Farewell, Writing. I Knew Thee Half-Decently...

Define irony.

Having a much more relaxed work schedule and writing less than when the week was crazy-busy.

Yeah... not sure what happened there....

I had every other day off this week. Monday was spent crashing and finally just relaxing all day to try to get over my bad head cold. I still have it, but it's mostly just the sniffles at this point. So I guess having one day fully off - no work, no chores, and no writing - was justifiable.

Tuesday after work and Wednesday while I was off were used for two things.
1) Cleaning the house. Between writing and being sick nearly every dish was either in the sink or in queue for the sink...
2) Preparing for The Great American Smokeout this past Thursday. I wrote about the Smokeout in last year's NaNo recap.

Since my "Propaganda Cart" was a bust last year I decided to put less effort in - clearly my coworkers just love their tobacco too much - but I did still have to do SOMETHING. So I created a new Anti-Smoking promotional poster. This of course meant fighting with my printer for about 4hrs, Hubby having to pull me away from the thing before I went all Office Space on it, and hitting up the in-laws' place to finish the printing I needed. I hung the poster by customer service, pinned up anti-smoking info and advice on my Wellness Board in the break room, and put the number to a quit hotline on the table the smokers sit at outside. Although firmly taped down with packing tape, the info on the smokers' table apparently lasted no more than 5hrs before someone ripped it off, put it in the ash bucket, and added their cigarette butts to the pile...

So glad I took the time to print those up and have them laminated by the store so I could re-use them every year. Thanks, guys. Super big thumbs up!

Anyway, that and working was my Thursday. Friday was more cleaning and the start of one of our friends crashing for the weekend. Anyone following the X-Future story, this was Filipe's player. Anyway, this resulted in us marathoning board games and Nintendoland all weekend; the board games simply because we have so many awesome ones but never the opportunity to play any of them. I did mean for us to also play the terribad, Mario-Party-esque game "One Piece: Pirates' Carnival" since we are constantly telling the guy how awesomely bad the game is; plus he is a One Piece fan.

Downside: For the past month or so that we've had our WiiU - we turned in our normal Wii for the limited edition Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker WiiU - we couldn't play Gamecube games since it's only backwards compatible with Wii games. Although the Game Stop exclusive came with a free download of the HD version of The Wind Waker, that still left our Gamecube version of Twilight Princess unplayable... and I've really been wanting to play it again. LOOOOVE that game!

Plus side: I FINALLY got around to hooking up the N64 and Gamecube in the bedroom while doing all of that cleaning Friday, and so we actually could play the Gamecube game "Pirates' Carnival". This also means my upcoming free time might be taken up with Twilight Princess, Majora's Mask, and either the original N64 Ocarina of Time or the Gamecube Master Quest version.

Downside Again: Most of our Gamecube controllers are busted in some form... the A-button is stuck in the pressed position, the B-button is so super sensitive that just tapping the controller near it makes the system think the button was pressed, the joystick is stuck slightly left of center and so the system thinks the player is moving left unless the joystick is held slightly to the right to counter.... etc. This is because we only have one true Nintendo-brand Gamecube remote, and the rest are off-brand; mostly MadCatz. Because of these controller issues the game is virtually impossible to play. Looks like I know what's going on our Christmas wish list this year.... OH! And add in a third Wii Motion-Plus remote so we can have more players for Nintendoland....

One Last Downside: The TV in our bedroom was a hand-me-down that was originally purchased at a yard sale. We kept it because its screen is about twice the size of the TV we originally had: my dinky one from college. The issue is that none of the buttons on the TV actually work properly. It turns on fine, but that's about it. Whenever I tried to change the channel - so I could test out the game systems after hooking them up - I ended up bringing up the menu instead. When I tried to turn down the volume I turned it up. When I tried to turn off the TV I also turned the volume up. Next thing I know the volume is at 100 and the TV is on channel 46. Also, nothing nearly as major, but the screen is set too dark and I can't access anything to brighten it up due to the lack of properly functioning buttons. This means the very dark-color-schemed Twilight Princess is going to be increasingly difficult to play until I can adjust the TV brightness.

Anyway, I attempted to link a spare universal remote to the TV so we could at least use that in lue of the TV's buttons. After fussing and trying 300 different codes over the course of about three hours, the best I could get was being able to manually type in the channel I wanted - but not actually use the channel up or down buttons - and lowering the volume back down to a reasonable level. So.... new universal remote needs to go on that Christmas List too, I guess.

