Tuesday 18th April 2017

It always amazes me when people actively get in the way of your aims.  I have a hard job understanding why.  It’s almost as if they resent the fact that they acknowledge your progress.
They’ll actively throw roadblocks in your way, sometimes under the guise that they think it will help you.  I’m not sure if they truly believe that or somehow convince themselves it’s for the best.  And whilst it sounds quite harsh to say that I wouldn’t piss on these people even if they were on fire…well… I wouldn’t.
This is different from people who ignore your aims.  Those people will smile nicely, believe it will not come to anything and carry on as if it never existed in the first place.  But the ones who get in the way… there’s spite there.  The only thing I’m not sure of is whether it is done consciously or not.
I’m experiencing a little of it in the day job right now.  I need to be minimising my stress, I am about to have editorial comments that I need to turn around quickly, I have health issues I need to manage, and yet…  the day job has decided to muck things around without so much as asking me.
I’m pretty livid but biding my time.  Work colleagues can see it’s a shitshow in a can.
But that pettiness and spite has actually been a help to me today.  I’m now up to the chapter where I need to write the greatest swordfight ever, and the magnitude of what I want to accomplish has been a bit daunting to say the least.  This is a difficult chapter.  It’s a major character moment, there’s seeds that need planting, there’s a ton of action, and it needs to have every bit of emotion wrung out of it.  It’s why I never got to it whilst at Eastercon.
I’ve been thinking about it all day, but the trouble is that when the day job plays up, it uses up all my mental energy, which just has me resenting it even more.  I need to focus on this chapter and instead I’m seething about how the day job thinks it knows better on how to deal with my disabilities.
But I came to a realisation as I walked back from town this evening.  One of the people in this scene is very much that type of person, the one who gets enjoyment in trying to cause people to fail (or at the very least make things difficult).  So the rest of the day has been about trying to channel my anger into the scene and particularly into this character.
It’s worked remarkably well (the only thing that has saved my mood today) and over the course of an evening I have managed to piece together the scene, including a key character moment that ties into the first book.  In short, all my character motivations seem to be on point.
Several other things did not help my mood.  I learnt that an old friend I used to go Geocaching with is seriously ill.  I feel pretty bad but given the nature of the illness I don’t think I can deal with it right now and I feel a bit of an arsehole for putting my own mental health ahead of someone else.  We’ll see how I feel later in the week.
On a more trivial note:  I realised that despite grabbing some shopping for the rest of the week I forgot to buy any Turkey Rashers and had to go out again this evening.  As a result I didn’t sit down to eat until gone 9pm.  I hate it when I lose an entire night to meal prep, and the day job mucking things around means I won’t be able to get that time back tomorrow morning.
As a result I finally got stuck into the chapter a little late.  This was not helped when I threw a full glass of drink all over my desk, my keyboard, the floor and me.  However, I feel my plan for the chapter really solidified over the course of today.  As a result, I managed to write the scenes leading up to the actual swordfight.  The villain of this scene was deliciously nasty, and suitably fuelled by my experiences today.
I’d wanted to get into the actual sword fight, but after 1800 words, it seemed a good and logical place to stop.  I also need to get a relatively early night.
But the chapter is feeling good and I think the swordfighting should be good.  I just don’t know when I’ll next get time to write.  I want to get this book finished this week but it would seem that the universe (and his representatives that work for the day job) have conspired to make that difficult.
If you want to follow more of my journey, then be sure to check me on my social channels.  Likewise, if you’d like me to expand on any point mentioned above, please say so in the comments.

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