getting on with it

About a week ago, I ran out of excuses to avoid taking this path through a very dark wood. What started as a nightmare that woke me from a deep sleep over a year ago has finally made it to the page.

Eight pages, for now, a good chunk of it heinous, violent murder from the pov of the antagonist. A lot less will be more, but this is where I have to start--staring horror in the face.

It's a very rough draft with many edits pending. This last run-through kept me fully occupied and away from the idiocracy spewing from all forms of media, and I'm grateful to myself for kicking it into gear. 

Sophie insists that her hips fit right next to mine in the stitching chair. Kinda.

You might be sick of seeing this meme, but it nails the feeling I had when I finished writing this scene. Sublimely indestructible? God like? High as a damn kite?

Update: I just spent about five minutes on Insta and saw this meme six times. I think the reason it's so popular is that we are desperate to feel this way, even if only for the length of a song and dance. 

(In case you haven't seen it, the comedy/drama, "Your Friends & Neighbors" on Apple TV, is worth getting a week's free trial. I'm on the second watch.)

I'm still toying with the idea of this being the cover of the book in progress, only I wish the background were black  

The S and the B just touching is intentional.

And if I don't stop fooling around with AI, my fingers are going to fall off or something else dire.

 

the writer, take 1

 

This is what 13 degrees looks like in Gwinnett County, Georgia. It really was too cold to snow much more than this but whatever got frosted froze and the roads were deadly. 

Perfect weather to lock oneself in and get some work done, you say? This was the cold that gripped my heart when I booted up Scrivener and the file for PT4 was empty. Gone. Vanished. 

Scrivener is complex and the learning curve was too steep for me, so from day one, I learned only the bare essentials which included a nifty thing called COMPILE. 

A backup that delivers a file of everything you've done so far in whatever format you need it in. 

The developers prefer you connect the app to some cloud - I have a dim view of my hard work fizzing around in the ether -  so I compiled after each work session, named the file with the date, and emailed it to myself. Backups galore. It only took a few minutes to calm myself and find the latest iteration. 

But my filing system is a disaster. I have shit and icons spewed all over the desktop each with cryptic little names that are cut off just because icons are tiny. Grr. 

All of this and a lagging, aging laptop conspiring to snuff the creative spark that had my ass in the proper chair for the first time in ages. Meanwhile, my new phone is trying to convince me that I'm on the spectrum, depressed, have ankylosing spondylitis, and need to buy Bitcoin. 

Really guys, I only have a new-found appreciation for rugby players. 

Well, eff all that. I'll wade in.

~Unsolved disappearances, like gossip, will fade into local color. Stains, even blood, wash away with time unless there is one person, one broken heart, to keep the memory of loss alive.~

excerpt from "Slash & Burn" 

PS. I read that since most social media platforms have become infested with despair and cooties,  blogging is making a comeback. I've always felt like I was publishing my own daily paper. Been slingin' it at your porch since 2005. 

Welcome Heather Cameron of True Stitches back to the fold.