Novel month 2021 – Day 6

Today’s word count: 4,166
Total word count: 15,573
Daily average: 2,595
Projected total: 77,865

I never thought I’d be bored on a Saturday in November, but here we are. I really couldn’t find much I wanted to do, so I wrote. And wrote and wrote. I finished Chapter 2 and a good chunk of Chapter 3, and that was on top of my language work (natural and constructed), a few speedruns of Dr. Mario (if I ever recorded them, I’d be 14th fastest in the world), and half a dozen other things. That still left me with hours of nothing. Tome flies when you’re having fun…except when it doesn’t.

Novel month 2021 – Day 5

Today’s word count: 2,561
Total word count: 11,407
Daily average: 2,281
Projected total: 68,442

Okay, this chapter’s going faster than I thought, and I know how to tie it back to the main thread. I’d say that’s a good day’s work. Wouldn’t you agree?

Not sure what I’ll do tomorrow. I have some potential family business planned, but I’ll try for a writing push over the weekend to build up a buffer in case work interferes.

Novel month 2021 – Day 4

Today’s word count: 2,069
Total word count: 8.846
Daily average: 2,211
Projected total: 66,345

Into Chapter 2. I didn’t know what to do, so I basically wrote about 7 pages of rambling and character introductions. (Well, reintroductions, really. That’s how it is when you’re in the 21st entry of a series.) Still not sure where this thread’s going, so I hope I can figure it out tomorrow.

Novel month 2021 – Day 3

Today’s word count: 2,059
Total word count: 6,777
Daily average: 2,259
Projected total: 67,770

Life begins anew, or something like that. One chapter down, 8 more to go, and I have a feeling the next one won’t be so easy. That’s mostly because I have yet to decide what I want to do with it. But we’ll figure it out as we go along. I mean, I have been doing that for a decade now.

Novel month 2021 – Day 2

Today’s word count: 2,341
Total word count: 4,718
Daily average: 2,359
Projected total: 70,770

I’m most of the way through Chapter 1 already. And that’s with a minor bout of sickness that left me fatigued all day. I think the “put your best character first” plan is working. We’ll see in a couple of days, because Chapter 2 is going to be one of my least favorites.

Also, for the record, I hate writing character deaths. Even unnamed ones who die off-screen.

Novel month 2021 – Day 1

Today’s word count: 2,377
Projected total: 71,310

And we’re off on the quest for ten. Chapter 1 of Light to the Depths, and the usual meandering introduction. Basically think of it as the same kind of ramble as my posts here, but it just so happens to have characters and a plot. Well, the beginnings of one. I’m starting with an Alex chapter for this Otherworld story. Why? Because I need wish-fulfillment. It’s all I’ve got left.

Novel Month 2021: Here we go again

Hard to believe that another November is upon us. Seems like just yesterday we were fighting to regain our freedom from the tyrannical lockdowns and mask mandates, and now here we are…fighting to regain our freedom from the tyrannical lockdowns and vaccine mandates. The more things change, right?

The whole point of writing, at least for me, is supposed to be an escape. I don’t know about you, but I desperately need an escape right about now. With the fight for freedom, my continued failure at living up to the standard I set for myself, and now the rigors of an actual job, I want nothing more than to jump into any of my created worlds, because every single one of them is better than this one. Even the one from The Linear Cycle, with its magical zombies, would be more enjoyable.

You know the drill by now, surely. One month, 50,000 words. I can start at midnight on the 1st, and I have to hit the 50K mark before November ends. This will be my 11th attempt at the goal, and I’m hoping to reach it for the 10th straight year. As always, here’s what has come before:

  • 2012: Heirs of Divinity
  • 2013: Out of the Past
  • 2014: Before I Wake
  • 2015: The City and the Hill
  • 2016: Nocturne
  • 2017: The Soulstone Sorcerer
  • 2018: Seasons Change
  • 2019: Winds of Change
  • 2020: On the Stellar Sea

Heirs of Divinity was my first serious attempt at writing a novel, and it shows. In my interminable editing cycle, I’ve reread the whole thing a few times, and I’m struck by how rough it feels. That was definitely before I found my stride and my voice. I had always hoped I could go back and revise the text, because there really is a great story in there, but…I know I won’t live long enough for that.

