On a Life Round-Up

Where does the time go?

Don’t answer that. It’s a rhetorical question.

Life has been busy. There have been writing deadlines, both work-related and personal-related. There has been some personal stuff occupying my time — and driving me half-mental. And there has been working on WordPress code for the new website.

Let’s take these in order, since I’ve not done a “life update” in a while.

Writing

Work has been endless deadlines since summer. Nothing unexpected there, it’s the life I signed up for. I’m wrapping up work on the November catalog in the next few days, and then it’s a pause of a day or two before diving into the December catalog.

Yes, I know. It’s not even Halloween, and I’ve already written about Valentine’s Day stuff.

One thing I’ve noticed recently is that I don’t “recover” from the monthly catalogs the way I used to. I think my brain’s getting a little tired. This happens every eight months or so — I get worn down and I stay in this worn down state for two months or so until I spring back recharged. That’s where I am at the moment, I’ve bottomed out.

That said, I’ve been feeling strangely creative.

At Shore Leave I mentioned to a few people that “The Ginger Kid” was the first piece of fiction I wrote in eighteen months. Since I wrote “The Ginger Kid” I’ve felt the creative juices.

In recent months, I’ve brainstormed ideas, written some plots, and last week I wrote a new short story. In the weeks to come…

  • I have an outline I did some work on in March and April that I want to finish. It was a neat idea, it was something I could toy around with on the train, but I didn’t finish it and I lost interest. However, I would like to finish it because it might prove useful.
  • The Merlin outline. This week I printed it out so I can tear it apart and put it back together as something not-Merlin. And that’s my NaNoWriMo plan.
  • Work on the podcast scripts.
  • Brainstorm ideas for a fantasy concept that’s nagging at me.
  • Oh, and there are two non-fiction articles to write in the next six weeks.

That sounds like a lot. I don’t think it is. I think it’s eminently doable. 🙂

Personal Stuff

Well, personal stuff is personal.

Suffice it to say, I’m feeling situationally depressed by certain things happening. At times I feel alone and bereft of friendship, but that’s not the reason for feeling situationally depressed. Rather, it’s a series of known unknowns and unknown unknowns.

It will pass.

WordPress

Yes, I’ve been talking about this site redesign forever.

The end, however, is truly in sight.

I’ve written out three pages of notes that explain what still needs to be done. That sounds like a lot, but notes are largely instructions to myself about how to accomplish what I want to do in seven areas. This is something that I think I can finish with a solid weekend’s coding. There’s a custom taxonomy to implement (and I’m not sure that what I want to do is possible), some page templates to test, and one persnickety bug to squash.

That’s the round-up on things.

Before we go, let’s listen to Mr. Rogers talk about how important PBS funding is:

Published by Allyn

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over ten years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

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