Imagine Trumpet Sounds...

Hey...hey... HEY! GUESS WHAT I DID! :) Go on, guess! :D Did you guess? XD

I FINISHED WRITING THE SKELETON OF MY CHAPTER!!!!!!

Yup, it's done... FINALLY! Only took me *looks at watch* EIGHT MONTHS... *sigh*

How could a chapter I've been excited about taken so long to work on!? Why is it that this is the second time I've written this about one of my chapters? I have one more chapter that I'm super excited to work on - it's one of the main reasons I made my story in to a novella. It's about three chapters away right now. I sure hope I don't get stuck on that one too... *sigh*

Man, I really need emotes.... perhaps I'll work on that next.... Anyway....

In all honesty, I didn't expect to finish this portion of the writing process yet. I've been slacking hard-core with the "write once a week" portion of my New Year Resolutions. I've been brainstorming a lot with ChibiSunnie, but nothing was actually put on paper. Every time I attempted to work I was either interrupted, or I'd write one sentence, get weary, and just stop. To go even further, I was CERTAIN this was going to be "plot bunny post" week because I couldn't imagine doing anything worth blogging about. I didn't do my last update until Tuesday, on Wednesday I wrote out the "Plot Bunny Post" to keep on stand-by for whenever I need it as filler, Thursday was one of those "interrupted or vegged" days, and Friday was "invasion of hubby's best friend" day. Thankfully, I was feeling crap-tastic on Saturday and spent about three or four hours in bed. In between the half-hour naps I worked on my story skeleton. In fact, towards the end of my self-inflicted bed rest - when the meds finally started kicking in and I stopped feeling nauseous - I went in to a total writing frenzy! Whoot!

I almost did an Early-Update day by blogging yesterday, but the "friend invasion" on Friday turned in to a sleep-over and he ended up hanging at our house for nearly 36hrs.... so instead of blogging I actually socialized... yay!

Anyway, back to the story itself. As mentioned in previous posts, this chapter has become a beast. So much so that I've decided I'm making a companion story to What is Truly Meant to Be: this chapter as a chaptered story in and of itself. I'll be introducing original characters and an original setting - Arnold's home away from Hillwood. I want to show more of each, but this upcoming chapter is the only time we're outside of Hillwood. Also, I had some fun subplots created, but there is just no space within my chapter. This upcoming chapter alone will be epicly long. Quite possibly twice the size of my previously longest chapter "Lady in Red" - the last chapter I was dying to work on and yet kept forever to write... Anyway, I hope this gargantuan chapter will make up for the forever-long hiatus.

I'm also going to breeze through a lot of stuff in the chapter. Mainly because all the previous - and following - chapters take place over the course of one week at most. Aside from "Nobody Wants to be Lonely", all the other chapters take place over the course of just a few hours. This upcoming chapter however takes place over the course of nearly fifty days. The events of nearly two months are going to be scrunched down to one mere chapter. Man, if I hadn't put the "parent song" restriction on myself I would have separated this thing in to two or three chapters.... WHAT HAVE I DONE TO MYSELF!?

Here's a bit of a taste by what I mean when I say "gargantuan chapter". I have a notebook where I write the skeleton of the chapter in. The first chapter has a skeleton of two-and-a-half pages. The second chapter has a skeleton of five-and-a-half pages. The third chapter - "Lady in Red" - ended up going completely away from my original skeleton, so it is a whole bunch of notes written in the margins. Keep in mind, THAT is my longest chapter so far. The fourth chapter takes up three-and-a-third pages. Fifth chapter takes up five pages of the notebook. The sixth chapter - which happens to be the shortest - only takes up one-and-two-thirds pages.

Then you have the seventh chapter. My beast that wants its own story. This thing takes up TEN-FRIGGEN-PAGES!!! Boy is this going to be fun to write! :P

Anyway, my point is that I'm FINALLY to the point where I'll be actually WRITING the chapter! Whoot! Once that's done I'll go in to more detail about each individual event when I set up the chapter as its own companion story. If enough people like that, I might stay in my little side-setting and write more companion stories of Arnold's life outside of Hillwood. We know what Helga's been doing over the past four years, but what has Arnold been up to? Hmmm.... plotbunnies.....

In the meantime, I'm still chugging along as Darkangel1326's beta. And we're now in a who-can-embarrass-the-other-more-with-complements war. ^_^ So much bonding! So much "I love you...no I love you more" banter! So much "OMG, you're so awesome.... OMG stop making me blush" banter! So much "Stop telling me how great I am, you're gonna make me cry" battles! I wuv her stuff and tell her she's a great writer. She blushes about how much I gloat about her and retaliates with "YOU BEST BETA EVERS!" It's such a fun relationship! teehee ^_^

So, to you my dear Darkangel.... BIG KISSES AND LOTS OF HUGGLES!

