Looking for editors · 5:27pm Jul 19th, 2018
Hey there everyone, I’m looking for at least one, preferably more, editors. I’ve been running my current editor ragged and need extra help on some stories; I figured I’d just post the request here in my blog before trying one of the editor groups, just because I’m an introvert and hate branching out.
So, I use gdocs, most, if not all, of the editing would be done there. I take criticism well, I think. While I do love my ideas, I am up for reworking things if they don’t make sense or if they’re just better a different way. Anyone who’s seen my writeoff entries probably knows how raw some of my unfinished work can be, which is why I usually spend a lot of time and get input from others before publishing something here.
The main project I need help on right now is that I'm trying to finish the story I Love the Smell of Friendship in the Morning. The only thing left for completion is the epilogue, but it’s running at over 9k words, close to twice as long as the next longest chapter. (I got carried away.) It needs a serious look through to make sure I haven’t just come out of the blue with certain things and, of course, a structure/grammar check. Knowledge of the rest of the story is necessary for help on the plot points, but not necessary for grammar/sentence/paragraph structure.
The next project I need help on is my upcoming story: Neighgency Business. It’s set to the tone of Call of Cthulhu modern, with some elements of Cthulhu-tech thrown in. The investigators have sent themselves to another dimension (Equestria, much to their chagrin) to rescue one of their fellow investigators who got sucked through a portal. Once they’re in Equestria, they’re not human anymore, so we don’t have to worry about them doing “human stuff” over there. The plot is in progress, due to it being tied to my gaming group actually having to work their way through the plot.
Then there are other projects. I’ve ordered them depending on my interest in completing them:
Sharktavia 5000, Eye of the Tiger (Shark): Octavia is a were-shark... there’s a group devoted to this. This is next on my list after the big two stories.
No Stomach for Diplomacy: Another writeoff story that I want to expand.
Buyer Beware: Writeoff fic I’ve been meaning to expand.
For the Cause: Not top priority, it was going to be a three parter about how RD received each of her injuries in Crystal War future timeline.
And various other projects.
So, if you are interested, pop me a PM orreply to the post. Any and all help is appreciated.
Argh, I'm sorry I keep dropping off the face of the earth here. My anxiety has been harder to control lately but I've been making progress, especially the last couple days. Then kids and work have been soaking up most of my free time by keeping me up for hours at night that they hadn't been before.
Oddly enough, the Writeoff site just slides past my anxiety issues with nary a hitch.
Anyway, I generally love what you're doing with the Smell finale; keep it up and ride the story where it takes you. And it's not you running me ragged, it's 100% me pushing myself too hard a couple months back with work and family and writing all each trying to run at 100%.
In doing so, I've found the metaphorical bottom of myself. Now I'm trying to dig back up and out!
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Well, regardless of fault, I don’t want to be pushing you faster than you’re able, that’ll burn you out, and I’m not going to be responsible for driving you into a nervous breakdown; I’m only responsible for driving myself into one.
As for the writeoff, big sigh. I have a huge drawing and I don’t know if I can finish it before the deadline.
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I always associated strong negative connotations with burnout: "Oh I don't care anymore, that thing sucks, I'm so burned out with it." But recently I learned that burnout can strike even when you're fully engaged, love what you're doing, believe in it, et cetera. Like I can say, "I'm burned out with X" while still wanting to do X, think X is still great, and even get a lot out of doing X.
That's to say, I can't really get burnout at this point; I got burnout a couple months ago.
What I'm trying to do now is unpack why it happened, what's still good that I want to get back to doing, and what I need to change or stop doing. As a quick tl;dr, I think my big takeaway is: don't spend a couple months trying to move while having kids and finishing a novel and doing a bunch of on-call work with your job and not sleeping. Of course it seems so obvious in hindsight! 
But I basically abandoned taking care of myself for the sake of getting everything else done at the time.
And that was the mistake. Some of it could've waited--indeed should've waited. Because you gotta take care of yourself, at least to some extent. The cost of not doing so isn't even the impacts to yourself, though those are real; it's the way it hurts and impacts others, like has happened over the last couple months as I've been on a tour through freakout-land.
While I kind of hate dumping this here, I hope it'll go a bit towards a better explanation and perhaps apology for being so inconsistent. And it's getting me present back on FimFiction, which has been weirdly hard to click the link to for whatever reason. (Again, contrast with the Writeoff, which hasn't? Go figure...)
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Yeah, I learned about a lot of things related to burnout while in recovery. I forget some people think that it means that you’re sick and tired of something, and while it can mean that, it can also mean something to the effect of “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is spongy and bruised.”
I like to list burnout into five categories:
Physical: this is indicated by wanting to continue, but due to injury from overwork, which includes lack of sleep or sustenance, you are physically incapable of continuing with something.
Mental: Similar to physical, this is when you have overworked your brain and either become hopelessly writer's-blocked, or just can’t think.
Social: this is when you just can’t deal with people anymore. Just needing to get away to somewhere away from others for some alone time is something everyone needs. True burnout is where you start full time withdrawing and freaking out at ppl to leave you alone. Social burnout is weird, because you have to look at all of your social groups as a whole, some may remain the same, some may vanish completely.
Emotional: this is from letting your work get to you emotionally. Being emotionally invested in work is good, but can be draining. Emotional burnout is not being able to feel about or get passionate about something, and is a big part of depression.
Spiritual: woe to the person with spiritual burnout. It is the other big part of depression. It is when someone loses their sense of meaning and purpose. That one is nothing but bad. There’s not knowing purpose, where someone not burned out wants to know their purpose; someone burned out knows that they don’t have one and doesn’t care enough to know anymore.
So it sounds like you burned out physically and mentally, maybe a little socially.
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WOW. That's a f'n deep breakdown. Maybe a little scary, too. But thank you for putting it out there.
EDIT: I just keep sitting here going, "No, that's it, that's definitely it." THANK YOU for writing that!
EDIT2: I think mine's sort of an all of the above.
But all for different reasons, with different causes and things to work on, etc. Just seeing it broken down and explained like that is huge.
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All five aspects affect one another too: being mentally burnt-out can make you not want to be near people, being emotionally burnt-out can affect your physical energy, etc. Being burnt out spiritually is probably the one that has the most catastrophic effect on the others: if you fail to find meaning in anything, including the search for meaning, then why do anything?
Been there, done that, it sucks. There’s no other way to put it.
I just want to make sure that I've clarified: not knowing your purpose is nothing close to the same as spiritual burnout. Ugh, so hard to explain... I’ll use examples:
If a spiritually healthy person runs into a crisis of purpose, they will ask “why am I here?” Because they care, they want to know.
A spiritually burnt out person feels a constant, profound sense of worthlessness and purposelessness. They won’t even ask what their purpose is; they’ve suffered from the loss of spirituality and reached the final stage of grief.(acceptance, although a more appropriate term might be acknowledgement)
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I think it's clear, man. Thank you for explaining.