Good Grief - ROW80 - Preptober

 

Bedwriting

I haven't yet started the writing portion of my goals or the scavenger hunts in my files but I've done fairly well on the other aspects.  My primary focus has been on prepping for writing.  It is after all Preptober, the month we prep to make NaNoWriMo a success.  I tweaked the goal for the NaNo project though and by doing so have backed away from the rebel choice to rework a previous NaNo novel.  Instead I'm combining those characters with the characters from another previous NaNo novel and therefore creating a new novel.  See below in the goals section for details.

Tho I've done a bit of the storydreaming for the novel my main focus has been on prepping my environment to facilitate writing.  Environment covers physical locations and physical objects but it also covers self-care and time-management.

One of the things I've missed as my eyes deteriorate is writing by hand.  When I still worked on typewriters it was never on rough drafts so composing on the computers has always felt off--awkward, sterile, too much like editing even when I forbid myself to backspace or correct in any other way.  It tripled or even quadrupled my wordcount per session but the quality degenerated.  Or, let me qualify that.  The writing tends toward the quality of non-fiction when I'm composing on the screen.  Thus it works for Blogging and Journaling, Letters and Essays but it sucks the life out of fiction scenes.  I tend to write about the story instead of using all of the fiction techniques to tell the story. I've just come to accept that that is my shitty rough draft style working at the keyboard and depend on the rewrites to resolve it.

Maybe it's just because composing with pencil on paper was the way I wrote my stories for the first thirty years that was the way my brain learned to enter and remain in the storydream while translating the dream onto paper. Who knows.  All I know is I miss the old magic and want it back.  So I set out over the last several months to figure out how to make it happen.  What did I need?  Could I get it or make it?

What I have ended up with so far is a cozy little writing nest on my bed which is a mattress on the floor next to Mom's bed.  For a lap desk I'm using a cute decorated box from a craft store with vintage images of peacocks and butterflies.  It is shaped to resemble a book with the front cover being the lid and at 3 inches deep is just the right dimension to hold a nice pile of clipboards, notebooks and filler paper up to 8x11 inches and a scattering of pens and pencils.  But it was too hard for me to get the right angle of light such that I wasn't getting in my own light when bending over the page so I solved that by getting a lightbox to light the page from underneath. I can even write without turning on other lights.

To augment my vision I also have reading glasses with 3.5x magnification and another device designed for crafting and hobby work which has a set of interchangeable lenses with magnification ranging from 1.5 to 5 (I think tho I may be remembering that high number wrong).  I got them for my fiber art work but soon discovered the 1.5 worked for reading the computer screen from a 'good posture' position.  But what makes them ideal for use for handwriting in iffy lighting is the little directable light positioned just above the nose.  They have also made it possible for me to read treebooks with regular print again for more than a few minutes at a time for the first time in years.  I meant to put them in the picture but forgot.  I'll probably make them the star of a future fiber art post.  Or maybe a post about vision aids.

Another prepping activity that has been eating up the writing time is prepping my computers.  Both of my Windows computers have been acting glitchy for months.  The primary laptop a 15 inch HP went blue screen on me in July and freaked me out but it rebooted OK after a forced restart.  But that put me on a path to figure out a way to back up my files more reliably with less thinking about it.  Also while I was at it I wanted to figure out how to make changes to the same file from either computer without risking getting confused as to which one had the most recent new work or forgetting that I'd created new work on the HP that hadn't been saved to the external drive yet and then opening that file on the Acer Switch and adding new work.  What would I do then.  I could only have the external drive connected to one device at a time.

I think I have solved those issues with a My Passport Wireless Pro.  I've had it for a month but haven't broke it out of the box yet. This is partly due to the fact tech tasks had always been something I turned over to my husband and tho I've gradually learned over the years of our separation to take on some of the simpler things it was always with guidance from him over the phone or vid chats the first time I tried something new or complex.  But I was determined to figure this out at the time I ordered it.

It is just that that is when my 11 inch Windows Switch went glitchy and I have spent hours and hours trying to figure out how to fix it in the last couple months.  It seems to have choked on updates and hasn't had a successful one in nearly a year.  But it cut me off from access to admin tools like troublehooting and disc cleaning and Fresh Start which is a clean install of Windows 10 sans applications.  It also has trouble getting online and staying online which may contribute to the issues with installing updates.  It keeps warning me there are security and stability issues but reports back errors when I try the suggested task.

Because the Switch was out of commission the HP has been doing double duty which meant I was overloading the RAM with all the extra aps and tabs open and pushing my luck putting off restarts because there was so much to tend to checking on each open tab for task completion state and making appropriate notes before closing them.  As October began the NaNo panic started closing in and I realized I could not depend on the HP to see me through it if I did not have a way to split the task load again.

