Jonathan Lovelace's Blog, page 6

Writing status update (#34)

It’s been about a month and a half since my last update, and while I’ve had a couple of productive weeks in that time, the vast majority of my creative effort and attention has been demanded by classwork, even more than I’d expected. I had hoped to … but I should go through the goals I set in mid-August point by point, instead of repeating myself first

Continue regular work on Shine Cycle development (the prerequisite for any substantial progress at all).

I didn’t manage regular progress at all; having the time for any development at all felt like a major victory.

Create super-sequence outlines (explanation) for three of the “Alternate Universes” sub-series.

I did this for two.

Answer at least two of the “Wrede questions” that I postponed when I went through the list a few years ago.

Success: I got through two, but only two.

Write loglines for at least two of the planned stories that don’t have them yet.

I didn’t do this for even one. But this is partly because no logline-creation task came up in my task tracker. (They are in the same “slot” in the rotation as the Wrede questions.)

Do “snowflake step 2” for at least one planned novel.

Close: The one task of this type that came up was for Space and Time, which I expect to split and so want to plan for in multiple parts; I set up (and scheduled for what will probably be years from now) the tasks for doing that.

Write at least two character histories and at least one character biography.

I wrote one character history and one biography, though I have also sketched out a second history that is waiting for me to sit down with the timeline spreadsheet.

Finish the Alliance précis I’ve been postponing for a couple of years now

I finally finished it. You’ll see it in this space later this month.

Post at least one Shine Cycle-related post before the next status update.

I’d hoped to manage this, but I should have posted this update weeks ago anyway.

Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”

As usual, I didn’t manage this.

Now, for the next several weeks.

I expect I’ll want to combine my monthly status report with my year-end retrospective (which will, as usual, come at the end of the liturgical year, the week before Advent), so these goals are for a period of about a month and a half. But I also expect classwork to continue to demand my time and attention, and I should spend more time in advance on seasonal blog posts, so I can’t set my sights too high.

Continue regular work on Shine Cycle development (the prerequisite for any substantial progress at all).
Create super-sequence outlines for three of the “Alternate Universes” sub-series.
Answer at least two of the “Wrede questions” that I postponed when I went through the list a few years ago.
Write loglines for at least one of the planned stories that doesn’t have them yet.
Do “snowflake step 2” for at least one planned novel.
Write at least two character histories and at least one character biography.
Post at least two Shine Cycle-related post before the next status update.
Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”

As always, we’ll see how reality matches up to those goals.

Filed under: Status updates

Writing status update (#33)

It’s been a little over a month since my last update. The first couple of weeks weren’t very productive at all for the sort of writing I mean when I just say “writing,” as I sort of expected, but the last three have been increasingly but inconsistently productive. I could describe what I did in detail and chronological order, but it’s probably better to primarily compare my progress to the goals I set for myself last month.

As you may recall, I tend to divide my Shine Cycle development time between “plotting” (outlining, assigning point-of-view to characters, and eventually the actual writing), “worldbuilding” (using questions created by Patricia Wrede I found years ago, a “Deep Cultural Fractalling System” and “Race Fractalling System” I found on Holy Worlds, and—mistakenly, but the classification has stuck and keeps progress moving faster—creating loglines and doing “snowflake outlining”), and “characters” (creating character histories, biographies, and descriptions.

Continue regular work on Shine Cycle development (the prerequisite for any substantial progress at all).

I’ll actually count this as a partial success. The two weeks of minimal progress were the week in which my class ended (requiring far more “crunch” than I like but actually somewhat less than I was beginning to fear) and I drove up to Evart for the dulcimer festival, then the next week was a week of recovery from all that exertion.

For the same reason, combined with the way I set up tasks in my task tracker months if not years ago so that things I didn’t expect when planning a month come up for me to do, I’m counting most of my results below as “partial credit.”

Create concepts and super-sequence outlines for, and assign POV for, six of the “Alternate Universes” sub-series.

I have concepts for four of them, and created a super-sequence outline for one.

Answer at least five of the “Wrede questions” that I postponed when I went through the list a few years ago.

Three.

Write loglines for at least three of the planned stories that don’t have them yet.

Two.

Do “snowflake step 2” for four planned novels.

