Well there’s your problem, ma’am

Saturday nights I run write-ins at my Discord server with patrons. For those unfamiliar, we do three forty-five minute writing sessions with a fifteen-minute break in between. I used to do them like a decade ago for NaNoWriMo and they helped, so they’ve become a fun thing to do again with others. Still, I’ve been really struggling to write anything–again, burnout–and I barely made it to the first session on time.

I’ve been trying, still, to write Hell Fire. After a couple of sessions with about 60% of the usual productivity, I finally seemed to hit a breakthrough and words started flowing, which carried over to the next two nights. All said, I’ve suddenly added about 15K words in forty-eight hours.

They are not very good words, and will require heavy revision, but at least I no longer feel like I’m banging at a closed door. And when I finally looked at what got things flowing agin?

Elis, at long last, had cismen being dumb to yell at.

Like trying to write a Livi novel without her going on some kind of adventure or Waverly without giving her the opportunity to go on a misanthropic rant, Elis does best when she’s being snarky at mansplainers or otherwise letting out her rage. The whole premise is that she’s a misandrist serial killer (even though that’s more incidental to the main plot than the focus) and other than a couple of jokes in the narration, she hadn’t had a single opportunity to be, well, Elis.

So I’m still trying to fast draft this thing, then I can go back and revise. The top of my revision notes is “MAYBE ADD MORE MISANDRY”.

I’ve hit a point now that I’ve been planning for a few books, which is always my favourite part of writing (“plan” is pretty loose–it’s not that I decide a thing is going to happen, but during the course of rolling stories around in my head, which I do every waking hour, the scenes came together). Ashur is finally making one of his big moves on the chessboard and Elis sees a little, though not all of it yet.

I have to take a few days off to work on freelance stuff, but that should give the next few chapters enough time to percolate. I know roughly what will happen but not the finer details.

As I said, it’s not good writing but…we’ll fix it in post.

My TB testing was put on hold because the lab doesn’t have the kit they need. I heard from my case manager and she’s lovely and helpful, but she confirmed what I worried about, which is that I actually have to apply for a program to get my medication covered, and while yes, I qualify, I need a few other pieces in place. At this point, best-case scenario is that I get to start this at the end of the month. (Worst-case is that I’m denied, and because I don’t have over ten grand to drop on medication, I have to wait and apply next year, which will be decidedly a bad thing.)

Did I mention stress makes my condition worse?

At least the book is moving again.