Quick Summary of September

Last Two Weeks Super Ungodly Melt Electronics Hot = No Write.

Next Two Weeks Not Hot Actually Nice and Pleasant = Hoping To Write.*

*Depending On How Much of An Asshole My Spine Wants to Be

Proof of Life August

Still limping around.

Working on new stuff when I can, but hurt the back again and have needed the last two weeks to recover, should be writing again next week.  I suppose I should be happy we've progressed to two steps forward/one step back as opposed to step forward/step back/stuck in place I dealt with from Feb to June, but annoying that I'm getting occasionally sidelined still.  Biggest annoyance is that obviously there's some things I CAN'T do, like picking up heavy objects, using a controller, etc, without hurting it and so I know to be very careful but sometimes...it just gets hurt and I'm not sure what caused it.  Was it sneezing?  Was it writing every other day instead of every three days?  Was it that I stayed up later than usual or didn't get enough sleep to rest the muscles?  Was it the hardcore bondage orgies?  So frustrating... 

Super miserably hot in Fresno even for Fresno.

Tried multiple times to get a quicker appointment at my doctor's but they're booked like crazy so I'm waiting another month to hopefully finally get hooked up with some specialists that can finally figure this out.

Another RR movie rec:  Thirteen Lives.  Fan-freaking-tastic movie making from Ron Howard.  About the Thai cave rescue a few years back.  Very understated and just let's the situation play itself out without any extra frills.  You just don't really need the extra tension when the fear of drowning and the weight of all that rock and just how tight those spaces are does all the work for you

Tease: Guess the Speaker Edition #5

“Faced with any possible use of its newly acquired free time, the mongoloid rushes across the campus just so it can ruin my breakfast, why am I not surprised?”

Still Circling the Runway

Really starting to feel like the Universe is conspiring against me at this point.  Had to wait to see my doctor to go over the MRI results as is and now she's gone for vacation for three weeks and I don't even get a reschedule call until Aug 8th at the earliest.  After all the other delays and insurance bullshit it just feels cruel.  Not that the woman isn't super overworked and overloaded and doesn't deserve her time off, but...feels like the office staff bungled everything yet again.

July WAS better than June which was better than May, but I'm still extremely limited writing-wise and just about anything wise.  Tell me, what's it like sitting in a chair?  Is it fun?  I've forgotten by this point...

Instead of 1-2 hours every three days call it 2-3 hours every other day with the occasional extra break day thrown in.  Tried buying a mini-keyboard controller I could just text-type slowly with and see if that was better, but pretty sure it was actually worse and I've tweaked something, so back to the normal laptop keyboard as able.

Progress wise I'm down to just 3 pages needing to be typed in and then we'll be onto new material.  This should be easier since I'll just have my eyes on the screen instead of twisting back and forth to read and then type and think and edit-as-I-go and all that.

Even at 2-3 hours every other day I figure I can manage 10k words a month, not fast, quite the malaise actually, but...do that ten months in a row and you do have a novel.  A normal novel.  Not the ever monstrosity WAR TO END ALL WARS is turning into.  So...the possibility of progress exists when it seemed very impossible just a few months ago.  Consider that a bright spot.

I like what I've written, so...that's also going well.  At least the scenes as they are.  The novel...I've extended the estimate out to 180k and even then I'm not sure 95k is enough to wrap everything up I've set into motion.  This shouldn't be this complicated...it's just a school story.  But then...it's capping six novels and dozens of shorts and references on a whole timeline while introducing a whole new generation which will have active roles in our mainline, so...

I think my biggest WTF RALEY is that I'm 85k into this monster and there's an argument to make we're just getting to the real story starting.  Which even for me is super slow rolling things...so I wonder if I should cut off parts of the beginning and yet they set other beats up that I need later in the novel and... well, this writing gig is hard if you want to do even a passible job of it...

And it's FRESNO SUMMER HELL, so my brain is generally just overheated mush and my laptop's fan is threatening to strike unless it gets overtime pay.  I hear some of our European brethren are getting to share our misery this year, so cheers, mates!

Anyway, the ellipses are breeding rapidly at this point, so let's call this your proof of life for the next month or so. 

6/30 UPDATE:  1 page left.  Sneezed yesterday and my back is very outraged, so might need a few extra days.  But the important info:  I finally watched "EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE" last night and it's highly recommended.  Best movie I've seen in years.  Maybe since Mad Max Fury Road...at least since Parasite.  Tears, uncontrollable laughter, disbelief, cool camera techniques, great acting...Ke Huy Quan especially blew me away.  I  mean...it's an existential horror, exploration of suicide, multiverse, martial arts, family drama, coming of age comedy...

Just...watch it if you haven't already.

MRI Day

Down to about 8 hw pages left to type/edit in, then new stuff for War to End All Wars.  Was writing every third day pretty much before this, but the spine DOES NOT like it when I lie flat on my back and having to do it for 90 minutes on a hard slab is probably going to temporally ruin my semi-crippled ass, so might need a week or two off after this.

Car rides also aren't high on my list...so that won't help either...

But at least we'll finally know what's going on in there and hopefully develop a game-plan towards fixing the problem.  Surgery of some sort, I imagine.  Since I've very done with this half-life shit.

Wish me luck!