On Wednesday and Friday I did attempt to work on the chapter a little bit, I swear! I got another glorious 400 words under my belt. I'm still about 11,000 behind at this point, though.... I'd like to say that I'll work on it this upcoming week, but that seems highly unlikely as well. I work straight through to - and including - Thanksgiving this Thursday. Friday we're heading down to my mom's to celebrate the holiday with her, and Saturday we do the Thanksgiving get-together with my mom's family. Sunday we'll be spending one last day with Mom and Sis, and possibly my very pregnant matron-of-honor and bestie. It's also the day before Hubby's birthday, and so we might all be doing something for him then since they won't be able to celebrate on his actual b'day. We then drive home at around two-ish I'd wager.

Monday - as mentioned - is Hubby's birthday. Not just any old birthday. The man is turning the big 3-0. Unfortunately, we can't really afford a huge blow-out, but we are still having the house invaded. This of course means I need the place SPOTLESS by Thanksgiving. This way I don't have to worry about obsessively cleaning the evening we come home or the morning of his birthday before people show up. Resulting in me cleaning non-stop whenever I'm home this upcoming week. If I do get any writing in it will be while visiting my mom; unlikely, but possible.

Now I REALLY wish I had my netbook fully fixed. I could at least have it in the car with me as my mom drives to and from the family gathering on Saturday. If it's with the extended family in New Jersey I'll have about an hour or so each way to write. If it's being hosted by her brother who lives in Pennsylvania I'll have ten minutes tops.

December being a week away also means I'm about a week from CROCHET MADNESS MONTH! That's right, everyone's Christmas gifts will be home made yet again. Hooray for being poor, but also having a 35gallon tote filled with yarn... and the skill to turn said yarn in to Christmas gifts! Whoot!

Alas, this means that my slacking this week cost me probably my last real chance of posting something before Christmas, if not the end of the year. Sorry for that, folks.

I tried on my day off Monday, but the illness was still too strong, and I ended up sleeping most of the day away.

I tried Wednesday in between beating up the printer, gluing a poster together, and cleaning. Alas, after about 300 words I fell asleep again.

Friday was another attempt. I got maybe 100 words in before I realized I just couldn't concentrate. I was just way too excited about the fact my husband was picking up his pre-ordered copy of A Link Between Worlds. This game was like a puppy we had picked out of the litter, but we had to still wait a few weeks before he was old enough to take home. I was PATHETICALLY excited for this game; mostly because it would be the first Zelda game we could afford to purchase on the release day. I spent the day cleaning, hooking up systems so I could play the other Legend of Zelda games we owned, and listing to a 45min Legend of Zelda playlist on repeat.

DAY OF ZELDA! And the game looks AWESOME. Hubby owns the 3DS and the game, and so he gets first play-through. But if that 3DS is ever left unattended I'm totally starting up a file! Considering the crazy schedule I have for the remaining 5 weeks of the year I feel like Zelda's going to have to wait though.

So... January 2014 is going to ring in my ability to again:

• Write!
• Read the next book in the "Heroes of Olympus" series: "The Mark of Athena"
• Play Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

.....

Is it 2014 yet????

Passing The Buck Might Be A Great Plan

Blech. I can't stand being sick. I've had a nasty head cold all week long and I haven't even had a chance to nurse it properly because I've also worked a full 35hr work week. True, a measly 35hrs doesn't seem like much to those who have full-time jobs, multiple jobs, live outside the United States where a day's shift is about 16hrs long, or if you're a parent and therefore are ALWAYS on the job.

However, it's a long, tiring week for me when I just want to curl up in bed and sleep the week away.

Virtually no cleaning was done this week. I attempted three different times, and each resulted in one or two loads of dishes being done and the laundry washed, but nothing else. Pretty much the entire week consisted of me going to work first thing in the morning, coming home early afternoon, and then staying in bed the rest of the day.

Normally I don't mind weeks like this. Since I'm hiding away in my bedroom anyway, I would spend the time writing on my netbook. If I fell asleep, oh well, at least I did more work than I normally would. Otherwise, I just spent the last 8hrs writing!

Sadly, I still haven't found the money to purchase the last few things my father-in-law needs to finish fixing my netbook. So it's still out of commission. I have taken up stealing Hubby's laptop while he's at work, but the rest of the time he's usually on it.

