Dave's Log

[gankylosaurus]

HI nice to hear from you. I checked out the workout you started and it feels like it is not meant as a solo routine you do everyday. It seems to be a part of a split routine where you focus on the abs. Also it is very challenging which isn't a good way to start such things. If you have some core problems and want to exercise daily I would advice you to do something like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a83LhW_CX4g.

It has a similar length but focusses on the whole core(abs and back). Also balance and flexibility and has a better starting level.

Hey, man. I may end up trying that video at some point, but for now, I think I'll try the Ab Ripper again. I admit I used to be in much better shape where I could do it more easily and see results, but as long as I don't push myself from now on, I think I'll be fine. I let myself recover for several days, and I'm going to start back up again tomorrow, alternating back and forth between running and core. That's my six days. I'm not crazy enough to do the Ab Ripper six days a week lol. And you're right, it's part of a split routine, sort of. In the full P90X program, it comes after every resistance workout. This is a double-edged sword, though. On the one hand, you're warmed up already and less prone to injury; on the other, those resistance workouts are an hour long each and fifteen more minutes is killer. I'll at least make sure I stretch properly next time I do the video.

Day 59

Unfortunately, I don't have much more to report. Yesterday was fun. Worked the early shift until 1, then slept for awhile, woke up, wrote, cleaned really quickly, got beer, and then a bunch of friends came over. It's funny, though. Apparently they all thought we were doing the D&D thing, when that hadn't been discussed at all. One person mentioned we should hang out again, and then when I told the rest of the group, I told them "We'll just hang out." For us that usually means board games and bullshitting.

So D&D will start up next week. It's actually a system called Fantasy AGE which is pretty easy for newcomers to tabletop roleplaying (which is why I picked it) but with a lot of customization. I'm excited for it, and I'm really glad my friends are into it already.

In other news, I'm having a pretty lazy day. Just reading mostly. About to get my writing done shortly. Right after I take a shower...

[gankylosaurus]

Day 70

It's a bit embarrassing how far I've fallen behind and I feel like I should be changing that back to Day 1. I'm a mix of emotions. I feel overwhelmed and uninspired and I don't know what I'm doing with my life. I write, I work, and now I wait for school to start back up. So far all our attempts to start a D&D campaign have been derailed (the latest one being because I forgot I work until close tonight.)

As far as the good things go...

I'm still writing every day. And I wrote a blog post about it.

I started a new kind of diet. After telling my fiance I need to count calories or something, she told me all I needed to do was count carbs. I did some research and found that if you keep your carbs under 50 grams a day, your body goes into ketosis, which basically means your body stops getting as hungry and you start burning off more fat. It's actually a really cool diet, though I have to be careful about what I eat. Turns out a banana has about 27 carbs, but bacon has none. And before you say bacon's probably just as bad, low-carb diets suggest that fat is fine to eat, and that you need plenty of protein. Turns out the body burns carbs first, then fat, then protein. So if you have fewer carbs, you start burning the fat sooner. And if you have some fat in your diet, you won't burn off too much protein.

Insert "Science, bitch!" meme here.

So basically I've had to cut out bread, pizza, beer, and wine. Fruits are limited, veggies are fine, and bacon, eggs, and cottage cheese are an excellent breakfast. I even scooped the innards of a taco bell taco out into a salad earlier. As long as I don't eat the shell (especially the soft kind, which are loaded with lard to keep them soft) I'm still good.

I'm also back to working out regularly. I'm not doing the Ab Ripper X video anymore, but I am doing that routine, still. I printed out each workout, then added pushups and pullups between each move. I did it yesterday and went at my own pace. Today I feel fine, and I'll be ready to do it again tomorrow (since I ran today).

So now I'm down to 199 lbs (in the morning). First time I've been under 200 in a while. I was 215 for about a month, but 205 had become my new normal, and it was hard to break out of. I want to get down to 180, and we'll go from there. And if it's a semi-muscular 180, even better.

And the bad things...

Gaming and porn are still my vices. But they've left me more and more unfulfilled lately, and I'm back to wanting to quit entirely. I don't think "entirely" is the right word, though. Basically, I want to leave them to later in the day after I've done everything I needed to do and I've gotten a substantial amount of reading done. Then if I'm bored and a game feels right at the time, I'll go for it.

I feel like I game and watch porn whenever I can't handle reality. It's supposed to be a reprieve from the bullshit, but it doesn't always work out that way. Especially when I'm done and I just feel hollow, and the weight of everything I need to do comes rushing back. And the depression comes with it.

And then there was the really shit thing that happened last week that has me so fucked up now...

Last week we adopted a dog. Within four hours, we decided to return the dog. And now everything resulting from that appears to be snowballing.

It was my fiance's idea to get another dog. She'd been wanting to have a second dog for a while, but was waiting until we (ie. she) had the money. Well, she makes a lot more money at her current job than she used to. The dog cost $130 to adopt overall. He was a five year old boxer mix, really friendly. Got along with our dog, though she very quickly made it clear whose territory it was, and he ceded dominance. We even had people over that night, and he was super friendly with everyone. Then we took him out and saw a neighbor we knew walking her dog. We asked if they could say hi, and seconds later, this new dog had the neighbor's dog pinned to the ground.

It took a couple minutes to get him off. A tip if you get in this situation: Pull their ear. It worked for me though I could have easily been bitten as a result. That would have been a small price to pay. By the end of it, the other dog ended up with three puncture marks, but he was quickly back to his happy-go-lucky puppy self.

