Posts on exsilium

Status Update - 2026 Week 17

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 11:00:51 -0400

Overview

ongoing writing projects
- weekly flash fiction These Are Not My Memories added to Patreon
- weekly flash fiction GREAT is draft complete and out to readers for feedback
- short story Corporeal Acquisitions being written, currently in first draft
- new weekly flash fiction started and in the exploratory phase
set up blog at exsilium.heavyliftingindustries.com
new accounts set up on Patreon and GoodReads

These Are Not My Memories

New flash fiction piece posted to Patreon. It’s free to read and includes an epub download option for paid Patreon members.

This is the first in what I’m calling the Patreon Singles Releases. Every week I’ll be writing a new piece of flash fiction and posting it to my Patreon this way.

GREAT

GREAT is my next weekly piece. It was completed over the weekend. Just awaiting feedback from readers and then this will go through the Patreon release process.

It was originally written as a three minute cosmic horror short film about right wing indoctrination via random video chat. I liked it as a script and I like it even more as a short story.

My weekly writing is supposed to be flash fiction. GREAT has settled in around 1750 words. A little bit more than what I was aiming for. That said, I’m more interested in following the story than I am an arbitrary word count. That may change in the future, but I’ll worry about that when I get there.

Corporeal Acquisitions

Another cosmic horror short story. It is continuing forward. I know the entire story at this point. I’ve collected all my little bits and pieces into a coherent, high level outline. I’ve started working through the outline on an initial draft.

The outline, in bullet points, was roughly 3500 words. As I’m working through it’s not growing too much. I’m about a third of the way through the first draft and it’s only grown by about 600 words. Expect the completed initial draft to be less than 6000 words total.

I’m aiming to have a polished first draft ready for readers before May 1st.

Untitled Patreon Singles Release

The next weekly flash project has been started. I am currently exploring ideas. I don’t have anything ready to go and am starting from scratch. It lets me work through what’s top of mind and see if there are any stories in there I’m interested in telling.

Published Blog

Set up this blog using hugo to generate a static site. It required a little bit of configuration, but not much. I’m pretty happy with the implementation. I’ve used Jekyll in the past. It was fine, but hugo feels cleaner to me. There’s a lot of similarity between to two.

I’m currently hosting this under my heavyliftingindustries.com domain. It will likely move at some point to its own domain. I’m not in a rush to do that. A new domain will come when I’ve got the income to pay for it.

Patreon and GoodReads Accounts

As I’m working on moving forward with writing, I’m setting up some new accounts to supplement that work. This is being done to have a single lane of focus. I have historically had a lot of interests, hobbies, and paths I’ve chased down. I’d prefer to minimize pollution across those streams.

A Patreon account has been created. The first piece of writing has gone up. It’s a flash fiction piece called These Are Not My Memories. It’s posted in a regular post under the members free tier. I’ve also created an epub download version that is available patrons under the paid tier.

A GoodReads account was created to eventually claim an author account. I’ll get there eventually.

My Mastodon account is a notable exception here. I’m continuing to use that as a primary account and I don’t see any real need to create a dedicated Mastodon account for writing.

Status Update - 2026 Week 16

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 10:39:19 -0400

Overview

resumed work on short story Corporeal Acquisitions
started and completed flash fiction piece These Are Not My Memories
started flash fiction adaptation of short film script GREAT
completed two new blog posts
installed and started using taskwarrior and timewarrior
created template repository for new writing projects
wrote xq tool for extracting questions from files

Corporeal Acquisitions

In 2023 I was looking for a writing outlet and considering revisiting prose. I started working on building out a cosmic horror short story at the time. I had put around a week’s worth of effort into figuring out what story I was telling and building some basic structure.

I’ve resumed work on this project and have a much stronger sense of the story. I’m still organizing and outlining with the intention of starting into a draft this week. I have a loose expectation of when I’ll have a reasonable draft completed, but largely using this to get a sense for how long a project of this length will take me to write.

These Are Not My Memories

The switch from screenwriting to prose means there are a lot of skills to build up. Many of these skills haven’t been exercised since I was a kid. I’m going to need consistent work on those. In that spirit, I’m working to write a flash fiction piece every week. The goal is reps, not polished pieces for release.