Still, I do have those few precious hours where Hubby's working and I can thief his laptop. It's been a slow writing progress, but it IS progress. I've even added a new step in my writing process. If you're one of my personal Facebook friends you'd already know this, but I now request that everyone "poke me back in to my writing corner" if they catch me messing around online while Hubby's at work - and I therefore have his laptop to write on.

It might be cheating a little bit, but I discovered that I really have no drive to write lately, except for when I make myself accountable. And I also discovered that the best way to make myself feel accountable for writing is to pass the buck - so to speak - to my friends online. I now make THEM accountable for keeping me in check; kind of like a parent making sure I get my homework done.

I tried holding myself accountable simply by having a new chapter up every week, but my ability to write is so limited that I never seem to hit my deadlines. As the weeks slip by with no update my sense of accountability wanes. That's when I realized that maybe it's not the need to hit deadlines that kept me writing, but the knowledge that people KNEW I was writing and expecting me to do just that.

The daily challenges back in July 2012; maybe it wasn't the deadline of getting a new story done by midnight. Maybe it was actually the fact that people knew I was participating in the challenge and were expecting a new story to be posted daily. They knew for a fact that I was attempting to write every day, and they were anticipating that notification to let them know that I was done and the work was up. Same for the weekly challenges over on Writers’ Huddle back in August. People knew I was participating and were awaiting my weekly updates. Granted, the opportunity to win a prize didn't hurt.

The thing though, is that people didn't know the specifics of when I was writing for the Writers' Huddle challenge, so how was this not a case of the deadline alone being motivation to write? Well, because it had a forum connected to the challenge. I could see others posting their progress and I could comment about my own. They were expecting an update from me by that Sunday. If I missed my deadline - if I didn't write that week - they would certainly notice and have a place to discuss that.

Not to say that they would; we had a few people who - due to circumstances beyond their control - missed out on a few challenges. We didn't mock those people or talk down to them or question their devotion to writing. We were understanding and welcoming. We usually eased the person's sense of guilt over missing the challenge.

Regardless, the fact that there were people who were holding me accountable for this challenge forced me to stay on point.

I tried to tell myself that the same was true about my Hey Arnold! and X-Future stories. If I told people that I'd post weekly or monthly that they'd notice that I fell short, and they might not be as kind about it as my Writers' Huddle buddies. Yet, even with a few of you as known readers, the vast majority of my audience are nameless and faceless to me. I really have little knowledge that my stuff is being read aside from the slow tick on the "visitors" counter and the very rare comment.

So, even though I KNOW that you want new chapters and that you're waiting patiently for them; even though I know that you notice the days, weeks, and months fly by without an update; even though that SHOULD be enough to hold me accountable, it just doesn't for some reason.

Distancing, maybe?

But knowing that there are people who can ride me about not writing? That's motivation for me. So, I guess thank God for professional editors and publishers who could harass me in to keeping my deadlines if/when I become a professional author. Until then, I'll try to keep up with this "Hold my Facebook friends accountable" approach.

Eh, it seems to be working so far. I've had a few sticklers. I had an aunt who responded to a comment I made on my sister's wall; telling me to "get back to work" even though the comment was an hour or so before I posted that I was attempting to write. I also have The Bard sending me pokes and "get back to work" messages if he sees me activate in his IM contacts; problem there is that I actually wasn't online whenever he sent me those messages. The mouse must have been bumped or something, making him THINK I was messing around on Facebook.

Oh well, at least I know I can trust my friends and family to keep me in check.

Seems to be working well, too. I almost exclusively wrote while Hubby was at work this week. Because of this drive and the passed-on-accountability I'm doing fairly well with NaNo this year. Granted, that's partially because I'm not strictly counting the words going in to a 50,000 word novel. For this year's NaNo I'm just aiming for 50,000 words of creative writing.

This means I'm counting everything I type for this blog, for the X-Future story, as well as my X-Future roleplaying. I did miss a few days last week, however, and so I'm still about 7000 words behind where I should be. It's still better than last year when I was about 12000 words behind at this point.

I can't wait to see how much more efficient I can be once I do get my netbook back! Whoot!

As for you guys checking out my progress? Well, I don't have the chapter quite done yet, so I'll have to post the link to it next week. You can still keep an eye out, if I post during the week I'll try to remember to tweet about it, and/or post it on facebook.

