October 2020 Update

Hello. So obviously I’ve been a bit AWOL recently, for which I feel I owe people a bit of an explanation. This is the quick version (hopefully).

So, as some of you know, I live with my sister and her family. The main reason for this was because my mum lived here too and I looked after her. She had dementia and needed constant supervision. She also had cancer although it didn’t really have much of an effect. She was supposed to have died two years ago tops but she’d never been very good at keeping to a schedule.

Anyway, this allowed me to write quite a lot since she was often zonked out on drugs and we had carers come in to deal with the more difficult issues (involving fluids and so forth).

So then covid hit and my sister’s three kids were at home ‘cos school was closed and my sister and her husband, who are both doctors, were not at home, so I was suddenly very busy and also mentally drained (kids aren’t fun, please don’t have any).

Then my mother got worse, which meant even more stuff to do, and as is probably obvious by my use of the past tense, she died (from the cancer). This was end of May. 

Now you’d think this would free up a lot of time, which it did, but for some reason I found it very hard to concentrate on writing. This wasn’t a grief, sadness, depression sort of reaction — dementia usually means the person you knew disappeared a long time ago — but more of a blank feeling from not having all the stuff I needed to do on a daily basis there anymore.

As a writer, I rely a lot on just getting in the zone and riffing, and I just wasn’t able to do that. I do feel better now but I find it hard to remember where I was with my writing, character names, plot lines, just no recollection of anything. And when I try to read over old stuff I glaze over and constantly lose my place. Found it very hard to get back into the swing of things.

I’ve lost a lot of Patreon subs over the last couple of months (which is completely understandable) but a lot of you have kept faith with me (for which I’m very grateful). It will take a while to build things back up, assuming I can get my shit together, but here we go.

My plan going forward is to post DD three times a week (first one went up yesterday). I want to bring back HTADDB and TGS (next week I think), and I want to write a few short stories to give my brain something else to think about. 

The usual problem of having too much on my mind isn’t an issue at the moment. Quite the opposite — completely empty-headed currently. However, it may take a week or two to get back up to speed. There also may be more mistakes than usual so feel free to call them out.

Oddly, while I haven’t been able to write my old stories, I have managed to think up a bunch of new ideas in quite a lot of detail. Around 120 of them. Don’t know where they all came from, but will try to knock a few out over the next few weeks as short stories. 

In conclusion, sorry for bailing so hard. Thank you for putting up with it. Will try to bring the fire over the next few months and then maybe 2021 will be a nice time (it could happen).

Find me on Discord if you have questions. 

Cheers,

Mood