On the Beast: the new CoT chapter…

So, for the first time in nearly 6 months, I’m posting a brand-new chapter of CoT. Trust me, I’ve actually been working like a demon on it — my commute to work is nearly 2 hours long (making 4 hours of total commute in a day) and I work more than 8 hours a day, which is a completely different beast than writing when unemployed. To start with, you have a lot less time to actually write. But, on the upside, it becomes the thing that occupies your mind, because it is no longer your only semblence of work besides, perhaps, applying and interviewing for jobs. This schedule should be ending soon — Gabe and I have leased an apartment much closer to my work, cutting my travel time down to an hour. This hour is also spent on the piece of the transit system that is most easy to write on, although I may nto always have a seat to do so. It depends, really. In any case, I am expecting an influx of time and creativity, so hopefully the next chapter won’t take so long.

This chapter was mostly written in a small notebook of actual paper; something I have not done since I was maybe 12 or 13. Maybe 14. I made the transition to MS Word quite quickly once I realized how easy it was. Also, it was the first time I had a computer in my room, and I felt like I could write all of my pubescent drivel on it without anyone finding it so easily. So, writing in this new, tiny notebook has brought back some nostalgia with it. Basically, I wrote the first few scenes over my Christmas vacation, then started my job and promptly forgot to even look at it for a few months. But I thought about it. I came up with ideas that really made me excited. And then, sometime in March, I came back to it.

It is unbearable strange to write in a notebook after writing so long on the computer. There is no thesaurus. No spell check. No easy removable of words. Just you, your pen, your paper, and your thoughts. I learned very quickly to view the notebook as a sort of “sketchbook” for writing. It isn’t final, everything can change when I transcribe it to my computer, and that I just need to let go. It took about a month to get there. I got into the rhythm of writing during the week on the train, then transcribing when I could over the weekend. I didn’t catch up until today, when I ran full-stop into the place I ended, unable to go further without the old scenes I had written in the firt draft to draw from. And then I decided at about 2 o’clock that I would finish it. I had only a little left — a scene and a half — and I figured I could power through it.

Gabe slept through a portion of my writing tornado and woke up about two hours later, to my furious typing. I then took a two-hour-plus break to play Fire Emblem as I had promised, and returned to writing. By the time Gabe finished dinner, I was two paragraphs away.

I think, perhaps, that I have the hardest time writing Eldari because she is very close to my personality around age 13 or 14. Very self conscious, very few female friends, and completely wishing books could guide her. Secretly, I think I must consider myself very boring, and I drag my feet about writing Eldari. She has possibly the most rewarding arc, but she’s a stubborn mule ( by design) about getting there, and I try to make it as realistic as possible. Make no mistake, she is not my Bella Swan or some such — she is very much divergent from me, and I consider her flawed. Most of her gifts keep her from being able to interact with other in a normal way — her bookishness, her gifted mind, every ‘advantage’ she was given actually sets her back any place that isn’t the battlefield. Of course, she’s far too timid to be anywhere near a battlefield, so she sort of comes off as useless to her people. It’s only when she’s out of her comfort zone where she can make friends. She has what SC calls an “aura of romantic complication”. She has a tendency to attract those she doesn’t like and become invisible to those she does. And when confronted with this, she is happy to be the object of attraction until it becomes serious — she isn’t unfair, just a bit silly, and when she can no longer ignore what is going on, she deals. Not overly well, I think, but she does it.

Eldari’s story ended up being more adolescent than I thought. When I started writing her, I thought she would come out sort of fully realized, self-actualized and totally in-control. And then Andar came along, and I realized that no, she is actually sort of young when it comes to romance. And angsty. And that all of that would have to come about in her arc. Getting over her unattractiveness to her own people, realizing that not everyone perceived her that way, and then realizing that she didn’t need a leading man. She’s hit the first two, sort of, but I’m looking forward to actually getting on that personal journey of hers. Also, she meets some of the most interesting side-characters. So yeah, that too.

Next chapter should be more with the ranger, Daithi, and his bard cousin, Elishaveth, who I have been dying to get back to. They also have a very intersting plot line (but then, I think all my characters do), and it’s far more fast paced than say, Muirinn or Eldari’s. Hopefully I’ll be able to start and finish it within a few months, but until then, I should be attempting to post every week or so.

Light at the End of the Tunnel…

….So. It’s been a long time. Hopefully, within the next month, I’ll get better at upkeeping this (and ficpress). I have been writing, just mostly for other people or on group projects (see Gabe’s blog for more of this), but I’m gradually reaching the end of the next CoT chapter. Most of this is a complete lack of time due to working all day and having a two hour commute in and out of work. This is also all on public transportation, so you can image the level of energy I have after a normal day. Our weekends barely are restful — we’ve either had a game or two to go to, or a family/wedding engagement. It has been a long few months. And I’ve had no days off from work that weren’t jury duty until this last Friday.

