T.M. Shannon

I’d like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land I’m on, the Cabrogal people of the Darug nation, and all Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders, and I pay my respects to Elders past, present, and emerging.

Australia is a land with over 50 thousand years of history, and I support all efforts for reconciliation and correcting the past wrongs of colonisation.

Hi everyone,

I gotta say, January went quick, with a lot of things happening at home, abroad, and that wonderful place I call work.

The second ECG came back, and it’s off to the Heart Failure Clinic—never Crossed myself so fast— with something, something, left ventricle, here’s your 4 meds. All going to plan, I can avoid the implanted defibrillator, but it’s a long road ahead.

The psycho-neural atypicality is doing its new usual, with definite signs of mania or possibly the underlying schizophrenia. Manageable, yes, and I’m a bit down on myself for not booking a psych appointment sooner, but looking forward to raise it with my Psych.

The writing? I’ll get into that in a bit, but with my laptop’s GPU fan down for the count and no way at the moment to get that fixed, I’ve been mad into O.G. Morrowind and all its bugs doing my replayed-RPG usual of metagaming and having a tonne of fun.

How’s the weather? Hot—but Sydney hot, not Western Australia hot. How’s the political climate? Usual Two Party agreement on hate speech legislation that’ll end up going horrifically undemocratic at some point. The vibe? Good news, it’s alive.

And with that said and while I jam to another Cybermode Beats mix, let’s dive in.

A Dose of the WIP

I’d changed my expected “Finish Date” (as in, going to an editor and beta readers) to February this year about four months ago, and no, I’m not going to make it.

And that’s fine, even with a mix of the Bipolar/ADHD, being sick of the writing malarkey at times, and mobile/PC gaming at fault. It was a hopeful target, I wasn’t making promises to begin with, but I’m glad I won’t make it, otherwise things’d be way worse for me and the narrative.

In good news is, I’m on the last 16 chapters with my outlines ready, and one plot point about to be shoved into another chapter to leave me room for something developmental that’ll work wonders and leave me with a sub-100k words/400 page product.

The end is in sight, yay? Not so fast, I’m still dealing with the executive function-drainer that is a complete reader-me overhaul of a messy first draft scraped over four “drafts” like butter over too much bread.

Insert bilbo_hraaah.gif here.

And the work has been getting me down—hooray for imposter syndrome, because I swear I’m dragging my feet and could lose a chapter for concision (had to check Word’s thesaurus for that one). Hence why I need an editor and beta readers, so pray for them reviewing my manuscript.

But today brought a philosophical view since the manuscript assessment that set me on a path to my best writing yet. How best? I’ve picked apart where I’ve rewritten weak and improved it, and I’m on 298 with a whole lot more happening, so maybe that pace isn’t so worrisome after all.

I’ll be honest, I went into the assessment thinking I sat on a pile of gold, my synopsis dreamy and buzzwordy, the incredible vision of the baby author with their baby manuscript bound to go absolutely page one magnum opus, everything you’d expect of a certain release by a certain author.

Yes, that bad.

You’d think I blow up at my assessor. Far from it. Here’s a PhD I’d subjected to what she called a “Writer’s Draft” from the start of the meeting, and I gotta say, I respected everything she said—she knows literary and cultural studies on a level a high-school bomb-out can only dream of.

I’d made major mistakes in my synopsis, a trendy dream dragged 7th Circle of Hellward by the slowest narrative ever. My themes were actually topics. The first scene was too long and split into micro-chapters. I’d gone overboard on show don’t tell. And I’d head-hopped like crazy.

I did fold my arms and looked away at one point, but I was listening intently, hearing everything of gentle, professional, proper constructive criticism that I expected to stew over for a few days before I tried to get it write, pun intended—only to start the next day.

Now with an end in sight, I’ll say April/May but won’t commit to that just in case, I don’t know how I’ll feel about the work. Relieved for a start, and maybe I’ll be able to concentrate on some reading for my break. Worried, definitely. But sad for those darling’s I’ve gone Friday the 13th on? Hell no.

I reckon it’ll be good.

A Dose of Addiction and Faltered Faith

So, I’ve been wallowing in the addiction for quite some time, and being a catechism breaker that means Reconciliation time, but I’ve been hiding from that as well.

I’m jaded with my program and it’s 37-day rush to Step 3—Made a decision to turn our lives over to the care of God as we understood him—before a dump into the slower Step 4. I was also peeved my sponsor cut me loose for wanting to push through when I was slipping like crazy.

