Writing – Page 4 – StoryTeller2, original fiction and so much more

Oh sigh

Okay, after I got Scrivener set up and updated my writing – see here – I had a nice visit with my daughter and family, made the tough decision to not take Triste [now named Jemma, Dingy is keeping her] because she and Stevie didn’t get along… she was sneak attacking the Collies from under the couch, biting their feet and legs; Luna whined in her typical worried tone and wanted to be friends but not a chew toy – she ended up staying in another room *frowns* whereas Stevie was like, bullshit and snapped at Triste in an I’m-the-adult-you-better-behave type thing. But, Triste stood her ground as the badass 7-week-old puppy, and I had a frickin’ mini-dogfight in full swing! So I told my daughter, nope, nada, ain’t having it – I can’t keep her. *sighs*

Bear in mind, I was going on like 3 hours sleep that day, too… damn this perpetual insomnia… Back to writing. M’kay, so I had finished chapter one and now have a full scene finished in chapter two – and hit a frickin’ block… arghhhhh! I want to write, I really do, but I am so stuck on which way to go, it’s frustrating. Trouble is, I have several, like… mini thoughts, concerning this story. Like, the start of ideas, that flit in and then vanish before I can get a firm grasp on them – which, in my book, kinda proves I really want to work on the story, I just keep getting stuck.

So I haven’t researched/contacted any publishers concerning the Lynette/Lachlan story; their story is in Scrivener as Part 1, while the current story about Allison/Robert is Part 2. I haven’t done any graphics work for my domains or done any updates at all – which are grossly overdue. I did finish paying my April bills a few hours ago – but got slapped with late charges on two accounts while waiting for my new checkbook registers to arrive. *sighs* They were due yesterday and paid today.

I watched a puppy video on Facebook earlier today. And cried.

I’m so outtie….

On creativity

So I recently posted that I finally got Scrivener set up and was ready to buckle down and get to work. Yeah. So, I began the second part of my planned paranormal series, was quite pleased with the first chapter – this would have been late Sunday night. Any-hoo, wrote the first draft of chapter one, Robert and Allison’s story, and added more background detail for the main characters for my use. Saved what I wrote, closed Scrivener, put my laptop to sleep and headed to bed. After several hours of tossing and turning, got back up – the story had grabbed me, and even though I was exhausted, I wanted… no, needed, to write.

Woke my laptop, opened Scrivener, and… my first chapter wasn’t there. Whaaaa? I checked each PC, hoping against hope that the saved draft might be found on one of them, but no luck. *sighs* So I rewrote the damn chapter. It was different, I’m sure, but still had the gist of my first draft. But I was sure the original writing was better. *sighs* I had this interesting second scene where it began showing Allison’s personality and traits, but at this point I was totally exhausted. So I saved, etc. and crashed for a few hours.

Once I awakened and had coffee and all that stuff, I grabbed my laptop so I could continue working on Allison and Robert’s story… scene two was missing! *screams* I walked away from my laptop, even though I wanted to write… I was so upset about my missing writing, again, that I was afraid I might toss my laptop. Bare with me, folks. I don’t typically toss expensive technology around, but was going on very limited sleep so was afraid my normal better instincts might not prevail. However, I eventually went back and rewrote scene two and tried to remember that additional backstory I had created for the main characters. Here’s the thing, though. Some of my earlier notes were there, while huge chunks were missing… it was like someone had gotten on my laptop and deleted sections from my writings. Here comes the ‘but’. These are new laptops, no one knows the passwords – but me; I live alone and no one had stopped by or visited; I had saved before shutting the program down, in fact, would click the ‘save’ button about every three minutes, or so….

So sometime on Tuesday, after I had crashed, etc. [I’m really on a weird schedule, falling asleep somewhere between ten in the morning to two in the afternoon, catching around four to six hours sleep and then staying up all night long writing, watching TV and playing games on my desktop PC.] Any-hoo, on Tuesday night, after needing to rewrite a huge chunk, again, I researched ways to save my work in Scrivener. I was just about ready to give the damn program up and go back to using Word, I was so frustrated – but I absolutely LOVE the convenience of having all of my notes stored in the same place… so I found this article where a writer said the save button in Scrivener didn’t actually save anything, that she used the ‘back up’ function to keep her work safe. After I was done writing for a few hours, I made a back up AND saved my work in progress….

