177 words. I added a bit to the end of the ritual scene that Aaron was doing in Vengeance, and I'm still not sure what should happen next. After that I got distracted. >.>
More or less, I met a guy, and decided that it was more important to get our relationship off to a good start. There's always a tricky transition period between when we're still just friends, and when we've stabilized into happy dating. For us this was a couple weeks long, right in the middle of the month of course, but relationships in general can't really be scheduled - they happen when it's time for them to happen.
I also moved flats and had to do a bunch of shopping for stuff I didn't need at the original flat but do now. My shipped stuff was supposed to arrive, but so far it still isn't here.
I guess I'll try again on the fiction front next year.
Showing posts with label Vengeance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vengeance. Show all posts
2018/12/02
2015/04/26
Winding Down Camp Nano for April
5780 words.
Sort of. It's not the actual number of new words I wrote, because I wrote one scene three times. But it's not the net total of new words either, because I saved a bunch of fodder from previous versions of that scene, plus made a discard pile, but only saved some of it. I guess overall it doesn't matter. I made a lot of progress on the story, and that was all I was really aiming for.
There's a few more days of April left, but I'm not likely to get back to it again until Friday, which will be May 1, so that's going to be my official final score.
The entire thing is now at 18,470. 6964 of those are about them bumbling around in the warehouses, starting with being ambushed in the first one, then getting sidetracked into a second decoy, before finally getting to the door of the correct warehouse. The latter two parts were nearly all written this month, for 3910 words (not counting discards). That's a lot more than I originally envisioned, but it makes sense that it would've been that complicated, and there was a fair bit of character development along the way. So much so, that I'm going to have to go back and make sure everyone is still consistent with themselves from before all that...
Then I finally got to the ritual scene that I'd been waiting to write for years. It's the scene I've written three times now, and probably the next time I look, I'll find more things I'll want to change about it. That's how this story has been going though. One scene at a time, edit it to perfection, before moving on to the next part.
Which, now that I think about it, I don't actually have any plans after this scene ends. This could be a problem if nothing suggests itself by the time I'm done. Hopefully the characters will figure something out by then.
Sort of. It's not the actual number of new words I wrote, because I wrote one scene three times. But it's not the net total of new words either, because I saved a bunch of fodder from previous versions of that scene, plus made a discard pile, but only saved some of it. I guess overall it doesn't matter. I made a lot of progress on the story, and that was all I was really aiming for.
There's a few more days of April left, but I'm not likely to get back to it again until Friday, which will be May 1, so that's going to be my official final score.
The entire thing is now at 18,470. 6964 of those are about them bumbling around in the warehouses, starting with being ambushed in the first one, then getting sidetracked into a second decoy, before finally getting to the door of the correct warehouse. The latter two parts were nearly all written this month, for 3910 words (not counting discards). That's a lot more than I originally envisioned, but it makes sense that it would've been that complicated, and there was a fair bit of character development along the way. So much so, that I'm going to have to go back and make sure everyone is still consistent with themselves from before all that...
Then I finally got to the ritual scene that I'd been waiting to write for years. It's the scene I've written three times now, and probably the next time I look, I'll find more things I'll want to change about it. That's how this story has been going though. One scene at a time, edit it to perfection, before moving on to the next part.
Which, now that I think about it, I don't actually have any plans after this scene ends. This could be a problem if nothing suggests itself by the time I'm done. Hopefully the characters will figure something out by then.
2015/04/04
Camp Nano April 2015 - and we're off!
1434 words so far. The goal this month is 15,000, or 500 words per day, which I figure should be doable for something like Vengeance that has to be written slowly. I'm figuring on two scheduled timeblocks per week for writing that include sitting next to other people - Friday evening and Sunday evening. That probably won't be enough to cover quota, and the only other time I can reliably fit a big block of writing would be Wednesday morning. Three times a week of 2-3 hours each, with lots of downtime in between (because this story needs lots of downtime in between). Maybe bits and pieces on Saturdays also. Should work.
So last night (a Friday) I'd intended to rough out the ritual scene with Aaron and Thorme, but instead I got there and hit the ground running on the rest of the warehouse scene. 1434 words in about two hours is a lot faster than I was expecting all that to come out. The excuse to keep them delayed for another three hours is kind of flimsy, but it worked well enough to get things going. Basically I made it extremely difficult to repair the control panel to the hydraulic lift that would let them get back to the surface.
Now I'm kind of stuck at a bit of a plot hole - namely, how could Alice have been backtracked through the underground tunnel after being in the second warehouse, and our heroes didn't pick up on her scent the first time? So I might move her (and the ritual) to a whole different block of warehouses instead. That kind of screws up the entrance I'd intended though - they're supposed to go in from the back, not the front. It also means I have to renumber all of the warehouses again...
So last night (a Friday) I'd intended to rough out the ritual scene with Aaron and Thorme, but instead I got there and hit the ground running on the rest of the warehouse scene. 1434 words in about two hours is a lot faster than I was expecting all that to come out. The excuse to keep them delayed for another three hours is kind of flimsy, but it worked well enough to get things going. Basically I made it extremely difficult to repair the control panel to the hydraulic lift that would let them get back to the surface.
Now I'm kind of stuck at a bit of a plot hole - namely, how could Alice have been backtracked through the underground tunnel after being in the second warehouse, and our heroes didn't pick up on her scent the first time? So I might move her (and the ritual) to a whole different block of warehouses instead. That kind of screws up the entrance I'd intended though - they're supposed to go in from the back, not the front. It also means I have to renumber all of the warehouses again...
2015/03/22
Getting ready for Camp Nanowrimo April 2015
In the last couple months, I've compiled everything I've written related to Rumen into a single Scrivener file. Including all the parts from the original roleplaying game (What is it to be Human?). There was a lot, and it wasn't organized very well for copy-paste, but it was a lot of fun to go back and reread all that. In total, I copied about 90k words - nearly all of Rumen's scenes, all of Katrina, and the first night for Aaron. That's an entire novel right there, and of fairly publishable quality as-is. Actually doing anything with the original game is unlikely though, because there's no way I'm going to track down all of the other people who wrote for it, now that it's ten years later. I might go back and copy out all the rest of Aaron's scenes at some point (everything involving Samuel and Mariah, the second scene with Aniqa) but the point of divergence for my story was after the first scene with Aniqa, so it's not a high priority.
Organizing all of my own stuff was quicker overall. For Vengeance, the version that I had in the Jer's file was very well polished already, and I don't even feel like I need the earlier drafts for those anymore. The other two stories (Tragedy of the Hand, End of Rage) were more of a mess, but there wasn't as much of it, so it balanced out.
My plan for April's Camp Nano is to continue from where I left off. So far I've only done some minor tweaks to Vengeance while I was compiling, and managed to write about 300 new words to the Warehouse Ambush scene. They had broken out of the first warehouse when I last looked, and now they've broken into the second warehouse and found that it was a sidetrack. I have to come up with something to keep them occupied for another three hours so that they'll match up with the timepoint of what Aaron is doing. Then I'll finally get to the next "fun" scene: they break into the correct warehouse and find Alice, and watch Aaron's ritual with Thorme in progress.
I'm also assuming that by July's Camp Nano, Rumen is going to have faded back out of my mind again. He only seems to show up in winter for some reason. So my tentative plan for July is to take another stab at Cosmic Potato - my Nano 2013 failure, where I only got about 6k words into it before Battle Pirates distracted me. I have all sorts of fun ideas running through my head for what I could do with it, and I need to get around to writing it down.
Organizing all of my own stuff was quicker overall. For Vengeance, the version that I had in the Jer's file was very well polished already, and I don't even feel like I need the earlier drafts for those anymore. The other two stories (Tragedy of the Hand, End of Rage) were more of a mess, but there wasn't as much of it, so it balanced out.
My plan for April's Camp Nano is to continue from where I left off. So far I've only done some minor tweaks to Vengeance while I was compiling, and managed to write about 300 new words to the Warehouse Ambush scene. They had broken out of the first warehouse when I last looked, and now they've broken into the second warehouse and found that it was a sidetrack. I have to come up with something to keep them occupied for another three hours so that they'll match up with the timepoint of what Aaron is doing. Then I'll finally get to the next "fun" scene: they break into the correct warehouse and find Alice, and watch Aaron's ritual with Thorme in progress.
I'm also assuming that by July's Camp Nano, Rumen is going to have faded back out of my mind again. He only seems to show up in winter for some reason. So my tentative plan for July is to take another stab at Cosmic Potato - my Nano 2013 failure, where I only got about 6k words into it before Battle Pirates distracted me. I have all sorts of fun ideas running through my head for what I could do with it, and I need to get around to writing it down.
2015/02/01
Going back to Rumen and Aaron
It's the beginning of February, and I've been ignoring fiction for nearly a month due to work-related writing commitments, that I'm finally done with, and can now get back into things. I don't really feel like working on Fortress Launne. For some reason, this part of the year seems to have become dedicated in my mind to Rumen's story. There have also been a number of recent events in my personal life that have set off a ton of strong emotions of all kinds, and aside from a sudden urge to write angsty poetry, I think a better outlet would be to get back to writing for Rumen.
It's been around 4 years since I even looked at anything related to Rumen. I think for starters, I'm going to assemble all the pieces of everything I've got scattered everywhere into a single Scrivener file - just like I did with Fortress Launne. That would be Tragedy of the Hand, End of Rage (which will become the opposite half of Hand eventually), and Vengeance Returns. A first glance tells me this is going to be kind of a pain - apparently I started lots of files with different names, and then didn't do anything with them, and then forgot I had them. :p
That'll be tonight's main task anyway. I'm sitting at a Panera, like I plan to do every Sunday evening from now until whenever Kristin gets bored and wants to stop. It was the regular Nanowrimo write-in time from last November, and we decided we should just keep going. She says she'll be here every week that she doesn't have to work. She's not here tonight, so I guess she's at work. Oh well, here goes some concatenating...