In the meantime, here's the Snippet I promised you about Trish's run through the latest Brotherhood obstacle course. Devon decided to poke his head around and try it out himself, and so now I don't know if it will become significant enough to keep in his companion story that I'll eventually write. If so, this portion will be sort of footnoted since the story will be through Devon's perspective. Anyway, Devon wanted to really provoke Trish before his run, and so I tagged that at the end of her run; originally the story ended with her collapsing after finishing the course.

So, let me know what you think of the snippet and/or my new accountability tactic. That comment section under each post looks so empty and lonely.

Epiphanies and Obstacle Courses

To start, I'd like to say "Whoot!" to the fact that I'm over 12,000 hits. I pretty much never suspected such love for a dinky blog that is just a glorified diary of a whining writer. So thank you to all of my repeat readers. Thank you for enjoying my lame rants. Thank you for sticking with me when I disappear for weeks or months on end. Thank you for enduring my emo-ness on occasion. Thank you for showing me love.

Thank you also for following along while I whine incessantly about how "lame and pathetic" I am as I give out a seemingly never ceasing list of excuses as to why "I didn't write anything this week". I knew that I gave those pitiful "reasons" that were supposed to justifiable. I knew that I did so frequently. I didn't quite grasp HOW often I posted such updated until ChibiSunnie bluntly wrote to me:

Chibi: I’ve noticed a pattern of "I was going to write, but there was a great TV show on” or “I was going to write but Hubby's friends came over” or “I was going to write, but I got distracted by the forums” etc.

An astute observation of the content of not only my blog, but my Facebook statuses. I was slowly picking up on this pattern myself. This typically resulted in my verbal berating of myself about being lazy and unproductive; resulting in me whining to my husband that "I haven't written in x-days! I need to work!" However, I never picked up on the fact that I gave SUCH lame excuses and so frequently; enough to get called out on it.

I thanked Chibi for her honesty. Sometimes your repeating pitfalls like that need to be pointed out to you before you truly see how large of a problem they've become.

I keep saying that I want out of my current job, and yet I rarely do any form of active job searching to find a replacement. I keep going on and on about wanting to be a professional author, and yet I don't put any sort of effort or discipline in to my writing. With my mentally and physically draining job - combined with the work of maintaining the house - it's just easier for me to turn off my brain when I'm home. Veg in front of the TV while snuggled against my husband; pretending to be productive while STILL working on my niece's blanket - a repetitive task that does allow me to sort of shut down my brain. Play video games that only require minimal puzzle solving. Mess around on Facebook or Deviantart. All mindless tasks.

I don't want to put the effort in to thinking. I don't want to put in the effort to try to figure out what The Girls have been doing at the institute or what Trish was doing before catching up with the two-year time skip. I don't want to think about how to thread forum posts together so they make a coherent narrative. I don't want to think about the layout of Gyateara, Amara's life, or how to bring Connor back to the Heroes Guild so he and Natalie can finally get back to their quest to save Albion. I don't want to have to figure out what Arnold did in Hillwood as the love of his life is out with another man. I don't want to figure out the thoughts racing through Helga's head as she tries to wrap her mind around the idea that Arnold never stopped loving her.

It's hard work if it's not a blast of inspiration; the characters spilling out their thoughts through me. After all the other work I do I just don't want to have to put that much effort in to something that is generally a stress-relieving past time for me.

And there's the problem. I still think of writing as a hobby. As a stress-reliever. And it is. When I do have those great moments of inspiration in which I don't really need to think - I just let my fingers fly and the words spill out - I feel lighter, happier, productive, proud, determined, and an overall mild sense of euphoria. As I stated in my one post last week: I was cranky all of October and I also didn't write all of October. I'm sure if I had done any sort of writing it would have really helped to de-stress me and made October a bit better.

The trick is to remind myself that I also want this fantastic stress-reliever to be a CAREER. If I wait for inspiration - for when it's easy to write - I'll never get anywhere. Weeks or months will go by without any progress, I'll slowly chip away at about five different projects - wherever the muse takes me, chapters will take up to a YEAR to finish, actual stories will inch towards a decade before completion, and I'll never get any sort of income for my efforts. On top of all that, I'll get closer and closer to middle age grumbling more and more about how I've wanted to be an author since I was nine and yet I STILL hadn't done anything to actually make that happen.

I hoped the concept of NaNo would kick me back in to gear, but it's not just the mindset, it's the atmosphere. When I lived with my mom I had seclusion. I could lock myself in my room, only poking my head out to eat and use the bathroom, and neither my mom nor my sister would really say anything about it. If I isolate myself in my bedroom now for more than an hour my husband tends to whimper about how he misses being able to hang out with me.

