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Character Driven Plots for Character Driven Readers

Using Story Arcs to Develop Characters with Plot

So, because I’m working on fine tuning this element in my database, seeing what I need to get the most out of it, I thought it would be a good time to talk about story arcs. I’ll let you do the work of looking up story arcs, because I am not a dictionary, but I will say plenty about what they are to me in the writing process.

Story arcs are the ebb and flow of plot, motivation, driving forces, and impacts in your book or short story. They are the reason the characters are here, and they are the reason your reader is here. If nothing is happening in the story, nobody is showing up. This makes story arcs essential to story telling, but for some reason people don’t seem to think much about them.

Usually stories are described by plot, usually only one plot. Sometimes they’ll be a B plot, like you see with sitcoms or cartoons or most anything on television where you have a main plot and a B plot to fill time. But story arcs aren’t limited to two things happening at once in the story; that’s just the formula of writing that’s been normalized and then memed, as people do. Story arcs can actually be quite complex and quite simple at the same time, in the same story, and they span more than just plot points. They are basically everything in a story from the blood pumping through the characters veins, to the events on a timeline, to the music swelling in the background. And when that’s truly understood, and you learn how to organize these concepts for yourself in a way that works for you, your stories can reach an entirely new level.

Breaking it down

This is how I’m currently organizing story arcs, and I want to start off by saying, I’m organizing it this way because it works for me. It might not be the same for you and you want to search for that. You want to develop your own tools that suit you for the best results.

For me, at the moment, story arcs are comprised of character traits, character motivation, environmental forces — and not just the environment, but the setting, the culture, the world that is driving events that can’t be pinned on a character. And, of course, impact.

Impact gets its own little note for every single piece of a story arc. Internal and external impact. Consequences and sacrifices. Motivation is essential for character driven story arcs, but isn’t necessarily present for environmental ones. But impact will always be there.

Sometimes all you have is an impact you know you want to hit, and you need to figure out what you’re going to write to drive to that point. It is the most important aspect of a story arc to measure, because it turns the internal into the external, pushing events through character reaction instead of just through environmental factors.

For the erotica and erotic romance I write, story arcs also include sexual tension, relationship arcs, suspense and tension in general. You can have setting arcs to mark the passage of impact on a space, or building, or city. A story arc could be an emotional arc, which is something I would tie to character arc. But depending on your character, it could look more like a stress arc, or mental illness arc, or a character power development arc, etc. You can have a relationship sacrifice arc, with an understanding that there has to be a sacrifice to reach certain goals between characters, even in the simplest of stories, and you might not know that sacrifice yet, but you know you need to plan for one to be there. Maybe you want a pain arc, because that’s how you measure drama.

Every story might have something unique you need to keep tabs on to ensure it’s going right, and you can call that plot, or character development, or tension, but I find it’s important to classify them all under one topic: story arcs. Because they’re not different, or something to be tracked separate from plot. They are the plot. This is everything required to understand what breathes life into a story, when plotting a series of events isn’t enough. You need to think of pulses, drum beats, a theme song a character is living and imbuing into the story in that moment that changes as they change. Or whatever works for you.

Why story arc?

For me, to put it simply, these are the things I need to keep track of in a story because I can’t just hope to remember it all. The process of identifying and developing story arcs is basically the organization of what already happens naturally in a story for me. You’re trying to find the pulse and make sure the rhythm matches the events. Usually, that pulse is happening already for a writer, and it’s just a matter of maintaining it by paying attention.

But sometimes you miss things, or the first draft opened up an idea into something else that needs exploring. Sometimes you’re so new to something, you don’t even know what you don’t know, which I think is basically everyone. We need to explore a topic and develop it to understand it better. And that’s what making story arcs is about. Developing aspects of a story that go beyond basic plot to craft a better story. Designing a plot to be character driven for the greatest impact, instead of just hoping it will figure itself out once you write “the end.”

The moment you decide something is a story arc, you have made a choice of what you’re valuing in your story, and that will have an impact on everything going forward. So better to make it a conscious decision than to realize nothing is there at all.

Formless

If you did bother to look up story arcs, you might have seen a bunch of writing systems telling you they can only present in certain ways to be “successful.” But writing systems are where creativity goes to die, so don’t take it to heart. Instead, explore what these arcs are to you and what feels natural as you’re writing, and if that natural impulse is having a strong impact on the story or fizzling out.

There are plenty of pulses in a story that don’t require a form or a resolution, but instead flare up when needed to push the story along or give it greater impact. Motivational arcs can be as essential as a heartbeat drumming through every scene, or they can flare up once in a while like anxiety, increasing intensity without needing to resolve. Behavioral arcs can take problematic character traits and drop huge plot points as an impact, or they can just be quirky reminders of who your character is and how they act out in the world. And if you find you think you need to change something so integral to a character because someone told you everything about character development is change, think about how impossible it is for most human beings to change, and why it feels so unrealistic when characters do it at the flip of a plot point.

Story arcs aren’t about one purpose, one form, one result. These are tools to control impact, to control reaction and hold tension and suspense. They’re the pieces of a story most people don’t bother to look at, but instead, again, hope just manifest by the end. They’re supposed to be adaptable to the story, not force a story to adapt to them, even as they craft the story. There is no final, proper form to reach for, but instead about understanding why something is going wrong, feeling flat or lacking impact. They’re the place one looks to problem solve a bad or boring book, a diagnostic tool, not a predetermined shape.

It’s essential to recognize these aspects and understand the orchestra you are trying to control, the music you’re trying to create. Each piece is going to ask for something different, is going to get its solo or contribute to the background ambiance. A wind instrument shouldn’t be treated like a string instrument; it’s not one thing. You’re not looking for a formulaic shape, but what that piece needs to be for the story exactly in that moment.

Creating impact out of plot

Story arcs allow for in-depth thinking and then plotting of elements of the story that can otherwise be missed and not developed to their best ability. And it’s in the complexity of that, or the simplicity that one breaks such complexity down into, that really gives power to story arcs. Stories aren’t just about things that happen, but instead about how people are impacted by things that happen. Places are changed. We want to feel an impact in the world as a result of events in a story, otherwise, how does one truly measure an event?

How does one measure the impact of something that is supposed to feel valuable to a character or monumental to a world, without reflecting it somewhere in the story, be it through their behavior or motivations changing? It can’t just be reflected in the plot, an A + B to C to hopefully = to D sort of thing. It has to be reflected in the environment of characters and settings. Even in emotional atmospheres. Story arcs can help you plot and measure the impact an idea has on the story, and I think that’s truly their power.

Brainstorming as part of the process

So how? How does one turn ideas for story into arcs that can be used to help progress and develop a story from start to finish? Honestly, the process of looking for story arcs in your ideas and fleshing them out is the best form of creative brainstorming one can do for story, especially when you’re looking in a way to ensure that these concepts are seen and felt by the reader and in the story.

For myself, organization is essential. Story arcs aren’t necessarily clear ideas that distinguish themselves from each other, and as a result you can lose track of them and fail to show them and resolve them in the story. Something that started out so important could suddenly be erased by a key plot point, or the moving of a scene and fall flat. Suddenly loose ends are forever loose, not just unraveling plot points, but making characters look two-dimensional and uncaring, making plot lines look completely unrealistic because they don’t have an impact. Where something that was built up to be impossible or enormous in impact is suddenly so easily overcome…

Yes, you can claim that was a character having character development of something to overcome a problem, but if you lose track of showing these points and making them feel believable, the reader has no reason to believe what you’re presenting to them. And if you miss out in fleshing a character to their full potential, the reader might not care about anything happening at all because there’s no representation on the page of these events having an impact on another living being.

Don’t assume reading comprehension is the same as mind reading. You have to write the story.

It can be easy to understand that writers need to convey details and visuals for readers when describing foreign worlds, futuristic technology, or magic, etc., but writers can forget that readers need that same guide when it comes to emotions. There is no reason to believe that your reader is anything like the character you’re writing, and if they’re not, if they can’t relate, you need to find a different way for them to relate to the character that isn’t the characters traits, behaviors, and situation you just assume are universal. You have to find a way to humanize a character to people that won’t understand that character, and that’s the importance of character arcs. Not just growth and development, plot points laid out in a row that you’re ticking one after the other as one progresses, but humanization of the character so that the reader can care about the events, can care about the character’s emotions as they’re going through plot points.

You can usually tell the difference when someone is going through a writing system, following an instruction manual to write compared to someone who has learned who their character is and is putting them in the story. It’s the difference of writing a story and building a story that challenges characters to grow. There’s more heart to the second type, engagement, where everything feels important because it’s coming back to character arcs and measurable growth. Instead of plot points which are just the choreography, pushing the character through the motions so the story can happen.

This is why I combine story arcs to include those character arcs, and include character arcs with plotting a book. In understanding that character growth and humanization makes a story impactful for readers, you change the way you look at stories in general. You’re suddenly not there about a series of events viewed through the eyes of a soulless narrator, but instead about characters you care about as you check in to see how they’re coping with the series of events.

Fucking how already, yeah?

So I explained the importance, and showed how focusing on story arcs can change someone’s writing in really intense ways. So how does one do it? Well, it’s really up to you.

How do you organize your ideas on the page? Sometimes it doesn’t start on the page. Sometimes it can be post-its, or note cards on a wall. Scribbles on a whiteboard in color-coded markers. I enjoy surrounding myself with stories and ideas, transforming my environments into a part of my brain. But because of my new visual limitations and how chaotic my plotting process can be, I’ve had to create tools on my laptop to mimic what I would do in real life.

There are already tools out there, digital ones, that might work perfectly fine for people. I personally love Scrivner, of which I’m dictating this post into, because of its design to nest and organize text, but it’s not great for this particular thing for me. I’m also a big fan of Scapple which can color code and create visual blocks of ordered text and images in a web/brain storm shape instead of a linear shape — but I don’t really enjoy all the fiddling involved. There’s also plotting tools that will plot your points on a line to create the illusion of time as an aspect of plotting. Those ones in particular don’t really work for me, but for some people really need a very time focused organizational style for plotting. It’s really about finding what works for you and experimenting.

For right now, I’m mimicking my Post-it style of multicolored post-its with notes written on them. My notes get to be far more extensive because I’m doing it on the computer and have created the element to give me the things I need, instead of limiting me to the constraints of an actual Post-it. Depending on the order I set, my story arcs will graph onto a model based on time, or based on the character and time, or whatever I really want at the moment, because what a writer needs when it comes to plotting a story changes in the moment.