And another huge chunk was missing! What the fu…! By that point, I was getting paranoid, lemme tell ya. I went through the back up steps again, late Tuesday night; closed the program and reopened it a half hour later. The back up copy was finally there. Yay! I did this several times through out the night, as I finished chapter one – again – and started chapter two. I need to get back to work on chapter two, I’ve started a bit of a mystery at this point… after the last three frustrating days, I’m almost afraid to open the program, though! *laughs* And, Dingy, Bill, and the girls are heading my way soon – they’re also bringing Triste, my new pitbull puppy.

Uh, welcome to the world of writing! *grins* M’kay, I am so outtie….

Whew and yay

M’kay, think I finally have Scrivener set up – with completed manuscript of Lynette’s Choice: No Change Required I might add – and divided into ‘parts’ for the three men featured in book one. Have started character work on next femme to be featured, Allison Bolden; she will snag Robert Rowe in the end. I even traced her lineage back a ways, too….

Lynette’s Choice finished with 43,000 words; pretty happy with completed revisions cause they both add more detail and push the story forward. Will be sending query letters out, soon. I’ll keep ya posted! *grins* Also getting ideas how Allison and Robert’s story will start – she won’t be Faenapped like Lynette was, either. But those pesky Fae will make appearances.

Honestly, I think I’m happiest with finally having Scrivener set up for this world, more than anything. Think I’ll add my serial killer story to a Scrivener folder, too. I must say it is really nice, neat, helpful and fast to have all pertinent files in one location – for the Fae world, thus far – versus needing to rummage through oodles of text, Word document and image files to check details. Now, just gotta get myself into the habit of opening and writing in Scrivener instead of Word! *laughs* I’m a diehard Word lover, I gotta say, so this will be weird for me.

I went cold turkey from that darn time consuming dragon game, five days without logging in. Hence, the ‘yay’ part of my subject line. [And cause I have Scrivener set up!!!!] However, I replaced the dragon game with another game; breeding and competing herding dogs! Started with Rough Collies, added some Cattle Dogs [but I really hate the red coloration so will end up selling those off] and just added some high quality German Shepherds to my online kennel. You can also breed livestock – ducks, sheep and cattle; you collect eggs, wool and milk to earn farm cash, as well as anything you earn for selling puppies and livestock; you also get a small, daily sign-in cash allotment. My livestock will be ready to breed, age-wise, in a couple of day. Everything must be 21 days or older to breed, and there is a 5 day ‘cooldown’ period after breeding, before you can breed that particular critter again. I have a couple of second generation Collies I’m currently growing out to begin work on the ‘coveted’ third [or older] gen pups. Animals stats will likely be stable by third gen; first gen from imports can be wild… for instance, you can breed two dogs with stats totally 380+ together and end up with puppy’s having less than 100 total stats up to better stats than their parents. So yeah, caring for critters can be a bit time consuming – you should log in hourly to work them, but it actually only takes about 10-15 minutes to care for my virtual kennel/farm. I just haunt the sales area too much, looking for high stat animals! *laughs* Then I have to try to be patient and wait for them to reach breeding age – which is why I have other breeds, my impatience!

Wowsers, lots of writing about a game in a writing-related posy, umm… sowwy! *laughs* That said, I am so outtie….

Block, or Procrastination

Yeah, that is the question.

So, classes officially ended on February 28, 2016. I’m done, fini, completed my Masters. Awesome. [Note: this is not sarcasm, I really am proud.] I also completed the novel I had been working on, my fiction thesis. Lynette has made her choice finally and is settling down with Lachlan. Very sweet paranormal romance, i.e. no sex scenes just a sweet kiss towards the end of the story. I still have to revise chapters 10-15. I still have to find an online critique/reading group to join. I still have to decide whether I am self-publishing or using a traditional publisher – knowing my work may not be accepted and have many rejection slips heading my way. I mean, I know I am not guaranteed being accepted/published simply because I have completed my Masters now. I am not stupid, nor am I naive. I am also still needing to transfer all of the writings into my Scrivener program. I mean, I did buy the program to use for writing but continued using Word while in school….

