For the past several months I have been struggling as a writer.

There, I’ve said it.

I always TRY to stay positive and play through the pain (so to speak), but I’ve finally had to admit to myself that I’ve been less effective lately than I would like. There is a very good reason for this.

In March, the company I worked for was purchased. We had been hearing rumours about the purchase for months and it was something that, on paper at least, looked like a good thing for all of us. The reality was slightly less than many of us hoped. I went from being a full-time permanent employee to a full-time term employee with an end date of June 30th.

Since being employed and earning a living are important, this change of state weighed heavily on my mind. In fact, it weighed so heavily that everything else kind of got pushed out, including my writing projects.

I have come to terms with my new reality, but it stills causes me a great deal of anxiety. That means some days I can write and other days I cannot. The good news in this is, I now have room in my head for the writer part of my psyche. Unfortunately, the writer-piece can also be taken up by guilt for not having done more writing. This guilt, while silly, sometimes keeps me from writing further (too busy feeling sorry for myself, I suppose).

It’s a pretty vicious circle if you ask me.

So, I’m feeling guilty that I haven’t finished writing the final chapter of Boyscouts of the Apocalypse. I can confirm that it is almost done however and I managed to come even closer on the weekend. The schedule is pretty shot, but I promise it will be done and available soon. I’m also disappointed that I have not finished Mik Murdoch and the Power Within yet either. Don’t worry, it is half finished and will be done by the end of the summer one way or the other.

Until those two projects are done, I won’t be picking anything new up, especially since I am busy trying to promote A Method to the Madness: A Guide to the Superevil which is now available for purchase (thanks to Amazon jumping the gun).

I guess my point to this little post is, sorry some of the updates to projects have been delayed. I am working on them all and they will be complete…eventually.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Tags: a method to the madness: a guide to the super evil, boyscouts of the apocalypse, delay, irreverent muse, Michell Plested, Mik Murdoch and the Power Within

I just had an OMG moment while writing book 2 of Mik Murdoch, currently titled, Mik Murdoch and the Power Within. I have been moving along quite nicely in the writing when I realized something. I had named one of my new, main female protagonists the same as one of my baddies from the first book.

That would never do! I mean, it is theoretically possible that two people will have the same name (obviously) but, with all the names in the world, should I be naming two characters the same?

Considering that one is a protagonist and the other an antagonist, I would say not. It’s much too confusing for one thing.

So I went back to the drawing board and my character now has a brand-new name.

Search and replace is a wonderful function.

But it reminded me of a faux pas I made in the first book. I discovered I had given Mik’s mother two totally different names when I was going through the proof copy of the book. Not quite the same problem but similar in nature. Simply put, I lost track of my character’s important information.

Fortunately, I am using a tool that allows me to quickly search, replace and even keep notes about things like characters, plot, settings and so on. That tool, in this case is Scrivener.

Now, before you accuse me of trying to write a commercial for Scrivener, I realize that there are other tools out there that writers use to achieve the same results as I get. You can use Wiki’s, dedicated documents and so on. I happen to use Scrivener because it allows me to put all the details and notes I want into the file without affecting the writing in any way.

So, I immediately created a section to document my characters. I’m not sure why I didn’t do this sooner. I’ve done exactly the same thing in Boyscouts of the Apocalypse. It shouldn’t have been such a discovery. When I went through the exercise, I found nine fairly major characters to put into the notes. That wasn’t even counting characters that were indirectly referenced.

That may not sound like much, but, if you had asked me minutes earlier the names of the characters in this book, I would only have given you about half of those (maybe).

Still, it is something I have seen before and I now have a way to deal with it properly. I can even take that information forward to the next book to prevent such duplication in the future. And, maybe I can use it to build a Wiki for my readers to refer to later too. Call it supplemental or additional features.

Whatever you call it, it is useful and makes my job as a writer easier.

Tags: boy superhero, boyscouts of the apocalypse, characters, keeping track of characters, Michell Plested, mik murdoch, scrivener, wiki