Insert creative title here.

Some days I feel incredibly creative and ready to take on the world (the writing one anyway) with hundreds of new ideas for my in-progress works, new things I want to try, and things that I had wanted to do but finally... finally hit that 'aha' moment that lets me move forward.

Needless to say I haven't had many of those days lately. When I worked part time I used to be able to sit down and churn out five to ten thousand words in a sitting without getting distracted - for nearly a year I was able to sit and type while at work. Yes, we were that slow. (retail)

Working full time (some days I just call it 'getting old') throws a wrench in a lot of things. I've got the skills to pay the bills, but damn. I don't know how many of you out there who look at my stuff also work full time jobs and know how much sometimes you just need to literally come home and decompress for thirty minutes to an hour because your mind and body are just totally blown.

Some would say get another job, but the one I got is close enough to home, pays well, and I actually like the people I work with. The chances of me finding another job like that? Potential is there, but it's not all that great. Not enough to make it worth upsetting the status quo anyway. As everyone may or may not have read, I've been running ragged at work lately when I thought things would be completely different, but there is new light on the horizon starting May 12th... I get more help. So that's something to look forward to.


Now, onto other matters. I don't really get nearly as much time to sit and digest everything I've put together and everything I'd still like to do nearly as much as I'd prefer, but I tend to do little things here and there when I find free moments. And that's literally all they are. Moments. The days of 5-10k word days are mostly gone, now it's closer to 500 to 2k words, sadly. Yes they all add up over time, but it still takes a lot longer.

Since my last post I've had a moment to go through my folder and start really organizing things. I've been 'naughty' in that I've mostly just jotted things down here and there without any major over-arching type of organization - the only exception to that is the story that I've finished and the ones I still have open.

I'll share some things, but for the most part I really want to keep stuff under wraps. (Sorry!) I say this because I have a habit of not liking something or seeing how I can continue a possible plotline. I ran into this problem relatively early with Whirlpool Country. As a young writer then... wow, feels like so long ago... I only had a very basic outline of where I'd like to go and just started writing. And writing. Then I started taking tangents and going all over the place, completely ignoring the outline after a while. I tried to get back to it, but it was no use, and now I'm stuck. I could keep going with it, but I've actually started jotting new ideas down while pulling things out of the story that I really liked about it. Whirlpool Country was my attempt at a 'mature' Naruto, or a quickly maturing one, which got both passing and failing grades. So I'm probably going to close the one that I've got there, but part of what I've been doing has been making notes for a rewrite of that story. I'm not going to say much else other than yes, Kushina will be in it (I really like writing her) but Rin probably won't.

Experiments in Empathy will be the first thing I post when I return to posting stuff (soon). A fight scene in the next chapter is still giving me a hard time, but I think I've got it. Fight scenes are the bane of my existence, which I will go over in more detail in another post.

Fire Shadow... I have a love/hate relationship of sorts with this story. I've got roughly half of the next chapter written, and then snippets for what is likely the next five or six chapters. My hardest thing to do has been to link them all together, because it's what I consider major plot points. My biggest problem is a damn lack of time to just sit and stare at it to figure it out. It doesn't help that I'm not nearly as interested in Fairy Tail as I used to be (the time jump sort of killed interest for me, I'm trying to get back into it) but I'm determined not to leave it hanging.

The thing I've been working on the most is probably a new story/challenge that I picked up from pokemaster12, as I mentioned before. I was conflicted about certain parts, but now that I've actually started writing content for it when I have the time, it's flowing rather well. For now, anyway. (Naruto and Rosario+Vampire).

Rewritten B-Side hasn't been getting as much attention as I'd like, but the sort of pilot chapter with Minato as the focus is done. Next one planned was Kagami.

On top of all this I've still been dilly-dallying over writing a Harry Potter fic that has him paired up with Daphne. The only issue I have is trying to write a Daphne with a purpose that isn't a carbon copy of all the other Daphne's I've read. *facepalm*


... I think that's enough of an update for now. Back to trying to write some more...

-PJ