I’ve joked and said my brain is tired… been sleeping extremely odd hours… playing the damn dragon game, too much… on Facebook watching videos and “liking” various things… watching YouTube documentaries… watched all seven seasons of Star Trek: Voyager over a few days [watched final episode, this morning, btw.] So, went “to bed” around noon today, awoke around 6:30p.m. or so – so yes, this is roughly my ‘mid-morning’ today. Still drinking coffee, obviously. Need to do massive domain updates, all accounts/domains.

I figured I just needed to push myself, and opened CoffeeCup last night to start doing text updates to my main account – where this blog is housed… ran into a confusing issue before upload and instead of figuring it out and solving it, shut program down and watched Voyager! *sighs* Well, that excuse to avoid work is gone, since I watched the final episode.

M’kay, tackle this. I’m not blocked. Nope. I’ve already started thinking about and begun working on the next female protagonist in this planned series; Allison Bolden, a werewolf to be with the other werewolf Lynette met and did not choose, Robert. Allison’s backstory is getting fairly well developed in my mind and some has been committed to writing via Evernote. I know I need to go back and do the final revision/editing for Lynette’s story and do actually prefer to take a break before a final revision so as to read with ‘fresh eyes,’ that of a reader and not the writer. So, maybe this is more along the lines that I have not created and developed a new writing routine where I actually get things done. I had a workable routine geared towards class assignments; now that I no longer have that ‘pressure,’ perhaps I am allowing myself to get too lax?

So, dinner now then shut off television and head back to my writing desk. Tomorrow I’ll push myself to redesign one domain. Plan set, push for follow through… so I am so outtie….

Yay! Sort of

I submitted my final thesis paper on time, Sunday, February 28, 2016. I was extremely pleased that it was a completed novel, including those grand words: THE END at the fini. I have been allowing my brain to start considering other characters for different stories and making tentative mental outlines with the intention of placing them in Scrivener. Started getting a pretty decent impression of Robert’s love interest and started thingking more about who she is. Logged onto the school site last night and discovered my thesis paper had been graded. On the ‘up’ side, I got 505 points out of a possible 505 and passed the course with a solid ‘A’. Awesome, yay me! On the ‘down’ side [I guess] was a generalized statement saying two areas seemed ‘rushed’ and need more work, flesh out characterization [characters were established many chapters ago] and setting. The comments actually confused me, more than anything… I will say she is correct on some areas feeling ‘rushed’, I kind of felt that after writing them….

So now I need to pull Lynette and Lachlan back into my brain and do a complete re-read so I can rework and revise the entire book, but mainly focus on the last five chapters – those are the ones not peer reviewed. Not a big deal, actually. Revision and editing are part of the process to complete a piece. I know this. I expect this.

Please understand, I’m not bitching here. I anxiously awaited the final critique – more than the grade – to have the comments and review to know what areas presented problems to readers. I don’t know, perhaps I expected the detailed comments such as my peers rendered over the last twenty weeks – which is what the instructor had done, as well. And I didn’t get that. Just a fairly generalized paragraph saying ‘it felt rushed.’ But no details where or when this feeling came about, so I’m a bit confused. *sighs* So, one option I have is to send the final five chapters to the peers I worked with, the closest. Another option is to send the entire novel [I’ll be doing this, anyway! *laughs*] to my daughter, for her views as a reader. And of course, doing a re-read for myself and see if I see the areas or area generalized in the paragraph my instructor gave; it’s been only four days since I completed the book, so actually kind of early to do a re-read, in my opinion.

Okay then, have some mundane things to do [grocery shopping!] and would like to get my hair cut, although I’m not sure I’ll do that today, and go to Starbucks! With that said, I am so outtie….

An Update of sorts

So Spring and family came for a visit on Sunday, Feb 21, for my birthday. Spring intended to bake a sheet cake for me – chocolate, of course, and let the girls each decorate half of the cake. Hope was having none of that, huh-uh no way nosireebob! Apparently, Hope told her mommy, “I’m gonna dec’rate the whole cake!” Naturally, Spring tried to reason, cajole, beg and bribe Hope to share decorating duties, to no avail… so she came up with the idea of splitting the batter and baking two round cakes. Now the girls could decorate a whole cake, each! Chocolate cake with white icing, blue and purple decorative icing and black sprinkles… yummy! The girls giggled and argued as they decorated their cakes, until both were ready to present them to me.