It's been around 4 years since I even looked at anything related to Rumen. I think for starters, I'm going to assemble all the pieces of everything I've got scattered everywhere into a single Scrivener file - just like I did with Fortress Launne. That would be Tragedy of the Hand, End of Rage (which will become the opposite half of Hand eventually), and Vengeance Returns. A first glance tells me this is going to be kind of a pain - apparently I started lots of files with different names, and then didn't do anything with them, and then forgot I had them. :p
That'll be tonight's main task anyway. I'm sitting at a Panera, like I plan to do every Sunday evening from now until whenever Kristin gets bored and wants to stop. It was the regular Nanowrimo write-in time from last November, and we decided we should just keep going. She says she'll be here every week that she doesn't have to work. She's not here tonight, so I guess she's at work. Oh well, here goes some concatenating...
2011/08/06
Camp Nanowrimo 2011 Part 2
It's Camp Nanowrimo time, where we're supposed to write 50,000 words in 31 days of August. They had one for July too. It's the first year they're doing these. And just like SFFMuse Summer Fun Run, I don't seem to be getting into it the way I do for November. Maybe next year when I have a long time to plan in advance to do something significant over two months.
This year I'm continuing work on Vengeance. Which of course is already started, but it's really the only thing I feel like working on at the moment. That's the problem with marathons anymore. The rules always say to start completely new work (or restart second drafts from the beginning). I have too many things already started and in progress, I don't need more of them. I don't have a clue what I'm even going to do in November because all of Fortress Launne is now done for first drafts, and what I need to do next is ... not edits exactly, but not technically new writing either.
So what I'm doing for Camp Nanowrimo is quasi new material, quasi edits, that continue what I need to do for Vengeance.
So far all I've done is write yet another version of the park scene. I have at least three saved versions in addition to the one I just wrote, plus there were a couple others I wrote that didn't save. None of it sounds more right than the others, but at least none of them are completely wrong, either. I guess I need to cobble together the good parts of everything and somehow make it work as a single scene. Having done it so many times in a row, I have the basic gist of what happens in it:
1. Rumen is so distracted by Craig being able to see the true form of him feeding, he fails to notice Katrina's arrival. This annoys him even more and he stomps off in a huff.
2. Katrina was assigned to collect intel surrounding Stockade Storage. She brought maps.
3. Robert, who is next in rank below Rumen, went to the armory to collect gear for himself, Simon, and Craig. He arrives second.
4.
=====
[Apparently I got distracted and never finished whatever I was going to say here. Might as well put up what I had. --2013 Oct 10]
This year I'm continuing work on Vengeance. Which of course is already started, but it's really the only thing I feel like working on at the moment. That's the problem with marathons anymore. The rules always say to start completely new work (or restart second drafts from the beginning). I have too many things already started and in progress, I don't need more of them. I don't have a clue what I'm even going to do in November because all of Fortress Launne is now done for first drafts, and what I need to do next is ... not edits exactly, but not technically new writing either.
So what I'm doing for Camp Nanowrimo is quasi new material, quasi edits, that continue what I need to do for Vengeance.
So far all I've done is write yet another version of the park scene. I have at least three saved versions in addition to the one I just wrote, plus there were a couple others I wrote that didn't save. None of it sounds more right than the others, but at least none of them are completely wrong, either. I guess I need to cobble together the good parts of everything and somehow make it work as a single scene. Having done it so many times in a row, I have the basic gist of what happens in it:
1. Rumen is so distracted by Craig being able to see the true form of him feeding, he fails to notice Katrina's arrival. This annoys him even more and he stomps off in a huff.
2. Katrina was assigned to collect intel surrounding Stockade Storage. She brought maps.
3. Robert, who is next in rank below Rumen, went to the armory to collect gear for himself, Simon, and Craig. He arrives second.
4.
=====
[Apparently I got distracted and never finished whatever I was going to say here. Might as well put up what I had. --2013 Oct 10]
2011/02/09
Progress on Vengeance
Man oh man, was there ever. Inspiration struck over the past week for how exactly to move forward from Aaron's viewpoint. Basically, the problem was the conversation with Alice. The solution turned out to be to prevent them from having a conversation at all, and then things continued to spin out from there. And now I'm a lot more clear on what exactly Thorme's plans are for the short-to-medium term, with regards to his attack on Hernando.
In summary: his prime goal is to partner up with Aaron. However, he had a backup plan, which was to take out Hernando's other servant (he'd already taken out Chance by this point, with Mira still alive), by doing a spell that would give him the power to mess with her remotely. And one of the prime ingredients of that spell is the sacrifice of an innocent. And Alice is that innocent.
So when Aaron shows up, Thorme presents him with a choice: accept a partnership, or watch Alice die in the alternate ritual (and then be killed). Either way would help Thorme. And in fact he's probably still going to do that second spell later, though not with Alice as the sacrifice. Aaron of course chooses to do the partnership.
So that was Chapter 8. Another excellent chapter. Needs polishing, but basically everything that needs to be in it is there.
So far the chapters are:
1. Craig stalks Jessica and tries to shoot her.
2. Rumen captures Craig and takes him to Hernando.
3. Hernando says "I'll trade you Jessica for Aaron."
4. Craig visits Aaron at the bookstore.
5. Craig and Rumen go to the park, where they plan to assault the warehouse.
6. The warehouse assault, which turns out to be a trap. (Scene needs major work.)
7. They escape the warehouse and find the right one. (I still haven't figure out how that's going to happen yet.)
8. Aaron shows up at the warehouse.
The plans for 9 so far: Craig and Rumen and etc. sneak into the warehouse where Aaron's ritual is in progress.
I'm not entirely sure what happens after that. They'll want to get both Alice and Aaron out of there, but how to do that is up in the air. Hopefully something will present itself while I'm writing it.
As for the warehouses... I've completely reconfigured them. Instead of plain old buildings, these are two levels by giant hydraulic elevator - which is how the thing could've sunk underground in the first place. The design is to be able to store stuff in two giant compartments. Fill one, then sink it down, then there's a second compartment over it. To reach the lower compartment (of every warehouse in the row), there's an underground hallway connecting them.
I'm not actually sure why I'm sticking with the "it sinks completely underground" that I wrote in on the spur of the moment. Hopefully that'll become clear at some point too.
Anyway, so now there's a second exit - through the door to the underground hallway. From there they just have to figure out which warehouse they actually want, break into it, and observe the ritual.
===
On a general note, I've noticed lately that I have a *lot* of magic rituals. There's at least one major one in every Fortress Launne book, and usually it's a climax scene. I wonder what that means...
I've made a small amount of progress on the Fortress Launne series too, mostly back in January when I was hoping to focus more on fiction than I did. Basically I took the opener I wrote for Taint, modified it to fit into Triangle II, then added to the bottom. It's at a stuck point again, where basically I have to finish the second draft version of Amulet I/Edward before I can continue. Which means starting with Edward. Which I've been procrastinating for weeks now...
In summary: his prime goal is to partner up with Aaron. However, he had a backup plan, which was to take out Hernando's other servant (he'd already taken out Chance by this point, with Mira still alive), by doing a spell that would give him the power to mess with her remotely. And one of the prime ingredients of that spell is the sacrifice of an innocent. And Alice is that innocent.
So when Aaron shows up, Thorme presents him with a choice: accept a partnership, or watch Alice die in the alternate ritual (and then be killed). Either way would help Thorme. And in fact he's probably still going to do that second spell later, though not with Alice as the sacrifice. Aaron of course chooses to do the partnership.
So that was Chapter 8. Another excellent chapter. Needs polishing, but basically everything that needs to be in it is there.
So far the chapters are:
1. Craig stalks Jessica and tries to shoot her.
2. Rumen captures Craig and takes him to Hernando.
3. Hernando says "I'll trade you Jessica for Aaron."
4. Craig visits Aaron at the bookstore.
5. Craig and Rumen go to the park, where they plan to assault the warehouse.
6. The warehouse assault, which turns out to be a trap. (Scene needs major work.)
7. They escape the warehouse and find the right one. (I still haven't figure out how that's going to happen yet.)
8. Aaron shows up at the warehouse.
The plans for 9 so far: Craig and Rumen and etc. sneak into the warehouse where Aaron's ritual is in progress.
I'm not entirely sure what happens after that. They'll want to get both Alice and Aaron out of there, but how to do that is up in the air. Hopefully something will present itself while I'm writing it.
As for the warehouses... I've completely reconfigured them. Instead of plain old buildings, these are two levels by giant hydraulic elevator - which is how the thing could've sunk underground in the first place. The design is to be able to store stuff in two giant compartments. Fill one, then sink it down, then there's a second compartment over it. To reach the lower compartment (of every warehouse in the row), there's an underground hallway connecting them.
I'm not actually sure why I'm sticking with the "it sinks completely underground" that I wrote in on the spur of the moment. Hopefully that'll become clear at some point too.
Anyway, so now there's a second exit - through the door to the underground hallway. From there they just have to figure out which warehouse they actually want, break into it, and observe the ritual.
===
On a general note, I've noticed lately that I have a *lot* of magic rituals. There's at least one major one in every Fortress Launne book, and usually it's a climax scene. I wonder what that means...
I've made a small amount of progress on the Fortress Launne series too, mostly back in January when I was hoping to focus more on fiction than I did. Basically I took the opener I wrote for Taint, modified it to fit into Triangle II, then added to the bottom. It's at a stuck point again, where basically I have to finish the second draft version of Amulet I/Edward before I can continue. Which means starting with Edward. Which I've been procrastinating for weeks now...
2010/09/06
Labor Day Novel 2010
Yes, I did it again this year. No, no plan this time either. I didn't have any excuses for not cranking out a ton of words like I had the previous two years, but alas, it looks like a lack of plan does me in just fine anyway.
