Writing Updates, Gaming Boredom Crisis, and Things You Find When Walking

Getting in Touch with My Inner Sloth

Good news on the publishing front—the cover art for “The Acme Employee Handbook” is complete, and the book is close to going to print. It’s been a long road with this one, and I’m proud of it and excited to be getting it out there.

I’ve made a number of declarations over the last few months about Things I am Going to Do Better From Here on Out, and one of them is to quit being such a lame-o when it comes to marketing my own work. I can’t bear the thought of asking anyone to read books that I’ve written, even though that’s the whole point of writing them—so people will read them, and hopefully garner a few moments of enjoyment or connection or entertainment from them. That’s what being a writer is. But I still remain loathe to trumpet my own writing. And I need to, because if I don’t, everything I’ve written is going to linger in obscurity. So here’s the thing—I am probably going push this book harder than I’ve pushed my other books. I’m just warning you. Hopefully, it won’t be too obnoxious, and we’ll all get through it together.

In other writing news, I’m thinking about participating in National Novel Writing Month in November this year, but I’m finding the whole process a bit inscrutable. There’s a big sprawling website that I can’t seem to get a grip on, and I get e-mails every week or so with links to “pep talks”—but there’s so many of them I can’t read them all. I don’t really understand how this is supposed to work, and the website is giving me ADD because there’s too much to look at. I suppose I’ll just go create a profile on the site and see what happens. If nothing else, maybe it will help me commit to writing something every day, even it’s just a paragraph. My normal weekday evening pattern now is:

1.       Get the bus back to my neighborhood and meet Mr. Typist for a quick bite.

2.   Come home, feed and medicate the cats, clean up around the place, and take a hot shower.

3.      Sit down at my computer and stare blankly at the screen.

4.    Realize that I’m mentally exhausted, and go to read a book/watch bad TV to “clear my head” for writing

5.      Fall asleep while reading/watching TV.

6.      Promise myself the next night will different.

So maybe structured participation in NNWM will help. Who knows?

Another thing that I do to clear my head is play video games. I’ve burned through Tomb Raider, rage quit “Far Cry 3” and I’m stuck in a holding pattern with “The Secret World”, since I don’t play enough to advance my characters in instance runs, where they can skill up enough to advance through the harder quests. There’s always Skyrim, but that one’s getting a little dull, too. I’m in a full-blown gaming boredom crisis, which tells me this is a good time to go browse GoG for some vintage games. I really like the slow-moving, clunky adventure games of yore. They calm my overwrought head.

Mr. Typist and I went a-walking on Saturday morning down to the old train tracks, and we saw some cool graffiti, a heron, and a giant old fishing vessel that was being towed through the locks to be sold for scrap. We both felt a little sad at the sight of that rusty old behemoth at the end of its usefulness, but I tried to think it of it as being reincarnated instead of cast off.

--Kristen McHenry

Cool Graffiti One

A Pretty Tree

Cool Graffiti Two