Random tangent to rant

I’m sure it’s clear at this point, but I’m not a fan of writing systems. I’m not a fan of someone following an instruction guide thinking that’s the way to write, because rarely is creativity or any kind of development allowed within a writing system. It’s a reverse engineered plan focused on hitting points, metrics, as the essence of the story and turned into a pattern of plot that needs to be resolved. Nothing else. And when you’re focused on hitting those points, it’s very easy to lose sight of what makes the story actually interesting, what makes a reader show up, what makes you show up. If you’re showing up to follow a formula for some other goal at the end, you’re not showing up to write a story and figure out what the purpose is for it all.

That’s not to say that all formulaic writing is shit. It’s just to say that when new writers are following a formula, they’re not learning to write. There learning a formula. It would be like comparing it to solving something with a math formula. When you’re handed the formula, you’re not taught how to problem solve to reach that formula. You’re not taught to understand the ins and outs of how to get to that endpoint. You’re just handed the shortcut without the experience, when it’s the experience that allows the shortcut to make sense.

It’s not a system. It’s a process…?

Anyways… There’s nothing special about writing story arcs. It can be done on post-its and note cards or paper or laptop. It’s as basic as brainstorming your story, and then breaking down those ideas and plotting them into little bite sized points that you then organize in a way that works for you when you think about your story. It’s making a spot for impact, for motivation, and connecting plot to characters and their motivations as events of impact instead of “things just happening.”

I don’t even think of story arcs as having a beginning, middle, and end, because there comes a time when you need to define what the hell beginning, middle, and end even mean in regards to the transformation of character and plot. (how many pieces does one replace of a boat until it’s a different boat…?) That kind of nonsense is not helpful in plotting. It’s not helpful in brainstorming to demand any rigid structure. Story arcs are a theme to explore through a piece, a way to connect characters to the events of a plot. Organized well enough so that you’re not missing important stuff while in the weeds of writing.

The nice thing about writing stories is you get to say a problem is resolved, instead of out in the real world where most problems hang there, being coped with, no definitive beginning, middle, and end. It usually satisfying for readers for problems to be solved, and cathartic for the writer. But that doesn’t mean that’s how you have to write a story. Your readers might hate you, but many people don’t write for their readers, but for themselves.

At least knowing the story you’re developing, and presenting to the world will be far more clear and done better if you bother to build story arcs and take the time to break it down and organize and ensure that each part is felt.

Right. How.

Because I do look at story arcs as plotting not really in time, but measured in impact, that’s how I write my notes for them. There will be a title or label to express the gist of the story arc, and then a note of information about the brainstorming process for that story arc. Why it’s there, what you want from it, possibly what you’re hoping to resolve or what sacrifice must be made.

Story arcs don’t always come with a solution, but instead they’re just full of the drama of a moment for a character. You have a very cool idea that you want to develop further, and ensure that it ends up in your story, even if you don’t necessarily know how to do that part yet? Make a note, call it a story arc, and develop it into something that works.

So once you have that story arc, for myself, I create editions so that everything to do with that story arc is connected, and I can’t lose track of anything. I need strong visual organization for my brain to thrive when it comes to writing conceptual text. So I color code, and make sure that main idea holds all those smaller ideas that fit into it. Then it’s about breaking down the story arc, brainstorming where these pieces are going to come up and how it’s going to reveal an impact on the characters, on the environment, on the events. Which scenes these pieces of the arcs are going to hit, and why.

It’s just notes. It’s just brainstorming. There’s no magic to it. Even how I organize is just whatever is easiest for me. It’s not a magic spell or special ritual where if you follow all the steps, you’re guaranteed a perfect story. It’s just essential design work as you take the time to develop a story, and it doesn’t need anything special.

No end form to reach for, no bs you must do it this way. You just have to work on developing the story in a way that you can track and ensure the impact is connected to the characters and their actions.

Character driven means acceptance of chaos.

If you fail to do this for plot, you risk building an intricate, exciting maze with plot twists and daring car chases, only to drop a dead cricket in, hoping something exciting will happen. (I don’t know why the cricket is dead, but it happened in the most boring way possible, promise.)

If you’re plotting out your character arc next to that story arc, or better yet, you just create plot arcs that are character driven, you don’t have to worry about being the kind of writer who makes their character jump through hoops for no apparent reason, and the character obeys because they’re boring and have no motivation beyond that the author has put them there to react.

Even with a little life in them, you don’t want your character to just be a mouse in a maze of your creation, simply hunting for cheese. Domesticated. Knowing everything is going to be fine if they follow the rules. You want them to be fully fleshed out, fighting the maze, fighting being there, fighting the unknown author who would dare drop them there in the first place, having emotional reactions that translate to behaviors that have them doing things like burning the maze down — something an author would never have designed — as the character goes and makes a better story.

Your characters need to be more impulsive than you, more motivated than you, and have no care about what you want in this process for them to drive a story, otherwise it’s just redundant and gone to plan, another heist movie where they tell you what they’re going to do, and then they do it, and maybe they kill a throwaway character, and everything’s okay.

You can’t have something new when you’re not allowing it to happen. Rigid structures of book writing preventing change, prevent adaptability. Something wild can only happen if you feel daring enough to let it. When you have an adaptable structure to maintain in regards to story arcs, allowing you to keep tabs on motivations, behaviors, impacts, tension, etc, you’re more willing to let the story become something better, something outside of the formula you find all those other stories living in, because you can see that it’s not pure chaos. The characters can still work in this change, and impacts can still look realistic and genuine to the moment.

I have so much to say about this topic, but I don’t feel like killing my eyes editing anymore today. So yeah, that’s that for now. Enjoy my enthusiastic lecture from a writer who can’t get their shit together enough to get back to writing beyond talking about writing. I’m sure it’s totally motivational.

I’m truly passionate about this topic — it’s everything about writing to me, the problem solving, the orchestration of trying to create an impact in a reader. And it’s fun. Loving what you do is damn fun, and more people should find what they love in what they do.

Branding When Disabled, AKA, Bitter AF

I wonder what my relationship with self worth and money would have been like if I hadn’t been born disabled in an end stage capitalistic hellscape. You know, a privileged hellscape, with tvs and refrigerators.

It fucks up a lot of things. How I think about what I spend my time on. How I value the things I do, and if I can ever truly value myself because of how fucked I am on the scale of those metrics. How I’m smart enough to know it’s all bullshit, but when it kills you — because that is the stark reality of our world. Having no money, being in long term poverty, is a death sentence. And the longer you’re in poverty, the more impossible it is to escape.

So I’m smart enough to know it shouldn’t be how I value myself, but I cannot escape the consequences of my failure to compete. My failure to win a broken game in a broken system created by a broken species.

There is no untangling that from what I do in the world, because what I do is what this world claims to value. The productivity of the worthy human — unless you’re already rich, then anything you do must automatically be valued. The things we do to contribute to this broken system. It decides I must feel guilty to rest when I have a condition labeled chronic fatigue. Where everything I do ends up being evaluated in my head of “is it a worthy endeavor?” based on return of income. Because I’m a drain on my family (they would never say it, but it’s absolutely the truth), the one who “if only?” can either save us or continue to pull us down.

Disability isn’t getting easier with age. Quite the opposite. Ageism is creeping in, and I’m noticing how others just don’t see those who are older, don’t clock them as existing at all. Society doesn’t value age, and certainly doesn’t value wisdom. People want to “get ahead” instead of seeing life is a continuous journey of coping with being alive.

And I constantly fight with the part of me who just wants to be allowed on to the side of winners, the side I’m never going to belong on… because this disability thing? It’s part of me. It defines so much of my existence.

I can point out ableism until I’m dead, but that doesn’t actually do shit. It doesn’t tear down the wall that would allow me to breathe easy because my needs will suddenly be met. It doesn’t make things easier on my loved ones, who have their own limits and disabilities disregarded by this society because it doesn’t fit the allowed definition. People who are just doing everything to get through, who are erased from the conversation because they don’t get a label, but they can’t fit with the winners either. I have a level of privileged with this poverty sentence to at least be visible by this label, while they’re struggling without it.

Any help is never going to be systemic change. It’s never going to be true stability, but a love bomb as people come in and then disappear when they start to feel the immense weight of it. It’s a lifetime, disability. It’s not solved with a pill, or a windfall, or a thought and prayer. It’s a lifetime in a system that has decided disability deserves poverty. And what is poverty? Slow death — sometimes faster, depending on the area. But I’m in a civilized country. They draw this shit out.

I think a lot about the confusing privilege I observe of people who aren’t struggling yet feel confident in asking for help, setting up a fundraiser, being paid to basically talk about whatever shit hits them in the moment. While I know so many who can’t make ends meet for so long, who feel so worthless that they could never ask for help. And when they do? How the world looks down upon them, like they did this to themselves. Like they’re crossing a line to dare ask for help, when others demand the same like it’s trivial and are handed it and more.

Why is it so different? I can’t even do a donate thing without feeling monstrous. I need to feel like there is some sort of worthwhile exchange. Here’s a bunch of stories for $10. Sorry I’m so sick I haven’t updated. It will never be “support me to stay alive.” Yet I see so many who can say “support me so I can be comfortable”. “Support me so I can be rich.”

What has this society done to people, where to be born into the wrong side of classism is to be psychologically groomed to accept that if shit is hard for you, it’s your fault? Society isn’t here to help those who need it, only to raise up those blessed enough to have classism reward them in the first case. Like, how did generations of humanity end up here, our fucked up, xenophobic social species picking a target and rationalizing the target for being picked, in both directions?

What madness to have been born into a game that doesn’t require participation to ensure winning or losing. To feel inherently wrong or entitled based on how you’re perceived in regards to worthiness of wealth. Because it’s not “wealth”; it’s life. Money is the right to be alive or not. Not a privileged, not a handout, not a charity. When the government taxes you, they are taking a piece of your life and saying they are owed it for letting you live where you’re living.

Except if you have so much money that to be taxed is absolutely nothing.

But we don’t tax those people. We reward them. Because we’re fucked as a species.

I think there’s an inherent empathy to be born with the losers, to have to constantly question a system of society that has chosen winners and losers. The winners don’t have to question — it’s dangerous for them to question, because they know, instinctual, how society turns. They aren’t special, they aren’t inherently worthy of more than others. They’re just associated with the winners. To be associated with the losers is the first step in becoming one — because classism is association.