Day 1: 3677 words toward Vengeance
Day 2: 3861 toward Hand
Day 3: 266 words toward ... never mind. T.T
The first two days, I made a fair amount of good progress. The overall goal was just to write a lot, advance the amount of material to edit later. Well, I managed to accomplish that.
Day 1 was all about Vengeance. I wrote out yet another version of the planning in the park, then gave up on giving it a good ending and went on to the good part - getting them into the warehouse. That was a lot of fun. Lots of fast-paced action, and the writing went by really fast.
Then I got stuck on how they were actually going to get back out of the warehouse. It sank underground and now has a heavy metal plate over the hatch. My vision of things involves them doing something ingenious and complex going back out through the roof. This rules out any underground tunnels Hernando might know about in the area and tell Rumen about. Rumen could also call on his other underlings (Edward and David are still back home), but I'd like them to do it on their own. They have a ton of combat and trespassing skills among them, they should use them.
Unfortunately, my current setup isn't very complex, and there's only one exit. So, well, I guess they need to either find or create another one in the roof that the Bad Guy somehow doesn't have covered (even though he was very well-prepared for their arrival; he didn't have intel on them in particular, just knew "someone" would likely show up).
Also, it occurs to me that the Bad Guy wouldn't just leave them to sit around doing nothing (and possibly coming up with escape plans). He'd torment them to keep them busy, fill up their time so they don't have time to plan anything about getting out or messing up the midnight plans with Aaron. So, I need torture ideas too. They would probably be generalized ones to cover a lot of different types of creatures since he didn't know who exactly was going to come.
Hmmm. I suppose some of the torture plans might provide openings on how to get them back out of there. Especially if there's only one way in or out. Any tormentors would have to go in and out the same way, right?
The other thing I did that I really like is a scene from Aaron's POV. I hadn't originally wanted to do anything other than Craig's, but Aaron wanted to be written. I started at just before he had to leave the bookstore, agonizing about how Craig had stood him up. It went until he got to the warehouse (of course he was going), and Thorme has proposed the partnership. Now he's demanding to see Alice. He wants to make sure she's all right, and he'd like for her to go home before he agrees to anything, but Thorme isn't going with that.
Unfortunately, when I tried to write him and Alice meeting up, that didn't go anywhere useful. So I have to rethink what Alice's role is going to be in this whole thing.
Day 2 was all about the Tragedy of the Hand. Since I was stuck at the warehouse scene, and the Alice scene had floundered, I figured I'd do something else instead.
Again, I liked the progress I made. I realized that the story actually starts back when the rogue vampire (the ancient retard) eats the Drunin witch. So I wrote that first. It sucked, but I can fix it in the rewrite. Then they were at the coroner, and then I touched on a whole lot of other minor plot points that needed to be introduced, and then I wrote the Council meeting. It turned out to be the best meeting scene I've written yet. I found it wildly entertaining, when normally my meetings tend to be really boring. So, yay. ;)
Then I stalled out when the meeting was almost over, on how exactly to introduce Cassandra's decoy subplot. Now that I've thought about it some, I might just delete that whole part out of the meeting and have it in discussion with Blaze instead. Or something.
I also finally got around to rereading the material from Labor Day 2008, when I first started this project. Gray's personality is completely different when he's talking to Cassandra. o.o He's also a lot more open about himself than I envision him now. Fortunately, I think the first scene, at least, is probably salvageable nearly as-is, and I can probably cannibalize large chunks of the second scene. Regardless, in this 2010 version, I haven't even introduced Cassandra yet. Though it should be only a scene or two away from the Council meeting scene.
As for Day 3 which is the end of today... not so good. T.T I didn't write anything meaningful at all, and not for lack of trying. There was lots of staring at a blank screen. I was stalled out on the warehouse ambush, stalled out on what to do next with Aaron (i.e. Alice), stalled out on how to finish up the Council meeting, and stalled out on what to do with the Jenya plotline. I tried to write some from the Rumen travel plotline - the part where he hands over Jenya to the Drunin - but it completely sucked, and I stopped after 226 words.
Which pretty much took out everyhting I had in mind to write. And so I sat there... and just had word constipation all day long.
In general. I need to get back to planning in regular fiction writing, in amongst all the freelancing I've been doing. Maybe one or two weekends a month or something. I've got three regular content-site gigs to juggle now though, so I don't know if I'll ever have time. I absolutely need to make at least $500 a month, absolute minimum. Until I can manage to do that and have time left over, fiction keeps ending up at the back of the line, and that needs to change.
Plus Nanowrimo is coming up fast, and I need to plan for it - both what I'm actually going to write (Triangle?) and how I'm going to do it and still pay bills without making it an all-savings month.
Day 1: 3677 words toward Vengeance
Day 2: 3861 toward Hand
Day 3: 266 words toward ... never mind. T.T
The first two days, I made a fair amount of good progress. The overall goal was just to write a lot, advance the amount of material to edit later. Well, I managed to accomplish that.
Day 1 was all about Vengeance. I wrote out yet another version of the planning in the park, then gave up on giving it a good ending and went on to the good part - getting them into the warehouse. That was a lot of fun. Lots of fast-paced action, and the writing went by really fast.
Then I got stuck on how they were actually going to get back out of the warehouse. It sank underground and now has a heavy metal plate over the hatch. My vision of things involves them doing something ingenious and complex going back out through the roof. This rules out any underground tunnels Hernando might know about in the area and tell Rumen about. Rumen could also call on his other underlings (Edward and David are still back home), but I'd like them to do it on their own. They have a ton of combat and trespassing skills among them, they should use them.
Unfortunately, my current setup isn't very complex, and there's only one exit. So, well, I guess they need to either find or create another one in the roof that the Bad Guy somehow doesn't have covered (even though he was very well-prepared for their arrival; he didn't have intel on them in particular, just knew "someone" would likely show up).
Also, it occurs to me that the Bad Guy wouldn't just leave them to sit around doing nothing (and possibly coming up with escape plans). He'd torment them to keep them busy, fill up their time so they don't have time to plan anything about getting out or messing up the midnight plans with Aaron. So, I need torture ideas too. They would probably be generalized ones to cover a lot of different types of creatures since he didn't know who exactly was going to come.
Hmmm. I suppose some of the torture plans might provide openings on how to get them back out of there. Especially if there's only one way in or out. Any tormentors would have to go in and out the same way, right?
The other thing I did that I really like is a scene from Aaron's POV. I hadn't originally wanted to do anything other than Craig's, but Aaron wanted to be written. I started at just before he had to leave the bookstore, agonizing about how Craig had stood him up. It went until he got to the warehouse (of course he was going), and Thorme has proposed the partnership. Now he's demanding to see Alice. He wants to make sure she's all right, and he'd like for her to go home before he agrees to anything, but Thorme isn't going with that.
Unfortunately, when I tried to write him and Alice meeting up, that didn't go anywhere useful. So I have to rethink what Alice's role is going to be in this whole thing.
Day 2 was all about the Tragedy of the Hand. Since I was stuck at the warehouse scene, and the Alice scene had floundered, I figured I'd do something else instead.
Again, I liked the progress I made. I realized that the story actually starts back when the rogue vampire (the ancient retard) eats the Drunin witch. So I wrote that first. It sucked, but I can fix it in the rewrite. Then they were at the coroner, and then I touched on a whole lot of other minor plot points that needed to be introduced, and then I wrote the Council meeting. It turned out to be the best meeting scene I've written yet. I found it wildly entertaining, when normally my meetings tend to be really boring. So, yay. ;)
Then I stalled out when the meeting was almost over, on how exactly to introduce Cassandra's decoy subplot. Now that I've thought about it some, I might just delete that whole part out of the meeting and have it in discussion with Blaze instead. Or something.
I also finally got around to rereading the material from Labor Day 2008, when I first started this project. Gray's personality is completely different when he's talking to Cassandra. o.o He's also a lot more open about himself than I envision him now. Fortunately, I think the first scene, at least, is probably salvageable nearly as-is, and I can probably cannibalize large chunks of the second scene. Regardless, in this 2010 version, I haven't even introduced Cassandra yet. Though it should be only a scene or two away from the Council meeting scene.
As for Day 3 which is the end of today... not so good. T.T I didn't write anything meaningful at all, and not for lack of trying. There was lots of staring at a blank screen. I was stalled out on the warehouse ambush, stalled out on what to do next with Aaron (i.e. Alice), stalled out on how to finish up the Council meeting, and stalled out on what to do with the Jenya plotline. I tried to write some from the Rumen travel plotline - the part where he hands over Jenya to the Drunin - but it completely sucked, and I stopped after 226 words.
Which pretty much took out everyhting I had in mind to write. And so I sat there... and just had word constipation all day long.
In general. I need to get back to planning in regular fiction writing, in amongst all the freelancing I've been doing. Maybe one or two weekends a month or something. I've got three regular content-site gigs to juggle now though, so I don't know if I'll ever have time. I absolutely need to make at least $500 a month, absolute minimum. Until I can manage to do that and have time left over, fiction keeps ending up at the back of the line, and that needs to change.
Plus Nanowrimo is coming up fast, and I need to plan for it - both what I'm actually going to write (Triangle?) and how I'm going to do it and still pay bills without making it an all-savings month.
2009/09/08
Hobgoblin is down T.T [posted at SFFMuse]
Arrrrrgh.
Well, it's not down down... in that it's still visible if you're not logged in - but logging in is fuxxored. Sadly, some of my writing notes over there are marked "member's only" so I can't see them while not logged in. T.T
I'm referring to http://www.hobgoblin.net if that wasn't clear.
Err, anyway, so the reason I mention this just now (even though it's been like that for at least a month) is because I wanted to write a blog update. I'll just put it here instead.
