October 2, 2019
Today at work I wanted to flip my desk over and run away. I was just tired and cranky. I have an amazingly boring job assignment of massive proportions that promises to slowly suck away my will to live. It will be fine, I’m sure.
Many times we receive documents that are absolutely infested with embedded formatting and crazy hidden text so that when we try to clean it up, it fragments into a mess of puzzle pieces. I used to enjoy puzzles.
WIP Revisions
I actually got ten more pages written. Yay! Words on the page. Unfortunately, I kind of hate the entire scene and it will probably get scrapped when I go back through for revisions. I am suffering a semi-dreadful bout of “imposter syndrome” probably brought on by listening to an endless stream of author-tubers. Everyone seems to suffer so dreadfully over the depth of their characters and the revelation of their worlds. I really truly and honestly never thought of it that much before. At least, not like that.
There was never an intentional mangling of the ideas to wring out their details. It always just came to me when I was writing. A situation would arise and I would ask the character what he or she would want to do about it. I probably infuse them all with about 10x the amount of courage they would actually have if left to their own devices but still… They always seem to have plenty of foibles and quirks and awkward idiosyncrasies without them needing to be listed out somewhere.
I actually get a little caught up in their personal dramas when I am writing them. I find it difficult to write emotionally tense scenes and will put them off if I don’t make myself do it. There is a scene where a married couple is having a real married couple fight and it is tense and painful and turns violent. I had to work myself up to tackling that one for two days and even then it was very difficult to let it go when it was over. But the story called for it and it had to be done. I guess that makes me an as yet undetected imposter.
WIP Research
I need to look into some of the latest research on neural interfaces and eventually I need to learn more about space debris and random dust particles. I am considering how in depth I want to go with the genetic modification and hybridization information. I don’t think we have an analogous science to base it off of so I prefer to skirt it. It isn’t that I don’t have the details in my mind. It is that I don’t want to wander off in one direction without enough hard science to back me up and then have my book dated and shredded when the science becomes available. Meh… I will just have to see.
Other Stuff
I have an old Chromebook that I have carted around shamelessly for years. It was always perfect for edits and writing and posting and stuff… Then it died. I mean. It stopped holding a charge which means it still works fine as long as it is plugged in. I guess that means it is on life support? A new one is super expensive and I am distressed at this turn of events. Oh well…
I did start working on a Beta Read! The author wants as much feedback as I can give him so it is a perfect exercise in grammar and pacing and phrasing and all that stuff. And it is a complete fantasy story too, so it has all the opportunities for issues I could ever hope for. So far it is really pretty good. The author is not a native English speaker and I think that is probably what is giving me most of my opportunities for making little suggestions.
Oh, and the defroster in my Jeep went out. The stupid thing is stuck on air conditioning. I have no idea how to fix it. I think I am going to take a hammer to it over the weekend and if that doesn’t work, I will probably have to call a mechanic.
Ɛ|3 Amy
Ubriel Bryne Books 