Monthly Mayhem in the life of a writer trying to finish a draft while bogged down by spring executive dysfunction (4.25)
The great drafting push, once again happening in far too small of a timespan...
Happy first Tuesday of the month! My Monthly Mayhem newsletter is back like a bad smell! Hopefully the spring is starting to perk everyone up (unless you’re on the side of the world where it’s not spring). This month was a wild ride, but not for the usual reasons (being too busy), but because I’ve started really paying attention to my functionality and how I can improve it.
Pretty cute for an old man, eh?
CREATIVE PROJECTS & ARTICLES
This was one hell of a month on the writing front. I’ll get more into the why a bit later, but suffice to say, I had more ideas than functionality throughout April.
First of all, I released a Broken Body series that you can read here:
Part 1: My Broken Body and How Western Medicine Failed Me Completely
Part 2: I Was in a Patriarchal Relationship with My Body (So No Wonder it Fucking Hates Me)
Part 3: [woops, didn’t get this one done this month—coming next month!]
Then, I also released an article about how we use language in important discussions (patriarchy being the example used):
Language Is Power, Not an Excuse to Dodge the Point
Then, in the middle of my drafting, I went on a rabid rant about how badly the Anne with an E (2017-2019) Netflix series rubbed me:
Why the Makers of ‘Anne with an E’ Should Be Set on Fire and Thrown Off a Bridge
Consider yourselves warned that I have about 25 more article titles, small bits of drafts, and ideas logged away for as soon as my creative energy kicks back after I burnt it the hell out from April 13th-20th.
Note to Substackers: Once again, these articles are all also available here!
The Vitmar Chronicles
This month was my big push to finish the first draft of Volume II, which I did! Yes, the first draft is officially finished! I truly can’t begin to express how delighted I am with the way the story turned out. There have been aspects of this volume that I’ve been struggling with for over a decade, and in traditional Bear Wiseman form, I decided that, instead of trying to fit a square peg through a round hole, I’d chuck the whole toy out the window and make my own. Meaning, I went pretty hard out of the original box in which I had been working.
I also did a lot of work into worldbuilding and developing the overall lore. One of the new characters who will be introduced in the next volume always felt a little underbaked, but as I was developing some extremely powerful characters who exist in the background, I realized that there was a connection to one of them that I had to develop. It went so much better than I could have ever imagined. Storylines were severely altered, for the better.
Now that the bones are down, May’s going to be centered around fleshing out the descriptions and emotional scenes to add more potency. This volume’s going to blow Volume I out of the water, or so I hope!
If you haven’t checked out “The Vitmar Chronicles, vol. I: An Ending & A Beginning,” click here to learn about the series and click here to read the first fifteen pages!
Off the Record
No new interviews this month and nothing currently booked.
Note to Substackers: you can also listen to these interviews here!
Gathering of Geeks
I had a really cool guest lined up for April, but unfortunately, he had to cancel last-minute because his kid was sick, so we’ve had to reschedule and he’s a very busy fellow. Alas!
Note to Substackers: You can also listen to this podcast on Substack too!
TTRPGS
I put Zweihänder on hiatus for April while finishing the Volume II draft of The Vitmar Chronicles, but I did still want to see my friends for a game night, so I decided instead to do a one-shot of Swamp Troll Witches instead, which is a game I picked up after one of my friends showed me a reel about it. It turned out to be a really fun night and definitely something a bit different.
PROFESSIONAL PROJECTS
No professional projects are underway currently, but I have recently updated my Wordsmithy on my homepage to include paid album reviews. After a decade of unpaid journalism, I’m still happy to write reviews because I love doing it and I’m good at it… I just need a bit of compensation. So if you know of any artists who have a small budget and want to guarantee that they’ll get a review, do pass this along!
Enslain Metal Merch
Absolutely nothing this month! I was supposed to be selling for a Swedish singer, but apparently she decided not to bring merch. May shall bring me back out with Merta though!
LIVE EVENTS
I did emerge from my dwelling once again this month for the sake of a show. I was given a press pass for the Finnish National Ballet—that’s right, my first time ever covering the ballet! Why would an old metalhead hippy like me go to the ballet? Because it was the first time they collaborated with a DJ (Dj hapan korppu) for the pre- and post-parties in the lobby, and I know her from Kosmos Festival, so I went to see the T(r)anssi ballet and was sure to come early and stay late! It was really cool, suffice to say!
Dj hapan korppu during her pre-party set
PHYSICAL & MENTAL HEALTH
I’ve been managing these two challenges pretty reasonably this month, except for, well…
Part of what I’ve been paying attention to this year is where my energy is at with the change of seasons. What I learned this April is that spring for me = massive influx of energy, AKA creative juice. You might think that would be awesome to have when I was working on drafting The Vitmar Chronicles.
I was as surprised as anyone else by how wrong that assumption was.
April was a bloody nightmare for me, because every time I sat down at my computer, rather than sinking into the world and lore of TVC, my brain started firing off article ideas at me left, right, and center. For every sentence of TVC I got out of me, I paid for it with agonizing levels of executive dysfunction caused by my brain screaming ideas for shorter pieces at me at full volume. That’s literally why I had to write the Anne with an E article… I needed to pacify my thirst for reviews to get my brain to shut up for half a second (I wrote over 5000 words that day). Needless to say, my Substack account is riddled with drafts right now that have only a title or an intro, because I forced myself to steer back into my actual project.
Now, because I am disciplined when I need to be, I did still get my draft done, as I said, but it came at quite a hefty cost. I was ruined with exhaustion at the end of every day and got pretty generally stressed out. I was glad to get it done before the 20th, so I had a day to rest before my friend arrived late on the 21st.
