Speaking silences

Silences are powerful things. We see it every day, in life and in fiction: weighted silences, pregnant pauses, comfortable quiet, air so taut that sound doesn’t dare disturb it.

Lately, I’ve been using silences in my fiction more and more. I’m finding that it’s a fascinating tool, and a way to look at a character that offers information even when they’re trying not to give anything away. Silences, in and of themselves, say something.

A rule that I try to hold myself to is that everything must have a purpose in my writing. If I can, I make a single element in a scene do double- or even triple-duty.

It is very easy to get into the flow of dialogue and forget just how useful the lack of a response can be. I’ve seen examples of discussions where the participants spill everything, answer every query no matter how uncomfortable, simply because they are in a place where they are supposed to speak. Ask yourself: would they really answer that question? Would they really reveal all these things, or is it the author pushing them to do it because they need to move the plot along? Question everything. Make every reaction and lack of reaction earn its place on your page.

Silence is a choice, and this is why is it such a powerful tool for a writer. Every choice our characters make tells us something about them.

Think about the impact of the person who falls quiet, or looks away, or is suddenly busy doing something else. A person can give an entire response in just a glance, whether it is framed with ice or a smile. Or they may choose the more subtle avoidance of not answering a question, by changing the subject or commenting on something tangential, shifting verbally towards more comfortable subjects. Their silence may hide in a punch or a kiss. A more obvious silence is left in the wake of the one who walks away, with or without dramatic door-slamming.

All of these reactions tell us something. Maybe we don’t know exactly where mother’s best china is, but do we really need to? Now we know that the character doesn’t want to talk about the china or its current location. Perhaps they’re ashamed, or guilty, or secretly have it being restored to its former glory as a surprise.

Sometimes, the most fascinating character is the one who isn’t yelling like the rest. Sometimes, they’re the most dangerous. Perhaps they’re bored, or considering their options, or waiting for an opening to coldly stick a knife in, or so furious that it’s better for everyone if they don’t let it out.

When the building is falling down, the image of the woman on the ground standing still, looking up, not screaming or even trying to get out of the way, speaks more loudly than all the screeching steel and crunching concrete.

And when someone stops dead, frozen in place by the words or actions of another, we may not need to see any more. The fact that they have stopped, that what they have heard or seen has touched them in a deep or shocking way, tells us something.

I have a deep love of mouthy characters, who will go off on a rant when pressed the right way and let everyone know exactly what they’re thinking. No holds barred, their inner selves bared and daring anyone to counter them. Starry is this type of character: when she’s pushed in certain ways, a switch will flip and she’ll lose her shit in many different ways (mouthing off is just one of them). She has torn open time and space, threatened pirates, and blown up half a moon in fits of temper. I absolutely love pushing her buttons.

Similarly, Rosie has no qualms about letting people know exactly what she thinks, loudly and in the most crass language she knows. It’s actually an effort for her to keep her mouth shut, usually prompted by a superior on the ship. She expresses herself baldly and is quiet cheerful about punching people in the face, and I love that about her.

At the same time, I adore the quieter characters on the Starwalker. Elliott is a good example: for all his foul-mouthed-ness, he’ll close down if things get uncomfortably personal and all you’ll get out of him is a scowl. There might be a relationship building between him and someone else, but if anyone mentioned it directly, he’d avoid the whole subject, probably scoff it away. Put a hand in his in private and he’ll be fine, just as long as you’re not vocal about it.

Dr Valdimir only ever speaks about professional or crew-related matters, never about himself or his past. He also refuses to display personal affections in public, though for different reasons to Elliott, going so far as to ignore or pull away from his lover when other people are around.

In a similar vein, Cameron only tends to talk about professional matters. She’s probably the most carefully-spoken of the crew, and only ever speaks when she has something of value to offer to the situation. Otherwise, she falls into observer mode, to absorb as much information as possible. She, in particular, knows the value of other people’s silences and the weight of what they’re not saying. As the Chief of Security, it’s part of her job, and she has been bitten enough to know the importance of it.

As part of building my characters, I usually work out this type of thing. What would make them uncomfortable? Shut down? Clam up? Knowing what would make them close their mouth can be just as useful as knowing what would make them explode.

As with all elements of building characters (and worlds), I wind up with way more material than I can ever use. For example, with Elliott, no-one has tried to mention the budding romance going on, not even the person he’s having it with. It might come up one day, but it hasn’t yet. And that’s okay. The Lieutenant hasn’t confronted Dr Valdimir about being ignored, either (at least, not on the page). But I know those moments are there as options, should they become appropriate and necessary for the story at any point.

I feel compelled to add that not wanting to reveal something (as the writer) isn’t a good enough reason to make a character silent. Too often, I’ve seen stories that stretch themselves out by refusing to have characters exchange appropriate information. Just like having characters spilling too much, too easily, this doesn’t do the characterisation or the story any good. It’s a cheap and lazy way to maintain tension and make the story longer without having to do something creative and interesting.

The best rule of thumb is that if a character would say something, have them say it. But know when they would be silent. Use that. Make your readers join the dots. Hint at things. Tease.

Because those silences can say so much more than whatever words they might trot out will. Embrace the power of your silences. Use them. Wallow in them. Enjoy the quiet of life and all it can do for you.

When Starwalker Went Sideways

A strange thing happened to me in October last year. I found myself in a position that I had never been before: a story I was writing was off-track and I couldn’t see any way to pull it back.

I pride myself on not doing that. I’m strict about continuity and sticking to the precedents and events that I have written into the story. The destination might change, but never the journey walked thus far. I push myself to be creative enough to write my way out of any particular gnarly situation I throw my characters into.

All of a sudden, that wasn’t working for Starwalker. I knew where I wanted the story to go, the things I wanted to have happen, and it seemed to make sense on the surface. But the more I wrote it, the more it felt wrong. The tone was off, sliding into darkness and despair. There’s a place for that kind of tone and I’ve played with it more than once, but this was different. It was like the whole story was sliding down a dark hole (or, appropriately, being sucked into a black hole).

More than that, I found I was pushing the characters harder than I liked. They were resisting the path I wanted them to take, and it was increasingly the fault of a big, looming being that they were facing down. More and more, the characters were becoming helpless, and the crew of the Starwalker are all capable, strong-willed people. Satisfying the outcomes are a result of at least some level of agency, not a lack of options that looks and feel a lot like railroading.

When it comes down to it, I just didn’t like the feel of it or where it was going. The more posts I wrote, the more I couldn’t see it coming to a ‘good’ end (by which I mean an ending that would be satisfying for me and my readers).

My readers were very kind. Some voiced concerns over the path the story was taking. Some expressed their unhappiness with the tone. None of them gave me a hard time about it.

Eventually, I had to admit that I’d got the story into a place that it couldn’t recover from gracefully and put a stop to it. Maybe it took me longer than it should have to come to that realisation, because I’m stubborn about these things and I didn’t want to admit it. I despise retcons. But to save the story, that’s exactly what I was going to have to do.

It’s not easy to admit that you’ve messed something up. When I wrote the post that let my readers know that I was going to reassess the path of the story and make some changes before moving forward, I was fraught with nerves. As supportive and forgiving as my readers are, this was going to be embarrassing at best, it was going to invite vitriol and criticism, and, at worse, lose me some of my readership.