Out of the Past didn’t even receive its name until almost 4 years after I wrote it. It was the original Otherworld story, and the only one of the first drafts that I kept. In other words, it started an obsession that is now 8 years old. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Before I Wake was a lot shorter, and it became my first published (okay, self-published) novel. I wrote it in the wake of my cousin’s death, which was my first true experience with catharsis. I truly love the story I created; it will forever hold a place in my heart.

The City and the Hill was the first of the “new” Otherworld novels, after I revamped the setting, the characters, and the very premise. Some parts of the old Otherworld #2 remain buried in there, not that anyone else would know where to look. And this is where the series began to click for me. Everything suddenly made sense.

Nocturne. What can I say about this one that I haven’t already? A few hours before I wrote this post last Monday, my brother showed me a picture he received from his online not-quite-girlfriend: her paperback copy of Nocturne. That was a rare ray of sunshine in this dark world. I still contend that this one was my best work as a whole, too. It hit all the right notes.

The Soulstone Sorcerer is, as I have said before, the book that nearly killed me. About 150,000 words, and I very nearly finished the whole thing in November. 2017 was just like that, though. At the time, I didn’t realize just what it was like to be depressed. All I knew was that I was writing, nothing else mattered, and I was perfectly fine with that.

Seasons Change represented a change for me, too. That was the first time I tried Nanowrimo while being in something approximating a relationship, as well as the first time I recorded my progress where other people were actually reading. It was fun. I made a couple of friends, neither of whom I even talk to anymore, but that’s okay. What came out of that November built a lot of the Otherworld story since, so it was worth it.

Winds of Change is almost like a rerun of the year before. This time, I wasn’t just in a long-distance relationship. No, I was in love. That shows very often in the text, because I couldn’t help myself. When I have positive feelings, they creep into my writing whether I want them there or not. I only wish they would come around more often.

On the Stellar Sea, the start of the second half for Orphans of the Stars, and the first time in years that I’d called an audible. I simply could not bring myself to write my original idea, Otherworld #20 (which became Laws of Man, which I finished a couple of weeks ago) in the conditions I had suffered under throughout 2020. The story was too real to be an escape. As this was the first time I’d be attempting Nanowrimo in the depths of true depression—nothing like what I thought back in 2017—I needed something that would take my mind off it all. So I turned to a bunch of kids.

That brings us to this year, 2021. For the fifth time in all, I’ll be doing an Otherworld story: #21, which I’ve titled Light to the Depths. For the first time since 2017, I’ll be writing without a muse, because part of my mental illness is that I have to throw away what little good there is in my life. For the first time ever, I’ll have to juggle a full-time job and the hobby that long filled my days.

In the past decade, I’ve sometimes wondered how many times I could pull this off. Would this be the year that the streak ends? Would enough bad finally outweigh the good and stop me from reaching the finish line? Every year, though, I kept on going, and it’s brought me to this point, where I can, if all goes well, say in a month’s time that I have accomplished one of writing’s great feats 10 times in a row.

Unless something drastic happens for the better in the meantime, 10 might be the limit. I doubt I’ll have the heart for it next year. After that…well, I honestly don’t expect to be around for Nanowrimo 2023. So, if I have to go out, let me go out on top.

The dream dissolves

(Title is a song by Ayreon with one of the best guitar solos I have ever heard. Seriously, check it out.)

As I’ve written before, I often have some very interesting, very vivid dreams, and a few of those have affected me on the deepest level. Yesterday’s was one such.

At the start (at least of the portion I remember), I was sitting in the living room of my grandparents’ old trailer. My brother was in the adjacent kitchen, and I seem to recall that he was looking for something to cook—dreams being dreams, his actions were less important and less distinct than the center of focus.

That focus was my son, a boy just shy of his second birthday. His mother and I were estranged, and she lived in East Ridge, a town about 20 miles away, so I didn’t get to see him often. In fact, this was apparently the first chance in months I’d had to spend more than a few minutes with him.

After a little talking—he had just reached the age where he could start to speak more than a word or two at a time, and he’d recently learned the magic word to get adults to make a lot of mouth noises, “why?”—we went out. I can precisely date the dream’s setting to November 5, 2024, because I was going to vote, I wanted to take him with me, and I spent the ride to the polls (in my truck, another rarity in my dreams) rambling about the rampant, blatant fraud of the last presidential election.

