Tanya Lisle

Creative on a health break

  • The tangents are back!

    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
    6. New month, more time!
    7. One thing finished!
    8. Working through the stress
    9. Getting back into it
    10. Slow and steady
    11. Distractions happen
    12. Summer is coming
    13. The unexpected
    14. Might as well be summer
    15. The tangents are back!
    16. Progress, at last! Scheduled for July 10, 2026

    Just when I thought the sun meant going out and enjoying myself, the heat got a bit too harsh for me to be going out quite as much as I want. It means I don’t have to deal with those feelings just yet, but I’m hoping that the blazing heat either dies down or I get used to it so it isn’t stopping me quite so much. If nothing else, I am still getting my once a week outing to check out the world and being much less housebound, one way or another.

    I also recently got scouted for a medical thing. Yay for being medically interesting! It resulted in my furthest adventure out from my house in years 1On my own and not in a car, anyway and I survived! Crashed very hard as a result, but I was downtown for the first time in years, so I’m hopeful that the weather isn’t going to stop me for too long.

    The Trilogy

    I am so close to getting back into the bit of the book that exists. As much fun as writing new stuff has been, it’s also slow and I am excited to get back to some of the fun bits of the plot that I wrote the first time around. It’s also a lot faster to work with story that I just have to make sound better rather than write from scratch, so my productivity will feel a lot greater, even if I’m pretty sure I’ll be working on it at about the same pace.

    As a side note, I do miss when I could write fast. This is the longest it’s ever taken to write a trilogy. I feel like it’s going to take me longer to finish this than it did to finish all of The Looking Glass Saga.

    Worksheet Tangents

    I had a thing happen with one of my medications. Yay for being medically interesting, right? It gave me an idea for something that people can use to keep track of how their new medications are improving their symptoms or causing side effects. And then I remembered I can’t get Affinity working on Linux, so it’s currently trapped in back of an envelope limbo for now.

    Photo of a mockup for a worksheet that tracks medications and symptoms over a month.

    Fantasy RPG

    It’s been ages, but I finally opened Notion up again so that I can start making notes on this project as I come up with ideas for it. Mostly because the day I had an idea for the game, I didn’t have a notebook and ended up starting a slide deck of all things to make these notes. I had a notebook for this project, but I cannot find it so naturally I have to complicate matters.

    I also had a sprint of trying to get the program working on my computer again but, again, Linux. I like this OS, but dammit. I’m going to have to run a virtual machine, aren’t I?

  • Might as well be summer

    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
    6. New month, more time!
    7. One thing finished!
    8. Working through the stress
    9. Getting back into it
    10. Slow and steady
    11. Distractions happen
    12. Summer is coming
    13. The unexpected
    14. Might as well be summer
    15. The tangents are back!
    16. Progress, at last! Scheduled for July 10, 2026

    I’m calling it, it’s summer. I know technically I should wait for the solstice, but if I’m having to use the aircon, then I think it’s worth making the call here. My health should start to even out with the good weather and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to enjoy more of the local events that the city puts on over the summer. I know the craft fairs have expanded to the outdoors and the farmers markets are in full swing, so I’ll have plenty of chances to enjoy the weather.

    I also got myself a rollator so I can go out more! Still having some feelings about being so visibly disabled, but hopefully I will get over it and be able to enjoy the nice weather.

    The Trilogy

    I’m finding it hard to do much else besides the books these days, and for good reason! I’m getting close to finishing the rewrite of book 2 of the trilogy! It’s nice to have so much of the world building done, though I am going to miss all my fade to black chapter endings.

    I am going to need at least one more pass on this before anyone sees it, but I’m still excited to have this pass almost done.

    Audiobooks

    I had a good upright day, so another chapter of book 2 has been recorded! Meanwhile, I’m working on editing chapter 7 of book 1. At some point, this audiobook will finally be out of my hands and I am excited for that day.

  • The unexpected

    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
    6. New month, more time!
    7. One thing finished!
    8. Working through the stress
    9. Getting back into it
    10. Slow and steady
    11. Distractions happen
    12. Summer is coming
    13. The unexpected
    14. Might as well be summer
    15. The tangents are back!
    16. Progress, at last! Scheduled for July 10, 2026

    Alas, I spent another week crashed and so not a lot has been done. On the bright side, I learned what some of the different tax forms are called, so not a total loss. I do wish I was spending that time on something less stressful, but there’s no going back now. I’ve just been trying to ease myself back into things and not think too hard about the possibility that I did something wrong and this will be just the excuse insurance needs to kick me off.

