What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Occasionally, I have character in a story who is patterned after my ex, Glen. There is one in the space serial, and as I was writing about the character, I remembered this one incident with Glen. We were at a science fiction convention, doing some kind of larp (which wasn't terribly my thing), and Glen had ended up standing on a conference room table, probably acting crazy. I'm pretty sure I was thinking, "Oh, dear god, he's either going to break the table or fall and get hurt." I said something in character to get him off the table, and I remember him saying, "Thanks. I had no idea how I was going to get down."

Needless to say, in my stories, the Glen-character is the charismatic guy who leaps before he looks. He is never a bad person, because Glen wasn't a bad person. However, good intentions don't actually mitigate harm.

Oh, Glen.

Not much happening here. I cut out the new waistbands for the yoga pants and pinned them. After talking to friends, I did some work on writing character backstory, until I ran out of tokens/interactions with the AI for this chunk of time. I'm pleased with the progress I've made. It is easier to do it with the AI to help fill in the character bio parts that I already discussed with it or that I don't care about writing (like what kind of certifications she would have as an environmental systems engineer on Mars). Of course, there are plenty of times that I don't like what it comes up with, but it doesn't take much time to explain why that doesn't work, which forces me to flesh out the character more.

Tomorrow, I'm off again to neurofeedback and physical therapy. I look forward to the neurofeedback and to working things out with my physical therapist. I'm also looking forward to a week with no neurofeedback (because of the holidays) so that I can rest a bit.

I consolidated two big boxes that had stuff from the solar panel installation down to one box that was small enough to fit in the last open cubby in the new shelves. Yay! Of course, it had a bunch of huge pieces of styrofoam in it, so those are sitting in the living room now waiting to go to the recycle. However, the boxes are cut up, so that is something.

Finally, I finished the new podcast: Christmas songs, some of which are pretty snarky. I still have a few things to do for it, but the time-consuming part is done. Yay!

With those things done, I'm going to get to work on sewing (and finishing up that portrait). I could work on the art rail, but honestly, I need new pants more right now. Once I've finished this round of stuff, then I can work on the art rail with Joel. I am so looking forward to getting this sewing done!

Lastly, I've been working on backstory for the space serial, and as I plan it out with the AI, I can see how much better the story will be with these fleshed out backstories. I realize, though, that a lot of my characters are really short. Hmm.... I'll need to balance that out. Anyway, still lots to do, but progress is being made.

Oh! Extra-lastly, I got the webpage of approved maintenance people for the brand of water heater we have, so I'll start calling them tomorrow. I have a less than nice plan for if that doesn't work.

I'm really happy with the way the space serial planning is going. I've got three plotlines (there are kind of more, but really, it is three) and with the AI, I got the Martian separatists' plan for what they will do all set, and then I got the plan made for the secret plan of one of the Martian characters. Now, I'm going through what actually happens. I've only made it through the beginning of the story, but the plan is only barely holding together, as two other important characters have escaped from where the Martians had them bottled up. No one in this story (except the assassin) is a bad guy (and even the assassin is going after someone who is in theory a criminal although in application isn't bad either). They just all have different, conflicting goals. Anyway, I look forward to seeing what happens in the planning, since I don't really know what happens in the middle yet. The AI and I will get there, though.

One of the problems I've had with the story background database is that with all the characters, relationship information, etc, it is easy to write something about the plot in a descriptions of a character's motivation, for example, and then have the info never make it back into the main plot description. Today, I created a page to make single sheet with all the story information, plus another page to make a sheet for character information. I fed all the output into Claude.ai, and we are working on cleaning it up. It is so nice to be able to talk through all these kinds of issues with someone, like an AI. While doing this, I realized that I don't have enough plot information for the space serial story, so in addition to cleaning things up, I'm fixing up the plot as well. (I also just realized that I didn't put the relationship information into the character sheets, so I'll do that now.)