Our new dog acted like nothing odd had happened. He even seemed like he wanted to play. We talked to the neighbors and they said they've been through this kind of thing before, and that we should just get him into classes and get to know him better before he meets any more new dogs.

Back inside, I was beating myself up while everyone else went back to talking. I felt like I'd failed as a dog owner. The new dog came over and lay by my feet, so I moved to the bedroom because I didn't want to be near him. I didn't want him reading my body language. He kept walking into the bedroom as if he were looking for me, and after a little bit, I started crying uncontrollably.

Later, when we tried to get everything back to normal (this was one of the failed attempts to play D&D) the new dog was chewing a bone by the water bowls when my dog went to get water. We heard the new dog make a noise and he bared his teeth at my dog. My fiance and I looked at each other and without any hesitation said he had to go back. We even drove my dog to my dad's place to keep her safe for the night.

This was all over the course of four hours. There's no way we fucked a dog up in four hours enough to make him aggressive like that, so we figure there was something the shelter didn't disclose (or else just didn't know about him). They said he wasn't aggressive about food and gave up toys easily. He had no bite history and showed no aggression toward other dogs. The man who'd surrendered him to the shelter had raised him from a puppy and couldn't care for him any more because he was going through a divorce. Someone else adopted him and brought him back because he was too strong for her and that he "wasn't a good guard dog." This was listed as "Unrealistic Expectations" on his card, and should have been a red flag to us, but we saw it as he was just too damn friendly to be a good guard dog. We didn't think about the fact that the last owner could have been training him to be aggressive.

We took him back in the morning and found out that when they do these tests with the dogs, they don't test for anything with other dogs present. The only thing they do with other dogs is make them walk past each other to see if they react. It's a no-kill shelter (otherwise we would have found another place to bring him) and they said that they'd just update his information to note that he should be the only dog in the home.

A couple days later, the dog who was attacked got an infection. The side of his neck swelled up and was leaking, so the owners took him to the vet. They said it cost $260 and they would like us to help out. We have no choice but to agree. Just for starters my fiancee got $200 in prepaid debit cards and a bottle of wine. We haven't given it to them yet, and I objected to the $45 in restaurant gift cards she bought them. Figured that seemed a little insulting, and she agreed saying she hadn't thought about that. They said they have to take him back in a couple days to make sure they aren't going to need more work done, and if they do, we're going to have to give them even more money.

I'm just worried now that the next thing I'll hear from them is that the dog died. I don't know what I'd do then. Probably move out of embarrassment. Money can't solve that problem, and it'll weigh on me for the rest of my life probably. The whole thing's already weighing pretty heavily on me, and I don't think I can take much more. I just want to forget it. My fiance keeps trying to talk to me about it to reassure me but I just tell her I don't want to talk about it and she just keeps trying to bring it up. She won't accept the fact that this could get worse and we need to be prepared for the worst. I don't know how to be prepared for that, though, other than to steel myself against the possibility and accept that it could happen and then we'll have to do a lot more than get some prepaid debit cards and wine.

UPDATE: Isn't it funny how things can just turn around in such a short time? I saw the owner of the dog who got attacked as I was leaving for work. He said the swelling has gone down a lot, which probably means that there won't be any more money to deal about - or at least not much. Also, he's alive, so that fear has been quashed. Then I got to work and learned that I wasn't working after all! Another coworker had offered to take it and I forgot, thinking that it must have been a different Wednesday night I got off. So D&D is back on as long as people are still available for it. Good times.

Edited June 8, 2016 by gankylosaurus

[WorkInProgress]

Hey good to hear from you. Good job on exercising regular and committing to your diet.

I did lately realize too, that I use porn as a coping strategy if I feel bad. Doesn't work( or at least only for a few minutes) and make things harder in the long run. But it is hard for me to stop anyway. It never seems like such a big deal in the moment.

My family had dogs since I was little and sometimes you can't do much. If a dog's are aggressive it is nothing you could foreseen or changed in such a short time. It seems kind of unhealthy, that you have such a big feeling of guilt after you did everything possible to better the situation. I really can't imagine what you could have done otherwise. Such things just happen. It is shit and annoying and unfair but it isn't necessarily some ones fault. At least for me it is very helpful to think about if I did something consciously wrong. If the answer is no, there is maybe a reason to change your behaviour in the future but none to feel guilty in this moment.

[Cam Adair]

Hey good to hear from you. Good job on exercising regular and committing to your diet.

+1

These can be the foundation of your success + writing that you can build upon.

[gankylosaurus]

I'm not numbering today's post. It's been 85 days since I started this challenge and yet I've gone completely off the rails.

I feel like unplugging for a bit. From everything. Not having Internet access on the road has been a little bit of an issue when I need to find store hours or something, but it's mostly been a good thing. Less distraction in my life. I feel like I need to do that at home, too. YouTube, forums, etc.

I used to be the kind of guy who'd go to forums every day. I was highly active on a writing site where I later became a moderator. I loved it there, until I didn't anymore. I learned a lot from being there and it actually distracted me from gaming. I talked to people, read their stories, banned a few people. It was fun.

It's become not an addiction but a crutch. I rely on it too much. I go to forums for advice and support, and I'm often disappointed. GameQuitters has been the most positive experience of all of these, but I have to wonder how long that will last. I have a feeling that the small size of the community is mostly to thank for this, and if it grows too large, it might just become another Reddit.

