What obstacles face writers? Many people have a day job, and by the time they get home from work, they are exhausted. Others, mostly women, but some stay-at-home men too, have small children they must care for, who would distract them from their writing. My particular obstacle is a yeller. We’re both retired, so have lots of time to pursue our passions. He writes computer programs. This would be fine, except that he yells a lot, and I'm not permitted to make a sound, because he's easily distracted. When you're writing a computer program, it is much more exacting than writing a story. Every jot and tittle has to be just so. The slightest slip can result in an error, which means that the program will crash and not run. That's what he tells me, anyway. But in this yelling disturbs me and I like peace and quiet when I write. If I had my druthers, I’d play one of my Napster playlists which puts me in the Zone. Ohl, you know what the zone is. If you're a programmer, the code is falling into place. If you're an artist, the paint is going on the canvas just so. If you’re a music composer, the notes are coming as fast as you can put them on the clephs. As a writer,. I use Dragon, which is voice recognition software, so I speak my story, dictating into my computer so that it types the words on the screen.
To avoid the stress-producing yelling, I do my writing in the early morning while my SO sleeps. Because he's sleeping in the next room I can't play my music so it’s more difficult to get into the Zone. But it's not impossible. If you have the writing compulsion like I do you find ways of coping. He tells me he can almost hear when I'm writing about. Sometimes he even has usable suggestions for a direction to go in when I get stuck. But the yelling is hard for me to cope with. I have attempted to tell him a new way to cope. "You can't control what the people do, but you can control how you react to their actions." Why does he yell? Well, you may ask. He has enemies. He left Christianity for paganism and the church he left feels the need to punish him for leaving it. He runs an operating system (Linux) they don't like because they have money invested in Microsoft. So they hack into his system and continuously interfere what he intends to do. And he reacts predictably. He yells. He loudly utters implications and curses. It's been going on for over 11 years. One would think he would have found another way to cope with the situation; different ways of putting one over on his enemies, for example, but he hasn't. He just yells. .Being an empath as I am, I feel the psychic pain in his yelling. But I guess I am naturally more logical and analytical than he is being as I am a Virgo ascendant. I would take pride and joy in continually foiling those bastards. I would emulate Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame. What a role model he was!
Plans have changed for the re-release of Takuhi’s Dream. We are in the process of getting the 2nd installment, Takuhi’s Nightmare, ready for publication. But I am doing the 3rd, and probably the final installment, Takuhi’s Daydream, for November’s NaNoWriMo, and she wants to release them in succeeding months, to take advantage of the buzz created by each book. I am presently thing phase, to the extent that I plan any book. I am an inveterate pantser. Outlining this makes me want to go ahead and write the book. And I find that each chapter is a new adventure.