Teen D gave me her cake first; she had written Happy B-day on it in blue, sprinkled black sprinkles all over, and used the thicker blue mixed with purple icing to decorate the edges… they looked like spiky points. Teen D kind of blushed and started to say something when I interrupted and said, “Oh wow, look at what you did! You know how much I love dragons and you’ve created dragon scales and claws! Thank you, babe.” Teen D beamed with pride as she squired a bit; I could tell she was embarrassed and trying to figure out how to tell me the “scales and claws” were an accidental creation, but I just winked at her and she realized I understood. Well, not to be out done by her big sister, Hope presented me with her decorated cake… it also had purple mixed with blue icing ‘scales’ and a big blob in the center where Teen D had written a message on her cake. Before I could say a word to her, she pointed to the blob of icing and said, “That’s dragon poop.” All of the adults burst out laughing. Who knew dragon poop was so tasty?

On Monday, my actual birthday, I went to Starbucks for my free birthday drink, and decided to head to Springy’s house from there. I wanted to visit longer – we hadn’t had much time together the night before – plus I wanted to see Elsa’s litter of twelve. After evaluating the pups and tentatively selecting the one I’ll be getting [me, a pitbull, wowsers!] I finally was able to talk with Spring for about fifteen highly interrupted minutes. [Hope is very competitive concerning Mommy’s attention and Grammy’s attention. It was like a double whammy!] I told her about the problem I was having with Chapter 13, that I was stuck and had no clue where or how to go about getting unstuck. I had also given her details of the various changes I’d been making, due to peer critiques, and how the very thing that caused my current dilemma was because of the only Instructor critique I had used. *sighs* It was a good critique, but with other interruptions, I had forgotten how I planned to implement the new direction and I became totally and completely stuck. It was like I was locked out of my story, and it was driving me batty. Add to that the way a character completely changed as I wrote in her voice, from how I had originally envisioned her – she surprised me the way she was in the story, but I wanted her to somehow move closer to what I had envisioned… well, Spring gave me an idea I had not thought of and I came home and wrote for hours! It’s safe to say I’ve moved past the block and am now heading towards the finish line. Yay, me!

So, with that said, I am so outtie….

Revisions and Critiques

So I just read the critique of Chapter 10 from one of my peers; she has actually read my novel from the start and been one of my main and steady critiquers. I value her opinion. She mentioned that it was the final chapter she would get to see, since class is almost over and graduation [for me] looms ahead. She included her personal email address and invited me to continue sending chapters for critiques – which I will – it was a generous offer, I feel and as she’s been following the story from the start, she has a pretty good feel for my style and voice.

Two of the things she pointed out, I hadn’t realized were difficult to visualize; those I will go back to and work on, later tonight. Some of the spelling ‘errors’ she pointed out are really not errors, per se, but the Scots spelling and part of my Scots family dialogue – so those will remain, as is. The spellings were looked up via a dictionary of Scots phrases and spellings, and changing a characters dialogue changes the character, in my opinion… they speak how they speak. If a character has been known to say things like, “I ain’t gonna do it an’ ya can’t make me” [not representative of the Scot, just an example] it would give a very different view of the character if that same sentence was changed to be something like this, “I shall not do that. No, you cannot change my mind” or even, “I can’t do it and you really can’t make me.” Each one gives the reader a different feel for the character speaking.

The book is almost finished. I will admit I’m kind of stuck currently, trying to figure out which way to handle a situation. Instead of writing, I have been concentrating on homework [only two more weeks till graduation!] and poking around Facebook a bit [my daughter’s dog Elsa just had her first litter of twelve pups! :^0] and she’s really hoping I’ll take a pup… as much as I love puppy’s, it is a pitbull and I keep thinking these dogs were created specifically to fight. Not my daughter’s, the breed, in general. *sighs* But I love puppy’s…. *shaking head* Gotta get images of puppy’s out of my head, this post is on writing!