One—and it was one of the most difficult, since it’s the one where I have only the “premise” and some notes from more than a decade ago, without even a super-sequence outline yet. “Snowflake fractalling” first may be better than outlining first, but it feels more difficult and frustrating because I’m not used to it.

Write at least five character histories and at least five character biographies.

Two and two. That few biographies largely because I put off the histories for so long.

Finish the Alliance précis I’ve been postponing for a couple of years now

Since it hasn’t appeared on this blog, I obviously haven’t finished it.

Post at least one Shine Cycle-related post before the next status update.

I’m going to count my list of alternate history ideas I’m not planning to use.

Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”

That, no. Though I did write a nearly-two-thousand-word letter from Evart, and about twenty-five hundred words in my final classwork for my summer-term class.

Like I said, I’m counting most of that as “partial credit,” about what I should have expected given that I knew I would have some “crunch” to finish classwork, that I hoped to go to Evart, and that both any classwork “crunch” and Evart would require some recovery time. So I’m at least somewhat satisfied.

I start my next set of classes next week, so I can’t be too ambitious in non-class-related writing goals. (I expect classwork won’t be so time-consuming at first as to restrict progress here, but I don’t know when it’ll get that way, so I’ve set my expectations low.) So here are the goals I think I can reasonably meet in the next month or so:

Continue regular work on Shine Cycle development (the prerequisite for any substantial progress at all).
Create super-sequence outlines for three of the “Alternate Universes” sub-series.
Answer at least two of the “Wrede questions” that I postponed when I went through the list a few years ago.
Write loglines for at least two of the planned stories that don’t have them yet.
Do “snowflake step 2” for at least one planned novel.
Write at least two character histories and at least one character biography.
Finish the Alliance précis I’ve been postponing for a couple of years now
Post at least one Shine Cycle-related post before the next status update.
Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”

As always, we’ll see how reality matches up to those goals.

Filed under: Status updates

Writing status update (#32)

It’s been almost a full quarter since my last update. Some of these weeks have been productive for the sort of writing I mean when I just say “writing,” and some were productive for the technical writing classes I’ve been taking, and a small handful weren’t very productive at all. But before even more time slips by, I should take a moment to compare my progress to my goals.

As you may recall, I tend to divide my Shine Cycle development time between “plotting” (outlining, assigning point-of-view to characters, and eventually the actual writing), “worldbuilding” (using questions created by Patricia Wrede I found years ago, a “Deep Cultural Fractalling System” and “Race Fractalling System” I found on Holy Worlds, and—mistakenly, but the classification has stuck and keeps progress moving faster—creating loglines and doing “snowflake outlining”), and “characters” (creating character histories, biographies, and descriptions, the results of which produced the most recent character profile last week). Despite the heavy classwork load, other demands on my time, and my general procrastinative tendencies, I managed to make pretty-good progress in each:

In “plotting,” I got The Dragon Returns outlined to the “sequence” level and made all point-of-view assignments for it (though they are still definitely “someone in such-and-such a post in such-and-such country,” not a name or personality yet).
In “worldbuilding,” I answered three Wrede questions that I had postponed when I went through the questions systematically several years ago, wrote loglines for three planned novels, and did the second “snowflake” step (expanding the logline to a paragraph) for two planned novels.
In “characters,” I wrote four character histories and three character biographies.

Let’s see how this compared to my goals (which were nominally for one month, not three):

Continue regular work on Shine Cycle development (the prerequisite for any substantial progress at all).

Some weeks yes, some weeks no … so no, not regular. Just a comparatively large amount some weeks, so it all added up to relatively-substantial.

Finish POV assignments for The Dragon Returns, create a logline for it, and get at least a quarter of the way through outlining it by sequence.

Done; in fact, I’m finished with outlining it by sequence.

Answer at least four of the “Wrede questions” that I postponed when I went through the list a few years ago.

I managed three.

Complete the second step of “snowflake outlining” for

Shine Cycle Character Profile: Amanda

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted something substantive, but here’s a recently-completed character profile. You can also read the others.

Amanda – Princess at large, in the King’s service in the Imperial Service. She has a record of consistent but not stellar excellence in academics and athletics but is well-known for having recommended others for the vast majority of promotions available to her. By the end of the War of Power she was writing many of the daily briefings for the royal family.

