I'm utterly convinced that my brain, right now, looks like a crowded whiteboard in a crisis room. I have so many projects vying for my attention that I’m genuinely afraid to go to sleep, convinced my characters will start fighting in the hallway.
The fun part? All this happens after I've completed my actual day job. For 35 hours a week, I safely trade dragons and branching narratives for debugging and deployment, working as an Automation Specialist in FinTech. I spend my days building perfectly logical, testable systems, only to come home and try to make sense of the illogical, non-testable chaos of my own imagination.
The volume of creative work is at the same time exhausting, thrilling and probably a strong indicator that I need to investigate better time management—or possibly therapy.
Maybe both.
⭐️ The Headliner Who Won't Quit: Urban Fantasy Novel
My novel, Sanctorum's Veil, is what I hope will be Part 1 of an Urban Fantasy series. It is still my primary focus, which means I spend most days trying to figure out how to credibly hide a mystical portal behind a slightly shabby Tesco Express. Or something like that.
The rules of magic in the modern world are crucial, and frankly, I’m exhausted trying to ensure my protagonist doesn't just solve everything with a Google search. I’m currently stuck trying to make the initial reveal of the mystical world not feel forced, but I suspect I just need more peanut butter sandwiches to get past this roadblock.
🚀 Jumping Genres: Sci-Fi Short Story Whack-A-Mole
To relax, I write in a completely different genres! Brilliant, right?
I'm at the editing phase of two short stories, which are currently a study in contrasts:
- Deep Space Opera: This is my holiday from Earth! I get to invent complicated spaceship names and worry about androids infighting and their organic overlords rather than mortgage rates or the price of a bus fare. It’s pure escapism, though my word count suggests I might accidentally be writing something longer. Whoops.
- Horror Loop: This is the story where I sadistically force my main character to relive the same terrible twenty-four hours, like a very low-budget, existential nightmare version of Groundhog Day. It’s excellent catharsis, but I keep accidentally writing the same dialogue twice. It’s method writing, honest.
🕹️ Interactive Insanity: The Game Scripts
If writing a linear story wasn’t complex enough, I’m also diving headfirst into scripting two video games!
This means abandoning the safety of a single narrative path and building a plot that branches more aggressively than a neglected bonsai tree. I've spent hours debating the emotional impact of Dialogue Option B versus Dialogue Option C, knowing full well that 90% of players will just mash the skip button anyway. It’s character building! (For me, not the player.)
⚡️ The Hyper-Concentrated Dose: Flash Fiction
My recent foray into a 300-word Sci-Fi contest submission was great, even if I didn’t bag the win (and yes, the contest taught me that my natural writing style is potentially 'epically verbose').
As an aside, I'm looking at potential outlets for this story, but it may well just end up on my Wattpad. Keep your eyes peeled.
With this experience, I'm taking on the challenge of developing another flash fiction piece for TikTok/YouTube Shorts/Reels, which demands the prose equivalent of a high-speed car chase: immediate, shocking, and over before you can question the plot. Every single word has to earn its pension, which is a nightmare for a writer who loves adjectives.
The idea is to transform the story into bite-sized chunks and release these chunks as mini, micro-fiction stories via video. A feat easier to describe than to execute!
⚔️ The Ultimate Side Gig: D&D Campaign Overlord
Finally, the thing that proves I have absolutely no sense of personal limits: I’m running three D&D campaigns. That's three different fantasy realms, three attempts at fantasy world-building, and about eighteen voices that sound vaguely like a dodgy Sean Connery impression to confuse my players with.
Two of these campaigns are my own ridiculously complex imagined worlds, and one is a published module—a blessed relief where I can occasionally say, "That’s how the book describes the dragon, I just run the game!"
Reflection: I Have Too Many Bosses
My writing diary isn't really a diary; it's a battle map. I keep telling myself that the sheer variety—the FinTech logic strengthening my plot structures, the sci-fi short stories sharpening my dialogue, and the D&D campaigns teaching me how to improvise—is making me a better writer overall. But sometimes, I just want to sit in a quiet room and only think about one protagonist for a change.
Wish me luck; I need to go see if the Urban Fantasy elves have noticed I forgot to pay their council tax—and, crucially, if I remembered to automate the payment first.
How do you, my fellow writers, avoid losing your minds (or your outlines) when juggling this much creative chaos? Spill your secrets in the comments!
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