As a side note on slacking, I have been doing better on the dragon game. I basically log in to do the time sensitive stuff and wait till later in the evening, when I’m done with writing or homework, to do the time consuming parts. This followed a single day of not logging on at all, kind of a cold turkey thing, and I’ve been doing the two-part login for two days now. *shrugs* It seems to be working. It’s allowed me to write my homework and read my required stuff; I just haven’t added anything original/new to my novel – but like I said, I have other issues with that.

So, a somewhat timely post – check; homework and critiques for this week – check; reading for next week’s class – check; email and daily duties – check. Watching a “B” flick on Netflix, then back to my laptop. Oh, I need to research why it freezes/stops responding on a nightly basis, too. My desktop and other laptop do not do this, well, desktop for sure… the other laptop I don’t use quite as often and not typically during the time period when the newest one acts up. It’s a conundrum.

M’kay, I am so outtie….

Ooopsie

I let two weeks go by without updating, and I thought it was only a couple of days. My bad. So, in the last two weeks I’ve used my new books, a lot. And I mean a lot; I’ve mentioned them in two discussions and highly recommended my peers consider purchasing them, and think Amazon has had a mini-upsurge of thesaurus purchases thanks to me. So that’s a good thing, for Amazon and my peers.

I’ve completed updates/revisions up to Chapter 9 in my novel and am considering a different title name for it. I’ve started looking into book cover art, as well as tutorials for DIY book cover art. No decisions firmed up at this point. I discussed the issues I’m having with Chapter 13 in my last class, and got an interesting suggestion from Prof. Jenn that I just might implement. Still thinking about the issues I would be facing, on each choice… I have three different ways I can deal with this chapter. Ernmas can pop in and put Badb in her place; book would be essentially finished with only a short epilogue needed to tie up loose ends and word count ending around the 40k marker. So novella length. Option two would allow Badb to continue pushing Lynette and Lachlan’s buttons and causing havoc. This would allow a minimum of an additional chapter before Ernmas comes in to finalize her agreement with Lynette and would likely finish around 50k word count. Option three, suggested by Prof. Jenn, is that Lynette states she simply can not choose a life mate, that it is too big of a decision with too little time spent with each potential partner. My idea was that Ernmas could give Lynette a strict timeline back in her old life, say six months, before she absolutely had to make a choice. This would allow readers the chance to see Lynette interacting in her old life more while she thinks about the three men to choose from, see her interact with some of the briefly mentioned secondary characters, and work through her personal demons before finally making a choice. Depending on how this is handled, it could develop over two or three more chapters, with the final ‘decision’ chapter at the end. Again, this option would definitely increase the final word count, pushing the story into definite novel length, plus, no matter my final decision, I am going back and adding to the chapters Lynette spends with each man so their [the males] character’s can better be shown.

Other than that, I’ve noticed I’ve been in a definite funk, of late. I’ve been playing that damn dragon game, too much. Watching too much TV – Justice Central and HGTV, some Netflix. Oh, and watched all five seasons of Alias, too. Then getting pissed at myself for wasting time, falling into bed exhausted, and unable to fall asleep until well after the sun comes up. *sighs* On the plus side, it is officially February 4th now and all of my bills for the month have been paid. I’ve helped Sammie with two papers for her classes. I have roughly two and a half weeks to go before my schooling is finished. [Which might be contributing to the funkiness; while I am beyond tired of classes at this point, I know after a short break that I’ll really miss school. *sighs* I am soooo in debt on student loans!] I do have various non-writing projects I’d really like to tackle, like the rug I’m making for my bedroom, sanding my kitchen cabinets, making a couple of new skirts for myself, etching my newest dragon art-piece, watching some of the DVD’s I purchased, playing the Sims, and simply reading for fun, to start with. I really want to do some domain updates, too, for all three main domains. Argh.

I have officially upgraded my two main laptops and desktop to Windows 10 now, as well. The desktop was the last to be upgraded, finished yesterday afternoon. I think I’ve covered the main points since my last blog entry, so I am so outtie….

