I chose to pivot projects this month. Cut Throat has been telling me from the start that I am not ready for it. And that’s if I weren’t already working on my first round of revisions with Project B. Energy has been in short supply this month, but I am hopeful that next month will be a bit better. Even so, I have accomplished quite a bit, and there is much to be proud of.
Progress
I am tabling Cut Throat for now, but likely not forever. I still love the story, but I don’t have the time to give it the effort it deserves. Perhaps I will have to wait until I write full-time to get it where it needs to go. After discussing with my writing group, it is clear I need to improve my skills before attempting it again. Character has always been my weakest link, and I picked Cut Throat specifically because it is heavy on character, as I like to improve my weak points, however, I think I need a little more time to do my ideas justice.
Rather than continue to try and slog through a sub-par version of Cut Throat, I spent most of the month working on notes and starting my revision of Project B. The first round of revisions is always the hardest. It’s messy and painful, and I procrastinate a lot. Even though I love this story and know where it needs to go, I still struggle. This is usually the largest sticking point in creating a manuscript, and I am at one of the most difficult parts of this revision.
I know I am making the story better, but it takes a lot out of me. I don’t often talk about the fact that I have a day job and work forty hours a week on top of all the writing I do, but it is a huge factor in how much I get done. My job has been significantly more draining this month, which contributes to me, once again, flirting with burnout. I am trying to be considerate of this fact and kind to myself when I fall short, but that has never been one of my strong suits.
What I’m learning
I have a tendency to take my biggest flaws and weaknesses and turn them into my biggest strengths. Anyone who knows me knows I love books and love reading. What they may not know is that I struggled really hard to learn how to read and encode words into my brain. Even now, I am only slightly above average in terms of my reading speed, and that is only because I’ve spent so much time reading. It wasn’t until adulthood when I did more research on what my “encoding and decoding processing disorder” might have been that I realized it was dyslexia.
I didn’t know that the reason why, when we read aloud in class, I jumped ahead and counted the paragraphs to find mine to practice was a part of my dyslexia. I didn’t know that that was why I struggled pronouncing words I had only read. I didn’t realize that was why my spelling was horrible. I also didn’t know that my ability to manipulate images and spaces in my head is tied to dyslexia. I think in pictures and abstractions, not words. Formulating my thoughts into speech takes extra processing effort. It does help to write things out first, as writing feels a bit more internal. I know this is odd for a writer not to think primarily in words. I have many challenges to writing and telling stories, and yet it is what I do over and over again.
Now, I could go into a post about diagnosis and when you get your diagnosis, but I’ll save that for another blog because it is so nuanced. What I do know is that nothing in the world could have kept me from stories. Because I am so visual, I experience books as movies directed and produced by my brain using the script someone else wrote. Occasionally, when I’m writing, I no longer see the words on the page, and I am simply walking down the street with my characters and describing things as I go. Sure, my grammar may suck and I spell words incorrectly but word processors have come a long way and I can fix a lot of it with programs or my Alpha and Beta readers point out those sorts of things. There are many red underlines in the text above as I’m writing, and hopefully, I will fix most of them before posting, but I’m sure I’ve missed a few.
Even still, I am learning that I like a challenge, and nothing will stop me or stand in my way. I’m extraordinarily stubborn and, at times, singular in my focus, and often, there is strength hidden within weakness.
Leisure
I am still working my way through The Spellshop, which I am enjoying a lot. It’s adorable and cozy, which is a welcome relief to my chaotic life. However, I find that it is far too easy for my mind to wander when reading because I’ve slowed down enough to give my thoughts space. This is both good and bad. It is good in that it gives me a reprieve and bad because I often don’t read as much, because reading is a perfect primer for writing. It fills up my creative well, which I immediately want to empty onto my own pages.
I finished watching Reacher and Severance this month, and I have to say, the last episode of Severance did not do what I needed it to in order to lift the series from its meandering ways. I am beyond disappointed as I loved season one, and in some ways, I’m still interested in the world, but there was no real reveal in the finale, and the writing was shockingly poor. I will likely still watch season three, but they have less goodwill going into it, and I may have to DNF if they don’t give me something to hold onto. Reacher, on the other hand, was great. Though you can hardly go wrong with a buff, one-liner-giving, justice-dealing, giant protagonist and a ton of action. However, the romance in this season didn’t work for me. They had no chemistry, and although the point was that they both weren’t looking for a relationship, they should have had some sort of chemistry.
I am on the last season of Jack Ryan, and like I often do after binge-watching most of a series I really like, I’ve stalled out in the last season because I don’t want to finish it and not have anything new to look forward to. And last but not least, I’m continuing to watch Survivor and vote each week for our Survivor fantasy league. Last week’s episode was a lot for me, as I imagine it was for many people.
It is fitting that this will be the first year I am watching Survivor through the whole season, as there is an Autistic player this year, Eva Erikson. Though she is not on my fantasy team, I find myself rooting for her. I would never consider going on Survivor. A game where social skills are necessary and backstabbing is the norm is not a place for me. That’s not even mentioning the fact that you are hungry, tired, sandy, and away from all creature comforts. It sounds extraordinarily overstimulating and awful in every way. I imagine if it were me on Survivor, I’d spend most of my time underwater trying to drown out the sensory noise. I’m sure I’d be voted off at the first given opportunity.
In the latest episode, we saw Eva struggling to finish a challenge and, once completed, went into an autistic episode. It was emotional for everyone, but it hit me a little harder than I imagine it did for most. I’ve been where she was (maybe not in those exact circumstances but in that overwhelming state where your brain loops, and you no longer have control of your body or surroundings), and it is terrifying. To go on television and allow your episode to be out in the public eye is something that takes a lot of strength, and I wasn’t sure how it was going to go when the inevitable happened. Fortunately, everyone was kind about it and Jeff Probst even let Joe Hunter go to her and help her out of it, but I wonder what people were really thinking. They all had to appear good for the cameras, but there is also something to be said about the way people can hate you when they don’t know you’re autistic and just think you’re strange, but rally around you when you tell them or learn it for yourself for the first time. I always wonder how deep that expression of acceptance goes; after all, you are the same person with the same traits before and after you tell them. As for Eva, I wonder whether she will get blindsided or brought to the end because people believe she will be easy to get out. This is the game of Survivor, but for this season at least, I think there’s a bit more at stake.
Looking Forward
Back to my normal update: Project B is my top priority. I need to get it done and out to Beta readers, as I told them they would have it by March or April, and March has come and gone (truth be told, I didn’t even start the revision until mid-March). I’m hoping it will only take me another week or two, but I do think that is wishful thinking. I am hopeful that once I get through the tough expansion section directly before me, I can blaze through quite a few chapters that won’t change on a deeper level. I have to remember that much of this book is good, and though I may have to move things around, cut, and add a little here and there, it is a much simpler revision than most of my other pieces have been.
I also plan to start working on Surrealist once I’m finished with Project B. This is a strange project that I started brainstorming and outlining this month when I decided to stop working on Cut Throat. It will likely be a good stepping stone to get to Cut Throat and be able to write that the way I want and it deserves. I’m hoping I can draft Surrealist in 4-8 weeks. 6 feels doable, but life can push any well-made plans back. This is an odd project that I pretty much need to write a whole first draft of before submitting to my writing group because of the structure, which pushed the timeline a little later than I’d like, but I still want to start querying it by the beginning of August. We will see if I can make that happen.
Until next time.
Naomi
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