We just had 3-Day Novel this past weekend, as happens every Labor Day weekend. This year my goal was just to make some forward progress on already-started WIPs. I wrote about 1200 words toward Vengeance, which is my vampire story inspired by an Anita Blake game on RPoL. It's been in progress since 2007 and is about 7k words long at this point. I'm in the middle of chapter 5. The jailbreak team has assembled in the park and are going over their plans to get into the warehouse where they think the damsel in distress is located. I'm a bit stalled on how to actually finish up that scene. Once that's done, though, it's on to chapter 6 - where they go to enact their plan and walk straight into an trap. Bwahaha...
Of course, after that point my notes are kind of fuzzy. They'll be trapped in the warehouse they tried to break into. If all goes according to my plan, they'll figure out how to get free just in time for Aaron's arrival - and they'll still be too late to put a stop to at least the first part of the binding ritual that'll ensue. At this point, I have no clue how to get from the point of entrapment to the point of Aaron's arrival. The damsel actually isn't in the warehouse they're in, so they'll have to track her down in the complex too.
And that's where I'm at on that at the moment.
Meanwhile, I haven't the foggiest idea what I'll be doing for Nanowrimo this year. If I go with tradition, it'll be something in the Fortress Launne series again, but I don't have anything prepared. On the other hand, I could take a stab at Tragedy of the Hand a second time. Hmmm.
Well, it's not down down... in that it's still visible if you're not logged in - but logging in is fuxxored. Sadly, some of my writing notes over there are marked "member's only" so I can't see them while not logged in. T.T
I'm referring to http://www.hobgoblin.net if that wasn't clear.
Err, anyway, so the reason I mention this just now (even though it's been like that for at least a month) is because I wanted to write a blog update. I'll just put it here instead.
We just had 3-Day Novel this past weekend, as happens every Labor Day weekend. This year my goal was just to make some forward progress on already-started WIPs. I wrote about 1200 words toward Vengeance, which is my vampire story inspired by an Anita Blake game on RPoL. It's been in progress since 2007 and is about 7k words long at this point. I'm in the middle of chapter 5. The jailbreak team has assembled in the park and are going over their plans to get into the warehouse where they think the damsel in distress is located. I'm a bit stalled on how to actually finish up that scene. Once that's done, though, it's on to chapter 6 - where they go to enact their plan and walk straight into an trap. Bwahaha...
Of course, after that point my notes are kind of fuzzy. They'll be trapped in the warehouse they tried to break into. If all goes according to my plan, they'll figure out how to get free just in time for Aaron's arrival - and they'll still be too late to put a stop to at least the first part of the binding ritual that'll ensue. At this point, I have no clue how to get from the point of entrapment to the point of Aaron's arrival. The damsel actually isn't in the warehouse they're in, so they'll have to track her down in the complex too.
And that's where I'm at on that at the moment.
Meanwhile, I haven't the foggiest idea what I'll be doing for Nanowrimo this year. If I go with tradition, it'll be something in the Fortress Launne series again, but I don't have anything prepared. On the other hand, I could take a stab at Tragedy of the Hand a second time. Hmmm.
2009/04/27
More Progress on Vengeance
Due in large part to an internet outage, I wrote 900 words toward Chapter 5 over the weekend. Craig and Rumen got together and compared notes, and now they're heading into a park where Rumen wants to eat something (someone >.>) before they head over to the warehouse to break in and rescue the damsel in distress. This part isn't directly related to the main plot, as I've laid it out thus far at any rate - but it's the intro to the real story I want to tell. Craig is going to recognize something about the way Rumen feeds, which reminds him of what happened to his family back when he was 4.
Then, I've also pretty much decided that in Chapter 6 when they go to unkidnap Alice, they're actually going to walk into an ambush. The Bad Guy is smarter than them. ;) So then they'll end up trapped in a locked warehouse, and have to figure out how to break out of that and still get Alice before Aaron's meeting.
I've also decided that the proposed partnership can only come to fruition between a necromancer and vampire with a series of three lengthy rituals. So there will be plenty of time for something to interrupt (i.e. Our Heroes) before the full binding completes. Furthermore, the lengthy rituals in question were originally created by Alec - the necromancer servant that Rumen lost 200 years ago to hunters that happened to be Craig's relatives.
I'm pretty excited about where this'll go, once I get the details fixed up in Chapter 5. At the moment I'm editting the part I've already written so that I can put it in front of my alpha reader. Once that's done, I'll figure out the exact details of what happens in the park.
Then, I've also pretty much decided that in Chapter 6 when they go to unkidnap Alice, they're actually going to walk into an ambush. The Bad Guy is smarter than them. ;) So then they'll end up trapped in a locked warehouse, and have to figure out how to break out of that and still get Alice before Aaron's meeting.
I've also decided that the proposed partnership can only come to fruition between a necromancer and vampire with a series of three lengthy rituals. So there will be plenty of time for something to interrupt (i.e. Our Heroes) before the full binding completes. Furthermore, the lengthy rituals in question were originally created by Alec - the necromancer servant that Rumen lost 200 years ago to hunters that happened to be Craig's relatives.
I'm pretty excited about where this'll go, once I get the details fixed up in Chapter 5. At the moment I'm editting the part I've already written so that I can put it in front of my alpha reader. Once that's done, I'll figure out the exact details of what happens in the park.
2009/03/29
Yet another generic progress update title
Finished Chapter 4 of Vengeance. Aaron didn't much like the ransom letter, and Craig offered to help him get Alice back.
So far, the plan for Chapter 5 is to start out with Craig coming back from scouting out the warehouse where Alice is, and cross paths with Rumen, who is on his way to feed. They compare notes and decide that they need to get Alice back before Aaron gets there - and without telling Aaron that that's what they're going to do. Basically, it would be bad for Hernando if Aaron actually gets to the meeting and gets stuck in an agreement with the bad guy before Hernando has a chance to get an agreement with Aaron (which, of course, the bad guy knows, which is why he wants to get it set up as fast as possible, before anyone else can react).
Then, Chapter 6 will have both of them plus some of Rumen's minions breaking into the warehouse to get Alice. When Aaron arrives, they'll be waiting to hand her over to him.
That's the plan, anyway. I'll be rather surprised if it actually works out that way. ;) So far, the whole thing is about 5k words.
Meanwhile, my thoughts are turning toward Myan again. I worked out the political setup of the city (which is largely based on the interaction dynamics of Zynga's game, Mafia Wars, which I play on Facebook T.T). I'm leaning in the direction of starting over from the beginning, write up the serial killer plotline as I outlined here earlier (now that I have an actual protagonist, which I didn't have when I wrote it the first time). On the other hand, there's something to be said about continuing where I left off and actually reaching an ending before tinkering with any of it.
So far, the plan for Chapter 5 is to start out with Craig coming back from scouting out the warehouse where Alice is, and cross paths with Rumen, who is on his way to feed. They compare notes and decide that they need to get Alice back before Aaron gets there - and without telling Aaron that that's what they're going to do. Basically, it would be bad for Hernando if Aaron actually gets to the meeting and gets stuck in an agreement with the bad guy before Hernando has a chance to get an agreement with Aaron (which, of course, the bad guy knows, which is why he wants to get it set up as fast as possible, before anyone else can react).
Then, Chapter 6 will have both of them plus some of Rumen's minions breaking into the warehouse to get Alice. When Aaron arrives, they'll be waiting to hand her over to him.
That's the plan, anyway. I'll be rather surprised if it actually works out that way. ;) So far, the whole thing is about 5k words.
Meanwhile, my thoughts are turning toward Myan again. I worked out the political setup of the city (which is largely based on the interaction dynamics of Zynga's game, Mafia Wars, which I play on Facebook T.T). I'm leaning in the direction of starting over from the beginning, write up the serial killer plotline as I outlined here earlier (now that I have an actual protagonist, which I didn't have when I wrote it the first time). On the other hand, there's something to be said about continuing where I left off and actually reaching an ending before tinkering with any of it.
2009/03/10
General Progress Update
Well, the UCF writeathon turned out to be anticlimactic. Plenty of people signed up but nobody did much. I guess everyone was busy with work or school. I wanted to get in 30k words but ended up with just short of 3k. It turns out that I don't do so well when I have to work full-time at the same time. But I managed half a chapter of Bus (Labor Day Novel 2005), 1740 words toward Edward (though I still didn't make it to the ritual, I have all the precursor setup in place now), and 192 words toward Vengeance Returns.
Then I continued with the chapter of Vengeance Returns after the month ended, and it's now 1139 words long. This is chapter 4, where Craig meets Aaron for the first time, and I'm at the part where Aaron receives the ransom letter about his not-girlfriend who got kidnapped last night. I wrote the letter he's getting (which brings the wordcount total to 1312), and he's at the point of reading it now.
On the whole, it looks like I'm going to stick with a strategy of fitting in bits and pieces of writing whenever I have time. I've basically stopped blogging, writing for ehow, and roleplaying. Now it's a matter of not getting sucked into too many Facebook games....
Then I continued with the chapter of Vengeance Returns after the month ended, and it's now 1139 words long. This is chapter 4, where Craig meets Aaron for the first time, and I'm at the part where Aaron receives the ransom letter about his not-girlfriend who got kidnapped last night. I wrote the letter he's getting (which brings the wordcount total to 1312), and he's at the point of reading it now.
On the whole, it looks like I'm going to stick with a strategy of fitting in bits and pieces of writing whenever I have time. I've basically stopped blogging, writing for ehow, and roleplaying. Now it's a matter of not getting sucked into too many Facebook games....
2008/09/01
Labor Day Novel 2008: Day Two
5672 words.