I mindlessly browse the Internet sometimes, and it becomes numbing and depressing. Videos and Facebook posts and anonymous comments piss me off. Problem is I need Facebook messenger to communicate with my fiance. Luckily, I discovered that messenger is a separate app that can be used at www.messenger.com

The only other forum I've been to in recent times that's been a positive experience is the AbsoluteWrite forum. I really haven't been there enough lately.

I don't know what else to say here. I don't know what this means for my future here. All I know right now is that I need to get off the Internet, remove myself from it as much as possible. Who knows, this may ironically be what gets my blog back in gear (though I may have to beef up my social networking skills if I do).

Thanks for everything, guys.

[lilX]

I'm not numbering today's post. It's been 85 days since I started this challenge and yet I've gone completely off the rails.

I feel like unplugging for a bit. From everything. Not having Internet access on the road has been a little bit of an issue when I need to find store hours or something, but it's mostly been a good thing. Less distraction in my life. I feel like I need to do that at home, too. YouTube, forums, etc.

I used to be the kind of guy who'd go to forums every day. I was highly active on a writing site where I later became a moderator. I loved it there, until I didn't anymore. I learned a lot from being there and it actually distracted me from gaming. I talked to people, read their stories, banned a few people. It was fun.

It's become not an addiction but a crutch. I rely on it too much. I go to forums for advice and support, and I'm often disappointed. GameQuitters has been the most positive experience of all of these, but I have to wonder how long that will last. I have a feeling that the small size of the community is mostly to thank for this, and if it grows too large, it might just become another Reddit.

I mindlessly browse the Internet sometimes, and it becomes numbing and depressing. Videos and Facebook posts and anonymous comments piss me off. Problem is I need Facebook messenger to communicate with my fiance. Luckily, I discovered that messenger is a separate app that can be used at www.messenger.com

The only other forum I've been to in recent times that's been a positive experience is the AbsoluteWrite forum. I really haven't been there enough lately.

I don't know what else to say here. I don't know what this means for my future here. All I know right now is that I need to get off the Internet, remove myself from it as much as possible. Who knows, this may ironically be what gets my blog back in gear (though I may have to beef up my social networking skills if I do).

Thanks for everything, guys.

Unplugging from the internet is a good drastic measure. 

Good luck! 

[Cam Adair]

One of the differences I see between GQ and Reddit as it grows in size is that we have been very intentional in cultivating a specific culture on the forum. So my hope is that as the forum grows, the culture will remain the same. It's one reason why it's important for you vets to stick around and help cultivate that! 

[gankylosaurus]

I appreciate that sentiment, Cam. I have no problem sticking around here, though my posts may be more sporadic. Maybe I'll only post when I have something to post. Daily update posts are kind of lame unless every day is actually pretty interesting.

So I tried something new. I went outside my comfort zone and got a new job in a field I'd never tried before. So for five days, I was a valet driver.

It was interesting, to say the least. And as a writer, it was actually really good story fodder.

But it's not for me. I'm going to avoid giving actual numbers here, but the number they gave me for hourly pay after tips on an average day was about 150% what I made at my other job. So that was pretty good. Turned out I was consistently making closer to 120% of my other job's pay, which was not significant enough to warrant the extra gas and stress involved. Not to mention the one boring job they put me at for eight hours where I was a parking lot attendant making just over minimum wage with no tips. So it kind of evens out.

It was fun, I'll give it that. And if it weren't for the fact that I have another job that pays decently, I'd definitely stick with it. They say it's largely a customer service job but that's bullshit unless you're a manager. I was a "runner" which meant I'd literally run to and from cars. Someone pulled up and paid us, I parked it and ran back. Someone came to claim their car, I took the key and ran to get it and brought it back to them. The most customer service I did was opening the doors for people and saying "Here's your car, sir" and thanking them for the tips.

The job kicked my ass so hard I lost three pounds in two days (190 lbs now, down from 215 in May) and the new shoes I bought for it made running a breeze since my normal running shoes have almost no padding--this is by choice, btw; training in more difficult shoes makes running in easier shoes that much better.

I started training Wednesday. On Thursday I had another training shift, but they asked me to stay and work a full shift. Then on Friday I had the boring parking lot attendant job where I basically just read and talked to people on Facebook. Saturday I had a 2 to 11 shift, and Sunday noon to 11. On Saturday I'd decided I wasn't staying there.

Part of this has to do with the fact that I simply fucked up. I lost someone's keys in a really embarrassing situation. A new car pulled up just as someone came to claim their car, so for convenience, they gave me both keys and had me park the new one, then bring the other one back. Well, when I brought the other one back, I left the keys to the car I'd just parked in there. And then that car went home.

So when the angry Russian man started threatening people's lives and asking me if I parked his car (I wasn't sure at the time if it was me) I had to reconsider my position within the company.

The boss later told me that they found the keys (in the other person's car) and got them back to their owner, and that I shouldn't worry about it, and that those guys were just assholes. But I'd already made up my mind when I realized the pay wasn't what I'd expected (or what the boss had told me it would be).

Funny thing is, when I told my fiancee Friday that I wasn't sure I wanted to keep the job, she got upset and cried. I told her I'd stick it out through the weekend for the rest of my scheduled shifts. Saturday, after all that went down and the pay hadn't increased at all, she totally agreed with me. So I worked my Sunday shift and told my manager it was my last day. Sad thing there is that I actually kind of liked that manager. But nah, I'm content with my decision.

