Guess who's managed to claw their way out of the road apple pile! · 12:31pm Jul 25th, 2023
Hey everyone,
I know it's been an exceedingly long time since I've posted a blog update or story chapter update, or even logged in for that matter, and I apologize for the long absence.
Thank you very much for your patience.
Those that have been around a while know that I'm not really good at being the bearer of bad news. And, probably, have figured that that was one of the reasons for my lack of blog posts. And, if you were one of them, congratz. Because that's been a large portion of the reason for my absence.
But, now that I've managed to claw a hole through the giant road apple pile that was dumped on me, I can give a bit of a run down of what's been going on and a bit of what I've been dealing with.
But, because I know not everyone wants to read about all of that depressing nonsense wall of texts, I'll first cover the widely relevant portion: story updates, so those that want to avoid the road apples can go on their way sooner and I won't end up wasting anyone time.
As I've stated many times before, the story is not canceled, stopped, and not on hiatus. Believe it or not, I've been actively working on it as much as I can this entire time, even without posting anything. I've been fine tuning certain parts and fleshing out scenes where and when I can as I work things around in the story as a whole. Using everything from my phone's notepad feature to 3x5 cards that I had write on. But, even though there's been a lot of problems trying to get things out, I'm happy to report now that there should be another chapter, at least another chapter, ready within the next week or two for release. I'm really looking forward to it and it starts covering a portion of the story that many have been anticipating and asking for for quite some time. So stay posted and I hope you enjoy it when it's revealed.
For those road apple adverse, thank you for your support, but now would be the time to stop reading and move on. I won't take offense, it's a huge mess that I don't want to burden anyone with but, some people wish to know the truth. ~Quillsy
Now on to the less fun portion of what's been going on.
The ongoing shockwaves from the break in and all of the issues that spawned from that have STILL been causing ripples even to today. And, unfortunately, have still been playing direct havoc with my work, not to mention my mental state.
One of the biggest problems I've had is getting entirely blown out of my proper headspace. Normally I'm a prolific writer that can sit down at the computer and knock out a novels worth of writing in a single day. But that stopped a while ago and instead I'd be stuck staring at the screen completely unable to do anything. The best way for me to explain this is that the cast and crew of my stories stopping talking to me and the game froze. I'd lose hours staring at the screen, unable to do anything. And, worst of all, it wasn't exactly writers block. Like, I knew what was supposed to happen. I had it planned out in advance. Had notes. Had documents. I have a large story bible that I've been using to keep all of this together and on pace. But for some reason, I just COULDN'T.
Let me put it this way. It's like I was standing in the kitchen. Staring at a pile of ingredients, and with the recipe book open to the correct page, but I just couldn't get anything done. I just couldn't DO what needed to be done. Not even start. Whether it was some sort of depressive episode or some other long stretch of something else going on in my operators headspace, I don't know. All I know is that my normal capabilities went up in smoke. One thing I DO know about the original cause was losing access to one of my groups where I'd be able to sort things out. Sometimes it was story stuff. Sometimes it was personal. Sometimes it was just shooting the shit. But that changed, problems arose, and it became a space I no longer felt comfortable doing any of that. Which, I didn't need it MUCH... but just having the option alone was enough of a morale boost to help me keep going at a steady clip. But, it being removed, entirely threw a wrench in my plans. And, for those that would offer to help fill in the gap, I thank you for that. But it had it's own unique qualities that would be practically impossible to duplicate. But, anyway, since then I've been trying to sort out ways on my own to deal with things and get the muck out of my gears so to speak. So, I'm doing better. Far better. Not GREAT mind you. But, better.
Additionally, and something that SERIOUSLY hurt my very soul, and as some of you already know, I started having serious computer problems. The laptop I'd been using for years was a hand-me-down as it was. But it still worked. And was pretty much all I could afford. And it's served me pretty well. Until it started showing it's age. The laptop started having serious problems with it's keys. They stopped working. Or, at least, stopped working correctly. I'd type and sometimes I would have to slam down on the keyboard key just to get the one letter to work. This was particularly a problem when trying to do things like sign in somewhere because I couldn't always tell WHICH character wasn't typed when I typed it. Just logging into the computer was a nightmare in and of itself. And when it comes to writing in general? Yeah, no, that just wasn't happening. I would write out, even slowly, at least when I could from a head space perspective, but what showed up on screen looked like some sort of unintelligible shorthand like from a court clerk or something with certain characters / letters missing all of the time. It just wasn't working anymore and just massively added to the problem I was having as a whole just getting into the writing head space. It was a sick twisted nightmare playing out in real time. However, a few kind and great individuals pooled together with me and helped me get a newer laptop. It's by no means GQ material, but it's a nice little laptop with easy key manipulation that I'm hoping will last me for quite a while. It's only the second brand new laptop I've ever owned in my entire life, with the last one being bought back in like 2007. So, yeah. It's got that 'new car' smell and snazziness for me. And for those that helped contribute to it, thank you VERY much. I hope to be able to use it to it's fullest and meet if not exceed your expectations.
