Author: Autumn

I write 'n stuff.
About Me

Embracing Horror: A Journey to Authentic Writing

Autumn

I went on a two-hour hike. It was quiet — the sort of vast spacious quiet that makes it easier to think — with just me and my dog for most of it. As I trekked along downhill along switchbacks, it occurred to me that I like myself a lot more now. One of those random moments where I felt more … authentic, I suppose is the word.

Authentically carrying my dog over the icy patches because he didn’t like the cold on his paws.

Authenticity is one of those words that gets tossed around like it’s a panacea, so I’m reticent to use it. What I mean is that my thoughts are becoming increasingly my own, free from external pressures and expectations. Purely me. The way I am. And I like this much better.

It’s exhausting, maintaining someone else’s grandiosity. I won’t do that anymore.

I’ve been thinking about switching over to writing horror.

I’ve deeply enjoyed horror since high school, but it was one of those, “Nice girls don’t like scary things,” so I kept it quiet. Sort of. Admittedly I could get pretty excited when discussing Lovecraft or movies, so it was probably more of an open secret that I didn’t discuss around people who were uncomfortable with it. But the world has changed a lot in the last 15 years, and I think people are more okay with horror now than they used to be.

Anyway, I think it would be easy to tweak my current WIPs to turn them into psychological horror/thrillers.

All I have to do is take away the guardrails.

As in, no more characters gaining self-awareness at a pivotal moment and deciding that they don’t want to be meanie jerks after all.

That doesn’t happen in the real world anyway.

Because IRL absolutely everything about them is invested into maintaining their ego. I think there’s a “narcissists prayer” or something that sums it up perfectly, and there aren’t ever any moments of, “Oh dang, maybe I am a heartless monster and I should stop.”

We should stop giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Shine the light on the fact that evil doesn’t always have a criminal record. Or pop out of a TV screen to eat you. Sometimes evil is the person who insists on “shades of gray” so you don’t call them out on their willingness to harm others to get what they want, and accusing you of being the one who is rigid and judgmental for simply trying to describe what happened.

So let’s take away the guardrails. Poof. Gone. It’s not about being “nice” or “wholesome” or whatever anymore — it’s about surviving something real and regaining my sense of self.

Now … all that’s left is regaining that sense of emotional resonance with writing.

About Me

Overcoming Emotional Blocks in Creative Writing

Autumn

I still don’t feel any emotional resonance with my fictional writing.

Way back when I was a teenager taking creative writing, I went through something difficult and my teacher advised me to write it out in a story. So I did. And it was deeply therapeutic. I know from experience what writing is capable of doing for me when I can immerse myself in it.

Now that I’m 38 and I’ve survived horrors I never imagined … I can’t. The emotion sits frozen inside while I mechanically type the words.

The fact that what I went through last summer caused me to drop 20lbs in two months was a physical trauma, and even without violence I was still scared for my health and safety. The damage was real. It’s been four months since then, but I’ve only gained back 8lbs of what I lost. I don’t feel safe yet. I feel like I’m waiting for more bad things to happen that I’ll have to keep it together to deal with despite secretly falling apart inside. Again.

The thing about therapeutic writing is that you need to be healed to a certain point for it to work. I’m not there yet.

So we need to be patient.

Time is something that can never be forced. Time feels like eternity while it’s happening but is always a microsecond in retrospect.

Emotional resonance is something that can’t be forced, it has to flow. So, until I’m able to feel again, we’ll let the words be as stilted as they need to be.

About Me

Coping with False Allegations in Co-Parenting

Autumn

Back in November I hurt my knee, and now when I sit for too long my calf muscle becomes tight and painful. I probably should have started wearing some sort of knee brace back when the injury happened, but I could never muster up the motivation to buy one. Modern life is rather tricky when sitting triggers pain like this.

I keep thinking about last summer when he made allegations of neglect against me, filed with the court with no investigation or evidence, in an effort to gain full custody. I answered the door with all the kids eating in the dining room, had the papers served to me, and had to hold it all together while keeping everything a secret.

