December 2021 Update

 Well, it’s been quite a long time since I posted here, hasn’t it? The short explanation is that real life got in the way. If we take the scenic route through the past several months since my last post, there’s quite a bit to tell y’all imaginary readers. 

In my last post in August, I talked about getting a job and a couple of my initial posts. Well, I’ve seen two or three other posts since then, and have finally settled at one. I’m guarding for an organization that helps college students in particular majors get work experience and earn money while going to school. Since the office is mostly empty right now, it’s a pretty easy spot to be in. My shift runs in the afternoon, and I leave after 20:00 at night, and my desk is in the HR office, so when this office clears out, I’m alone down here on the ground floor. I patrol the 2 floors of the building where the organization has offices every 90 mins, watch cameras, and generally get to do whatever the heck I want while seated at the desk. This means I can write during the day. 

Due to this ability to write, I’ve adjusted my writing goals. I now write every day, and I’m using the Nano site to help me stay on task. My current goal is 325 words on any Archivos article for Aelyshthar that I happen to be working on, and it’s going well. 

While I’m doing that, I’m also doing series plotting for my Masters of the Schism series, and the Discordant Harmonies series. Final task is going through a general fiction coming-of-age-through-some-adulthood story to figure out where my scene written/outline counts went wrong.

And about my DH series. I’m doing a full rewrite of the first three books. The first novel is going to lengthen a great deal. Different characters are getting sex/gender changes, including Géta. I’m adding more foreshadowing and I have a much better idea of what’s going on behind the scenes of this conflict on Ruphlan’s border. There are hidden agendas everywhere, which means lots of political intrigue. I’m excited about this project and look forward to getting it together. 

The series plotting for MOTS is going well too. Right now, I’m pretty much just plugging things into a spreadsheet to help me see all the threads of the characters’ lives and the plots I have going in this thing. This is working up into a complicated series, and I still don’t know how many volumes I’ll end up writing. However, it is good to get going on this project, and I’m having a great time doing so. 

Long Time No See

Keeping up with my blog (and the posts on my Patreon, for that matter) kind of fell off my task list the past couple months. I've been struggling with my writing since February. 

First, my rewrite of DH01 went off the rails. It got bloated and meandered a lot, and I finally stopped writing on it. When something goes that bad, I usually cut to the last place where I feel the writing did everything I wanted it to, but I wasn't pleased with any of it. 

At the same time, I was working on phase outlines for two or three other projects. Those were going better, but I wasn't happy with those either. My displeasure with these was a little harder to pinpoint until I realized that they seemed too long. I was using the phase outline system that my friend Zette usually employs in the writing of her stories, and while it was easier to progress with this system than it was with the plot-card system, I found I missed the plot cards and eventually gave up on those.

What enabled me to give up on all these projects was my friend J.A. Marlow's Twitch streams. Jam started streaming a couple months ago, and in one of her streams, she shared her plotting spreadsheets. She very kindly shared them with me when I asked her to, and I've been plugging my stories into them since then. Thanks to the plotting spreadsheets I feel I finally have a handle on my stories. 

But doing all this plotting means I'm not writing fresh fiction right now. To fill that need, I've started work on creating a story web in Archivos for my Discordant Harmonies series. It's been going well so far. The pages for each element require a summary and a full article, so I've been setting up files for it in an Archivos Scrivener for the things I need to write in. I don't have artwork for the elements yet, but I have plans for getting it. I'll be posting these on my Patreon, so if you want a sneak peek, come support me!

Changes are Afoot

Well, though I'm not actively writing on Discordant Harmonies 1, I'm still making progress on its background. Due to some worldbuilding I've developed over the past week or so, I've changed Chraest's name to Aelyshthar, finally given the star system it's a part of and the indigenous race names, and conlanged just enough to make what I have of things linguistically logical. 

This meant I had to create a new alphabet, which you can access by joining at the "Boy My Feet Are Really Worn Off!" level of my Patreon; the link is in the sidebar. I'll be posting something a bit more substantial for the "Why Don't Airplanes Wear Capes Too?" level and above later on, hopefully this morning after finishing this post—if I can just remember what the heck I meant to post in the first place. (And I've been so excited about posting my first higher-level Patreon post, too!) 

In addition to these changes, I've started preparing articles for posting to an interactive wiki-type web app called Archivos. At this time, I've got two articles written and am doing research on volcanoes to bring a little more realism to the worldbuilding of the planet. My friend J.A. Marlow is helping with what knowledge she possesses and suggestions for interesting and informative documentaries for me to watch, and I plan on researching more and looking up some books about it—ebooks from the library if I can find them. I'll be adding this information to a more mundane wiki as well, but the user interface is a bit more difficult to figure out and I don't want to start setting that up until I've got a number of good articles written. Neither of these will be accessible until after the launch of at least book one of my DH series. 

Oddly, I'm really enjoying this hiatus away from my story. Yes, I want to get back to it, but it's not tearing me apart this time around. I'm not sure how well I'll keep up with this blog, my Patreon, Twitter, and my articles for the wikis when I'm interested in my story again, but I'm determined to do better about it this time. And no qualifiers like "We'll see how that goes." I'm going to keep up with things this time.