Lately, though, I’ve finally gotten back into doing my hobbies, such as writing and cooking. I don’t really have a sudden influx of time, I’ve just been managing it better. Gabe and I have been playing an hour or two of a game after dinner (or during, depending on whether it’s on computer or Wii). Our current darling is Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, since it’s a tough game that can be played pretty casually if you’re into it. The plot’s been awesome, Gabe and I have picked our favorite units that we personally cheer for, and we’ve been making our way through about a battle a night pretty steadily. We also have a few games in the rotation: Wizardry 8, Baldur’s Gate, and Fable; plus he’s been watching me play the more open-ended Black & White and Spore. Also, I shameless play Sims 2, and sometimes Gabe likes to laugh at the animations — like the ghost pirate you learn a shanty from.

On the cooking front, I’ve been making dinner nearly everynight, but lately I’ve been adding a few more dishes to our weekly rotation. I’ll talk more about this in a later post, but I’ve found some pretty good & new favorites I’ll be making much more often. I recently made desserts for mother’s day; chocolate cupcakes filled with white-chocolate whipped cream and strawberries that were made with my mum in mind, and mini-triple citrus cheesecakes for Gabe’s mother. We ended up giving a plate of each to Gabe’s mom (lucky too, since we walked right into mother’s day brunch), and a half-plate of each to my mum, since neither me nor my brother are home and my father hates strawberries and cheesecakes. This Friday I made monkey bread, much to the joy of Gabe and J, who had never heard of the thing before. Gabe has dubbed it “Original Sin: The Dish” and has made me promise to make it again. I’m doing a very nice, big dinner for his friends at the end of the week to celebrate his graduation from grad school, so we decided to make that the dessert.

I do have a lot to say about my struggle with this chapter and well as my job, but I’ll save that for another post. This one is really to say: I’m not dead, I’m still writing, and I’ll post more soon.

Merry Saturnalia, All!

My family is throwing a Christmas party today, but I figured I’d throw up a quick post for an update before Gabe and his boys drop by, since he’s been nagging me to post for the past four weeks (and I finally agreed that I needed to). Christmas went well, save for a small accident at the mall, where someone hit me at cruise-speed from behind. There was no damage – in fact, nothing that even said there was an accident besides Gabe being absolutely sure that no, it was not inertia from breaking. The people who (may or may not have) did it sped past us though, so any sort of resolution didn’t really occur. except for, of course, my mother flipping her lid and my brother “helping”. Still, the holidays went well – I got a few computer games, plus some books, a slow-cooker, and a few movies – as well as some stuff on cake decorating, which has been a skill i have been dying to learn, since I currently decorate cakes like an epilieptic five-year-old. My mother is convinced that it’s him my genes, though – what with her, my brother, and my grandmother being artistically as well as culinarily inclined. I, howevere, am convinced that I got all the baking genes, while skipping out on all the artistic ability (I once was asked if my cat-playfully-laying-on-its-back drawing was of a dead pikachu. It was not my proudest moment).

Gabe got me a whole bunch of stuff for the game, as well as Fallout 3 for Christmas, and I spent most of Christmas Eve after he left playing Fallout. I got through the beginning (after restarting, since I finally had to admit that not having external speakers was setting me back an obscene amount, and I had to go salvage some from my parent’s computer in the loft) and now I am running around Megaton, trying not to get in over my head. I am enjoying it – espevcially VATS, since I am awful at FPS in general. I plan to play more, since it’s OMG ABOUT SOCIAL EXPERIEMENTS, which, as anyone who knows me is aware, is reason enough for me to play anything. I like to play games, however, with a walkthrough handy – I know, lame, but I play for plot and no amount of help can make you get through a battle if you don’t have skill – but I’m having issues with the ones for Fallout 3. Why? Because I play as a girl – which apparently is UHEARD OF. For ladies do not play games, right? COME ON GUYS. I’m hoping it’s because it’s relatively new, but I have a feeling its due to men who write Fallout walkthroughs being a MANLY sort of man. A MANLY man cannot play as a lady. That is UNMANLY. Ugh, whatever boys. I’m halfway tempted to write my own for ladies, who get completely different dialogue options.