To their credit (not mine), my readers were wonderfully understanding and supportive. Some expressed concerns they hadn’t voiced before, concerns that gelled with my own feelings, and some gladness that I was addressing it. I cannot say how much of a relief that was, especially after how much I’d beaten myself up about it all. With that particular worry behind me, I was able to turn to the task of fixing up the story with a lighter heart.

Throughout this process, I have thought long and hard about how I got into that place to begin with. How did things get so far off-track? How did I not spot it earlier and fix it?

I don’t think there was any one cause. I can’t point at a single thing and say ‘you were the problem’.

Part of it was that I was too committed to where I wanted the story to go. I’ve had something similar happen before, when I’ve had a clear idea of something I wanted to have happen, usually linked to a specific character, but it just didn’t work the way I thought it would. A character would have a particular need or drive that was at odds with my end goal, and either refused to do what I want or turned the tone sour. I could see that continuing would put them in an emotional place that wouldn’t work for a satisfying end, or it would taint that whole part of a story (for example, a character doing something because they have no choice, rather than being fired up and driven to do it under their own agency).

When it happened that time, this feeling was my cue to adjust my plan. I rolled out the implications of what I could see, didn’t like where it was headed, and adjusted before it got mired into the wrong path.

So why didn’t that happen this time? I think I pushed too hard, was too stubbornly holding onto my vision. I believed I could make it work. And, to an extent, I couldn’t predict just how dark and depressing the tone would get.

My personal frame of mind at the time had a lot to do with that. That’s not to say that I was in a dark or depressed place: I’ve never been truly depressed in my life, and I’m immensely grateful for that. But I was in a difficult place, emotionally and mentally.

My health around that time was not good. I was struggling with the fatigue (more than usual), and when that happens, my mental energy and attention span shrinks. I was pushing myself to keep up with everything, the serial included.

On top of that, my work had become very busy and stressful. I was asked to change teams to help sort out an issue, and had to switch projects in the middle of a release, which meant a huge amount of catch-up for me, including lot of rapid upskiling in a new area of our product (to me). (I wrote about this recently.)

Then there was the run-up to NaNoWriMo. Organising events, getting stuff in place, sounding enthusiastic and energetic on the forums, and being ready to hit the ground running from the Kick-off Party onwards. I had loads of help, but there were a lot of balls to keep an eye on. The Writer’s Retreat was a worry, because we weren’t getting the number of bookings that we were counting on (we wound up losing money on it in the end, but that’s another story).

So when I say that my frame of mind might have impacted my ability to troubleshoot Starwalker’s plotlines, that’s what I mean. Juggling varying sources of stress and distraction while dealing with soul-sucking fatigue is going to have an impact, no matter how much I push to stop it from showing.

I’m not blaming any one thing. I am grateful for my job, and while I’m under a lot of scrutiny right now, the challenge is good for me (and my career). I wouldn’t switch being an ML for anything; the work is completely worth it. The fatigue is something I try to manage and deal with, and I have to be honest with myself about my capabilities.

It has also been almost five years since I started writing Starwalker. That’s a long time on a single project, and I think I was starting to get burned out on it. I have taken short breaks from it before – a month is the longest I’ve taken before, I believe – but spending that long on a single thing runs the risk of settling into unhealthy patterns. Ruts, habits, grooves, patterns: they can be good or bad, and with few mental resources to call on, I think I let momentum carry me forward in the week-by-week posting further than I should have. It’s telling that I had the mental capability to deal with other stuff but not Starwalker.

So I wound up in a place that I couldn’t see my way out of, and I was so mentally drained in relation to the project that I wasn’t sure what to do next. So I called a halt to it. I admitted the position I had found myself in and put the story on hold while I took a break. I didn’t set myself a return date – something I always make sure I do – and only promised to return.

I think I did the right thing. I put Starwalker on hold during the first week of NaNoWriMo, and freed myself to do something completely different for a month. I put up the author note and tried not to worry about it (I’m a worrier), and mostly succeeded.

It was a much-needed break. It wasn’t about rest; it was about needing to do something else, something not Starwalker. I knew that it was the right thing to do as soon as the hiatus post went up and I could feel the weight lift from my shoulders. I was still bracing for any potential fall-out (which didn’t happen, thank goodness), but I had given myself permission to turn my attention to something else for a while, and it made all the difference.

After NaNo ended and I put Vampire Electric aside again, I took a week to myself, then started looking over the troublesome parts of Starwalker. I wound up retconning seven posts – nearly two months of work – to get back to a place where I could adjust the story’s path sufficiently. All through the break, I had let my subconscious chew on the problem, as well as consciously pondered ideas and options from time to time. Once I had my restarting point settled, I was ready to get going. And I did.

The break wound up being about six weeks in the end; posts resumed on Christmas Eve. It was actually a little later than I had hoped, but work was still insane and I wanted to make sure I restarted Starwalker right. I took the time I needed and I think the story is better for it.

I still find the whole incident rather embarrassing. I strive to do better.

Right now, I’m still juggling a lot of story elements and figuring stuff out as I’m going. A part of me wishes that I had taken more time to plan out the end of Starwalker Book 4 more thoroughly, but I think that’s fear from what happened. Over-planning kills stories for me, so I try not to. I try to have faith in myself that I can do this; I can find the ending that I want this story to have.

So far, I think it’s going well. I have a good idea of where I want it to go, I’m adjusting things on the fly, and I’m excited to get the next part written. The tone is lighter, the pace is faster, and the stakes are higher.

Here’s hoping I can pull the end of this book off well. Wish me luck! And strap in, it’s going to be a rocky ride.

2015: Hopes and goals

January is already nearly done, and I’m only just setting myself some goals? What can I say: it has been a busy year already.

But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been thinking about what I hope to achieve this year. Already, some planning has happened and things are shifting. So let’s get down to it! What stars am I aiming for this time?

 

Life Stuff

As annoying as it is, life stuff impacts on my ability to write and create the stories that are buzzing around in my head. So what are the things that I’m hoping to get done this year, and will they make my writing life easier?

Work

The beloved and begrudged day job pays the bills and makes everything possible. I have some hopes for improvement in this area, particularly with how challenging it is right now, but I really can’t complain.

I’m in the enviable position of:

• Having a job that pays my bills
• Enjoying the job and liking the people I work with
• Being relatively secure in my job
• Qualifying for long-service leave this year. I just need to decide when and how to use it!

I’m always leaning towards new prospects and opportunities, but really, staying happy and healthy in my current position will suit me just fine for this year.

Home

Over the past 18 months, I have reorganised my home to be more comfortable and conducive to writing. I’m most of the way through the process, so my main goals for 2015 in this area are to:

• Finish up the reorganisation, which mostly means:
  • Gutting the dining room and refilling it.
  • Sorting out the old office. It’s going to become a guest room or possibly a beanbag room. Or both.
• Enjoy my surroundings.
• Use my writing balcony more.

Health

Ah, the monkey on my back, the fly in my ointment. It hasn’t been good, though I’ve been keeping my head above water (which I judge by my ability to keep going to my day job). I’m hoping to do some investigations into potentially helpful avenues, depending on cost, and will mostly keep trying to look after myself.