She's just as plagued with plot bunnies as I am so I'm thinking this relationship is gonna last a while.... yay.

Well, off to write and/or work on emoticons for my blog! I'll catch you next week for SUPER BOWL SUNDAY! Whoot, whoot!

Cleaning and Brainstorming and Championship Games; Oh My!

So, yet again I failed at my Sunday is Update Day thing. The worst part is that I've actually been waiting to blog this week. I have so much to talk about I almost posted on like Wednesday or Thursday, but I was afraid that I wouldn't have anything else to write on Sunday.

And then Sunday came and nearly went without a post. Just so that my three readers wouldn't get confused I ended up posting a "placeholder" just to prove that I really WILL update every week - even if it's with filler....

Here's my list of excuses:

1 - A friend has become my Jedi Master in the world of "Super Couponing" and my weekends have been pretty full with THAT training.... It kept me SIX HOURS to clip all the coupons she gave me last week. And Sunday it kept me all day to organize the five-inch-thick stack of coupons. Why did it keep me a week to organize the coupons I clipped? Well, reason 2....

2 - It's cold outside and my husband's LARP group still wanted to have our monthly session. And so, knowing I had a week to clean, I agreed that we should have the game at our house so we didn't have to do the session in the local park. Now, had I but kept up with my New Year resolution to keep with a cleaning regimen there wouldn't have been a problem. However, I was distracted with Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword lately. So it kept me all week to clean - but everything was neat, reorganized, and I unpacked a few more boxes in time for the Friday game. So.... yay!

3 - My favorite American football team the New York Giants were playing in the championship game against the San Francisco 49ers. This nailbiting game in the rain was a true Battle of the Defenses with both teams going in to overtime with 17points each. Nearly ten out of the fifteen minutes of overtime passed before the Giants finally called their kicker in for the game-winning score; sending the Giants to the Super Bowl against the New England Patriots. When I had given up on the stack of coupons I was going to finally blog, but I just couldn't keep my eyes off of the TV long enough to write something worth-while.

4 - I then had every intention to blog after the game - but I was too tired. And I was going to make up for it by finally blogging yesterday. However, I spent the first half of the day running around STILL trying to find a job. And then the second half of the day was spent sleeping on the couch with a bad reaction to the soup I bought from Subway. I should have just gone for the sandwich.....

Well, here it is, Tuesday, and two days late on the update. But update I still shall!

For a while I wanted to jot all my Plot Bunnies down in one spot, maybe even have my readers comment on which story they'd like me to try out first. However, I keep having legit things to blog about and so the Plot Bunny post got pushed to the back burner... as it is again this week.

Originally, I was thinking I'd actually blog about the Plot Bunnies; since I was still in my rut with the chapter that has been plaguing me for about eight months. Then my script writing buddy ChibiSunnie came to my rescue! The girl that said she'd Beta for me about two months ago never got back to me. I think I overwhelmed her. In fact, ChibiSunnie, who knows first hand how extremely anal about details I can be, still chuckled about being overwhelmed by everything I had bouncing around in my head. Thankfully, due to our co-op during Script Frenzy last April, Chibi knew how to handle the three-pages of info I gave her and really helped me work through a lot of my issues.

My big thing was that I shot myself in the foot. Since the twist at the end of my one-shot-turned-chapter-one was a surprise even to me, I didn't have the entire backstory thought up. Then I had an issue with the chapters surrounding Helga's Sweet Sixteen in which Helga and Arnold got back together when I didn't want them to. And so Arnold not knowing the Chapter 1 twist seemed odd. For the life of me I couldn't figure out how Arnold didn't know. Thankfully, talking things through with Chibi super-duper helped.

BIG HUGS TO YOU CHIBISUNNIE!!!! :D Thanks so much for the help!

So now I can get my butt back in gear, finish my chapter skeleton, and FINALLY get to writing.

Since Chibi worked hard to draw me a beautiful Christmas Postcard as a gift and I didn't even think of making anything for her I told her I'd write whatever fluff she wanted for Valentine's day. So that means I have until February 14th to not only write this chapter that's been haunting me since LAST February, but also write Chibi her fluff. Time to get crackin'!

A little hint on what Chibi would like for Valentine's Day this year - Arnold and Helga weren't the only ones who dreamed what married life would be like after Rhonda's origami fortune teller matched them up....

Yet ANOTHER thing involving ChibiSunnie is that she's currently sketching out a scene from each chapter of my story!!! She already has a pencil sketch of the break-up scene from the first chapter and the Helga-in-the-junkyard scene from the second chapter. I'm so excited to see them finished up, but she's back in school so it might be a while before she inks and colors them. Once she's done I'll have to post them here!!!! I'm so excited that I'm going to get illustrations for my story! I'm still in shock that my writing was able to inspire someone enough for them to want to draw my "powerful scenes" - as Chibi puts it.

