Tanya Lisle

Whoops, so much for weekly

February 1, 2026
This is post 5 of 5 in the series “The 2026 Done List”
1. Fabricating productivity for the new year
2. 2026 projects
3. Weekly update: Let’s see how long I keep this up!
4. Weekly update: Oh right, the hard part
5. Whoops, so much for weekly
I was planning to keep with the weekly updates, really! With the lack of my main computer, I was on a temporary computer that has a keyboard that I absolutely hate. There’s keys that just don’t work properly, some things are just in the wrong place, and the feeling of it all is just too sticky. Surprise, I really struggle on keyboards that I dislike using and, given that I’m mostly relegated to bed when I’m trying to do anything ¹ I can’t really get an external keyboard plus laptop like this. Add to that the fact that this backup laptop will absolutely give me a concussion if I try to prop it up in the same way as my lighter laptop and I just didn’t actually get much done.

Well, it was the laptop and the medication adjustment. I was encouraged to try increasing the dosage on one of my meds and I spent a week convinced that my cat was dying. One vet visit later and it turns out she is totally fine, but at that dosage the medication gives me severe anxiety. So probably for the best that I wasn’t online as much.

Website updates

I’m still not sure what to really do with the Project pages, but I started adding a little more information to them. It’s not much, just current status. The fact that I can’t heavily structure these pages the way I want still annoys me, but that might be for the best given how different all of these projects ultimately are. So if you want more information, there’s at least something more there. Let me know if there’s more you’d like to see on there!

The Trilogy

Got a whole one chapter done on this keyboard. It was frustrating because it was also a chapter that should have been really fun given the changes, but in the same way as a pencil that keeps breaking is going to make drawing a pain, a bad keyboard is going to make writing an absolutely horrible experience. But now that I’m back on my old computer I might actually be able to write some more! Hopefully.

Audiobooks

It’s been a while, but I finally recorded a new chapter! If you want to call them chapters. Tales from the Twisted Eden Sector is the anthology series, so technically everything is a short story and this was a twenty page short. It took a couple days and you can definitely hear my voice change over the days. Hopefully I can still use it and if not, well, hopefully I can record it in less than three days next time. I’m just going to go ahead and blame my reading struggles on the health issues so no one can make fun of my for some of these bloopers, okay? Cool.
Weekly update: Oh right, the hard part

January 18, 2026
This is post 4 of 5 in the series “The 2026 Done List”
1. Fabricating productivity for the new year
2. 2026 projects
3. Weekly update: Let’s see how long I keep this up!
4. Weekly update: Oh right, the hard part
5. Whoops, so much for weekly
I made a few very specific choices this week that ended up being less than ideal for my health. It was worth it, but it also means that I wasn’t able to do nearly as much this week as I was last week. That and my computer breaking ¹ means that I just didn’t get to do nearly as much this week. Still, I didn’t crash as a result of working on this, so I’m still on track!

The Trilogy

So. I forgot just how much work book 2 needed. This is the part where I need to do some structural changes and also change the names of half of the cast. It takes place in a fantasy world with a fantasy language and the first pass had a bunch of stand in names so I could get to writing instead of figuring out which sounds the new language had and which sounds it didn’t. So much stuff about the world and how things worked changed from when I started writing this to now, so I’ve got to go a lot more slowly through this section of the story.

It’s not a bad thing, but it does mean that I will start getting distracted so I can rework things in the back of my head. Actively sitting down and figuring things out doesn’t work as well for me as picking up another project and letting the ideas stew.

Audiobooks

This is a bit of a cheat, but I’m loosening the definition of “worked on” for this week to make myself feel better. I’ve been using Descript to help me with the editing of the recordings I’ve made so far and they are not only making it worse with every update, it’s also been trying to hard to shove AI into the software that I don’t trust that they aren’t going to start training on my voice if I keep using it. This means I’ve been looking at how to get that art of what I liked about the software–The ability to edit audio via the transcript–into Audacity, which I use to do the rest of my editing.

I think I’ve found something that could work, but unfortunately with the computer currently in need of repairs, it might take a bit to actually try it out.

Because Pretty stuff

I’ve been thinking about those trinkets that I made and trying to figure out how to adjust them so that they weren’t just cute things to put on a shelf. I may like them that way, but I do not want all of these to stay in my house. I found a keychain to throw one of these on, but something about glass on a keychain just feels like an awful idea.

Apparently purse trinkets are a thing, though? I haven’t had a purse in a while, so I’ve been pretty out of the loop on that. Someone else is going to have to tell me if that’s a thing I should consider.
Weekly update: Let’s see how long I keep this up!

