It’s official, y’all: my trusty 2017 laptop has been pronounced dead. I’ll not delude you; this is a blow to me in many ways. First, I have a tendency to get attached to my things—even the replaceable or worthless things. Second, this laptop was far from worthless. It’s been to as many continents as I have, its hard drive still houses basically all the work I’ve done regarding Adventures in Aryest, and it was my only way to log into Facebook. I was hoping that it would be repairable, which would allow me to recover access to Facebook from within my account, but sadly that doesn’t seem to be feasible anymore. Finally, losing my laptop disturbs my workflow profoundly.
Longtime readers will know that disruptions to my schedule represent some of my greatest challenges, and this is actually one of the hardest things that’s happened to me in a while. It’s extremely lucky that an old friend of mine just gifted me several PC parts in order to resurrect my old gaming tower, as that’s the computer I’m currently using for just about everything. It’s a weird feeling to not have any access to Facebook, as normally I feel I should be doing more with it. It’s liberating, to be honest, even though I know that it’s probably bad that I haven’t gotten back in yet.
I do regret not having access to Facebook Messenger anymore. It was the only way that I was able to communicate with some people, and as I’ve never been good at prompt communication, I fear they won’t realize their messages aren’t reaching me—perhaps at all. I can only hope that maybe this post will reach them, and they’ll know to pursue alternate means of contacting me. I miss you, and I’m not ignoring you, I promise!
Part of why I missed posting last week was because of my revamped work ethic. I’ve refocused on my job search and not phoning in my day job, all of which takes time and energy, so posting here wound up losing to those things. Then, today’s vlogbrothers video brought into sharp relief why it’s so important for me to keep up with these weekly posts. Stability, normalcy. Plus, I have a converter which will allow me to use a keyboard on my phone, so there’s really no excuse not to…
If you follow my endeavors on Twitch, you’ll have heard that I’m finding success planning To Save What’s Lost. My mind has been working on both the outline for the rest of my plot and what the beginning needs in order to feel more…real. I sat down and wrote out what forms of wildlife I want to sprinkle into the parts I’ve already written, and I’m quite happy with the results. Now, we’ll see some moose in the hills as we walk back from town with Kari and Tomas, and he’ll note that it’s odd that the birds are quiet as he’s enjoying the sunset right at the beginning. A population of owls roosts in the Vaç forest just outside the walls of Vacen, and they come into the city at night to eat the rats and mice that live in the city, not to mention any gull or pidgeon young they can snag from sleeping parents.
Adding bird calls and deer paths and other evidence of wildlife will infuse my writing with details that’ll drive the realism up a notch and give my characters new ways to interact with the world which surrounds them. The sad thing is that with my need to focus more on the work that generates meaningful income, I won’t have the opportunity to intersperse these details throughout my writing before I begin recording my audiobook if I want to keep to the timeline I’ve set before myself. Rerecording isn’t the biggest deal, though, and I’m confident that posting the audiobook in any form is better than waiting the amount of time it would take to go back through beforehand.
On that subject, I’ll be posting at least the prologue and first chapter of the To Save What’s Lost audiobook on my YouTube channel, which is currently kind of a mess, before the end of the month. Don’t worry; I’m fully aware of how disorganized my channel currently is.
That’s all I’ve got for you today; I’ll be tinkering with a lot of things gong forward, but sadly I still need to be focused on my less creative endeavors in order to stay afloat. I’m going to break through this wall, though. Just you wait.
Thank you for reading; I hope you enjoyed it! If you did, I humbly ask you to consider tipping me or checking out my social media. Thank you again, and I hope you enjoy the next one!
Umbrella Terms 