It’s not based in genetics, or intelligence, or something genuine to the individual, but in the social wiring of humans as they reinforce small differences until they become rationalizations and reasons why. Why are things unfair? They would say because people are different — but that’s only when one group of people punishes those who are different from them. They rationalize their innate xenophobia onto their targets, never looking inwards. Because inwards in the truth — no one is so different that they deserve to be born into a situation that will kill them. And no one is so different that in a society that could support everyone, that they get so much more while others die with nothing.

None of this is justified… but everyone is participating in it.

Why does networking open more doors than hard work? Social association. And if you let in the wrong one and become associated with a loser? Social assassination. There are no bridges up because of that second part. Just a few people crossing the class divide, knowing they can never look back or they might return to needing to survive instead of thrive. Education looks like a bridge, but they’ve priced that so far out of reach, ensuring anyone who can’t afford it without loans will suffer the rest of their lives for daring to try.

Exploitation of classism happens at the educational level, but not a true path out of classism. The networks in academia reinforce classism. They give jobs to those who already belong, and weed out those who don’t. They have transformed the system of apprenticing, reinforcing the working class, who will never be the upper class, forced to be in debt for the right to have access to a living wage. With a promise if you just throw down enough money, you’ll get ahead. Because McDonald’s — a minimum wage that isn’t a living wage — requires a degree now.

So who are the people who spin their disabilities in the third person for legitimacy, writing in the language of the winners? Those already born there. Who know they’re supported already, and don’t feel it a burden to ask. Where else can such a mindset come from, truly? The haves, not the have nots. And I can’t mimick it, because it disgusts me, the lack of awareness. The confidence when in such a web of complexity, because they have never had to see that complexity and empathize.

Or they have, and they use the words anyways.

People are just memes. This social pattern is just that, a pattern, that can be adapted to. It’s not inherent; classism is just groups of people only seeing certain other people to be worthy like them because of perceived shared sameness. It’s tribalism, because our xenophobia has not been overcome, and tribes can be faked. People do it all the time. There’s a reason narcisists and sociopaths are usually found at “the top.” They fake it really well.

But then what. Winning? What is that beyond survival, but the reinforcement of the social inequality one has been fighting the entire time? It doesn’t break the system. You contribute to it. There’s no rising tide raising all boats, but a burning of bridges and a firm locking of a mask on one’s face to ensure they will always fit in. Depersonalized until you’re talking like them, in their limited language of tribal human.

I cannot burn myself when I need to survive for others. But to walk a path with full self awareness that stands for everything I’m against? I’m not capable of that either, not well, not with the exuberance and determination needed to do it well. And if you’re selling out in a half-assed way, what’s the fucking point to begin with?

When not overcoming their personal demons through raunchy, fun stories, Sadie Sins lives with their 4 mischievous cats, writing about sex positivity in dark erotica, and fighting for disability visibility and the toppling of class inequality. Here’s a list of all the things Sadie Sins has overcome to get here — and we assure you, they belong here and don’t really struggle in a way where you would feel uncomfortable to see a real human being and the pains of reality and decades of poverty. No, everything is cool, disability is easy — hey, and being non binary is very trendy right now and not a transphobe magnet at all.

I don’t think I think too much, not really. I honestly think that the majority of people don’t think at all, and it just looks like a lot in comparison. Because it’s right there. We are all contributing to this society, yet no one is making the rules. Our instincts are driving us, and humanity is fucked. I dream that there is intelligent life out there, because my greatest sorrow is to think humanity might be the epitome of what life comes up with. Like fuck, how depressing.

…Humanity has overcome a gigantic list of atrocities to get to this place, (mostly ones it committed,) and it still hasn’t learned that the only battle it has is with itself. Humanity has conquered a globe, the dark, the atom, and is swiftly annihilating the only place in the solar system it can survive as a species, and it can’t stop itself. Because it’s not self aware.

Humanity is a mess of evolutionary instincts that aren’t here to design, but to survive, and unless it adapts and takes on a new way of living, asap, it will drive itself off the cliff it’s digging deeper and deeper. Humanity thinks a bigger bad will finally be what pulls it together to be a better species, but humanity also thinks that violence is the only way to gain cooperation, which is why it has mimicked its modern societies on tribalism. Where humanity chooses who will be sacrificed to feed its rationalization of the deep seated fear that without inequality, self worth and self purpose will dissolve.

I don’t get a participation trophy for being human, but my fuck, I want one. Because this is a world I didn’t choose, but I’m stuck participating in it anyways, having to pick a side, pick a spin, take care of my socials who depend on me to not drag them down by being just as flawed as everyone else, but in a way that isn’t accepted by our insane as fuck society. Disability: the unacceptable human flaw. Not genocide. Not hoarding of wealth. Disability: the thing societies really don’t want to face. Because hey, truly facing disability makes able-bodied people question why they’re being asked to break their aging bodies for worthless goals in the first place.

Being sick is easier than living with my brain. It won’t filter the complexity out. It’s gotten healthier since understanding the allergy thing — it’s just adding to the web, seeing more strings of what’s wrong with the situation I’m in and what I have to do to either 1) overcome in a selfish human way, or 2) fall into the pit with the targets who aren’t allowed out. There’s no 3rd option. There’s no pretending that I get to walk a line that will be a bridge, or raise a tide, or topple a system. I can lie to myself, but I’m not self deluded — oh, to be so fucking self deluded!

The system reflects the species. Humanity isn’t changing. Evolution didn’t suddenly decide intelligence was the way to go when people no longer needed intelligence to survive. And even if it had, it didn’t erase all those instincts that got us here. We hit a plateau. Cooperation should be the next stage — we’ve built a tech infrastructure ripe for global cooperation — but it’s the banding together against the other, tribalism, still winning, violence and dominance at the core. Someone has to suffer for balance. Humanity can’t perceive good without evil — such nonsense.

Every time a nation talks about helping another, there’s always so many healthy, comfortable voices going “what about me?” The privilege of the privileged getting the last say.

Well, I firmly remember the things I’m trying to escape as a human being, so I guess it’s time to write instead of think. Because writing is my selfish escapism. Coding is my selfish escapism. Looking anywhere but at the mess of a system I’m participating in is both my escape, and selfish as fuck, and I am painfully, bitterly aware of it.

Sadie Sins is bitter, disabled, and takes offense to trying to sum up their human experience into a slick, depersonalized blurb that perpetuates the continuation of dull stereotypes that either erase or valorize the disabled when we are all fucked humans. Sadie Sins doesn’t want to talk about being disabled, but feels required because of how it interferes with their ability to be a productive robot that produces creative results on demand, and how mentioning illness and disability “the wrong way” results in healthy people running the fuck away as if disability and reality are contagious.

Sadie Sins is in the middle of healing from a decade of debilitating symptoms, and is pushing themself to be okay enough to do shit that they may or may not be okay enough to do, because poverty from years of disability is killing Sadie and making all of their decisions. And now Sadie realizes they are in the middle of dealing with the trauma of that when facing the task of branding. Because they’re too close to it, and it means too much right now, and although some pain has stopped, there are wounds that are finally being allowed to be felt, which are infected, amputating pieces of the soul, and suck balls. And branding isn’t actually that fucking important and can wait.

Branding Through Trauma

Searching for my brand

I was listening to one of my fave writing podcasts — which there are very few — and they were on the topic of branding, which reminded me of the thing I had intentionally avoided when redoing the website. I had focused on visual accessibility for myself and others, while avoiding updating my author page or any of the things that talk about me as a writer. This was intentional because it was, as they say, a whole can of worms that I wasn’t ready to open just yet. I’m still not ready, but I’m at least willing to think about it from a place of curiosity instead of reaction and avoidance.

Part of the issue is I don’t know myself anymore. A decade of illness changes you, and the last few years have been so extreme in that regard. I have collected definitions and labels and understanding of myself, and I see how these things are presented within this field as badges instead of defects, to the point each diagnosis feels more like a collector’s item instead of the extreme complexity they come with. Expectations to hold oneself to when exhausted by said complexities.

Defined by limits?

I don’t begrudge authors their spin, their strength in vulnerability to define themselves by these conditions — to define their brands by these conditions. To get empowerment instead of to feel weighed down by the challenges each one embodies. But I am struggling to see any of this as my brand.

Part of it is absolutely self-ableism. But part of it is how I see myself — how I feel I need to see myself to cope and continue on.

The reality is, these conditions have limited me from being a writer. I write despite these things. And these conditions have made writing so arduous, they are what I fight to do the thing I once loved greatly. I don’t want to define my brand by the things that have limited it, and that’s just the place I’m in right now.

I’ve always tried to define my brand by the writing, because that is the two-dimensional version being put out into the ether, so easily summarized into blurbs and slapped on a package. To claim a brand has room for complexity is a lie. But at the same time, it is always a human being in the center of a brand.

Traditional branding?

It always feels like the waiting default, and I can’t fall into that treacherous hole. I can’t default to the traditional branding many authors have done, and still do, in a modern era that doesn’t respond to such separation with bios in third person. Like they’re trying to put a tense between the author and their fandom. It’s antiquated, and self-serving to claim that one will not have to sacrifice any sense of invulnerability in the name of putting the stories from their inner world out there. It doesn’t resonate with me. It never has.

Limits again…

Not talking about certain aspects of my life because they didn’t coincide with my brand, left me with nothing to talk about. These conditions absolutely limit me. They define me by their limits, by my battle to push back those limits to steal something of myself. Because I didn’t want to share how much I had been lost to these limits, I was unable for years to maintain any sort of brand. I let it grow dusty and silent, which was a severe disservice all its own.

…Rebranding is hard

Rebirth is a difficult thing. One would think it would be easier than initial birth, but it comes with the experience of being someone else. Of knowing that you become someone else on this journey. The feeling that you need to know the ending before you’re allowed to present it as you. I have so many hopes, so many goals I’m reaching for, many of them in reaction to the limits forced on me by my illness. And I don’t want that to be my brand either, because that is a reaction, not a being.

I don’t want to be in this place. So I don’t want to define myself by being in this place, nothing more than trying to overcome challenges placed on me by out of control limits. Even if it’s honest, it’s not everything, and it’s certainly not enough to drive a creative force.

So let’s look at the genre, my writing in the genre, and what I was hoping to accomplish. There is a brand in there, one centered on a goal, which honestly might be enough to be a brand in general.

Branding in a genre?

