Elysae Shar's Blog, page 7

Camp NaNo Day Two

Got 2998 words today and, yes, I’m going to be lazy and not add another 2 just to hit 3k.All my major players are in place and I got chapter two in the bag, but I’ve also realized that I need a smoother transition from chapter one to chapter two. Right now, it reads as if several days pass in between when it’s supposed to be the same evening. So yeah, I’m up for another chapter two tomorrow. Especially since I kind of nixed the main antagonists reason for disliking the protagonist in the first chapter. I softened it out too much, so it now comes kind of out of the blue.

I also gave finaldeadline.co.uk‘s taskmaster a spin to see if it did anything for me. And I gotta say, I’m impressed with the program. I did three ten minute sprints and got about 1.4k out of that. Guess I don’t need to be jealous of people who can do 2k+ in an hour.

Camp NaNo Day One

I had a pretty good start with ~2.8k words written. That’s the prologue and chapter one of A Fool’s Errand under wraps. If I can keep this up, I’ll have a finished first draft by the end of the month. But I’ve already diverted from my painstakingly recovered outline by adding two small scenes that give more depth to the antagonists.

A Crack in Time + Free Promo

A Crack in Time: A Shortstory is now life on Amazon and Kobo. Other vendors coming soon.

Mark always wanted proof for intelligent alien life. But when he finally gets his wish, he’d far rather find a way back home.

Trapped in almost complete darkness with a talking cloud, Mark is presented with an opportunity most could only dream off. But said cloud isn’t very forthcoming. Add a giant slug into the mix and an odd noise that’s definitely going to drive Mark crazy if he doesn’t get away soon.

Can he escape in time, or will he bring ruin upon himself and everything that’s ever lived?

 

Beyond the Wall will be free until Saturday

Forced to stay in Morson a while longer, Ash takes a job at the local movie theater. Something about the place seems off from the get go, but curiosity drives him to stay and, for a while life seems great. Then Ash finds something carved into the floor under the carpet at the theater.

Things spiral out of control, when that voice decides to pay him a visit, letting him know that it’s not over. And that voice isn’t the only thing to survive and cross over into reality.

Can Ash figure out what’s going on in time to safe a friend? A building? And most importantly himself?

Find out in Beyond the Wall Part 2 of the Ash Manor Series.

Tried to Outline and the Universe Said No

A few days ago, I was working on my outline for Camp NaNo. Went to save it and the stupid program crashed mid-process. I tried to recover the file for an entire night and nothing.

I guess, I should take that as a sign: I’m not meant to be a plotter. Thing is, I want to be. It’s fun and I’m stubborn. So, I spent the last few days recreating my outline from memory and filling in what I couldn’t remember with new material. And the new outline is better and tighter–more in-depth, too. So, take that Universe!

I also took a moment to run one of the stories from Winged Tales through Grammarly for fun and nearly had a heart attack when a 2k word story came up with 60 critical errors. Then I realized that the characters in that story are called Seelas and Arlax, which Grammarly, obviously, didn’t recognize.

One Unnamed 1st Draft Done

I just finished Ash Manor 3’s first draft. It clocked in at ~23k, which if, past experiences have taught me anything, will lead to a lower 3k finished product.Still longer than Beyond the Wall, but nowhere near as grotesque a difference as finishing the whole arch would have been. There’s one scene I may or may not want to add during revision. That’s an additional ~2k right there.

Also, because I knew I wouldn’t start revising this until May, I slowed myself down to roughly 1k a day, though some days I wanted to  do more. According to my original daily goal, I would have finished about ten days ago, and that would have led to me wanting to start the story, I’m preparing for Camp NaNo. Bad when I never know exactly how long something will end up.

Now, I’ve got plenty of time to finish plotting that and there’s a short story, I’ve been wanting to fix up for ages.

 

Not Quite so Unveiled

After doing some mental restructuring of the plot of Unveiled,  I found somewhere I could stop the story without just chopping it off. I don’t want every part of this to end in some sort of cliffhanger… Of course, while writing toward that new end, I realized there were several other good cutoff spots along the way if handled right. It pushes the series more firmly into the serial format, which I never intended, but it also gives me some perspective on how to connect the other Morson stories I’ve floating around in my mind.

Since Unveiled referred to the conclusion of Ash’s storyline and is thus no longer a fitting title, I’m thinking of retitling the series to something along the lines of  Ash Manor: Season 1 Episode 1 (The Morson Journals/Chronicles).

One thing, I know for sure, though: No more pantsing. Next time I want to know what I’m signing up for ahead of time.

