Ready or not...

Everyone has their style, and I guess this is mine. Here's a bit of insight on the developments since the start of the year, though a bit out of order:

Thanks to a friend of mine, one Mr. Paez, I've got a publishing program so I can stop bothering anOTHER friend of mine to do the formatting. I can also freely edit things to eliminate the errors as I see fit without having to trust an editor.

In March, Azure flew down and we attended the Slover Library author fair. I'll upload a picture of the table and whatnot another time. We sat around, got pitied by a few people, and had to listen to a "rich guy" talk to us about how successful his books were. Books that were less than 50,000 words, with stock photos on the cover. The only copies of my first book I've sold have been because my mother pressured coworkers or because random bystanders pitied me.

I started my second novel, a stand-alone called Better Half, in February. I've previously practiced with it, and those early chapters are still on my dA account.

It isn't going well.

See, the idea is all I ever start with. Some come with timelines, cultures, worlds even, and a few key characters. A good 90%, no exaggeration, of Beyond Pain is off-the-cuff, in-the-moment writing. That's how I do things.

Unfortunately, the idea isn't the only factor. My mental health is the other key component, and it's been on the decline for a decade or so now. As my skill in writing has skyrocketed, my drive has plummeted.

I'm capable of, and have several times, writing over 10,000 words in a single day, in less than six hours. In an ideal environment, that translates to about 12 novels per year on the low end, or up to 48 on the high end, depending on the word-count of each. That's not accounting for formatting or editing, but that's because the ideal scenario is having people to help me with those parts.

I wrote one last year. I was supposed to write three this year. Clearly, my skill is up to it. My mind is not. My environment has continued to degrade, and my mind has followed.

My mind, unfortunately, isn't the only issue I'm running into with this book. It is intended to be character driven, somewhat slow paced, and start off depressing with an upswing. That's the concept. Sadly, I can't justify to myself writing this story.

I began preparing to write a wholly realistic story, but that just doesn't fit my creative style. I thought about taking the characters and adapting the story to a different time period, but that felt like too much of a departure, with too much time spent away from the characters. Then I decided that a fusion of the two would be best.

The current state of the book is about half-finished. Halfway through, and I don't feel like I've successfully done anything with it like I wanted to. None of it fits the way I wanted. As it stands, I think my old practice version, bastardized as it was, is better! I thought I had a way to salvage the work, but now I can't bring myself to write at all.

I recently tried skipping ahead to the next book, but that didn't help either. I love that next idea, and I want to write it, and I have fun if I do, but I have no vitality left for creativity. It's not the idea, I've realized, it's me.

Not that a whole lot of people will read something like this, and I'm not a well-known or important author, but I'm the kind of guy who tells everyone my business. Privacy is for those with something to hide, for their own reasons I'm sure, and I have none of that. I have no money for anyone to steal, nor valuable possessions, nor potentially-viral and money-making ideas. And any of those ideas I might have could only shine in my hands because of their incomplete nature - as I said, I write off the top of my head.

Around the end of September, I intend on basically going dark. I won't be playing video games or doing anything else with my spare time but blasting music and writing. The work will suffer, but it needs to be done by the deadline, and it'll get done. I'm no longer interested in publishing - Beyond Pain was shoved out the door so I could attend that author fair, thinking it would be a great opportunity - so I just need to get the ideas written down first. I can comb over them later, format them later, and publish them later.

For anyone who wanted new work from me anytime soon, if any such people exist besides Azure - who remains the only person to have finished Beyond Pain - I'm afraid you'll be waiting a long time unless you want to read it on Google Drive, where I'm working on it.

Until then.