 

Writing!

This is what we’re really interested in, right? What writing am I hoping to achieve this year? A tricky question, because I’m not sure if I should continue to aim high, or learn from last year and be more conservative.

I guess, at the end of the day, this is a list of things I want to achieve. So let’s start there!

Starwalker

After a hiccup in the latter part of 2014, Starwalker Book 4 is still under way. I’m still loving writing it, too. My aim is currently to finish up Book 4 and get to the end of the current arc.

My plan has always been to stop there. I’ve got the kernels of ideas for Book 5 brewing (the seeds are being planted in Book 4), but there’s not enough there to write. Yet. I don’t believe in starting blindly; I won’t write without knowing what it is I’m writing (I’ve done this before and it doesn’t work for me). It’s simply not ready.

On top of that, I have been writing Starwalker for 5 years now (!!!). I am immensely proud of that, and I’m just as in love with it now as I was when I started. But it’s time for a break. I’ve got projects piling up on my to-do list that I would love to get to, and right now, I don’t have headspace to seriously write more than one at a time.

So what does this mean? It means I’ll be putting a pin in Starwalker after Book 4 is complete. I may come back to it one day, but I’ll be taking a rest from it.

If I get the itch to play in the Starwalker realm, I may well continue building the Shorts. I have a list and an idea for most of them, and shorts are a good way to capitalise on downtime.

I may also look into publishing options. Self? Traditional? Kickstarter-funded? All good questions to consider.

Vampire Electric

I made good progress on this last year, and I want to capitalise on that this year. My long-term goal is to:

• Complete the second draft (currently about 50% done) and get to the end of the story
• Do an analysis of the draft and see how happy I am with it, and what work it needs. It might need to be broken up into multiple novel-sized chunks.
• Serialise the third draft, editing and reworking as I go.

For 2015, I want to work on the first of those bullet points. It’s going to be a big story; if current patterns hold true, I’ve got about 100,000 words left to write. This means I’m unlikely to finish it this year, but I’ll probably work on it as my NaNoWriMo project again and make a good-sized dent in the remainder.

Apocalypse Blog

These ebooks have been out for a while, and I’ll be honest: I’ve let them languish. I have edits I need to do to them, and new covers to apply, and new blurbs to write. I need to adjust the pricing and try to lift their market presence.

In all, it’s probably not a huge amount of work (though with marketing, it’s a bit of a black hole, so we’ll see), but I want to set aside the time and mental space to do it.

Vampire Victim Support Group

This is a lot of fun, and because they’re shorts, I’m hoping to be able to fit them in between other stuff. I’ve got a list of them roughly mapped out, and hope to expand the series over the next year. I’ve also got some big-picture ideas (the original idea was a group of loosely-connected vignettes, and I’ve started pondering ideas for the connective material), but we’ll see where that goes.

Tales from the Screw Loose

This project (otherwise known as the ‘robot brothel story’) has been lurking for a while and is almost in a state that’s ready to write. Talking with a friend about it recently, it’s easy to get enthusiastic and excited about it. It’s not going to be a short or quick project (current plan have a rough trilogy outlined), so this will take some investment. Probably a good one to serialise.

I’m not confident of my ability to get to this in 2015. The projects listed above could easily fill up the year, and I’m not in a place where I’d put this at the top of my list.

Chances are, what I’ll do is see whether I could cope with a second serial when I get to the stage of serialising Vampire Electric. That probably won’t be this year. So Screw Loose will remain on hold, for now, but not forgotten.

Other Stuff

I’m not entirely sure what this covers. I know I talked last year about putting anthologies together, but I really don’t have the mental energy for a project like that this year. Or at least, right now. I think the list above is plenty to keep me busy; everything else is on hold. Backburners. I’ll fight the urge to get distracted by squirrels and shiny objects.

I will add that I’m hoping to be a bit more regular with posts on this blog. I let a few things languish last year, so I’m aiming to be better this year. Finish what I start, which means putting up a lot of posts currently sitting as half-finished drafts. I’m getting there, one step at a time. Watch this space!

 

Writing Events and Community Stuff

I’m still very active in my local writing community. And by ‘active’, I mean that I organise a bunch of events, get people together, and have a load of writing-related fun. I have no intention of changing this. My writing friends are a constant source of support, amusement, inspiration, and comfort. I wouldn’t trade them for the world.

Monthly Writing Group and Write-in

That said, I am changing things up this year. The monthly events I run are successful and working, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be better. I have spread the events out over the month, sharing the load around a bit, and I’m hoping that will wind up being better for my health (previously, the two big monthly events were on the same weekend, which was a big, tiring time for me). It also spreads the cost of the events, which will help many of my attendees.

Writer’s Retreat

After the turnout and feedback we got last year, my co-ML (Municipal Liaison – I have a wonderful friend who helps me to organise the events) and I are in discussions about whether we will do another one this year. The main issue seems to be the cost and getting time away from family commitments. We can’t do anything about the latter, and we work to keep the prices as low as possible, but at the end of the day, if it’s not working, we need to be honest about it.

We’re looking at other ideas and options, and it’s likely that we’ll try something new and different this year. Cross your fingers for us! I’m sure it’ll be fun, if a lot of work, but it’s always worth it.

Writers’ Asylum

This has been a lot of fun over the past couple of years, and I’m aiming to run another one this year. I took feedback last year and have some ideas for how to change it up, so there’ll be a new setup this time. I’ve got the theme in mind and I think I know what the challenges should be. I’m hoping to make it fun for everyone who gets involved.

That’s everything! It’s a big list, now that I look at it all in one place. I’m both a little daunted and utterly ready to get going. So much to do, why waste time?

Let’s go. Let’s make 2015 better than 2014. Onwards and upwards, my friends.

I hope you’ll all join me on the journey.

Retrospective: the year that was 2014

Hard to believe that it’s already 2015. Sheesh! So much has happened, and yet, not anywhere as much as I had hoped.

2014 was a frustrating year for me. Struggles with my health meant struggles with everything else… but let’s take an honest look at what I accomplished last year, compared to what I set out to do.

I have been so grateful for the support and help of my family, friends, and readers this year. They have helped me achieve the house stuff, sent me well-wishes, and supported me when I was flagging. I don’t ask for help often or easily – I’m a very independent person – and I’ve needed a lot of it over the past year. Thanks to everyone who has been there, including those of you who I only talk to through a screen. Your words, your time, and your attention are always appreciated.

