If, in fact, that can be made a descriptive. If it can, then I suppose that what I ought to entitle this is “unennuic”, but there’s opacity and then there’s just general obstructionisticism.

Ahem. Beg your pardon; my suffixes got all out of control there.

I was utterly right about what was wrong with my plot. It turns out that, stripped to bare bones, the major plot points seem to come from four different books. All fine books, but different ones with different goals. So. Good. Build a skeleton, then I can flesh it out.

Again.

My first draft of Self Sacrifice had some problems, the most major of which is that it wasn’t a story. It was fragments of several stories, but no amount of retrofitting was going to put them together, as the characters were fundamentally different in Part B than they were in Part A. Sometimes the laws of the world changed. So I backed off, and determined to start fresh, from a storyboard and then a blank-page rewrite.

I have been fighting with organizing my storyboard. The storyboard is SUPPOSED to make things clear, easily modular, contained. All I had was a huge mess of post-it notes on cardboard.

Okay, that mindset usually means I’m trying to solve too many problems at one time. I tried to limit myself to part of the book, then a smaller part. Then I decided to collect the post-its together that were obviously related, make them tidy, and hold to one side those that I wasn’t certain of.

When I was done I discovered, underneath it all, the bare outline of my first draft.

Well, that explains why I couldn’t fix the storyboard.

So. Tonight I will remove all but the very beginning and very ending post-its, and then meticulously add in points that I know must occur to get from the one to the other. Then I will add in the points between the points. Slowly. Carefully. And with no care for things that I have written and therefore “know” have happened in the book.

Good, I guess, to know what I am doing. Still, I am ridden with ennui.

At Radcon, spending half an hour typing out fiction in the coffee shop.

Hardly worth a post, but it’s good to blaze one’s trail against future need, so here it is.

We have met the enemy and they is us.

I don’t need anyone to tell me that there is no difference between the two stories. But I would love it if someone could explain to me how we wouldn’t notice the similarity while we were re-enacting it.

At work, which is fun, I am working at capacity, and daily increase that capacity. I’m designing SQL based reports, custom SQL views and stored procedures — and, I now recognize, my knowledge of SQL when I began this job was similar to the mathematics knowledge of a child who can count to ten. So, daily, I am teaching myself SQL on the fly so that I can understand what already exists and create something new. I’m already a match for people who have been on the job for several years, so clearly things are going well.The novel isn’t, so much. I know what I’m doing, and it’s fun, but I’m tapped out when I’m done with work. Even writing here is a tremendous effort. Apparently creatively exploring, learning, and problem solving uses some of the same resources that writing does, while not being as fulfilling. Having created a innovative solution to a problem gives me a feel of “well, that was fun” while writing something gives me a feeling of “see what I did!”

This is not a problem, mind you. As far as I can tell, I don’t have problems any more, as I used to define problems. Clearly, what is needed is some sort of new balance, where I am putting forth less than maximum effort at work, so that there is effort to be spent outside of work.

Hrm.

I am fond of speaking this pattern of thought, when enumerating directions that can be taken: “There is solution A, solution B, solution C … or something that I have not yet thought of.” There is always something I have not yet thought of.

And I just thought of one of them.

I have been approaching this as if resource and effort were finite, and their rate of replenishment a constant. Instead of finding a balance, I could find a way to expand the resource and effort available to me, or find a way to increase the rate of replenishment.

Or something I haven’t thought of.

Well. Those are two directions I’d not considered. If I can grow stronger physically, more enduring physically, then it makes sense that I could train myself up to be stronger, more enduring, and faster recovering, ah, psychically, as well.

I wonder how one goes about that process. Hmmmmmmmm.

Amber Benson has an important message to share — won’t you help her deliver it?

Here’s the deal. Copy the image, post it –everywhere, and often– and encourage others to do so until the pic gets to both Amber and Melisa. Need to know more?