Snow Days turn to Slow Days · 3:55pm Apr 4th, 2014
Good news everyone! I'm still alive, so last month's tl;dr was unnecessary and I'm totally okay with that. Scout's motto is "be prepared," so no regrets.
Let's get right to the good part. At the bottom of today's post I'm starting a trend where I include a checklist of everything I have left to do for Tartarus Infernum. I will continue to do so with each post after this one, so we can watch the amount of work shrink until it is finished. It will take time, but it will happen.
I don't have much to report but I owe it to anyone interested to keep them up to date. Regardless of how much I accomplish, I'm going to keep posting on at least a monthly basis to remind friends, followers, and myself that I will never give up on writing so long as I have a functioning upper body.
On the bright side, springtime weather is coming to my quiet little Northern Virginia suburb and I've been enjoying it! Through the window! From my recliner! In the basement! While I struggle to sit in a position that isn't too painful!
All things considered, the fresh air is a welcome upgrade. Snow or shine, I've been doing little this past month that doesn't involve sitting around trying to ignore the pain. The surgery itself wasn't actually painful for more than a week — it's the narcotic-free cycle of self-maintenance between surgeries that causes mental and physical agony. To be short, sweet, and kind of discreet, I currently have a loop ileostomy with an adhesive bag attached to the bottom of my stomach. The bag hurts my skin and prevents it from healing but I can't remove it.
To be less discreet and excruciatingly specific, the pain results from a pair of vicious catch 22's; one, my stoma is navel-shaped, so every time I stand up the bag will crease and pull away from my skin, causing painful adhesive trauma; two, the the bag quickly fills with acidic liquid stool, which can cause damage to exposed skin, and if it touches damaged skin, it burns. A lot. Each situation causes pain, but more often than not, they combine; acidic stool gets stuck in the bag's creases, causing a constant burning sensation while sitting and a painful sting every time I stand up. I've devoted a lot of time and effort to minimizing the pain, but even with professional assistance, the problem keeps coming back. As one may suspect, being in such constant pain makes it difficult to accomplish anything. Sitting at my workstation hurts a lot more than my recliner; hell, even my bed hurts more than my recliner, and I can't do anything productive from there except watch TV and sleep. I have a laptop, but with a huge portion of my stomach off-limits, my it's effectively out of the question.
I'm such an American, am I not? Jobless, sedentary, and stuck to the chair, haha. Speaking of TV, I've watched Attack on Titan at least six times now. It's amazing. I love it.
In other news, I've had another harsh lesson in "effort does not equal popularity." Over on my YouTube channel, a song extension I created solely for Tartarus Infernum passed a million views this month. Seriously. A 15-minute video that took me 10 minutes to make has literally 1,200 times more attention than a 167,703-word novel that took me the better part of a year to write. Granted there's many unaddressed factors and it's in dire need of improvement, but still, twelve hundred times? This world, man, I swear.
But let's talk about what we're all here for — epic stories of horse.
Spitting in the face of pain I have pushed my way through chapter 12 and finished touching it up. Chapter 20 has seen some progress in its rewrite, and I've started work on the new chapter banners. Let's get to that checklist I mentioned, see it below!
Tartarus Infernum
209,338 words
23 chaptersEssential Objectives
9 chapters to touch up
3 chapters to rewrite and then touch up
2 chapter banners to create from scratch
4 chapter banners to update after chapter splitting (easy)
10 background music tracks to refine and upload (easy)Secondary Objectives
Finish world map for Appendix I
Finish notes on magic for Appendix IIPost-Release Objectives
8 character introduction illustrations
14 illustrations for high-impact scenes
Essential objectives are things that I must complete before release. Secondary objectives are things I would ideally complete before release, but I will disregard them if the essentials take too long. Post-release objectives are backburner projects that will be gradually added in the future.
Magnum Opus Dissonance, you has it.
Of course, it's even worse than usual, since the popular thing isn't even a story.
Still, part of the secret to eventually getting noticed is persistence, and you've proven you've got that in spades. A lot of people would have given up by now.