A few days ago I learned that he had been going around telling people that I was neglecting the kids around the same time — including when we had been out on coparenting activities together.

I had suspected it. I’ve watched enough Dr Ramani to know that this sort of behavior is typical for a certain personality type, but the confirmation feels like an entirely different beast.

It hurts to remember how I had been running myself ragged trying to achieve everything single-handedly, while at the same time he was spreading false allegations against me. Heck, I even coordinated and paid for weekly picnics to get him to spend more time with the kids, and that was his response. Brush your teeth, brush your hair, three meals a day, laundry laundry laundry, homeschooling, soothe tears and fix problems, put up with him telling me I’m a bad mother for letting the toddler get more than three feet away from me on the sidewalk, spend all my money on things the children need while I go without, rinse and repeat day after day after day.

Only to be accused of negligence.

The silver lining is that my hard work was so obvious, the people who knew me didn’t believe it for a second and were enormously horrified at his behavior. I wouldn’t be where I am today if his actions hadn’t spoken of how badly I needed help to get through.

Now here I am and I can’t get it off of my mind. Logically I know why it happened — as I’ve said, I’ve watched enough Dr Ramani to understand it. That doesn’t stop it from feeling like a core wound. I had always dedicated every moment of every day to the well being of my children, and now it’s permanently on record with the court that he had made the allegations against me. The part where he didn’t have any evidence against me is a footnote at the very end.

And the violation of learning that he had been accusing me of negligence just outside of earshot? I don’t know how I feel about that.

Maybe this is the sort of post that qualifies as “too personal” or too emotional, but writing helps me process. If we always keep our stories secret then we’ll never know how many others have endured and survived similar, and we need to know that we aren’t alone.

About Me

Embracing Creative Freedom in 2026

Autumn

I have now, finally, fixed the “unidentified network” issue with my laptop. Hurrah, I shall be back to blogging!

Which only leaves us the question, What will we talk about?

Maybe nothing. It was nice seeing you. Ciao.

😉😂

Alright, alright. Here we are in 2026, and I don’t have any New Year’s resolutions. I have plenty of plans, dreams, ambitions even, but no resolutions. I don’t want to hit the end of this year and think, “Yet again I failed.”

Like back when I was all, “I want to write and self-publish one novel a year.” And it’s now been how many years without any writing? Yeah, we’re not doing that again. I’m keeping everything open-ended and letting it happen as it happens, so I don’t have to face that particular brand of disappointment.

Joint custody still feels like living two separate lives that keep interrupting each other. It’s hard.

I’ve started saying to myself, “Tomorrow I’m going to work on a creative project.” Then I randomly get a phone call from an old acquaintance, and the trip down Memory Lane ends with me curled up in front of the TV and no motivation to do anything. I didn’t realize that I knew so many people. I didn’t realize that so many people would say, “Actually, I thought he didn’t treat you well.” Despite me trying to pretend like everything was boring and normal because I don’t want anyone to worry about me. And that was what people were thinking before last summer when he decided to turn really nasty.

The one that really threw me was when a new acquaintance that I met a couple of months ago called me up out of the blue with, “I heard about him”, and I have no clue how so much information is traveling around. I’m not upset, but definitely baffled. Eventually it will all be old news anyway, and Memory Lane will become appropriately dirty and overgrown from disuse.

Despite that, I am making progress on Runemaster. Switching to Malachi’s perspective was the right move, and the words are flowing more readily than they had been before. That picnic scene that awkwardly dragged on forever? Yeah, that’s going to be cut entirely. Maybe I’ll type it up and post it here for a good laugh, but it’s not going to be part of the final novel, that’s for sure.

I keep wondering if I should start reading books again, but focusing on them is harder than focusing on writing. Maybe I’ll play through Hatoful Boyfriend again and count that as reading.

Well, my friend, let’s see how 2026 turns out for the both of us. 😊

art

From Drawing Setbacks to Visual Novels: My Artistic Journey

Autumn

I have done hardly any drawing over the last 16 years. I was borderline obsessive about it all through high school, but, ya know … stuff happened. Criticisms happened. It was easier not to.