[members-only cut]
I now have a ton of different plot threads started:
1. Cassandra's plotline. She's the princess that has just come of age, doesn't at all want to be stuck with the normal fate of princesses, which is to get married off to a neighboring kingdom as an alliance exchange. Her father, the king, has noticed that she would make a better ruler than either of his sons, who are both morons. But she needs to do something to prove her worth to the Council, who are going to balk because she's a girl. So, little does she know that there's some sort of quest in her future, just as soon as I figure out the details...
2. Meanwhile, the city of Trincal is about to go to war against the druids. They've discovered a "secret weapon" in the form of an old, powerful, yet retarded vampire who is really spectacularly good at sucking the lifeforce out of everything. They have no idea what he is, other than "some sort of lifeforce sucking demon", and they've been carefully herding him in the direction of an underground passage that leads straight to Duuniain, the druid's main village. And they're planning to coordinate an attack at the same time as he arrives to there.
For his part, his mental capacity is basically on the level of "braaaaaaaiiinnnsss..." - and the lifeforce energy on druidic lands is extra delicious, and he really really wants to go there just as soon as he finds a way. He's been bumbling around in the Trincal sewers while the rest of the city coordinates.
Cassandra's quest is probably going to have something to do with all this.
3. Meanwhile again, Rumen is a powerful vampire, and he has been living among the druids for the past 16 years. Trincal doesn't know about him, and the druids don't know he's a vampire either (otherwise they would've evicted from the lands by now, as they hate vampires). He was just going about his business eating a random Trincal resident, when he overheard the battle plans. He's going to rush home to tell them, only to find that they've discovered he's a vampire, so they're going to lock him up until they figure out what to do with him. After all, even though he's a vampire, he's also been an honored guest for 16 years and has helped them out a bunch during that time.
Since vampires are telepathically aware of each other, he knows about the other one, doesn't like him, but doesn't have any idea that the other guy is the "secret weapon."
4. Jenya is a young girl whom Rumen adopted as an infant, 16 years ago. Her dying mother placed her in Rumen's care, not having any idea what he was. For some reason he actually honored her dying wish and brought the baby to her people, which are the druids. This whole story is also supposed to be about Jenya discovering that her "revered grandfather" is actually a vampire in disguise, and coming to terms with that. I haven't figured out how to introduce her yet.
That's the Beginning, anyway. My thoughts for the middle so far:
1. Trincal attacks Duuniain. They fail, because Rumen is in there to defeat their secret weapon.
2. Cassandra, who was involved in the attack, ends up stranded in druid lands. So does Gray, who has been charged with teaching her how to be leaderlike instead of merely ladylike. Gray was raised by the druids, so once he's cut off from the Crown and the oath that binds him to Trincal, he can start going unhinged about everything that's happened to him in his life.
3. Lots of high minded philosophical existentialist debates on what to do about Rumen. This will go on until the battle, at which point he proves that he's on their side, which then complicates the debates. Eventually, it's up to Jenya to decide his fate. I'm hoping she'll decide to let him go, preferably in peace. (Because if she decides that she hates him, he'll be sad. He'll still go - it's not like they can actually lock him up for real or kill him unless he lets them, which he won't.)
4. I haven't decided what part of Rumen's timeline this is. It could be right after his first rampage when he was mad at the world for having become a vampire. Or it could be the rampage after Alec got killed by a hunter, when he killed the hunter's entire family line. If I'm hoping to match all this up to the Sacramento story with Craig, it would have to be the latter. See, Craig comes into it as the one member of the hunter's family line that Rumen missed, who has been trying to hunt down Rumen ever since... On the other hand, the whole setup with Trincal could also make sense as when Rumen first met Alec in the first place.
5. I also have no idea whether the Trincal MCs are going to run into Rumen and Jenya, and what will happen if they do.
And now I'm going to head off and brainstorm up a proper intro for Jenya. Her story starts right at the point where she discovers he's not who she thought he was, and I need to set up the circumstances for that....
[members-only cut]
I now have a ton of different plot threads started:
1. Cassandra's plotline. She's the princess that has just come of age, doesn't at all want to be stuck with the normal fate of princesses, which is to get married off to a neighboring kingdom as an alliance exchange. Her father, the king, has noticed that she would make a better ruler than either of his sons, who are both morons. But she needs to do something to prove her worth to the Council, who are going to balk because she's a girl. So, little does she know that there's some sort of quest in her future, just as soon as I figure out the details...
2. Meanwhile, the city of Trincal is about to go to war against the druids. They've discovered a "secret weapon" in the form of an old, powerful, yet retarded vampire who is really spectacularly good at sucking the lifeforce out of everything. They have no idea what he is, other than "some sort of lifeforce sucking demon", and they've been carefully herding him in the direction of an underground passage that leads straight to Duuniain, the druid's main village. And they're planning to coordinate an attack at the same time as he arrives to there.
For his part, his mental capacity is basically on the level of "braaaaaaaiiinnnsss..." - and the lifeforce energy on druidic lands is extra delicious, and he really really wants to go there just as soon as he finds a way. He's been bumbling around in the Trincal sewers while the rest of the city coordinates.
Cassandra's quest is probably going to have something to do with all this.
3. Meanwhile again, Rumen is a powerful vampire, and he has been living among the druids for the past 16 years. Trincal doesn't know about him, and the druids don't know he's a vampire either (otherwise they would've evicted from the lands by now, as they hate vampires). He was just going about his business eating a random Trincal resident, when he overheard the battle plans. He's going to rush home to tell them, only to find that they've discovered he's a vampire, so they're going to lock him up until they figure out what to do with him. After all, even though he's a vampire, he's also been an honored guest for 16 years and has helped them out a bunch during that time.
Since vampires are telepathically aware of each other, he knows about the other one, doesn't like him, but doesn't have any idea that the other guy is the "secret weapon."
4. Jenya is a young girl whom Rumen adopted as an infant, 16 years ago. Her dying mother placed her in Rumen's care, not having any idea what he was. For some reason he actually honored her dying wish and brought the baby to her people, which are the druids. This whole story is also supposed to be about Jenya discovering that her "revered grandfather" is actually a vampire in disguise, and coming to terms with that. I haven't figured out how to introduce her yet.
That's the Beginning, anyway. My thoughts for the middle so far:
1. Trincal attacks Duuniain. They fail, because Rumen is in there to defeat their secret weapon.
2. Cassandra, who was involved in the attack, ends up stranded in druid lands. So does Gray, who has been charged with teaching her how to be leaderlike instead of merely ladylike. Gray was raised by the druids, so once he's cut off from the Crown and the oath that binds him to Trincal, he can start going unhinged about everything that's happened to him in his life.
3. Lots of high minded philosophical existentialist debates on what to do about Rumen. This will go on until the battle, at which point he proves that he's on their side, which then complicates the debates. Eventually, it's up to Jenya to decide his fate. I'm hoping she'll decide to let him go, preferably in peace. (Because if she decides that she hates him, he'll be sad. He'll still go - it's not like they can actually lock him up for real or kill him unless he lets them, which he won't.)
4. I haven't decided what part of Rumen's timeline this is. It could be right after his first rampage when he was mad at the world for having become a vampire. Or it could be the rampage after Alec got killed by a hunter, when he killed the hunter's entire family line. If I'm hoping to match all this up to the Sacramento story with Craig, it would have to be the latter. See, Craig comes into it as the one member of the hunter's family line that Rumen missed, who has been trying to hunt down Rumen ever since... On the other hand, the whole setup with Trincal could also make sense as when Rumen first met Alec in the first place.
5. I also have no idea whether the Trincal MCs are going to run into Rumen and Jenya, and what will happen if they do.
And now I'm going to head off and brainstorm up a proper intro for Jenya. Her story starts right at the point where she discovers he's not who she thought he was, and I need to set up the circumstances for that....
2008/08/12
Shifting my writing schedule and priorities ...
I finished Chapter 3 of Vengeance last night. It's not as pretty as the first two chapters, but it's done. Everything that needed to happen in it happened, and a motive for why Hernando wants Craig alive just dropped out of the sky while I was writing it. In short, Jessica's task can no longer be completed by any vampire, and here comes a non-vampire who could possibly do it. Just because he's a mortal enemy is only a minor problem. ;)
So in Chapter 4, Craig will be visiting the bookstore, and I'll be introducing Aaron to the non-game audience for the first time. Should be fun. While Craig was talking to Hernando, Aaron's love interest Alice was getting kidnapped by Hernando's rival, so Aaron isn't having a very good day...
That's what's happening with the front half of Vengeance. The back half, meanwhile, is now the opposite side of Tragedy of the Hand - which, right on schedule, I've still not gotten Round Tuit and it'll be what I tackle for Labor Day Novel 2008 coming up in a few weeks.
In general, I realized last night that at the rate I keep pushing fiction to the bottom of the priority list, I was never going to get anything done. Meanwhile the not-having-written pressure mounts while I'm at work or trying to sleep. So I need to prioritize better. I have four workdays and three free days per week. I have four categories of writing things to fit into those three free days - fiction writing, roleplay writing (RPoL), free nonfiction (my blog), and mercenary nonfiction (eHow and whatever I expand to for writing for pay).
Mercenary writing has to be at the top, just because I will be needing that money in a few more months when it (hopefully) starts paying off, assuming I invest enough time-capital into it at the beginning (i.e. now). Ideally I'd like to be making at least as much with it as I was getting from the takeout on weekends - around $200 per month. It wasn't a lot, but it took the edge off on rising gas prices and such. At the moment I no longer have that padding there, and while I'm not in trouble, it's still alarming to see how close I come to running down my checking account to the no-fees minimum.
RPoL writing I really can't seem to get away from. I'm in five slow but stable games, and I run mine slowly as well. None of them are at all likely to end anytime soon. I have no plans to join any more of them, like, ever. As a general rule, I pretty much have to devote one full day out of those three free days to RPoL to keep up.