After all of that, I think I have a new perspective. On going outside my comfort zone, on working, on my current job, on people even. I went back to the pool and I felt like a different person. I felt much more detached. And I think that's because I feel less like the job rules me now, and I feel like I have more control over my fate. I'm more of a superior now than a peer. Which sounds arrogant, but I'm a supervisor, and it's been hard for me to make that jump from peer to superior. I'm still fair, and I always will be, but I don't back down from telling someone to do their job.

Plus, now I have more of a drive to look for other jobs outside my comfort zone. Maybe I'll finally become a bartender, like I've wanted to do for a long time.

Oh, and before I go, I guess I should comment on my story: The editing process is going slowly but steadily. I've been bouncing around trying different things to take notes about the story so I can edit more thoroughly. I've summarized each scene and made notes on every one of them, and today I finished summarizing each character's individual storyline within the novel. The next step is rewriting each of those storylines into what the story should look like after the edit. From there, I can figure out what scenes need to be added, which ones need to be change/moved around, and which ones are fine as is. Then I'll be able to move into editing for continuity and finally the line edit. Then I'll send it out to some trusted beta readers (maybe even a couple new ones as well) and I'll see where to go from there.

I really like this story and I'm glad I finally got around to writing it. To think, all I had was a title, and now I have a novel.

[Cam Adair]

I was just thinking about you yesterday. Nice to see an update.

[Mad Pharmacist]

You have a lot to post! It's probably even more than 750 words, which I'm writing each day!

Awesome to see an update!

Greetings, Mad Pharmacist

[gankylosaurus]

Heh. I can typically write over 1,000 words in a half hour if I don't get distracted, @hycniejsy. And since I write for 30 minutes every day, I'm doing at least that much on a regular basis. I don't think this post will be as long.

Anyway...

I've been here before. I'm at that point where nothing is fun. Everything just pacifies as time moves around me. I go to turn on a game and turn it off shortly after I reach the main menu. I have to make myself do even fun things now. I pass the time watching Youtube and sleeping. Reading is still good, but it just makes me more tired.

I think it's because I'm starting to truly recognize how economical I have to be about the hours in the day. The games I want to play could have me on the couch for hours at a time. But at the end of it, what have I really accomplished? Probably less than I would have watching a movie--because at least then I would have absorbed a whole story end to end in that time.

The average book of about 100,000 words takes me about ten hours total to read at a normal pace. Some games have taken me upwards of sixty hours. I have fond memories of both, but those sixty hours didn't have six books worth of story or entertainment.

Yesterday when I couldn't sleep and I was alone, yet I didn't want to read, or play a game, watch a movie, or even write, I sat down with a notebook. At the top I wrote the word "Simplify." I've done this before in various degrees. Clutter has come up a lot in this journal, both in the literal sense and in the figurative, mental, sense. This is about a little bit of both.

I decided I need to declutter my digital world. Reorganize bookmarks, delete old ones, eliminate my old email address... But that old address has a lot associated with it, so I had to list out every account that I have attached to it so I can transfer them to a different email. There were way more than I remembered. And when I'm done with that, I still have to go through my two current "main" email addresses (one is more professional than the other) and unsubscribe from annoying things and organize certain senders into their own categories. Et cetera et cetera.

I don't know why I'm going on about that other than to get it sorted out in my own head. Point is, I was bored enough to find pleasure in something boring.

I don't like watching TV anymore by myself, unless I'm just finding something to fall asleep to (Futurama usually does the trick with the number of times I've seen it).

And I've encountered a strange drawback to my 30 minutes a day writing regimen: Now I only write 30 minutes a day. Don't get me wrong here, that's way better than before. Before starting this Write Chain challenge (in which I recently hit day 100) I rarely wrote more than 10,000 words of new fiction in a month. At just 30 minutes a day, I managed to get 30,000 words done in a month. And then I went on to finish the first draft of this book at 57,000 words.

But now that progress seems too slow. I want to finish this project by the end of August when school starts. I already mentioned my editing plans up above, and right now I'm still working on the new summary for the whole story. I think it's over 4,000 words already, partly due to the new scenes that I spent more words detailing. And I'm barely halfway through summarizing the story. At this pace, I'll have the new outline done within a week, which isn't bad, but...

But I could be working much faster. I was looking at my blog recently and I stumbled upon this passage:

It sucks to have to sit down and start writing. It feels like work. It is work, if you’re pursuing a career. But in my experience, no matter how much it sucks to sit down at first, after about five minutes of writing – using a timer – I actually want to keep going. I may look at my word count and see I’ve only written 900 words and groan because I need to get so much more done, and then the next check I’ll be over 3,000 having not felt the time go by because I was in the zone. You’ve heard of a runner’s high, right? This is the writer’s version of that.

I don't write like that anymore. Those 3,000 words may have taken me an hour and a half that I didn't notice passing because I was having so much fun with the story. All because I told myself I just need to write for five minutes and see how I feel. Well, five minutes was never enough to feel like I had progressed the story, so I'd keep going, and going, until I either ran out of material, found a good stopping point, or had to stop.

Now I just tell myself I have to write or edit for 30 minutes. But instead of reevaluating after that half hour I just stop. Sure, I've gone on for 45 minutes once or twice, but nothing like the multi-hour marathons I've written for in the past.