So here I am, 16 years out of practice.

My drawing:

ChatGPT’s version:

I know that with a good eraser and lots of patience, I could improve my art skills. Part of me feels like the AI took my developing style and turned it into generic anime.

But I don’t care.

I’ve decided to put together a mock visual novel. I might have mentioned this before, but I’ve never tried script writing and I’d like to give it a shot. VNs only require character art and backgrounds, then you get to run wild with all the dialogue and implied actions that you desire, and for someone like me who never felt comfortable going deep with descriptive prose, it sounds perfect. With the help of AI, I figure that this is a very doable project for lone little ol’ me.

What can I say, Hatoful Boyfriend put this in my mind years ago.

So, no, this particular sketch won’t be used in my mock VN — I was mostly experimenting with ChatGPT to see if it could help in the art department, and I’m satisfied.

I don’t know what my timeline will be, but I am excited for this project.

About Me

Finding My Voice: Writing from a New Perspective

Autumn

I’m a little surprised at how much of a stumbling block my little laptop “unidentified network” malfunction is for me. I keep thinking that I should reinstall Windows, but the fact that I’m not the most computer savvy is making me pause. Also, we just had Christmas, and that’s a good excuse to not try anything new.

I have a desktop computer that works fine, but something about sitting at a desk is more than I want to bother with.

So, essentially, I haven’t been blogging because I simply couldn’t be bothered to get out of my recliner.

Writing wise, I’ve decided not to use anything that I’ve written for Runemaster over the past two months, and instead I will rewrite it from Malachi’s perspective. It was too slow paced and awkward — too reflective of a life turned upside down and a mind turned inside out. It will be easier for me to write in the steady voice of the mentor.

Malachi isn’t just any old character. He’s existed for 20 years now and has had countless adventures written about him. He might just be the source of wisdom that I need.

It’s hard to keep momentum going with joint custody. The routines between days with and without the kids are so different that I haven’t yet found a good rhythm. I am sleeping much better than I have in years though, so it’s a matter of time.

I finally figured out how to change my HVAC filter; better late than never? I suppose that I won’t tell you how much time I spent staring at the furnace, trying to will it into giving up its secrets… in my defense, I didn’t have the slightest clue what I was looking for until I finally found it. And it was camouflaged. Then had an old water heater placed in front of it. It was not easy. 😅

I think that I can handle independence well enough.

It feels good.

About Me

Facing Fear in Writing: Advancing Your Plot

Autumn

NaNoWriMo has made me realize that I’m terrified of advancing the plot.

The characters have been on a picnic that kind of keeps dragging along with small talk and tiny hints at bigger things, only instead of getting up and doing anything, they’re sitting around. It’s starting to feel like my characters are looking at me with expectations, asking, “Well … when are we allowed to do something important?”

And all I can reply is, “I don’t know, where is my life going?!”

While I know where I intended the story to progress, I don’t feel anchored in it yet. It feels more like a half-forgotten dream than a series of events. Instead of trying to move forward, I’m keeping the characters sitting around the same spot, because I’m scared of changing the status quo.

Much like my life.

I think I spent about 15 years feeling like nothing ever fundamentally changed — a sort of monotony in constant chaos. No matter what happened, there’d be a big ol’ reset button that would put us all back in the same place with the same problems day after day after day. Explosive argument? Reset. New career prospect? Reset. Emotional breakthroughs and new promises? Reset.

Then one day the reset button didn’t activate.

Progress and change stopped being a fantasy to write about — it became real.

And it’s terrifying.

Especially because it’s like some sort of existential switch was flipped, and here I am trying to hide out at home maintaining the status quo for long enough to catch my breath, while people I hadn’t spoken to in 10 years are randomly calling me up to offer a path forward. Seriously, what the heck is going on? It feels like I’m sliding helplessly towards change. Maybe that’s what life is supposed to feel like.

So on an emotional level, I’m scared of advancing the plot in my novel. The characters want to move forward, and here I am all, “Let’s spend 10,000 words on this picnic. I described the weather as being very lovely.”