Within this genre of erotica and erotic romance is my battle to be different. To be an authentic voice that is brutal in its willingness to not conform to the expectations narrow-minded people set, while also refusing to apologize and hide away.

Then there are the outside voices. People who want to define erotic fiction as a reality that should be held to the morals and ethics of a living, breathing community. In this is not just the extremes of people trying to put an age on a group of words, define a species on a group of words, or a crime on a group of words, but also in the demand that a happy ending is required, or a character must act in a way that a sole voice insists upon to be valid within the fiction of a group of words.

Some people find safety in regulating words, and in having those words regulated. Because they’re unsafe in their brains. They are unsafe to conceptualize without fear of something breaking, of a wall bursting open and their entire sense of reality and self shaking away into chaos. And how do I know this? Because I had PTSD since I was a toddler, and how the brain modulates concepts — memories — that feel too dangerous to face is by regulating them. And when one cannot regulate their thoughts because it is an impossible task that leads to extreme suffering for the person doing it and for those around them, they try to regulate the world.

They try to regulate groups of words. They try to regulate the brains of others in the hopes that if everyone is working together to insists that the concepts they define as dangerous disappear, they will one day be safe with their own brain.

The thing is, PTSD — traumatization — is being frozen in that place of inability to accept. It’s being frozen with the inability to face a concept. It is being trapped trying to regulate one’s own thoughts and the world around them. These extreme, quite frankly, irrational behaviors are not cures to PTSD, but a symptom. It is trauma unleashed upon the world, committing trauma upon others as it tries to force conformity and regulation of thoughts and concepts and words. And as a result, as an author, writing what I write puts me in the path of the traumatized who would really like to re-traumatize me so that they might feel safer in the world. And that has made this thing I love to do fucking difficult.

It would be far easier to put a sanitized version of my inner world into a group of words to prevent such conflict. To prevent the reminder of the pattern of trauma by regulating before it’s demanded I regulate. And I think there came a point where this illness had traumatized me in a new way, and there just wasn’t enough of me to tackle it all.

The trauma pattern is built deep into my psyche, telling me if I just regulate what I share by spinning a 2D image of myself out in the world, that I can avoid triggering the pain the trauma pattern will inflict on me if I don’t. Because this is the brain doing it to itself, the psyche traumatized, hoping to avoid an imaginary future pain by inflicting pain now.

Trauma is self-destruction spun to look like empowerment some days. Trauma is self-afflicted abuse as the brain infuses impossible value into a memory — into a concept, because a memory is not an experience but just an interpretation the brain has crafted. Trauma is certainty of death if those self-created concepts are faced. Literally, the psyche will choose annihilation of existence to avoid the very thing that psyche created in the first place.

We create our monsters. Only some of us make friends with them.

Writing is my healing, exposure therapy. It’s my defiance against trauma, and the self-destructive patterns of thoughts and behavior the traumatized psyche is victimized to as it victimizes itself.

And doesn’t that just sound so self-important and valuable when the end result is a fuck fic? I’m crafting legitimacy.

A process doesn’t really have an ending. The same with branding.

This is a process. One that requires the most from me because of PTSD. It’s why I’m not allowed to give up, and not allowed to justify and rationalize for too long stepping away and letting it just disappear into the ether. Because I don’t get to be a living being who is just being, not when trauma has defined so much of my existence for so long. I am still a reaction, asking myself to grow into something more because that’s what self-awareness demands. Self-awareness, the existential horror of a dead universe.

Trauma can’t be my brand

I don’t want to present my brand from the lens of trauma. Partially because it’s a defiance of trauma. Partially because it sounds too intellectual, too important. This is not a medicine people are supposed to be aware they’re taking. It’s supposed to be an experience. It’s supposed to be a way to get lost in a concept, fully submerge, where one comes out exhilarated instead of questioning if they read it the right way. If they got the results they were looking for.

Also, I think it’s just extremely condescending to present what I write in a way that could make others look lesser for writing similar in comparison. I understand why I’m doing what I’m doing, but that doesn’t mean I’m doing it for those reasons. It’s not a choice, but an impulse, a pattern that needs completing.

I don’t expect other people to mimic my impulses, or to feel forced to justify their impulses in the same way. I’m here to get lost in a potentially unsafe concept in defiance of trauma, and I don’t want to place expectations or my self-serving intention on any author or any reader. I write for myself because I’m selfish. And it’s in that selfishness that these stories get written. There shouldn’t be a contract in that. Just an understanding.

Being ill has taken me away from my selfishness a lot. It is a different experience, one of survival. In those constant battles and exhaustion, I’m left seeking an easier route. But as much as I can claim it would be so easy to write something that would not make me feel vulnerable, or put me in conflict with the traumatized seeking to traumatize of the Internet, I can’t. I don’t get to choose what I write; it chooses me. It is a byproduct, not a goal, not an instrument that I get to yield. My brand is a byproduct of that, of the person personing.

It’s become important to understand this when faced with writer’s block. When frustrated and just wanting an easy path for a change. But I suspect after 30+ years of PTSD, and now a decade of illness, my brain has become addicted to the difficult path. There is no safe thrill of the unknown in the mundane. That’s why we escape into our minds as it is.

I already know part of the answer…

I understood my branding early into writing. It was the embracing of it all. It was the fun, the cheeky defiance to the voices that wanted to make everything so fucking serious to the point no one was allowed to have their own thoughts without shame being forced on them in punishment. I just don’t know how to balance that branding with the version of me who has had their ass kicked by illness all these years.

It’s rare for me to feel silly and playful lately, and it’s work to find that inner voice. But I want to. I want to be more than the limits that keep growing as I age into this mortal form. I want to be more than the frustrating comparisons as I try to figure out if my brain is working today or if its succumb to inflammation and allergies.

Where we dwell in consciousness is where we truly dwell

As a crafter of concepts, that saying speaks to me. It’s the tattoo I’ll never get until I finally get a tattoo. It speaks to not only what I’m trying to do — to open a psyche into an uncertain place that can have greater rewards then punishments — but to my journey as an individual. As a person who has battled years of depression and anxiety, and a chronic illness that has physical and neurological side effects. As the person left in screaming face pain for months upon months with no one offering answers or solutions while I was left to endure and solve it myself.

There is a balance to be found in the value we place in our memories and experiences, and the value we place in our goals of who we want to be as individuals. But there is only ever the being we are in this moment, being. And if you’re not fostering your mindset, being aware of where you’re dwelling in the conceptual minefield of the psyche, there is no way to get to a better state of consciousness.

Limits feel like failure in an ableist culture

image of author self conscious of camera looking away

I’m resisting listing the labels and diagnoses I’ve collected these last years and connecting it to my writing brand because I don’t want to deal with the vulnerability. The feeling like I need to present myself in a “worthy” way to make up for what feels so limiting and broken. But I also see it as a disservice to the version of me who feels empowered to represent what is so rarely even acknowledged.

Disability is erased in our culture, looked down upon as a failure of the individual, instead of as the blunt reality of being a living being that will eventually die. Perfection is a lie. Painlessness is a lie — only life can feel pain. It is by definition a state of suffering to be alive. But we as a culture choose to paint the most idyllic picture because that’s where we want to live.

And I did that too, which was why I couldn’t show up to be a writer when everything just got too difficult. I perpetuated in my erasure, because that’s what I was taught. Because that was how I coped with the pain of limits and living imperfect.

So however I end up doing this, I’m going to need to find that balance. Truth, genuineness, but from a place that doesn’t feel completely defeated by the limits of fighting. Tired, but hoping energy will come. Unformed, and afraid to create a shape that I can’t fit into. And begrudgingly okay with the shape I’m in now.

April 21 2023

Style: Minimalism

Okay, I’ve decided the game

It’s going to be a choice of style. I’m struggling with two huge limits as a result of my current writing style: 1) my ability to focus because of the ADHD, and 2) my ability to read with my vision limitations. I need to make this easier on myself, and the support tools that I have at the moment are not enough. So what is the next direction?

Minimalism in style.

For one, it’s a challenge. It asks my brain to look at everything in a completely different way as a writer, and that’s something my brain enjoys. There’s a game in there. There’s a game with a desired outcome that can be measured.

This means there will be less decision fatigue because I’ll be moving toward a desired outcome instead of feeling like I have so few limits, that I have to spread out in all directions.

Less words means less editing. Editing is where I’m struggling the most because of the requirement to read as part of editing. It’s an acceptance of the difficulty involved with my executive dysfunctions and visual impairments, which is a healthier way to move forward. There’s less self-ableism when I’m making things easier on myself based on my limits, instead of fighting limits that can’t be changed.

Ideally, it will be less time-consuming — but there’s no guarantee of that, and that’s not necessarily a goal I’m looking for.

I suppose when looking at writing as self-publishing, the measurement of time is quite important. The faster it is to get from the conception of the product to the publishing and income reception of that product is absolutely important. But I’m not in a race right now. I’m in the experiment and understanding phase of everything. These metrics might become important later on, but they are easily abused into something self ablest if I’m not careful, and therefore aren’t a goal for me at the moment.

My goal right now is to be able to have a completed story with the least amount of pain, but one I can still feel proud of. With the requirement of keeping my mind engaged. And these issues are really what kill my time, if I want to get into the whole measurement of what it’s been taking to get me to complete this writing process for one basic story.

Time sucks

Time is taken away because of allergies, which slow my cognition, and flare executive dysfunction, making my attention span even shorter than its default.

A lack of schedule allows for every random thing to become a distraction, instead of something put aside in its own time block away from my writing time block.

The requirement to read as part of the organizational process of writing. I’m treating this with my support tool editor, creating visual blocks that the text falls into, so that I can focus on the purpose of each block, leaving notes to myself to help keep that focus. But this is still time consuming.

I know it’ll grow easier as I become familiar with my new process — I’ve literally designed it with this in mind. But right now I’m in the phase of training my brain, which can be extremely arduous because of my executive dysfunctions. Once I learn something, it’s second nature (when not ill), but the learning process can be difficult. Especially when learning through text. Reading is taxing on me, the focus it requires, especially when every small detail is important with writing.

I didn’t realize how much my brain filled in text that I hadn’t read. It leaps. It glosses over entire sentences and paragraphs, and just fills things in. I suppose I’m lucky that it’s usually filling things in the correct way, until I find myself faced with a set of instructions that I can’t focus on, and I realize the extreme limits of my brain’s inability to hold attention to text.