I worked on my serial story last night and this morning. I'm pleased with how it is going so far. I've got a couple of weeks to write a couple thousand words, which should be fine. I need to have 4000 words done for the critique group. I might need to make some of the characters less standoffish, though. I don't see that many really friendly people. I'll have to remember that I like that.

I went on the writing retreat, and it was just lovely. I had a great time with friends and did a lot of work on a short story that I'll read at a scary Christmas story reading. It needs a bit more tweaking to be entirely comprehensible, but I'm pretty happy with it. It is so short that I was just able to copy and paste the whole thing into the chat window for my chosen AI and discuss what it thought the story was about and what I could do to make it more clear. I could make dozens of revisions, and the AI doesn't have any problem with reading each one of them and commenting. It is so nice! It doesn't always have the perfect suggestions, but it helps, especially with "which words did I repeat too often".

By the time I got home, I was so talked out, so I shoved the laundry in the washing machine and played like 4 hours of Green Hell, which is a kind of survival/tech tree game. I had been really struggling to get new tech tree branches to open up, but while I was looking for Brazil nuts (on Friday before the retreat), I spotted a location that I was supposed to visit. Then, while I was on the retreat, I realized what I needed to do to transport water more quickly. So, when I got home, I implemented my water plan, which worked great and enabled me to get so much more done (I had been carrying a single coconut half one at a time to the fire to boil water, but I replaced that with using a whole coconut, which had been for clean water, to carry dirty water to the fire to fill four coconut bowls at once). I also went and visited the village that I spotted on Friday, and that opened up a bunch of things I had been waiting on, like a map, meat dryer, and a fire pit. Plus, I found another coconut, so now I can carry twice as much water, and Brazil nuts. I can use their shells for mixing paint or making a bobber for a fishing pole, which I think will then let me create a fishing trap. Now that I'm doing a bit better in the game, I'm enjoying it a bit more.

So, I'm working my way through this meditation book (in advance of someday getting to do the neurofeedback, which I assume I will need to practice regularly, so I'm getting in the habit now), and it is pretty awesome. The book is The Magic of Pathworking: A Meditation Guide for Your Inner Vision by Simon Court. "Pathworking" seems to be a process, like a tech tree in video games, where you slowly build up your skills to try new things. In this case, the "new things" are different guided meditations. I've always liked guided meditations (or at least, I liked the ones they did at school when I was in 4th grade), and these are similar to the ones I did back then. I feel like the meditations are both on traits you want to work on (either improving or getting rid of) and also on cool, fantasy-themed ideas, so that the meditation doesn't get boring. We'll see, but so far I really am enjoying it.

In other news, speaking of awesome, Joel is so great! I wrote a chapter of our story that I wasn't entirely sure about, and Joel edited it (and added some stuff) to make it awesome. It was so much better than if I had had to struggle with it!!!

Also, last night, I sat down and organized which books I want to read in what format (most of which was making sure they are available) for the next month. It took forever, as I searched the different services that give me access to books. Hopefully, it will result in me feeling less stressed and unhappy about all books besides Murderbot. Oh, I shouldn't say that, since I just listened to the first Dresden Files book, and it was good (although dark).

I've had "hang paintings" on my to do list for months. The problem is that I don't have frames. I've ordered some, but not all have come yet. The problem before that, though, is that I don't have nails in the walls to hang them from. Before that, the problem is that I don't want nails, I want to have an art rail of sorts. But before that, I need to paint the walls, and before that I need to patch them. And to have the wood for the art rail, I need some scrap wood from the shelves we will build. To build the shelves, I need the paint-on insecticide, so that we won't be making the woodworm problem worse, and I also need to paint the area behind where the shelves will go, which means I need to get up there and do whatever patching is needed. So, finally, today, I wrote up lists of what needs to be done to hang the paintings and what needs to be done to make the shelves. Then, I replaced "hang paintings" with "Decide on art rail style". Now, that is something that I can actually do.