Blog writing, on the other hand, I can draw back a bit. Daily posts took a lot out of me, and I'm down to 1-2 times per week nowadays, but the community I'm in doesn't at all mind. There's about 20 of us who read and comment each other's blogs, and I can just comment on theirs without posting much on mine.
So that leaves fiction. As with roleplay writing, to really do a good job it's better to give it big chunks of uninterrupted time. Last night I squeezed it in after I got home from work and before bed, but that meant going to bed at dawn, so I don't know if that's such a good idea every time. Certainly not if I have something scheduled in the morning/early afternoon.
So... merc writing gets one day, RPoL gets one day, and fiction gets one day. Blog now goes to the bottom, basically to squeeze in whenever I'm taking a break from the other three (instead of having fiction in that capacity and therefore never doing any).
One thing I've noticed is that the nonfiction writing can be done basically anywhere, and I can be interrupted without too much impact. Fiction can really only be done from home; with roleplay, I often have to look up stuff in my books, and with the writing I need to avoid distractions. So, I just need to do more nonfiction writing while I'm waiting around on errands (in lines and waiting rooms, etc.) to make better use of that offline time, and therefore give me more time for the fiction.
So in Chapter 4, Craig will be visiting the bookstore, and I'll be introducing Aaron to the non-game audience for the first time. Should be fun. While Craig was talking to Hernando, Aaron's love interest Alice was getting kidnapped by Hernando's rival, so Aaron isn't having a very good day...
That's what's happening with the front half of Vengeance. The back half, meanwhile, is now the opposite side of Tragedy of the Hand - which, right on schedule, I've still not gotten Round Tuit and it'll be what I tackle for Labor Day Novel 2008 coming up in a few weeks.
In general, I realized last night that at the rate I keep pushing fiction to the bottom of the priority list, I was never going to get anything done. Meanwhile the not-having-written pressure mounts while I'm at work or trying to sleep. So I need to prioritize better. I have four workdays and three free days per week. I have four categories of writing things to fit into those three free days - fiction writing, roleplay writing (RPoL), free nonfiction (my blog), and mercenary nonfiction (eHow and whatever I expand to for writing for pay).
Mercenary writing has to be at the top, just because I will be needing that money in a few more months when it (hopefully) starts paying off, assuming I invest enough time-capital into it at the beginning (i.e. now). Ideally I'd like to be making at least as much with it as I was getting from the takeout on weekends - around $200 per month. It wasn't a lot, but it took the edge off on rising gas prices and such. At the moment I no longer have that padding there, and while I'm not in trouble, it's still alarming to see how close I come to running down my checking account to the no-fees minimum.
RPoL writing I really can't seem to get away from. I'm in five slow but stable games, and I run mine slowly as well. None of them are at all likely to end anytime soon. I have no plans to join any more of them, like, ever. As a general rule, I pretty much have to devote one full day out of those three free days to RPoL to keep up.
Blog writing, on the other hand, I can draw back a bit. Daily posts took a lot out of me, and I'm down to 1-2 times per week nowadays, but the community I'm in doesn't at all mind. There's about 20 of us who read and comment each other's blogs, and I can just comment on theirs without posting much on mine.
So that leaves fiction. As with roleplay writing, to really do a good job it's better to give it big chunks of uninterrupted time. Last night I squeezed it in after I got home from work and before bed, but that meant going to bed at dawn, so I don't know if that's such a good idea every time. Certainly not if I have something scheduled in the morning/early afternoon.
So... merc writing gets one day, RPoL gets one day, and fiction gets one day. Blog now goes to the bottom, basically to squeeze in whenever I'm taking a break from the other three (instead of having fiction in that capacity and therefore never doing any).
One thing I've noticed is that the nonfiction writing can be done basically anywhere, and I can be interrupted without too much impact. Fiction can really only be done from home; with roleplay, I often have to look up stuff in my books, and with the writing I need to avoid distractions. So, I just need to do more nonfiction writing while I'm waiting around on errands (in lines and waiting rooms, etc.) to make better use of that offline time, and therefore give me more time for the fiction.
2008/04/14
Things I'm allegedly working on
In no particular order:
1. Edward. Need to move forward with what happens after the ritual. Either that or rewrite the ritual from Charles' point of view.
2. The Emerald Sword story from last September. I'm five chapters into it. It's on the backburner at the moment, with some inspiration going into it from the (currently defunct) Dragon Cave game.
3. Vengeance. I started chapter 3, where Craig is standing in Hernando's main audience chamber, meeting the MOC for the first time. I sort of faltered to a stop when I realized that I don't understand Hernando's motives clearly enough - namely, why don't they just kill Craig off and be done with it? (And perhaps more important, do I actually need to have a motive worked out in advance or not?)
4. Tragedy of the Hand. This is the one I haven't started yet, just have lots of notes drawn up. It's inspired by the Within Temptation song. If my current level of procrastination keeps up, maybe I'll just do it for Labor Day novel next September...
5. Stranger on a Bus. My 2005 Labor Day novel. Ten chapters done, two or three left to do. I've been stalled a bit because I have to come up with some kind of coherent wrap-up ending, instead of just continuing to make stuff up off the top of my head ad infinitum.
6. At this point I haven't the foggiest idea what my 2008 Nanowrimo is going to be about. I might take another stab at Birthright. I tried that last November but then got very focused on Edward, and never really got into Birthright at all.
1. Edward. Need to move forward with what happens after the ritual. Either that or rewrite the ritual from Charles' point of view.
2. The Emerald Sword story from last September. I'm five chapters into it. It's on the backburner at the moment, with some inspiration going into it from the (currently defunct) Dragon Cave game.
3. Vengeance. I started chapter 3, where Craig is standing in Hernando's main audience chamber, meeting the MOC for the first time. I sort of faltered to a stop when I realized that I don't understand Hernando's motives clearly enough - namely, why don't they just kill Craig off and be done with it? (And perhaps more important, do I actually need to have a motive worked out in advance or not?)
4. Tragedy of the Hand. This is the one I haven't started yet, just have lots of notes drawn up. It's inspired by the Within Temptation song. If my current level of procrastination keeps up, maybe I'll just do it for Labor Day novel next September...
5. Stranger on a Bus. My 2005 Labor Day novel. Ten chapters done, two or three left to do. I've been stalled a bit because I have to come up with some kind of coherent wrap-up ending, instead of just continuing to make stuff up off the top of my head ad infinitum.
6. At this point I haven't the foggiest idea what my 2008 Nanowrimo is going to be about. I might take another stab at Birthright. I tried that last November but then got very focused on Edward, and never really got into Birthright at all.
2008/01/14
Thoughts about Vengeance
Last night I cranked out another scene to the story that I'm now going to call Vengeance as its working title. The "present day" part of it that follows Craig is now about 2000 words or so.
I also wrote nearly 3k words over Christmas break, on a "flashback to 200 years ago" segment that follows Rumen.
The two parts are coming out very differently, in terms of how I write them. The Rumen part just flowed along with very little editting. It stalled out when they finally reached the town, and I've not yet figured out what exactly will happen next. So now they're standing outside a tavern while I ruminate. In general, this part of it has been a lot like writing a Nano, except very low-key and unstressy. The story wants to write itself. I just have to sit down and get away from life distractions enough to do it.
The Craig part, on the other hand, consists of a lot of editting. I'm very slowly cranking out perfect prose. This isn't as straightforward as it sounds; generally I'm doing the same thing I've always done - write a draft to figure out what happens, fiddle with it to death, then chuck it and start over. Before last night, I'd been fiddling around with scattered fragments that were going to be somewhere in the scene but I didn't know where. Last night I got around to tossing it all out and writing the "real" version (the one that's presentable to the general public).
In a lot of ways, this is exactly how the roleplaying game went. We advanced at a glacial pace, largely because we had to wait for each other to post. There was a lot of in-between waiting time. This turns out to be helpful for the Craig part now - because even though I sometimes go a long time without actually writing anything, the story is still right there where I left off, waiting for me to come back and work on it some more. As long as I have a clear outline (which I do, two blog posts back) and know what I'm doing, it doesn't stall out too terribly. It doesn't disappear into the murk of my subconscious, never to be seen again, like a lot of my other stories have done.
It probably also helps that one of my most strong-willed characters is involved. Rumen can be very demanding and exacting for what I do with him and how I write him. During the game, he would often drown out anything my other character Aaron might want to say, sometimes making it very hard to post for Aaron. So now that Rumen is awake in the back of my mind, he's quite insistent that I proceed with this project. Ahh... muses. :)
And the finished segments end up very readable. Back when I was doing it for the game, they had to be - because people would be reading whatever I wrote within minutes of posting. All in all, the game has trained me very well.
I have one alpha reader for this. Fortunately he's very appreciative and encouraging - which is exactly the kind of support I need while it's still an alpha.
In general I don't actually know where I'm planning to go with all this. I'm writing it because it wants to be written, and there's only so long I can hide from it by doing other things (bill paying, household chores, playing endless rounds of jigsawdoku, stressing about work or moderating a chat channel, blogging, etc.). Every time I sit down and look at it, it's calling to me. I don't even know how long this is planning to be yet, or what its future is after I'm done. It's all kind of irrelevant in the moment, and who am I to question why. :)
I also wrote nearly 3k words over Christmas break, on a "flashback to 200 years ago" segment that follows Rumen.
The two parts are coming out very differently, in terms of how I write them. The Rumen part just flowed along with very little editting. It stalled out when they finally reached the town, and I've not yet figured out what exactly will happen next. So now they're standing outside a tavern while I ruminate. In general, this part of it has been a lot like writing a Nano, except very low-key and unstressy. The story wants to write itself. I just have to sit down and get away from life distractions enough to do it.
