At the end of March I wrote about the different viewpoints within the autism community. There is a saying, “If you’ve met one person with autism, then you have met one person with autism” and it describes how different each autistic person is. Conflict and anger can often result due these differences in all of the people involved in the autism community. I suspect many people see those differences as a weakness, with a desire to have a united front but after a great deal of thought, I see things differently. Perhaps those differences are a strength.

I’ve finished the section of back story for each character, it helped me in filling out their motivations and character for the main story. Now back to the main story, we join Jake as he tries to figure out what has happened and reports in for duty to help out.

It is almost April, which is also Autism Awareness month. April 2nd is World Wide Autism Awareness day. Over the last few years, I have been learning about autism by reading books, following autistic bloggers, parents of autistic children and participating in a discussion group focused on autism. While performing this research, I have become acquainted with the challenges and issues each group has when dealing with autism.

For those few who are following along, this is the last of the back stories, at least for the moment. This story is about Deidre and how she left home. I have enjoyed writing this section but I suspect that most of this will be pulled out of the final book or trimmed down quite a bit. I like to learn more about my characters but I’m not sure how well it will fit into the final story.

I’m running behind again on the next chapter for “Year 2038 Bug” so it will be next month before I have the chapter ready. I am writing about Brian and his daughter Deidre and after writing most of the chapter it doesn’t feel like the right path so I need to do a rewrite. I am also working on another project, which I am close to finishing part of it, and I’d like to complete my writing on that so I can then focus more on my book in progress. I want to see if I can get caught up and build up a buffer, if I can get two chapters done I will publish both of them next month.

Over the last few years I’ve been learning about autism by reading books and following people on social media who are involved with the autism community. I have been exposed to many different perspectives from parents of autistic children, caregivers and autistic adults. There are many unique viewpoints, ranging from autism should be cured to autism is just a different way of thinking, which reinforces the idea of an autism spectrum.

Time for another chapter for my book in progress, “Year 2038 Bug”. I had a nice surprise while writing this chapter, the text flowed smoothly and I didn’t experience a blocking problem when capturing my thoughts. While I have felt the need to set up background for my story in the last few chapters, they have been harder to write and pull together. It was nice to get back to some action in the story and I’m happy with how things ended up.