A tall, striking, slender woman with waves of light brown hair flowing down her back. As her responsibilities in the Service have grown she has chosen increasingly imposing gowns and formal robes, but she spends much of her time on the Academy’s athletic fields dressed in a simple athletic costume.

Amanda is known for her drive to improve herself and for her scrupulous attention to detail in her assigned tasks. Among her colleagues in the Imperial Service she is renowned for her patience and self-sacrificing concern for their welfare, her neighbors in the Capitol districts near the one in which she lives know her as quietly generous, and both the Palace residents and staff and her neighbors prize her discretion with what they have confided in her. Each day she rises well before dawn to ensure that the daily briefings are complete and distributed, then gets a few more hours sleep before beginning the rest of her duties. She also spends several hours each day on the Academy’s athletic fields to balance the time she spends sitting at her desk.

After considering her options for some months after her arrival, Amanda decided to begin an academic career at a school that aimed to prepare its students for the Academy. After a few years there, she transferred to the Academy, where she took her time deciding but eventually settled on a primary concentration in history, with a secondary emphasis on athletics.

In each of the three years following her graduation from the Academy, she qualified for, trained for, and competed in the Empire’s Cup competition in several track and field events, and did quite well, but she never placed higher than twenty-fifth. After her third Cup appearance, she decided to retire from sport for at least the time being.

She then applied for and received a position in the Imperial Service as the aide to a shift manager in the Palace service. She settled into the position happily, building a strong rapport with her coworkers and superiors.

Over the next decade, opportunities for higher-ranking and higher-paying positions appeared somewhat regularly. Most of them she ignored, for one reason or another, but for at least three of them she successfully recommended others in her shift rather than applying on her own behalf. Eventually, one of her superiors two levels above her heard about this, asked her why she hadn’t applied for a promotion, and persuaded her to accept an increase in her official rank and pay. She was finally given nominal seniority two years later.

Over the next decade and a half or so, having passed out of the view of her formerly immediate superiors, she continued to pass those promotion opportunities that she paid any attention to on to her peers and subordinates rather than taking advantage of them for herself.

At length, however, this came to the attention of the Queen, who asked her to enter her personal service. Amanda’s duties primarily consisted of research and organization asistance to a higher-level aide who was responsible for preparing regular briefings. With her advancement coming now at the pleasure of her superiors, instead of when she applied for promotions, she earned her seniority there within three years.

Two years later, the Queen transferred her to the King’s service, where she was asked to help prepare the daily briefings that the Palace staff gathered for the Palace residents. After seven years in that post, when her supervisor resigned, she was given the responsibility for creating the daily briefings. And after four years there, at the King’s request, the Parliament voted to make her a princess at large to honor this service.

Filed under: Character Profiles

Writing Status Update (#31)

It has been again not quite two months since my last update. For once, these weeks have been both productive and almost-consistently so, and not too much at the expense of other priorities either … just so busy I haven’t had time or attention to spare to compare that progress to my goals.

Most notably in Shine Cycle development, I finally finished outlining The Longest War by sequence. The other “milestone” is that I finished my pass through the first phase of fractalling Imperial culture, though it turned out I was closer to the end than I’d thought, so that was more “so little left to do” than “so productive a month.”

But before I get myself even more off track, let’s look at how I fared against the goals I set back in March:

Continue regular work on Shine Cycle development (the prerequisite for any substantial progress at all).

I’ll count this as “almost, and close enough.”

Outline at least the rest of The Longest War by sequence.

Done. Though I got no farther than that.

In fractalling the culture of the Empire and the Sunshine Kingdom, get at least a third of the way through the “Humanity” section.

Done; I finished that “phase” (which is as much as I’ve downloaded, and in fact as much as has been posted of the current revision of the system of questions).

Write at least one character history.

I didn’t write any character histories, but I did get a handful of entries and descriptions done. And, more importantly for my future workload, I divided the list of characters into “major” and “minor” characters: “major” characters are those who will almost certainly appear in and influence the storyline of something planned on my outline, and so need histories and biographies written, but “minor” characters aren’t likely to appear, and so don’t need such. As I made these lists, I moved the history and biography tasks for “minor” characters from my task “backlog” to what Tracker calls the “icebox,” which has significantly reduced the amount of work piled up for me.

Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”

No fiction, no, as usual. My prose went to schoolwork.

And while I was rearranging my task tracker, I also realized that the “snowflake outlining” (which was the next subcategory to come up in the “worldbuilding” category after I ran out of culture-fractalling tasks) was not the sort of thing I would want to do all in a row for one book, so I started rearranging them to put all of the “step 2″ tasks before the “step 3″ tasks, and so on.

Now, tasks for the next month:

Continue regular work on Shine Cycle development (the prerequisite for any substantial progress at all).
Finish POV assignments for The Dragon Returns , create a logline for it, and get at least a quarter of the way through outlining it by sequence.
Answer at least four of the “Wrede questions” that I postponed when I went through the list a few years ago.
Complete the second step of “snowflake outlining” for Sunshine Civil War and Stone of Power .
Write at least one character history.
Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”

As always, we’ll see how the month turns out.

Filed under: Status updates

Writing Status Update (#30)

It’s been well over a month, if not quite two months yet, since my last update. And while these weeks have not been a total loss for Shine Cycle development, my progress was slow and intermittent. Still, I did manage to accomplish a little worth mentioning, and it’s about time to make a quarterly report on my goals for the year.

What little I actually accomplished in the last weeks came down to two items: one character history, and The Longest War outlining. I think I might have gotten at least half-way through what remained of The Longest War that needed to be outlined by sequence, though I’m not sure.

For next month, I’ll simply repeat the goals I set back in early February:

Continue regular work on Shine Cycle development (the prerequisite for any substantial progress at all).
Outline at least the rest of The Longest War by sequence.
In fractalling the culture of the Empire and the Sunshine Kingdom, get at least a third of the way through the “Humanity” section.
Write at least one character history.
Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”

We’ll see.

However, as it’s now about a quarter of the way through 2015, I thought it’d be a good idea to consider how I’ve managed so far on the goals I set for the year.

Goal: In my iterative outlining, get at least to the end of the saga in the current pass—which is converting “super-sequence” outlines to outlines by “sequence”, deciding on point-of-view characters, and creating tentative loglines.
Intermediate Goal: Have at least a general (“super-sequence”) outline of every “main-line” story, plus the “Game of Life”, by July.

I’m nearly done with The Longest War, but that still leaves on the order of 11 needing outlining by sequence (most without even the “super-sequence” outline), as many needing point-of-view characters, and nine without even tentative loglines

Goal: Have at least one “polished” logline.
Stretch Goal: Get at least half-way through the “snowflake method” for at least one story.

I’ve mae no progress on either of these.

Goal: Write at least four character histories.
Intermediate Goal: One character history by April, two by July, three by October.

I’m on track to meet or exceed these, with one character history completed by, as it happened, the middle of February.

Goal: Finish working through the “Deep Culture Fractalling System” (that is, the “worldview” part, which is all that’s been posted …) for the Imperial culture.
Intermediate Goal: Finish “Step 3: Reality.”

I finished “Step 3″ (to the extent that I’m answering the questions, because I finish most answers with a note “TODO: answer in more detail and for subcultures”) in January, I think. And it looks like I’m on track to finish the rest of the questions well before the end of the year, though I may well get behind again.

Stretch Goal: Get at least halfway (probably about 50,000 words, but assessed using the outline if the story turns out to be significantly shorter than that would indicate) through a draft of one of the (intended-to-be-novel-length) stories I’ve done at least preliminary planning for.

No progress on that either.

So, I think a fair summary would be “not as good as I’d hoped, not as bad as I’d feared.” Here’s hoping the next few months will be more productive.

Filed under: Status updates

Writing Status Update (#29)

In the month since my last update (which I combined with a civil-year-end retrospective and goal-setting post) I’ve made a little progress on the development of background material for the Shine Cycle. And so it’s about time for another status report.

Last month, in addition to my goals for the year, I set goals for the month. I’ll consider each in turn.

Continue regular work on Shine Cycle development (the prerequisite for any substantial progress at all).

I failed on this point as of the last four weeks in my task tracker only two recorded any real progress, and only this past week showed any truly substantial progress.