Okay, then…

So my third book arrived a few hours after my post, the day before yesterday. I thumbed through all three books; the books were not exactly what I expected, but I am not disappointed in them. The Emotions Thesaurus, by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi, was my favorite, by far. This book is filled with extremely helpful synonym’s for well used words and really helped me get ‘unstuck’ – or, at least, not be repetitive – on emotion descriptions. Very handy, especially when you’re sitting there writing away and you know there’s a better word to use but it escapes you… chances are, this book has it. The other two books, both by the same authors, for Negative Traits Thesaurus and Positive Traits Thesaurus, are both filled with loads of extremely useful and helpful information, but still not quite what I expected. Maybe I was thinking they would be written and presented a long the lines of The Writer’s Guide to Character Traits, by Linda Edelstein.

Edelstein’s book has really helped me start the character creation process; I can look up the various stereotypes and mix-and-match complimentary traits to better present a more rounded out character. Now, I’m not saying I won’t be able to do that with the Positive/Negative Thesaurus’ written by Ackerman and Puglisi, eventually – it’s likely more along the lines of them presenting the information in a different format than what I expected.

So I was able to rework some descriptions I had previously written; they’re main characters in my current novel, but I felt some of my wordage was fairly stale and used a lot. So I tried the minimalistic approach – which fell flat for my readers, as I mentioned. Hopefully, these books will help bring the freshness back. And on the plus side, I also wrote 1000 words last night. Might not seem like much to some, but after a week long dry-spell, it felt like a lot!

Last thing I want to mention here, totally unrelated to writing, is how shocked I was when I heard Alan Rickman had passed… such a great actor, he will be missed. I adored him in Galaxy Quest, thought he was simply the best in the Harry Potter movies, was awesome in Sweeny Todd, and I could go on.

K, I am so outtie….

Sheesh, too much TV

Not a good writer-ly start here, with twelve days between posts. And no excuses, either. I’ve not been under any deadlines or been sick or anything. I’ve simply been blah. Plus it’s carried over to my novel, which really sucks.

I roll out of bed in search of coffee, sit down with my first cup and play a game while waking up. I end up sticking with the game for an entire pot of coffee. By that time, it’s usually nearing the girls dinner time so I begin that – and put another pot of coffee on. Halfway through that pot, I realize I’m hungry, so I make my dinner. After dinner and the unfinished portion of the second pot of coffee, I either head back to my room with a Coke, or sit and watch some TV with a Coke. If I made it back to my bedroom, I do wake up my laptop and check my email, login to school and check things, and open up my working copy of Choose. Understand, I’m up all night all of the time, whether I’m productively writing or not. It’s the ‘or not’ part that’s getting to me.

I’ve been glued to the TV watching Fixer Upper, Love It or List It, Property Brothers, and the Justice Channel. So yeah, spending tons of time on HGTV! I think Chip is a goofball and adore his antics; Joanna has a beautiful rustic style for design, even though I don’t care for shiplap. I adore Hilary’s sense of style and think David is an awesome real estate agent that really listens to the clients. Drew & Jonathan are my fave’s, though – I love the styles! All of these shows give me ideas, on the plus side… they also help me see all of the flaws from my previous contractors, on the negative side. And, I play the game while watching. Argh!! These shows pretty much end for the night around 4a.m. or so; by that time, I’m typically winding down and not feeling too creative. *sighs*

However, two nights ago I finally started some revisions on Choose. Yay, me! I’ve added some ‘missing’ scenes that help explain things better, added some detailed descriptions of a few important characters, and purchased three new books from Amazon that should really help my character descriptions. My peers and Instructor have all commented that my settings are beautiful and highly descriptive, that they can truly visualize where they are… But, they can’t quite see the characters, other than eye and hair color. Well, two of my books have been delivered and I’m planning on thumbing through them shortly, to see if they can help flush out my characters. I have high hopes; I try not to use the typical phrases that I think are over-used, to describe my characters… apparently, my minimalistic style for that is falling flat. So, my new Emotions Thesaurus and Positive Traits Thesaurus [waiting for Negative Traits Thesaurus to be delivered, still] should help resolve that issue. I hope. The important thing here, though, is I’m finally writing again! So again, yay, me!

I haven’t opened the game today and I’m almost finished with my coffee. The girls have been out a few times and have about an hour and a half to go before dinner. I’ve finished my main email and just need to pop into Facebook and Craigslist real quick, to check for anything of interest. This is exciting, it looks like a night of writing is ahead! So, I am so outtie….