So What Happened? (Patreon)

So--that's done, then.  I've refunded as far back as Patreon will allow me - a surprisingly slow and painful task; I guess the service doesn't like people doing that.

So, what happened?

When I stepped away from the computer, stuck in the middle of scene with Cindy sat opposite her therapist being secretly observed by K, I never expected to be this long.  Obviously - a month, maybe, or two, but certainly not longer.  But at some point I decided that until I had something tangible to share, I'd keep away.  It was a bad decision, but it was one motivated by, I think, a number of things.

Looking back, I wonder if maybe I'd slipped into a mild depression.  There was a lot going on.  Work was very intense; nothing new there for most people, but there was simply too much to do, in too little time, coupled with some very unpleasant individuals that, in retrospect, really got under my skin and affected my mental health.  Work is also on the creative side, and it drained a lot of those energies that might otherwise have been used for writing.

And there were other thing, too.  An illness in the family; associated guilt; arguments; exhaustion.

And against all that, a story that, in all honesty, I thought about pretty much every single day without ever finding the courage to put fingers to keyboard.  It was a stange kind of cowardess.  Initially it must have been - might have been - writer's block.  Then work justified staying away - after all, how could I indulge in writing when I had this overflow of overdue things that needed doing.  (The overflow is still there; there'll always be too much work.) 

And then I started to question what it was, exactly, I was writing.  I'll save that for another update.

In any case it was a perfect combination of both valid reasons and questionable excuses to keep me away from the keyboard.  Oh, on occasion I'd type out a few character or plot points that'd come to me in the dimly-remembered minutes before falling asleep at night or fully waking in the morning, but in general not a whole lot was getting done, consciously.

So what changed?

First, I took the advice of a patreon.  I went out and picked up a copy of Stephen King's "Billy Summer."

I'd never read Stephen King before.  I think it was snobbery, and an aversion to horror/suspense fiction.

I was wrong.  Billy Summer was a fantastic read, and it really got me thinking about reading more and writing more.  I followed it up with King's "On Writing".  Absolutely brilliant, and like a direct injection of inspiration.  I've got another story, waiting in the wings now, directly inspired by Billy Summer waiting for Constant to politely get done and move out of the way.

The next thing that kicked me out of my stupor was AI.  More specifically, Sudowrite, one of the new generation of AI-assisted writing tools.

I'd played around with these in the past: DungeonAI, NovelAI; both fun, both rather.... mediocre, in terms of the actual fiction they create.

But I tried this new one, and it was... better?  The initial glamour has worn off and the AI bits-and-bolts running under the chasis are increasingly obvious, and it was spit out some very questionable stuff.  I don't see this kind of thing replacing real authors anytime soon, though I imagine it'll be a huge boon to online content creators....

WHich is what this kind of is, isn't it?  I can easily imagine Patreon writers generating a lot more content--of any written type--using this stuff.  More on that later - and I'll have an example to share once I've tidied it up a bit - but ultimately it's not my thing.  Constant will definitely remain AI-free.

However, playing around with it and dealing with the frustration in which the AI spat out gibberish - forgetting the setting, or the character's motive, or even what they were wearing or had been feeling a few scenes back - and taking over the writing reminded me of how much -fun- writing is; I found msyelf enjoy it again; and it was the final push to get me to dip back into my Fakeminsk account and see what was going on.

As I wrote yesterday, I was horrified to discover that Patreon had been charging in the interim, but also amazed and touched to find people still here.  I don't know if I'm deserving of that faith, but for what it's worth, I'm back at the keyboard and writing again.  I'll do my best to not disappear again; I think I've learned my lesson.