In addition to that, I also got Oblivion and Black and White 2, as well as a Sims expansion (and I went out the next day and bought the next one). I haven’t gotten to the first two games, but I have been playing Sims 2 – I know, I know, not everyone’s cup of tea. But I’ve got latent OCD and meglomania burning a hole in the back of my brain, and man, does playing the Sims ease that. Also, it is hilarious. After replacing all the defaults in the game, its become very interesting to do my best to create Sims after people I know – and somehow, the game completely nails some people. For instance, Sim-Gabe keeps rolling fears about his FEAR OF MEDIOCRITY, OMG. He is terrified to write a bad novel, paint a bad painting, lose a contest, etc. If he does so, his aspiration meter goes headfirst into the red and he has a TOTAL BREAKDOWN OMG. When this is brought up to real-Gabe, he only makes a face and tells me I’m banished.

In other news, the very first game of the CoT RPG is tomorrow, which is totally exciting and also mind-numbingly terrifying. We still have a few more things to do on it, and we’ll be down a player, but I think it should go well, if only because flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants is the normal status for me when I deal with anything CoT related. Still, J is a D&D purist (excpet when its his character that’s broken) and I’m worried about keeping him somewhat happy, because his character does not have the plot armor he seems to think it does. Which I’ve tried to explain, but he’s so sure his character is godly. Which, uh, it’s not. Not really. Better than everyone else’s situation, but really….it’ll be a toss up whether his HP is gonna keep him up long enough to make any difference.

In CoT story news, I’ve finally been going over it, and hopefully I’ll be able to make some headway on it after the holidays. I’ve also been working on Toxicity of Susan’s first chronological episode, but holidays have been keeping me from having much time to write anything. And when I do have time, I’m generally either gaming to relax, or baking with my mother. Monday through Wednesday I’m also supposed to be baking the goodies for Dan’s family and and friends, which is my christmas gift to them.

So Uh, About That NaNoWriMo…

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
20,969 / 50,000
(41.9%)

So, I ended up losing steam in the middle of the month – first due to a near-ninja escape from my house, then due to OMFG NEW COMPUTER BROKE WTF, and then holidays. I had originally been picking up speed – I had a good week where I wrote between 2000 and 3000 words a night, but it was not to be! I ended up having issues with things at home (namely: I am related to crazy people) and jobs (re: I CAN’T GET EXPERIENCE IF NO ONE HIRES ME). After that I got my new compy – the beautiful, custom-built EVA, but she came with a dead back fan, and in three days my drool-worthy beast of a GPU crapped out. In the middle of a writing session. I lost an entire scene of almost 800 words. After that, I basically couldn’t bear to write CoT for at least a week, and then job stuff and holiday stuff snuck up on me and yesterday was the first time I had time to write. Only to discover – I had lost every word of that scene, save for the original first sentence – which I had re-written before the crash! I tapped out a few words, trying to recover the lost scene, but…well, that didn’t go so well.

In any case, I truly enjoyed writing for NaNoWriMo so I decided I’d try doing a monthly word count of 25,000 for CoT. I like keeping track of how much I’m writing, and hopefully it will point out the problems I have with my word count. Also, it should keep me in enough practice to easily double what I write normally for NaNo next year. Also, it will give me great incentive to keep updating the blog!

NaNoWriMo: Day 11

Day 11

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
14,641 / 50,000
(29.3%)

I’ve started to institute some semblance of a schedule on myself – I get up, job search, write the blog post about the day before, then I have time free for whatever, followed by stopping whatever at around 9 to get ready to write by 9:30 or 10. Usually, with the two hours until 12 (plus about a half hour since I always start late), I can get over my word count done. Which is my aim, since I am something like 3,000 words behind, and I’m trying to slowly pare it down until I’m back on track. Most nights I get somewhere near 2000 words, which means I’m taking off about 400 words from the 3,000, so I’m making good time. I think I will throw myself a one-lady-party when it finally gets down to 2,000. I include the 3000 in my daily goal too – so whenever I look at my goal, it is some obscene number in the 5,000 range. It will be a fine, fine day when that finally gets back to a normal amount.

This current chapter is a beast. Each scene is taking up by word count each night. It looks at other novels and thinks it could take them. It eats Volume 1 chapters for breakfast. It is like the Jabba the Hutt of chapters, only without the dancing slave girls and Han Solo in carbonite. But the best thing about it is that I finally have broken out my pirate playlist – Drunken Sailor – on seeqpod. I’ve been writing with it on for the past few days – ever since I got past the kiss scene, which was the second scene in this chapter. I believe I’ll be starting the sixth scene tonight. The pirates have not officially shown up yet – they will technically be in the last two scenes, but we won’t have a true pirate chapter until volume 4.