Home/life stuff:

• Day job – it continues, it’s going well, and I’m still utterly grateful for it. 🙂
• Big house change-around – not complete yet, but I’ve got the main parts tidied up and working. In 2014, I finally got a whole bunch of my comic book art framed and up on the walls, and I set up an awesome writing balcony for myself. Love that balcony, it’s wonderful. Still a bunch of work to go to ‘finish’ the change-around, though.
• Beating my health with a stick – it has been more like the other way around. Bah. 🙁

Writing stuff:

• Starwalker Book 4 didn’t quite go to plan. Due to health stuff, there were more delays and interruptions than I like, enough that I was frustrating myself. Late in the year, thanks to a few factors (I haven’t written a post about this yet, have I? I should do that), the fourth chapter took a bit of a turn down a dark alley, and proceeded to drag its feet, sucking and slurping along until I put a pin in it. I took a break from it for about six weeks, and I really needed that time to get my head straight and come back to the story fresh. The fourth book has had a little bit of retconning done and is now back on track, humming along on a much better path.
• Other Starwalker stuff – hasn’t really happened, mostly because Book 4 took much longer than expected, especially with the break and reset of a section. Nope, haven’t edited any of it, or done any more shorts yet.
• Vampire Electric – the second draft is coming along nicely! It was my NaNo project for 2014, and it is currently sitting at about 100,000 words. Disturbingly, I’m only about halfway through the story. It’s going to be a long one! I’m pleased with how it’s going, though, and looking forward to getting back to it at some point.
• Other projects – all pretty much on hold. With my health as it is, I just haven’t had the mental bandwidth to deal with multiple projects at the same time. Writing a web serial means that I have to have my attention pretty much glued to Starwalker the whole time. I don’t consider this a bad thing – I still love to write Starwalker – but it is a restriction. I did a little poking around on the edges of a couple of projects, planning a few things out, but nothing substantial. Yet.
• This blog – I didn’t have any particular goals around this, but updates have been spotty at best. I really should do better. I have a whole list of things I want to write about but just didn’t get to.

Writing community stuff:

• My Creative Writing Group is still going strong! We had a lot of fun over the last year, and the turnout continues to be strong. They’re a wonderful bunch of people and I learn a lot with them.
• I tried something a little different with the Writers’ Asylum this year. It went well! Some changes were made due to feedback from the previous year and they seemed to work well. I got some more feedback and I have a plan to try for the next one. Ideas are in motion.
• NaNoWriMo went well. I wrote loads, and events were big and crazy, and we spent a weekend on an island again. There were a couple of things that didn’t go so well – a couple of issues with people, which is always a danger when dealing with a big, diverse group, and our TGIO party got rained off – but nothing we couldn’t work around or get past. We tried a couple of new things, and learned some stuff we’ll put into practice next year. On the whole, a successful month.

2014 was pretty hard on me, but looking at it this way, I think I achieved more than I give myself credit for. I think it’s because I had to fight harder than usual to get things done, and I champ at my own restrictions because I demand more from myself than what I’m currently capable of.

I think the most disappointing thing in the whole year was having Starwalker wander off-track and having to retcon to pull it back into line. That upset me, because I try to be better than that. I try not to let the pressures in the rest of my life bleed into my writing, and I failed.

On the other hand, the thing I am most grateful for is the support I got when I took that hiatus and took the time to get my head straight. I often say how wonderful my readership is, and this is just another example of how much they do for me, and how much they mean to me. There was not a single complaint, even when they admitted that they weren’t enjoying the story so much since it started to slide. There was support and encouragement, and understanding. They are what I like to call ‘awesome humans’, and I’m proud to have them as my readers.

I’m also proud that I stood up and took action when the story was going wrong. It took a while for me to admit to myself that I was in a place I couldn’t write my way out of, but once I had, I didn’t hide it. It’s not easy to put your hand up and admit you made a mistake, especially to the people you want to have adore and trust you. So, yes, it sucks that I got into that position and I’ll be doing my damnedest to never be there again. But I think I handled it well – or at least I didn’t suck at it – and it came good in the end.

Perhaps that’s the best thing I can take away from 2014: there were many battles in it, but I got through them and out the other side. I have learned things, and grown, and I’m still pleased to be who I am. Onwards! Into a shiny new year and all the promise that it holds.

Time pressure

So many projects, so little time. I’ve talked a lot on this blog about how much I struggle with my health and fatigue (or at least, it seems that way to me). I work full time to support myself, too, so my available time to write is pretty restricted.

My project list is so long these days. I put the Works in Progress page up recently, and I’m still thinking of things that I should put on there. It’s a page that will be updated pretty frequently, I think.

It’s natural that I get frustrated by the restrictions in my life. I am brimful of stories and struggling to be able to get them down and share them. I have pieces of my heart I’m ready to give away but no hands to hold them in. Not enough spoons to carve them out with.

Okay, that metaphor might have got away from me there. But you get what I mean.

There’s something that happens to me when I feel this way for a length of time. The things I really want to do pile up and up, and I’m constantly tipping them back against the wall: not yet, not yet, wait your turn. I’ll get to you. Just hold on there.

At some point, that pile gets too high. The sheer volume of things I want to do but can’t becomes too much, and it topples. I’m right in there, standing underneath, and I give up and join in, tearing chunks out of the middle and strewing them around. Fine. Fine.

In my head, something shifts. In my chest, something gives way. I say ‘yes, I feel crappy all the time, and I have all these restrictions on me, and it sucks. And you know what? It’s not good enough. I’m sick of missing out on my own life. I want to do *this* and *this* and this other thing over here. And I’m damned well going to do them anyway.’ My brain is suddenly active, alive with urgency and ideas that are usually so far out of my reach.

Outwardly, I have a productive spurt. I write on this blog again, blurt out a stream of things that have been backing up for some time, and wind up scheduling them over days or weeks to spread them out. I clean my house. I sort papers that have been sitting in a messy pile for months. I throw stuff out that I’ve been meaning to get to. I plan out a chunk of a new project. I write shorts. I do some of those things that have been towering over me, blotting out sight of what progress I might be making with everything I’m missing out on.

Chronic fatigue is a tricky thing. Sometimes this is enough to pull me up for some time – weeks, months maybe. Sometimes it only lasts a short time before my energy dwindles again, maybe a weekend if I’m lucky.

That’s sort of where I am right now, on the up-kick of a productive spurt. I’m not sure how long it will last. It feels more forced than usual, driven by more determination than it has been in the past. I’ve been lower for longer lately, and I’m trying to pull myself up out of it.

Part of it is most likely prompted by some help I’m getting at home, and right now, I’ll eke the most out of every opportunity that I can get. If a door is open an inch, I’ll do my damnedest to kick it wide, or even a foot wider. Every little helps.

Right now, I’m feeling really positive. My day job is going well. Starwalker is a bit of a challenge (which I might talk about in another blog post), but I got last week’s post out on time and that’s a victory in my book. My writing group is going well. I spent last weekend hanging out with writer friends, writing. The Writer’s Retreat is coming along nicely. Now the pressure is off at home, I can spare the mental energy for looking into health options.

And I’m getting lots of ideas for stories. Some existing projects, as well as a whole new one.

I have figured out why Vampire Electric wasn’t gelling as smoothly as it should be for me: the villain is too off-screen and away from the action for too much of the story. I need to go back and rethink how he weaves in with the rest of the story and drives it forward. I’m planning to continue work on the second draft of the novel for this year’s NaNoWriMo project, and now I’m in a good position to fix it up when I do that.

I’m getting more clarity on some of the shorts I have on my list for Starwalker. I know roughly what I want to do for each character, but some are clearer than others.

I have an idea for a second VVSG vignette. It niggles at me.

The assassin-centric novel I wrote a few years ago is starting to itch again, too. I have a fairly good idea about how I want the rewrite to go, and how I might start to shift it into the Starwalker universe. With some more background work, I might even be able to work in the Fall of Earth, but that would be a sequel (or even two or three books down the track in that particular series).
More and more often, I’m finding that my stories come out as a series. Not serials, necessarily, but standalone novels seem to get bored in my brain and start breeding. Like dustbunnies (or plotbunnies). If I keep turning the idea over in my hands, I seem to realise there are three or four plots in there, not just one. So many books to write!

