Not derailed so much as detoured

Good morning, dear reader.

Today I am exhausted. You know, like every day. I’m trying to be okay with it. After all, if it’s every day, it’s not unusual, right? Still, it’s hard to do anything that takes any brainpower at all. But all that takes is an attitude adjustment. Y’see, I don’t actually want to do nothing but play phone games. I’ve gotta look at the things I do as the things I want to do, instead of the things I should do.

In an effort to make creative endeavors feel more fun, I’m starting a new project. Cassidy isn’t at a standstill, and I am still working on it, but it’s… slothly. (It is too a word. I bet you even know what it means.) In the meantime, I’ve been watching Supernatural with friends, and Season 11 is frustrating me. Why does every threat have to be human-shaped?

Anyway, I wanted to explore what I thought this season’s Big Bad was going to be at the end of last season, when they set it up. I’m writing a whole season of Supernatural in episode format, modeled after Season 5 (which is objectively their best season) in terms of pacing and tension, etc. I’ve never done anything like this before, but I anticipate that it’ll be both easier and harder to approach. Like, easier because each episode is significantly shorter than a novel would be and self-encapsulates, but harder because the twenty-three episodes will have to carry the football of Season Arc into the end zone.

You know I’m tired when I start making football analogies.

I’ve never really written fanfic before, so, this will be interesting. My first stumbling block was that I was scared of getting the brothers’ voices wrong. But I decided, fuck it! I’m writing ’cause it’s fun. It can be as flawed as it is, and it’ll still be fun. Maybe one or two people will enjoy reading it, but if not, who cares. It’s fun. It’s my brainworm, no one else has to ride it.

Wish me luck, Reader.

I was right! or Been away..

So, remember how I said that if I stopped writing for a week, it would go back to seeming completely terrifying? Yeah... I was right.

Monday, I was all over everything. Went to the gym, wrote 2,200+ words, and was generally magnificently on-task. But on Tuesday, my tank ran out. I had to have fun, or I would surely die. So, though I had planned to make it to the gym, instead I spent all day playing Don’t Starve, which is my favorite obsession. I’m still not sure why I love that game so much—past a certain point, it’s just easy. I have, like, 80 blow darts and I killed the Deerclops with nothing but tooth traps. It’s getting a mite silly.

So, thusly funned, I approached Wednesday optimistically. I got to the gym in the morning and was hoping to write 4k words to make up for Tuesday, but it turned out that, fun as DS was on Tuesday, my tank was not so filled as to allow me to actually go anywhere on it. So I didn’t write my book and I didn’t write my blog—instead, I spent time trying to catch up on my internet. I managed to get through about half of my Tumblr before Branden got home.

Man, Tumblr is a commitment.

Thursday, we had house cleaners come. Let me tell you, I will happily trade money for spoons. Branden wandered through the house when he got home, blissfully bellowing “so clean!” And I... I ran the errand that I had to run before our trip tomorrow. Other than that, I caught up on Tumblr and Feedly. Didn’t quite feel up to approaching my 112 new messages on deviantArt, though. So, watched Bones and decompressed... some more. Last night, we did last minute get-ready-to-go things, and then slept like piles of kittens.

Which brings us to today.

My travel bottles didn’t all fit into a quart-sized plastic bag, so I had to run out and get some slightly narrower travel bottles. Also, my mom came over with my 2-month-old nephew, and predictably, nothing writerly has gotten done. I did manage to read today’s Tumblr and catch up on dA (which included unsubscribing from a couple of groups whose deviations are never my thing), but I am listening with one ear to make sure that I’m not missing anything important. Needless to say, I don’t have the brain for creative writing... though my mom did just take Declan upstairs so the two of them could lay down.

I’m not convinced that’s a good idea for her—she has to drive back to Denver, and if she left nowish she could probably avoid the awful traffic—but if she sticks around, she can give me a ride to the park ’n’ ride at 4. Color me selfish.

So now I’ll try to get some words down, as I doubt very much that I’ll do any writing from Boise (though I will try, if I have honestly free time). I’ll be flying back on Monday. See you guys then!

Word count: 23,489 (寁)

I've come too far to turn back now!

I got to 1,928 words on Friday before I had to leave to Fort Collins for the book signing. (Spoilers: I finished when I got home.) When I got there, shortly after 3, I found that the line was long. Long long. Around the block... then the next block... then the block after that kind of long. In addition to that, I had neglected the rule that I’m sure was prominent on the website if I had bothered to look: I had to have pre-ordered Gaiman’s new book in order to get a signature. I think there were copies to buy on site, but by the time I got there, I had no confidence there would be any left over to buy when I got to the front of the line.

So, with a heavy heart, I called it a wash and my friends and I went to a late lunch at Coopersmith’s, which was delicious and you should definitely go there, if you have a chance. By the time we were driving back, it was rush hour and there were three separate accidents on I-25, so we took a “long” way (which was a much shorter way, in light of the traffic conditions). All in all, a very nice day—but far from relaxing.

Saturday, I spent almost the entire day cleaning the house. In this instance, when I say cleaning, I mean straightening, organizing, and neatening—not bust-out-the-cleaning-supplies sort of cleaning. And it was still all day long and totally overwhelming. By the time I went to bed, my brain had shut off hours before.

Sunday, we had yet more neatening to do, but it was the much smaller half and we were done by 2:15. Then we had Writers’ Group at 6, to which I was greatly looking forward. But I had writing to catch up on before that, so I wasn’t able to squeeze in more than forty-five minutes of low-key, relaxing “fun time.”

In addition to getting good feedback on my story and getting to give feedback on good friends’ stories (good friends’ good stories?), I also got to see my friend Kevin again for the first time in, what, two years? After Writers’ Group, Kevin, Branden and I went out to dinner at Fire On The Mountain Buffalo Wings... Om nom nom. Then home again with just enough time to fold laundry, brush teeth, have fun for a half hour and go to bed (even so, much too late).

Tl:dr; I didn’t get to fill my fun tank this weekend. Writing usually takes me two hours or longer, and catching up on feeds takes a similar amount of time on a normal day—which today is not, since I didn’t catch up on feeds at all over the weekend. So I don’t see fun in my future this week either. (I really wish that Blogger had emoji, or good image integration. Insert sad face here.)

One of my friends told me to take the day off. I really want to do that. My writing tank is so full and my fun tank is so empty, I’m rolling Willpower every few minutes not to start up Don’t Starve and scream “Fuck it!” into the void.

But I want to finish my book. I want to get the second draft done so that I can start the third draft (hopefully more of an edit and less of a complete rewrite) so that I can put some polish on it and work on getting it published. But what I am having trouble understanding right now is why people would write more than one book in their lives. Don’t they have friends and loved ones who feel their absence? Don’t they have hobbies they’re neglecting or recreational activities they miss?

I must have faith that this angst will pass. Stay the course. No one can write my book but me. I just gotta hang in there.

Word count: 21,066 (削)