And I can only blame myself. I've always said that I don't want to write when I'm not feeling it, and maybe I'm just burning myself out. But maybe I just need to challenge myself a bit more. Those half-hour writing sessions didn't turn out crappy writing after all, so my mood didn't affect it most of the time. Maybe I need a better place to write, a shrine of sorts meant for writing, where only writing and editing happen.

My train of thought just got interrupted by a phone call and I'm not sure where I was going now. Or at least, I don't have the energy to write out all these jumbled thoughts. Plus, this one's long enough as is.

[lilX]

Hope you do well on your writing career! 

[gankylosaurus]

Day Zero

Today, I started to disassemble my desktop computer. It's been an empty shell for a long time, ever since the motherboard fried and I moved all the working parts to a box. I've been using my fiance's old laptop ever since. It gets the job done. So I decided to clear off the desk of both monitors, the speakers, and every unnecessary wire. It would be my new work space, since my usual space gets shit piled on it daily.

Then I got an idea. One of the monitors is really nice, even for its age. And all it needs is an HDMI cable. I decided to run the laptop to the monitor and see what happened when I closed the lid on the laptop. And the screen went immediately black.

Well, shit, I thought. But I found the fix pretty easily, thanks to being at least a little bit tech-savvy. I set the laptop settings to "do nothing" when the lid is closed. I did that and not only did the screen stay up, it automatically corrected the resolution to the higher settings of the dedicated monitor.

I moved out anything unnecessary but left the monitor, speakers, and keyboard. I plugged it all in, put the laptop in the desktop's old cabinet, and set it up. And it runs beautifully.

I hadn't planned to do that today. Not even the initial plan of just moving everything out because looking at the unused equipment was making me sad. I'd decided to do that out of an almost bipolar kind of urge, where I didn't want to do anything, so I figured I'd be productive and put my mind to a project.

Somehow, I ended up having fun. And not only did I move my work station to my old desk, I can use my old hardware and never notice the difference unless I try to run a game (which play a bit sub-par on this laptop.)

And after all that was done, I actually had more energy than before. I played around with a couple of games on it just to see them on a bigger screen again, and then I went back to reading with a new perspective.

See, I found that I've been looking for something satisfying for a long time. I feel completely unfulfilled every day. I'm Ahab looking for my white whale. But putting my mind to something that should be difficult actually energized me somehow. I feel fulfilled today. I don't expect to get the same feeling every day, but it's encouraged me to go back to what I used to do a while back where I got all my tasks done first thing in the day, so I can do "fun stuff" for the rest of the time (if there's any time left).

Besides, school starts in three weeks. What better way to get prepared than starting my reboot now? Especially since I have no idea how much time I'll have to write this semester with 17 credits and classes that will probably require a lot of writing. The only question I have to consider now is whether this reboot deserves a new thread. I don't want new members to feel they have a burden to catch up on this journal.

[gankylosaurus]

Day 1

I'm feeling more energized again today. It was the first day of writing on my "new" work station, and I have to admit, I forgot how weird it was writing on a screen that was centered with the keyboard tray but not the keyboard itself. Took me way too long to realize that that was an easy fix. I felt like I was writing at an angle until I simply slid the monitor a few inches to the left.

Anyway, the reason I feel more energized is because I just took a look at the numbers on my novel. When I finished the first draft, it was only 57,000 words long, which is really lean for a novel. I want to hit right around 90-100k. So I read through the first draft and made a ton of notes, then wrote up a new outline, put the draft 1 scenes where they're supposed to go (so I can edit them or completely rewrite them) and then starting from the beginning, worked my way through the scenes.

When I got to a scene that didn't exist and was only part of the new outline, I wrote it from scratch. When there was a chapter that just needed editing, I copied it (so I'd have the original for comparison if I remove something I want to put back) and went through changing it--adding, removing, correcting, etc.

A good rule of thumb (at least from what I've read) for how long each act of your book should be is simple: 25% Act 1, 50% Act 2, 25% Act 3. So, that means that my act 1 should be about 25k. My first draft's act 1 was only about 10,000 words long. Yeesh.

As of today, I've added 13,000 words to this novel, all in the first act so far. I'm at 70k now, and it's starting to look like I may actually end up having to cut from the second draft. I'm not worried about having to cut, but man, I wasn't expecting that. I under-write a lot.

But then again, I've never edited a full novel before. I never really thought about how much actually goes into it. How much can change, how much can be made so much better. And now I'm seeing it for myself in action, surprising myself by taking the story to the next level.

And I'm not just adding words to add words. I'm actually adding to and refining the story. I had characters in draft 1 that appeared out of nowhere, so I needed to give them a purpose earlier on in the story. So that on its own generated a lot more story for me to write.

And it's awesome.

I'll probably get back to writing more tonight, maybe. I still have some more cleaning to do, and then I'll decide if I want to write or read. Or maybe finally get back to my blog which hasn't seen any action in months.

[Cam Adair]

Good to have you back with your updates! 

[WorkInProgress]

Nice Energyboost you took from that Desktop solution. Really excited to see the novel finished even if it will surely take some more time.

[gankylosaurus]

Day 3

Thanks guys

It's really hard to figure out what to write about in these things anymore. I just wrote a new blog post for my personal blog (which may or may not be done) after writing a bit in my novel. Now I'm kind of done with writing lol. I'm planning on getting about a month's worth of material for my blog ready and then I'm going to see about releasing bi-weekly posts. Having a month ready in advance gives me three advantages: First, I can write a bunch ahead of time if I feel like I'm going to fall behind later; second, if I do fall behind, I have a month to catch up; and third, I can sit on posts and decide to change or remove them when it comes time to promote them. Sometimes distancing yourself from your writing really helps you gain some perspective.