These are the things I used the Switch for:

• Reading PDFs  With the keyboard detached and the now tablet held portrait style the reading experience was as comfortable as reading ebooks on my android devices but unlike the 7 inch Androids the Switch screen was big enough to have a whole PDF page on the screen with fonts big enough for me to see especially with higher magnification reading glasses.  This did away with having to scroll sideway for every line of the page.
• Reading books borrowed from Internet Archive and Open Library.  Ditto explanation re PDFs.
• Reading books borrowed from Libby/Overdrive with my library cards.  Not as necessary as for PDF as I'm set up to do that on two Android devices but it was still nice. Especially when I ran the battery down for both of those devices at the same time.  And reading the Libby books on the HP--actually any sustained reading on the HP--puts a crick in my neck and between my shoulder blades because it is too bulky and heavy to pick up and hold at the right distance and angle.
• Watching/Listening to videos. Often while working on non-creative tasks on the HP such as file sorting, metadata fixing in calibre, email inbox decluttering, task list making.  Or maybe while playing a game on an Android tablet or crocheting.
• Keeping up with current events via text and video.
• Listening to music while working at other tasks on other devices or physical space decluttering, exercising on the mini-tramp (exercise is too strong a word as stand and sway is about the best I can do).
• Writing.  Mostly at the kinds of writing that didn't involve making changes to projects on the HP.  Writing exercises like morning pages, sprints, prompts, notes and musings about one of the stories on the HP. Also journaling, email, social networking and blogging.  This worked especially well with cloud based aps like Google Drive, One Note, and Evernote. Because I could open the piece from the HP and copy/paste into the appropriate file.  It was also nice to be able to write elsewhere in the house as it was more mobile than the HP due to size, weight and battery life.

There were a few more things I did with it but that is the heavy work it did and in the last weeks all of that gravitated to the HP and started pushing out the serious work.  Especially WIP in WhizFolders and Scrivener.  You see it is my habit of keeping tabs I'm planning to return to soon open in multiple aps which fills up the RAM and then as described above it becomes inconvenient to restart because the task of shutting down the aps is overwhelming so then the cache of the aps fills up and the computer gets slow and glitchy.  This was an issue with both the HP and the Switch even before the Switch went on strike.  It may also have been why the HP gave me the blue screen of death in July.  So even tho I've decided to replace the Switch this is an issue I need to work on in the category of self-management.  It is probably not conducive to productivity to have my attention always scattered that way.

I replaced the Switch with a Windows 10 tablet sans keyboard.  I could get a keyboard that docks with it but it is a Bluetooth device and nearly a year ago I got a Bluetooth keyboard that works with all my Android devices as well as the Switch.  Not the HP tho as I goofed when ordering it in not realizing it was not Bluetooth and that irked me no end as I have Bluetooth speakers, earbuds, mouse and five Android devices which would be able to access my ebook library without USB and from any nearby room if only the HP had Bluetooth.  But as soon as I get the wireless external drive set up that problem is solved.

Anyway the new Fusion5 Windows tablet arrived yesterday and I've spent many hours already getting it prepped for productivity: setting up preferences, learning my way around, introducing it to keyboard and mouse as I hate using the touchscreen for anything but a simple 'button push' act. Don't get me started on manipulating the taskbar or ap windows by touch.  I never got the hang of that with the touchpads either. 

I've also added programs from the Windows Store because I discovered that it arrived in S Mode which means it will only install aps from the Windows Store. It provides a way to exit that mode but it is a done and done deal.  No going back. And they make it sound alarming by implying that only by staying in S mode can they guarantee the stability of your device.  

But my productivity will suffer if I can't have the programs I'm used to.  The whole point of having two Windows devices was so I could have a more mobile one that could still work on the same aps like calibre, Scrivener, WhizFolders, Adobe Digital and Adobe Acrobat, Open Office, VLC video, Gimp, Doodly.  And what about Chrome and all of the Google aps including Google Drive.  All of my browser bookmarks and passwords are held by Google and accessible from all my Androids.  Why is that suddenly a problem for Microsoft?

I made a serious effort to find Windows Store aps that could duplicate as many of the tasks as possible that I'm counting on the Fusion5 tablet for but I'm clear now I'm going to have to exit S mode.

All of this has kept me enough distracted from grieving in the last couple of days that I've only wept quietly a few times. Today's tearing up was triggered once by encountering a tech conundrum and casually thinking I need to ask Ed about this and once by suddenly remembering in a moment when my attention wandered off a focused task that sometime today the funeral home had picked up Ed's body and moved it to the crematorium.  I will probably be getting a call tomorrow about next steps.  

