Nerd Church - The Writer Diaries: A Magical Solution To the Terrors of the Blank Page

 

My dearest nerdlets, there are some topics which appear in the bookish/writerly/bloggerly interwebs again and again — and one of the most common of these is writer’s block.

(Which, yes, I’ve talked about before too.)

Nerd Church - The Neon Tragedy of Certain Dark Things (...and Romeo and Juliet)

 

**This post contains Amazon.com affiliate links, which allow me to earn a small commission on qualifying purchases.**

**Please only use my affiliate links for .COM purchases, as I do NOT earn from other Amazon sites**

Don't deceive yourself...this is not a love story. 

- Certain Dark Things, Silvia Moreno-Garcia

 

He jests at scars that never felt a wound 

- Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare

 

Certain Dark Things is a vampire novel.

…It’s also entirely unique.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia, the author, describes the book as 'neon noir' - which is as good a label as any for this inventive, interesting, and compelling, mash-up of styles and genres.

Nerd Church - The Writer Diaries: On Updating Old Blogposts, and The Beauty of Blogging

Warning: Brief refs to Depression and trauma

I've been going through a lot of my old blogposts lately.

It's both an attempt to defeat the forces of entropy... 

...and to possibly get back onto Google Adsense (it's a whole thing, I talked about it a few months back, so check that post out here if you're interested.)

And... it's been interesting.

Like, genuinely interesting - way more than I thought it would be.

Basically, I was not aware of the sheer volume of stuff I have written over the course of the last 11 years - it's a lot. (Lol.)

And a lot of the things that I've written are a lot better than I remember.

(...which is probably once again proof that I'm my own worst critic 😅)

Nerd Church - The Iconic Darkness of Andrew Scott's Moriarty

 

**This post contains Amazon.com affiliate links, which allow me to earn a small commission on qualifying purchases.**

**Please only use my affiliate links for .COM purchases, as I do NOT earn from other Amazon sites**

Warning: this post contains brief discussions of mental health issues, and brief references to murder

I can think of very few performances as utterly iconic as Andrew Scott's Jim Moriarty.

Long before he was Fleabag's Sexy Priest, Andrew Scott was BBC Sherlock's Sexy Criminal Genius. 

(Sexy being his baseline - it must be a difficult burden to bear; imagine being sexy while you pay your electric bills, or putting the bins out sexily...)

Nerd Church - The Writer Diaries: The Writerly Urge To Face-Plant the Laptop

 

It's not that easy, being a writer.

Sometimes, you just want to face-plant your goddamn laptop.

I've had a frustrating couple of weeks, writer-ness-wise.

• A piece of poetry I'd submitted to a magazine got rejected (again.)

• I got declined for rejoining the Google AdSense programme (again.)

• And I made only pennies on Medium (...again.)

Nerd Church - The Salt Path ...A True Story?

**This post contains Amazon.com affiliate links, which allow me to earn a small commission on qualifying purchases.**

**Please only use my affiliate links for .COM purchases, as I do NOT earn from other Amazon sites**

Warning: this post discusses terminal illness and Ableism

I watched a normal-looking woman on The One Show sofa, sitting next to the actor Jason Isaacs, and talking about her memoir being turned into a movie (starring, oddly enough, Jason Isaacs.)

(The One Show - for those of you who aren't British - is a Big Deal™.)

Something about her - the woman, Raynor Winn - seemed... off. 

But then, I try not to judge too much based on brief interviews - I don't know these people, y'know?

Sometimes people seem off - not least when they're not TV people, and suddenly find themselves talking to the nation in the prime-time flagship slot (Lord knows, that would def. make me seem off!)

Nerd Church - Christmas Hurts, This Year

 

Warning: grief, death, serious illness, mental health issues, general trauma

I've always loved Christmas.

But Christmas? It hasn't treated me so well. Especially the whole lead-up-to part of Christmas.

In 2023, my father had brain surgery a few days before Christmas - that was stressful (he's OK now, mostly.)

My grandfather died not long before Christmas in 2018.

Eleven years ago, my other grandparents died at Christmas within four days of each other. We had a double funeral. 

...That still wasn't the worst Christmas of my life.

Nerd Church - The Writer Diaries: A Writer Is Not...

 

A writer is not replaceable — each voice is their own.

A writer is not tameable — each is wild, each answers the call the way that they must.

A writer is not something definable, not something that an algorithm can create, not someone who can be easily pushed aside, not a simple money-making cog, not someone who exists to generate a profit for Capitalism’s insatiable beast.

A writer is someone you pay — art is not a disposable item; writers need to eat.

Nerd Church - Shout Out To Those With Mental Health Problems In This Clusterf**k Timeline!

 

Sh**'s messed up.

...Like, it's been messed up for a while, I know. But our current level of 'historical' is feeling more like 'biblical' (in terms of scale, rather than religion,) every day.