But, as nice as all of that is, and for the few that did contribute, you were probably wondering why was there still an ongoing delay, since the laptop arrived at the first part of the year and it's now the end of July. Well, here's the answer:
There was far more wrong than I had originally thought. And it's directly affecting the story. How? In short: Shit's missing. I had whole scenes, whole segments, whole flashbacks, and huge areas that were/ are/ have been entirely missing. I checked multiple sources, everything I've been writing on, and various files, computers, email addresses, drives, etc, and things are just GONE. Thankfully, I still have the bulk of the story and the original drafts, and a bunch of the supplementary files. I've also located the complete timeline, so thank the stars for THAT because that'd taken me literally months to sort out in and of itself. But, still, there's things missing. And KNOWING that things were missing has kept me in this cycle of spinning my wheels in the proverbial mud as I've wasted so much time in trying to find that which is gone. Specific character interactions that I very clearly remember, but can't find, and if they're gone, then that means the entire scene that contained them in gone. See the problem? So, eventually, I ended up coming to terms with the loss, and simply started rewriting the parts that were missing, as I remembered them, and stored them away, in multiple places. In fact I've backed up absolutely everything in multiple locations. At least everything I've been able to locate. But, and to make matters worse, When I was still dealing with the old laptop issues, I'd been forced to use other methods to write. And that lead to things being scattered all over the place. Which lead to more headaches. In hindsight, it was a mistake. I just shouldn't have been writing at all during that time and just waited instead until I got the situation solved. Because the problems that came out of trying to track down everything of THAT that went missing along the way, far outpaced the time savings because I lost even MORE time by trying to sort that mess out. But, with all of that mess untangling finally complete, or at least officially come to terms with the loss, I've started to work on the next chapters of the story.
But, another of the drawbacks of getting a new laptop, and trying to transfer everything over, is finding replacements, and getting things set up appropriately. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit, but it's the truth, is I've only, as of about 7am this morning, managed to log back into here at FimFiction. I don't even remember the last time I'd logged in successfully. The last several times I'd tried with the previous laptop were met with such monumental frustration that I would simply give up before I ended up throwing the blasted machine. Not being able to type in passwords etc reliably is a REAL problem. So that's had a large part to play in my absence as well. However, I'm STILL trying to learn to properly use this laptop. Unfortunately the keys, as responsive as they are, aren't quite the same as my old laptop. So I'm still doing a lot of fat-fingering and other issues that result in typos and other nonsense. I also ended up settling for using open office, because it's free, but I've been having ongoing issues with it ever since I installed it on this laptop. I never ran into the problems before, it just doesn't seem to like this laptop. Every time I open it it goes through a 'recovery' process to get the last file I opened. Which is stupid since I always save and close before shutting down the laptop. But, for some reason, on this particular laptop it demands to do it. Which may sound like a small complaint, but when you're trying to 'just get work done' it's a real headache to have time wasted for you on the front end and it really causes hiccups that threaten to derail you before you even get started. especially when there's time when you only have a short time to write at a time and you have to deal with losing time and gaining frustration because of the delay. I don't know about anyone else, but momentum is really a big thing for me and if I'm being hindered at the very start, it's a huge huge problem. Quality of life hindrance. But, I'm learning to deal with it as I've simply gotten so pissed off about all of the detractors that now my spite is taking over and I refuse to be held down anymore. So I'm going to ride the spite train as long as I can.
And that's to say nothing of the other vast personal challenges I've been facing the entire time as well. But I'll leave that for now.
TL;DR of it all... I'm not dead, and neither is the story. And expect a new chapter in the coming weeks.
As always, thanks for your continued support and if you have any questions, concerns, or comments, ask away and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
~~~{Quillsy}~~~
Nice to hear you again dude, glade you are still around and kicking. For the lack of drive I know that all to well, feeling paralyzed at just staring in front of the PC doing nothing, you want to write but just can't because of stress and anxiety that ruins your day, you are missing the jolt to just get starting to write. For the laptop keyboard issue you could just buy a keyboard to attach it to the laptop I have done it in the past and is a quick and cheap solution for yourself. I use Open Office a lot a lot too, and know about the issues with that program myself and yeah if can crash at the weirdest of times. I wish you well dude and I am looking forward to the next instalment of your story.
i know a bit of your story and how life has beat the crap out of you.
wishing you the best.
after doing a full read over your post grin i only skimmed it the first time sorry.
take your old laptop to a friend we both know and see if he can clone the old drive to a external and see if he can find your old things i am betting he can if the drive is not totally dead.
going to guess you have not found your discord info yet?
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Spark, yes, that's an excellent analogy! I just couldn't get the spark to fire up and get going.
As for the keyboard suggestion, I've done that before, on the laptop before the one that recently failed. It gave me extra time to use it, but it was a real drag. I actually tried it with this last one too, but there were a few problems. One of which is only one of the USB sockets were still functioning, and I needed that for the mouse. [I actually have to keep the track pad turned off while writing on laptops or I keep hitting it accidentally midtyping and it just screws everything up] But, even if I didn't need to scroll around or whatever, there was a few distance issues because I couldn't simply rest the keyboard on the laptop, so it had to be back and away from wherever I was typing. But then that made it hard to read and use. Was such a drag, but the new laptop is doing far better for sure!
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Thanks Harts, and, yeah, it's been a long grueling year+, that's for sure.
As for the laptop, I talked with our mutual friend about it just to make sure, and he confirmed that in this particular case that wouldn't help. I really wish it would, but it won't. But, I'm making progress anyway, and finally, so there's that at least.
And as far as Discord, yeah, I just finished recovering it this morning. So, yay, progress!
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yep got your PM on Discord glade to hear things are moving foreword.