Turning mud into a sculpture

 The completion of the first draft of a story is always an odd experience for me. It is this feeling of elation mixed with a bit of nausea when I realize that the first draft is generally what one may politely call...rough. Impolitely, it could be called many things far worse.

The Dreaming Sea's tale is there, on paper, ready for me to review then slice and dice and build upon. I shudder in horror if someone were to read this and expect a complete story. When I make a first draft it is an experimental playground. I will frequently switch POV, to see which character works best to tell the story from. I may shift the tone of the story around a bit to see what works best for delivering the story. It's a mad jumble before I put it on the forge and hammer it out...but it's there.

Time to take a couple of weeks to clear my head and take care of a few other things around here so I can get in the mind space necessary for sculpting something beautiful from this muddy puddle. It will get there, and I will offer as many updates as I can over the coming months. This will likely NOT be the final pass at this story so the release window has been pushed back to sometime in mid 2022. Sorry to disappoint but that's how it goes when one aspires for something worthy of my readers' attention.

Hope everyone has a great transition into Autumn here in the northern hemisphere. Looking forward to dragging more of this tale into the light in the coming months.

Also, please check out the first two books in my highly rated Concentric Worlds series! https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08KGSN1YM

Back to School...and Work

 My five year old began school last week, which caused no small amount of anxiety in the household. It's been just as rough for us as it has been on him, I think. Sending our little boy out into the great big world to experience some small level of independence is scary. 

I've been a work from home dad for eleven years, now. There's a lot to be said for being your own boss and taking control of your own fate...but there's also something to be said for stability in the form of not putting the entire world on your shoulders.

Over the past several weeks I have had a stirring inside of me as I continue my own mental health recovery process. It has led me down the avenue of searching for a job outside the home. To that extent I took a shot in the dark and am about to go to work for the good old USPS. It will be part time to start, which is perfect. Still, it ads no small amount of stress to the household. 

I am wondering what it is going to do to my writing schedule, but not overly concerned. I have always taken the 'trench writing' approach; writing whenever I get a small stretch of silence so I can think. I don't imagine it will be much different whether I am delivering mail or chasing a small child around the house.

Draft one of The Dreaming Sea is in the home stretch. I'm over 70,000 words in and beginning the wrap up chapters. I'd be lying if I said it was a great draft, but it is a start. I already have a litany of changes for draft two, including shifting the focus from one character to another and probably eliminating the chapter that I am currently writing, altogether. Being a writer is so frustrating before it becomes rewarding.

Personally, I am feeling much better these days. My mental health has largely stabilized and my thinking has been clarifying with each day. It's like emerging from a fog bank and finding a whole world that I couldn't see through the depression.

Here's to all the adventures that still await.

Until next time.

The Journey Back

 This morning I woke up, took a deep breath, opened the curtains in my bedroom and let the light spill into my little world. I looked outside and saw the town waking, clouds dotting the sky and birds rushing from nests to find food for their young ones. I was okay, and knew that everything would be alright as my five year old opened the bedroom door to let me know that he was awake and ready to start his busy day of playing with trains.

A month ago I wouldn't have been okay. In fact, I would have been very far from okay.

The pandemic took a pretty large psychological toll on me, and I can now admit that I wasn't right for a long time before then, either. It was simply the boulder that broke my back. I tried my best to keep it inside but as the world was beginning to heal, and things were slowly approaching a new normal, I wasn't. I was getting worse.

Anxiety can be sneaky. For me it crept up over years until I had reached a point where I was left completely dysfunctional and depressed. Not only couldn't I write, but I couldn't function as a parent or spouse. My poor wife finally forced me to face it in late April. I couldn't go on without help and was heading for the worst kind of psychological crash.

I am the kind of person who always swore that they would never resort to mood stabilizing medication because I felt like it represented a failure on my part. From the time I was young it was beaten into me pretty hard that depression is a weakness and means that you're a terrible and useless person. It was a huge mountain for me to summit. It was daunting, it hurt, and I kicked and railed against it for a very long time.

Then I was sitting there in my doctor's office, listening to what was going on inside me from a medical standpoint. Due to the other issues that were fighting to physically take me down -- namely a wonky immune system -- my body had virtually no serotonin. It was being attacked by my immune system. It was likely something I have lived with ever since I was an anxious 4 year old hiding in the bathroom at school because I was having a panic attack.

Fast forward to late May. A few weeks on my new medication and I have emerged from the haze and fatigue that comes with stabilizing, finding my focus to write again. Between my last post and now I had barely touched The Dreaming Sea, but I have had a couple of positive sessions in the last two weeks that have shown me that I can still find my writing voice. In fact, the words that come out of me now have a new life to them -- showing a heart and soul endeavor that I never realized was missing until now.

So, with some patience, draft one of The Dreaming Sea should wrap up over the next month or two. I'm not going to rush it. The words come out when they are ready.

Thank you to everyone who has expressed concern, frustration, and understanding toward me over this difficult time. I'm not sure I can ever say that I am completely healed, because I feel like it is an infinite process. Maybe that's what makes it worthwhile.

Cheers until next time.

The Dreaming Sea - February Update

 Well, I've been away for a minute.

This continuing limbo of existence that began eleven months ago continues to hit me in unexpected ways. One of those ways has been a really deep bout of psychological fatigue. I attempted to work through it but ended up taking more days off between writing sessions and, eventually, a two week hiatus in the middle of drafting. I have never done that before. It's been an eye opening experience. I have discovered that on this particular book taking more time off between sessions has been more productive. I am now writing just two or three times per week but the quality of what I am writing is higher than what I was churning out when I was trying to force myself to write every day.

I'm about halfway through the first draft of The Dreaming Sea. The story is coming along well. I think that once it is layered in subsequent drafts it will be a very compelling science fiction work. It is going to take me a while to get there. I had an initial goal of releasing it by summer but it is looking more and more like a later in the year release. That's fine. It's not like I want to release another book into the void during the pandemic, anyway.

I think things are slowly on the upswing, but it looks like the light at the end of the tunnel is depressingly distant and falling further away from us day by day. I know we will get there but the journey has not been something I would wish upon my worst enemy.

Blogging isn't something that I feel super compelled to do, but I do like to give updates to my readers, and fellow writers who need someone to commiserate with. So, I hope that these infrequent ramblings help someone out there to realize that they aren't alone in struggling through this dark moment in human history.

Stay safe, and keep on writing and reading.