S.M. Pace's Blog, page 12

Do You Have A Goal?

Okay, so late posting this, but I literally just joined Misha Gericke’s Five Year Project Bloghop.  I could have skipped this month, and posted on March 25th, but my personal goal this year is to stay motivated.  In light of that, I’m putting nothing off.

My official 5 year plan is to be making a stable income through my writing, by January of 2021.

My current, foreseeable, big goal is to earn $2500 a month by December 1st, 2016.

My goals for this month.

Set up my Patreon Page
Complete the first draft for Book 3 of my Threads of Magic series
Earn $250 this month through fiction sales

Wish me luck, and good luck to all of you in your goals this month.

Cheers

Share your monthly/yearly goals in the comments.  And check out the rules to join The Five Year Project Bloghop here.  

 

Conlang Nerd – A Lesson in Werewolf Proto-language

found on stocksnap.io, picture taken by Jeffery Betts

Today’s word of the day, because I seem to be writing about them a lot lately, is rabbit.

In Skaod, a language spoken by the Yurha werewolves, the word for rabbit is “tovi.”  Much to my main character Toby’s annoyance, Skaod also doesn’t make much use of the phoneme “b” so he rather accidentally ended up with the name rabbit after being adopted by the werewolves.  Not the best name to have among a rather hard living, hunting, people, but Toby has done fine with it.

And because I love language building, we’ll take a little trip back to Wevek, one of the languages that Skaod sprang from.

In Wevek, the word for rabbit was kos (tovi came as a loaner from another language). To say what, to us, is the rather simple sentence, “the rabbit hopped behind the bush,” is a bit trickier in Wevek.

Here are the words you need:

the rabbit – kos   arkoshi

hopped – sot   skogchra

behind – ki

the bush – put latpuyi

Now, I’ll tell you that Wevek is usually an OVS language.  So, you might put together something like:

Ki put sot kos

That sentence would be akin to a toddler’s barely intelligible babbling Wevek.  All my fellow language nerds (I know you’re out there somewhere) know what’s coming.

To begin with, each of those words is merely the vanilla form of the word.  Capable of being used, on it’s own, as part of a sentence.  However, Wevek is a very agglutinating language.  Vanilla words tend to have a lot of stuff added to them to convey a variety of meanings and purposes.

So, here’s a more accurate list of the words you will need:

the rabbit –  arkoshi   (a – indicates this word is the subject; r – indicates the gender class of furred animals; kos – the root word for rabbit, the s gets dropped; sh – indicates the rabbit is moving and completed an action; i –  indicates this rabbit has been mentioned before, aka “the”

hopped – skogchra  (sk- indicates third person animal; og – all that’s left of the verb, where did that g come from, who knows; ch -indicates the speaker saw this happen; ra – indicates immediate past tense

behind – ka (adjusted to indicate that the rabbit placed itself behind the bush, as oppose to be put there, or simply found there)

the bush – latpuyi (la – indicates object of a preposition; t – indicates gender class of plant life; pu – the root word bush; y – indicates something is happening around the bush; i – indicates this bush has been mentioned before.

 

found on gratisography

Those of you who aren’t con-lang nerds are gaping at the screen, and wondering if I have any sort of social life.  Yes, creating this sort of thing is really what gets me pumped in my spare time.

The root of this sentence is the word rkos, rabbit. Every other word must be attached to it, and cannot exist alone.  The forms in which these words can exist alone are quite different.  Wevek makes a habit of making what in English would be entire sentences, into single words.  There are real world languages that do this, including many Native American ones.

 

So, the real sentence/word:

latpuyikaskogchrarkoshi

Wevek is long extinct, or more accurately turned into many other languages, as languages often do.  Skaod is much less polysynthetic, owing to its other parent language being more isolating.

There’s my geek moment for today.  Sound off in the comments, and tell me what makes you geek out, whether it be writing, music, television or whatever.

Cheers

IWSG – Cold WIP Feet

First Wednesday of the month again, and time to air out those insecurities.  Click here or on the image above to sign up with the Insecure Writers Support Group

My most recent insecurity has to do with my current WIP.  I only just pulled this story out of mothballs this week, and hadn’t looked at it in over a year.

I remember I had really grand ideas about how it was going to turn out.  Images of characters (heroes and villains alike) doing majestic things, incredible feats of magic.  Webs of political intrigue, the violence and pointlessness of war.  Chaos created by an entire faction betraying their nation, and essentially declaring war on everyone.

But as I sit down to right, everything comes out feeling impotent.  Forced.  Dull.  Ugh!

Some of the awesome scenes that I envisioned just don’t make sense.  Other scenes that still technically work, are boring.  The action is not carrying through the words.  The dialogue is flat and uninteresting.  Some characters that I had big plans for, don’t really seem to do much of anything.

I feel like I’m spinning my wheels.  Part of me just wants to blow through, get the rough draft done, and fix everything in revision.  Revision is by far my favorite part of writing.  As long as I can get the bones in place, I can always make the meat look good later.

But I’m afraid if I don’t at least enjoy what I create in this draft, it will be like working with weak, brittle bones.  Part of me knows that I’m just afraid.  I’ve written two books in this world, and maybe I’m too close to these characters now.  Too nervous about how the story will inevitably twist and mutilate them.  And, on a more meta note, worried that compared to the previous two, this novel will suck, proving there’s simply no story left to tell in this world.  Proving that I’m no good.

Let me know how you deal with stories that just aren’t coming out how you wanted. 

