Do Not Disturb Until Spring

So the book editing is done and I even platinumed Dragon Quest XI... in lieu of the arrival of Kingdom Hearts 3 today. Yet another game that I had to have on release... with no plans to actually play it right away.

Even with this game here, I still have to devote time to work. My gaming friends with a 9-5 are always stressing that they spend every possible moment on a game they're excited about, but... that's exactly how it turns up for me too. Only my discipline has to be self-imposed for the weeks leading up to my book release and that may mean spending more than full-time hours putting it together before I get to 'clock out' and play.

Remember when you were a kid and had to stop playing video games to go to school and you thought being an adult meant playing 'whenever you wanted'? Even for a freelancer, it doesn't quite work that naively. I don't work for x amount of hours for x amount of money. Often, I even work xx amounts of hours for 0 amount of money, but it doesn't mean the discipline can be looser or 'whenever I want'. I actually have to take those times where I am most productive and jump into work then. If I tried to predict the hours something would take and cram those all in before the deadline... well, chances are I would under-predict the time about threefold and do most of it sloppy, rushed and stressed. No, working 'whenever I want' is usually not when I want to work. When I'm wide awake and energetic and happy, the last thing I want to do is sit at a computer and yell at how stupid technology is until I get it to work how I want it to.

By the way, I'm that bitch that likes to email companies about how they can improve their interface. Although I'm rather diplomatic since I can sympathize with overworked developers often not having the luxury of sleep or normal working hours.

So, even though I would love to binge on KH3, I have some book covers to tweak, print and ebook formats to arrange, conversions to test, and then I can hit that Publish button and take one of those fake-cations to finish the game.

Very likely I won't have the discipline to just relax and play a game and will pick up the draft for my third book to take over my life again.

Work and play offset each other. I need balanced doses of both contribution and consumption or it drives me fucking mental. I laugh when people pull a 'must be nice' with me. Nice? People don't know the half of it. The trick to survive being the tortured artist is to paste on that retail-smile and keep it up.

I'm a fish in a bucket trying to stand out in a sea with really fucking amazing fish. I'm not doing this for As in class or in a contest handing out participation trophies. If I want to make this work, I also have to keep in mind that it may never work. The main source of misery in this world is people who create guarantees out of a life with no actual guarantees. There is no miraculous safety blanket keeping the big bad world from you. There is no guarantee your rise in a company makes you indispensable, your company will thrive or your dream job won't sometimes be your worst nightmare.

One thing that's almost always worked for me is taking a social media diet. When I notice my feeds getting too negative, I disappear for a few days. Even if you're not an empath, that shit can get to anyone. lol Hell, I see a ton of people who just get bent out of shape just watching the news. I can see that too, since I never watch it but it was on in the dentist's office earlier this month and I was in tears before the tooth torture even started.

Which I feel like I should say they did a spectacular job and I'm over-exaggerating. It was no day in the park, but my dentist and his assistants were great and attentive and were amazing at reading my stoic little twitches when something was hurting. It still sucked and was terrifying to hear my teeth cracking, the temporary facial paralysis... you know, that stuff. But I knew what to expect going in and it wasn't extra or surprising.

Anyways, I'm out. Sleeping tonight, no school for the boys tomorrow with this polar vortex windchill coming through, so I get to sleep in and get to... the whatever. The list. The one I keep randomly throwing out there because I keep blogging when I'm forgetful and tired.

Aw, Shucks...

My scheduled posts went a little on the dark and heavy confessionals, but NaNo is my month of isolation and I have to admit, UnHeard is becoming a voice for themes in my life that aren't light and pretty. There are moments of humor, moments of lightness and kindness, but like many of the themes in this series, I wanted to be as honest as I could about what these characters might go through, not just due to disability but how the fantasy version presents issues that I do have to create without any context in realism to go by.

