A Gray mood to match the Gray skies. (Patreon)

This week has been rough. The driving itself was good, nothing to report on that front, but I was hit by the

. “The winter blahs”, a bout of mild depression. I’m not sure where it came from, but I had very little motivation, as can be attested by the few chapters I’m posting this week. It hits me once in a while, and while I’m not sure what might have triggered it. I do have a suspect.

I got the ‘Wasteful Death’ book back from the editor, and I looked at the initial comments. Just an over view of how she felt about the story. She did have good things to say, but as can be expected, the bad outweighed the good by a lot and I think it shut me down.

Another suspect could be the game I was playing, Stardew valley. I was obsessing about it, constantly thinking about how I could replay a day to make more money. I was doing that instead of thinking about my stories, so I put a stop to it.

I can’t be sure it will help, of if that’s even the reason, but my writing did pick up today. I’ll get back to that in a moment.

No movie review this week. As I walked through the DVD section at Walmart, I just couldn’t work up the interest in anything they had. Another consequence of the

. Hopefully I’ll have something next week.

So on to the writing.

As part of the

or maybe it’s unrelated, I stalled on Chapter 16 of The Society. I spent most of the week trying to muscle my way through it, but yesterday I decided to just pick up at some point after it, where I know what happens again. I wrote 2 chapters. Writing the chapter yesterday was a little rough, but today it flowed well.

I’m going to call this part 6, because I’m hoping to fit the missing chapters in part 5 when I can come up with them.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4vQ-LxGi-e4ZlVJVEh0T0xBQ3c

I did manage to write chapter 3 of Crimson. I actually spent time working on it I should technically have been working on the Society, but heh.

Part 3

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4vQ-LxGi-e4N3RMOFRvemlfeUk

I wrote part 5 of the Orr story 2593 today and that flowed quite well. So we get more sex, and a bit of personality conflict between crew members

Part 5

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4vQ-LxGi-e4YUlKWWpBODVfT2M

And finally the last days of Spring for Stardew Valley, that’s day 23 to 28. Will I ever get back to this. Possibly. I do enjoy the game, but I want to give myself at least the month to rest from it, and I want to make sure to be in a good period mood wise when I pick it up again to see if it had an effect in bringing my mood down.

Part 3

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4vQ-LxGi-e4VUNDa2pwMExTSWc

On the editing front. As I said, I got Wasteful Death an my initial look at it stunned me. Still this morning I forced myself to look at the actual comments throughout the story. I didn’t make it a quarter of the way through it before I was overwhelmed. There are a lot of them. Now. I know some of them I’ll just ignore. The Editor normally edits people whose goals are to be publish through publishing houses so some of her comments are directed at making the story more marketable. That’s good, but it isn’t why I write.

I know my stories won’t please everyone, in fact, I’ll be surprise of over the long run I’ll get many “faithful” readers, my writing style simply doesn’t lend itself to be commercial, so those comments will be disregarded.

Also, She made an assumption about the story, that it has a romance element. There isn’t one, at least not on in the sense the publishing industry sees it. My character have passed the romantic stage of their relationship. They’ve been ‘together’ for three years. They are now living with what comes after. If it’s anything it’s a relationship story, instead of a romance.

So I know some of what she said will be ignored.

There’s still a lot of it. For the coming weeks my output of new chapter will probably drop since I plan on trying to go through at least once chapter a day of Wasteful Death. I do want to publish it ASAP so I have to focus on that. I will still do my best to put out 3000 brand new words a week, as promised.

And with that I’m done. See you next week.