 

WIP – Update

Here’s that time where I just know I’m talking to myself.  So, self, here’s how things went today.

400 word short story about a monster under the bed.  Could be interesting to play around with later.

Back in the thick of Toby book 3.  I completed 12 scene sentences.  I’ll actually start writing tomorrow, and we’ll see how things go from there.

Cheers, and I’ll see you tomorrow for IWSG.

IWSG – High Frequency Words and the Writers that Use Them

Sigh, will I ever be able to post two consecutive IWSG posts in a row.  Who knows, but I’ve done enough “I wish I could commit to blogging/writing” posts, so this one is different.  This time, I want to talk about high-frequency words.

This is my biggest writing hang-up.  I always have to go back through my final drafts, with my list of repeat words, and remove them.  Sometimes it’s a no-brainer, but more often I’m pulling my hair out deciding whether that ninth occurrence of sigh can stay put, because it actually works, but so does the sigh that I had just decided to leave alone three paragraph’s ago.  It’s tedious, and frustrating, and the only part of writing that I dislike.  How many times are my characters allowed to sigh?  As you can see from the beginning of this post, I do it all the time.

If my characters aren’t sighing or nodding, then they are feeling too much, hearing too much, and sometimes looking too much.  My go to in drafting is to filter details through my characters, along the lines of “he felt _____” or “she heard ______.”  Was and had also pop up quite a bit.  Honestly, my list of high frequency words is pretty long.

I do stop and wonder sometimes, what is too much.  As I’m gnashing my teeth over that ninth “sigh” I glance at the found words panel and see that the story now only has four sighs.  Is that okay.  How many sighs are too many?  How often can my characters get away with nodding?  Or hearing.  Or looking?  How many occurrences of to be are too many?  How much do I need twist my writing to a new turn of phrase, just to eliminate one high frequency word?

There’s probably no answer to that question.  Or, I guess the answer is personal preference.  My opinion, for what it’s worth, is if you like how that particular use of sigh in your story, keep it.  Don’t stress over how many other sighs are floating around, or whatever your high frequency words happen to be.  Speaking of which, feel free to sound off in the comments about your own high frequency words.

Cheers, and hopefully, I’ll be back soon.

WeWriWa – 8 lines from “Mist Mad”

This 8-10 sentence blog hop is hosted by The Weekend Writing Warriors. Click the link if you’d like to join.

This is from “Mist Mad” a short story set in the world of the Everwood.  A single landmass the size of Asia sits in the center of a vast ocean.  At it’s center, covering several hundred thousand square miles, is a temperate rain forest, trees as tall as sky scrappers, budding up to a central mountain range stretching fifteen miles high.

Miles from the shoreline, surrounding the land on all sides, is the Mist, a wall of gray fog.  No man or woman to enter has ever escaped with their sanity.  That is, if they manage to escape.

 

The body flopped over.  I stifled a scream, and leapt backward.  My foot slipped, and sent me sprawling, smacking my backside on the wet rocks.  I found myself staring into gray eyes.  Eyes that stared back.   

Mist Madness; the fate of a sailor that strayed too close to the White Mist and breathed the poisoned fog in.  I imagined the panic of the other sailors.  A person struck with Mist Madness would do all they could to turn other sailors, sabotage the ship and sail it straight into the fog. 

The body, I could not tell if it was man or woman, twitched.  The mouth opened, and let out a strangled sound. 

Thanks for reading.  Cheers!

Word Count – January 27, 2016

Hello all, long time no post.

Another site revamp, another week in this writing game that I am still learning how to juggle with the rest of my life.  Today is also my son’s 1st birthday! And I don’t have to go to work! Hurray!

Today’s work count, so far: 400

Not bad considering.  I’m also working on Chalice.  It embarrasses me to realize that I announced that story’s publication several months ago, then later realized it was nowhere near ready.  Soon enough, though.  I’m at least learning from my many mistakes in this self-publishing adventure.  And Chalice is a much better story now than it was six months ago.

Good luck in all your endeavors today.  Cheers.

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!

Short Story Blitz Update #4

We’re smack in the middle of NanoWriMo, and here I stand as a nano rebel, working on my entirely unconnected series of short stories.  Here’s what’s been happening with that.

This month

Stories Written:

Stories Revised:

Stories Submitted:

School Year Totals

Stories Written

Stories Revised:

Stories Submitted:

 

Story Snippets

Tags:  




Del.icio.us





Facebook



TweetThis


Digg



StumbleUpon




Comments:  0 (Zero), Be the first to leave a reply!You might be interested in this:  
 IWSG one year anniversary!  Write With Me - June 25  Cover Reveal & Release Date- The Mother's Chalice  IWSG - Time and Writing  I'm Celebrating My WingsCopyright ©  [Short Story Blitz Update #4], All Right Reserved. 2015.

Short Story Blitz Update #3

Here’s what’s happened this month:

This month

Stories Written:

Stories Revised:

Stories Submitted:

School Year Totals

Stories Written

Stories Revised:

Stories Submitted:

 

Story Snippets

Tags:  




Del.icio.us





Facebook



TweetThis


Digg



StumbleUpon




Comments:  0 (Zero), Be the first to leave a reply!You might be interested in this:  
 I'm Celebrating My Wings  How Fanfic Started It All  Readers Meet Writers  I'm Back and Why I Don't Write Horror  Indie Life - The Dos of Self-publishingCopyright ©  [Short Story Blitz Update #3], All Right Reserved. 2015.