It's exciting, as it always is, but it also builds a sense of urgency. No matter how ambitious my word count is this month, I won't even by halfway done with my draft this month. I engineered each of these books to exceed 200K words. Not with fluff or rambling, but with actual plots, structure and development. How do I know? Well, I couldn't have said so prior to writing UnSung, but once I stopped looking at word count and just developed it, I found that the stories I wanted to tell naturally tended towards large word counts. And this coming from a skeletal writer who used to struggle with working off of a frame at all!

Truly, I'm excited to put this one down where it stops and go back to refining UnSung for its final forms. No small task. A single book three times the size as the average book in my first series and I need to make at least two full editing passes before I'll even consider publishing.

I make it sound like I wasn't careful the first time around.  Eeeeee, so not true. I might even say I was way *too* careful in those days. I can recall fully passing through each one upwards of five times, wondering if the deliberate rush in the beginning would hurt it or not. It originally wasn't intended to be a novel after all, so I struggled with the first one the most. The others came more naturally. I was turning my life around, getting healthier and WHAM BAM ZOINK those drafted up so quick that I was skeptical that they could even be coherent. It wasn't until towards the end of the series that I dialed back the obsessive urge to pass through 'editing' that resulted in zero changes... repeatedly.

Nevertheless, I'm planning to take a short break after NaNo and another around Christmas. I'll crunch some more of the everything in between the New Year and the release of Kingdom Hearts 3, aka Soul Steal Month. After that, I plan to enjoy marathoning again, something I haven't done since the letdown that was Final Fantasy XV. Only so crushing because such an otherwise beautiful game with great mechanics was flattened by a limp story. lol I do have a Selective Gamer blog floating around with my handful of reviews that go into this more, so I'll spare the rant here.

So! As we reach the end of NaNo, congratulations to all of the participants and I encourage everyone to try to fit it into your future! I'll post my final word count (and I only count the novel, not the endless blog posting I do) and my graphics in a later post. Post yours in the comments below! In fact, do your victory laps everywhere you get permission! You've earned it!

Just Stuff

Cold weather is finally here and if you know me, I'm as psyched as the people who like hot weather (and probably enjoy those same people whining about how cold it is). Right now, I kind of just want to sleep under the warm fluffy blankets I dug out to celebrate and breathe in the ice cold air pouring into my window. No fans, no heaters, just silence to enjoy or fill with purposeful noise.

Of course, there's a cutoff. Once the cold dips towards freezing, I close windows. Once it dips into the 20s, I pull out the space heater (if my fingers and nose are icy). Yet, my favorite wardrobe comes out-- giant sweaters, fleece pajama pants, crocheted hats, fluffy socks. Things that aren't comfortable to wear unless the air is genuinely chilled. Even a cranked AC can't quite create the same environment a legitimate fall/winter permeating chill can.

Sometimes it can spark health issues, but for the most part, it's ripe for crochet, reading, writing, hot drinks and wholesome food holidays. I even met my weekly writing goal towards UnSung this week so I can hibernate and huddle up and plot if I want. (Getting so close to the end, but I'm really trying to tie up plots in the draft rather than throwing it together and dealing with an editing mess.) Still have cover art to do, still have NaNo prep underway, still have holidays to squeeze in so my loved ones don't think I'm losing functioning status on the social spectrum. Kingdom Hearts 3 will steal my soul in January and maybe Dragon Quest XI which I've been meaning to play, but haven't gotten yet.

Priorities still point to writing. Aside from the daily grind of feeding little people, keeping the house clean, and maybe some tablet gaming while nodding off at the end of the day, the usual juggling became more concentrated. At the least, I want UnSung's draft done. It will get put aside after that. I won't edit it again until December and not just because of NaNo. I really want to kick some dirt over it and look at it with fresh eyes. While starting its sequel for NaNo, things might shift even. So I'm looking at a 2019 release after all. I really want to avoid rushing things even if it means pushing them around a bit. It will be worth it to be more flexible in plans to get them just right.

That being said, time to enjoy this chilly weekend, however I use it. About to make some hot tea to start. Oolong, if you want to know. Here's to a productive winter season. Buh-bye, bugs, sweat, sun rashes! Hello, wonderful smell of dying leaves, fire pits and seeing my breath when I breathe!