Right now it is almost 4 pm on Thursday, August 25th.

My last post was on August 22nd, Monday. Since then I’ve written over 6,000 words in chunk 35+ and figured out what my mental block was with it.

What the problem was is that I had two separate characters each doing their own arc thing and the time frames weren’t syncing up between them. The rest of the story, for the most part, had been chronological in order. Somehow in chunk 35 I had lost my mental grasp on the timeline and col*

===

It is now 5:25 pm. I just got back from taking my daughter on a shopping run to get a girlfriend of hers a birthday gift.

where was I…

===

… I had lost my mental grasp on the timeline and…

Damn… I don’t recall what I was thinking.

That’s the damn problem with always having constant interruptions.

I think I was trying to say I split the chunk up into different ones with each character’s POV in mind. The Boog sections went to a BoogPOV document and the Jessica/Cerbril ones went to the mainPOV document. Once I did that it began flowing again and I was able to pick up the Boog storyline from where I had left off. All 6,000 words were on his timeline.

I seemed to recall I wasn’t having any issues with the Jessica/Cerbril storyline so I essentially ignored it, for the time being. I know I’ll have to get back to it at some point.

The Boog story progression went amazingly well. So well that I’ve almost reached the point of them being reintegrated back into the Jessica/Cerbril one. Once I reach that point I’ll put that on the back burner again and catch back up with the Jessica/Cerbril one to the same point. Then I work on weaving the two chains back into each other again where they would fit chronologically.

Did any of that make sense?

I know I’m rambling here.

Life… it’s the excitement of it all, the monotony of it all, it’s the first draft of it all.

🙂

Tootles all

😛

** Wait! **

If you were following along with the math, you should have come up with my current chunk 35+ now being well past the 6,000 words at this point. That means once I get the two merged back together it could span several more chunks. I try to keep each chunk between 4,000 to 4,500 words for editing and review purposes for my group. I know I would hate seeing something larger being submitted upon me with all the crapy mistakes I tend to drop in my own stuff.

4,500 words times 36 chunks makes my overall story right now at about 160,000 words. SSHHEEPPPP!

I would say I’m at about the 75% mark right now against my mental overall projected story arc.

So I’ve been able to sneak a bit of time these past few days into getting my chunk 23 ready for the September submission. I cleaned up a good portion of it in order to… make it seem better good-er-er? I can’t actually say it’s better but it seems better, at least to me. I think I had given away too much of the mystery for what is yet to come. The solution is steam line gutting it.

I then allowed myself a small break and brought up chunk 35, which is where I last left off and coincidentally, also in need of a fourth pass because I had ignored an entire plot thread involving one of the characters. I took one glance at it and closed it right back up again. Shheessshhh. I ain’t got that kind of time right now. I have to pack things up in about a half hour and go pick up the wife from the dentist. She is getting some work done and is being put under. I have a feeling I’ll be spending much of the rest of the day playing sexy nurse or some freak version of that with my hairy out-of-shape body. She’s a lucky gal. Past that I’ve got to go and pick up all the kids and deal with all their errands too.

Yeah… fun times.

My brain is only so limited in what it can hold into it with having to stop, pack up, do a bunch of miscellaneous chores, and then try to dive back into a fictional world where things are being subtly carried throughout the book. It doesn’t work like that.

Oh well…

That’s it for now.

Tootles all

😛

I knew I needed to write something on my cathartic blog. I didn’t realize it had been a month.

YOU SUCK DAVE!

So, what’s new in the Dave-verse?

My son stepped on a piece of wood, and as luck would have it, it bounced up and popped him right smack dab on his right eye’s retina. His vision was 20/15 in that eye but is now about 20/25. It’s a loss, and thankfully it wasn’t worse. It happened a few days before his 12th birthday so his life has been in the crapper as he wasn’t allowed to move much out of fear of his eye rupturing and rebleeding in itself again.

What else…

I’m currently editing chunk 23 (again) and have paused on chunk 35* (or so? Wherever I last left off). I don’t plan on abandoning much of my 24-34 stuff, but parts in it need to be changed. I don’t like the voice of one of my characters. I also have a habit of expanding upon anything that I’m editing like my waistline as if I was working quality control in an ice cream shop.

😛

I didn’t win that super big 1.3 billion dollar lotto. I spend about $40 in tickets over the buildup of that huge pot.

Kids are back in school. I still haven’t really had a day to myself yet with all the life stuff that keeps happening around here. A few days ago I went up into my attic and fought the insulation to run a new length of electrical cord. That sucked. The last time I did something like that was easily 10+ years ago. I was in a lot better shape than I am now and squeezing through those rafters while trying to not punch myself through to the floor below was easier. Getting older and rounder sucks.