Snippet:

Teja heard a splash behind them and jumped off his lap, racing to the rail. She was enthralled by the merfolk that dogged the ship – the front end caused her great confusion, but one glimpse at the tail caused her to mew in excitement, as if she thought there was a great tuna swimming below, just waiting to be her dinner. The reappearance of the human end distressed her, and she hissed in fear, looking over towards Arduus to see if he could come save her, should she get into a mess she could not handle. He laughed, and she haughtily turned her kitten face away from him to let him know he had fallen into disfavor.

NaNoWriMo: Day 10

Day 10

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
12,859 / 50,000
(25.7%)

Yesterday was mostly a normal day – I played Morrowind in the afternoon, but I left around 6 to go out to dinner with my friend Rach at Not Your Average Joe’s. We had a good time; she just went through a totally BS break up and is at the phase where she’s realizing she had totally handwaved a bunch of awful things (never calling back, never calling in the first place, being totally ditched after dinner for his friends after she had driven an hour on a weekday into the city to see him) about him, just because she really liked him. Since she’s at a lack of guyfriends, she wanted me to tell me about all of my guyfriends, and also Gabe’s – she wants to be set up, but I’m of the opinion that set-ups never work. I usually can tell who would be good together, but you can just throw two people together and say “hey, you’d work out, TRUST ME” and expect them to act like normal people. It’s a lot of pressure.

I’m a fan of the more natural “let’s put them in a box and try to get them to notice each other” idea. Interest can’t be faked or manufactured, so it’s sort of a long waiting process, with an exceedingly high OBSCENE FAILURE rate. Since you can only do so much, you just have to put them in a group of people until they notice each other. It helps if you’ve given them ideas of mutual interest before hand – yeah, this guy, he LOVES MUSIC, and so do you. Not that I’m saying anything. Nope. But then again, the party atmosphere is risky – some people are in their element in parties, and people gravitate towards them, not realizing that, hey, this might be them at their best. This person you are talking to – they may not actually exist.

I’m not quite sure when everyone decided that your friends are the dating service of your SO’s friends, but this seems to be the way things go, at least for girls. When you have a boyfriend, suddenly your friends want to know if he has friends. Nice friends. Cute friends. Preferably both at the same time, but you know, they only actually need to be cute (okay, so people say nice instead, but this is a lie. I have shown people the nicest of his friends. They just want the cute ones. They’ll manufacture a nice personality in their head for them if they have to). Then you should set them up. Set you up? What is this, the 50s? Can you not make yourself attractive enough if you meet them? I have to throw you together like rats in a breeding box and see if it works? This is like if you asked me for a reference for a job – if you turn all crazy pants on him, I can never introduce him to another girl, no matter how much more compatible she is. Even if you get together in a natural way and break up, I’ll still get blamed by both of you for the heartache you made yourself.

So no, I won’t ’set up’ anyone. Not even if you ask nice. You’re on your own. I can give you the opportunity, but that’s it. In fact, I can give you multiple opportunities. But set up? Listen, I like my friends and his friends too much for that sort of thing.

I got back late from dinner – we went to her house to hang out, ended up watching tv for a while and then I got home around 10:15. I started writing just about then, and it went pretty well – I got over my daily word count done, and made some good progress on the words I need to make up. I finished scene 4 last night, which means I am technically half way done. The chapter looks like it will be a beast of a thing; as of right now it is 9 pages, and I still have three more scenes to go. This scene and the next are in the original draft (well, the next one is half of a scene from the original draft, and the other half appeared earlier), so I writing went far quicker, though there was still a lot to change. The girl in the scene is supposed to be the elf equivalent of a 12-year-old, but in the original she acted like an 8-year-old, which needed to be fixed. Knowing quite a few more 12-year olds now, I was able to really get that thin line between childhood and adolescence. Well, more accurately, young adulthood, since adolescence is a relatively new concept that they would not have had in a medieval society. In any case, I’m hoping to finish this chapter by next weekend, and hopefully be all caught up on my word count by the same time next week.

Snippet:

Arduus’ heart thumped loudly. He has not previously known of his aversion to cats until he had worked on Caelan’s farm and been swarmed by the many ratters that holed up in the barns. He had petted them liberally the first few hours he had met them, only for a large red rash to appear everywhere they and his cat-fur covered hands had touch. His eyes had swelled – not as much as Caelan had seen on some of the other men though – and she had banned him from the barn ever since, handing those jobs off to other men less bothered by cats. He had thought himself safe on the high seas, but as the small thing padded towards them on its big paws, he suddenly recalled Bryok’s outburst months before, about a furry dark omen aboard the ship, and the subsequent conversation with Branor about his daughter’s new kitten.

