The Eldritch Tomb of Unknowable Caffeine

hillaryjacques said:

I haven't written for months. After many years of writing almost daily, and generally enjoying it, this is...unfortunate feeling.

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There's this Dutch children's game where you gotta "pay toll" to cross into a certain area. Your toll is words. You know what your desired area is.

You need something to write about? Let's hash that ish out, sister.

LadyV said:

I'm at this point, perhaps beyond it. The ideas still flow, which is good, but actually plopping myself down in front of the computer and typing out the words won't happen. Just thinking about it makes me go

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Oh my! I'm not afeared of it like that little yellow guy. I'm thinking that a couple of changes on the home front at the pace of the job front may be significant contributors.

tianaluthien said:

My theory is that sometimes I'm in too deep so I need someone who isn't overthinking things to help me out.

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Chatty writing partners are teh best!

Filigree said:

June 2009, I woke up from an H1N1 fever-dream knowing exactly how to finish a scene on a book stalled ten years previous. And then I didn't stop.

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I have noticed your unrelentingness of late.

10trackers said:

There's this Dutch children's game where you gotta "pay toll" to cross into a certain area. Your toll is words. You know what your desired area is.

You need something to write about? Let's hash that ish out, sister.

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Is that children's game "life"? Because it sounds awfully familiar.

Oh, it's not for lack of ideas. Believe me.

I had a 5 year hiatus. That was mostly because of kids, stress of moving out of a bad relationship and other things.

Then there were some long stints of not writing for months.

It's more steady now. and I'm glad

Filigree said:

In my case I was deep in an art career, and playing a little on the side with fan fiction. For ten years, no original fiction, not even a sustained longing to attack all my old WIPS. Didn't miss it. Even told my first agent I was probably out of the game.

June 2009, I woke up from an H1N1 fever-dream knowing exactly how to finish a scene on a book stalled ten years previous. And then I didn't stop.

I find very dark chocolate works wonders.

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I tried to keep writing after my third child was born, but there just were not enough hours in the day -- or energy in my body -- to be a full time writer and a mother, too. So I stopped when Third Child was about six months old, and left off until about 2004, which is ten years almost exactly.

I got started back because of the SCA. We had a woman in our shire whom I adored, and whom we all loved teasing (not hurtful; if we failed to tease her at least a little, she would complain that we were ignoring her! LOL). One day I wrote a WANTED poster about her, and tacked it up where everybody could see it; the wanted poster had a list of silly "crimes" she had committed, a bunch of Viking jokes, and lots of alliteration. Everybody loved it so much (the woman? She demanded copies!).

It felt so good to have that kind of affirmation for such a little thing, I ended up writing a short story about the lady and her best friend. Ended up reading it out loud at feast, and brought the house down; the king even kissed me and said he hadn't laughed so hard in years.

From there, it kind of snowballed. Everybody wanted a story. I ended up writing a whole cycle of stories about the various members of our local SCA community. Culminated when the Aethelmearc King read out one of my stories at a party to commemorate the elevation of one of our group (naturally the story was about that person being elevated).

After that, I was off and running. There are times (like every time I sit down to write) that I wish I'd kept writing through that ten year time; maybe I'd be more successful now. But I can't take that time back and I don't really want to, not truly. There was not enough me to go around to both writing and my enormous family, and I had to choose. I didn't make the wrong choice, not for me; your mileage may vary.

Whatever works for you. The key is to be open to new and inspirational opportunities, I've found.

hillaryjacques said:

Oh my! I'm not afeared of it like that little yellow guy. I'm thinking that a couple of changes on the home front at the pace of the job front may be significant contributors.

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Well, maybe "scared" is a bit of an exaggeration, but the idea of writing makes me anxious. I don't want to sit in front of the computer for hours staring at a blank screen, trying to will words that don't come.

Also, my crazy work hours don't help. After starting at 4am and running around a store for 8 hours, I'm beat. I would likely fall asleep while at the computer. It's happened before.