For example, Tales from the Screw Loose is now probably a trilogy, and much bigger than just a robot brothel (once I get down into the depths of the second, and definitely in the third, book). Again, the events in Starwalker are pushing this into a larger story (and I think it’s a lot better for it, mostly because straight erotica really isn’t my thing). Sexual politics, the automation of industry, the impact of refugees, entitlement, rebellion…

And then there’s the new story. It’s shiny and novel, and the more my brain picks at it, the more interesting stuff falls out. It’s called Splinter Soul, and the basic premise is that, some time ago, someone broke the world in a fundamental way. Souls are infinite and managed to survive being split when the planet fractured, and now people walk around with only splinters of the souls they should have. There’s magic involved, based around how much of their soul a person has managed to rejoin and what form they are most powerful in, so it’s in a person’s interest to try to find all the splinters of who they really are. The splinters are other creatures, some of them mundane, some of them fantastical. They might also be other people, and there might be dragons. There’s a role for reincarnation to play here, but I’m still figuring out the mechanics of that.

It’s still mostly a world right now, a setting with lots of fun pieces to play with. I’m having fun working it all out, and the mists of a story are forming in the background. I think, for once, I’ll have the antagonist before I have the protagonist nailed down. Maybe I’ll wind up making the villain the protagonist… now, there’s an idea. Ooo.

Just writing out those two paragraphs has given me two or three new ideas I can work in. It is unfolding.

This is how the mind of a writer goes. Right now, mine is firing on… maybe not all cylinders, but let’s call it five out of six (instead of the usual two or three).

I have to be careful not to push too hard. Not to throw too many balls into the air, lest they all fall down. I have to pace myself, at least a little, try to keep things reasonable. I don’t want to push myself into some kind of collapse.
But I do want to push. I want to enjoy this. I have so many toys and I mean to play with them. I want to make the most of this up-swing in productivity while it lasts.

There’ll be a price at some point. I’m borrowing spoons. But hell, I’m going to make it worth it.

What am I up to?

In an effort to be more proactive about self-promotion, I’ve been thinking about the resources available on this site and upgrading them.

Truly, what I should do is build a new author website and move all this content over there. I already have the domain (melanieedmonds.com), but getting it built is going to be a chunk of work. I’ll need to hire an artist to do the banners I want (I already know what I want to do there). I’ll probably need to learn some more CSS to make it look the way I want, too (or hire someone to do that, and that’s beyond me at the moment, too!).

Rather than hang around and wait for ‘one day’ when I might get to all that, I decided to go ahead and build out this site. At least the content will be easy to transpose, should I get the full author website sorted.

Hence, we now have a handy My Writing section here on this site. What is it? Go take a look, lazy!

…I’m kidding; of course I’ll tell you. It lists the stories I’ve done that you can access right now, with links to my ebooks on every store they’re available as well as the original websites. I’ll be working to expand the links available as I find my way into different stores, libraries, and subscription services.

Under that, the Works in Progress page lists, predictably, the things I’m working on at the moment. I’m hoping to keep this up-to-date as I work through stuff (I change projects so infrequently that it shouldn’t fall behind too often).

You may also note that stuff I’m not actively working on is listed on that latter page, too. This is stuff that I have in the works and mean to get to… sometime. Some of it’s old, some of it’s new, some of it I have talked about before to varying degrees. Most of it is ticking over in my brain in some capacity or other.

Maybe these pages will be a kick up the arse for me to get moving with some of this stuff. Fingers crossed, right?

What do you think? Is this worth doing? Of interest?

Got any comments about the projects that are listed there? Suggestions? Requests? Reactions? I’d love to hear them!

Narrowing focus

So, I’m not dead. I know it might have seemed that way from this blog, and for that I apologise.

The truth is, this year has been kinda hard on me. My health continues to struggle along and my ability to juggle multiple distractions has shrunk drastically.

For those familiar with the spoon theory, I’ve had fewer spoons to spend lately and I’ve had to manage them ruthlessly. (For those unfamiliar with the spoons theory, go take a look! It explains so much.)

When I get challenged for time or energy (or as things have been lately, for both), my focus narrows down. I cold-bloodedly prioritise the moving parts in my life. It’s the only way I can cope.

The truth is, this blog isn’t at the top of my list. Not even close. It’s pretty well up there, but I have several more important things. Work, paying my bills. Writing and posting Starwalker. Keeping my house in a liveable state. Making food. Taking care of the family cats while my folks are away. Running the local writing events I’m responsible for. Getting organisation started for this year’s NaNoWriMo.

Over the past year, I have stumbled with all of those things. I have taken days off work to rest and try to recuperate. I have used holidays from the day job to catch up on cleaning my house and other various things that have fallen by the wayside. I’ve missed Starwalker posts. I haven’t missed any events yet, but they are a lot more last-minute than they usually are. Organisation is a long, slow process, where it used to be quick and relatively easy.

I have been trying to get myself into a more stable position. That, in itself, takes time and energy away from something else. It’s all about prioritising those spoons and off-setting current stress and effort with future benefits.

Some of those things have been worth it, from something as simple as replacing a failing laptop to avoid having to work around unreliable technology to reorganising whole sections of my house to condense the mess (and required cleaning) into smaller areas. Having a dishwasher installed has helped immensely (and I’m aware of how ‘first world problem’ that sounds, but it’s a godsend to me!).

Some of the things I’ve tried haven’t worked out. A recent disaster has been hiring a cleaning agency to take care of the heavy lifting involved in keeping the house clean. Four visits, three different cleaners, varying levels of competency, culminating in a lovely incident where the cleaner managed to lock me out of my own house entirely. That endeavour probably wound up costing me more stress and sickness than doing the damned work myself would have been.

I live and learn. I push on, because forward is the only way to go. I try to keep picking my feet up, day after day, week after week, fighting for each and every damned spoon in my arsenal. I fall, I fail. I get angry with myself and try to do better. I wrack my brain for better options. And I just keep pushing onwards.

It’s an ongoing struggle. Are things better yet? Maybe a little. I’ve got some more help at home again (and I can’t say how grateful I am to have my dad back), and that’s helping to take the weight off. With his help, I might have a chance to catch up. Overall, I’m not really feeling any better, not yet. I might not be slipping behind a little more every day, but I’m still barely treading water.

So why am I writing in this blog again? Because I’m not done. I have more options to try and I’m sick of missing things. I’m trying to do better, even if I don’t feel it.

Every now and then, I stop and think about how lucky I am. It’s easy to feel worn thin by everything I’m trying to deal with right now, but perspective is important. On a scale of CFS, I can still function from day to day. I can get up and leave the house when I need to (and occasionally when I just want to). I am holding down a (pretty demanding) full-time job. I’m still a mainstay and a driver of my local writing community. I’m bringing in enough money to support myself and pay all my bills, and to treat myself to the stuff that matters to me. I have awesome readers who are understanding of my occasional flakiness.