Outline at least the rest of The Longest War by sequence.

I made progress toward this, but only a few very small steps.

In fractalling the culture of the Empire and the Sunshine Kingdom, get at least a third of the way through the “Reality” section.

This I did; in fact, this past week I finished that section entirely. (Partly because I got ahead of where my task tracker thought I was, and so kept looking for where the “current task” ended and speeding up to try to be able to check it off.)

Write at least one character history.

I did manage to finish one character history.

Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”

None.

I’ll adapt the same goals for the next month:

Continue regular work on Shine Cycle development (the prerequisite for any substantial progress at all).
Outline at least the rest of The Longest War by sequence.
In fractalling the culture of the Empire and the Sunshine Kingdom, get at least a third of the way through the “Humanity” section.
Write at least one character history.
Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”

We’ll see.

Filed under: Status updates

Shine Cycle 2014 Review, 2015 Goals

As we near the end of the civil year, it’s time to look back over the year that was and forward into the new year. I did my blog retrospectives at the end of the liturgical year, before Advent, including the one on the Shine Cycle, so this week I’ll consider the goals I set last year, and set new ones: my goals having to do with the Shine Cycle, my planned fantasy series, today; Strategic Primer, my strategy game, on Wednesday, and the rest on Thursday. I’ll also include my regular montly status update in each category.

2014 Goals

First, let’s look at the Shine Cycle-related goals I set a year ago:

Worldbuilding Program Development

I’ve long felt that some of my problems (largely of scale) in developing the Shine Cycle could be made much less difficult by the use of better software tools—tools which apparently don’t yet exist, as I’ve explained in several of my “unwritten program” essays.

At the end of last December, I had thought of some ideas as to how to go about writing one such tool that I felt I urgently needed, so I set the following goal:

Goal: Write a “timeline program” that meets enough of my needs for me to use it (nearly) exclusively for managing the history of the world in which I write.

However, not long after I set that goal (and started asking if anyone else wouldd be interested in helping me design and test it), I figured out how to make a spreadsheet work “well enough.” So I failed to meet this goal (and I’ve now forgotten essentially all of the development ideas I had, which I do regret), but this wasn’t the “blocker” I thought it would be.

Shine Cycle

Most of my goals were repetitions of ones I’d made progress toward but failed to accomplish the previous year.

And instead of simply listing them in the order I posed them, I’ll group related ones together.

Outlining

Goal: In my iterative outlining, get at least to the end of the saga in the current pass.

I’ve made significant progress, but partly because that progress was inconsistent and partly because The Longest War in particular proved more complicated than I’d initially thought, I’m still quite a ways from actually accomplishing this goal. So I’ll yet again repeat it.

Goal: Have at least a tentative logline for every story or planned story or volume in the Shine Cycle, for each sub-series, and for the series as a whole.

Goal: Have at least one “polished” logline.

Stretch Goal: Complete the “snowflake method” for at least one story or planned story.

I wrote a few tentative loglines, but came nowhere near meeting the first goal. And I didn’t even think about submitting one of my tentative loglines for critique, or get anywhere near the point of expanding the loglines using the snowflake method. These will come, or not, with my iterative outlining.

Goal: Have at least a general outline (what I call a “super-sequence” outline) for every planned story.

This is close; there are perhaps two or three that I don’t have in the “main line” (see the series outline), about half of the “Game of Life” sub-series, and all of the Alternate Universes series (which I have setting but not really story ideas for anyway). But close isn’t success.

Goal: Sort out “POV assignments” for every planned story.

I made some progress, but not much. And this, too, will come or not with my iterative outlining.

Background and Worldbuilding

Goal: Finish “the timeline revision.”

I didn’t accomplish this, but I decided at some point to give it up for now.

Stretch Goal: Write at least six character histories.

Met and accomplished, twice over: I wrote fifteen character histories (plus approaching twice that many character descriptions and “entries”). But I still have many characters whose histories I want to get down, so this too will repeat in the list below.

Goal: Finish the “race fractalling system” for at least one race from the Shine Cycle.

Stretch Goal: Finish the “culture fractalling system” for at least one Shine Cycle culture.

Because the culture fractalling system came up before any race-fractalling tasks in my task tracker, I’m closer to what I called a “stretch goal” than the “goal”. But I’m not all that close to finishing it. So I failed to meet either of these.