My last bit of news is the excitement I'm getting when I realize that people are not only reading this blog - 31 views when I last updated - but people are ALSO finding and reading my stories on FanFiction! January 8th is the only day I haven't had at least ONE person read my stories - which is amazing for me since there have been months where there were more days where no one found my work than days when at least one person did. Having a continued readership when I haven't posted anything new since early November is just shocking to me!

Not only have I had a steady flow of people reading my stuff, but every story I've posted has received one or two new faves this month! The fact that people are still finding my work just amazes me to no end! Perhaps it's because Delaroux and DarkAngel1326 both post me as their beta in their Author's Notes.... It would make sense if that were the case....

OOOh, speaking of DarkAngel1326, I have been beta-reading for her new prose works. I'm so proud of this girl! She's so open to criticism and seems to really appreciate the help. The only thing else I have to say about her is if I were to suck at poetry as much as she claims she sucks at prose then I'd have a poetry book self-published somewhere....

OK, so Lunar New Year was yesterday, so maybe Reboot Resolutions Take 3 will be effective! We'll see next week, depending on whether or not I actually post on time. Perhaps finally a Plot Bunny post, or perhaps it will be pushed back one more week because I'll actually have more story-related news! I sure hope the latter is true.

*This would be where I have a cool signature post-closing line if I were creative enough to think of one.... can I use "See ya, Cowboy" until I think of something????*

New Years Resolutions: Take Two

Boy am I doing great with resolutions already! I completely missed last week! I did have every intention of posting last Sunday so that Sundays would be "update day." I completely zoned out though, and when I attempted to make up for it on Monday I just got focused on how insane my last post looked with all those pictures. Yet, at the same time, I miss not being as expressive here as I can be on DeviantArt. I was thinking of swiping the emoticons from DA, but they specifically state on their website that the emotes are just for DA.... and I don't want to go around and have copyright issues with anyone.

So then I thought about making my own emoticons. That is damn hard to do if you don't want to just make simple smiley faces! And I was attempting to make Hey Arnold! emotes since the one forum needed them anyway. I am decidedly NOT good at making emotes! I spent pretty much all of Monday attempting and the end result was NOT good. Perhaps I'll try again soon with just regular smileys....

The rest of the week was consumed by Legend of Zelda. My husband and I received the latest game "Skyward Sword" for Christmas. I'm dying to play it, but my husband joked that I can't start "Skyward Sword" until I finally beat "Twilight Princess." And for some reason I agreed to this... All I needed to do was go through the last dungeon and beat the game boss. I mean, that kept me like an hour to do! The issue, however, is that I never "completed" a Legend of Zelda game before. Meaning, I've never had all the side quests completed and I never bothered with the optional dungeons. I was determined to "complete" the game "Twilight Princess" however! I wasn't going to enter that last dungeon until I had the optional dungeon done, collected all the gold bugs, found all the heart pieces, and killed all the poes to collect their souls.

And that's where it got annoying. With the wonderful cheating world of walkthroughs I was able to easily find the last of the heart pieces and the golden bugs that I needed. However, since I played the game on and off for nearly SIX YEARS it was hard to remember which Poes I did and did not find. I went through the walkthrough checklist and I THOUGHT I got them all, but still remained about eleven short! After two days of tagteaming video walkthroughs by ZeldaDungeon.net and double checking the same spot in the game - which occasionally meant I had to go back through the dungeons I already completed - I FINALLY found the last damn Poe!

By Thursday - after working almost non-stop since Tuesday - I FINALLY beat the damn game! I was now satisfied enough that I could now get started on "Skyward Sword!" YAY!

Friday came, and when I was done with my cleaning spree to make up for the neglect my house got this week, my husband was ready to go to a second week of "Friday Night Magic" at the local comic book/gaming store. Basically, every Friday the store will host a gaming night for customers to sit and play the card game Magic: The Gathering.

My husband LOVES this game and hasn't been able to play much since we got married - finances being what they are. So when his one friend offered to lend him cards to play with the man was like a kid on Christmas morning.

I agreed to go with him to a tournament last week. BIG MISTAKE! I ended up stuck at the shop for SIX FRIGGEN HOURS. I enjoy my husband's friends, and I'm in to a lot of gamer stuff, but I just don't get in to the card games like Magic or Yu-Gi-Oh or Pokemon, etc. So while he was in the forever-long tournament, I was off in the corner with my netbook. Sadly, there was no wifi for me to use, and so I couldn't blog while I was there. I attempted to work on my story some more - you know, work on that "write at least once a week" resolution - but it was so noisy I couldn't really concentrate. I ended up playing computer games like "Diner Dash", "Plants Vs. Zombies", or "Skip-Bo".