Him admitting he didn’t make 3 outreach calls a day despite that program rule fired up my Hypocrisy Detector as well. And guess who also ended up slipping a couple of months after that?

I’m not bitter, you’re bitter.

Thing is, the addiction thrives in my Bipolar/ADHD as much as that poor, wounded inner child who needs healing, where the triggers are so powerful. Being in a state of stress, tiredness, anger, and feeling alone doesn’t help matters either.

And no matter how earnest I pray, it wins on a sub-weekly basis.

I’m at a loss but not a total loss, because it’s time to go back to a sponsor and Step 4, my preliminary work done. As for prayer time? Gotta fight the inner atheist and lacking executive function in the mornings and evenings. And it’s time to make outreach calls.

I don’t know how it’s gonna go other than I’m gonna slip along the way. While that’ll mean the slip questions, it’s either do something about it and slip or do nothing and slip into oblivion. And having been through that too many times, I don’t want to fall back in.

Likewise with faith, I I’ve been in the doldrums since those early days going to Church 4 days a week and hanging with the church nannas doing the Lectio Divina for my formation in. Granted I was in mad keen in the comedown from a manic episode, but I loved that time.

But now’s as good a time as ever to rekindle things with Lent kicking off on the 18th. Might be a good time to hit up The Chosen, too, and there’s a Lenten conversation going at Church I’d like to hit up with the darling partner. Guess I’ll let you know how I get on.

A Dose of that Game I’m Playing

Ahh Morrowind, you 2002 beauty of sparse landscapes, tiny towns, a very short draw distance, a mass of hyperlinked dialogue, and a metric tonne of bugs, how I love you so.

Yes, I’ve done the stealthy archery in Skyrim countless times and loved every second of it, laughed at Oblivion’s potato heads and crazy ragdoll physics, and will do so again. But Morrowind holds a special place on my hard drive as my first Elder Scrolls game.

Atmospherically, it’s a mix of familiar and alien, from Western RPG castles and knights to ginormous mushroom towers and creatures from the cutting room floor, shacks and Tudor stone/wood inns and the sheer psychosis of Daedric ruins.

But as a game, it really grabbed me with the deep, tabletop RPG mechanics and customisation, the freedom to do whatever you want with your character, a factional reputation system where a rank-rise in one leads to dislike by another, and a main quest I can only call Jesusy.

It’s not without detractions. The graphics aren’t fine wine and are jarring some 24 years later. Modded (I have Rebirth ready to run on OpenMW when the GPU fan gets fixed), textures, characters, and resolutions are insanely better, but that can’t cover its age.

But story-wise, and in its countless lore and skill books, it shines bright for me, the sparse world driving me to dig deeper in. The varied architecture—including a manor district inside the shell of a giant crab and a town of bug-buildings.

And as the IMHO pinnacle of Bethesda writing, my love was assured.

I’ve just finished the base game’s main quest, which I will admit is a lot of legwork (100 Speed and Unarmoured FTW), and versus the focussed, personal approach to modern game storytelling, it’s very dated, and you couldn’t make this today.

This quest is longer than Skyrim’s main quest and pitiful civil war, and takes you further around the map. There are more factions and more to do, and they have they have a definite place in the game world. There’s a sense of accomplishment rather than just living a storyline.

And it taught me how to adventure off the map, that glorious side of Bethesda games that feels like the carrier of later titles, and had no place whatsoever in Starfield.

Yes, the game is breakable. Yes, you can metagame to the nth degree and create unstoppable characters with God-tier gear, spells, and potions that can stomp on monsters even without exploiting the exploits. Oh, and save often, the game could crash at any minute.

But as an experience, it’s far more intriguing than, “Save Tamriel from the world-ending demon,” or “Save Tamriel from the world-ending dragon (with added retcons),” specifically concerning The Elder Scrolls’ most fascinating mystery, and the end results of stealing a god’s power.

With unreliable narrators, conflicting accounts, historical ruptures, and with a little imagination to stretch the world to 5 times it size, it’s a wonderful beast that spits you out into its world with, “You’re on your own now,” with no quest markers and limited fast travel.

A Dose of Au Revoir

Yep, that part of the blog where I wrap the journey up, fire up the WIP, and get some words down on the page. So, whoever, whatever, and wherever, I hope it’s a good day for you, and don’t forget to check out that short story of mine up top.

Take care all,
T. M.