I've now been at work for 24 hours straight. My smibble is broken, can someone toss me a fresh one please?

*throws several smibbles, hoping that at least one will hit the mark*

Good morning Cantina.

aliwood said:

I don't want to adult today either. In fact, I don't even want to write.

It's that bad.

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Etola said:

Same here. After two weeks of unusually high workload at work AND trying to stay on top of my writing, I took a three-day weekend to attend a con. It was a vacation, but it was a high-energy vacation and I am still worn to nubs. I keep staring at my computer, almost resolutely NOT doing work. May spend my lunch break playing on my Nintendo DS because just I can't brain today.

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CAMueller said:

I would also like to not adult today.

Let's all pile into Junely's pillow fort.

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Shadowflame said:

My weekend was slagged by unexpected running around.

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PeteMC said:

I'll do that if I may. Today is officially Not Going Well.

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to everyone.

Hope you all have a better day today, and that the karma balance of Junely's pillow fort went through the roof yesterday.

hillaryjacques said:

I haven't written for months. After many years of writing almost daily, and generally enjoying it, this is...unfortunate feeling.

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Filigree said:

I took a writing vacation for nearly ten years, once.

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Shadowflame said:

I had a 5 year hiatus. That was mostly because of kids, stress of moving out of a bad relationship and other things.

Then there were some long stints of not writing for months.

It's more steady now. and I'm glad

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jallenecs said:

I tried to keep writing after my third child was born, but there just were not enough hours in the day -- or energy in my body -- to be a full time writer and a mother, too. So I stopped when Third Child was about six months old, and left off until about 2004, which is ten years almost exactly.

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I don't think I've ever stopped writing altogether, but there certainly have been fallow periods. They were caused by life issues, such as dayjob stresses, money worries, sleep apnoea (undiagnosed until 2009) affecting energy levels and what I suspect was low-level depression, and also taking on too many reviewing commitments (so cutting down time for fiction), writing two novels in the last decade (one trunked, one not sold) and procrastinating rather too much. You can see it in my short fiction output, which is the only fiction I've had published - there's a two-and-a-half-year gap between one published story and the next, and a four year gap from 2010 to last year, partly due to only writing one short in 2009 (which didn't sell until 2013, coming out in 2014) and none at all in 2010 and 2011. I do remember long periods of feeling blank and having no ideas that were anywhere near being ready to write. That can be a vicious circle: stress about being unproductive causing you to be even more unproductive. As Shadowflame says, it's more steady now: six shorts written in 2013, one (a long novella) in 2014, two so far and aiming for a total of six in 2015. So I'm glad of that.

Anyway, off to day job, which will be a three-day week due to the Easter public holidays.

PeteMC said:

I've now been at work for 24 hours straight. My smibble is broken, can someone toss me a fresh one please?

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Don't have a smibble to hand. Will a be okay?

eyeblink said:

Don't have a smibble to hand. Will a be okay?

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That would be perfect, thanks

I basically didn't write very much for, oh, about 5 years there while I was studying. My only saving grace were NaNo events, which saw me churn out 1 novel and half a novella, despite being super busy; and also the Spec Fic Anthology contest run for AW, which had me write a 10k story which later grew to 20k and wants to be a novel. (I *just* missed out on being published in the AW anthology, apparently - made it to the last round of cuts, with the message that mine was good enough, but didn't fit the theme they'd decided on. Ack! So close!)

So that makes about 120k in 5 years, which isn't much. I mean, I wrote 124k in 2 months in 2009 - I remember the year because it was my first NaNoWriMo and I carried on in December.

So yeah. I've written maybe 40k since finishing my degree (some of that is blog posts, though), which is only about 4 and a bit months... So chances are I'll make more this year alone than I did for the previous 5 years combined.

I need lots of good thoughts today, I have a test for a new client in one hour that only the top 10% ace. And I have a migraine. But I really need that client. Halp.