[Cam Adair]

Getting ahead always helps. I try to do it with YouTube but I'm not always successful with it.

[gankylosaurus]

Day 6

A slight dilemma: I'm not going to finish this book before school starts. But that doesn't seem to be a big deal now. I have a two-hour break between class three days a week, so I'll be able to get a lot done then, especially during the first week when I probably won't have a lot of homework (though I bet I'll have plenty of reading. Yay for being an English major! I'm not even sure if that's sarcasm.)

Today I did my requisite thirty minutes of writing and kept going. I had two scenes to combine together because I changed the POV of one of the situations. That new scene is going to need a rework to flesh it out, but that's fine because of what I call the Helter Skelter method where I work my way through to the end and then go back to the beginning (because "when I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide.") It doesn't do well to stop mid-draft to go back and make big changes, mostly because that whole time I'll be thinking of all the progress I'm not making by going backwards. Forward progress is key. It keeps it moving, and it can be quite uplifting, especially when I check the numbers and see I'm right on track. Act 1 of this novel came in at just over 25k by the way, which is perfect.

I recently re-read an article on writing that reinforced my ideas and gave me a new perspective. The first point it makes is that you should finish your writing in one sitting, whether that means a whole short story, or a scene/chapter in a novel. I've stopped in the middle of a scene where I felt like I was on a roll (usually because I had to leave or do something else and was only doing my writing during a brief span where I was able to snatch up some time) and it really sucks when you go back to it the next day - or even just a few hours later - and realize that you've no idea what you'd planned on doing next. Usually when this happens, what I'd been planning to do was really deep and was going to make the story a bit bigger, but I end up with something much thinner.

The second thing that really struck me was the point about slow drafts and fast drafts. If you write slow first drafts, working quickly through your second draft can help you give the story some cohesion. I write fast first drafts, though, so my second drafts should be slower so I can develop the characters and relationships and settings better. That's been the case with a lot of scenes that I've kept but edited for continuity, foreshadowing, writing, and level of detail; all those scenes became bigger and better. However, for the new scenes (or radically different new versions of old scenes) I'm still in the first draft phase, so those are being worked through quickly, just to get them done so I can flesh them out later.

It was comforting reading about the fast then slow method, because I'd been discouraged by the number of writers on forums and such who lamented about having to cut a lot from their novels just to get them town to a readable, non-epic length. I was always just like "I wish I had that problem."

Anyway, tomorrow I plan on getting the apartment back in order. The past three days have been a little chaotic, between getting bit by a dog and having to go into work late, then having a night shift followed by the morning shift, which immediately led to falling asleep shortly after getting home today. Tomorrow's my day off and I plan on using it effectively.

So let's write all my goals out for tomorrow:

• Wash dishes
• Fold laundry
• Write
• Continue getting all my accounts on my main two emails
  • Follow-up step: Move Google Drive materials over, export bookmarks, change Chrome login to new primary email. Might not happen for a couple days.
• Chill the fuck out.

[Cam Adair]

Let's crush those goals!

[gankylosaurus]

Didn't add anything new to the story today. Just changed the POV on one of the scenes and rewrote a bit of it, as well as some typical editing. Still got my time in at the old word processor.

As for the goals I listed above, I did the cleaning I said I'd do and my writing, and I'm mostly done with the account migration to my newer email addresses. One is more for my writing stuff, and the other is everything else. Gonna have some trouble with the google drive stuff. Seems like I'll be downloading a lot of really big zip files and uploading them again. Hopefully the format won't change (ie. change to word format which won't reformat back to docs format easily).

The bookmarks will be easier, but that's nearly the last step.

As for chilling out, I kinda failed on that one. I slept in until 1 somehow and then watched more Youtube than I care to admit before getting around to cleaning. And my Kindle seems to be dead. The screen was blank and I managed to get it to start back up again and my books came back automatically, then it went blank again. Then black, then blank, then it tried to load and it's been stuck frozen on the loading screen ever since. I don't think it's repairable. Oh well. Maybe I'll upgrade to the Paperwhite sometime soon.

I'm not going to list out any goals for tomorrow because nothing's really pressing and I work 9 to 5. I'll write, and I make no promises beyond that.

[Mad Pharmacist]

Just keep it up man!

Glad to see there are other writers in this world.

Greetings, Mad Pharmacist

[gankylosaurus]

I feel like I keep expecting things to just fix themselves. I look ahead toward milestones, scheduled things in my life, and I go, "When that day comes, everything will get easier."

School started today. I thought that that would change something for me. I did my two classes for the day, and during my two and a half hour break between classes, I got some writing done. There isn't really any homework to get to just yet, and the pool's shut down for maintenance. I could go in and help, but the times when they need the most help are when I'm in class. Next week we'll have a slightly more normal schedule, but until then, I'm out of work.

Maybe I'm just overwhelmed. I came home to find that the fiance had done laundry, but hadn't folded it yet. We had clean laundry in a basket for a week and never did anything with it--a group effort, mind, especially while we were both working together on a project that had us driving hundreds of miles every day. So now the place is a mess again. When it's clean, I can keep it clean, especially if I'm home alone and only have to keep track of my own mess. When we prepare a dinner that requires a lot of cookware and plates and everything else, things get out of hand, and the place becomes a mess again.