There is so much time lost in this battle to keep my brain focused. And that my allergies are so intricately connected to my brain’s ability to focus only makes it all the more frustrating. So, a game. A game where I’m not focused on the stakes or the frustration, but instead I’m leaning into the path of least resistance. With a goal that keeps my brain interested enough that it won’t automatically fuck off like it usually does when reading.

And maybe it’s time to go back to listening to text to edit as part of this process, but I’m not a great audio learner. It’s still really difficult to focus. I’m a good visual summary learner, taking concepts as a whole and organizing them while ignoring the unnecessary details. But this is writing, where every letter is a necessary detail, so I’m kind of shit out of luck in that regard.

Perfectionism as a coping tool to trauma

I miss writing short stories that are actually short. I miss being able to have an idea that doesn’t have the exhausting requirement to flesh it into something so much larger. I’d like to be able to get back to that, and I know part of why I can’t right now is that I’m stuck in the neurosis of perfectionism.

I’m putting a lot of self value into my ability to write at the moment. I think it’s normal for what I’ve been through. Writing is one of those measurable things that can tell me my brain is working after the last decade of really messed up cognition and health, along with all the fear that went into not having control over what was happening to me. The neurosis right now is just these little self checks asking “is my brain still working?” “Is it happening again?” “Am I going to disappear into this invisible illness, and have it all cascade out of control once again?”

As much as I keep reminding myself the trauma that occurs with long-term chronic illness, I haven’t really addressed it much in my day-to-day beyond trying not to be so self ablest. Getting to this point of getting to say I “overcame” chronic illness is rare, impossible, and it never fully feels real.

It’s surreal after a decade of struggle — fighting invisible, microscopic enemies floating on a breeze — to be handed an answer. To be asked to perceive my existence, in what was once such an unsafe world, from a place of safety. And until I can feel a little more certain with my health, I don’t think anything that I do in the world is going to feel genuine and insignificant. Instead, it’s just another way of measuring if the illness is still gone, if my brain is still working, or do I need to act immediately to prevent everything from spiraling out of control all over again.

Redefining minimalism as a style

I’m going to have to remember what minimalism is. How it’s effective writing, instead of sketchy writing. I think a part of me is worried that to become minimal with my word count is to become lazy as a writer. Because when I first started writing and making short stories, I was minimal because my brain literally couldn’t be anything else. It couldn’t focus, couldn’t see its inability to create effective visuals and mood. And I was just so fucking tired all the time that anything was good enough. Any amount of words was proof I was alive and my brain was doing something.

Which is probably why I’ve been avoiding short form writing since recovering a lot of my cognition. At some point I associated brevity with inflammation of the brain — because trauma is damn frustrating like that.

So yay, I get to learn something. I get to challenge myself. And through that process of self-improvement, I’ll also be editing, writing, making my life easier based on my limits, and getting closer to feeling safe as a self published writer again. I’m interested to see how it’ll go, which is already a good sign that my brain is engaged in this new game.

April 20 2023

Refocused

So I spent this morning on my drive to get allergy shots thinking about caving, about changing Breeding his Nephew to add a paranormal element so it would be allowed on Smashwords (Amazon would ban the fuck out of it, but Smashwords allows certain kink if there’s an obvious sentient brain involved — although it’s been a while and I should really recheck all the terms of service on this shit to make sure…)

Anyways, I was considering caving, only to realize it was coming from a broken place. It’s fear. I’m looking to add multiple characters and story arcs to what was supposed to be a basic fuck fic reminiscent of the whole pittbulls and parolees thing, all because a part of me is afraid I’m not going to be able to get back into writing. That the sickness will grab me once again, and I’ll lose so much time and cognition that I’ll never be able to get back to my life.

And that’s a dumb fuck reason to do anything.

It’s wrong. I already know it’s wrong. I’m absolutely better than I’ve been in years, and I know exactly the things that set me off and how to deal with them. It’s never going to be a loss of years again with my brain dribbling out of my head while I’m left staring at a wall trying to remember what a person does every day. I understand the airflow issues that push every allergen in the house into my room, the litter box as the source of everything pain/destroying to my health, and there’s no reason to be afraid it’s ever going to be as bad as before. I don’t have to make choices from that place — bad story choices, btw.

Like, seriously, what a waste of time it would be to add in multiple minds to this thing — and there is absolutely no way you can add a touch of magic/paranormal to a contemporary story without demanding a completely different change of plot. Everything becomes about the magic in the normal world, instead of the kink. No.

So, I’m refocused. Added the note taking linking element to my scene editor to be able to link and auto-populate descriptive text into the database without filling out a bunch of forms each time. Good. My eyes hurt, which is shit, but whatever. Allergies be allergies.

The Writing Process: A Rant

The Writing Process: A Rant

Today sucks

Today, I want to talk about the writing process and why it’s actually important. And I mainly want to talk about this because I am super frustrated. I feel like everything I’m doing is about trying to get back to writing, instead of just writing, and honestly, I’m not wrong. That’s the majority of what I’m doing right now. I am building a system instead of writing a story.

After years between now and publishing my last book, I just want to be at the end of this process where there’s a book to publish and I don’t feel like I’m fighting everything, including my very difficult brain and all my executive dysfunctions. But I’m not at the end of this process. I don’t have a book to publish. In some ways, even as I polish off the last of this current short story, I still feel like I haven’t started this process — mostly because I don’t see the story I’m writing as viable for publishing.

There’s a reason for that; it was to take a lot of pressure off of me as I get back into this writing journey. It was so I didn’t have to make a cover with my fucked-up eyes in pain all the time and having to face that aspect of what I’ve lost in such a short amount of time on top of getting back to writing. But because I’ve taken the “easy” way out, I’ve put a lot of work into something that’s going to be locked on my website (unless I add a fantasy element to it, and I don’t want to. It’s all fantasy, but somehow pretending it’s supernatural makes people who read understand words aren’t real? Like, dumb fuckery.) I don’t feel like I’ve succeeded in anything, and I think a part of me needs a win right now.

So, the writing process. The importance of doing all the busy work I’m doing now. A refresher to remind me why the fuck I’m here.

I can’t claim that a writing system is solely a good idea because of executive dysfunction. I think someone would need to have an amazing memory to write a series or serial without some sort of process in place. Even if it’s as basic as writing an outline, I genuinely don’t believe that writing a complex series can be done — done well — without a structure to keep focus and to juggle all the plot points and character arcs and background information that needs to be juggled.

I am a poor mental visualizer, which is why it’s essential for me to have reference for what I’m writing about. I need background images, and blocks of text describing setting and characters and clothing and items if I’m going to be capable of conveying visual information to readers.

Because I’m such a poor mental visualizer, this is obviously something important to me. It’s a void in my brain that I’m trying to fill for myself, not just the reader, and that can get difficult when addressing such a deficit. My neurosis can pop up, and I can put greater value on it than it needs to be, or I can feel frozen in my writing because I don’t have that image to convey. Having the database where I store the description of that image can help my brain disengage from the obsessive need to ensure that I’m conveying something that I’m struggling to visualize. In that regard, doing this background work is one of those steps that might look like busy work, but it’s actually allowing me to move forward instead of being stuck as a result of my very difficult personality.

But it’s boring.

Last night, after finally stealing enough time to get the manuscript into the editor I had created last week, I started the editing process. And I found myself hating it. Partially because I was exhausted; partially because I was holding a ton of expectations that were overwhelming my curiosity; partially because I’m still struggling with allergies and what they do to my cognition. And today I just feel frustrated. My brain is conceptualizing everything I’ve gone through, everything I’ve created to get me to this point, and all I’m seeing is the struggle without reward.

Somehow I thought creating the support tools would make this editing process easier. But there is only so much I can do that will actually get results at the end that are measurable. Everything else is just trying to create a little more ease, a little more convenience, but nothing of impact. Nothing is going to fill out this database for me — although I have made a way to link text into my reference forms so that it will auto populate, and I’m probably going to expand on that because it does seem the path of least resistance. But I still have to input the manuscript, and separate the text out and link it to the correct data file. I still have to battle with my many executive dysfunctions in regards to reading and focusing to get that done.

To make my life easier. But it doesn’t feel easy. I have to do all this very difficult — feeling near impossible — work, in the hopes that it’s going to make things easier in the future.

It sucks. I’m bored as fuck. Writing is fucking boring.

I just want to get to the end of this already. I want to get to the end, not because I’m avoiding hard work, but because my brain is not certain that I’m ever going to enjoy getting to the end of this process. I want something to prove that all these doubts and frustrations aren’t grounded in anything real. I want concrete proof that the work I’m putting in will guarantee results.

And maybe that’s just unrealistic. Maybe that’s a level of dumb fuck expectation that no one really has a right to put on themself. We cannot know the future. The whole point of experimentation is the understanding that failure is a part of that process.

But I don’t want to be understanding about the process right now; I want a fucking win.

Have I written multiple novels without this new process, without this structure I’m putting into place? Yes. And I would really love to default to that. It’s a place where I’m doing, completely ignoring the deficits, getting the writing done and over with. But it is always going to end with me back in this spot, where I see a new mountain I need to structure before I can climb if I want to move forward as a writer. I am at this place right now because I am well the fuck aware that there is no going forward if I don’t commit to some sort of structuring and reference with my writing.

My brain is not getting better — actually, that’s not right. My brain is not changing. This new system of support tools is designed to acknowledge the very real deficits my brain has in regards to working memory, long-term memory, visual conceptualization, and attention. But it’s not designed to make me feel good about this process, to help me cope with the frustrations I’m feeling as I have to force my brain to work with its very real deficits. That’s something I need to provide in a different context, and I’m doing a shit job of it today.

It has to become part of the process. Every time a block comes up, stopping, assessing, and naming has to be part of the process of getting back to writing. And not just getting back, but the process of writing. Because that distinction needs to become part of the definition of writing. What feels like busy work, be it research, building these structures and support tools, looking at the market that I’m creating the product for — in this case the book for — has to all be part of the process of self-publishing.

Every step taken is a step closer to the end result. And it can be difficult to conceptualize that when all I want to do is be at that end result.

I’m very funny with my conceptualizations. I have a brain that can conceptualize extremely complex structures, but not in a complex visual way. I have to create simple visuals to box a concept — and for some reason my brain needs that visual language when it comes to learning and expressing what it’s trying to say. It’s already doing the work in the background, but it needs a different language.

