MindSpark
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Update - May 2025
🕑 Added 2025-05-10 09:00:08 +0000 UTCHello all!
So, uh, I’ve been a little non-existent lately. I’ll explain a little more in a bit, but the tldr is that I kinda crashed out and have spent the last few weeks hibernating and trying to destress.
Alright! Life update stuff:
So, the new place I’m living has its ups and downs. Some upsides are having privacy again and no more screaming children, which is great! Downsides include higher-than-expected costs, birds being noisy motherfuckers on the rooftop at night (my apartment is essentially the building’s attic/loft), a big fly tipping/littering problem outside the building, and rats living in the walls. Positives and negatives, ya know?
Honestly, though, I am happy enough with the place. Some of the problems can be remedied easily enough, and the others I can live with – at least for the time being. Others have it a lot worse than I do, so I can’t really complain (even if I might vent some frustration every now and then). All things considered, I’m on the fortunate side.
When I moved in here, part of me was hoping (expecting, even) that writing would be easier, and that words would flow from my fingertips. But, alas, writing is still proving difficult. And that, paired with all the stress and grief I’ve been building up for so many months, sorta caused me to just shut down for a while. I didn’t realise just how much the crap over the last year (more than a year, really) has been building up until I moved in here and finally gave myself a moment to relax/reflect, and it all slammed into me.
Cue me being catatonically zombified for a hot minute.
Writing a lot, writing consistently, isn’t easy. And I have a bad habit of beating myself up over it when I miss targets I set for myself – which only makes the problem worse. I look back at the past with rose-tinted glasses, remembering a time when writing was easy and I could put out a half-dozen stories/chapters every week. But, truth is, writing was always difficult. It’s just that I didn’t overly pressure myself or beat myself up over it back then; I had a whole lot more fun with it.
I’m rambling a little.
What I want to do is get back to that place, where I’m not stressing myself out over everything. I feel like I’ve become way too formulaic with writing, and I’m not happy with that. I want to experiment more, try out new writing styles. Go wild with different prose. Have some fun with new/different kinks. Maybe even dabble in entirely different storytelling formats.
To that end, I’m going to be putting Fairies and Monsters on hiatus. It’s something of an experiment itself, and one I don’t think is working quite the way I’d intended. When it returns, I might well start the whole story from scratch – maybe even split it into two separate stories. We’ll see.
In place of Fairies and Monsters, I’ll be writing random stuff instead! Little thoughts and story ideas I’ve had (and set aside) over the years, as well as things that I just feel like writing. Some of it will be niche and not to everyone’s tastes, some of it will be wacky and experimental, some of it might even be good!
I can’t promise I’ll put out 30k words a month (and, if I set that as a goal, you can be damned sure I’ll miss it), but I can promise I’ll do my best.
I want to rekindle my love for writing. And, hopefully, y’all will enjoy that journey along with me.
Thank you for reading. Sorry for the rambling (I tried to keep it brief and mostly concise) and for the lack of stories/chapters over the last weeks. There’ll be something up on the Archives in the next few days (hint: it involves swords, duels, nuns, fire, and a particularly horny lady). I won’t give any exact dates, deadlines are the bane of my existence, but I’ll be soon™.
Comments
Дмитрий Рудаков
Deadlines kill... I understand you. I have a book that has been waiting for updates for two years, and will be waiting for the third. Despite the fact that new stories go there, the story flies and I soar. I recently listened to a webinar by a coach, and he said that one of the reasons for not wanting to write is lack of self-love... and therefore to everything you do. He gave an example of his cat, which lies awesome, walks awesome, sleeps awesome. In your perception, that's the reality, and that's the cat because you love it. I can't say "love your business," that's advice to a homeless person to buy a house. But we love everything you do. You write awesome, and (I'm sure) you walk awesome and lie awesome. We love everything you do. (from a personal tip, try writing in new cafes with a cup of coffee)
