I almost forgot to blog from being so out of it. I do seem to just crash hard on my rest days at the moment, and that’s not exactly sustainable because I end up losing a bunch of social time with people. It’s grim, and I need to do better at spending quality time with friends, as I’ve had pointed out to me a fair bit. And yay, 11pm blog, hype. This first term was rough as hell, and I need to figure this out going forward to keep it to one term, not four years.

Oh one cool note, for a brief moment after editing, but before I finished hitting target with TFT, both VOL and TFT were the exact same length: 96,062 words long. That’s pretty neat.

Oh hi 11pm did you miss me? Damn it. I shouldn’t be surprised, I have had two awful nights’ sleep back to back through no fault, except that it’s cold and I was overtired. The one point of improvement I could have made was to find my paracetamol, which I keep failing to find and thus to take. Like, I have permission to take the full dosage allowable for a day, and I often take none, which is dumb. I am always in pain, why do I not make life easier on myself with this one simple tool? Honestly, at this point I think it’s just needing to form the habit to check in, and keeping it all in a sensible place.

So TUS, WHT and TSS are all ready for a final edit. VOL needs a lot more work, because the chapters are all weird lengths at present and I’ve had to break out a spreadsheet to figure out how to fix that – yes I know but this time a spreadsheet is justified! I’m working on TFT in the meantime as that’s more straightforward, but what I really need to do is find some great resources for planning a story, to write out the arcs as I see them, and then measure all these novels against that as a benchmark. If I can, that might use some of my brainpower tomorrow. But I will settle for writing sooner…

Ok so target is slipping back towards 11pm again, which is not great, but I am starting to think I should take the data I have for the last three years – thanks to the 10 bullet journals that cover that time – and figure out what the mean time is I write by. I figure there’s two figures, one much more useful than the other I suspect: I figure the mean time I write by as a number on the clock is pretty useless, unless assuming I wake up from 8 hours of sleep each night at the same time, which, you know, weekends kind of undermine. The more useful figure, would be mean time since waking, with a matrix against how much sleep I got the night before, and maybe a three dimensional one for quality of sleep leading up until that point.

See normal people play video games in the evening, not plan out three/four dimensional matrices for data that honestly doesn’t matter. But hey I mean I do play video games too. I just, happen to use spreadsheets for those as well. I may have a problem.

Got to visit my nephew properly today, which was a really lovely experience. Also as you might note, despite a busy day of that, eye tests and food shopping, as well as all the usual stuff, I am writing this before 8pm, so a huge win there too. This 4 day weekend did me a world of good, and I’m starting to feel a little less burned out, and a bit more present in the moment. I also bought a hot water bottle at long last, so I get to be warm while I’m at it.

I added another 1,000 words to WHT today, which is weird as that’s my most bloated manuscript, but I think I’m leaning towards getting every current chapter either t3K across all 14 books, or earmarked for merger with another, or cut. That way, I can start doctoring each in their own right, without worrying about hitting a 1.2K chapter which needs a bunch added, and then reincubation. It’s also letting me finally add in the 300+ notes of missing content and ideas I have backlogged on Trello! My god I do love Trello, best internet multitool there is.

Wow, does it feel good to be writing this at quarter to three in the afternoon instead of 11pm! It does indeed. I got jabbed yesterday and it hasn’t been 24 hours yet, but the worst I’ve felt is the aching arm, which, well I ache all the time anyway so it’s not that hard to compensate for. Hoping I don’t just fall apart tomorrow or Monday, but it does at least look unlikely. And yes, I woke up today, took a chill start, and then did all my writing in a nice and timely way. I jumped from TSS to WHT, which is an odd choice to work on extending as it currently sits at 117K, but I want to get every book to having 3K~ chapters as that feels like a good starting point. Then I’ll go through and just start hacking at all 14 with a meat cleaver. TSS is now 111K, and I am pretty sure it’ll sit at closer to 90K once I’m done trimming.

But all that is in the future, I’ve earned a carefree day, and I’m gonna go back to digging up corpses in peace.

…In Graveyard Keeper, just so we’re clear.

Got my Covid booster today, the advantages I guess of ‘multiple conditions’ and all that. Either way, one less thing to worry about, and I can go to America next year now that I’ll have a recent jab. I’m just hoping that I won’t have any side effects this time, because the last jab wasn’t pleasant at all. I ended up not going to Mana tonight, which I had planned to but just, lost my nerve I guess. It was also the realisation I needed a quiet evening to best avoid those side effects from last time. I, kind of regret that decision, but I think it was also the correct one. Still very low energy, but I’m not coming apart at the seams.

So I think that I’ve extended TSS as much as I should, and I have some options over what to do next. I started filling out a form for Radish, but I’m torn on if I want to go that route. I’m still not even sure if I want to build an audience or just exist in quite peaceful obscurity. Actually that’s a lie, I know I want the latter, but I feel like that’s not socially acceptable. But, I do want to write a webnovel, and that does imply publishing said novel on the web. I need to think on this more.

Semi busy day, that is the morning was busy and the rest of the day was, not. But I didn’t sleep so well so the morning knocked me out a bit. But it was also the first time in years I’ve gone to a hairdresser, and it really helped. My confidence feels boosted because I’ve been super wary about going to places for a long time. It’s a little win. Time to crash.

Omg, Legends & Lattes is so good, it’s going on my go to list of comfort fiction, 100%. And, speaking of, I finally started listening to my other comfort listening again. It’s been a long time since I could just put on I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue and just enjoy it. I missed it in all its politically incorrect silly goodness. My soul is feeling soothed, and I’m feeling more at peace. And now, I have four days off, to just try and reset my batteries.

If I continue focusing on TSS, by this time next week it will be longer than WHT, which is a little surreal. But I’m planning on getting most of the books to that length, and then cutting them down to about 90K each, which I feel is the ideal length. Or if they end up staying long who cares, I’m not going a traditional publishing route anyway.

You know for once Imma not read 11/22/63 again this year just because of the date. Not because I don’t want to, more I do that every year, and right now I feel like some comfort fiction. I’m going to read Legends & Lattes because I’ve been meaning to for ages now and it’s so long overdue. Also of note, tomorrow I finish work at 11am, and then I am off until Monday. The lecturers strike is sad because lecturers shouldn’t be forced to strike for such basic things as not having to deliver lecturers right after giving birth, and not being paid enough to get into work. That said, this is the first chance in weeks I’ve had to just stop for a while, and I need it so badly.

I have a decision to make, whether I go to the creative writing society after uni tomorrow. I would have to wait around until 7pm, and I don’t know how I feel about sharing work with total strangers. But it might be worth it? I don’t know. I also cannot remember if I have therapy this week or not. Pretty sure I do. Speaking of I really need to find my debit card. Can you tell how much I need a break by the fact I don’t know where my debit card is and I’m too burned out to panic about it? You seeing why maybe I’m opting for cosy fiction over literal Stephen King? Ok admittedly I find horror cosy but still.

Bed.

OK, that was a weird 24 hours. Violently ill, suddenly fine, and no idea why I ended up in the first or how I got to the second. Imma just add it as a post it to the gargantuan “probably the EDS” board and try not to overthink it. I did think ‘over-exertion’ but that doesn’t explain the rapid recovery. Bug, same problem. I didn’t eat anything weird, and that wouldn’t explain the headache and lack of gut pain. Honestly I’m stumped and a little unnerved. But hey, somehow in the midst of that I wrote a thousand words. And today I wrote a thousand more. Life goes on, and life is good.