s okay. (Because WordPress handles the actual posting through schedules, it’s no more effort for me. It’s not like I have to remember to go do it every day.) 

I have had it suggested that I should spread the posts out over days, so that there’s only one a day (this kind of post-count is my goal). In some cases, I do do that, though it’s difficult because it stretches out all the travelling time for the group. It’s hard to keep that within reasonable bounds and cover everything I need to at the same time.

However, that tactic is going to have to wait. This week, I have a particular date that I’m working towards, and certain things that I need to get done in preparation for that. (No, I’m not going to tell you what those things are. 😉 ) So I couldn’t spread the content out much at all. 

The result is that I have 12 posts going up over the next 7 days. Oh dear. I’m not doing well at the post-a-day thing. Oh well! I fail to care too much. Better that than lose some fun content.

There’s also another actiony scene in there (which always leads to the spammy). I’ve tried a slightly different approach on this one, compared to the fight scene that gave me a headache a couple of weeks ago. I’m not sure if it works, but it’s a different kind of scene. I’d love to know what people think of it! Keep an eye out for it on the 12th Feb.

Right. Just have next Saturday’s posts to sort out, which I might do tomorrow when my brain’s had a bit of a rest from all things apocalyptic. Hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I do writing it!

Brain – off switch?

I wish I had one. The thing with being creative regularly is that it makes you more creative. This was the point of starting the Apocalypse Blog! And it’s working! I’m learning, I’m enjoying my daily writing sessions, and I’m actually writing every day.

And now I’m starting to get ideas. For more fictional blogs. Other ways to use the medium, other stories that I can tell this way. Like a ship’s log, told by the ship.

It’s exciting and wonderful, but I so don’t have time for any more right now! I’m barely scraping AB into my schedule at the moment (laptop issues are not helping by cutting my writing time short every commute). I am writing the ideas down, though! They need a lot of work.

If AB doesn’t kill me this year, maybe I’ll do another one afterwards. The temptation is definitely there! Never mind that I’m a day or two behind schedule (in next week’s stuff, not this week’s). It’s still the best fun. 🙂