My Mid-Life "Writis"

My day job is in biomanufacturing, and it is a very unorganized chaos, like when too many secondary characters are cluttering with side stories and pulling focus away from the main plot. The basics of the day job come across as simple—follow instructions in a clear outline, step-by-step. The issue is each step is interwoven, and often overlaps other steps, and several steps are broken down into sub-steps and can require multiple people to complete. Eventually, the steps are completed, and our product is finished.

After we complete filling out the paperwork, we review, and edit, review, and edit, looking for any spot that might need clarification or correction. But like any work, you always miss your own errors. It can take weeks, to months, for the team of secondaries to catch the errors.

Another team of secondaries tests the quality of the different stages of the product—contaminates, purity, biology, etc. Like a bad plot device or too much allusion. This also can take months. Eventually we get these results and have to consider what could have caused the imperfections.

A third team of secondaries is now looking at where we can improve overall. Is it the general technique, or is there a specific aspect in our everyday operations that we need to start improving from the base level?

And all these characters have been making it impossible for me to shut my day job brain off for the last eighteen months.

Yesterday was a 13 hour day. It happens regularly in my career. I had advanced notice, I get a nice break and OT. I’m not going to complain. A gas station with a café opened literally next door last summer, so I could even take my break off-site without needing to travel. I was equipped with coffee and a notebook to try to get some world-building in. At the café, was one of the secondaries who refused to let me focus on my plot, and kept asking my questions about how the procedure was going.

After work, if the brain can shut off the “did I do this, remember to do that tomorrow” list, I try to just vent in a journal for the first thirty minutes. I empty myself of negativity about work, anything and anyone. Then, I begin to channel that towards what my MC feels.

Grace Kinlan is like me in a few ways, but not like me in many others. She had an easy childhood that she did not deserve and feels very bitter when it is taken away from her. My daily goal is just to get one-to-two scenes done, approx. 1,000-1,200 words, and to write one backstory/worldbuilding element in my journal. I have no target word count for Grace’s first story. I figure I can shred whatever comes out and re-work it.