Robert Lynch

Last week I didn’t do much at all through the week, I was getting back into a night work routine and there’s always an adjustment period, then on the weekend I accidentally did a sack of work. I say accidentally, but really I’ve been wrestling with a decision for a long time, and finally the dam broke and I started to move with the rushing water. I have two compilations and ‘Crash,’ a prequel to the first Frank Mason series, ready to be published, all I need is covers for the

First week back at work after my week off. How did I go? I wanted to put writing first, but the truth is when it’s your first week off in two years there are more important things to do. I got my walking done, I did social things, I slept well, and I got my room clean. But what of my 42 hours of writing work? I got about 14 of them done. I’m still calling the week a success. I lined up a gargantuan amount of things to do in a week off, and in truth, I was never going to get e

It’s been two years since I stopped freelance writing and started my crappy (but reliable) night job. In that time I have accrued eight weeks of annual leave but only taken one of them, which I spent moving house. This week I am taking another week of annual leave, but this time I get to spend it writing. My plan for the week is to pretend that I have quit crappy night job to write full time. I guess I’m having a fantasy vacation. I have made a list of all the jobs I want to

Star Wars Episode 9 comes out in a little over a month. The Mandalorian TV show came out this week. The computer game Star Wars: Fallen Order comes out tomorrow. There’s Star Wars everywhere. I’m like a kid in a candy store, or a scifi nerd in a time when a bunch of Star Wars properties come out. When Solo came out, and flopped big time, we were told that it was due to “Star Wars fatigue” an idea that one Star Wars property per year was enough to turn off the public. In the n

This week I’m running double-time to push my content back on track. I’m still paying for letting resistance knock me down a couple weeks ago, but this week I will catch up. I always planned to have extra content made up to act as a buffer for when life kicks me about, but never seem to be able to get ahead. Sometimes it’s easier to catch up than get ahead. When it comes to creative pursuits, it seems like the thing you should do is the thing that you always put off. If someth

Last week, amongst working six days at work, I slugged on to get caught up again. My patreon story for last week was problematic in a good way, in that it accidentally took two days to write and finished up at 4000 words. So my goal of getting a Frank Mason short story written this month was achieved, it’s just that I started writing a much smaller story and this one kind of fell out of me. I have been focusing a lot on analysing detective stories to get into the groove of wr

Last week was a bad week. Everything was harder to write and slower to get done. So hard that Thursday and Friday I did nothing at all. I don’t know if it was just that I’d gotten in to a kind of rhythm and I was getting bored, or if some physical health problem was creeping in, or work stress was getting a hold of me, or because I don’t take the daylight savings change well; but I was gripped by a malaise and Resistance pounced and got the better of me. It’s true that it is

So the weekend was a bust. I had social things (read copious drinking) to do on Friday and Sunday, and I spent Saturday sleeping off the day before and preparing for the next day. For the last two weekends, I have kept my usual night hours on the weekends and had no social things to do. I spend the weekends of winter down at the footy club volunteering, but when the summer comes around I tend to keep my night hours. After just two weeks the loneliness is getting to me. That’s

It has only been two weeks since I started publicly pushing my work. Views to the website have risen markedly, so clearly the strategy is working, and people are now seeing my stuff more than ever before. It’s weird; I don’t feel as much pressure to produce work now that I have to get the work done on time because people can see, even though I’m certain that no one actually cares enough to notice if I was late. The human mind is a fickle and weird creature, no doubt. I was st

This week I got iTunes sorted out, so now the podcast is on a sack of distributors. Now I just have to put out a podcast on time every week. I just finished adding an email sign up page to the website, so people who like to sign up for email lists can, it also means that I have to start making a newsletter each month. I also made some additions to my schedule spreadsheet. Where before it was only tracking the weekly website content, I have just added columns for the newslette

I just finished submitting the podcast rss to a sack of podcast distributors. The podcast is live! Yep, I’m freaking out. Now I have to live up to making a new episode every week. The idea of the podcast was to funnel people to the website to see what I’m up to and read my stories, so I have to take it seriously. With this step, it also means that I can’t slouch on any of the other content responsibilities, from now on I am telling people about what I’m doing. Up until today,

This week I’ve made some decisions and tweaked some plans. Previously I was going to compile all of the website and Patreon flash into a single book at the end of the year, but I have decided that instead, I’m going to do more frequent smaller bundles. I’m only going to compile the Patreon flash and make a compilation ebook every ten stories. This will make them around the same size as my planned Frank Mason short stories, so it doubles as a way to publish an ebook and learn

I’m really sore this week. Last weekend I was at my brother’s place, sleeping on the floor in my swag and helping put up a trellis on his block. Even though that was light duties comparatively to picking pumpkins, fixing sprinkler lines, or god knows what else I could have been doing; it’s still exhausting to do on only a couple of hours sleep. Ahh… The ongoing plight of night shift. I slept a couple of hours to move my sleep pattern to be awake during the day and then when w

I’m currently writing this on my phone. I’m away for the weekend but I still need to write. So I put the MS Word app on my phone (which is pretty bad, but I’m still able to get words written on it) and I’ve been able get a little work done each day. Even after this trip I’ll keep the app on my phone. Who knows when I might be able to make use of a few minutes. My break at work? The doctor’s waiting room? In the middle of a conversation with a really boring person? One aspect

What a pretentious title. I typically listen to podcasts or YouTube videos at work, but last night with an hour to go; I turned everything off and toiled away in silence. It got me thinking, some of the most interesting ideas that have come to me come in moments like that. With no other stimuli to distract the mind wanders, bringing forth ideas which have been simmering in the background. I suppose it is similar to meditation, except that I am too fidgety to sit still while b

This “week” is a catch-up week, so I’m at double time. If I can get two pieces done per day, it will get me all caught up before the 1st of September. I got episode seven of the podcast done yesterday in a little over 2 hours, which I am really happy with. It was a couple of minutes shorter than I’d have liked, I am trying to make them around 30 minutes long, but the main topic varies in size. I don’t want to just vamp filler in order to get to a length, if I run out of inter

Wow, this week just blew right past. It was the last week of the footy season, which meant a push to finish strong. Work was, as ever, uncooperative. I spent most of the week at work or asleep and the one day off I had I spent at footy. Still, the plight of the nightshift worker is to either live when everyone is asleep and feel better but socially alone or to make the effort to scrap a social life out of the week and feel tired and grumpy. I’m not sure that I’ve figured out

I was looking at the titles of the blogs I have been putting up and they are all doom and gloom, so this week I shall at least pretend to be happy. And there is plenty to be happy about. Tomorrow I will publish my 18th flash fiction, 7 of those Patreon exclusive stories. As the portfolio builds and I am able to see it laid out, it actually helps to motivate me to do more. When that little voice tells me that I can’t put out content, I now have physical evidence that I can loo

The renewed push from last week came to a screeching halt when I went to record the podcast and my computer refused to recognise the microphone. Something occurred during the move that made the computer throw a hissy fit. After so long and annoying troubleshooting I finally got the thing working but it ate up all the time I had on the weekend to record, so no podcast this week, I will start it up again next Friday. Along with the renewed push for writing content I also have t

Lately, I haven’t been updating the site. I haven’t been writing at all. Well, sometimes life kicks you in the head so hard you can’t do much else but focus on what’s in front of you. I’ve moved house, had my work make annoying changes in my shifts, and I’ve been trying to get a better job. While I’ll still be applying for jobs, the job market is still a piece of garbage; so it’s time to get back to writing. I had been building up the site, to start advertising it, to bring i