The first is These Are Not My Memories.

Like the majority of my writing, there’s an undercurrent of horror. It’s a piece about tech, identity, and capitalism as an uploaded consciousness in a bot with no back ups.

GREAT

Another flash fiction piece that’s just been started. It was initially written as a short horror film about right wing indoctrination. It was originally written to be a low budget, three minute short.

Given the amount of film scripts I’ve written over the years, it seemed like a good idea to see how I feel about the adapting process while continuing my goal of writing a flash fiction piece each week. This is largely a test to see if I’ll adapt more pieces in the future.

Two New Blog Posts

The Time is Now documents where I’m currently at in my writing and the rationale behind switching from screenwriting to narrative prose.

Writing for Flow talks about some of the processes and structures I’ve put in place to ensure minimal disruptions in the writing process.

taskwarrior and timewarrior

I predominantly write at a Linux terminal. This is part of my attempt to minimize disruptions in the writing process. I also like minimal systems to keep track of what I’m doing and how much time I’ve spent on each task.

taskwarrior is a highly functional task list application. I’m using it largely as a source of truth for the projects I’m currently working on. At any point I can bring up my task list and see at a glance what needs to be worked on.

timewarrior is time tracking software. This ties into taskwarrior and can be configured to automatically start tracking time whenever a taskwarrior task is started. I like time tracking as it’s a measurement to see how I’ve performed in the past and to extrapolate how long something new might take me in the future.

Template Repository

I’ve taken a lot of tools from my life as a software developer into writing. Version control using git and source code hosting sites are major ones that I’ll elaborate on my usage more in the future.

I have a consistent, basic structure for my writing projects that includes Makefile tasks and pre-commit tasks for automatic clean up and formatting.

Since I tend to follow the same basic requirements and structure for each project, I’ve created a template of that structure and saved it as part of a repository that can be reused and updated as necessary.

It saves me the repetition of setting things up from scratch or copying and pasting for each new project.

Created `xq` Tool

As I discuss in the Writing for Flow blog post, one of my tools for minimizing the disruption of writing is to drop questions or ideas separate from the current line of thought inline, using the Markdown checkbox (- [ ]). This ensures that questions and notes are captured without breaking my writing flow or requiring large context switches.

xq is a small command line application written in Go that extracts these questions out of a document for me. The default behaviour is that it will extract the questions from a specified input file and append them to a file called open_questions.md in the same directory.

It supports custom input and output files, as well as a flag to keep the questions in the original file while marking them completed (- [x]).

It is a minimal tool created to handle a specific problem.

Writing for Flow

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 11:40:27 -0400

One of the ways that I try to organize my writing is for flow. For me, that means not having to stop or slow down. Keep my thoughts and keystrokes uninterrupted. My goal is to minimize the amount of things getting in the way of getting the words out.

This is a brief introduction to the systems and software I use. I’ll go into more detail on most of these topics in future posts.

Purpose Driven Software

The primary piece of software that I use for writing is Neovim. It is a mode based terminal text editor. If those words, in that order, don’t mean anything to you, I congratulate you on being a rational and well-adjusted individual.

Everything in Neovim is a keystroke. The whole program is meant to be used exclusively with a keyboard. While it takes some time to learn, it is ridiculously powerful and quick to work with once you’ve adapted.

One of the primary reasons I work in Neovim is to avoid using a mouse. Every time I take my hands off the keyboard I am slowing down. In a perfect world, I never have to take my hands off the keyboard. If I can avoid moving them out of the home row position, that’s even better. Neovim facilitates this effectively.

Minimal Syntax Between Text and Intent

As I’m writing in Neovim, I don’t have access to text formatting in the same way that a word processor offers. I write using Markdown syntax instead.

The majority of my writing is just plain text. For those odd occasions where I want a little more formatting, like headings or the occasional underline, Markdown is lightweight enough that it doesn’t impact my flow. It’s the least amount of friction between the words in my head and the words out of my head.