Am not planning any service at this time due to the Covid rules.  But I've already arranged with Ed's brother to transport the ashes to the Rogue Valley when they go down later this month for his mother's funeral and they will bury his ashes with her in the family plot up in the Applegate forest.  Groves of trees were his goto for stress relief.  I know he loved it there because he said so when we attended one of his cousin's graveside services thirty odd years ago.

Stood on the scales before my shower today and found I've dropped 7 pounds in the 8 days since I learned of Ed's death.  So grief has an up side?  Good grief?!  Who knew.

Backstory highlights and high and low notes:

2013 Piles of Painted Echoes

2013 Our Broken Valentine

2013 Together We Are Amazing

2015 My Heart is the Lake of Fire

2020 Who Am I Without You?

2020 Sunday Serenity - Sorting My Stuff

2020 Of Truth and Words and Rude Epiphanies.

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 4 2020

The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

NaNoWriMo 2020

2020 Round 4 ROW80 and NaNo goals:

Sleep 7.5 hours Daily Minimum --  This used to be a major challenge for me but I've got it managed since mid March.  Or at least I had until this past week.  Grief has taken a toll.

Move/Breathe/Meditate 15 min Daily minimum  -- proven to provide a high yield return on investment as whenever I've practiced any of them it stimulates creativity, memory, and insight; lowers anxiety, and increases energy, stamina and a positive mood.

Storydreaming with note-taking tools at hand. 15 min Daily MInimum -- This is a technique I learned from Robert Olen Butler in the book From Where You Dream.

Read Fiction 30 min Daily Average

Read/Study Craft 15 min Daily Average 

Social network activities 30 min Daily Minimum (writing Joystory posts doesn't count only social reaching out like reading/commenting on other blogs, guest posts and posting to fb, twitter, pinterest etc) -- something I've a strong resistance to.  The autism diagnosis helps explain this but doesn't let me off the hook.  If anything it makes it more important.  Plus this is preparing the ground for future promotion once I'm ready to publish

30 min Daily minimum engagement with a scavenger hunt though all my creative writing files including Joystory looking for better than shitty first draft scenes, sections, stories, poems and essays and edit, organize and make hard copies. --  It's been years since I've made clean copies of manuscripts in my portfolios and for most of the noveling writing challenges I've never printed hardcopy.  That is a lot of words to mine as between 2004 and 2015 I participated in more than one such challenge per year-- Nanowrimo, Junowrimo, Camp Nano, ROW80 and Sweating for Sven.among them.  That is a lot of novella length WIP just gathering electron dust.  A conservative estimate is over 20.  I've been wondering for sometime now if the neglect of these stories after the challenges were over is at least partly responsible for the storyworld's elusiveness over the last several years.  I'm hoping that this exercise in honoring their existence will cure my character's recent shyness.

To prep for self-pub: Gather all my poems into a single Scrivener file. Minimum one poem per day until all accounted for.  Adding new ones encouraged.  This will take most of the Round as there are over 80. See Poems by Joy Renee Portal.  Another exercise in honoring old work to encourage new work.

Via the above mentioned Scavenger hunt: Collect everything resembling personal essay into a Scrivener file.  Either this will be added to the self-pup poetry ebook or will become the second ebook.  Or a combo of those options.

Personal Journaling 20 min or 500 words whichever comes first Daily Minimum -- This is the heart of the writing challenge.  The preceding provides the structure and the nutrients that nurtures and honors the work which I've learned over time must exist to ensure that this becomes more than just dabbling.

NaNo Novel 1666 words per day on average. Am going to rebel a bit and bring back a previous NaNo WIP and rework it.  It is fitting because it's premise was rooted in the dynamics of my own marriage. I'm hoping this can be an exercise in grief processing. It's title is The Storyteller's Spouse and it was an exercise in 'unreliable narrator'.  The wife in my story is a YA novelist and the husband is a life-of-the-party natural born storyteller aka raconteur aka tall-tale-teller. I think the reason I got discouraged with the effort after that NaNo ended was because I had tried to lay all the unreliableness at the feet of the husband not realizing how much the wife's denial about the extent to which his storytelling was not confined to social gatherings put her squarely in the same camp. Older and wiser now.
   Am tweaking this goal to combine Storytellers Spouse with another story.  I had forgotten that I've made it a tradition since 2008 to write my election year NaNo in the same storyworld as Mobile Hopes which is set in a mobile home park called Hope Estates.  Each of the novels is set during its election year and the families in the park are living the issues that dominate the campaigns: health, jobs, housing, immigration, women's rights, law and order, climate change, race relations and so on.  Alll I have to do is have the characters move into Hope Estates and share the novel with several other families and I don't have a reworking of an old NaNo but a new story in the Hope Estates series.