The structure I’ve created in regards to the outlines and the scene editor all utilize that visual language of mine. The notes I made as I was designing these elements also utilize the visual language in shorthand. It would look nonsensical to most people, just symbols on a page, mostly squares and rectangles much like a brainstorming cloud. But that’s all I need to see to create something complex in my head and then translate it into a project. I do these very basic notes when it comes to coding, understanding the nesting and order of operations of elements I learn how to use by seeing how they break. But if I didn’t take that step, if I didn’t know that about myself, I would not be able to move forward. I have to be honest with my weaknesses to be able to gain anything, and that has to be part of the process.

Blunt Honesty

So, today, my writing process is acknowledging how fucking shit it is to do all this difficult work only to feel like no product has been made. To know that I am going to push my brain to limits that it has in regards to editing. To overwhelm it. To make it ask what is the fucking point of any of this as I go through the decision fatigue of “What’s the best way to convey this concept to a reader that is both clear and also engaging, and why is every fucking choice wrong?” For every single sentence. For nearly every single word in that sentence. All while knowing this book isn’t publishable.

I’m going to commit time and energy into something because it’s important only because I say it’s important, even as it takes me away from putting that time and energy into a product that will make me money by the end — a product that will prove to myself that everything I’m doing is actually getting results, and not just me fucking around learning new things because doing the shit that requires me to focus is boring.

This is so fucking boring

That’s really it, at the end of the day. There are so many things my brain is good at — strike that. There are so many things that reward my brain with dopamine because my brain is actually quite bad at it in the right ways, and the challenge is addictive. But right now, writing is not that. I haven’t done the mental work to turn this project into that. I haven’t set the stakes. I haven’t built the game that will give my brain the dopamine to keep going as I do the arduous work it is normally willing to do when it feels rewarded.

Also, decision fatigue sucks

Decision fatigue doesn’t feel like a reward. My brain likes there to be one answer, the one answer it solves, just like a math problem or a script of code. There isn’t one answer with writing; if anything, writing is all the answers being whittled down into the path you end up on. And that path isn’t the right path, it’s just the one you ended up on. It’s a lot like life, and there is very little satisfaction to life. I’m never choosing the right words when writing; I’m just choosing words until my brain is tired enough to go, “Okay, fuck it, none of this matters, every options is shit; it’s good enough.”

There’s no dopamine reward in that, just letting go, and that is one of my greatest deficits. I don’t have a stop switch easily accessible. Once my brain has taken all the pieces in, turned sentences and concepts into a story to tell, and built the structure of thought — holding it all in my head — it needs to ensure that it’s translated properly. Well. Even as I see that there isn’t one solution, and that none of the solutions are wrong, my brain is still doing math, trying to solve the problem with one answer. And once it’s dedicated all that time into building that complex conceptualization, it doesn’t want to let go until the problem is solved.

The problem that doesn’t exist because none of it really actually fucking matters.

The real problem is my brain

You know that very wise advice of not trying to solve people? My brain doesn’t understand that. It takes complex data about a person, conceptualizes, and then tries to solve — even as it’s aware that isn’t how things work. Most social interactions are about disengaging my brain exactly for this reason. There’s a pattern of thought that comes naturally to this organic computer in my skull, and it is completely useless for the majority of things in life. It’s literally why I choose to write, choose to create anything, ever.

I need to make the game for my brain to solve, or there is no satisfaction or happiness in my life.

I am not writing a novel or series when I sit down to write. I am creating the data (all the shit I make up) and adding in the structure (the rules of writing, as well as the end goal of plot and character arcs) and giving my brain a problem to solve so that it will be happy in a way it cannot be happy any other time.

[data] + [structure] = [customized problem to solve (aka: game)]

I’m the kind of person who is looking for broken things to fix to find satisfaction in life. I fixed a trashcan the other day, solving the plastic mechanism to the lid that had broken years ago and no one had gotten around to dealing with it — and that brought me more satisfaction than the entire room I had also cleaned that day. It’s madness.

So this is also why I need the writing process. Because before, the structure I was building — the game I was creating so that I could then solve with writing — was too simple. It was designed for my brain when it was inflamed. Now the game needs to be more complex, or I can’t find a reason to come back to it. Because I’m not here to write a book. That would be too easy. My brain doesn’t get dopamine from that. I’m here to make such a complex problem for myself that I will feel satisfied once I solve it.

Self destructive by design? Maybe.

It’s not a choice. It’s my base chemical makeup. It’s a pattern of thought that I’ve had since small. It’s why books were so compelling to me as a kid, because I realized that everyone is searching for circumstances where they feel there talents are actually useful, and that’s what good books provided for the main characters. There was no point in having a character that was supposedly smart or talented or had some crazy magical power or difficult flaw, without having a challenge for them to overcome as a result. The strengths and weaknesses of the character would define the main plot points to come.

Books were wonderful like that, because unlike life, they always had a damn point. Someone was always trying to say something in a book, while with life it’s just chaos that we hope to organize in a way to cope with the complete lack of logic.

What I can control is in choice

The choice is that I keep coming back when my novelty seeking brain has decided there’s nothing left in the task of writing.

I don’t want to be a good writer. There’s nothing I want to master. I want to learn something. I want to be effective in what I do. I want to add data to my perceptions of the world and existence on a whole, and if the task I’m doing isn’t providing that, my brain checks the fuck out.

Really, how many times can you do the same damn task, sitting in a chair staring at the screen, hoping something different will happen? The choice is that I show up even though I know nothing different will happen. And then the next choice is to try and find a way to make it interesting enough so that it feels like something different is happening.

Why write?

I don’t really have a story to tell. When I first started writing, I was in the middle of PTSD therapy. I was trying to understand all the many things I needed to understand about the human animal and coping. That’s what drove me. The motivation isn’t there anymore. I understand enough. Now what.

[game] ?= [satisfaction]

Okay. So, it’s like, I’m here to make a game. I’m here to make something spectacular with all I’ve learned, so I’ll be engaged in the process. But how many times can you set up the dominoes and watch them tumble in glorious ways, until you become disinterested? When you know there’s only so many outcomes, none of them lasting; what drives you to create another pattern of the same?

People think it’s to move from pain, that the goal of money and getting out of a difficult situation is enough. But you know what you find in difficult situations that just so happens to fuel dopamine? Challenges that matter. In every direction. And isn’t that just so interesting for a brain that likes to problem solve?

One could contemplate, design, and make something absolutely unique and perfect for the space they’re in… Or they could buy something instead. When you don’t have money, you’re forced to dedicate the time and thought into a project, and my brain likes that. It wants an excuse to be creative in a way that matters, where there’s no guilt for ignoring the silly game it’s building for itself that makes an income.

That’s why building the game is far more interesting than playing the game I built. Building those support tools has value to me, measurable cause-and-effect to help me improve my existence in the world. Using the support tools to fuck around in a world of my own creation…?

Does it even matter? Does anything I do as a writer actually matter? And if it does, is it enough for my dopamine driven brain to grab on and keep going?

I think if I had the answer to this, I would already be writing (or I wouldn’t be trying to come back anymore.) And that’s the whole fucking problem. I know it doesn’t matter. And I know even if it did matter, my brain can’t conceptualize it as actually important enough right now to switch on and show up. Everything I do as a creative is an exercise in self indulgence, and my brain is bored by it.

Do other people deal with this?

There’s no way to really know myself without my deficits in executive function. When my brain was so inflamed from allergies that my OCD was everything, keeping me focused and driven, I thought that was my personality. It’s the same with ADHD; I don’t know if not having this fucked up dopamine system would mean I experience the world differently and wouldn’t be so driven by the novelty of learning to the point that everything that sparkles so quickly fades. I don’t know if having a different brain chemistry means I could be satisfied with doing the same thing again and again, and never once question — instead of always questioning — the path I find myself on.

This is my brain as I know it to be, with all its many flaws and difficulties within the current, severely flawed structure of the modern world. It is forever sharp teeth tearing into new concepts, slashing and dissecting, and then dismissing for the next meal. Never full, never satisfied. There is no plateau to rest, just the challenge of being trapped, fighting to get higher. And there’s not much I can do about it beyond live with my brain and pretend that with enough time these teeth might somehow soften, that it will eventually find whatever the fuck it’s looking for and be content.

Self destructive by design…?

This is not good content. This is not sellable as a product on a website. This is not a concept anyone seeking self-improvement wants to hear: desires in life are nothing more than chemistry and self indulgence, and we’re all puppets to our chemistry with no control in making the shit we do every day make sense or have actual value.

It’s certainly not information someone interested in growing a following as a writer for a consistent income would want to share with their readers. To know that the creative work one creates is boring to the creator? No one wants to know that. New writers don’t want to know that the creative process doesn’t fit into the mold of the capitalistic system that demands one create a product of similarity again and again and again, just so they be allowed to live on the income that’s returned. No, the reader is too caught up in the consumption. Because as my brain seeks novelty that it only feels capable of having exist if it designs it personally, their brains are seeking novelty without needing that frustrating step in between.

I miss those days of being a reader where shit was actually satisfying…

Does anyone really want to know that in the same way I create problems for my characters to solve to make an engaging story, I have to create challenges for me to solve so that I want to even show up to this gig? There’s nothing inspiring in the reality of this. But I’m not here to put a spin on it to make it inspiring. I’m here to cope with the shit-realities of it all.

Because I’m here, ready to write. And I’m so fucking bored. I’m so bored, I’m writing about why I’m bored, hoping that it will solve the problem of my boredom by pushing me further and further away from the actual writing/editing I’m supposed to do. And yeah, being self aware of it doesn’t solve shit. It’s part of the process.

Because part of the process of writing is not writing!

…See what I did there?

No, it’s not actually meaningful. It’s a fucking cop-out. But it’s the best I’ve got today as I hate on the hard truth that my brain is seeking something it is never going to have. Never. Yet it can’t fucking stop.

It’s an addict by nature. There’s no purpose in it, just coping. If I didn’t need my brain to write, shit would be so much simpler. But it can’t be simple. That’s boring to it. So here I am, ranting about shit I can’t change, before I go and do the boring shit I won’t have an excuse to avoid once I’m done writing this.

Fucking words.

April 17 2023

New editor and delays

So after I realized the issues I face with editing — mostly visual and focus issues — I decided to make an editor to help. And it’s been amazing. Learning to code has really allowed me to create my own support tools, and it’s just opened up so much. I’m going to be using this to write, it’s been so helpful, and I’m really excited about it.