January 11, 2026
This is post 3 of 5 in the series “The 2026 Done List”
1. Fabricating productivity for the new year
2. 2026 projects
3. Weekly update: Let’s see how long I keep this up!
4. Weekly update: Oh right, the hard part
5. Whoops, so much for weekly
The Trilogy

The first book of the trilogy is mostly rewritten! I have been working on this for months, which you’d think would mean it was longer. It is currently under 30K and definitely needs one more pass so that there’s some actual description. It is going to be a pretty short installment regardless, which makes sense. It is intended more as set up for the rest of the trilogy and plays out a bit like a horror movie before they encounter the killer. Will I do this pass before I start working on the next book? Absolutely not. We’ll be diving into the next book next week!

Unless I get distracted. Which, well, we’ll see what happens.

Created some place to track the projects

I wanted to have some kind of public record of all the things I have managed to accomplish this year, so I made the Projects page. It took more time than I’d like to admit, honestly. I may have started my career as a WordPress developer, but that was over 20 years ago and it’s a lot less straightforward to do things that used to be pretty simple. Well, simple if you just went into the source code to make some adjustments. I really do hate the amount you have to rely on plugins, but at least it works? Maybe not as well as I’d like, but I might poke at it again later.

Let myself get paranoid about income again

For those who aren’t aware, I am unable to hold down a day job. The Long Covid means that I am limited in the amount of good hours in a day, and many days that number is a fraction. However, I am also posting about how much stuff I’m getting done in a week as part of this series which, well, someone may see this and decide that I am, in fact, able to get a job and will lose my benefits.

So I decided to reopen my Patreon just in case. For right now it’s just going to be a bunch of cross posting these updates there, but if if there’s ever something that I want to release early it will probably be released there. Maybe. I don’t think I ever had anyone sign up for it so we’ll see.
2026 projects

January 4, 2026
This is post 2 of 5 in the series “The 2026 Done List”
Despite this being the year of the done list rather than the to do list ¹ I do still have some general ideas of things that I want to work on this year. I wasn’t sure last time if I wanted to make that list of projects, but the more I thought about it the more I realized I wanted to keep a record of what I did manage to accomplish.

I’m going to try and keep this as an index and report back on what I managed to get done. Fifteen minutes a day isn’t much, but hopefully it adds up!
1. The trilogy
2. The prequel interactive novel to the trilogy
3. A fantasy RPG
4. Converting the existing books into more formats (eg. Audiobooks, collected editions, etc.)
5. Some Twisted Eden resources
6. Digital art
7. Jewelry and trinkets
I may not touch some of these, I may add more to the list, we will see! Currently I’m hoping that I will do better about posting and keeping a record of how much I’ve done on these, but time will tell how well I manage that. Wish me luck!
Fabricating productivity for the new year

December 19, 2025
This is post 1 of 5 in the series “The 2026 Done List”
1. Fabricating productivity for the new year
2. 2026 projects
3. Weekly update: Let’s see how long I keep this up!
4. Weekly update: Oh right, the hard part
5. Whoops, so much for weekly
It’s taken over three years, but in recent months I have achieved stability. I still have very limited energy and can’t be upright for very long without getting horrible headaches, but my symptoms are finally at a point where they are predictable. I can make plans. I can leave the house! ¹ Predictability has given me a freedom that I haven’t had in a long time, but it also gave me something else.

Ambition.

I’m starting to see glimpses of the person I once was coming back. Not the burnt out tech worker parts, admittedly, but the parts where I used to throw myself into projects that I loved. I miss losing hours a day on creating things and following that inspiration when I was between projects to figure out what I was up to next. It’s a thing I can’t do anymore without causing major health issues, but now that I’m stable, I think I can treat myself a little.

Of course I mean I am going to let myself start doing things again. I’m going to need to be very careful because, well, I know myself. I give myself any slack and I will run away with the leash. No concrete goals, no timelines, nothing that might make me feel even a little bad about taking a break from it. It’s not going to be anything like the productivity I used to do and it is definitely going to feel pretty fake sometimes, but it will be something.

The only rule I’m holding myself to is a maximum daily time allocation. At the start of the year, no more than fifteen minutes a day on a project that I am going to keep a running list of. That time limit goes up by no more than 5 minutes after 1 month of no increased symptoms. That is a lot of time. Well, for me at this point in my life, anyway.

I am very excited about this. I don’t know if I will post the list of projects anywhere, but the list currently includes the trilogy I wrote last year, a couple Twine and RPG Maker games, some art, creating paperback and hardcovers, and a smattering of other things. It’s going to be so good to make things again! I cannot wait.