It’s now about 6 pm and my brain is kinda fried for the day. We have company coming over in about a half hour so there is no way I’m going to get any progress on my story going.

What else…

I’m thinking that’s going to be it for now.

Oh, I saw a trailer for the new-prequel HBO Game of Thrones show. It looks interesting.

and…er… my brain is hurting too much right now. It feels tired so I’m going to call this quits and get ready for our guests.

Thanks for wasting your own brain cells reading this drivel.

Tootles Y’all

😛

The syndrome is sneaking its fangs into my little… tiny… insignificant… ego.

😛

But then again I ain’t that smart so there isn’t that much to taint.

Err… what?

I was working over the past hour over my chunk 35 restart and I discovered I had ignored an entire branch of my story.

Yeah, I’m that stupid.

Imposter syndrome talking here “What is that crap you wrote? It took me another hour just to clean up four paragraphs enough to not set off every red pen alarm this side of the Mississippi River. And to forget that arc? You are a looser Dave. Your writing is LOOSER because things keep falling between the cracks! It’s that loose.”

I’m such a looser

😛

The last time I wrote anything for my story was the morning of July 3rd. I had run away for a few hours to pound out some words and then had to get back home to prepare for the party we were hosting.  Today is July 20th. I know you know that but I’m trying to make a point here. It hasn’t been until today, 16 days later, that I was able to escape to my own version of a happy place. Speaking of happy places, I drove the family down to Disneyland for some fun and to visit some of the wife’s relatives.

Again… it wasn’t until today I got some Dave time in.

I can write*, honestly, I can. It just requires me to be left the FUn alone. *(no guarantee about quality mind you)

I was nervous about starting up again as my story mind had gone cold again seeing how long it had been. I opened up my document and re-read the last two pages I had written and found myself editing for clarity and soon enough I had reached the end of my prior work and was pushing on into new territory again. It took me about an hour to get past my retro edits but I got there.

The story is fresh in my mind again and I’m ready to keep going.

Only now I’m sitting in a friend’s apartment as they are out of town. My daughter is playing with their cats and doing the litterbox and food duties while I’m putzing away with this update. I’ve been interrupted more times than I could count but that’s okay because this kind of thing doesn’t require a whole lot of focus. I don’t need to remember key character details and plot points for two dozen fictitious persons all at the same time.

Nope. It’s me on a couch, looking over at the fish in their tank that got their pinch of food and are swimming about energetically. Hey, getting fed is exciting.

I just caught myself yawning. Is my update that boring? Glancing at the clock on this laptop I see that it is almost 8:30 pm. My bedtime is in about an hour. What can I say, I live an exciting life.

What else…

Go team introvert?

Go introverts?

Okay, you caught me, I’m googling a thought.

And I found what I was looking for.

Kids are fun but I think being a grandparent is nicer because you can leave them behind. I feel sorry for the unlucky bastards that find themselves having to take care of their grandchildren full time.

What else can I ramble on about?

Oh, the daughter is done. I guess it’s time to wrap the party up so I can go home and hit the sheets. Oh, I Know. I’ve been trying to read Leviathon Wakes over the past six months. I’ve managed to get past halfway finally. You see often times the only chance I get to read is towards the end of the day, and reading naturally makes me tired, so it’s a no-win scenario most of the time.

Okay, enough of this Dave.

Wrap this up.

Tootles all

😛

Randomly I decided to log into my steam account and check on the status of my order.

I ordered mine 1 year ago today. What are the odds that I would check on this particular day?

I would say about 1 in 50. I knew it was going to become available sometime in July from my last check-in, which was around February. So it’s really not that freaky of an occurrence.

That is all.

Ughh…

It’s that time again.

I’m reviewing one of my peer’s stories.

To put it mildly… the assium is strong in this one.

I know, you might be thinking “What is assium?”

It is as it sounds.

The creation of a stories world that is pulled straight out of a person’s ASSium.

I’m tired of this stuff.

It’s almost like they are taking the dartboard approach to things and throwing them together regardless of how they might fit.

For instance, the nights in this world are AT LEAST 14 hours long. 14-hour nights, while it’s SUMMER, would require the place to be far north or south of the equator region. Any place this displaced wouldn’t have the kind of favorable weather to grow crops. Did I forget to mention the hero comes from a farming community? Okay, I did now. Happy?

It’s almost like me saying I eat over seven hundred pounds of food a day and decide to go on a week long backpacking with nothing more than a waist pouch to hold a few energy bars.

STOP DOING THIS PEOPLES

Stop using your assium to move the story forward without substantiating it.

Handwavium to the extreme.

uugghhhh…

That is all…

My bitching is over.

