That story I had in mind as Les for the Halloween contest just didn’t want to come together.

Most likely, it’s because I’ve hit another motivation wall.  Finding it difficult to open up WordPerfect again.  I’ve been looking for a distraction to keep me occupied for a while, but with limited success.  Many times in the past, that’s been all that got me through one of these slumps.

I do have an idea or two and quite a few stories in progress, though.  I’m going to fiddle with those a little today and see if that can spark me.  Sometimes I do just come out of these slumps by simply opening WordPerfect and getting some words on paper.

No way I have time to finish “The Man I Used to Be” for this year.  Guess I’ll file it away in the half-baked folder with “Within Steven” – another dark Halloween story I’ve fiddled with in a couple of previous years.

Going through another rough patch with long hours at work.  It’s calmed a little, and I got some sleep this weekend, so I’ve been getting back to the keyboard.

I’m working on a story for the Summer Lovin’ contest at Lit, but I don’t really want to go into much more detail than that for now.  I’ve had way too many contest stories peter out on me lately after I gave details about them.

That being said, I’m feeling pretty good about this one so far.

Just thought I’d drop an update here.  I quite often will put a few words on the forum shoutbox even when I’m silent pretty much everywhere else, so you might take a peek there if I go quiet.

I’ve been a little busy polishing off my Nude Day stories as RR and answering feedback from Lowborn.  Loving the reaction to it.  Thanks to everyone who voted and commented!

Went in and backspaced a fairly large scene in a LesLumens story I’ve been working on – “Jackin’ Jill”  It was just too complicated, and outside my realm of experience.  I’m going to replace it with something simpler that I’m familiar with.  Think it will probably get that one moving again.  I’d really like to have it finished and start posting it in August sometime.  This is yet another story that’s been nagging at me for a while, much the way Lowborn was.

Getting a few things off my plate may help me clear my head and get this chapter of SOTM rolling.  It’s a turning point in the story, and I’m probably a little over-critical of what I write when I hit one of those points.  I agonize over them until they’re perfect.  Once I get past this, there’s a lot of action coming up, and that’s just plain easier to write than these big plot points.  Could help me crank out a few chapters.

Just thought I’d drop a line since it’s been a few days since I posted anything.

I went to do something that should have been simple tonight.  I was going to add the chapter image for Lowborn Ch. 01 to the “My Work Extras” page.  Should have been simple.  Drop in a couple of lines of code and done.

Not to be.

After wondering why it kept coming up with errors and staring at the two new lines forever, I decided to check my single quotes.

When I did this page, I had to go through and replace every apostrophe with the html special character, in order to avoid conflicting with the code markup.  It took frikkin’ forever, but the code finally saved.

Something in the last update of the software had gone through and replaced all those special characters with single quotes again!  AAARGH!

So, I went through and replaced them with curly single quotes this time.  Fortunately, it worked.

From the user side, the page was working fine.  It was only when I tried to save those two new lines that the software picked up on the error it had created.

I had to do this on other pages, so I’m probably going to have to go through and check every bloody one of them.

Anyway, after that fiasco, I put the two lines of code in, and the chapter image is finally on the page, awaiting the release of Ch. 01 on Lit.

As to everything else, I’m getting a little writing done, and Lowborn continues to move through the editing queue.  Eight is in Roust’s hands now.

Just had to vent :p