Technical Difficulties and the Meaning of Christmas

Well, to start with I put up the latest chapter of Blade's Edge today, or I tried to, but it's not working on the website. However, if you have downloaded the free mobile app for your iPhone or Android smart phone, you can still read Chapter 6. For some reason it's working through the mobile app, but not through website. I have sent multiple heads up to the JukePop Serials website folks and hopefully they will be able to fix the situation soon. I will update here and on social media as soon as I have any updates on its functioning. In the meantime, if you have a smart phone, you can still read and +vote the story as you normally would with the jukepop app! :-)

In the meantime, I'm starting to feel like the manuscript I chose to rewrite for this course really is beyond salvage. We'll see how I feel about it after lesson 2, but after that first read through there is so little that I want to keep, and there are so many giant holes, that I am concerned that there's nothing I will be able to do to salvage the story except throw it all out and start a new one. At any rate, I can still use it to learn a lot from this course, so I will keep plugging away at it, but my hopes are not as high as they once were.

I didn't really plan to talk about the meaning of Christmas in this post, it just struck me as something funny to put into a blog title. As an atheist Christmas doesn't have the kind of meaning attached to it for me that it does for others, but I consider the winter holidays an important time of year. For me they represent time to spend with loved ones, and a time for reflection. I often spend the winter holidays thinking about where I hope to take my life in the coming year, not in terms of new years resolutions, or other fleeting fads, but in terms of a long term outlook for my own contentment and sense of self.

This year I have been thinking about writing a lot in particular, of course, that's always true as November wraps up and December kicks in, and here I sit with another first draft of a novel... but this year it feel more permanent. Like I'm moving more solidly in that direction than I ever have before. Like it's a commitment I'm actually making to myself, instead of something I mention once or twice to my close friends but then don't actually do anything about. The more Novembers I spend focused on writing, the more time I spend writing the rest of the year, and the more I do that the more I realize it's really what I'm meant to be doing.

Not sure how I got to that from the meaning of Christmas, but oh well. How's that for late night blog rambling? I hope that this post finds all of you doing well, and I hope that all of you get a chance to spend time with loved ones this holiday season, and that it brings, happiness, peace, and clarity to all who seek it.