Stultus: Blog

Well, writing-wise anyway. Just small baby steps, but any progress is better than none.

I realized that quite a few of my SOL stories have not been cross-posted to Lit - so I decided to start dealing with some of that. Also, this gives me the excuse to do very minor typo updates as I go. After a far too long break from writing, even editing helps me get back into mood!

I just working alphabetically, comparing what's here (my primary home) with what's there. '59 Miles West of Venus' didn't seem to need many typo corrections, but I'm updating that story here as well anyway. Finished Ch's 1-3 yesterday, so hoping to finish the rest of that later today.

I've also realized that somehow, I've lost the partial next chapter of 'I'm Going to Make It All the Way' that I had slowly been tinkering with. Looks like it was overwritten 6+ months ago by accident, so it's not on my last backups. It probably need a big rewrite anyway. My partial chapter for 'Baleful Sky' is fine... but does need a major rewrite.

Baby steps...

I got the chance to look over my writing "To-Do" list for 2018... sadly, it seems nearly double than my 2017 listing :(

Ok... not one of my better/more productive writing years :/

As an update, I lost my job about two years ago mostly due to ongoing medical issues (4 orthopedic surgeries). I decided about six months or so ago that I didn't enjoy life while dosing constantly on pain pills, so I went cold turkey off of all of them. That DID improve my overall quality of life, enough so that I can now do some things around the house other than be a vegetable... but sitting for hours in front of a computer (for writing, etc) does ratchet up my pain levels uncomfortably. Still... but I think I'm just slightly getting better now about living with it.

My wife then got laid off from her long term job earlier this year which didn't improve our finances... and then her health took another hard nose dive. Enough so that for the last six months or so I've had to spend 90% of my time acting as her primary caregiver (instead of her nursing me post-surgical recoveries!)

Being off of my diet due to stress for the last six months hasn't helped my blood sugar levels a bit. THAT changes next week, stress or not.

So... RL has been ~ challenging.

Writing status:

Lacking productive 'sit-down' time, I've mostly added story notes to a dozen or so odd current/later term projects and I've added a few pages to several on-going serial stories (like Baleful), but nothing is currently 'Done'.

Baleful Sky is in an especially tricky partial state, as I wrote about ten pages for it late, late one evening (when I wasn't quite in the optimal frame of mind) and as a result several life-altering character decisions were made. Probably correctly (it was in my outline), but not perhaps with my usual tact or subtly. I need a clear, fresh look when my brain is in a proper, happier place.

So... hoping for a happier/healthier and more productive year in 2019!

I've had very little writing time so far this year... and then things got much worse when my pc's power supply flaked out and surged/scrambled my boot SSD. That was an omen that I couldn't put off doing some long overdue upgrades. I had a bit of Paypal money from my eBay sideline business and that covered most of the upgrades. (Wife and I are both still otherwise unemployed :(

I upgraded from an i5-2500k to a Ryzen 2700X, perfect for multitasking, and did a clean install of Win10.... bang, Black Screen of Death. Repeat about 300 times over the next two weeks :(

BSD causes can be... well, just about anything :/
Google search shows 100's of 'how to fix' pages at dozens of different tech sites - none fixed the problem.

So I spent two full weeks troubleshooting every new component. Memory? Nope. Bad DirectX/MS C++ Redistr? Nope. Bad Win10 system or swap file partitions? Nope. CPU overheating? Added a water-cooled radiator, no change. Bad GPU? Nope... replaced it too with a new graphics card (ouch... F^%$ you crypto-miners!) and the problem only got worse :(

That left only the new case power supply to diagnose... and it was partially to blame. I replaced the PSU cable to the video card with another brand new cable = problem gone!

My Stultus files were all safe on a different drive (and I had two good sets of current backups) so nothing lost there other than time.

My old writing keyboard (Logitech G105) was flaking out too (space bar didn't work half the time) so it has just now been replaced with a Rosewill. It was nearly impossible to find Cherry MX Blue keys, which are about the hardest to hit keys on the market... but essential, if you learned to type old-school on an IBM Selectric and need to key-bash.

Anyway... poor(er) now, but back in business!

I've had them for a month... but didn't have the time to review all of the edits and do the final rewrite. I stayed up late tonight to finish it - and did.

This chapter kind of closes the door to the recent exposition bits concerning previous events and gets the story ready for the next and final phase of this adventure. It's rough, wild and crazy here-on out.

I've had no writing time to work on anything new, so everything in the pipeline is still where it was last month, incomplete. I hope to work on this next week, RL permitting.

I posted up the new Arc Deco chapter yesterday and saw that it had a weird editing artifact embedded in it, but I've just reedited it and fixed it.

In a surprising spurt of late evening creativity, I have also mostly finished the next chapter too, Chapter 11. It needs about two more pages of content and then it will go off to editing. I've also made partial progress on the next Baleful Sky and I"m Going to Make It All the Way chapters. I'll finish those before I give in to the growing urge to work on a new project.