The Craig part, on the other hand, consists of a lot of editting. I'm very slowly cranking out perfect prose. This isn't as straightforward as it sounds; generally I'm doing the same thing I've always done - write a draft to figure out what happens, fiddle with it to death, then chuck it and start over. Before last night, I'd been fiddling around with scattered fragments that were going to be somewhere in the scene but I didn't know where. Last night I got around to tossing it all out and writing the "real" version (the one that's presentable to the general public).
In a lot of ways, this is exactly how the roleplaying game went. We advanced at a glacial pace, largely because we had to wait for each other to post. There was a lot of in-between waiting time. This turns out to be helpful for the Craig part now - because even though I sometimes go a long time without actually writing anything, the story is still right there where I left off, waiting for me to come back and work on it some more. As long as I have a clear outline (which I do, two blog posts back) and know what I'm doing, it doesn't stall out too terribly. It doesn't disappear into the murk of my subconscious, never to be seen again, like a lot of my other stories have done.
It probably also helps that one of my most strong-willed characters is involved. Rumen can be very demanding and exacting for what I do with him and how I write him. During the game, he would often drown out anything my other character Aaron might want to say, sometimes making it very hard to post for Aaron. So now that Rumen is awake in the back of my mind, he's quite insistent that I proceed with this project. Ahh... muses. :)
And the finished segments end up very readable. Back when I was doing it for the game, they had to be - because people would be reading whatever I wrote within minutes of posting. All in all, the game has trained me very well.
I have one alpha reader for this. Fortunately he's very appreciative and encouraging - which is exactly the kind of support I need while it's still an alpha.
In general I don't actually know where I'm planning to go with all this. I'm writing it because it wants to be written, and there's only so long I can hide from it by doing other things (bill paying, household chores, playing endless rounds of jigsawdoku, stressing about work or moderating a chat channel, blogging, etc.). Every time I sit down and look at it, it's calling to me. I don't even know how long this is planning to be yet, or what its future is after I'm done. It's all kind of irrelevant in the moment, and who am I to question why. :)
2007/12/26
A Tale of Vengeance
Thank the gods for past blog posts!
Christmas break has started, and instead of doing what I was originally planning to do - finish up the tail end of Edward - I was suddenly struck with an overwhelming urge to do something involving my What is it to be Human? characters. Back in summer 2006, I'd gotten just over 700 words into an intro to a story based on the plotline of that game, when suddenly the game came out of dormancy and my story became moot.
Well. Now the game is dormant again, and has been since last May. There's no sign that the GM is ever planning to come back. All of the original players are now gone too. I think this time it really is dead.
Of course, with a year and a half having passed since I even thought about my little tale, I'd completely forgotten everything I'd been planning to do with it. So I sort of floundered around today, trying to remember - until it occurred to me to check back on my past blog posts here. And voila! Suddenly it's a good thing I rambled on and on about it for weeks. :)
In a nutshell then:
1. Craig was hired by the owners of the zoo Jessica demolished, to have her destroyed.
2. Craig gets captured by Rumen, who takes him to Hernando.
3. Hernando is already displeased with Jessica, who has been doing a terrible job of convincing Aaron that vampires aren't all that bad.
4. They make a deal where Hernando will let Craig have Jessica, IF Craig can first convince Aaron that not all vampires are bad, and to let Hernando talk to him.
5. Hernando assigns Rumen to assist Craig. In theory, since they're working closely together on something, they will have plenty of opportunity to discover their shared ancient history.
I've done the first one, and now I'm at the beginning of #2.
There's now also another dimension to the story - the plot bunny that drew me back into this in the first place. A scene set a couple hundred years back, when Rumen was just getting done raging about the loss of his human servant, and moving on into a fugue state. He meets a mortal woman and her child, she's dying, and somehow she foists care of the child onto him. Through taking care of the child while taking the child back to its own people, we (hopefully) get to learn just what he'd been up to just prior to the point of meeting them. Which sets up the other end of where Craig came from.
Christmas break has started, and instead of doing what I was originally planning to do - finish up the tail end of Edward - I was suddenly struck with an overwhelming urge to do something involving my What is it to be Human? characters. Back in summer 2006, I'd gotten just over 700 words into an intro to a story based on the plotline of that game, when suddenly the game came out of dormancy and my story became moot.
Well. Now the game is dormant again, and has been since last May. There's no sign that the GM is ever planning to come back. All of the original players are now gone too. I think this time it really is dead.
Of course, with a year and a half having passed since I even thought about my little tale, I'd completely forgotten everything I'd been planning to do with it. So I sort of floundered around today, trying to remember - until it occurred to me to check back on my past blog posts here. And voila! Suddenly it's a good thing I rambled on and on about it for weeks. :)
In a nutshell then:
1. Craig was hired by the owners of the zoo Jessica demolished, to have her destroyed.
2. Craig gets captured by Rumen, who takes him to Hernando.
3. Hernando is already displeased with Jessica, who has been doing a terrible job of convincing Aaron that vampires aren't all that bad.
4. They make a deal where Hernando will let Craig have Jessica, IF Craig can first convince Aaron that not all vampires are bad, and to let Hernando talk to him.
5. Hernando assigns Rumen to assist Craig. In theory, since they're working closely together on something, they will have plenty of opportunity to discover their shared ancient history.
I've done the first one, and now I'm at the beginning of #2.
There's now also another dimension to the story - the plot bunny that drew me back into this in the first place. A scene set a couple hundred years back, when Rumen was just getting done raging about the loss of his human servant, and moving on into a fugue state. He meets a mortal woman and her child, she's dying, and somehow she foists care of the child onto him. Through taking care of the child while taking the child back to its own people, we (hopefully) get to learn just what he'd been up to just prior to the point of meeting them. Which sets up the other end of where Craig came from.
2006/07/13
Stuff
So I said in my last blog entry that everyone else seemed to be doing well, even though I wasn't ... and then I come back and see "Blocked!" and "Overwhelmed!" and "Something in the Air (I can't write)" ... and I'm thinking: NOOOOOOO!!!!!111!1!!11! I don't wanna be contagious! o.O
Okay, I guess upon thinking it over more, when I said "everyone" before, what I meant was Robert. He has put aside his Mariner trilogy in favor of a "throwaway side project" ... which I believe he mentioned in his last blog entry. Well...
6 days into it, he's managed to crank out 33,000 words per day every day and is approaching 200k words.
33,000 words per day. For 6 days. And he's not done yet.
I'm lucky if I can make 33,000 (fiction) words in a month. (I would say "year" but then there's my two Nano Winner certificates staring at me from the wall, so that would be untrue.) I'll just take comfort in knowing that he's been doing this for 4 more decades than I have, and that maybe when I'm his age (20 years from now), I'll be able to do that too. But good lord. :(
On the bright side though, my cable went out last night. This wouldn't normally be bright, but for me it was. It meant no Internet, and it cut me off from my Diablo 2 addiction. I decided to take it as a sign that maybe I should write something.
I'm 726 words into the What is it to be Human project. :) It came out pretty good, too, a lot better than my other intros, though it might also be confusing to people who haven't read the game. I sort of jumped right in where the last thread ended for Aaron, with Aniqa leaving the bookstore. My hunter guy, Craig, then picked up with that - Aniqa leaves in a huff and goes down the street, has an infodumpy conversation with her lackey about what had just happened in the bookstore, and now Craig has taken aim with his sniper rifle and is about to shoot her.
And that's where things are now. This would be the point where someone comes along and interrupts, and I haven't decided whether that should be Rumen or Hernando. Probably Rumen, actually. In the game, Hernando is at this point doing something else with Aaron and would be too busy to go gallivanting around town. And much as I had intended to depart from the game plots, I find that I can't. How it's written in the game is how it has happened, and I can only go forward from that without changing anything.
Rumen, however, isn't actually doing anything in the game right now. With Damisa gone, and no signs of ever coming back, he's just kind of wandering around aimlessly.
Speaking of the game. It's come back to life. Suddenly the other two people in it are playing again, exchanging posts daily. Neither of my characters are active at the moment (Aaron is in bed, and Rumen is wandering aimlessly), but I'm reading along to their stuff and enjoying the plot twists coming out of it. There are very few games where I actively want to read along to the threads where I'm not involved, and at this point WIITBH is the only one that I read in detail, without skimming. (I make a lousy lurker of other people's games for this reason.)
So now I'm trying to think of people to coerce into joining the game, and see if we can make the thing rise from the ashes. I'll be by to nudge Robert back into it too, just as soon as his life is settled down again in a couple months or so. ;)
The other big thing on my mind right now is a lengthy, detailed conversation with a conservative Christian woman I've known since high school. I'm in the process of outing myself to her. So far we're in the middle of Gender Dysphoria 101 and how it's a birth defect and not a choice. She's mostly in the "but you are too a girl! for reasons XYZ!" phase and well ... I guess I'm going to get lots of detailed practice in coming up with good responses to all of that. Which is good, even though it's also painful, because eventually I need to have this conversation with my brother again. I take comfort in having watched way more extreme FTMs meet with the exact same thing and knowing that if they can still get accused of being girls even while they're practically neanderthals, I'm definitely not alone. It's easier to not take it personally that way.
And that's where I am at the moment. Hope all of your blocks dissolve soon and the words begin to flow! :)
Okay, I guess upon thinking it over more, when I said "everyone" before, what I meant was Robert. He has put aside his Mariner trilogy in favor of a "throwaway side project" ... which I believe he mentioned in his last blog entry. Well...
6 days into it, he's managed to crank out 33,000 words per day every day and is approaching 200k words.
33,000 words per day. For 6 days. And he's not done yet.
I'm lucky if I can make 33,000 (fiction) words in a month. (I would say "year" but then there's my two Nano Winner certificates staring at me from the wall, so that would be untrue.) I'll just take comfort in knowing that he's been doing this for 4 more decades than I have, and that maybe when I'm his age (20 years from now), I'll be able to do that too. But good lord. :(
On the bright side though, my cable went out last night. This wouldn't normally be bright, but for me it was. It meant no Internet, and it cut me off from my Diablo 2 addiction. I decided to take it as a sign that maybe I should write something.
