Back at the Bench: Drafts, Dragons, and the Stories Waiting for Me

Content Note: Today’s post includes discussion of chronic illness, upcoming spinal surgery, interrupted creative routines, and writing through uncertainty.

“Stories don’t stop growing just because the hands holding them need to rest.”

Welcome to The Crippled Cryptid.

Disability, chronic illness, service dogs, and survival without the performance.

If you’re new here, hi. I’m Sky.

Professional cryptid.

Unwilling amateur cyborg. Though, hopefully, not for much longer.

Author, chronic illness advocate, and medically complex enough to make my chart a jump scare. I cope with sarcasm, snacks, and an ever-growing pile of drafts.

Most days are lived inside a haunted meat suit with a questionable warranty and a long-standing feud with my nervous system.

Some days, though…

We make things anyway.

Stories.

Worlds.

Half-finished sentences that glare at me from across the room until I finally give in and finish them.

I spend a lot of time in Bed Jail™, writing between symptoms, doctor’s appointments, naps, and whatever chaos my body has decided to throw at me that day. Thankfully, I’m rarely alone.

There’s Luna.

My medical alert Service Dingo™.

Guardian. Enforcer.

Official “You’ve been typing too long. Fix it.” supervisor.

There’s also M&M.

My Player Two. My soft place to land.

The person who asks how the writing is going, reminds me to hydrate, and gently bullies me into finishing the things my ADHD brain keeps trying to wander away from.

This space is for chronic illness without inspiration porn.

Disability without apologies.

Creativity that exists anyway.

Messy.

Nonlinear.

Real.

If you’ve been here before…

Welcome back.

If you’re new…

You’ll find your footing.

Pull up a chair.

Ignore the tower of notebooks that’s one enthusiastic sneeze away from becoming a structural hazard.

Mind the dog toys.

Don’t touch the coffee.

It’s impossible to tell whether it’s fresh or left over from yesterday.

Welcome back to the Workbench.

🐉 On Today’s Workbench…

• Current projects
• Word counts (or the lack thereof)
• Research rabbit holes
• Publishing updates
• Narrative gremlins
• Future plans
• One very opinionated Service Dingo™

📚 Workbench Stats

Current Projects

• 🌸 Bloom (Expanded Edition)
• 🚣 The Ferryman
• 🌼 Where Marigolds Grow
• 🕯️ Something Wicked
• 🐾 Luna Bean’s Children’s Book

Current Mood

📝 Editing

🌱 Hopeful

☕ Running primarily on caffeine and stubbornness

Narrative Gremlin Status: Extremely active.

First…

I owe you an apology.

Wyrm Workbench has quietly slipped through the cracks these past several weeks.

Not because I stopped writing.

Ironically…

Because I’ve been writing almost nonstop.

Nearly every spare hour has gone into filling the draft folder before my spinal surgery on July 9th.

The truth is…

I don’t know what recovery is going to look like.

Maybe I’ll bounce back quickly.

Maybe my body will insist on a long nap.

Either way, I wanted to make sure this little corner of the internet stayed alive while I rested.

I wanted Future Sky to be able to open the drafts folder, hit Publish, and crawl right back under a mountain of blankets.

I didn’t want The Crippled Cryptid to disappear just because I needed to heal.

I don’t want you to forget about me while I’m resting.

🐾 Luna Note

Everybody keeps talking about taking care of Mama after surgery.

Good.

That was already my plan.

I’m also fairly certain Luna Bean, M&M, and BJ (the Yard Yeti) are going to unionize against me.

They’re going to insist I stay away from my desk.

They’ll probably hide my iPad.

They’ll definitely tell me to stop answering emails.

And honestly?

They’re probably right.

After spinal surgery, my only real job is going to be healing.

🐾 Luna Note

To be fair…

Mama did promise the doctors she’d rest.

I’m simply making sure she remembers making that promise.

But Enough About Recovery.

Let’s talk about the fun stuff.

The word stuff.

The things you actually came here for.