NaNoWriMo: Days 6, 7, 8 & 9

Day 6

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
6,383 / 50,000
(12.8%)

I actually was able to start somewhat early this day – the computer I play Morrowind on sometimes decides randomly that it is having an error. It doesn’t know why, it just suddenly thinks that something HORRIBLE IS HAPPENING OMG and decides to say the game I am playing is no longer running. Now, I could understand if the game was hiccupping in any sort of way, but it always plays perfectly until the sudden error message drags me back to windows. Needless to say, I am dying to get my hands on my new computer. Also, this was the day that the final parts for new!compy came in – Vista and MS Office, sent with love from my own Microsoft corporate worker-bee brother. I resisted Vista for a very long time – I know there are bugs, and it looks strangely like the mac os, but I’ve heard most of those are fixed and the people who use Vista now are in love with it. I’ve used it before, and although I’ll miss my menu buttons, I know that to fight the tide of it now is sort of, well, dumb. All the games coming out now for PC will be coming out nearly exclusively for Vista, and although I don’t like the strong-arm tactics Microsoft is using to force gamers and other users into switching, I understand the need – just look at the newest Mac commercial (ps- does anyone like the PC better than that stupid self-satisfied Mac? Just from the commercials, I’d buy a PC. If I wanted an indie kid in my room, I’d go back to college). Plus, as a gift, my brother sent me Shadowrun, which is only playable on Vista. <3

As for writing, I almost reached my daily goal. The scene I had been working on was pretty long – it’s to catch everyone up on the month they missed, plus start up the plot of the chapter – so I stopped when I realized it was getting late and called it a night.

Snippet:

“We must talk, you and I,” he said firmly, in a tone that brokered no argument.

He nodded mutely, following the man out of the cottage with a heavy pit of dread sitting in his stomach. There were few cultures that took familial duty more seriously than the Nothmen; the dwarves were said to be one, but little better than myth and magic were they, having disappeared long enough ago that Arduus suspected they were like the dragon-kin, who had never existed. He thought the dog-demons were heavily bound by familial ties as well – little good that did him, since Kohar’s gold eyes marked him as both demon and Northman. He had often stood in front of the Hi-Jhannon for his willfulness, but Kohar did not have the obligatory fondness forced upon him by blood relation. He knew that a ‘speaking-to’ from the Northman would be far worse than he had endured before – partially because the blood relation that had kept physicality to a minimum between he and his forefathers would be no impediment to Kohar should he feel Arduus did not comprehend his words.

Day 7

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
8,620 / 50,000
(17.2%)

Gabe picked me up around noon-ish this day to bring me up to the apartment for the weekend. Originally, Gabe, J and I were supposed to go drapes shopping (hey, they wanted to. I didn’t even bring it up) but Gabe got called in for an emergency meeting on campus, so J and I had to go shopping. It took up longer to get to the mall than to get everything  – we were in and out in less than a half hour, and we had successfully resisted buying varying kitchen appliances. We chalked it up to our awesome shopping synergy (J was just glad we got home before 7, since if we had all gone together, there probably would have been a certain time everyone would have spent bickering over what was needed) and drove home. Also, we listened to Great Big Sea and Jonathan Coulton there and back. It made for an awesomely funny car ride.

Gabe came home only about five minutes after we got back, and after a failed attempt at trying to find powertools to hang up the curtains, we decided to save it until monday. After, we cooked a dinner of frenchbread pizza, egg noodles, and corn, and played Dokapon Kingdom. We managed to blow through a whole chapter (which took place on their view of Sweden, Norway, and Finland, populated by a strange sort of Sami/Inuit hybrid that had also populated Russia) and start the one in Afrike. And actually, it wasn’t nearly as offensive as I thought it would be. They all basically look like Sallah from the Indiana Jones franchise. Still, we’re all holding out from Crocodile Dundee mayors in Flinders.

As for writing, I blew through my word count – both me and Gabe wrote 2000 words or over, and we only stopped when I got to a good stopping place. I finished the beastly first scene, and got about halfway into the second.

Snippet:

“What are you two chatting about?” Saissa asked, stepping onto the stones that created a path that led to their cottage from the farm proper. She wrapped her shawl tightly around her shoulders, her smile faltering as she looked between them. “What is so important that is has you both wearing such grim face?”

“Ah, you see,” Kohar said with a beaming grin, “We cannot get anything past this clever wife of mine!”

“I am no wife!”

Day 8

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
8,840 / 50,000
(17.7%)

Creepy kid was again at the game – I don’t know why he shows up, since he’s not in the game, and we’re not letting him in it, and we start at 1 and end at 5 and his LARP doesn’t start until about 6. Also, no one can stand him.