There are some people who aren’t sick and aren’t that lucky. Who struggle to find a job; any job, let alone one they kinda enjoy or feel valuable in. Who can’t imagine driving community stuff the way I do. Who can’t see themselves committing to writing a web serial post every single week of the year. There are some people who are so sick that they can’t dream of doing any of those things, who struggle to make it out of bed at all, who have hurdles far over and above anything I have to deal with.

A friend of mine wrote a touching piece about her situation with her health recently. I’m in a similar place emotionally, though my condition isn’t as serious or life-altering as hers. Perspective matters.

I’m doing okay. I’m coping. Sometimes all I’m doing is coping, but I guess that’s how it goes sometimes. As hard as it all feels, I am pretty lucky. I’m trying to remember that.

I can’t promise this will be the first of a stream of new posts. I can’t promise anything at this point except that I’m still here. I’m still pushing. I frustrate myself, I try different things, and I keep trying to be better. Maybe one day I’ll get there.

In the meantime, the world moves around me and I hate feeling like I’m being left behind. Starwalker rolls on towards the end of its fourth book. The publishing industry is flexing and shifting. This world of writing that I love and life for is changing and I have things to say. I mean to say them, when I can.

Please forgive my silences. Understand that sometimes it’s all I can do to get each week’s serial post up, and sometimes that’s too much. Know that I mean to speak more.

I dream of taking a sabbatical from work: taking a year off to write. I dream of everything I’d be able to do. I know I’d sleep for the first three months, and after that… watch out. There’d be no stopping me, and you don’t want to know how long my to-do list is. But oh, the stories I’d tell…

Sadly, reality intervenes, but dreams are nice. They keep us going. For now, reality.

One thing at a time. One spoon after another. Such is the life with chronic illness. Such is a busy, modern life.

I am here. I am, I breathe, I write.

I write.

Uphill battle

Followers of this blog and of my current web serial may have noticed a somewhat erratic pattern to my updates lately. This particular blog has always been a bit up and down; I have a tendency to post here in spurts, depending on when I have time and impetus. My web serial, though, I have tried to keep far steadier and more reliable.

Not so much lately. Even my precious Starwalker has been impacted by my recent life issues, and I’m here to say: I hate it. It breaks my heart every time I have to go on there and tell my readers that I am letting them down again. They are wonderful and supportive and understanding, and I am grateful for every one of them. I disappoint myself more than them, it seems.

I honestly wouldn’t blame them if they got sick of all the inconsistency there has been lately and stopped reading. I always promised myself that I wouldn’t be that writer, who missed deadlines and was labelled as unreliable because she couldn’t stick to her own schedule. I have always been so determined to stick to my promises and keep the story rolling on the cadence that I’ve set. But I fear I’m failing in all of my promises lately.

My health is the core of the issue. The chronic fatigue syndrome is impacted by a lot of life stuff – stress, change, work, other health problems – and it’s all making me pretty miserable at the moment. For those familiar with the spoons theory, I think I’ve lost a few spoons over the last year or so, and I’m struggling to juggle them effectively. It’s all I can do to get to work most days, and getting home and sorting out dinner sometimes makes me want to cry or scream quietly in frustration. It can all be so hard.

I’ve dealt with CFS for several years now. I don’t think I’ve had it drag me this far down for this long before. I’m fighting with it, and I don’t think I’m winning.

But I didn’t come here just to whine (okay, maybe I wanted to whine a little bit). I despise what this is doing to me. I hate that it’s making it so difficult to write. My usual writing time is on my commute to and from work, and most of the time I just want to rest when I’m on the train. I’m not awake enough to put words together, or I’m too drained after a day of working and need to wind down before I hit the evening chores at home.

No, I am fighting it. I’m also trying to figure out how to manage it so that I can do what I want. That means some changes to my lifestyle, and I’m still working a lot of that stuff out. I’m simplifying things at home a bit, and getting help with the chores and tasks that I just can’t get to (for one reason or another).

I think that was a big step, actually: recognising that it was time to ask for help and actually doing it. Admitting to myself that I can’t do everything. I’m a very independent person. I like to be able to sort myself out, in my own time, be self-sufficient. I am always making compromises, but I like to feel that I’m capable, that I’m able to get myself by. It was a wrench to realise that that’s simply not true any more. Everything costs and I’m too energy-poor to be able to pay for it all.

I had to tell myself that it was okay to ask for help. It’s tempting to feel guilty or shameful about admitting it, but honestly, I don’t have the energy for that either. I’m sick, sicker than I have been in a long time. I’m doing what I can to manage it, mitigate it. And I guess my need to be realistic and practical – and not drive myself into a collapse – won out over my pride and my need to feel like I was whole enough to be truly independent.

I think I’m a little proud of myself for that, because I feel like I’m doing the sensible thing and not hiding behind my fear and pride. Which sounds counter-intuitive, but it makes sense to me.

I don’t know if it’s enough. After all, I’m not feeling – or doing – any better yet. I’m still looking long and hard at the pieces of my life, sizing them up for extraction or adjustment. I went over my priorities recently here on the blog, and they’re still true. I still need to work and I’m holding onto that well enough. I’m about to order the last bit of help for things at home, and that will help. I’m trying to keep the number of running projects to a minimum, even though I get restless and I want to get things moving. I’m also working on some healthy living stuff, to try to bolster this stupid body of mine that doesn’t seem to want to do anything these days.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about Starwalker a lot. Like I said, I hate that I’ve been so inconsistent there. I don’t like missing posts, or delaying things, or being That Author who can’t work to schedule.  I’ve been throwing around my options, because clearly what I’m doing right now isn’t working.

I considered taking a hiatus, but I did that recently and it was no help whatsoever. What do I think will have changed when I return? It’s a stop-gap at best; it’s not a solution.

I also considered changing the posting frequency. Maybe shifting it down to once a fortnight rather than once a week would give me enough breathing space. I don’t want to do that, though. I think that’ll just shift the problem from every week into once a fortnight, and I’ll wind up in the same position again: trying to write and edit and post, and finding that I’m too exhausted to do any of it.

I have to change something, so the next thing on my list is when I write. The train was my thing, my office, my writing time. That’s not working any more (now it’s dozing or reading or just zoning out to music), and maybe that’s what I need to change. I need to find a new space in my life to write in. And with my energy levels where they are, maybe every day is just too much. Summoning up the creative energy is a lot harder than it used to be.

Maybe what I need to do now is dedicate some time on the weekends to writing. Right now, my weekends are pretty much like this:

• Saturday: the day I Do Stuff. Run errands, do the chores around the house that I don’t have help with. Once a month, I spend the day at my favourite Coffee Club with my writing peeps and write (the post following this one never misses, because this is where it gets done!).
• Sunday: the day I Rest. I try to do as little as possible on Sundays, because I have to recharge before the new work week. If I try to go out or be all active, I’m usually paying for it over the next week. That’s no fun. Instead, it’s my gaming day. I usually spend a lot of my Sunday time on Guild Wars 2, as that’s when I am able to meet up with friends and run around and kill stuff, and they can’t tell if I’m still in my pajamas and haven’t brushed my hair.

So what would I change? Hard to say. I have to be able to get stuff done on the weekends, and I have to protect my Sundays as much-needed rest time. But could I work writing time in there somewhere? It’s entirely possible. Maybe if I keep Saturday afternoons free, get all my running around done and then settle down with the netbook, that will work. Or figure out how to say no to that last dungeon run and log off a bit earlier on a Sunday. Maybe I should do both.