Avoid Context Switching

The heaviest usage I have of Markdown is with the checkbox syntax: - [ ]

One of the biggest interruptions in my writing has been notes or questions unrelated to the specific thought that I’m working on in that moment. It meant either stopping what I was doing to jot down the thought elsewhere or to power through on my current thought, hoping I don’t forget by the time I’m done.

The checkbox has become my tool for getting those ideas out inline. Rather than try to find a separate place to jot the note down, I add it in the middle of what I’m writing. I’ll start a new line with the checkbox and write my note there.

As soon as I’ve got the idea out of my head I resume working on the thought I was originally exploring. It is guaranteed capture of ideas with the least amount of disruption and context switching I’ve been able to figure out so far.

After my writing session is done, I will then extract all lines starting with checkboxes and append them to a separate file. I typically call it my open questions file. I’ve written a utility application in Go that will extract questions automatically.

Writing is not Editing

Attempting to write and edit simultaneously is the surest path to hell I know of. Correcting a spelling error or a missing word is one thing. Rephrasing or expanding something is editing and I do my best to avoid it at all costs when I’m in the writing process.

Much like with inline questions, if I need to capture an idea I will simply write it inline. If I am feeling like I’ve missed something, got the structure wrong, or want to rephrase, I will write a new version underneath the original version.

I am continuing to move forward by capturing a different way of approaching something. I’m not thinking critically about the way something is being presented, if it’s better or worse. It’s just a different presentation.

I have had projects where I have five or six different approaches to a sentence or paragraph inline. It ensures that all the ideas are captured and I have lots of options to work with when it does come time to edit. I treat this like a bastardization of Postel’s law. I am bold in putting words down and liberal in cutting them away.

Future me, who is more tapped into this project, will be able to parse through the text and figure out the right path forward. The job while writing isn’t to create the perfect gems. It’s to create enough real estate to mine later and discover the gems.

Limited Hardware Is Good

I write on a laptop that makes it difficult to betray myself. It is old, underpowered,the audio doesn’t work, and the battery is in less than stellar condition.

On a full charge I can get about two hours worth of work out of it in a normal session, using normal writing software.

If I open up a terminal emulator, kick it to full screen, and run Neovim there I can get about three and a half hours.

If log into a terminal only session and run Neovim from there I can get up to six hours. That is crazy considering the age and state of this laptop.

The added benefit of a terminal session is that there are no happy distractions. I can’t disappear into a four hour youtube shorts k-hole. There’s no streaming video or social media to scroll. It is just text. It is effectively a digital typewriter.

The Time is Now

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 16:32:28 -0400

If you’re passively curious what’s going on here, the following paragraph is the tl;dr version.

My name is Dave. I’ve been writing my entire life. My background is deeply rooted in screenwriting. My present circumstances allow me the time to invest heavily in writing. I’m using that time veer off my well worn screenwriting path toward prose. This blog will be where I talk about writing as a discipline, the tools I use for writing as a filthy Linux deviant, and my overall writing process.

If that paragraph satisfies your curiosity, feel free to drop off here. I’ll never know and no one will judge you.

Otherwise, into the thick of things.

As of writing this post, I’ve been unemployed for nearly seven months. Another casualty of tech layoffs and a shrinking job market. My days include a fair amount of skills development, trying to decipher a way back into gainful employment as a software developer. I’m also trawling through the job boards and firing resumes into an ever widening abyss that does not answer in return.

There are limits to how many hours each day I can put into these activities. For my own mental and emotional health, I need other outlets.

While I have a lot of hobbies, writing has always been my primary outlet. The points in my life where where mental and emotional well being have suffered the most have always coincided with periods where I wasn’t writing. I’m not willing to draw a causal relationship, in either direction, but there’s definitely a strong correlation there.

When I was kid I would write short stories or poetry. There was something very appealing about the shape of words and putting those words onto a page. I’ve filled many notebooks and I have fond, frustrated memories of plucking out pages on a typewriter.

The writer and poet was a stark contrast to the disruptive, scattered kid in school.