    I may have spent too long working with US healthcare. One insurance call and form has me very stressed.

    On the bright side, I think they finished repairs to the roof. I may not have mentioned it last time, but I have been living directly under a construction zone and let me tell you! The sound of banging, power tools, and the walls shaking due to what’s happening directly above you for weeks does not do great things for your mental health!

    The Trilogy

    As much as I want to publish this trilogy like the rest of the books, I am hesitating now. I keep getting reminders from my private health insurance and also from the Canadian government that if I dare to make too much money from a series that has taken me years to write, I could get kicked off of my insurance entirely. $7,400 annually to get investigated, $21,000 annually to be removed entirely. That doesn’t even cover housing, much less is that enough to live on. Not to mention if insurance isn’t covering my medication, my expenses go up. It would be catastrophic for me.

    On the other hand, I know what my traffic numbers are on this blog. I know my sales numbers of previous books. This is likely not going to be an issue.

    Audiobooks

    You know what a great test of noise cancelling headphones is? Roof construction! Stress meant that there hasn’t been as much writing, but I still wanted to get something done and getting the final edits done on another short was it. I know I can hear all the times my brain fuzzed out while I was recording, but I do wonder how much that is going to matter. I have heard a few audiobook samples now and I’m starting to think I’m being too hard on myself.

  • Summer is coming

    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
    6. New month, more time!
    7. One thing finished!
    8. Working through the stress
    9. Getting back into it
    10. Slow and steady
    11. Distractions happen
    12. Summer is coming
    13. The unexpected
    14. Might as well be summer
    15. The tangents are back!
    16. Progress, at last! Scheduled for July 10, 2026

    It’s another new month and, while I had another month without major crashes, it was another month of not hitting those maximums per day. The fatigue has just been kicking my ass, which means I just cannot spend more than 25 minutes a day on fun stuff. Some of this definitely is related to having to spend more time on housework 1Some personal stuff has come up that necessitates this but ultimately it means I am maintaining what I’m currently doing. Just a little every day and hopefully I get to cross off something else at some point this year!

    But also I am kinda hoping that I can increase soon. My health tends to get better during summer, so wish me luck this month!

    Also, way less this block. Unfortunately for me, insurance really wanted to reassess whether or not I was still too disabled to work which meant my energy had to be spent on filling out paperwork for probably not a doctor 2Or even someone who doesn’t understand post exertional malaise, illnesses with variable good and bad days, etc. to look at and determine whether or not I can hold down a job. So I’ll see if documenting and celebrating what I spend 20 minutes a day on in this blog is a bad idea.

    The Trilogy

    I keep thinking I’m getting close with leaving the restructuring phase of this, but there’s so much world building. I am definitely going to need another pass on this to trim out some of the fat because I want to go into all the nuances of this world I created but is the audience going to care? Probably not. Then again, I may make my editor tell me what I need to cut out instead. Maybe.

    Because Pretty Stuff

    I finally published those listings! I really need to get better at editing the photos since they look hella dark but given the traffic to that site is mostly from China and the ability to purchase from the site is currently broken I am not in any rush to get that done.

  • Distractions happen

    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
    6. New month, more time!
    7. One thing finished!
    8. Working through the stress
    9. Getting back into it
    10. Slow and steady
    11. Distractions happen
    12. Summer is coming
    13. The unexpected
    14. Might as well be summer
    15. The tangents are back!
    16. Progress, at last! Scheduled for July 10, 2026

    This two week period started out so well until the major distractions hit. Unfortunately, that did end up taking away some of the time I would have spent on projects, but it had to be done. And luckily I have already set up most of what I need, so it’s been pretty smooth making the changes. The unlisting has been done, and now I’m taking my sweet time setting up getting the books elsewhere while focusing back on the things that I want to be working on.

    The Trilogy

    Slow and steady! Emphasis on slow right about now, but that happens when you’re restructuring.

    Audiobooks

    Nothing edited, but I did manage to get another chapter recorded! It took 5 days, 10 minutes a day, and I really hope my voice doesn’t sound too different between each recording, but another chapter recorded!

    Because Pretty Stuff

    Before all of the Draft2Digital nonsense, I finally got some photos taken! The plan was to list some things, but hopefully that can happen next week.

Other ventures

Scrap Paper Entertainment

Novels and stories

Because Pretty

Handmade items

Twisted Eden Publishing

Workbooks for writers

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