Unfortunately, I’m faced with old challenges this week and who knows how long, as my allergies flare. At first I thought it was a cold because my throat just became raw a couple of days ago in the matter of minutes, and I had no clue why. As it lasted, and the heat increased with the weather, I assumed environmental allergies from the sudden explosion of Spring. It took until a day or so ago to realize it was the new cat litter we got, and it’s really bad.

We stopped any kind of ‘dust’ based cat litter ages ago when we realized how bad it was for the cats and humans. Somehow, those lessons were forgotten — I swear I just become complacent, you know? Looking for convenience. And these litters make those promises of “no dust”, but they’re fucking lies. I don’t know what the standard is for dust in the cat litter industry, but however they’re defining it, they’re full of shit.

So I’ve been sick. And it’s been the worst version of the allergies, meaning the exhaustion combined with the difficulty moving my limbs, and fucking save me now, the face pain has been sparking again. It’s been over a year free of that excruciating pain, and one fuck up and I have a house full of dust and the screaming face pain is building. I’m hoping having a bunch of teeth pulled means there are less nerves in my face to react, but I can’t know. Not until the allergic responses get so bad that it’s beyond anything inflammation wise, and at that point, if it’s not screaming pain, it’s severe cognition loss, which is its own hell.

I might be living out of my car a bit until I can get the dust under control — or just to avoid my allergies reaching that kind of extreme again. I don’t know. I’m going to talk to my allergist tomorrow, see if they have anything useful to recommend. At this point, I don’t understand the lack of solutions from the medical community. I can’t be the only one who gets screaming face pain from allergies. I can’t be. It’s clearly an inflammation response that is happening in the nerves of the face, and that I keep getting blank fucking looks and no help after all these years isn’t just nonsense, it’s a failure of the medical system. This is an a + b = c problem, and I shouldn’t be the one to have to keep pointing it out.

Whatever. I’ll be writing while I can. Like I said, the face pain is more a threat, and less full blown screaming right now, so I’m hoping to cut it all off before it reaches that point. I need HEPA filters and I’m going to have to break out the construction level air filter that was powering the clean room when I needed a clean room, and see if I can capture the dust asap — but it’s going to be days for new filters to arrive. Have to wipe down every surface, walls, ceilings, floors, everything. The fine particulates of the dust is just as bad as whatever is hitching a ride on the particles to my system right now, hence the hoarse throat.

One day, if I ever get my life back long enough to not be struggling just to survive, I’m building a toilet designed for cats. At their level, so if you have a cat with mobility issues, they don’t need to risk falling from a height to use the bathroom. I don’t know why the fuck humans have normalized raw sewage and dust in their houses as “sanitary” when it comes to cats, but it’s a fucking problem for everyone involved. If you have allergies, or find that you just don’t feel well at home, and you have a cat, that litter box should be your first concern. There’s nothing okay about 2023 still not solving this shit. We don’t have chamber pots anymore for this very reason, so why keep with litter boxes?

Taking on Impossible Projects

How to take on a project when you don’t know if you can complete the project

As I reach the end of the creation process of my story reference database — finally — I thought it might be nice to talk about how I got here. To the end. The same end as one might find at the end of a book, or the end of a trilogy, or of a series. The end of a project that was too large to fully conceptualize, now actually completed.

This is a project I didn’t know how to do on all levels. I knew a little HTML from running the website, but that was it. I didn’t know the language. I didn’t know the syntax or what form anything was going to be within these foreign computer languages to give me the results I wanted. I didn’t know the limits of what I was asking for, and therefore didn’t know the right questions to ask. I didn’t know the path to start on, to branch to, or if I needed multiple paths to get to my destination.

The only thing I knew was that if I was ever going to write again, I needed to take this journey, because my brain was too broken to be able to write without the correct support system.

That might seem huge, unrelatable, but it’s not. This is where I come from when it comes to tackling an impossible task — you have to believe it’s impossible for whatever reason. It’s for everything I haven’t done before, and therefore I don’t know if I can do. I don’t know how to do something until I do it, and I certainly don’t know how to do it well until I mess it up enough times. This is how things that feel impossible get done — by doing.

When I decided to make this database, it was when facing the largest psychological hurdle I had ever faced. I was very aware that my brain was the most broken it had ever been, and that I couldn’t write anymore (among other things.) In that reality was not only the impossible goal I wanted to reach, but during a time when my brain was struggling the most. It should have been impossible.

Why wasn’t it?

In some ways, I truly don’t know. Because it was impossible. How could I have gotten here when I couldn’t remember the names of my characters anymore? Where I had no visual concept of what they looked like in the scene, or what the scene looked like… But the thing is, these weren’t new problems. My brain had always struggled with visualizing what I was writing, it was just worse now. Yeah, I couldn’t remember my plot arcs, or how to stay focused to form proper ideas out of my rambling sentences… but again, not new problems. They were just presenting in new, more difficult to overcome ways. And I could see that without some foundation of support — without a brain outside my flawed brain — I was far too overwhelmed to be able to juggle all these aspects to move forward.

ADHD and Executive Dysfunction

I’ve always had ADHD, but I first truly understood it to impact my life in high school. I had been an obsessive reader, reading a book a day, then something had changed in my brain and I couldn’t focus on reading anymore. I changed my values at the same time, told myself that if I wanted to be effective and change my life, I needed to be present for it. But that was how I coped with having the thing that I did — my identity as a reader — stolen for me so completely. I adapted and pivoted so well, I could pretend I hadn’t lost a piece of me.

ADHD defined me after that point, the executive dysfunctions and cognitive fog becoming my identity when I wasn’t lost to impulse and novelty. It wasn’t until the end of my 30s that I even had an inkling that I had ADHD. When I started this database, I didn’t know of my ADHD and autism, and the many executive dysfunctions that go hand in hand with the way my brain works. I learned as part of the journey of building this database and getting back to writing. It helped me understand how my brain works, why what was happening was happening. And this knowledge gave me a much more useful perspective on my path going forward.

A Lifetime of Impossible Tasks

None of it was new. I had been adapting around my executive dysfunction since my teens. The most prevalent was my poor working memory, and difficulty in storing short term memory into longterm. I was blessed with a level of intelligence that allowed me to deduce in the moment answers that others could memorize. If I studied the hours before, I could hold answers that would be long gone a week later. I passed complex math classes that way, only to realize I had no memory of formulas later. And it got worse when my immune system was flaring from living in black mold, my cognition dropping. But in those moments I was blessed with a superhuman level of neurosis that I substituted for my broken motivational system.

Even as I say blessed for both these supposed “positives” that got me through, I understand they were also completely self destructive. Neurosis is such a painful mental illness — no one asked if I had OCD back then; no one noticed that the thing I was relying on to get through what everyone else seemed to do with ease was so damn destructive. And intelligence — there is no harder prison to escape from than from an intelligent mind. Especially when mental illness comes rearing from the chemical imbalance of a raging immune system.

I needed self awareness to break out of these two gifts turned curses — and to be fair, I would say self-awareness is the sharpest double-edged sword out there. But I did gain it in my 30’s, at the same time my body failed along with my brain.

Self-Awareness: The Prison Breaker

Self awareness allowed me to see that what I thought was me failing impossible tasks up until that point, was me looking from the wrong vantage. And when my body failed and my brain was inflamed, and I was the sickest I had ever been, I took on the first impossible task that I knew was impossible, and I decided to become a writer.

And I did it. Sick as fuck, barely able to lift my arms for hours upon hours every day as I was struck by weird, mysterious glitches. Having maybe 4 hours a day of mental clarity, of my body suddenly moving like nothing had happened at all. During this time — when broken and well — I wrote stories I didn’t know how to write. And I kept writing, and self publishing, and at some point it wasn’t about me becoming a writer. I was a writer.

I had done the impossible. And then the impossible decided to double down in my late 30’s. Something in my brain broke differently, bigger than ever before, and I found myself staring at the walls most days, unable to get my brain to focus long enough to collect a thought, never mind do a thing. I couldn’t write. My executive functioning had failed so greatly that I couldn’t remember to do most anything. I was completely defined by the walls around me because my object permanence was gone, and I couldn’t remember there were rooms on the other side of doors.

So I did it again. The impossible task to become “functioning” was met and conquered.

I didn’t magically overcome the impossible, but instead built an executive functioning board along half of a wall, using words and symbols on dry erase notecards to spark my memory. Putting items in a To-Do and Done column so that I could stay on track. And as long as I could remember to look at that board before and after each task, I could do things again.

Eventually, I was able to combine those tasks into routines, my brain growing back, reconnecting. And when it glitched, the board was there, waiting to help.

And then I didn’t need the board at all… but I was still broken. My brain couldn’t adapt to my limits like it did before. I still couldn’t write.

Looking at the Impossible from a Fresh Vantage

Pinpointing my mental deficits and learning the term executive functioning were the pieces to the puzzle I needed to eventually realize I had ADHD and find a doctor to help. It led me to understand the role hormones play in ADHD as we age. And when they finally noticed my adrenals weren’t producing enough cortisol and that I had adrenal insufficiency, I learned how the adrenals play a role in hormone production.

I’d say it took at least a year with the appropriate cortisol supplementation for me to fully heal from the severe cognitive decline I had been living in from the untreated adrenal insufficiency. I’ve gotten a lot of my brain back, and the ADHD treatment has given me much more executive functionality than I’ve ever had before. Now, when I look back to when I started writing, and when I started making this database, I am truly left in wonder and absolute awe as to how the fuck I actually got here.

Because I can see from this perspective just how broken I was. When before, while living in such a struggling brain and body, all I could see was the tunnel vision of task after task, goal after goal, step after step. In that place I never allowed myself to believe I couldn’t do something. My only question was how?

Self Doubt Cannot Exist When Doing Impossible Things

You can cry. You can rail at the universe for what it has done to you for making shit so unfair. You can fight reality all you like. But if you want to do what feels like the impossible, you can never doubt yourself. It cannot be part of your identity. You can never doubt that you are going to reach the goal you’re reaching for.

The reality is, you could drop dead tomorrow having never reached your goal. But that’s not how living beings get things done. We need to be oblivious to reality when it comes to these tasks that seem so impossible. We need to be blind to the time it takes, to sacrifices made, and to our emotions when something inside of us screams ‘I’m done and I don’t want to do this anymore.’

When it comes to impossible tasks, we do not start out being the person who can complete the task. We start out being the person who will be changed by the process of trying to complete the task. And even though this is everything in life, not many are aware of how this is just the way things are.