We never got there, because I woke up sometime during a ride that seemed to go nowhere. But the memory stuck with me, and I think I know why: it’s a vision of a future close to what I wanted—the only major exception being the parental separation—one I now realize is out of my reach.

The timing just works. We’re 36 months away from Election Day 2024, Take away 9 months for a typical pregnancy, 21 for the boy’s age, and that leaves about half a year. So it’s theoretically possible that I could have a son at the appropriate age at the appropriate time.

It’s just everything else that’s the problem. I’m getting older, and I’m not even sure I’m physically capable of fathering a child. The only woman I’ve ever loved enough to want to try lives a lot more than 20 miles away; her biological clock is also ticking, assuming the mRNA shots haven’t left it flashing 12:00. The idea that we’d have a fair election in 2024 is laughable on its face. Whether I’d be alive to see it is something I’m starting to think even less likely.

But that’s why we have dreams. Like stories, they’re an escape, a chance to get a glimpse of another world. Where fantasy often shows us worlds that will never be, a dream can instead let us look at a world that could have been, if only things had turned out differently. They are, in some sense, roads not taken. Roads we never knew were there, whose signs we never saw. Paths we wanted to tread, but circumstance forced us to turn away.

Or I’m just searching for meaning where there is none. Wouldn’t be the first time.

Love letter

To all who love me,

I am sorry. I have caused pain. I shared my misery with you, caring little for the effect it had on you. I have, through my actions and inaction, been a burden to you. For that, I offer my sincerest apologies and ask your forgiveness.

Perhaps I don’t deserve that. It may be that the problems I created are too great, my transgressions against you too numerous, to ever be forgiven. The magnitude of my failure is not something I can measure, so I must place all of you in the position to judge as you see fit. In this, I ask nothing more than a fair trial, no matter the ultimate verdict.

In my defense, I will say that, at every faltering step of this journey, I chose what I thought to be the safest path for us all. The path of least resistance, sometimes, but always the path I believed held the least pain for everyone involved. My error, then, was one of measurement. What I thought to be hurtful instead proved a chance to learn, to grow, to experience, and I turned away. I hid from the pain like a child, rather than facing the opportunity like a man. I never claimed to be perfect, and this is one of my greatest imperfections. To err is human, as the saying goes, and I am only human.

You who love me do something that I feel I am no longer capable of doing. Time has worn me down. My thoughts have darkened, my world turned black. I accept this only because I know of no other way to live. All my attempts at changing, at rising from the hole in which I find myself, have ended in failure. If a future exists for me, a path that will lead me to at least a modicum of victory or indeed joy, I cannot find it alone. I need to be pointed in the right direction, spurred into motion, and probably even carried halfway. Otherwise, I would lack the strength and conviction, and this, above all, is my deepest shame.

I had dreams of brighter days, fantastic visions I wished to make real. Though I have caused you great pain, greater still is that which I have caused myself by letting those dreams die. If you still believe they can be resurrected, I beg your help in reviving them.

That, I would say, is my true purpose tonight. I have spoken and asked. Now, I beg and plead, as a humble penitent seeking some measure of absolution. My desire was always to give hope to the world. Yet, in so doing, I have kept none for myself, and I am now in need.

Some love me in the manner of family: as a brother, a son, a nephew, a cousin. For all of you, I am sorry that I have burdened you, that I have neglected to honor you and our family as you deserve.

Others love me as a friend, though never as many as I would have liked. For you, I am sorry that the bonds of friendship have, for too long, bound in only one direction.

One loves me in the romantic sense. For you, words are not enough to convey my apologies, and yet words are all we have. I could write a book whose pages were filled only with “I’m sorry” repeated ad nauseam, but that still would never be enough to cover all the mistakes I have made.

For everyone, I know what I have done. I recognize the negative factor I have become. My first, and thus far only, reaction to that recognition has been to retreat ever further. That is my one defense, my only escape. I realize how much pain it causes. I always have, but I also thought it was a lesser pain, that staying close would be worse for all of us. While one man cannot bear all these burdens, I felt that sharing them would drag us all under rather than give me the strength to overcome them.

I was wrong. I wish I had understood that sooner. Now, I fear it may be too late, so all I can do is reiterate my request. Forgive me, please, for all I have done.

Yours forever,
Michael