It’s what time of year again, a time I call “Brain Hurricane Season”.
What is Brain Hurricane Season?
Brain hurricane season happens approximately twice a year for three weeks and inundates me with new story ideas that I have to plan out; but they come so fast I often have to pause current projects and oftentimes I never get to write all the stories I dream up!
The catalyst for this brain hurricane season was an idea I had for Marvel, thanks to discussion Henry’s friends had about Iron Man. Can he be saved or not? Is there hope? I did some research but not much, only about four hours and I have got side-tracked by other things. But still, interesting stuff nonetheless. I need to get watching the last two movies though to fully understand what the kids are on about.
Anyway, the kids moved on and now they’re talking about three or four other Marvel movies, such as hearing rumours that Tom Hardy is giving up Venom, is that true? I did some research and it doesn’t appear to be! We’re big Venom fans here in this house, it is a recent movie that made us cry laughing – it was so funny!
So I can blame this little bit of research and playground gossip on being the catalysts for my brain hurricane season.
Turns out some of the new ideas are connecting to a current project; my so-called standalone Christmas novel is now going to be part of a small series, hence why subconsciously I have been holding off it for a while. I thought it was just Christmas music as to why I couldn’t write it.
For some reason or another, the Christmas novel is going to contain poems and songs and is going to be connected to another story about Candyland and The Easter Bunny. This idea was brand new on the 16th October 2022 and will be known as my Easter Project.
I think another catalyst to all this is the fact that Henry and I realised we listen to a lot of songs related to candies and chocolates and so we created a playlist last month called “Candy” on our only luxury, Amazon music. It’s funny what the brain does when you listen to certain types of music!
Henry is excited by my new plans as he loves movies about candies and anything Willy Wonka related, he just loves food that kid! But put it in a dream world where you are having adventures it gets him all excited, but my Henry is ever the businessman – he said to me “ma, think of the merchandise”, oh yes, he is already acting like my manager! I just wish he would let me write!
I have also decided that although I love writing horror, I want to downplay the gore and darkness of it to make them into family friendly Halloween style stories, as I have decided to focus mostly on family entertainment more than just doing whatever I feel like doing at the time.
I sat back and thought the other day about what kinds of responses from fans will I enjoy the most? I thought, I love kids, the kids of the world mean everything to me and I am most likely to respond to a child in full if they ran up to me.
Then I had the idea of, wouldn’t it be cool if I became a bestseller and I had mini merchandise toys in my handbag of the characters I wrote and handed them to a kid who recognised me on an off chance?
Thanks to Henry I am thinking about the other business behind writing, not just the book sales now. Good to think big I suppose?
So I decided, well then, that settles that, I am writing for family entertainment with kids in mind and my inner child has been singing about it all day!
It means I can be more light-hearted and playful and I love seeing kids laugh!
My inner child has also been insisting that I revert back to being a nine year old but I told it, OK, on some conditions… we don’t eat like we did when we were nine years old and we don’t laugh hysterically in people’s faces when we are nervous and put on a show for them and then hide behind the sofa because you forgot your senses and realised what a nitwit you made yourself out to be!
My inner child nearly cried, I was too harsh to it, so that’s why I said sorry to it and gave it 4 individual jelly babies to make up – she wants the whole bag, I said no, she cries and I am trying to ignore it – it’s for her own good!
I am not saying I can give up horror for good though, adult horror that is, because it’s a major part of me – but it’s just not as big as it used to be in my heart anymore as I am healing a lot of my darkness lately.
All I really want in life now onwards is light hearted fun, lots of love, good friends and a comfortable home, health would go a long way too – but hey, I am working on it!
There is a children’s picture book series brewing in my head too, for kindergarten age. It’s about a friendly community of monsters that are friends with each other.
Another story is about an angel who decides to become interviewed by a chat show.
So many new things coming to me and this is only the start of the Brain Hurricane Season, I still have two weeks to ride out, if this is a normal storm!
I wanted to do NaNoWriMo this year, but there are lots of problems in the family right now where I can’t concentrate on more than a paragraph or two per day; so this year I am just not going to bother.
I really wanted a project completed by now, but it wasn’t meant to be, I guess.
To be perfectly honest, I am losing hope to do anything creative these days as I am simply not allowed the time to myself to do anything.
I can’t rely on working on anything whilst Henry is at school, because at any moment Henry is sent home early in the day and I lose my flow. He is being sent home as often as twice a week!
Since Henry overheard the school suggesting he has an autism assessment, Henry seems to have taken it upon himself to emotionally play up all the more, like he enjoys the attention he is getting about it. Henry is really play acting towards the teachers concerns and I have told him, this is a dangerous game for his life long-term, but he thinks it’s all a game!
I suggested to Paul he is only doing this so he can be sent home from school to create his robots all day long and play for twelve hours a day on that darn laptop of his! When he is sent home from school, we should ban him from TV, laptop and his robots until his proper home time comes. But then Henry plays the suicide card and Paul relents and lets him have the things!
Then I hear the arguments and screams between the two of them because they are getting in each other’s way, and Paul can’t move around the house because of the mess Henry is causing! I try my best to help, but every time I open my mouth it just fuels the fire in the both of them!
I tried to take myself upstairs to my bedroom to write upstairs, but they shout so loudly to one another so often, it’s hard to drown them out unless I put earphones on and I don’t like to do that because of increased ear infections.
I am dying of embarrassment because neighbours walk cautiously past the house, staring at it because of the hysterical screaming that goes on consistently. I tell them about it, but Paul and Henry are so self-absorbed, they just don’t really care.
I hate this kind of environment, it doesn’t help my PTSD at all, in fact I am often drained and can’t eat because of the stress of it all, because a lot of the huge arguments are at dinnertime at the dining table and nobody can eat when this goes on!
I don’t wear my hearing aid when Henry is home, because to be perfectly honest I don’t need it – that’s how loud things are here as soon as he gets home. Besides, there are times Henry will randomly screech loudly for the slightest thing and it blooming hurts if I have it in my ear at the time! I even lost hearing a couple of years back where Henry did a screech so loud my ear bled, found out I had a perforation over it! Henry was two feet from me at the time!
This is what I am living with. It’s not excuses to not working, you have to be here to experience it for yourself, because I am telling you, it’s constant!
I do most of my blog posts when they are all in bed at night; this means my sleeping pattern is badly out of sync for a healthy and social lifestyle. My sleeping hours are anything between 3am and 1pm depends on the day! Mostly its 4am to 10am, not enough I know, but what else can I do?
I rarely watch TV as nobody respects the fact I want to watch something, reading is getting less and less for the same reason – practising art is almost non-existent, my meditations are slowly going out of the window… it’s tough to have a decent life here on any level! Even when I am asleep, from 7am until I wake up, someone checks in on me every 45 minutes waking me up, so it’s not even undisturbed sleep.
Lately Henry’s behaviour has been so bad, that I have often forgotten to take my meds because he has been so demanding!
Anyway, just a heads up about why I can’t finish things. Never used to be this way!
Happy reading!
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