Jonathan D. Allen's Blog

Hey there, everybody, glad to have you back. Apologies for last week, it was a rough one, and I was ready to collapse from exhaustion by the end of it. Literally – Friday afternoon I was having trouble holding it together and at one point just stared at my desk with my head in my hands, my head pounding, gut churning. Blame poor sleep. And this won’t be as long as my usual entry, either, as this week has been just as crazy and when I get home I just want to veg out, BUT I wasn’t about to leav...

Alas, work is kicking my ass, but trust that I’m still out here and will be back next week.

PS, wrote 65,000+ words in November, kiss my ass NaNo!

Welcome back, dear reader, and first I’d like to say Happy Thanksgiving to those of you in the US who celebrate it. I have mixed feelings about the origins of the holiday, especially where it relates to colonial ties and what it represents for indigenous people, but I do like the idea of a time of year where people are prompted to reflect on what they have and understand that happiness is sometimes about what you have in hand, and not in the endless pursuit of something “more”. Gratitude is s...

Welcome back and whew, let me tell you. This week has been a practice in dreams meeting reality. Let me get the personal out of the way first: the weather has sucked, our cat may be sick, work is absolutely ball-bustingly busy, and the culture shock of moving halfway across the country has set in. That’s not even getting into the bug that’s been going around the office, which laid me low at the end of last week and ensured that I didn’t get back into In the Pines until Monday. What I’m saying...

Hey there, welcome back. It’s Thursday again and you know what that means. That’s right. Prepare yourself for thrills, chills, and literary spills as I try to figure out what the hell I’m doing. It’s all a process, though, right? Right.

These days I have my hands on my hips and am shaking my head at the damn weather. Summer seemed to last well through to the middle of October (with a few reprieves here and there), then we got a week of Autumn, and now it’s straight on to winter, with sub-free...

Hey hey, it’s Thursday again, and you know what that means – blog time. Still hanging in there, still writing, still enjoying the hell out of it, though I find myself in a bit of a “situation” with In the Pines. This is the same kind of situation that has plagued me in the past, but as I said in the past, at least this time it’s on the outline level and the fix is measured in days rather than months.

Here’s the situation: as planned, I picked up the outline again on Friday, with grand plans t...

Apologies for not hitting that Friday post last week, but work continues to be hectic and I’m fortune to get even one blog entry out the door. So hey, consider this a victory alone.

Considering life’s pace, I’m actually quite happy with how much writing I’ve done over the last week. Believe it or not, I’m on track to at least equal my productivity from last week and have made huge strides of progress where Elkmont is concerned. I’m about halfway through the “first act”, which entails the arri...

Welcome back! I’m glad to report that you’re catching me on the upswing, which is a rare and beautiful thing this time of year (I’m usually starting that downward slide into the SAD doldrums right around now). Thankfully, I’m on the mend physically, mentally, and emotionally. The return to work has done me a world of good. I’d love to be that person who works better from home full-time, but I’ve learned that such excursions should be limited for my own mental well-being. For whatever reason,...

Time for the Friday housecleaning entry. I had originally intended these entries to be photo-only, but I think this is also a good place to tackle whatever happens to be on my mind, clear the cobwebs and reset for the weekend. I’m going to try to avoid talking about writing in these entries, but we’ll see if I can stick to that.

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First of all, I’ll again be participating in Extra Life this year. For those who don’t know, Extra Life is an annual video game marathon/fundraiser that helps out th...

Not like I intended to leave in the first place, but being in pain will do funny things to your productivity. And make no mistake, I was in pain. A lot of it. I’ll spare the delicate nature of what went down, but suffice it to say that I had a lot of pain in a very sensitive place, and it ended up necessitating surgery. Minimally invasive, outpatient surgery, but surgery nonetheless – itself very painful, painful enough to cut through the general anesthesia. So you have two weeks before surge...