I've been thinking a lot about why I like the Murderbot books and what _actually_ happens in them. I've also been thinking about how to come up with clever solutions to problems the characters face in stories. To help with this, I've been reading a book on problem solving. Last night, while listening to Murderbot write database queries to try to figure out a mystery (it is less boring than it sounds), I realized that a huge part of what the main character does is problem solving. More than that, it is the research for problem solving. I think this is the case to some extent for Dungeon Crawler Carl too. If I ask myself "What are they doing and why?", I think the answer often is "trying to get information to solve a problem" or "trying to get physical items to solve a problem". I think with both of these series, the story even includes them going back to revise their statement about what the problem really is, because they didn't understand it clearly at the beginning. Are most things that we would consider "plot twists" really just the iterative process of having gathered enough information to understand that your problem statement is insufficient or incorrect and going back to revise it? I'm going to have to think about this more. I think one of the things that I find stressful is that I can't figure out how to get the characters from "we have a problem" to "we have a solution to the problem", because I get overwhelmed because of my anxiety. My original plan was that I would use a problem solving process behind the scenes to solve the problems. However, now I'm starting to understand that it shouldn't be behind the scenes where the problem solving should happen. I should show the characters going through the process, which should include them making problem statements that are inaccurate.

Normally, I have characters be confused and not know what the answer is. I don't think I often have them misunderstand the problem. I think that partly this is a function of me being overwhelmed personally and unable to figure out what the heck is going on. I _think_ I am also more likely to say that I don't know what the answer is than have a problem statement that I'm not sure about. _This_ could be my mistake. I do kind of make guesses when I think about medicine ("could it be a magnesium problem?"), but I think I don't make a guess about other things. I just say, "I don't know!" and then throw up my hands. I think I have to be willing to make a guess, even if it is a bad guess, because that gives me someplace to start. There is a guy who writes a blog called "Putanumonit", and he advocates putting a number on things (ie giving things numerical values, even if those values aren't perfect), because you can work much more easily with a number than you can with an amorphous feeling. Probably the same is true of solving problems. You need to make a guess at defining the problem so that you have something to work with, or in this case, a place to start. You can then try to break down the problem into components and do research to see how accurate your problem statement is and if those components are the ones you should be focusing on.

Now that I've thought about this, I can see where to do have characters guess about what the problem is in the story I write with Joel. I'll have to think about it in my Mass Effect story, as the whole game series is that the main character knows what the problem is and no one will listen to her. In my story based on the game "Seduce Me", I do have some moments where the characters start defining the problem. However, I can see that they still really don't know what is going on in the same way I refuse to make a guess. I have characters who are stuck in another story at this exact moment too, because they aren't guessing. In the new, serial story I want to write, I'm in the planning stage, and I've also gotten stuck there on the "making a guess" stage for one of the plotlines.

Well, it would seem that now I have a lot to think about.

So, I've been writing a Mass Effect fanfic for the last 10 years. I'm just finishing up Mass Effect 2 and starting to plan the story for Mass Effect 3. It is fun to figure out what I will change and what I won't. One of the themes in my story is self-care. The main character has a lot of issues by the third game because of overwork. It pisses me off that the game never gives any option but for the main character to just keep doing more. So, I am going to fix that by showing her delegate, like the good leader that she is supposed to be. Another theme I am working on is the importance of free will. I'm setting that up to be really important in the story of the third game. And this morning, I read an article about how one of the problems with the third game is that it focuses on building this magic weapon that will save everyone, taking away the focus from the things that made the earlier games really good, like character interaction. I'm trying to figure out how to move the focus away from the magic weapon back to the characters and interesting solutions. I've got some ideas, and if I can get them to work, it should be super fun. What I would really like is to take all the side characters that I've either made or existing ones from the game that I've written about and find ways to bring them back into the story to do something really meaningful. Since my main character has to delegate, I have a lot more of an opportunity to do that instead of just having everyone work to build this magic MacGuffin. So much fun!!