2024-W19 EOW Report

Highlights This Week

• Most important fiction-related highlight this week was hitting a wall on MINOS because I still can’t suss out the character motivations and arc for the POV. I feel like the MECH/CDA integration is really good now, but as I’ve discovered over and over again… a premise isn’t a story. And I really need to get good at, if not just at least competent at, mapping a plot structure so it’s not just a TTRPG world-building splatbook. So the THB exercises I did back on March 16, 2024… I expanded into more THBs, numbering 38 in a clothbound, probably smythsewn, Muji notebook, which I than needlessly transferred to my reMarkable, and then dumped them all on to github here. Here’s my working theory (that’s been partially proven already with prj: SAVED): I use these THBs to map out my own stories by doing what MRK recommends (shaving off the serial numbers, changing genre, and inventing a new MECH)… and/or, I come up with my fun, imaginative MECHs and find the best THB/plot-structure to map on to it. The latter, of course, is way harder as I would have to find a THB PROG that makes sense and may require tweaking and adjusting. But technically, this should work. I talked more about this on the second episode of GFP, (which you can listen to on Patreon, Spotify, or YouTube).
• Related to the first point, I’m thinking maybe there could be a THB index braided into my website here as a resource for myself to find THBs when I need them. Or this is yet another projects to distract me from actual writing, and crafting of stories. Or it’s a super useful resource and tool. And maybe the process and muck of doing it helps with laying down foundation. Or this is all justification. It’s great when you’re intelligent and can logic your way out of anything. Just great.
• Oh, also started a wiki on the 16th Century for my private use… for a potential novel series. It’s using wiki.js and hosted on my brother’s server. I think the energy I pour into this Hugo/GitHub blog can be transferred to my research process as well. It’s like building a talisman for yourself, just imbuing it with magickal energy or something.

Project Status Dashboard

The following are ongoing fiction writing projects broken down to what stage they’re in. Legend in footnote¹.

Updating the above table to be more Scrum Agile. Seeing a bunch of projects that don’t move was irritating me. So everything that’s not being actively worked on will sit in BACKLOG now. Anything that’s top-of-mind and prioritized will be in the three slots above. This week was brainstorming more world, characters, and plot on prj: MINOS. I’m kinda frustrated with it because I’m hitting a wall with a lack of a plot structure. Hence why on Saturday, I ended up focusing on Thumbnail Sketches. Which, unfortunately, effectively killed my streak.

EOW Time Tracking

In this section, I track daily actions (axn) and emotions (emo), aiming for just 30 minutes of fiction work a day. If time permits, more is done. AXN emoji legend in footnote².

STREAK COUNT: 0 Days

BEST STREAK: 18 Days

Four Thousand Weeks

I don’t think it was just me hitting a wall in prj: MINOS that shut me down this weekend, it was hitting a wall on several areas of my life. I haven’t had time to slow down and think since 3/13. I mean I had time to decompress, but not truly reflect and think. If I had to recount what happened again… 3/13 let go, 3/14 shut down Osmosis, 3/21 first talk with consultant to current job, 3/23 convo with former hire now at current job, 3/25-3/29 week of insane hustle with consultant wanting a quick call on 3/28 which required a ton of moving calls around, 4/1 third call with said consultant who’s vouching for me at the current job, literally creating a new position there, 4/5 land the job, 4/9-5/10 getting pummeled with a lot of Zoom calls: onboarding, training, strategy calls, meet and greets, joining some weekly calls, co-working sessions. Building up the stamina during these past thirty days… buttondown shirts, brewing coffee, daily cigarette, no longer taking lunch breaks, much less leisurely ones where I watch a show, waking up at four or five so I can fit in my thirty minutes, while also getting up early on weekends to deliver work on my one and only other client, more coffee, sleeping at nine or ten latest. This has been my routine for almost two months now.

On one level, I’m engaged, in the spirit of chasing and doing good work. I’m at 110% capacity and alive, unlike the last few years where I was at 60, maybe 70% capacity… taking everything easy, while managing around the toxic client or the go-nowhere one, while attempting to launch something that went nowhere, just floundering and unsure, and distracting myself to numb the pain. The short of it is – I’d rather be the former and present, than the latter and past. And listen – doing improv, sketch writing, and standup 2021-2023 was a good distraction. But jumping back into boardgames so hard in 2020-2022 was not, especially with the absurd thought I had time for complicated hex-and-counter wargames of all things. And of course, the TTRPG run from 2021-2023, becoming a “superbacker” on Kickstarter. You know you have a problem when Kickstarter bestows a title on you.

But last night, when my eldest decided to catch the solar flare powered Nothern lights at 2200, and wasn’t clear on when he’d be done, and I stayed up until 0100 (at which point my wife offered to pick him up instead)… that messed with my strict regimen over the last 60 days. And I was also a little sick yesterday. Point is – I haven’t reflected and I finally hit a wall and now I’m reflecting on Sunday afternoon.

Book Reading

• Finished 1776 (2005), played the last 25% at 2.5X. I should’ve done that by the 40% mark when I realized how slow McCullough read and how slow he wrote the book. Did I learn? Yes. Were there interesting facts, trivia, and anecdotes? Yes. Did it feel dragged out because recounting just the first year of the war might not have been sufficient incidents to fill out a 400ish page book? Probably. But I let it play out at 1X because, I dunno, respect and reverence? Parapatriotism as a closeted-American? I dunno. Can someone recommend a more interesting and eventful one volume on the American Revolutionary War?
• Still at Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Never Let Me Go (2005). Hit 30% on the former, 50% on the latter. Knocked off another 2% on T.H. White’s The Once and Future King (1958) on the Kindle even though it’s so slow, too twee, and tongue-in-cheek for me and I’m not in the mood for it. Started the Great Courses How the Crusades Changed History (2013) on Libby right after 1776 (2005) ended. Probably have too many things going on and I shouldn’t.
• With that said – despite not recording any book reviews for Garage Fiction Podcast yet (we have two novella focused ones in the queue), Olivia suggests we start reading a novel as well. Because we just read Ring Shout, she suggested A Master of Djinn (2021). So I guess I’ll start another novel?

Archive of all EOW reports here

P.S. Just in case you missed the blatant advertising for the Garage Fiction Podcast, the podcast is up on Patreon, Spotify,and YouTube.