Wasted Winter

Journal 114 12 Feb.- 3 March 2024

Well on the good side it feels like winter is coming to an end. This past week has seen a warm up in the weather and general sense of Spring in the air.

I spent my entire winter (at least the 2024 portion) watching K-dramas, movies, and reading the occasional comic book. I went out to dinner twice. I talked movies, comics, and even Tokusatsu with friends and new people; and I didn’t skip a single Gym/PT session.

I don’t know if I needed this time to recharge or to think through things.

But I do know that I feel I need to change things back up. I need to get back to my desk. But “need” doesn’t accomplish, “want” accomplishes.

In other words, feeling guilty and whining about what I should be doing means nothing. Until I actually want to do the things, I won’t do the things.

After Last blog

After I finished my last blog, weeks ago, I felt a sense of defeat and anger at myself. I decided to go through my agent list again and see who I could reach out to. Once again, only one name was open to queries.

Instead of getting depressed about it I started doing some research and I found a new resource. A live list of open submission agents (sort of). It isn’t fully real-time live, some of the agents are closed again, but all of their information is collated.

Armed with this new list I’m getting ready to rewrite my query letter and start doing batch sends again. The plan is to send out the first five queries in the next week or so, wait six weeks, drop the next five, and so forth.

More on that as I progress.

Writing schedule: Revision and Dusk Novel

This is the first time I have ever allowed revision to go so long between drafts.

I mean, I haven’t even done a simple typo sweep of the entire last manuscript. And I have NEVER started a new novel without at least the first revision pass being done on the previous novel.

I understand that last fact is bizarre only to me. Most of my peers seem to start new books all the time… but many of them also have bad habits of not finishing those books. I’ve tried to concentrate on writing one book at a time and finishing the first draft plus a first revision before I start the next book.

To that end, I think I really need to double down finish the first revision pass before I start Dusk.

In other words, I no longer have a start date scheduled for Dusk.

And I need to double down on revision.

And Now…

What’s left to talk about?

I look at all the time I put into building and readying a D&D campaign. Weeks and weeks of maps, notes, and tons of material created. It wasn’t a waste as a lot of the material will be appearing in the Dusk novel.

The world building was so intensive that I built my own calendar based on a double lunar cycle, mapped cultural and language shifts over epochs of time, wrote histories of nations that don’t stand in the “modern times” of the setting. I even worked on more mythology and hidden secrets of the cosmos, gods, fates, and the things above such things. (the gods of the gods as it were).

So much work… and it’s not being used. My plan to actually run such a gamer petered out months back and now I wonder how I ever thought I could have done it.

Hell, half the time I barely feel engaged in the games I play in. Sometimes it takes a while for me get into things. I’ll not want to play, but then a few minutes into the game I feel better and start to enjoy myself.

If I’m having this much trouble playing… how could I have run? And my insistence on playing in person again is holding me back as well.

I guess it’s better to keep it as a dream and work on it from time to time as an exercise.

Media Talk…?

This is where I usually talk about movies, comics, and kdramas. But I don’t know if anyone really cares to hear about all of that.

This journal has changed and evolved (devolved?) so much over the last four years. It’s ridiculous how much this site has changed. At one point it was just a gaming story every week and random monthly posts. There was a month I posted 7 times. Now I’m lucky if I get two posts in a month.

My discipline is wholly lacking.

Well… I guess I can run through a short list of good dramas to watch and then I’ll call it quits for the day.

On Prime: Marry my Husband is the perfect revenge show. Must watch.

On Hulu (and I HATE Hulu): A Shop for Killers

On Viki: Jugglers and Good Manager both are fun.

Netflix… I haven’t watched any on there for the last couple weeks, so if I make a suggestion it’ll just be shows I already talked about in the last posts, so go back and read those.

Anyway, that feels like enough for now… things to do.