Some of you may already know, but for those of you who don't, the changing seasons really mess with me body wise, and issues manifest in a variety of ways. All of which results in me being unable to write until the pain improves, or subsides. This year unlike those before, I have many options available to me.

Currently, I am writing this with the help of my Dragon speech to text program, because of the pain I've been experiencing in my shoulders, arms and hands, but I'm tired of waiting for things to be perfect. If I waited for everything to be perfect, I'd never get anything done. As a way to warm up to using my Dragon program again, I've decided to practice on an FA journal, and catch up on my thank you notes to all my watchers.

Using my Dragon program is a little tricky, because you have to think of the sentence you intend to say before you actually say it. When I type, I usually type the words as they come to me, but in order for the program to understand and spell words correctly, or even take words in context, I have to use full sentences or the program gets confused. It also has a setting that puts in all the grammar correctly, but that also requires that you know exactly what you're saying before you say it, and I'm still not there yet.

Overall it's a really useful program, once you've gotten used to it – and this time around it's a lot easier to use, probably because the program is used to my voice and accent by now – which I didn't realize was so difficult to understand (apparently Southern Californian and Coloradan don't make an easy accent mix for computers to grasp). The other thing that's helpful, is that the room I'm using isn't really tiny, nor does it act as a resonance chamber like my last room – so that's a plus. It's also become really handy since my mouse is kind of dying and the click doesn't actually click very well – but Dragon has a solution for that, so no more unnecessary stretching or reaching whenever I need to use the left click button.

During this downtime I haven't just been sitting around (if I don't do something creative I start go insane), I've mainly been doing mental gymnastics to keep all of my thoughts in order, and not forget anything since I can't write anything down. Over the weeks, I've been able to get to know the characters in my latest story a lot better than I probably would have otherwise. It's been really tricky only working on the things I can memorize. I can't really work on dialogue, because that's the easiest for me to forget. When I write dialogue, I'm all in the moment and I have to write it as fast as I can before the moment is gone. Mostly, I've been focusing on visualizing the environment and the characters, trying to see them as best as I can so I can describe them later on.

I am still planning on continuing the Bestiary project, I just really need to work on something that's a little happier for a while. There're lots of other stories in the encyclopedia that I'd like to write, but the OCD in me just won't let me move on until I finished the last one. I never abandoned projects, that's just not my style. Sometimes it takes me a little longer to complete a project, but it's never abandoned.

A big thanks to all my new watchers, readers, and commenters, it's so exciting to have you here and I hope I can continue to bring you stories that you'll want to read.

TTFN,
Tyvara