For now.

😛

Tootles.

So… been watching the news lately?

I watched that special session of the 1/6 committee. All I can say is… “Got Trumper Tantrums”?

Ketchup dripping down the wall?

Attacking a secret service agent?

Allowing guns through metal detectors because “They aren’t after me” mentality?

An uneducated populace… I’m at a loss for the right words. Let me do a quick search through google.

Found what I was looking for.

“An uneducated populace is easier to cow, easier to control, and easier to enslave. “

— Thomas Jefferson.

Got Trump?

Way back, before his run for President in 2016, I pegged him as a buffoon. His ego unsettled and soured me. Then to find out he was the front runner in the republican party only made my stomach turn even more. His verbal assaults on Ted Crackuz were humorous but the stronger he became the more frightened I became.

I honestly thought Bush Jr was a complete moron. Granted, he was/is, but the difference is he didn’t have an evil soul about it. Misguided and uneducated, sure. Still, he wasn’t Baalzebul in the flesh. Cheney on the other hand had the taint of darkness about him. Granted this is the same man that fathered Liz Cheney, a woman that seems to have more soul & HEART than her father could ever possess.

I’m basically rambling much of this out so It’s going to feel EVEN MOAR disjointed than my usual rants.

Then there is the whole repeal of ROE a few days back. That is scaring me too.

The November midterm elections can’t get here soon enough. My hope is that enough of the stagnant middle ground is pissed off enough to actually affect what is going on right now.

The truck-publicans have been disillusioned and lied to.

(Intentionally) SOUNDING CLICHE (wake up sheep…)

July 4th, 1776,

Birth of a nation.

Jan 6th, 2021

Attempted murder of said nation.

I was googling for a t-shirt with those dates and something similar in wording. So far I’ve found nada. Yeah, I’m a real freaking hero wearing a t-shirt with my political views on it (sarcasm).

In truth, I’m a vet. I did my years. I never saw combat but I did PUT MY MONEY WHERE MY MOUTH IS.

Does that make me MORE of an American than others?

No.

Others gave far more than sweat and a few years of their life. I came back home, they did not.

How can we allow a child-like limp-dick weasel to desecrate and destroy the sacrifices of all of those who came before and ended up paying the ultimate price?

Free speech is one thing. inciting riots is another. Go ahead and tell Billy Bush about your “grabbing them by the pussy“. Do not collude with foreign powers to undermine the sanctity of our nation. Was Russia listening? Hell-yeah they were. I suspect that it was all part of the reason you were so instant on crippling NATO and withholding aid to Ukraine prior to Putin’s invasion.

There… I said it.

(Reaches up to scratch itchy head under tin foil hat.)

Alright, I think I’m deranged enough right now. Time to get back to ignoring my kids running through this playland and focus on my story again.

😛

Mental Noodles all… errr… I mean… Tootles all

🙂

I’m currently editing chunk 21 of “A New Day” for submission to my review group. We typically meet on the third Wednesday of each month. I like to imagine myself sending out my submission by the first of each month so as to allow my peers plenty of time to ignore my submission before rushing through it at the very last moment.

Did I end that above part with sarcasm?

I mean it is what most people typically do, right? I’m guilty of it as well, or at least I try not to be. I’m one of those people that review their submissions with a fine-tooth comb. It’s like I’m hunting for lice eggs on their scalp. Do I do a good job at it? That’s debatable.

Still, I want the option of having the time for doing this. Do they afford me this same early submission, not entirely. Some of them do, others do not. Pobodies Nerfect, I know.

At the moment I’ve run away from home and am sitting in a local McDonald’s sipping my unsweetened tea. It’s 8:30 am right now. I finished my early morning errands over at home despot. I had to pick up some paint for our bathroom remodel that is still going on.

So the chunk I’m working on is number 21, I’m not sure if I mentioned that above or not, nor do I care enough to go back up and look. LIFE HAPPENS IN THE FIRST DRAFT is my motto for a reason. You get what you get, no do-overs in life. I do “try”* to spell check this thing as it’s being written but that’s as much as your gonna get. I mean I can’t ignore all the tiny red underlines. THEY GET TO ME!

*(I am a despot myself)

So in chunk 21, (did I mention that already?), the story picks up and winds back into chunk/chapter/page 1 of the story. It is essentially where the whole thing begins. I’ve got to go back and copy/paste/edit/tweak that first section to match what is now taking place in the now, which was back in the chapter/page 1 stuff.

Have I lost you?

Let me explain. Page 1 is the current timeline and from there the characters go about moving forward in the story. At some point, Jessica falls into a coma and begins reliving her past (life flashes before your eyes as your dying sort of thing). So in a sense, the next part is where she makes a recovery and the story moves forward again.