I'm not quite sure how to fix this. I really kind of wish I were doing online classes again. At least then, I didn't have to show up at any specific time, and I don't have to worry about missing half of my first class because traffic was stop and go the entire way, turning a twenty minute drive into an hour long drive. I could write down the assignments that needed to get done that day, do them, keep the place clean in the meantime, and still manage to get in some reading and writing. I know I can do this because I've done it.

Now, I don't know what I'm doing. It'll probably take me a couple of weeks to get through all this and just get used to the routine. I also have to find a better place to take my laptop so I can write. I just hate coming home to a place that needs a couple hours' worth of cleaning, and I need to get this shit sorted out before I actually give my life over to schooling.

But as I've learned before and I've said before and I'll continue saying, the best time to implement a change isn't tomorrow, it's right now. I just wish it didn't have to be so hard.

[Cam Adair]

Tomorrow is always today. The decisions we make in this moment are the same decisions we will make in a future moment. If we want to change the future, we have to change right now. You nailed it.

[gankylosaurus]

Thanks, Cam. I just wish I knew how to take my own damn advice.

I think I've realized that I'm getting in the way of becoming the person I want to and need to become. I second-guess my actions all the time. I discourage myself and postpone change. I make excuses. I think my fiance's family dog being added to our household was terrible timing, because I'm just now trying to get used to school, and maybe it would have been better to wait. But that's probably just another excuse for my feelings of inadequacy, of feeling lost.

I'm stressed, plain and simple, but the only real thing that should be stressing me out is a bill from the clinic where I went for a tetanus shot and some antibiotics after being bitten by a dog. I think all I have to do is call my insurance company and it will go away. The pharmacy claim appeared on my account, after all, while the visit to the clinic did not. The verbiage is weird, too... it says that my insurance company notified them to say I wasn't covered by their plan. Does that mean that my insurance didn't cover the visit? Or did they plug in the wrong information and use a User ID that didn't belong to anyone? Hopefully it'll be cleared up easily, and if I really just wasn't covered for that visit, I may have to pay a visit to the owners of the dog. I don't want to do that because I told them we were square, but they were adamant that if there was anything they could do to help that I shouldn't hesitate.

Anyway... I feel like I need to make these journal entries more journal-like. So far, it's felt more like a blog. Anytime I write, I'm always thinking of what kind of flair I can add to it. What cool hook can I use to grab readers' attentions. And it's been cathartic to me because I've been able to let some things out, but at the same time, those can get verbose, and I end up leaving a lot of my grievances on the cutting room floor.

Not only that, I don't pay much attention to the positive. It's an afterthought.

Not to say that I'm going to focus on the positive. I think I actually need to start talking about what actually bothered me about the day and what I think I might be able to do about it. Then, I can go into the positive parts of the day. The surprises and just general happy things.

Let me cover a few days here, though...

This past weekend was the last weekend before school started. I spent Saturday trying to put my computer back together since I'd bought a replacement motherboard for fairly cheap. It took a while to get together (including two trips to the computer parts store, one of which was to return an item I didn't end up needing because it didn't fit) and after all was done, I got ready, turned it on, and... nothing. The fans spun, the lights glowed blue, the hard drive made the mechanical sound it always makes when it starts up, and then nothing else happened. It stayed quiet, and the monitor never came to life. Turns out, when the old motherboard fried, it must have short-circuited the CPU as well.

I was pretty let down by all this. I just want my desktop back. It had been reliable to the end. And after helping a friend build a brand new PC with all new parts, I just wanted a desktop again. I took the whole thing apart again and repackaged the motherboard. I have it ready to be shipped back, and I'm going to lose $20 between restocking fees and shipping costs, but I'll still get $50 back. My old desktop is basically no more. The only parts I've decided I'll still salvage are the hard drive, disk drive, and maybe the power supply, though I think that may need an upgrade too. When I can afford to, I'll build a brand new computer. In the meantime, I have all I need. In fact, until I try to do anything graphically intensive, it's like I'm using my desktop. I think I already explained the whole laptop hooked up to the monitor and everything else situation.

This is already getting verbose. I'm sorry. I'm just letting everything out. The good stuff comes later, I promise.

My fiance started talking to an old... boyfriend? Not sure how to describe him. She was sleeping with him while he was engaged. She justified it because she knew they wouldn't work out. He messaged her a few months ago, but she didn't see it until recently because it was in her filtered messages on facebook. He told her that she was right about everything "with creepy accuracy." Turns out he got married, had a kid, and they divorced. She'd been in a weird part of her life then and it was all awkward because she had a falling-out with the roommates before blah blah blah eventually she met me and she's happy.

Anyway, he messaged her a lot. And she complained about it all the time, but she kept indulging him. And she admitted he was probably crushing on her. He wanted to meet up and catch up, and I had no objections. Especially if she ended up with a friend that I actually got to meet. (Longer story there, more nuanced and less relevant).

Then she decided she wanted me to go on a man-date with one of my friends at the same restaurant to spy or some shit. I was like okay, sure, I'll go out for a beer, whatever. We had a weird argument the night before what she kept ironically referring to as "the date." She got of work in time to go meet up with him, and she told me and my friend to just stay home, because she can handle herself.