It’s worth a try. It’s going to take some organisation and conscious effort, but all this stuff does. If it was easy, I wouldn’t be posting this at all, I suppose.

It’s a good place to start. I’d rather try this and see if I can make it work before I go changing things like posting frequency or reader expectations. I guess I’m still too stubborn to give up, and I’m glad of that. This damned sickness will only strip me of my life one thing at a time, and I’ll make it work for each and every one. Somehow, I’ll stay strong and keep pushing, in the hope that one day I’ll get on top of this beast and kick its ass.

You know what frustrates me more than anything? The ideas that pop up into my head, stories that are almost full-fledged, and me with no time to write them in. One day, I’ll make time for them all and toss them out into the world. Because that’s what I live for.

Looking Forward: 2014

We’re already a couple of weeks into 2014, but it’s not too late to set goals! Let’s see what I’ve got on my list for this year.

I should perhaps add a caveat that I’m going to be a bit more conservative than I was last year. Struggles with my health and energy levels are forcing me to be a bit more realistic, as goals I know I can’t reach just depress and discourage me. If I go above and beyond, then fantastic. But this is what I’ll be happy with achieving. Maybe a little more. I like to aim high, even if I’m pulling my focus in slightly.

Home / Work

Might as well get this stuff out of the way! My goals here involve:

• Keeping up with the day job as I am currently. It’s going well, I’m always learning new stuff, and it enables me to do all of those other things that make me happy. I’m lucky enough to have a good group of people around me, too, and I’m thankful for that.
• Finishing up the big change-around at home. The first phase of this is done, and it’s going great. There’s still some tidy-up work to do and the next phase to knock over before I’ll be content with how things are. This will make things easier for me at home, releasing more time and energy for other things.
• Beating my health with a stick until it behaves. Worth a try, right?

Writing

Starwalker

Ah, the beloved web serial. Book 4 is well underway and I’m aiming to finish this particular story arc (and book) this year. Will there be a Book 5? At this stage, I’m honestly not sure – there are a couple of places the story could go after the end of the current trials, but I don’t have any set plans for that yet.

It’s also possible that it’s time to put a pin in that particular project and move on to one of the others on my list. Do I have much more story left to tell there? Would it benefit from a break? All good questions, and no doubt I’ll be asking them right up until it’s time to make a decision. Which will probably be around the end of Book 4, whenever that happens.

Could that be the end of Starwalker? Unlikely. It just might change from its current pattern.

Here’s what I have in mind for this year’s tasks:

• Finish Book 4. Unless it extends beyond the end of this year, but right now that’s not looking likely.
• Edit Book 1. A light edit is partially done; I’m looking to finish the edit off and tidy it up for potential submission to publishers.
• Do more shorts. Elliott’s one is fighting me, but I’m determined to defeat his story and release it into the wild. I have a list of others to do, too, and aim to get to some more of them as well.
• Look at publication options. By the end of the year, I’d like to have sorted out my options and decided what I want to do. The Kickstarter is still a possibility.

Vampire Electric

I’m loving how the second draft of this story is coming out. This year, I’d like to continue with the second draft and see if I can get closer to finishing it. It’s falling into 3 parts and the first part is almost done. One more NaNo should give me the second part, at least. Hopefully I’ll be able to work on it a bit more than that, but that will depend on other commitments (and potentially whether Starwalker is still running as a serial).

I’m also considering putting this up as a serialised novel, once the second draft is done. Effectively, I’d be serialising the third draft, as all I’d be doing is editing and posting. However, considering how much more there is to write in the second draft, I have no idea if I’ll even start this in 2014.

It’s entirely possible that I have already bought the domain for such a serialisation, however. Ahem.

Tales from the Screw Loose

Recently, I had a little squee moment when my brain stumbled over the missing piece for this story. I finally have everything I need to start writing this one! Except for time and opportunity, of course.

I’m not sure yet whether I’ll write this one as a serial, or as a background project to be serialised later (like I’m considering with Vampire Electric). I’m pretty sure that I will serialise it somehow. A lot will depend on Starwalker and whether I keep that going as a serial, as that will dictate my capability for writing another fresh, off-the-cuff serial. (Trying to write two serials at the same time would be a recipe for disaster for me. Let’s keep things realistic!)

I’d like to get all of the groundwork laid for this story this year. Maybe even start the first draft (or set of posts). A lot will depend on how the two projects above are going!

Apocalypse Blog

Ahh, the good old Apocalypse Blog. I’ve got new covers and fresh edits to apply. I mean to sort these out! Get the books all redone and shiny, and publish them on all the outlets I can get my e-fingers on. I’ll also be changing up the pricing structure to reflect the latest trends. I’d like to rejuvenate the sales for my beloved trilogy and see my graphs go back up again. That would be lovely.

I’m still getting requests for a fourth book on this series. Which I love! I’m so happy that people are enjoying it. I don’t have any fixed plans for a fourth book, but I have notes lying around for some shorts. No promises at this point, but if an idea from this world bites strongly enough, I’ll write it.

Anthologies

Last year, I wrote a couple of shorts for anthologies. This year, I hope to see them published, but that depends on the projects in question. Watch this space!

I’m also looking at putting together my own anthology this year. I’ve got a few themes in mind to choose from, and the kernels of ideas for stories. Still working out details, but I’m aiming to have one released (to the public! to buy and read!) this year. This will be a collaboration effort, rather than an anthology of my work – I’ll be writing one story for it, maybe, and editing, collating, and typesetting the whole thing for release. I have a couple of friends I’ll be working with on this, so it’s not just me.

This is a first for me. I’m not sure how it’ll all go, but I’m sure it’ll be interesting to find out! Need to polish up my ability to write short stories. Also need to figure out more of the back end side of doing a project like this.

I love learning new things.

Writing Community

I adore my local writing community, and that I get to help shape it. I have no intention of stopping, because of all the wonderful help, support, and encouragement I get from the awesome people around me.

Creative Writing Group

Into its sixth year now and still going strong. This year, we have a new time-slot to experiment with, later in the evening, and it’ll be interesting to see how that goes. I took a poll of the subjects that the group wanted to talk about at the end of last year, and I’m curious to see how that list works out. I have a few topics to research so we can talk about them, and that’s all good.

Writers’ Asylum

This was an experiment last year and went so well that I’m doing another one. Preparation for this is going well (I got the prompts written recently), and I’ll be lining this up for April soon. Watch this space!

NaNoWriMo

Can’t go without mentioning this. I fully intend to resume my Municipal Liaison mantle for the 8th year, and we’ll be having fun with the usual events. Plus, there are plans for a new-style Kick-off Party and another Writer’s Retreat. The ball for the Retreat will probably start rolling soon (organising an event this big has to be done well in advance). I’m looking forward to the awesomeness already.

Is that everything? I think that’s everything.

Oh, except that a friend and I have been sorting out setting up an editing service. It’s a way for us to do what we love and raise some money in the process. I’m both eager to get going on this and reeling at the thought. Right now, it’s on a pause until I can get stuff at home more settled. Then I’ll be able to give it the attention and devotion it deserves.