Actual Prose

Stretch Goal: Get at least halfway (probably about 50,000 words, but assessed using the outline if the story turns out to be significantly shorter than that would indicate) through a draft of one of the (intended-to-be-novel-length) stories I’ve done at least preliminary planning for.

Again, utter failure. I didn’t even get the few-hundred-words’ progress I manage in last year’s NaNoWriMo. But I’ll repeat this goal below too.

Monthly Status Update

In my last update, I identified the following goals for the month:

Continue regular work on Shine Cycle development.
Outline at least the rest of The Longest War by sequence.
In fractalling the culture of the Empire and the Sunshine Kingdom, get at least halfway through the “Reality” section.
Write at least two character histories.
Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”

Between classwork and my new internship (which I shall write more about in my “general” post later this week), I had neither time nor attention enough to spare to manage any of these. I did finish one character history, and made slight progress on outlining The Longest War by sequence—and that’s the extent of my progress this month.

Because I expect my schedule to be about as hectic for the next month at least as it has been, I will scale my ambitions for the immediate future back yet further:

Continue regular work on Shine Cycle development (the prerequisite for any substantial progress at all).
Outline at least the rest of The Longest War by sequence.
In fractalling the culture of the Empire and the Sunshine Kingdom, get at least a third of the way through the “Reality” section.
Write at least one character history.
Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”

2015 Goals

I don’t know what demands will be placed on my time beyond classes and this temporary internship, so the goals I’ll pose for the next year are yet less ambitious than what I’ve set in previous years—but because I do want to get things done so I can move past them (and get my task tracker down to more manageable levels) I’ll also moderate that tendency somewhat. Lastly, I’ve decided to set “intermediate goals” so I can check my progress before next December.

Outlining

Goal: In my iterative outlining, get at least to the end of the saga in the current pass—which is converting “super-sequence” outlines to outlines by “sequence”, deciding on point-of-view characters, and creating tentative loglines.

Intermediate Goal: Have at least a general (“super-sequence”) outline of every “main-line” story, plus the “Game of Life”, by July.

Goal: Have at least one “polished” logline.

Stretch Goal: Get at least half-way through the “snowflake method” for at least one story.

Background and Worldbuilding

Goal: Write at least four character histories.
Intermediate Goal: One character history by April, two by July, three by October.
Goal: Finish working through the “Deep Culture Fractalling System” (that is, the “worldview” part, which is all that’s been posted …) for the Imperial culture.
Intermediate Goal: Finish “Step 3: Reality.”

Actual Prose

Stretch Goal: Get at least halfway (probably about 50,000 words, but assessed using the outline if the story turns out to be significantly shorter than that would indicate) through a draft of one of the (intended-to-be-novel-length) stories I’ve done at least preliminary planning for.

We’ll see.

Any thoughts? Writer friends, do you have any goals for the coming year?

Filed under: Shine Cycle, Status updates

Year-End Summary, Poetry Book Update, and Post-Hiatus Plans

Today is the last day of the year on the Christian liturgical calendar; tomorrow is the First Sunday of Advent. So, as in past years, I have marked the end of the old year by looking back over it, summarizing where this blog—and my life in the subjects it covers—has been in the past year. This week has also marked the end of my hiatus, so my year-end retrospective posts this week have also served as “monthly” status reports and described my plans for blogging going forward.

On Monday and Wednesday of this week I wrote about two of the four main departments of this blog, looking back and forward regarding the Shine Cycle and Strategic Primer. Today, a look through the “essays” that appeared in this space on Saturdays (and occasionally on other days; and a few of the poems, which ran on Fridays) in the past year—since last year’s retrospective—and what you’re likely to see here from now on.

Year in Review

First, a look back over the “essays” and “poems” sections of the blog in the past year.

Hymns and the Liturgical Year

Many of my posts were written for the various occasions in the cycle of the liturgical year. And many of these fit into my series of posts about great and favorite hymns. For example, each Saturday in Advent I wrote about a favorite Advent hymn, including “Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates”, “Hark, what a sound”, and “O come, o come, Emmanuel” (including, of course, all seven verses, and both the English and the original Latin. I also wrote about “O Morning Star! how fair and bright” in Epiphany, “Hosanna, loud hosanna” for Palm Sunday, “Come, ye faithful, raise the strain” in Eastertide, and “Come, Holy Spirit, come” for Pentecost.

