Saturday 23 December 2017

'Tis the Season

You'd think yes, but actually no....
This could quite easily double up as my end-of-year roundup, but we'll see.  Basically, we're at my Mum's for Christmas, with everything that entails, and I need to write something.

Because that's how things work now.  I write.  I've had my little tablet since just after my birthday, and if I'm honest, it's been pretty revolutionary.  I needed something that I could use in the evening while my phone was playing audiobooks to get the Chap to sleep, and something that wasn't the computer.  Computers are too easy.  They make my habits easy.  But my tablet is crap enough to make my habits really hard to do, leaving just typing stuff as the only realistic option.

And it's brilliant.  I've found an outlet for my stories that doesn't involve late nights and dangerous behaviours.  Wattpad is great.  I've found a friend.  I've got two long books about half-done, and the feedback I'm getting on each chapter is really positive.  I think that might be one of the things I need in order to keep going.  I need feedback and support, which is why my Flickr behaviours are so addictive.  I get sucked in by favourites and comments.  It's dangerous.  But not with writing.  I still get nice comments, but I can somehow manage to get to bed before midnight.

And just this month, when it looked like none of my stories would be ready for publishing, I took a short story and put it through Smashwords.  It's over there on the right, just under my profile stuff, available to buy, for something like 75p in our money.  Smashwords is also great, and I liked it so much, I wrote another short story and made it available for free.  I'm developing unhealthy behaviours with the stats page, hoping that I might crack 100 downloads before Christmas, but at any rate, I'm having a very positive experience.  The plan is to get the HGS thing in shape in the New Year and upload a chapter book for a coupla quid.

Like we're about to form some kind of
 Power Rangers Voltron Mega Zord kinda thing,
which me and my siblings could probably
actually do if it came to it
And so it is in a good place that I find myself at the end of this year.  There's a blog post to be written about what's come out of therapy recently and how it relates to my Cinderella thing, but I'll save that for another time.  Spoiler alert:  I had a horrible childhood with enough privilege to paper over the cracks.  It'll take some working through, but in the meantime I've come to spend the festive season with the very people who caused it all, and I don't feel bad at all.  These people, aside from one obvious exception, are the people who will ultimately see me through.

LMW

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