In any other circumstance, this might have been fine. But immediately following an argument... Well. I trust her. But a girl's cheated with me when her relationship was in a weird place, and I didn't know where her head was at the time. I guess "her" could refer to either woman in either situation here. So when she met up with him at 8, and then suddenly it was 11, and then almost midnight... I'd already been having a panic attack for a couple of hours. She came home and she understood why I felt weird, why my anxiety had gotten to me, why my heart had been racing for so long. I mean, I broke the freaking bathroom scale with my foot. I felt... I don't know. Powerless.

In the end, she realized that she had regressed back to that time when she'd been with him, when she'd been less mature and surrounded by drama. She hadn't known what to expect going into this "date" but she decided that she thinks he and I would actually get along and that he'd fit in with our circle of friends. I'm fine with that (and don't you get on me about that "fine doesn't mean fine" shit) and I knew and still know that I was just freaking out for un-knowable and uncontrollable reasons.

So, I've decided to call up my doctor (after dealing with the insurance thing) and schedule an appointment. I need antidepressants and/or anti-anxiety meds. Particularly the latter. I wanted to deal with it all on my own, but it's become more difficult. I was watching TomSka's weekly video blog and at a convention, he realized that he had lost the ability to smile. That was when he also realized he'd been off his meds for the previous three days. There was a day when I felt like that, and I don't like being that way around people I love, when I know I'm perfectly capable of being happy. And if I can do anything else to improve that, I will do it. If it doesn't work out, I'll know in the future, but for now I have to try.

Onto the happy shit

My MWF classes had been worrying me at first because I have a two and a half hour break between classes, but that actually forces me to get some shit done. Make calls I've been putting off and get my writing done. And by the time my second class ended, I was left with a feeling of "that was it?" It had moved so quickly.

Then today was my long day, the one that has an extra class, and all my classes together go from 8:30 to 3:50. Between the first and second class, I have fifteen minutes to get from one end of campus to the other. That'll be difficult in the future when the teacher doesn't end class a half hour early. But all my teachers today were fun, more or less. My Intro to Fiction teacher seems to have a pompous air about him like my creative writing teacher when it comes to literature versus genre fiction, but I can move past that. One of my teachers looked like a student when he walked in in bluejeans and a gray t-shirt. I was late for both my first classes, missing half of the entire lecture yesterday and having to stand in the doorway because it was basically standing room only at that point. But in today's class, after everyone had introduced each other, I had to introduce myself. But when he asked me for an interesting fact about myself, he changed the question to how would you survive a zombie apocalypse.

I of course have thought a lot about this, and I gave him my answer promptly: Giant hamster ball.

He laughed and there were a few shy chuckles in the class and one girl even said, "That's actually not a bad idea."

So it was a fun morning. But the best part, the most surprising part, was my last class, the one I'd been least looking forward to, because it's the one tacked onto Tuesdays like a tumor making my day two hours longer. It's Intro to Teaching. Or that's what the teacher called it; officially it has a different title. She used a lot of different teaching techniques to get us to meet each other and participate in the class, and then like a magician she revealed that she'd basically been playing us like middle schoolers. She revealed the smoke and mirrors and showed us how all these different tricks could be used to re-focus students and keep them engaged. It was clever, actually.

And afterward, I talked to the professor about how to officially get into the Education program and she helped me a lot. Even told me that the six-year limit on test scores could probably be waived. I told her I'll get it taken care of tomorrow when I have a two and a half hour break between classes. It's kind of the last thing that was really stressing me out about school, especially because I have to pay for a background check.

In two of my classes, I revealed that I write sci-fi and fantasy novels. After one of them, a student actually got my attention to talk about fantasy, though at first he asked if I said I write high fantasy. We talked a bit about favorite fantasy books and authors and even talked about D&D. In the other class, the aforementioned Intro to Teaching, when we had another little ice-breaker moment between students and we'd completed what we needed to do for the lesson, the guy I was talking to turned the conversation toward my writing.

It was really uplifting, though I hadn't realized it at first. I feel weird telling people I'm a writer, because I think they think I mean I'm published. The girl who introduced me, when she said I was working on my fifth novel (might be sixth, actually, but I wrote fifth on the card) she added that I'm... I can't remember the word she used but I'm pretty sure she said accomplished. I quickly pointed out that none of them are published and the teacher said, "That's five more novels than I've written."

All in all, good day. Nice to end on a happy note. Nice to be noticed and recognized, without putting on my old arrogant airs that I always used to have walking into writing classes. I was always the best, I knew it. That arrogance actually made me try harder to prove it, too, so it served me well. Still I came off as an asshole, I think. These past two days, I was just myself. I didn't try to lord my experience or age over anyone. In fact, I only once hinted at my age when talking about the SAT that I took ten years ago when I was seventeen, and that was when talking about the education program requirements with a teacher. I look younger than I am and I feel like I'm hiding a little bit by not telling people my age, but I feel like I fit in better this way. I'm approachable and a good listener and my age only serves to make me a better person through experience. Everyone just assumes I'm a mature twenty-year-old.

I don't know why I'm going on about this. I feel like it's just another insecurity. I shouldn't be proud of my age, especially with where I am in life. Where I am is fine, but I'm not much better off now than I was when I was twenty. I've just spent more time here and had more time to figure things out. I just don't want to tell anyone I'm a twenty-seven-year-old college Junior.

I think that's enough for tonight. I had a lot to air out, and I actually really do feel better. I think focusing on the crappy parts of the day first and coming up with solutions, then following up with what was actually nice about the day, helps. I should keep doing this. Though maybe in fewer words next time.