The other “essay” posts written for specific occasions on the liturgical calendar were a discussion, on Christmas Day, of the idea that Jesus was born “that first Christmas morn“; an Epiphany discussion of “believer’s baptism,” “falling away,” and infant regeneration, and again an Ash Wednesday meditation.

I also continued my series of posts about hymns with a few that were not chosen to fit the liturgical calendar: “Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven”, “All people that on earth do dwell” (“Old Hundredth”), and “God of our fathers” just after Independence Day.

Book Reviews

I continued working my way through my list of books everyone should read to explain why I think each book belongs on the list, though I only covered a couple of books: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the poetry of A.A. Milne.

I had meant to write at least one “review of ‘recent’ books,” but didn’t get around to it.

Civil Year

In addition to the posts prompted by occasions on the liturgical calendar that I mentioned above, I wrote a few posts related to civil holidays—and my own birthday.

First, around the turn of the civil year, I wrote a personal retrospective and set goals for this year, then wrote a “New Year’s ramble”.

Then, in February, on my birthday, I wrote about self-image as opposed to actual age.

As I mentioned above, in July I chose the hymn to discuss because of the proximity to Independence Day.

Lastly, this week I wrote a reflection—my sixth annual—for Thanksgiving.

Poetry

I posted twenty-two poems this year. That’s nowhere near the poem a week I once managed, but it’s still more than I want to enumerate here. (If you want to see them all, you can read the category, or look at the archive page that I have finally updated with the last ten or so poems.) And it was close to my goal of about a poem a week until I abruptly stopped in June.

Here are a few of the “highlights” I would pick out from the double handful of poems:

A poem I wrote for Advent, “O come, O King”, became the first—and so far only—post that someone reblogged on another blog.
In January, I wrote what I think is about my second “filk” (poem based on “a fandom”): Tirian
And the very next week, after beginning a new friendship, I wrote Friends, based in part on the old rhyme “Make new friends.”
Yet another poem I posted in January, The Praise of Poetry, also later ran on the Holy Worlds blog.
And lastly, in March I wrote a poem that was partly prompted by a sonnet by e.e. cummings: “The trees stand”.

Poetry Book

Throughout the year, I kept working on my “Poetry Book” project. I intended to post updates on it quarterly, but didn’t quite manage that. Still, I did post four updates over the course of the year, and one somewhat tangential post, including an update that gave updated stats on poems’ popularity on this blog at the turn of the civil year and an announcement that I will be maintaining a promotional blog that will post a poem—by other poets—a week for a year.

I’ll give an update on the project in a later section of this post.

Writing Theory

Other than the posts I’ve already discussed, the most common general topic among the remaining posts was what we may call writing theory.

First, in January, I talked at some length about “rewind” style time travel and time travel in fiction in general.

Second, in March, I wrote an explanation of what I mean when I ask for suggestions of a “real title” for a poem.

And third, in May, I wrote a description of the process of “iterative outlining” I use to develop my Shine Cycle.

Miscellaneous

At the end of May, I wrote a thought experiment probing how we ought to think about certain hot-button political issues.

And in October, after not having written anything of any real substance on the blog since August at the latest, I made the hiatus official.

Poetry Book Update

The Poetry Book project is all but done, but behind schedule. (I had hoped to have it actually done, not just “all but done,” by the middle of November at the latest.) The print version is waiting for proof copies to ship and be approved, and the Kindle version is almost to that point.

I added three more poems since the last count I had mentioned; the collection now contains fifty-nine poems, each accompanied by at least one public-domain line drawing, woodcut, or engraving.

As I mentioned above, earlier this fall I announced plans to maintain a promotional blog. I have now made that blog public: like the book, it is called “A Year in Verse”, and it can be found here.

Post-Hiatus Plans

I had hoped and intended to have a substantive post run in this space every Saturday this year. This obviously did not happen, and blogging, coursework, and other priorities interfered with each other.

