Reading and Writing Update
May. 25th, 2025 04:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nyykiWell, it seems my plan is going to leave me searching for diversion when I’m eating, relaxing to go to sleep, etc., now that I’m avoiding any romance novels other than those written by people I’m familiar with. My download yesterday consisted of an issue of The Week, a quarterly compilation magazine dealing with art music, and one of the extreme viewpoint magazines I check out so my viewpoint doesn’t get to focused on what I know so far. Other than those three nonfiction magazines, I got one novel by a romance author that I’m familiar with. I’ve got season 2 of Andor on my player too, video described of course, but that’s the gamut.
I don’t connect with most westerns – Craig Johnson seems to be the sole writer, and the Longmire novels are modern western of sorts. I don’t listen to war novels, and spy & Espionage is limited in appeal, like mysteries. And this is not me fishing for recommendations, because as a blind person my options for reading materials is way limited. But there is going to be some readjustment of my strategy.
I’ve reached page 250 in the novel I’m working on, and a lot has happened so far. I know what one of the major points of the novel will be, but I’m deciding if it’s a big enough finish for the trilogy. I’ve also got some ideas for the next Inspector Peep story, but the crux of it is eluding me – I need something from a folk tale, fairy tale, nursery rhyme, or something adjacent to those that’s lost. I’ve got an option, but I think it’s a bit weak. Note that I’ve also included elements from fables, movies, and books in this setting. I won’t reject things from operas either. Caveat – please don’t get offended if I don’t use what you suggest, my brain is wired so suggestions often spur new idea directions and that will be what I use; contributions are very welcome because of what they do more than what they are. Still, I appreciate every one I get
The rest of my life is going okay as long as I don’t think about the things that don’t work in my life. No matter if someone considers what I’m giving up or has been taken from me to fall within the category of needs, I find no value in obsessing on something not available to me. So I’m moving forward in a different way from how a lot of people would, but I’m still moving forward some.
I found a new strategy – I was tempted to do a passive-aggressive thing to drive a point home to my roommate, that a pair of boxes she put in the way were in the way enough to annoy me. I was going to set them in front of the back door, so when she went outside, which she does a whole lot, she’d see them and maybe get the message. I wasn’t comfortable with that, both because I don’t like being that way and also because the point might get missed. So instead, I got up front about it and told her what I was planning on doing, and why I was considering that course of action, thereby removing the passiveness from the action. She moved the boxes, and not “later” like she does a lot of stuff, but right then and within fifteen minutes the boxes were in her car to be taken to Half Price Books. That worked a lot better than I thought it would. I also got into a conversation with her about her broken memory, stemming from her attention span that’s slightly greater than the diameter of a gnat’s anus, and how that seems to me to be a manifestation of neurodivergence of the ADHD kind. I was able to deliver it with enough finesse that she didn’t batmobile up. The key to all of this, at least for me, is to make sure that I include my part of things – It’s my reaction to things she does that make me get tweaked – I can’t speak to if it’s universal to those behaviors because I don’t have either the time or inclination to do that level of analysis, not to mention the required funding. This is starting to feel like the interactional style I had whenlanalucy was my roommate, where we had free and open communication and owned our part in everything, also knowing when to step away and explain that the emotional one of us (it varied, of course) needed processing time to approach the issue in a rational way. I miss that so much, and getting any of it back is very much welcome. I thought it was either impossible or at the least improbable… and it only took a bit under six years for this to work out. I’ll of course keep aware to find out if this improvement is persistent or if it’s an aberration.
I don’t connect with most westerns – Craig Johnson seems to be the sole writer, and the Longmire novels are modern western of sorts. I don’t listen to war novels, and spy & Espionage is limited in appeal, like mysteries. And this is not me fishing for recommendations, because as a blind person my options for reading materials is way limited. But there is going to be some readjustment of my strategy.
I’ve reached page 250 in the novel I’m working on, and a lot has happened so far. I know what one of the major points of the novel will be, but I’m deciding if it’s a big enough finish for the trilogy. I’ve also got some ideas for the next Inspector Peep story, but the crux of it is eluding me – I need something from a folk tale, fairy tale, nursery rhyme, or something adjacent to those that’s lost. I’ve got an option, but I think it’s a bit weak. Note that I’ve also included elements from fables, movies, and books in this setting. I won’t reject things from operas either. Caveat – please don’t get offended if I don’t use what you suggest, my brain is wired so suggestions often spur new idea directions and that will be what I use; contributions are very welcome because of what they do more than what they are. Still, I appreciate every one I get
The rest of my life is going okay as long as I don’t think about the things that don’t work in my life. No matter if someone considers what I’m giving up or has been taken from me to fall within the category of needs, I find no value in obsessing on something not available to me. So I’m moving forward in a different way from how a lot of people would, but I’m still moving forward some.
I found a new strategy – I was tempted to do a passive-aggressive thing to drive a point home to my roommate, that a pair of boxes she put in the way were in the way enough to annoy me. I was going to set them in front of the back door, so when she went outside, which she does a whole lot, she’d see them and maybe get the message. I wasn’t comfortable with that, both because I don’t like being that way and also because the point might get missed. So instead, I got up front about it and told her what I was planning on doing, and why I was considering that course of action, thereby removing the passiveness from the action. She moved the boxes, and not “later” like she does a lot of stuff, but right then and within fifteen minutes the boxes were in her car to be taken to Half Price Books. That worked a lot better than I thought it would. I also got into a conversation with her about her broken memory, stemming from her attention span that’s slightly greater than the diameter of a gnat’s anus, and how that seems to me to be a manifestation of neurodivergence of the ADHD kind. I was able to deliver it with enough finesse that she didn’t batmobile up. The key to all of this, at least for me, is to make sure that I include my part of things – It’s my reaction to things she does that make me get tweaked – I can’t speak to if it’s universal to those behaviors because I don’t have either the time or inclination to do that level of analysis, not to mention the required funding. This is starting to feel like the interactional style I had when
lanalucy was my roommate, where we had free and open communication and owned our part in everything, also knowing when to step away and explain that the emotional one of us (it varied, of course) needed processing time to approach the issue in a rational way. I miss that so much, and getting any of it back is very much welcome. I thought it was either impossible or at the least improbable… and it only took a bit under six years for this to work out. I’ll of course keep aware to find out if this improvement is persistent or if it’s an aberration.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-26 01:47 am (UTC)Should Peep find the Handless Maiden’s silver hands? Or an arm for the boy with the swan’s wing?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_Without_Hands
no subject
Date: 2025-05-26 02:15 am (UTC)It took me a bit to process through the last thing you mentioned -- I'm not familiar with those two tales. My fallback at this point is Peter's shadow, but I'd rather use that as something she encounters.
Regarding the roommate, I'm pretty much assuming nothing, and keeping the bar set way low.