For this past Friday's tournament I decided to download a whole bunch of fanfiction on to my netbook so I could casually read while I was at the store. I'm not sure why I even bother - the chairs aren't comfortable, I was cramped, I was hungry, and it was too noisy to do much of anything besides computer games again. My only reasoning for going with my husband is that it is the only time I really socialize - unless you count when his friends randomly invade our house. At least this time I was only at the store for about four hours. At that point I got so hungry I gave up and went home. My husband's friends drove him home another three hours later!

Upside: Two weeks in a row my husband won the tournaments and so the store owner joked about making him a crown as "King of Magic"....

Anyway, this week was shot when it came to blogging AND writing. Boy is 2012 starting off terrifically.

Well, I'm on now. Posting on "Sunday Blog Update Day". So it's a start at my second swing to stick to my New Year resolutions. If I can just get past my blockade as to how Arnold didn't know Helga was dating anyone I just might be able to finish up this chapter that's been plaguing me.

In the meantime, I'll be doing more beta-reading for DarkAngel1326 as she ventures away from poetry and in to the land of fanfiction prose. I'll also try to ween myself off of the addiction to all the role playing Delaroux does on facebook in her discussion board....I'd link the board, but it got pretty hard core pretty quickly - crime syndicates, murder, prostitution, demons, sex.... it's racey....

I'm hoping for a positive post next week... we'll see.

2012 New Years Resolutions and Starting Fresh

Well, a Happy New Year to you and yours!

Image by SilentReaper

I am hopeful that 2012 - with it's obvious lack of wedding planning and packing/moving - is a LOT less crazy than 2011. Don't get me wrong, all in all, 2011 was a great year and 27 seems a great age. However, all the chaos kind of messed with my writing abilities.

So the new year means starting fresh! And I had a nice start! This morning I woke up and was inspired to work on my fanfiction!

Yeah, you heard me! I worked on my writing! Was so inspired I actually wore my ScriptFrenzy shirt! Granted, I didn't actually work on the ACTUAL story, but I still worked on the skeleton and fleshed more of it out.

OK, to sound a little less like a slacker, let me start off this year by letting everyone know how I work when it comes to at least this story.

1. I decide where I want to go with the next chapter, and then I find the song I'll use as the "parent inspiration". Basically, in drawing sense, I get a reference for the chapter.

2. Next, I use the lyrics to get a broad view of the plotline that I want for that chapter. I try to interpret the lyrics in prose form and usually write out next to each lyric what it could mean in the story's prose.

3. I then take these notes and start threading them together to get the actual timeframe of the story. This lyric will refer to THIS part of the chapter, and this lyric will refer to THAT part of the chapter, etc.

4. Once I know where I want to go with the chapter - and make sure that at least most of the lyrics are represented - I start up on the true skeleton of the chapter. I start fleshing out the details. This is when I whip out the handy-dandy notebook...

....not THAT notebook....

....and I write out the broad overview of the chapter.

5. Once my skeleton is complete and fleshed out I finally take out my netbook/sit at my desktop and actually START WRITING!

Yeah, yeah, I know....

Anyway, this is when I take my narration in my notebook and I actually plug in dialogue and go in to the details of everything. I then polish it up and the next thing I know... it's done!

Anyway..... since it IS a new year, I decided to start fresh. My main resolution is to write more. To work on my stories - or really ANYTHING - at least once a week. To do weekly updates here. To just.... WRITE! I am so determined to actually finish this story before 2013. I started it August 2010 and so I think that would be more than enough time! Well, I worked a little on my story this morning, and I'm writing this update, so far the resolution is in tact!

The other fresh start is the new look I have for this blog. I've read more blogs lately and they look pretty swank. A lot of them bring in interest with pictures - hence all the ones above. Also, I use a LOT of emoticons when I'm writing things on DeviantArt.com, and so it just seems blah when I can't use the emotes anywhere else. In fact, if it wasn't for the fact that DA specifically requests that people don't use the emoticons outside of DA, I would have them plaster those adorable emotes all OVER the place here!

I'm not sure if I like the pictures though. It takes a while to find them and they just take up a lot of space.

Well, I now know at least two people read this blog, and so my last bit to spruce up this place is to tweak who can leave comments. Now you don't need to be a member of Blogger.com in order to comment. So please, I'd love to know what you think of my posts. Are they helpful? Are they amusing to read? Is there anything I can do to make the read more enjoyable? Just leave a comment below!

Love you, guys, and HAPPY 2012!!!!