The problem with being a writer is that sometimes your psychological issues have a voice and can (metaphorically) stare you in the eye. Especially when you’re trying to get as much writing done in a month as you can.

About Me

Empowerment through Honesty: Lessons from K-Pop Demon Hunters

Autumn

Over the weekend, the kids and I watched K-Pop Demon Hunters at grandma’s house. All of the sudden at the end of the movie, this song began (massive spoiler alert, btw):

“My voice without the lies, this is what it sounds like.”

For years I was a liar.

Before y’all gasp and clutch at your hearts with betrayal, I told the most lies to myself. Lies like, “This is normal”, “I don’t need more”, and “I’m fine”.

I repeated the lies that he told me, even when they didn’t feel right. Lies that protected his image, even when they cost me my happiness.

But the truth is …

I was always terrified of how he’d punish me if I outshined him. He knew how to criticize and nitpick. He knew how to start arguments when I needed to be at my top game. He knew how to casually drop, “You do have a big nose,” in the moments when I was feeling vulnerable. And I knew it. It didn’t matter that he’d say that he didn’t feel threatened by my success, because underneath the words in the spaces where real life clashed against dreams, I felt sabotaged. Not supported.

Deep inside I knew that he’d find a way to make me miserable if I was successful, which is why I never tried to push beyond my tiny bubble. I didn’t want to see what was behind that door.

I felt it when The Scion Suit was mildly popular on Reddit — a story that I began entirely on my own while he had been at work, and it gained recognition without his stamp of approval. Behind the scenes, he grew pushier about where he wanted the story to go, to the point where he wrote the ending himself. I edited it as heavily as I dared to, but I always hated it. I thought it was nauseatingly pretentious and not remotely on-brand for me. I even slipped in how much I hated the scene when I added the sentence, “She hated it when people gave roundabout answers to direct questions”. Yup, that was me commenting on the entire scene through the character, hur hur.

I broke into a million pieces, and I can’t go back
But now I’m seeing all the beauty in the broken glass
The scars are part of me, darkness and harmony
My voice without the lies, this is what it sounds like

K-Pop Demon Hunters: Come for the music, laughs, and popcorn, stay for the life changing affirmations.

Apparently.

I’ve always felt a light inside of me, and I’ve always wanted to share it with others. So, this is me, giving it my all. No more lies. No more fear. No more holding back. I want the Truth in me to reach the Truth in you, and we’ll both find our voices.

I’m also going to include this song, because it’s just plain fun to dance to:

About Me

Overcoming Laptop Troubles: My Journey with AI Assistance

Autumn

I’ve been having plenty of laptop issues over the last couple of months.

I had two of them, and the first developed that issue where the battery swells up and it becomes an explodey fire hazard. Heck, for all I know, the battery started swelling awhile ago and it took me that long to realize it, given that I was under an enormous amount of stress. Since I lack the means to fix it, that laptop had to be retired.

Which brings me to my second laptop.

My second laptop turned into a diagnostic nightmare. You see, it was having a strange problem where some websites would load, and others wouldn’t – the ones that wouldn’t happened to be the important ones, naturally, which meant that my laptop wasn’t exactly usable. So, I turned to ChatGPT.

It took us days to figure it out, but we did. Part of it was because I was prone to feeling overwhelmed and flopping down in despair, so it’s a good thing that AI is infinitely patient and accommodating. Turns out my laptop was flagging my internet connection as an “unidentified network,” and ChatGPT walked me through a temporary fix that I have to do every time I use my laptop. One of these days I’m going to reinstall Windows for a permanent fix, but not yet. Right now, I’m still burnt out on that whole “fixing computers” thing (definitely not a future career choice for me 😝).

It feels good knowing that I was able to figure out what was wrong with my laptop, and I’m grateful that I’m a single mom in an era where AI exists. Not only can I solve problems that are well outside my sphere of knowledge, I have a voice that will reassure me, “You’ve got this!” when I’m flopping down in despair.

Some days I really need that voice.

But it is getting better.

