I Have No Idea What I’m Doing

I mean that wholeheartedly, regarding pretty much every aspect of my life right now. I have absolutely no clue what I’m doing.

At the end of 2019, I knew exactly what I was doing. To see how much I knew exactly what I was doing, you just have to go back to the first blog post on my website. Oh, how naive I was.

My plans were great, except it turned out I had been lying to myself about exactly how unwell I was by the end of the ranch season. I knew I was in rough shape — had spent the last few months at the ranch begging my failing body to hold out that little bit longer — but once home I slowed down enough for all the parts of me that had been hanging on by a thread to finally give up the ghost. 

But I had hope. I had plans. I was going to get better, build back like I always did when my ME/CFS relapsed, and I was going to live my life.

And then, Covid.

Suddenly, the blank slate I had been excited about filling was all I had. There was nothing to carry with me from my pre-pandemic life, because my pre-pandemic life had been in America, and all the parts of it that remained in the UK had been on hold for far too long to just pick back up from within my house.

While there was no official guidance on people with ME/CFS regarding covid, I and many others knew that we weren’t willing to risk our already struggling immune systems with this new illness. A new term became part of my vocabulary; shielding.

I was housebound again. Not for the first time in my life, likely not the last. But it was the first time I have been housebound not because I can’t physically leave, but because what potentially awaits me isn’t safe.

Within 6 months, I had gone from a life spent almost entirely outdoors, meeting new people every week and far too busy to check the news regularly, to a life shut inside with just my parents for company and little else to do but watch the world panic online.

Then my body decided oh-so-kindly to occupy my focus by having a pretty rough adverse reaction to some new anxiety medication, and really that set the theme for my pandemic experience. I already knew that I had been overtaxing my system by working at the ranch, and I was dealing with consequences from that. But it seemed once the knowledge set in that I wasn’t going to be going anywhere for a while — and a big heaping dose of stress flooded my system — every part of my body that had been a mild annoyance decided to become a full-on Problem. 

Great time to need to see doctors about a bunch of different non-urgent issues, a pandemic. Super great.

So, slowly, the dream of what my life would become now I was permanently in the UK crumbled before my eyes. Even if it had been safe to go and do all the things I had hoped, I was nowhere near well enough. But with nothing upcoming to motivate me to keep on top of both my mental and physical health, I… didn’t. 

I stopped replying to messages. I made excuses to stop walking the dog with mum, even on the days I felt well enough to do so. I told myself that none of my ‘future goals’ were possible until we moved house, which we were (and still are) absolutely nowhere closer to doing so. I delayed doctor’s appointments because the idea of going into the outside world — worse, going to a medical facility — during a pandemic was too terrifying to contemplate until I absolutely had to. 

I was never the worst I’d ever been health-wise. But I was almost there. The last time I’d been as bad as this was after my GCSEs, and I reverted back to the exhausted, depressed, constantly-in-pain sixteen year-old I had been then.

That is to say, I wrote a lot of fanfiction.

I didn’t have the brain capacity to work on any of my ideas for actual books, not if I wanted to do them justice. And I had enough completed manuscripts to go on submission as it was. So I didn’t need to write a new book, and I didn’t really have the mental capacity to write a new book. But fanfiction was easy. Fanfiction had no expectations. And most importantly, fanfiction gave me something to do that didn’t matter. 

It’s kind of funny, honestly, how the peaks and troughs in my health could probably be charted almost exactly inversely against my AO3 wordcount. When my brain and body are failing me, fanfiction is something I can do that has the benefits of feeling productive without the negatives of having other peoples’ expectations weighing on me. I don’t have to write thinking will this sell, will anyone like it, is the wordcount too big. I don’t care if no one else likes my fanfiction. It’s great if they do — and the instant gratification of comments and kudos after a chapter update has SUSTAINED me in these trying times — but I’m not writing for anyone but myself.

And, as I slowly came to realise, writing and posting fanfiction made me feel like I was actually in control of something. 

In writing fanfiction I didn’t need to consider what was marketable or too much or too little. I didn’t need to get anyone else’s permission to share it with the world. I didn’t need to wait for years before it could reach anyone else’s eyes. And during a time when scaling a flight of stairs required a nap and I couldn’t stomach solid food, that kind of freedom was a lifeline. 

So that got me thinking.

I keep my fanfiction and my professional writing separate very intentionally. If you are one of the people in my life who is aware of both my books and my AO3 username, please know that we have a sacred bond and you are trusted with a great secret. 

That being said, as great and necessary fanfiction is to my mental health at times, I kind-of wanted something… different. I wanted something I could share with the people who knew my books — most of whom probably think I’ve dropped off the face of the earth by now — and I wanted to try and prove to myself that I could get that kind of feeling of freedom and control with characters and settings I had created.

I also wanted to prove to myself that I could write short things, because that, historically, has not been my strong suit. I am the person who sets out to write a 15k oneshot and suddenly has 300k and rising. 

And that’s where we get to the point of this entire blog post.

*Drum roll please*

I started a Patreon!

Yup, I have become That Person.

I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know when I will feel safe going outside. I don’t know when I will move house, or when my next book will sell, or whether my stomach will ever fully stop hurting when I eat. But I know that writing is one of the few things that keeps me sane, and I know that sharing that writing makes me happy. I also know that We Live In A Society and money is a thing required to exist in that society.

So, in-between the fanfiction, I started writing some short stories under a collection I like to call ‘The Ordinary Lives of Extraordinary Creatures’. A kind of fantasy-contemporary vibe, in a world where creatures of myth and magic coexist peacefully with humans. Stories in which the world isn’t ending, but maybe sometimes it feels like it is. 

And I had so much fun writing them.

Which led me to the idea of Patreon, of having a little community of people who support my work that I can share these stories with, and maybe in-between share some things that aren’t stories. A place where I am in complete control of the writing I get to share. 

If you click here, it will take you to a dropbox link to download a short story; it’s about a selkie, Connor, who wakes up one morning with the worst hangover of his life and absolutely no memory of the night before — and his sealskin nowhere to be found. 

It’s totally free, and it’s a pretty good example of the type of stories I will be sharing monthly on my Patreon. If you enjoy it, please consider supporting me to get access to future stories, and sharing it with anyone else you think may enjoy it. You can find my Patreon by clicking here.

I want to be excited about sharing my work with people again. Publishing is slow, and I have ADHD; I’m not built for delayed gratification. And I need to stop accidentally getting sucked into 400k+ fanfiction projects. So this feels like a good way to stretch my writing muscles and remind my brain that there are good things in the world, in my world. A way to reconnect with readers and find new ones. And, most importantly, to give myself something I can control.

I hope you’re as excited about this new part of my writing journey as I am. I hope you love my silly little stories. And I hope this is a better year, for all of us.

Also here is a picture of my dog, as a reminder that there are some good things about being at home all the time. Look at that lil face <3