 

My Early Writing Years

Unfortunately (or fortunately) none of my writing from elementary school or the decade after, exists anymore and I remember very little of it. Except for one story in my Happy Dogs “series”, in which I introduced a new character who ended up living with the main cast for days. Thing is, I never named him, so when I finally noticed that several stories later and tried to fix my oversight, I ran into a snag. The whole thing was written longhand and only the very bottom of the page remained. I ended up with going with something along the lines of: As he left, he said, “Oh, by the way, my name is…”

As he left, he said, “Oh, by the way, my name is…”

The next thing I remember was my first ever intended novel length work, which featured a bunch of children traveling across the country to learn to control their powers from a mysterious stranger.  I somehow got it into my head that every page had to have every character. On top of that colossal mess, the whole thing was a massive rip off of the Shining. I even called it that… And since, in the 90s, I apparently didn’t care much about originality or copyright, I followed that up with a ripoff of Sliders.

After that came a story about a soul eating orphanage,  featuring a villain named Annelie. That one died when it got confiscated by the school’s most despised teacher, whom I, later on, found out, shared the villain’s name… Fun times.During that time a friend and I also produced a “magazine” named either Hamster News or Hamster Times, which none one but us ever got to see. Mostly because I was really into breeding those rodents at the time.

During most of this time, I also fancied myself a poet. I had a whole binder full of these poems…and they all sucked. I remember destroying them  sometime in the early 21st century.

 

 

 

Sometimes, Compromising Helps

Compromising on how I split my writing time allowed me to finally push past the first few chapters hurdle for Unveiled. I’m up to 13k now, which puts me right on track to finish it this month and keep A Fool’s Errand for Camp NaNo next month. Though the way the story is developing, makes me wonder if I shouldn’t find a reasonable place to split and turn it into two books because at this rate it’ll end up about twice as long as Beyond the Wall. And that would put me at a series progression of 12k->25k->50k+. I’m not sure I like that. I definitely want to move into full-length novel territory for future works but  within a series? I’ll see where I’m at story wise at the 25k marker and decide then.

I’ve also discovered that, in 3rd person, Heart is one of my least favorite characters to write. It makes him a lot less intense, but the jarring transition now would just be jarring without serving a purpose. So, I’m going to have to suck it up. On the positive side, it also means less swearing from him, though he still swears more than the other characters and definitely more than me.

I’m kind of curious to see how long this one will take me to revise and edit after. Book 1 took a good two months and book 2 just over one. If book 3 takes less than that, I’m calling shenanigans…

I Don’t Know Why I Bother Anymore

With setting myself goals and targets, that is.

My plan was perfect: Write a fantasy novella (which I’ve taken to calling A Fool’s Errand or A Dagger Named Dael) while planning Unveiled.

Except every time I sat down to write the fantasy, I started to feel guilty because I wasn’t writing Unveiled.About 2k words in, I stalled myself almost completely. I know where the fantasy is going and I know what I want to happen, but alas I can’t write it. So, I gave in and switched to Unveiled, writing scenes as I developed the story further. Only that didn’t work either, because I wanted to write the other. Stalled around the same time.

I’ve staggered along between those two all month now. Not making much progress but not giving up either. Yesterday, I finally found a compromise both me and my muse could agree on: One day a week is for Dael the rest for Unveiled. That got me almost 2k, which for me is a pretty good day. So, crisis averted.

On the Baldur’s Gate front: I kinda wrecked that, too. I fiddled with some files and accidently deleted my megamod install when my mouse froze and unfroze at the worst moment. But I’m too set on doing a full playthrough, this time, to give up.So, I did a new Mega Mod install with a slightly different setup and almost all the available NPCs. Call me crazy, but I mean for this one to last a good long time. Took a whopping 11 hours to do, but is surprisingly less laggy than the previous one, go figure.

I’m currently kind of in love with Vynd. He’s sarcastic and wtty and doesn’t go on about how tormented he is. Nothing against Drizzt, but this is what a drow is supposed to be like, in my opinion, and I can’t be the only who thought Kimmuriel deserved more ‘screentime’.

 

Six Naked Casters in an Asylum

After two days of trying to figure out why BiG Setup wasn’t working and then finally remembering that I needed to run as admin, I was kind of annoyed and didn’t bother to check the modlist on the final try.As such, I manged to end up in Spellhold with no equipment, a druid, a cleric, two sorcerer’s, a mage, and a fighter/mage. Fun times! Especially considering how much my setup depended on immunities and resistancies granted by said equipment.

I started this run mostly to try out that Xan NPC mod and figured I’d give Kelsey a spin, too. Never intended it to be this caster heavy. I used Shadowkeeper to change Viconia to a cleric/thief just so I could avoid taking another mage. Alas none of the meatshields could out-tank my PC. So they all left the party soon after joining. And I just can’t say no to Edwin. Arrogant, evil mage? Gimme!

Thing is, despite the complete lack of a “proper” tank, they’re doing pretty well. Edwin’s the only one who can’t get his AC below zero. He’s got dips should I come across a sling.

I kind of think that this is one of the better party setups for naked Spellhold. Lots of resting, but I can’t see a fighter type, dependent on weapons and armor, have this easy a time.

I did die once, though, when my PC got wedged between the party and a hungry umberhulk and stoneskin ran out.