So do I... take meds that impair my concentration (and might make me sloppier) but reduce the migraine, or do I work on the test with a migraine, which might make me slower/sloppier?

Feeling a bit more human now. Woke up early again, that what happens when you move clocks into the future. My brain seems to have jumped two hours ahead.

Today is windy. I don't do windy so I shall be cowering under a chair this afternoon. Thankfully, I bought two bars of chocolate yesterday. Now that's planning.

Also, I listened to the Writing Excuses podcast yesterday. Its excellent so thanks for that suggestion, much appreciated.

If anyone else has podcast suggestions I'm still taking them.


Alps, also, super positive thoughts for 10s. I'm wishing that migraine away for you. Pass it over here if that helps. I'll do it instead so you can concentrate.

Dear head-office, if you haven't learned how to bill gift cards properly after, oh ten bloody years, maybe you're doing this business and database thing wrong. And no, deleting entries from the database monthly, and still bill them a full year later doesn't really work, does it?

10trackers said:

I need lots of good thoughts today, I have a test for a new client in one hour that only the top 10% ace. And I have a migraine. But I really need that client. Halp.


So do I... take meds that impair my concentration (and might make me sloppier) but reduce the migraine, or do I work on the test with a migraine, which might make me slower/sloppier?

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As a fellow migraine sufferer, I sympathize. And I say if you are risking sloppiness either way, take the meds. Then at least you'll feel better.

Friendly Frog said:

Dear head-office, if you haven't learned how to bill gift cards properly after, oh ten bloody years, maybe you're doing this business and database thing wrong. And no, deleting entries from the database monthly, and still bill them a full year later doesn't really work, does it?

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I hear you.

Does anyone want my other half for a few days. He's driving me nuts.

Also, on the names thing. I sometimes find my spam folder useful for a name.

Well, THAT went spectacularly badly.

10trackers said:

Well, THAT went spectacularly badly.

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Uh, oh. So sorry.

Pete and 10s.

I had a "stop writing period" of six years, from college until I got married. No original work, no fanfiction, not even poetry, and I'd written it all in high school. I even stopped reading as much. I lost all sources of inspiration, my entire writing circle, everything except the things I'd written which were, well, standard high-schooler quality. I believed the whole "no one makes it as a writer" fallacy. So I stopped and figured I'd "grown up." I tried to write again in the fifth year and it was god-awful. I figured I was done for good. Thank god for the person who introduced me to the Day Zero project, because if I hadn't decided to try the crazy thing, I wouldn't have decided to try NaNo.

Good morning Cantina

10trackers said:

Well, THAT went spectacularly badly.

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I'm so sorry. Hugs if you want them, little as that will help.

I took about 6 years off writing at a go. 'Course I took that time off a lot of things. Dating. Friends. Singing. Writing music. Going outside when I didn't have to go to work. (Seriously, CFS is kind of a bitch).

Finally got it managed enough to add friends back in, then writing, and I've recently bought a new keyboard and a composition software, so we'll see how that goes! (Dating and singing are still no-gos, but honestly, I only really miss one of them and maybe the music composition will lead back into it )

Also, MRI tomorrow! Still not super excited, but am amused that I apparently get copies of the pictures. I'll have to work out something to do with them.

I suppose it is good to hear that other people here have had periods of non-writey-ness before getting back to kicking their fictional characters' butts and taking names for their characters.

Not that the prospect of being un-writey for even a year is even that appealing...

10trackers said:

Well, THAT went spectacularly badly.

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Lissibith said:

Also, MRI tomorrow! Still not super excited, but am amused that I apparently get copies of the pictures. I'll have to work out something to do with them.

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Imagine the art project possibilities.

(Also sending good luck to you for the MRI tomorrow.)

Lissibith said:

Also, MRI tomorrow! Still not super excited, but am amused that I apparently get copies of the pictures. I'll have to work out something to do with them.

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Good thoughts for tomorrow.