So, as with the other departments of the blog, I now plan a reduced and not nearly so strict schedule. I hope to post at least a couple of substantive (i.e. not just “sorry no post,” and more than just a hundred words or so) “miscellaneous essay department” posts each month, and at least a couple of new poems, but those will no longer come only on Saturdays and Fridays respectively.

I also plan and hope to continue my tradition of marking Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost.

But we’ll see.

Filed under: Administrivia, Miscellany, Poetry Book

Shine Cycle year-end summary, post-hiatus plans, and writing status update

As has become traditional on this blog, this last week of the Christian liturgical year will be given over to posts looking back over the past year on the blog. Today, a look back over the Shine Cycle worldbuilding and other background material that has appeared on Mondays throughout the year since last year’s year-end summary, and also an update on my plans now that the hiatus has come to an end and a report on my progress on the Shine cycle since my last status update.

Retrospective

First, our look back over the year that ends this week.

Précis

For awhile, almost every month I continued posting brief introductions to the books I’m planning for the Shine Cycle. I got through the end of the “main line” of the series and began covering the first and most-developed sub-series, but got no further. Specifically:

Last December I wrote about Desperate Times , the third and last part of a “triptych” about a famous detective.
In January I described An Internal Conflict .
In February I wrote about A Calculated Wager , which covers the same time as An Internal Conflict, and also the “Dratted Campaign” stories.
And in May, I began my more detailed coverage of the “Game of Life” sub-series with a précis of The Invasion.

Settings

I wrote a few posts describing places that parts of the Shine Cycle may be set.

In December, the Sea Shield Isle, which will be important in Universe
To mark Christmastide, I described Christmas in Capitol.
In January, I finally described the Dragon Empire, the main adversary for much of the series.
And In April, I re-imagined the New Roman Empire in response to reader criticism.

Characters

I posted a handful of character profiles:

In January, a profile of Persephone, including an excerpt from my current draft of An Internal Conflict.
In May, a profile of Windstorm of the Rivers Kingdom.
And in August, a profile of Adelaide.

Future History

I also posted a couple of background posts drawn from my ongoing development of a future history of our world for use in my “Game of Life” sub-series, discussing genetic engineering and the Third World War.

Post-Hiatus Plans

Now that I’ve had some time to consider, here is my plan for the Shine Cycle side of this blog going forward. (I’ll explain my plans for the other departments in their own year-end summary posts later this week.) I now plan to write a “writing status update” and at least one other Shine Cycle-related post each month. And since I will no longer be trying to make one post in each department every week, I will no longer post Shine Cycle-related posts only on Mondays, but rather, if my intended schedule slips, post them when I have them.

Status Update

Since my last status update, it’s been almost three months, and in retrospect—given the demands of classwork—my goals for “the next month” were more suitable goals for a three-month span than for a month.

Continue regular work on Shine Cycle development

Continued work, yes; regular work, no. The “volatility” of my Shine Cycle project in Pivotal Tracker, the task-management tool I use, stands at 104% right now. (What’s really somewhat sad is that only my “personal misc” project, which includes tasks for my Poetry Book and stands at 76%, and the project for my class this semester, at 49%, are any more consistent.)

Outline at least the rest of The Longest War by sequence.

Umm … no. I made a little bit of progress, but I don’t see myself finishing this even before the end of the year. Though I’ll try.

In fractalling the culture of the Empire and the Sunshine Kingdom, get at least halfway through the “Negative Identity” subsection.

This I actually more than accomplished; instead of merely getting halfway through it, I finished that section entirely. Though I don’t know how much I had done by the beginning of October.

Write at least two character histories.

This, too, I managed to meet, with four histories over the three-month period.

Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”

Utter failure on this point, as usual.

Because I hardly know what to expect regarding my schedule for the next month, I’ll keep essentially the same goals:

Continue regular work on Shine Cycle development (the prerequisite for any substantial progress at all).
Outline at least the rest of The Longest War by sequence.
In fractalling the culture of the Empire and the Sunshine Kingdom, get at halfway through the “Reality” section.
Write at least two character histories.
Write at least a hundred words of “actual prose.”

And again, we’ll see.

My next status update will likely be combined with a civil-calendar-year-end summary post. But until then, do you have any thoughts?

Filed under: Administrivia, Shine Cycle, Status updates