More on this in (hopefully) the near future. For now, I have a set of goals before me. So enough talking about it: let’s get going. Onwards, my friends!

2013: A Retrospective

2013. It was a bit of a rollercoaster. I can’t believe I’m a week into 2014 and I’m only just getting to this.

I just pulled up my goals post from the beginning of 2013, and wow. The year went so differently to what I had planned. But I guess life would be boring if it was all that easy to plot out, right?

Let’s break it down a bit and see what I managed to achieve and what fell by the wayside.

Work

This one went pretty much as I had hoped. It has been a busy year with occasional bouts of stress, but for the most part it has been secure and steady. Thanks, workplace.

Home Stuff

This is a big part of what changed for me this year. The financial stuff has settled down and that’s a layer of stress that has lifted off me. Score one for me!

However, my folks were both called away several months ago, and they’re currently on the other side of the world. Nothing to worry about: they’re staying with my brother for a while and playing with the grandkids. All good! We share a house, so I’m currently housesitting and catsitting and generally taking care of everything at this end for them. Which, to be clear, I don’t mind in the least, but it is an extra overhead that I didn’t have before.

What I didn’t expect was just how much those little things would impact everything else. I’ve lived on my own before, looked after a house (and its associated furry inhabitants) by myself before, but this time around it’s different. I’m struggling way more than I ever have before. I think my health is just so much worse now and that’s making it difficult for me to keep up. In truth, I haven’t been coping well, and I’ve had to call in friends to help out when my energy reserves just failed me.

In struggling to keep up with things at home, everything else has been impacted. This is because my priorities have to be:

1. Work, so I can pay to eat and live
2. Home stuff, so I eat and live
3. Writing, so I can breathe and be me.

For the latter months of 2013, I spent some time trying to figure out how to make things work at home. It has involved shuffling some things around (not moving house, but moving a lot of stuff around inside the house; this is a work in progress, but it’s getting there); paying someone to pick up the things I don’t have energy for, like the cleaning; and toying with the idea of getting in a lodger. The lodger idea has slipped into the background for now, and I have a few ideas for improvements to help things go more easily for me at home, but it’s getting better. Slowly and surely!

It has been a big change for me. I hadn’t realised just how much I had become used to sharing a house (and all its associated work) with my folks, and how much I relied on their help and input on a day-to-day basis. I’m so grateful for my friends and all the help they’ve given me as I’ve been working to adjust and cope; I would be in such a mess now if it wasn’t for them.

Health

Yeah, it’s crappy. The CFS has been getting worse for a while and I’m struggling along on empty all the time now. I’m budgeting my time and activities more frugally than I’ve ever had to before. For those familiar with the spoons theory, I have fewer spoons to play with these days.

I’ve had a little bit of progress. The tests I had towards the beginning of the year highlighted about three separate issues that I needed to deal with. Things are improving there, slowly. Sadly, these are all digestion-related, and while my tummy is happier these days (most of the time), it hasn’t led to an improvement in energy levels.

The CFS is an ongoing battle. It forces me to prioritise things very strictly, and getting on top of things at home has been more important than chasing the unicorn of a successful CFS treatment. It might sound counter-intuitive, but I needed to get the immediate concerns sorted out so that I have the leeway to tackle the longer-running problems like CFS. I don’t have the mental or emotional energy to handle both at once.

As the home stuff gets sorted, I hope to get time to devote attention to my shitty health. In the meantime, I plough on.

Writing

Here’s the really interesting stuff. The short version of this post is that it hasn’t gone anywhere near as far as I had hoped. But let’s break it down a bit.

Starwalker

The web serial is still going strong! It’s into its fourth book now and heading swiftly towards its fourth birthday. Hard to believe I’ve been writing it for that long! My readers continue to be a delight and a wonderfully supportive blanket. They have been so understanding about the posts I’ve had to miss because I was simply too sick to make it (and I’ve done it far more than I’m comfortable with). I’m so grateful for them. I still love the story and even though it’s getting harder to keep up, I have every intention of pushing on and trying hard.

I talked about making the first trilogy into ebooks. Maybe running a Kickstarter campaign and having a whole plan – I actually got as far as writing out the plan. This has largely been skittled by the issues above; my priority is keeping the web serial posts going, and work on editing the first book is very much a background task now.

As for the shorts, I have a pile of ideas brimming but little to no time to get them down. The fourth one of the series is almost written, but it’s fighting me and I’ve been letting it rest so I can come back at it fresh. Not much progress here.

Vampire Electric

I had hoped to finish the first draft. What I wound up doing this year was quite different: I have abandoned the first draft about 70% complete, and started over. It was my NaNoWriMo 2013 project, and I used November to start fresh on the second draft of this story. I knew a lot of the things I wanted to fix or do better or differently, and I think it worked. It’s coming out much stronger now, though I’m only about a third of the way in. On the plus side, I have a good idea of how it’s going to end now, and I still can’t wait to write it.

Tales from the Screw Loose

I aimed to get all the prep done for this. I wound up doing a load of planning during my NaNo prep, so I’ve actually achieved this! There are still a couple of key things that I’m still figuring out to tie it all together, so it’s not quite ready to start writing, but it’s ticking over in the back of my brain. Soon, my pretties, soon.

Apocalypse Blog

Not as much progress here as I’d like. My sales dived into the toilet and I’ve been working to kick them back up again, to no avail. This is mostly because I haven’t got to the point where I could put my work into the public domain and actually do said kicking. On the plus side, I have fresh edit feedback on the ebooks and a set of shiny new covers all ready to go. I just need to put them all together into ebooks again and re-release them.

Anthologies

I haven’t been entirely idle this year! I joined in on a couple of anthologies that were being put together through a group on Goodreads. I have written my stories and sent them through, but both projects have foundered since then (not due to my involvement, I promise!). One of them is back up and running now, and I have hope that it will see the light of day in the next year. Fingers crossed for the other one.

Community and Events

I’m still heavily involved in my local writing community. NaNoWriMo is still a big event for me, full of events to organise and run, and explains why this blog went so chillingly silent after 1st November rolled around. We did a bigger and better than ever Retreat, lots of write-ins, and lots of fun was had. Plus I got nearly 50,000 words of that second Vampire Electric draft done, which makes me happy.

The Creative Writing Group is still going strong. Five years old and still rolling. This makes me insanely happy. Lots of interest and enthusiasm from old and new faces alike, so definitely nothing to complain about here.

I also did an experiment this year by holding the first Writers’ Asylum. Why do I call it the first? Because it got such good feedback that I think it was a great success and I’ll be doing another one. However, they take so much work to set up that I’m not rushing it: right now, it looks like it’ll be one per year. Otherwise I’d never get my own writing done!

Overall…

It has been a hell of a year. I haven’t achieved anything like as much as I had hoped. But I’m still here, I’m still moving forward, and I’m grateful for all those things that have gone well. It’s harder than it used to be, but I’m still writing. I still have ideas clogging up my brain and popping out of the woodwork when I least expect it.

I know it’s a bit late for new year’s resolutions (and I never really do them anyway), but I’ll do a 2014 goal-setting post soon. It helps to see it all laid out; I like plans. Here’s hoping that 2014 is the year that I manage to stick to more of what I aim to do!