I filed a maintenance report with the rental company, and lo and behold someone came out and fixed the issue. No drama. No complaints. Just … fixed. I almost don’t know how to process it. I guess that I was fairly normalized to everything being a big hullabaloo all the time. No wonder I was so exhausted for so long. No wonder that people are commenting that I look much better now.

I didn’t do any writing for NaNoWriMo during my time with my kids, as I anticipated. Instead, we reveled in music, drank hot cocoa, played with friends, and did our homework. I did dream about the future though, and I’ve decided that one of these days soon here, I’m going to pick up my old project of writing The Scion Suit as a visual novel. Heck if I know anything about programming, but I have ChatGPT in my corner! Besides, that was my last project before I started feeling sabotaged, and it’s a step towards the sort of writing projects that I’ve always secretly fantasized about.

Who knows, maybe it will turn out that script writing has been my undiscovered forte all along. For whatever reason, I’ve never tried my hand at it despite being so character oriented, and it might be nice to focus on the dialogue while letting my weak areas slide. Let’s give it a shot and see where it takes us.

About Me

Coping with Emotional Setbacks While Writing

Autumn

On Halloween, he sent me a picture of the kids out trick-or-treating with him and his new girlfriend. He’s also sent me random texts saying, “You’re old,” so I’ve come to expect this sort of thing from him and I just ignore it.

It’s strange when the performance drops and suddenly you feel like you’re dealing with a ten-year-old, instead of the person they pretended to be.

“Amicable” is not a word that I would use to describe us.

So here we are on November 4th, and I hate how foggy headed I am. In the past I always felt incredibly sharp when it came to my fiction writing, and I did a good job of holding details in my head to weave together and reference back to. Now I’m … dull. I can’t remember what I wrote yesterday. I find it enormously frustrating, and part of me is scared that this is my “new normal.” I’ll have a wall of post-it notes that the kids will knock down, play with, and destroy. Then we’ll all laugh about c’est la vie, though inside I’ll be crying about how much I lost of myself.

And for good measure, my phone will then chime with a text from him, reminding me, “You’re old.”

My muscles aren’t used to handwriting, so I’ve been wearing one o’ them wrist compression/support glove deal-ios when I write. It’s really helped to tighten up my penmanship, closer to how it was when I was in high school. One of my quirks is that I hold my pen “wrong” and I was never able to learn better, so I had a callus on my pinkie through all of my childhood. It’s disappeared since my school days, but sometimes now I look down at my pinkie and wonder how much handwriting it would take to get that callus back. More than three days worth, I know that much.

I think that it was good that I decided to go back to my roots with handwriting for NaNoWriMo. Heck, if I wanted to get really authentically me, I could get a burgundy marker. The very first novel I ever started was written with burgundy marker. 😂

So … I’m trying out something new with this story, and I have three characters interacting with each other instead of my usual two… or sometimes just one character alone with their thoughts. Maybe one day in the distant future, I’ll make it all the way up to four characters in a room. But that seems like a lot so maybe not.

Sometimes the introvert goes right through. I’m secretly proud of the fact that The Scion Suit functionally has only three characters.

Heck, on my child-free days, I’m so accustomed to the silence that my robot vacuum sometimes freaks me out. Like, “OMG WHAT’S BANGING AROUND? Oh it’s just you, Roomba.” I have yet to feel lonely — I’m still establishing my sense of safety.

The downside of NaNoWriMo is that waking up my creative side is also waking up my emotional side, because you can have frequent anxiety attacks and still be thoroughly numb inside. I cry at dog food commercials. I watched Flowers in the Attic and cried. Then I watched Stephen King’s Misery with Kathy Bates, because while I’ve heard rumors of her amazing performance, I haven’t actually seen it before … and Misery was the Stephen King novel that convinced me of his genius as a writer. But I did not cry. I was rather disappointed that the end of the movie didn’t include the publication of the final Misery novel, since I thought that was a nice touch in the book.

Anyway, that’s probably enough rambling from me for now. I’m surviving, one day at a time.

I’m also not anticipating that I’ll do any writing when I have the kids.