We're still in that sickingly attached stage of marriage where we want to spend all of our free time together. Probably a result of being in a long-distance relationship for eight years. We both know that we have to get over it; I have my stuff to do and he has his and we can't spend every waking moment attached to each others' hip. Yes, when I explain to him that I have to hide away in either our library or bedroom so I have a quiet place to work, and I explain how much I need to do said work, he pouts and then lets me be. The issue then is me not caving in to that puppy-dog look and wanting to snuggle against him while binging on the next show we have in our Netflix instant queue.

So we both have some growing to do. We need to re-learn to be independent and accept just being in the same house. He needs to improve his understanding of how important writing is to me so he can better build an atmosphere that I can nurture my writing in; instead of struggling to fit it in to my life. I need to stop letting the atmosphere I'm in dominate me. I need to find ways to make it work until the lifestyle changes. I need to do more things like locking myself away in the bedroom, writing when Hubby's not in the house, and blasting music through headphones so I can block out my surroundings while I write at my desktop. I have to be strong and reset our home's culture myself; Hubby will follow once I get it started.

I need to make an active effort to bring reading and writing in to my life. Well, reading without it TAKING OVER my life. Twice now I've spent the six hours Hubby's been at work just sitting in bed reading. I don't even realize how much time just disappeared until I have to stop to pee and notice that I have to go fetch him in about a half-hour. On the plus side, I'm half way through the "Heroes of Olympus" series and the conclusion of "Son of Neptune" was enough of a stopping point that I can hopefully wait a week or two before picking up "Mark of Athena"; especially since I KNOW it ends in a massive cliffhanger, resulting in me instantly tearing through the latest book. If I do that I'm going to loose a week or two of my life, easily.

Anyway, enough about epiphanies. They mean nothing until they are acted upon. So I started to act upon it.

For the Brotherhood section of the forum I wanted to upgrade the obstacle course that the mutants use to train on; as well as test out possible new recruits. Warbash busted up most of the obstacles and so it needed to be rebuilt anyway. The problem is that I'm HORRIBLE at coming up with a challenging obstacle course. Between June and now I had about four pages of obstacle ideas. I wrote out what I wanted to train the Brotherhood members in and rough ideas on how to do so. They were all jumbled concepts that didn't really work. Then Ronoxym posted as Devon this past week. He was itching to have the Brotherhood's two-year time jump to finally get that part of the forum up-to-date with the main X-Men portion.

Hubby was all set to do the time skip, but one of the ideas I had scribbled down for the obstacle course was Quicksilver poking fun at Trish over getting shot during the Purifier raid. I loved the playfulness of it and didn't want to lose my opportunity to post it. I needed the new obstacle course though, and I needed it before the time skip.

So I struggled and bounced countless ideas off of Hubby. I even started doodling out the layout of the course. When I say "doodle" I of course meant that I measured our apartment to get a better idea of  how large certain obstacles should be and then drew them to scale on a sheet of paper. When I set my mind to something I go all out to make sure it's done right. This usually results in something that SHOULD only take about a half-hour to write instead taking a WEEK to plan out and finish. This is probably another reason why I'm so hesitant to write anything.

I finally completed building the obstacle course on Thursday, finished typing out the three-page description of it on Friday, and wrote out Trish's run through it during my Sunday Insomnia while Hubby was on his overnight shift. It's lengthy and so I still have to figure out how to best post it on to the forum so it's not just this large wall of text to sift through. For the obstacle course description I broke it down in to the individual rooms the Brotherhood member has to run through, and hid them behind drop-boxes. That way you can easily jump to the room description you need without having to sort though endless text. I also used Photoshop to draw out the layout and hid the map of the course inside a drop-box as well. Not sure if this is the best way to go for Trish's run though. Maybe....

Anyway, this resulted in me going from virtually no writing to writing about 7600 words over the weekend. True, spending all of my time working on this project resulted in me not taking the time to work on the next X-Future chapter, but at least we can FINALLY move forward on the forum after it being dead since August.

Since Trish's obstacle course run isn't really all that crucial to the overall storyline of X-Future it probably won't end up as more than a paragraph or two in the novelized version. In that case I think I'll post it as a very lengthy addition to the Snippets anthology. So keep an eye out for that within the next few days and I'll be sure to link to it next Sunday.