I'm 726 words into the What is it to be Human project. :) It came out pretty good, too, a lot better than my other intros, though it might also be confusing to people who haven't read the game. I sort of jumped right in where the last thread ended for Aaron, with Aniqa leaving the bookstore. My hunter guy, Craig, then picked up with that - Aniqa leaves in a huff and goes down the street, has an infodumpy conversation with her lackey about what had just happened in the bookstore, and now Craig has taken aim with his sniper rifle and is about to shoot her.
And that's where things are now. This would be the point where someone comes along and interrupts, and I haven't decided whether that should be Rumen or Hernando. Probably Rumen, actually. In the game, Hernando is at this point doing something else with Aaron and would be too busy to go gallivanting around town. And much as I had intended to depart from the game plots, I find that I can't. How it's written in the game is how it has happened, and I can only go forward from that without changing anything.
Rumen, however, isn't actually doing anything in the game right now. With Damisa gone, and no signs of ever coming back, he's just kind of wandering around aimlessly.
Speaking of the game. It's come back to life. Suddenly the other two people in it are playing again, exchanging posts daily. Neither of my characters are active at the moment (Aaron is in bed, and Rumen is wandering aimlessly), but I'm reading along to their stuff and enjoying the plot twists coming out of it. There are very few games where I actively want to read along to the threads where I'm not involved, and at this point WIITBH is the only one that I read in detail, without skimming. (I make a lousy lurker of other people's games for this reason.)
So now I'm trying to think of people to coerce into joining the game, and see if we can make the thing rise from the ashes. I'll be by to nudge Robert back into it too, just as soon as his life is settled down again in a couple months or so. ;)
The other big thing on my mind right now is a lengthy, detailed conversation with a conservative Christian woman I've known since high school. I'm in the process of outing myself to her. So far we're in the middle of Gender Dysphoria 101 and how it's a birth defect and not a choice. She's mostly in the "but you are too a girl! for reasons XYZ!" phase and well ... I guess I'm going to get lots of detailed practice in coming up with good responses to all of that. Which is good, even though it's also painful, because eventually I need to have this conversation with my brother again. I take comfort in having watched way more extreme FTMs meet with the exact same thing and knowing that if they can still get accused of being girls even while they're practically neanderthals, I'm definitely not alone. It's easier to not take it personally that way.
And that's where I am at the moment. Hope all of your blocks dissolve soon and the words begin to flow! :)
2006/07/03
Drat. Hold the Presses
I've run across a fairly sizable plothole in my plans for the July Novel Dare.
The idea was to have Craig cross paths with Rumen. Craig being the sole survivor of a grief-driven rampage that Rumen executed after Craig's relative killed off his human servant. There is only one problem with this ...
Craig was 4 when it happened. He's at most 40 now. That means that it happend 35 years ago.
Meanwhile, in Rumen's timeline, it happened 150-200 years ago.
Unless I want to add time-hopping to the story, or other Stupid Sci-Fi Tricks, this just isn't going to happen. :(
In other news, my living room and dining room are uncluttered now. The kitchen is clean except for the floor, and the only thing left to do in the bathrooms is a tub (and the floor). I'm down to floors, more or less. Lots of vacuuming tomorrow. It will take me all day to do that, just because of how slow I am at housework. So I've scheduled it in for a full day, during the day, wherein I'm taking the day off from work for the purpose.
The guests arrive Tuesday afternoon. The only thing I'll be doing on Tuesday is changing the bedsheets as soon as I get up. They'll get the bed with my only clean blanket, while I sleep on a foam mattress in my storage room, with all the boxes. I wasn't organized enough to make it to the laundromat with all the other blankets. I also didn't get a new lamp. However, she liked being in the dark anyway, so that hopefully won't be too terrible...
Hmmmmm. Wait. I could just say that Craig has an extended lifespan, since he's not actually entirely human anymore. Maybe he can live 200 years! Without having to make it so that all humans do! It could work! *dashes off to brainstorm that angle*
The idea was to have Craig cross paths with Rumen. Craig being the sole survivor of a grief-driven rampage that Rumen executed after Craig's relative killed off his human servant. There is only one problem with this ...
Craig was 4 when it happened. He's at most 40 now. That means that it happend 35 years ago.
Meanwhile, in Rumen's timeline, it happened 150-200 years ago.
Unless I want to add time-hopping to the story, or other Stupid Sci-Fi Tricks, this just isn't going to happen. :(
In other news, my living room and dining room are uncluttered now. The kitchen is clean except for the floor, and the only thing left to do in the bathrooms is a tub (and the floor). I'm down to floors, more or less. Lots of vacuuming tomorrow. It will take me all day to do that, just because of how slow I am at housework. So I've scheduled it in for a full day, during the day, wherein I'm taking the day off from work for the purpose.
The guests arrive Tuesday afternoon. The only thing I'll be doing on Tuesday is changing the bedsheets as soon as I get up. They'll get the bed with my only clean blanket, while I sleep on a foam mattress in my storage room, with all the boxes. I wasn't organized enough to make it to the laundromat with all the other blankets. I also didn't get a new lamp. However, she liked being in the dark anyway, so that hopefully won't be too terrible...
Hmmmmm. Wait. I could just say that Craig has an extended lifespan, since he's not actually entirely human anymore. Maybe he can live 200 years! Without having to make it so that all humans do! It could work! *dashes off to brainstorm that angle*
2006/06/30
SFR end of second month
30 / 90 days to go | 60 / 90 days gone
35,973 / 90,000 words done | 24,027 words behind
Dragonfly: 1841 (916 final count)
Stranger on a Bus: 2673 (301 edit words)
Temple: 2813
general roleplay: 8470
Blogs: 20,176
Caught up on all roleplay again (*gasp... wheeze...*). My favorite GM was around to pester me to get my sorry arse in gear, so I did. Took me all night, but I did. Managed to reduce the "words behind" category slightly in the process.
[members-only cut]
Major new development for the July novel dare story (which I've decided just earlier today is going to be my July novel dare story (which I hadn't actually planned to join until today either)): Aniqa is going to be Craig's original target, he's going to catch up with her while she's in the process of failing abysmally at convincing Aaron that vampires are nice, which would've been getting her in trouble with Hernando anyway even if Craig hadn't been around. I like it that way because that's what happened in the game, and I can just write forward from that; it makes perfect logical sense for the story to flow forward that way. I'll be changing the names of Aniqa and Hernando, of course, as those aren't my characters. Basically I just need to retain the basic idea of them and their plot functions.
I'll be ditching a large number of side plots from the game, though. First, Mariah has explicitly said that she doesn't want me to write about her character or the werewolf pack, so I'm just going to omit the werewolves entirely. Then, in the game there's room for a lot more vampires than my story; I'm just going to leave it as Rumen and Hernando, with Aniqa as one of Hernando's underlings. In the game there was a third vampire that was muscling in on Hernando's territory, but that's not really terribly relevant to what I have in mind, and it's not my story anyhow, so out it goes. Also, I'll probably skip the whole Damisa thing. She was fun for developing some of Rumen's entourage, but not terribly relevant either. I'm not even sure how I'm going to work in his cat collection as it is, or whether I ought to, fun as they were.
I have an opening scene in mind too. Craig arriving, finding Aniqa, getting ready to kill her off, and Hernando stepping in. They have a chat that ends with Rumen introduced at the end.
I need to rename the characters that aren't mine, real soon like.
But it's past dawn, I'm not actually sleepy, but tomorrow is going to drag badly, I can tell already...
Oh, and I got nothing housework-related done today either. Must... start... uncluttering...
35,973 / 90,000 words done | 24,027 words behind
Dragonfly: 1841 (916 final count)
Stranger on a Bus: 2673 (301 edit words)
Temple: 2813
general roleplay: 8470
Blogs: 20,176
Caught up on all roleplay again (*gasp... wheeze...*). My favorite GM was around to pester me to get my sorry arse in gear, so I did. Took me all night, but I did. Managed to reduce the "words behind" category slightly in the process.
[members-only cut]
Major new development for the July novel dare story (which I've decided just earlier today is going to be my July novel dare story (which I hadn't actually planned to join until today either)): Aniqa is going to be Craig's original target, he's going to catch up with her while she's in the process of failing abysmally at convincing Aaron that vampires are nice, which would've been getting her in trouble with Hernando anyway even if Craig hadn't been around. I like it that way because that's what happened in the game, and I can just write forward from that; it makes perfect logical sense for the story to flow forward that way. I'll be changing the names of Aniqa and Hernando, of course, as those aren't my characters. Basically I just need to retain the basic idea of them and their plot functions.
I'll be ditching a large number of side plots from the game, though. First, Mariah has explicitly said that she doesn't want me to write about her character or the werewolf pack, so I'm just going to omit the werewolves entirely. Then, in the game there's room for a lot more vampires than my story; I'm just going to leave it as Rumen and Hernando, with Aniqa as one of Hernando's underlings. In the game there was a third vampire that was muscling in on Hernando's territory, but that's not really terribly relevant to what I have in mind, and it's not my story anyhow, so out it goes. Also, I'll probably skip the whole Damisa thing. She was fun for developing some of Rumen's entourage, but not terribly relevant either. I'm not even sure how I'm going to work in his cat collection as it is, or whether I ought to, fun as they were.
I have an opening scene in mind too. Craig arriving, finding Aniqa, getting ready to kill her off, and Hernando stepping in. They have a chat that ends with Rumen introduced at the end.
I need to rename the characters that aren't mine, real soon like.
But it's past dawn, I'm not actually sleepy, but tomorrow is going to drag badly, I can tell already...
Oh, and I got nothing housework-related done today either. Must... start... uncluttering...
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