It's one thing on top of another on top of another. 

I came across a blogpost I wrote in 2018 where I was like 'the world is bad at the moment,' ...and I genuinely can't remember what I was talking about. That was 2 years before 2020, and none of us really know what normal is any more.

Maybe, five to ten years from now, I'll look back and think, 'what was I complaining about in 2025?' but I really hope not.

Against that backdrop then, I, like many people, have mental health problems. And have for 10+ years at this point.

And it's f**king tough.

So to all of those with mental health problems, or anyone struggling, right now - this is a shout out to you.

Nerd Church - Stephen King's IT Is F**ked Up

 ...which probably isn't that surprising.

Warning: this post contains discussions of drugs and addiction, and brief references to one of the most notorious scenes in IT (the child sex scene.)

**This post contains affiliate links for Amazon.com. Any purchases made via these links will earn me a small commission. Please only use my links for .COM purchases, as this is the only Amzon site for which I earn commission.**

Stephen King

        - or so the meme goes -

                    did not write Stephen King's IT 

                                - he co-wrote it, alongside IT's primary author: 

                                            Cocaine.

Nerd Church - Fighting the Pointlessness

 

Warning: brief reference to feeling suicidal, discussions of pointlessness, grief, mental health, existentential dread, and all the things that make up the general sh**ty state of the world.

Things have been tough for me, lately.

When you lose someone you love... it's damned hard.

Everything feels pointless - if that can happen to them, then what is the point of anything?

What's the point of writing a blogpost? What's the point of writing anything?

And since my purpose in this life is to read and to write... if I can't find the point of that, then what's the point of me?

(...I'm actually an optimist, if you can believe that. I just have mental health issues, and have been through some tough sh**.)

Nerd Church - The Fractured Web: Our Socials are Scattering

Warning: this post refers to the bad things that happen on the internet; wide variety of topics, be careful!

The internet is fragmenting...

Nerd Church - A Series of Kafkaesque Events

**This post contains Amazon.com affiliate links, which allow me to earn a small commission on qualifying purchases.**

**Please only use my affiliate links for .COM purchases, as I do NOT earn from other Amazon sites**

Warning: this post discusses and/or references panic attacks and Anxiety, murder, grief, forced marriage, and systemic failings

There are also some (mild) SPOILERS for Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

I recently found myself re-reading Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Nerd Church - The Writer Diaries: My Brain Is Unpredictable, Right Now

 

[Warning: this post discusses mental health problems and grief]

Look, I've been through some stuff lately, and it's definitely affected me.

My mental health has not been good for the last 10+ years, and now, after losing my mother in February... my head has given me a whole bunch of Very Bad Days lately.

I can't bring myself to go into details, but... it was hell. As a family, we've been through absolute hell since October 2024.

Nerd Church - The Writer Diaries: Let Me Romanticise Writing, Dammit!

 

Every now and then, out there on the Interwebs, I come across someone who disapproves of the 'romanticisation' of writing.

To them, writing is a career, a job, an occupation. Maybe they enjoy it, maybe they're good at it, but there's no fire in them that compels them to write.

Nerd Church - To-Do List Struggles

 

My to-do isn't that long - at first glance.

But that's mostly because I only write down a few things that I need to prioritise and/or think I'm in danger of forgetting. 😅

My mental to-do list? Much, much, bigger.

Like... I expect a lot of myself.

Nerd Church - Strange Days

 

Strange days are here to stay
Ever since Bowie died
It hasn't been the same

- Green Day, Strange Days Are Here To Stay

 

The world's weird, right now.

Maybe it always is, always was, always will be.

Still, I can't help but feel - and I know other people will agree - that we're in the middle of a particularly weird and wacky period.

The 2020s haven't exactly been an easy ride so far, and it looks like that isn't changing any time soon.

But whoever you are, wherever you are - keep going.

Nerd Church - The Writer Diaries: Stories Don’t Need A Beginning, A Middle, and An End

*gasps*

Nerd Church - Blogging Schedule Update (...It's Been A Stressful Week)

 

I don't usually write Nerd Church posts like this, but since Nerd Church isn't really tightly defined (...or defined at all, OK, I know,) I figured why not?

You may or may not have noticed that there was no Comics Wrap-Up (CWU) post, or Friday Fics Fix (F3) post this week.

- Which wasn't a planned break.

My life turned into another whirling ball of chaos this week, with my mother's health being very Not Good.

(Thankfully she's doing so much better now.)

Nerd Church - That Time American Horror Story Made A Mini-Series About Writers...

 

I love American Horror Story (AHS).

It's amazing, let's be honest.

I started watching a fair few years after the beginning, and started from said beginning - Murder House (as everyone should, imho,) - so haven't actually caught up yet.