So, what did I learn about myself? Well, spring is for sure a season to write articles, not draft long-form fiction. While I did enjoy getting into the worldbuilding, getting myself into a place where I could focus on it was truly next door to mental torture for me on certain days. Perhaps summer or winter would be better times of year for this sort of writing. I suppose I’ll be finding out in the coming months, but lesson learned, whew.
Regarding the old bod? Standard visit to osteo, nothing special this month. However, I did do a deep breath meditation again and managed to unclench a good portion of the upper half of my spine. That felt great, but I’m always a bit scared to move afterwards, since I don’t really know what I need to recover after doing something like that. Needless to say though, feeling the releases and softenings and millions of pops and cracks is amazing.
GENERAL BEARSNESS
Ever try to plan a road trip, when the three people involved are all way too busy and way too stressed and completely mentally incapable of planning anything functionally? Well, that’s what my friends and I did this month! In hindsight it was quite hilarious, because these were my same girls from the AC trip in January, which was also a bit of a shit-show. It seems we are slightly cursed, but who cares, because it always ends up being a ton of fun. Perhaps we need to plan less in the future and save ourselves the grief when it all falls apart?
Part of the point of this road trip was to visit some of the extremely weirdly named places around Finland. Since it was on the way, we visited the scenic village of Vääksy, which was where my second Au Pair family in 2009-2010 was located. It’s known for its canal and has a pretty cool brewery/museum/gift shop, where we obtained our mascot, Stove the pike (that’s the past (younger) tense of Steve, Brymir’s plush pike, who was tragically lost to a stage roof at Tuska Festival). It has info on the tunnel that brings water to the capital, as well as a floor dedicated to fishing in Finland and Rapala fish hooks, and the top floor had an exhibition from an artist using what is essentially garbage (“recycled materials”) as his medium.
Vääksyn kanava // Vääksy’s canal
After we left, we took the scenic road via Jämsä towards Jyväskylä and stopped by a small waterfall. Finland doesn’t boast many of these, so that was a fun stop-in. Then we popped by the home of my favorite Finnish painter to pick up some art that I had bid on in her silent auction last year (and some new prints while I was at it) and had lunch with one of our fellow Enslain ladies in Jyväskylä. We spent way too long in town, but it was super fun and absolutely worth it.
Juveninkoski
After participating in ridiculous shenanigans on the lakeside, we continued up to Paska-Avenue. Yes, that does indeed translate to “Shit-Avenue.” Long story. After that, we went in search of Mulkkujenväli [dicks’ space], which is the passage between Mulkkujärvi [dick lake] and Vähä-Mulkkujärvi [lesser dick lake], because we’re clearly adults. The space between was left undiscovered because it was getting late and dark and I apparently had something lodged in my foot that was causing me quite a bit of pain, and also we didn’t have any flashlights or headlamps or anything, so it was probably for the best. We did successfully find Mulkku- and Vähä-Mulkkujärvi though, haha.
Stove the mini-pike at Shit-Avenue
We landed at a super cute cottage in the middle of nowhere, quite literally, on a street called Yöpöllö [night owl], which is apparently a municipally-run AirBnB that steered quite thoroughly into the owl theme, as we found little owl decorations all over the place. It was a shame that we ended up there so late because it was a really cute place and it would have been fun to arrive before midnight.
Two different saunas, hot tub, a grill hut, beach fire grill, firepit, and swimming pond, none of which we put to use
Luckily for us, we had plenty of time to get out though, so we slept in (and by we, I mean everyone but me, because I don’t sleep) and made our way to Tampere to meet yet another one of our Enslain fellows for lunch at Dumpling Studio (yes, same place I ate with my friend last month—worth it!). She then took us to an old hospital that’s been turned into a terrifying carnival of wonderful and unsettling artwork, before we went on our way to Pierulampi [fart pond]. Because yes, we are adults.
Would you believe if I said there is far more than one Fart Pond/Lake in Finland?
Once we finally relinquished Lady Enslain to her family, who had been wondering if she was still alive after her weeks of touring and gigs, we trundled our exhausted heinies back to my place to recuperate from our 2-day adventure. Alas, this was about all we accomplished during my friend’s visit, so I hope it was a worthwhile trip for her!
All that aside, April was a pleasantly uneventful month, where I did some light garden work, but most of it was spent gnawing through my draft before having visitors, and then resting the last week because I wasn’t feeling well.
Oh hey, and one more thing… it seems like I might have started to figure out how this whole Substack thing works, so for those of you reading via ‘stack, thanks for giving me a shot, welcome, and I appreciate the hell out of you all for giving me a chance to be in your inbox!
Okay, thanks to all of you who get this to your emails too, you guys rule and I appreciate you all too for listening to my ramblings every month [insert cheeky wink here]
“Kierros alkaa mä olen valmis
VIKATILA, VIKATILA
Pelko puhuu lujaa mä huudan lujempaa
VIKATILA, VIKATILA…”
— Merta ft. Hanad
Coming Next Month…
May’s looking like a total wild card for me, because I’ve got two shows with Merta next weekend and I’m trying to get my residence permit renewed (oops, didn’t know I had to do that) so that I can visit my parents. They sold their place, so it seems I need to finally get the last of my stuff out of their garage. Whatever happens next month will be squarely centered around when that happens! Helsinki Psych Fest may or may not be on the table as well. We shall see.
My (still rather bare-bones) Best of 2025 playlist can be found here:
LINK TO BEAR
Bear’s Homepage
Bear’s YouTube
Bear’s Instagram
“TVC: Volume I - An Ending & A Beginning” on (Finnish) Amazon
“TVC: Volume I - An Ending & A Beginning” on Google
“TVC: Volume I - An Ending & A Beginning” on Kobo