I hate saying that, because it sounds snobby, but really, if you met this kid…he’s disruptive, self-centered, loud, and cannot pick up on social cues. In fact, he needs to have most of them explained to him. Like everything else. He managed to try to strike up a conversation with everyone in the game and, okay, we’re all pretty nice. J is probably the one with the shortest temper when it comes to social stuff, but he’s the last one to yell at you for it. Our ogre and our cleric (or well, fallen cleric, long story) are pretty much either experienced with dealing with people with low self-esteem (the ogre, who really softens just about any blow by making it a joke) or is new enough to not judge, since he might be just as annoying (our cleric, but he isn’t. He’s just over-enthusiastic. This is part of the long story). Gabe generally hates confrontation. Mike almost never loses his temper at anyone – he’s an RA, it takes a damn long time. Our irish mage and I are probably the people who cannot quite manage to be mean. And he pisses off all of us. Everyone save me and the mage lost their temper at him, and he latched on to either one of us at any time. I left to call my mum – I really was going to call her anyway, but I was going to wait until after the game until creepy kid decided to hit on me – and he followed me until I was outside, and on the phone. Despite the fact that I announced that I was calling my mother.

Listen, I’ll give anyone the benefit of the doubt, until they ask “are you two engaged or married” like it is the deciding factor of whether they can try to steal me away or not. Here’s a thought, kid: it doesn’t matter, because either way, I’m not looking for a new boyfriend. He then proceeded to try to move his chair closer to me, so our knees were touching. Twice, so it was no accident. That was when I called my mom. Whose response was “HAHAHAHAHAH, YOU NEED TO BE MEAN. Also, I’m very proud of you for not losing your temper.”

On the writing front, I got very little done. As I explained to SC, whenever you have two characters kissing, it is like each has become a goddamned spider-child, and how the hell did they get than many limbs? I also had the issue of the two people being of very different heights – one is about 6′1 or 6′2, the other is 5′6 or 5′7. It’s a large gap in heights. The tallest boyfriend I’ve ever had was 6′3, but I’m 5′10. Currently, Gabe is about 6′1 or 6′2. I have never been significantly shorter than the guy I’m kissing. I have never had to play the “stair game”. I was always just about the right height. From having smaller lady-friends who have tall boyfriends, I know that this is often an issue of balance vs romance.

To add to the situation, there is a box. So now, where do the hands go? One has to be holding the box. Her hands are on him. Where is his other hand? Gabe and I realized this may be an issue of balance as well – at our current heights, he could be holding a box, both of us could avoid being smooshed by the box, and neither of us are in danger of falling over. So he dragged out a text book, stood on it, and this time, it definitely was harder. If I balanced over him, I’d be on his center of gravity. With enough force (or, with enough lack of balance) I could easily topple him. Yeah, that would be really romantic. He obviously couldn’t use two hands to hold onto the box. There needs to be books on the physics of kissing or something.

Snippet (some names are asterisks, so as to avoid spoilers):

There would always be a few seconds he would not be able to recall about that night, and all of them occurred in the time it took for ****** to go from standing grimly before him to having her lips pressed against his.

Day 9

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
10,884 / 50,000
(21.8%)

Sunday we celebrated J’s birthday (it’s really on Tuesday, but I was going home later in the afternoon). He had asked for a White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake as his gift. So Saturday night, I baked him his cake and let it set over night. It looked like a slasher movie (it had cracked quite noticeably right in the center, where all the raspberry was), but it tasted delicious. He had chosen the winter oreos (which have red frosting) for the crust, which was an awesome choice – laying it down, it looked like i had poorly buried a bloody body in some CSI show, but when it cam out, it looked like i had put raspberries in the crust.

Writing went well after I got home, and I managed to make my word count.

Snippet:

“I best make my goodbyes to my dear sister,” Branor sighed. “I’m sure she has much to tell me, especially about my poor daughter.”

“She’s raised more than a few fine girls,” Aieinna observed, though there was a gleam in her eye that spoke of mischief.

“Ah, she has you too, I see. Well, now I’ll be hearing it from two women!” The Captain heaved a dramatic sigh and turned to Arduus. “Now, if you don’t have any child-rearing advice to impart on me from my sister, Master Arduus, you may feel free to load your things aboard. The boys will be helping you as soon as they’re finished making eyes at those fish-brains off the port bow.

“The mermaids have found you already?” Arduus laughed.

Aye, they must have a nose for finding the silliest and stupidest boys sailing into port – and somehow they’re always on my ship.”