The Motivation Has To Be Bigger Than The Goal

When I decided to become a writer, it wasn’t any easier for me to read. I had stopped reading for years, and had only come back to it because I had gotten so sick that my body would freeze and refuse to move for hours on end. Chronic fatigue isn’t sleeping all the time. It’s being in a body that refuses to move, bored out of your mind, demanding an escape. All you have left is your imagination to see you through, to remind you what living is, and that impossible task to start a business when I could barely lift my arms didn’t actually feel impossible. It just felt like the only thing to do to get through the moment.

Making this database was the only thing that I could do to be able to be a writer again. I did not write during the time I was making this database, because I couldn’t write. Making this database didn’t actually give me back the part of my brain I needed to be able to be a writer again. But what it did do was keep me focused on my goal — my impossible goal — of being able to write again while my brain was broken. It gave me hope when I saw that I could learn a new skill, a new language. And even when my cognition would drop and I would lose it all, it reminded me that I could get it back again when it came back and the code would work.

It gave me something to measure my achievements, small as they might be, while going through the process of my brain healing. While distancing me enough from my written works that I wouldn’t put my failures on to them. Because that was something that I was seeing as well. I was so focused thinking I couldn’t write, that I was going to ruin what I already created, instead of seeing that my brain was broken. It was easily promising to become a complex, and I knew that was detrimental to being able to go forward as a writer if it was allowed to sink in and take root. I didn’t want something else growing to trap me in this prison of a brain.

Taking the impossible journey was as simple as breathing. It promised something more when there was nothing. Taking on these tasks has to mean everything, otherwise why would anyone take on the impossible?

Preserving You During The Impossible Failures

Self awareness showed me where I was self destructing once again. I had learned by now, could see clearer each failure.

I transferred my end goal of being able to write, into the goal of being able to create a support system to write. The goal was the same, but when failure inevitably would strike, it was about the failure to create the needed support system instead of a failure to write.

Dealing with my vision disorder, and having my insurance provide the worst coating on what was supposed to be vision support screen glasses, was a failure of the support to help me see, not a failure of my vision. It was a failure of capitalism, of a society that thought any sort of glasses wasn’t automatically a vision aid, not on my failing sight.

It might sound so small, these little distinctions. These little transferences of where to place the pain and blame when things don’t go the way we need them to go. But it’s essential on this journey. It maintains mental well-being and self-esteem. In science, no one ever says your vision failed because you can’t see a virus with your bare eye; it’s that you failed to use or obtain the correct tools, and therefore couldn’t see what was there.

It’s a shifting of expectation and pressure that one places on oneself when we try to be accountable for everything we can’t control. It removes the question of if one is good enough, and again brings you to the how does one do something no matter abilities or talents. We’re brought to how to achieve the goal, instead of asking why all these parts of you aren’t good enough to let you reach that goal.

It’s not about owning the limitations, but about owning the solutions.

The Journey is the Goal, Not the Goal

I learned a new language and pattern of thought when my cognition was at its weakest. I held onto motivation when I literally had a failure of motivation as a result of ADHD. I was able to create the support tool I needed when my brain was at its weakest. And if I’m brutally honest, even with this support tool, at that point of my health I don’t know that I would have been able to write. I would have, because the tunnel vision would have allowed it, but without a healthier vantage, I’m not sure I would have been able to get past my perfectionist neurosis. But it would’ve given me hope and sent me looking for the answers that would help. And that is everything about taking on the impossible.

You need hope that it’s not truly impossible.

Our experiences don’t always change us into the person we need to be for the goal we’re chasing after. Sometimes they reveal that we want to be someone else. That the goal isn’t right. And that’s okay. Self-actualization is not an A+ B always = C formula. What we put in might define or shape the results, but that doesn’t mean we understand why our results are so unique and different to what we imagined.

Just like we can’t know the book we’re going to write until it’s written, wanting to be a form, a career, a completed task, an achieved goal doesn’t mean we know who we are going to be on that journey. So we have to be kind and forgiving, instead of trying to be that goal. Because if we are cruel and unaccepting of reality, fighting ourselves, filled with dissatisfaction and hate on the journey, that is the form we’re left in. The goal won’t define us; we define the goal.

So not only can you not doubt that you can do the impossible task, but you have to realize it’s not about the task at all, it’s not about the goal. It’s about you on the journey, because that’s what’s going to fuel and sustain as you do the impossible. It’s going to be why you show up. It’s going to be why you decided to take on the impossible in the first place when you have never done anything like it before. And it’s going to show you that you’re not as smart as you think you are when you look at something that seems impossible.

What we think is impossible is just our limits of imagination and experience. We haven’t become the people yet who know that it’s not impossible. It’s only in taking on the journey of the impossible that we ever get to discover the truth: impossible is just a concept, one we create. Our belief isn’t truth, isn’t fact, but just another limit we place to hold us back from meeting reality.

We’re a collection of scattered atoms with consciousness defining something we haven’t even attempted as impossible. It’s pretty nonsense the longer one even thinks of it. We have no idea what is actually impossible or not.

March 9 2023

Migraines and Possible Vision Solutions

Well, apparently I’ve been overdue for a good migraine. It’s going on day 3 — started the middle of Tuesday after a weird bout of crying, and when it hit it didn’t feel like a headache. It felt like I had gone full right back into an episode of fatigue, brain fog, and loss of motor skills, just hunching over in front of the computer, my brain glitching out unable to do basic shit again. Seriously thought it was a thing — like an ER thing — but nope, guess that’s just the opening act of this current migraine, one that has hit with fun bouts of euphoria, less fun anxiety, and really fascinating skewed visual distortions. The pain has set in this morning, hitting in waves, and gonna be real, it’s fucking boring being sick.

I have been able to get some work done these last days — seriously, what am I really supposed to do with my time, sick or not? Stare blankly at a television screen? *snort* I’ve added some useful bits to my database code that allows me to copy templates and alter, making the multiple sheets in the character form creation a faster process. I’ve made some basic forms that I’m adapting for Demon Bonded at the moment — that’s where I wanted to go when I finished the last PATB book. I wanted to jump into Demon Bonded, get another episode out, and then write another PATB, but my executive functioning just couldn’t support that by the time the mold was cleaned up.

I’m probably going to continue coding as much as I can through the pain — creativity just isn’t sparking from this place. My brain is going through weird distortions, and I don’t want to end up writing a bunch of nonsense on the current work only to need to edit it all later. (If I’m real, I shouldn’t be coding cuz if I fuck that up, it’s so much reading to find the problem. But I can’t just sit here all day being sick. Fuck that. Let’s make a mess.)

I’m noticing something interesting of the last few days. Exciting, even. My vision issues are different with the migraine.

So, I’m not sure if it’s the fluid build up/inflammation changes happening in the head, or something to do with pain receptors not reading when the euphoria hits (leaning toward this one) but my eyes haven’t hurt much at all the last few days, even though I have absolutely been coding. I’m still photosensitive, but not in the same way I’ve been on a daily level. My eyes are still fucked, don’t get me wrong, but this eye condition has always been here since I was a kid. It’s only been recently that it’s been preventing me from doing the things I love.

After my insurance provided me with the most painful, useless support glasses to help me read the screen but instead gave me eye pain for days, I had kinda given up a lot on finding a better perspective on this shit. I hadn’t realized I had adapted down into the daily baseline pain of this condition, and that it might be better with a different intervention. The pain shutting off during the early days of the migraine reminded me that it doesn’t have to be this way. That if I can find a better solution, I might be able to claw back more of my life and functionality.

And maybe that’s just a lie I’m telling myself out of desperation and hope. But fuck, I can live off of lies if it gets me pushing toward a better tomorrow, you know? I think that’s part of the human condition, otherwise we’re just staring at the inevitability of death every day until the end. (what, that never crossed your mind as an activity you can start today? Oh, darling, existential dread is just a thought away.)

So I talked to my PCP about migraine prevention, and we’re going to try something different to the neurophthalmologist’s protocol. They can’t really be mixed because of how aspirin can interact with the new med. And if it doesn’t work, I’ll be seeking out a migraine specialist to see what they can do. What I’m looking at will take weeks to work, if it does work, and given my questionable brain chemistry, it might not be a viable option because of how it impacts the serotonin system. Aka, I might go manic and have to stop, leading to more lost days of work. But if it does work, it won’t just be preventing migraine pain; it’ll be helping with all pain. Like the eye pain and the strain of the muscles as they struggle to not default to their resting, skewed position when in use.

So as shitty as this migraine has been, I’m quite happy to tear out a silver lining and sew it into a couture garb to wear for the next months as I see how this new treatment goes. (Because yes, I’m also watching Netflix’s as I code, and I found a new season of Next in Fashion.)

March 6 2023

Currently Coding

Just wanted to check in and assure peeps that I haven’t fucked off for a bunch of years again. ^^; I’ve been working on my story reference database, finishing the template creator and building character sheet forms. It’s essential for me to have a one stop, visually organized system of reference to be able to continue to write the complex serials like Demon Bonded and The Paranormal Academy for Troubled Boys. The ADHD treatment has helped my executive functioning a lot, but it’s not a cure, only a treatment. It’s my job to create the tools that work for my unique brain (and eyes) to ensure I can return to getting these stories out with any kind of consistency.

Last week was also a week of really bad vision, eye pain, and allergies. Apparently something was growing in my humidifier, and it took a lot of adapting down to the pain until I started problem solving — it’s rather fascinating how much suffering a person will endure until they finally wake up out of it, huh?

Anyways, that’s much better now. I was able to flip my sleep cycle again (only lost 1 day this time around) so that I’m waking up at dawn instead of falling asleep. And yeah, it’s been really nice to measure the clarity of thought my brain can produce lately when coding. Getting the adrenals treated has helped so much. I’m solving these coding issues one after the other instead of the slow, confusing slog it used to be, and I’m already into the final form creation. It may still take a week or two to get it all polished up, but my goal is to try to task switch into finishing up the current Breeding His Nephew scene this week so I don’t completely get out of the habit of writing.

I really struggle with balance. It’s kind of like my brain loads everything it needs for a task like a giant video, and then buffers until it’s all running smoothly. But switching to a new task requires loading completely different info and all that buferring happens again. This is why the database is important — I need to store things outside of this wonky brain of mine so it has less it needs to load up each time. It’s quite practical, but for some reason I really resisted getting to this point…