In grade seven, my gym teacher threw me up against a wall and cocked his fist back, ready to punch me in the face. In grade eight, the same teacher subbing in for an absent English teacher couldn’t reconcile the poetry I’d handed in as being my own work. It was inconceivable to him that the kid he’d nearly knocked teeth out of was capable of anything other than being a distraction and a nuisance.

Side note: I’d changed schools between grade seven and eight. The gym teacher from grade seven became the vice principal for grade eight. It was not a great year for me.

High school is when my writing took a very sharp turn. There were a handful of indie filmmakers cranking out films that spoke to me. That was who I wanted to be. Taking my words past the page and onto a screen. No more prose or poetry. My path was going to be the way of the screenwriter/director.

There are a lot things that I like about screenwriting. The visual writing style always appealed to me. There was no (acceptable) analogue for spelling out a character’s internal thoughts or emotional state. No asides to analyze the present situation for your audience. Ideas needed to be externalized.

There are also things I dislike. A screenplay is not a completed piece. It is a blueprint for a potential piece, that may be realized, in whole or in part, at some point in the future. It’s work that is inherently incomplete. It is dependent upon time, money, and other people to realize. When you are nobody, have no money, and nothing to show for yourself, that means it’s up to you to figure out how to get that completed result.

I love having written a screenplay. Seeing that accomplishment is incredibly fulfilling.

I love being on set. Working with a cast and crew to build something together is always a joy, even when it’s difficult and frustrating.

I love watching my film in a theatre with an audience. I’ve watched my films in a converted high school gym with an audience of six, myself included, and in a sold out 500 seat theatre. Both are fantastic.

It’s the pieces in between that ensured I was never going love filmmaking the same way I love screenwriting.

It’s the pieces in between that limited my filmmaking to a bit more than a half dozen short films. This is despite having written more than two dozen feature length screenplays, over fifty short film scripts, and a handful of one act plays. There was always that sense of things being incomplete. The absence of creating a self contained and whole work.

Throughout all that writing I’ve had a persistent refrain: I wished I had the opportunity to just write. The world could go away and I would be able to stop working for awhile. I could focus on writing.

It felt like I was just scratching the surface of an inexhaustible flood of words. The only way I was ever going to really deal with it was the capacity for it to be the only thing I needed to worry about.

If I’m being honest, that wish was manifest from procrastination piggybacked on the excuse that I would love to write but I’m exhausted from having to work. Doing the adult pantomime was too taxing.

A good amount of that procrastination was fear. If I wrote seriously, then I cared about writing. If I cared about writing, the next logical step would be writing for other people. As soon as other people get involved the possibility of rejection and failure becomes very, very real.

I still wrote. I just did it while hiding behind an inability to make it my whole life as an excuse to half ass it. Pretend like I didn’t have the necessary tools to be serious about it. The problem wasn’t me, you see, it was the conditions. Societal expectations and what not grinding me down. You understand.

I don’t know why it took me seven months, but the time is here. That thing that I desperately wished for across two decades has tumbled into my life. Not under ideal circumstances, but it’s here. All I need to do is run with it.

I have no expectations that writing is going to be something I can sustain myself with. It was implausible twenty years ago and is significantly less plausible now. I also know that I can’t organize my entire life around chasing a tech industry that seems to be more repelled each passing day at the very concept of employees.

I’ll keep looking for work. Keep building my development skills and knowledge. It’s the in-between that I’m interested in.

I’m switching paths. I’m taking myself away from screenwriting and putting my words back into prose. It’ll take me some time to figure out my voice, to sort out the structure and the style. I have the time. I’m going to wrestle every moment I can out of that in-between to do it.

Posts on exsilium

Status Update - 2026 Week 17

Overview

These Are Not My Memories

GREAT

Corporeal Acquisitions

Untitled Patreon Singles Release

Published Blog

Patreon and GoodReads Accounts

Status Update - 2026 Week 16

Overview

Corporeal Acquisitions

These Are Not My Memories

GREAT

Two New Blog Posts

taskwarrior and timewarrior

Template Repository

Created xq Tool

Writing for Flow

Purpose Driven Software

Minimal Syntax Between Text and Intent

Avoid Context Switching

Writing is not Editing

Limited Hardware Is Good

The Time is Now

Created `xq` Tool