NaNoWriMo: Day 3, 4 &5

Day 3

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
3,113 / 50,000
(6.2%)

I started sort of late this day – I re-picked up Morrowind, after totally forgetting where I was in my massive file, and had to restart, so I spent a lot of time doing that, and didn’t really start until around 10 (since it takes me an hour to write about a thousand words, so starting at 10 would give me 2000 words before midnight). I ended up getting sidetracked by SC and Gabe for a while, and when I finally got down to writing, my friend called me to tell me she had an awful day. I ended up making up some of it past the date (which i counted as Day 3, because I’m lazy) and so that’s where we get the word count.

Snippet:

“Hm,” the Al-Aillil hummed thoughtfully. “A marrying age, no doubt about that. Got to marry them when they’re pretty, that’s what my grandmother always said,” she told his mother brightly.

He secretly wished a chasm would open up beneath his chair and swallow him whole, sparing him this indignity. Of course, the gods always found his awkward predicaments more than sufficiently amusing, and his chair stayed firmly supra-terra. He longed for the sweet release of a long fall followed by a short stop, as long as the gods promised that his foremothers could not follow him into the afterlife, where he just knew they would try to marry him off to the nicest dead girl they could find as long as she came from a good family.

Day 4

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
4,519 / 50,000
(9.0%)

I actually got most of my full writing time in on Day 4 – but only after midnight, really. I ended up watching the election coverage, and was very glad I did! My roommate-for-life, who has a political crush on Obama, texted me the second they announced he had won. After that I continued to watch for the speeches – first McCain’s suprisingly gracious concession, the Obama’s speech. I’ve got to admit, he’s had better speeches. This one wasn’t his best, but it was pretty good. After that I booked it through the chapter and finished at about 2am.

Snippet:

He wondered, briefly, if he could manage to suffocate himself with his own pillow. She was nearly his height, by Danu, and she lacked the refined shape of most of the High House daughters. Even his own mother had remarked on how she was so oddly shaped, like some sort of human girl – or worse, some sort of half-breed. There was no reason he should find her attractive in the least – by the gods, she was his friend – but still, his thoughts seemed determined to remind him of her small, slender hands…

Research. He needed to do research. Anything to keep from thinking of the things he had heard women could do with their hands. He needed a distraction – that is, of the completely innocent sort. Not the sort that made him think of wet gowns and dexterous hands.

Day 5

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
4,968 / 50,000
(9.9%)

I ended up doing most of my editing for the chapter that morning, and then put it up sometime after lunch.  started writing early at about 8, since I knew I’d have to plot out the next chapter before writing it. My usual MO for chapter plotting is to read the chapters with the character in it, partially to remember the feel of the narrative, and also to make sure I haven’t lost any continuity. It’s often through these read-throughs that I figure out the details of the chapter, and every once or twice I’ve added a whole extra scene because of it. Also, for chapters like this – an Arduus chapter, that had already been in the original draft – I go through the scenes I wrote in the original, and chose which ones survive and how to save them. I actually don’t think I’m managed to cut out any original scenes; they tend to either be brought in earlier to the story, or later, or I take the scene and just completely re-write it. I never copy and paste – even if the scene is almost exactly the same. I find that when I do, I tend not to remember the words I’ve written, or I feel like now I have to stick to that continuity, and most of all, it sort of feels like cheating.

In any case, plotting the chapter took nearly four hours – partially due to SC, Ninja, and Gabe being distracting, but also because Arduus chapters tend to be the longest chapters, so instead of reading through four or six page chapters, I’m reading through about nine or thirteen pages. I also didn’t even bother to read the scenes from Volume 1 – I think I’ve re-read them so often they’re burned into my brain. The chapter is fully plotted now, and I managed to get a piddle amount done on my word count.

Snippet:

Arduus himself had ached awfully the first excruciating days, where the other farmhands were more of hindrance than help. They had found that the best entertainment around was to watch the high-born elf-boy attempt to do their dirty work, but he had bourn their laughter with more patience than he had known he had. Of course, he had been more than ready to give them all a good wallop until Aieinna had bluntly reminded him of how he had laughed when the village boys attempted to do drills – that is, until those village boys proved their had more brain then bravado, and those same village boys had been the ones to unlock the gate that night so long ago.

NaNoWriMo: Days 1 & 2

Day 1

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
401 / 50,000
(0.8%)

I didn’t make such a great showing on the first day of NaNo – I was still tired from our awesome Halloween party, and Gabe’s RPG takes up some crucial writing hours in the afternoon, and we were both jonesing to play Dokapon Kingdom. We finally finished Chapter 3(after i spent forever trying to collect 3 panaceas when i could have just gone back to the first continent and bought them. In a store) and Gabe conquered a good amount of Llano. Also, the villages in Llano are quaintly offensive, what with the tiki-masks on the grass huts and mayors of questionable education with at best a tenuous grasp on communication. Wearing Amazon war paint. As I said, quaintly offensive. Good going Japan. I was willing to give you the Asiana towns -that’s your home turf, so whatever, but really, Llano?