🌸 Bloom Is Blooming Again

One of the biggest projects quietly taking over my desk has been Bloom.

A few years ago, I published it as a poetry collection.

This fall…

It’s coming back.

Not as a simple reprint.

As something fuller.

Richer.

Closer to the book I always wanted it to become.

There will be brand-new poems.

Little doodles tucked throughout the pages.

Notes about what I was thinking while writing certain pieces.

Stories behind the poems themselves.

It feels less like revisiting an old project and more like sitting down with a younger version of myself for a conversation.

I think that’s kind of beautiful.

Next to Bloom, I’ve also been reformatting The Ferryman, a short story I originally published under a pen name.

Getting to breathe new life into old work has been surprisingly emotional.

Some stories deserve another chance.

I think this one does.

Meanwhile…

I’ve still been spending time with Something Wicked and Where Marigolds Grow whenever life gives me a quiet afternoon.

Progress is slower than I’d like.

But it’s still progress.

🐾 Luna Note

Mama says she has “too many projects.”

I counted.

She stopped letting me count after six.

And Then…

There’s Luna.

Because of course there is.

Somewhere between writing Friday Takeovers and documenting all of her latest adventures, a tiny idea started growing.

A children’s book.

About one very smart, very stubborn, dual-colored-eyed Australian Cattle Dog who happens to have one of the most important jobs in the world.

Helping her human.

I’ve already started writing it.

And honestly…

Writing in Luna’s voice has become one of my favorite parts of every single week.

Next week’s Wyrm Workbench is going to be all about that project.

How it happened.

Why it matters so much to me.

And why I think Luna Bean deserves her own story.

The best part?

It’s already halfway written.

Future Sky has officially run out of excuses.

🐾 Luna Note

I checked the drafts folder.

It contains many words.

Some of them are even in the correct order.

🔎 Research Rabbit Hole

Today’s completely normal search history:

• Victorian flower meanings
• Ferry folklore
• Australian Cattle Dog behavior
• Can dogs recognize books?
• How many times can someone rename the same document before admitting they’re procrastinating?

Asking for a friend.

🌱 Small Victory

I didn’t write ten thousand words today.

I didn’t finish every project.

I didn’t magically clear my to-do list.

But…

I showed up.

Sometimes that’s the bigger accomplishment.

We’ve been productivity goblins around here.

Running errands.

Going on adventures.

Taking far too many car rides with Miss Luna Bean.

Collecting stories faster than I can organize them.

And despite everything…

The words have kept coming.

Maybe not as quickly.

Maybe not as neatly.

But they’ve come.

What about you?

What have you been building lately?

What dream have you been chasing in between appointments, workdays, flare-ups, family obligations, or simply trying to survive another week?

I’d genuinely love to hear about it.

If you’ve ever stared at a blank page and felt it stare back…

You’re not alone.

If your progress is slow…

Messy…

Inconsistent…

It still counts.

We build what we can.

When we can.

That’s enough.

🐾 Luna Bean’s Official Workbench Inspection

I inspected today’s writing personally.

Mama stopped typing several times to pet me.

This delayed production.

I have determined this was an acceptable trade.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Five out of five tennis balls.

Human adequately supervised.

Next Time on Wyrm Workbench…

🐾 How one opinionated Service Dingo™ accidentally became the star of a children’s book.

Recovery might slow me down for a little while.

It won’t stop me.

The stories will wait.

The characters aren’t going anywhere.

And when I’m back at the bench…

We’ll get back to building worlds together.

Until then…

Thank you for being here.

It means more than you know.

—Sky

© The Crippled Cryptid

Disability. Honesty. A little chaos.

(…and maybe a few unfinished drafts.)

🔗 https://linktr.ee/skylanarissa

There is never any pressure to donate. Reading, sharing, commenting, or simply spending a few minutes here is already more than enough.

If you’d like to support the long, slow work of staying alive, healing, and continuing to tell stories, you can do so here:

💜 https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-skys-journey-to-health-and-mobility

🪵 Workbench Motto: We don’t wait for perfect writing days. We write on the days we have.