I have lost my review group. They can’t seem to grasp that the story is jumping backward only to meet up with itself again.

So this keeps bugging me with the burning question… does this mean it’s bad writing or the wrong audience?

I keep CIRCLING BACK on this question.

Ha?

(taps microphone) Is this thing on?

Hello?

Sooo… what else is new that isn’t new.

I’m taking the crotch goblins out to the roller rink later today. Talk about going around in circles.

Thank you very much, you’ve been a great audience, and please don’t forget to tip your hosting staff.

Yeah… I went there… again. You could say “I circled back”.

I recall my own youth and the countless hours I spent at my local roller rink. That was the 70’s. Yes, I’m old. The world had just invented color for everyone to exist in. Prior to that everything was in black and white.

Side note: I’ve never seen the movie Pleasantville. I hope to see it someday.

Okay Dave, enough fidgeting around, it’s time to get back to editing your stuff so the older peeps don’t throw my papers at me yelling “Back in my day, stories made sense! Huckleberry did none of this flux capacitor Biff stuff! Now get off my dangling participles!”

Tootles all

😛

So… Did I write much?

Not really. I got drunk a few times. 😛

Did I enjoy my vacation?

Overall, yes. Nothing in life is ever “perfect”.

Where did I go?

Maui, Kahana area.

What was your favorite part?

I went snorkeling in a sea turtle area and had four of the guys popping up at the same time so as to box me in. That was cool.

Am I ready to go back to work tomorrow?

F-No. I actually got back a few days ago and have been dealing with my kids again. Much of my vacation after-glow has already been burned away.

Guess that’s it for my self-imposed vacation Q&A.

I took most of the kids to go see the Pixar movie Buzz Lightyear. The kids liked it well enough to stay awake were as I fell asleep towards the end of it. I must be getting old. 😛

I also took my son to see Top Gun. He was lost through most of it as he hadn’t seen the first movie.

What else… I’m currently working on chunk 34 of “A New Day”

Overall I think I’m past my first draft’s word count and I’m guessing I’m sitting at roughly the 75% mark. Granted I never did finish my first draft as I quit that at around the 85% mark. Things came up, I lost my mojo for it, and found myself benching it for a while. You know the deal.

Semi-side rant: I truly hate how incompetent my family is. My wife has this habit of starting something, getting stuck, and then passing the responsibility to me. My kids have this habit of being complete idiots and can’t even start the washing machine or fill the soap dispenser, even after I’ve provided several walk-throughs, so everything that comes out isn’t really clean. On top of that, they leave said items in the friggin washer so they get foul all over again. Then when I go to use it, I have to let the thing run through a sanitation mode, then rewash their clothes, then finally wash what I wanted to wash in the first place.

Today is the birthday of one of my oldest friends. Happy birthday Kim. I honestly don’t see you enough.

My motivation is once again at an all-time low. The vacation did put some pep back in my step, only once I got back to the same sheet again, I soon felt it evaporating out of me.

I really want to call in sick tomorrow and hide away in my home office. Is that wrong of me? I haven’t even had my first day back and I’m already tired.

I finished watching the Ben-Kenobi series on DisneyPlus. It wasn’t movie quality but it was done well enough. They tied/merged it in between “Revenge of the Sith” and “A New Hope” rather well. It did a good job of bridging the gap of continuity while providing something fresh at the same time.

Once again, having ridden on an airplane to and from Maui, I’m reminded of the safety video where they tell passengers to adhere their own masks before attempting to assist their flailing idiot child’s. So… hide in my office tomorrow or suck it up?

Retirement can’t get here soon enough.

What? Am I wishing my life away? No Dave! No! Never wish your life away. Time is the one thing you can never get back. You have to enjoy every moment you have for it will never come again.

And what I’m reading out of that is… “You have to enjoy your hidden days of solitude for life giving you the chance to find your sanity again isn’t a guarantee.”

To mutilate a line from the Lightyear movie, “To insanity… and beyond…”

Even the wife’s and I’s private time in Maui got interrupted by the early arrival of her Aunt “F” showing up.

Yeah…

My family is PHYSICALLY healthy, I should count my blessings.

I still can’t but feel as if life needs more to it.

A person needs to feel like they serve a purpose. Mine, because of the life I both chose and found myself in, hasn’t been that for me. What gives me joy is my writing. Now, will any of it ever see the light of day? Who knows. I can only keep plugging along when the voices in my head are calm enough for me to focus.

*(I was interrupted 8 times by various family members during the blurting of this post.)

I’m thinking hiding is sounding really good right now.

Tootle all

😛