I ended up only writing a piddling amount – at a quick pace – before falling prey to a headache no doubt given to me by J, who is our resident plague-bearer, and went to bed at 10. Gabe did far better, and he woke me up coming into bed around 1 (which was really 12, i guess) so that we could plot out the doom of his PCs.

Snippet:

“I did not expect to see you out here, in sunlight,” she said lightly with a smile.

“I did not expect to be here,” he began, but quickly bit down on the compulsion to explain himself. Elucidating on his predicament to a lady would have already given him pause, but the idea seemed especially prohibited when he took into account that the lady in question was the man’s mother. Although they were undoubtedly locked in battle of wits among equals of intelligence if not station, tattling about a man’s…questionable appetites to his well-respected and well-loved mothered seemed the very definition of low.

Day 2

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
2,097 / 50,000
(4.2%)

Today went far better than Day 1, and I blew through the daily expectation and made some headway on making up for my poor showing yesterday. J was feeling better, as was I, and both Gabe and I were pleasantly surprised to find out that Daylight Savings had happened sometime during the night. We played a goodly amount of Dokapon before Dan took me home, and we’re pretty close to finishing Chapter 4. J just has to bring the Princess back to the castle – I mean, someone does. Gabe and I talked about how we would enjoy the game even more if it had an actual sort of co-op feature, instead of us pretending it did. Also, we came home to find a veritable glut of candy on the table, left over from Halloween. This was made even better by the fact that my parents are the awesome house that gives out king-sized bars, instead of those lame fun-sized ones.

After relaxing, I got to writing, and obviously, made some good progress!

Snippet:

This ceremony seemed just as awkward as the last – he wasn’t sure who had thought to submerge young, nubile women in a pool of apparently chilly river water, especially in a thin white robe, but they had either been completely unaware of the sight it would make, or had been all too conscious of it. It had been worse with Lady Alia, what with her more…ample assets, but even Lady Muirinn’s…modest endowments made many of the younger men shuffle uncomfortably.

The Magic is Gone and Other Things That Suck About Growing Up

I’m still in awful job limbo – it’s all looking up, but I have one place being wishy-washy about their decisions (I think the lab thinks I’m over-qualified, while HR is on board with hiring me, so it’s all gumming up the works), and my first-choice job place has given me an face-to-face on Thursday, which means this week will take FOREVER to go by. I’m excited though – I’m pretty sure its down to me and maybe two other people, and I think my interview is last. In any case, I’m crossing my fingers I won’t have to start another job search – it is getting really, really tiring.

In any case, I’ve had a busy few weekends! We went to Six Flags, which was awesome – we went on Superman twice, Batman, a whole bunch of other rides, and both the haunted houses. We also went to see an Illusionist where I realized, sadly, that I really just don’t believe in magic anymore. It was really a strange moment – I’m really in love with magic theory, I spend hours thinking about how magic works in each world I write, but in the end, I guess I’m just too old to suspend my belief anymore. Not that he was a bad illusionist – he was great, but I spent most of his act looking for mirrors and hooks. I did that before too, but now…well, now I know that it’s impossible, and I’m not able to pretend that maybe this guy actually is real.

Gabe and I also made this fabulous orange chocolate mousse that takes only 45 minutes to make and set. We cobbled the recipe together out of a whole bunch of other recipes we found, and it turned out great. We ended up using it again this weekend for Flip’s birthday. He asked for a Mosaic Brownie Cheesecake, which turned out amazing, and we used the rest of the heavy cream and chocolate to make a double batch of this mousse. We also had brownies and crushed oreos left over from making the cheesecake, so we ended up improvising some fancy dirt-cups. I sent Gabe out to get gummy worms – both of us forgetting the marathon right outside the apartment – and it took him 20 minutes to make it down the street to a 7/11, where they only had gummy bears. So we ended up having “dead bodies” instead of worms. Gruesome, but delicious. We all had a chocolate OD from so much food – all Gabe and I could manage for dinner were grilled cheeses and chips. And heavily gingered cider.

Also, as of today, I have finally finished chapter 4 of Volume 3, and I am free of Muirinn’s POV for another volume (YAY). I would like to squeeze out another chapter in a week before NaNo starts, but I doubt I can – it’s a brand-new POV and I haven’t even plotted the chapter out yet. Hopefully it will be short, but Muirinn was half the length of the chapter before it, and it took the exact same amount of time to write it.

In terms of the RPG: The primer will be ready for consumption by the end of October, and that everyone can get their final character drafts into me by the end of November.

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