The Voices In My Head

This started off as a tangent on the last post, but it got too lengthy, so I dropped it in its own.

Before I continue, did you read the other post? I have two new ones up for today to make up for the random vanishing act. Go check that one out first! ^_^

Back? Alrighty then. So, as I mentioned in the last post, I'm growing more confident in my characters all having not only differing personalities, but voices as well. I mean, I can tell when one is talking versus the others because of how the statement is said and the little visual clues that come along with it. I thought it was just sort of an instinctive author thing, but I'm now realizing that it's because they're truly their own people and have their own way of talking.

It excited me to realize that. So I wanted to showcase how my characters all differ both in personality as well as speech. I also wanted to showcase what I meant when I said that each of The Girls was a bit of me.

Lia is my bashful and maternal side. The side of me that most people see. She's playful but protecting. Probably one of the reasons I got all giddy whenever Chayse - who is VERY much my husband - did anything to woo Lia. Lia is - more or less - who I am. When we first started X-Future and she was a younger teen she was unsure of herself, routinely fell in to her nervous tick of biting her lip and playing with her hair, she'd playfully punch people in the shoulder to accentuate her statement, and she loved calling Chayse names like "Swamp Brain". That last part I blame on all of my Percy Jackson reading since the character Annabeth routinely picks on Percy about being a "Seaweed Brain".

Anyway, after the time jump and Lia had two years to mature and train, she became more confident in herself and her abilities. She also became very maternal and protective of those she cares about. There's this one scene when she's walking Crystal around the Institute and something happens that forces Lia to protect Crystal. It surprised me how Mama Bear Lia became. I don't know why I was so surprised if Lia is me, however. I'm called Mama Bear by my friends all the time.

Lia's voice reflects all of that personality. She may use the same words as the other girls, but when she was younger it was filled with doubt or cheesy insults to mask the insecurity. As an older teen her words are filled with confidence, but concern. Even though she's not the oldest, she certainly speaks and acts like she's the mother of the students.

If Lia is who I am than Willow is who I want to be - well, partially. Willow is confident, playful, and a prankster. She knows she's got what everybody wants, regardless of sex. She is mad flirtatious and exudes sexuality. Being overly flirtatious - especially since more often than not she's not actually interested in the person she flirts with - tends to get her in trouble, but she loves to do it anyway. She basks in the attention. Even after she aged she's still the same-old-Willow. She's toned down the flirting a LOT after getting in to a relationship, but she hasn't stopped completely; just ask Crystal and Tyler. She's still sarcastic and playful, usually trying to joke around in serious situations to try to lighten the mood. But she's also learned when to get serious and work as a unit.

Willow's voice is full of confidence, flirtation, and sarcasm. She's a sweet talker who uses pet-names a lot and likes to say whatever she needs to in order to get someone's blood going. Although she's older than Lia she definitely acts like a sixteen-year-old hormonal girl in contrast to Lia's mothering.

Trish is my dark, pyro side of me. If there were no rules - or if I didn't have a conscious - I might have ended up like Trish. She's this tiny thing, but she still can give most people this cold chill just from looking at them. She has this "Don't Mess With Me" attitude most people comply with; Quicksilver and Devon being the exceptions - well, them as well as Deadpool and Wolverine, but they're interrogating Trish so it doesn't count. She is OBSESSED with fire and has two personalities linked to that obsession. There's the Wild Fire half where Trish just gets so angry she flies off the handle and goes wild herself. She doesn't think, she just does. It usually gets her in trouble. The second half is the slow, controlled burn. She's calculating and vicious. She'll figure out how to get out of a situation and she'll figure out greatest way to hurt her enemies. Nyssa needs to be weary that Trish linked her to Devon - who is Trish's main enemy at this point.

Trish is the easiest to figure out voice wise. She's constantly cursing - usually dropping the f-bomb, which I can't stand... - and her words are either filled with a chilling confidence, or a rush of anger. She will either intimidate you with her burning calm or her wild anger.

Crystal isn't really a part of me since she was an NPC I just took over. She's a young teenage fangirl who landed on cloud nine when her celebrity obsession became her boyfriend. She's a bit awkward and bashful - as most fourteen-year-old girls are. She's definitely a bit of a prude, a side I discovered leading up to Prom. She has moments where she rambles endlessly and she likes taking charge whenever she does find something she's confident in. She doesn't mean to be rude, but she's blunt and speaks her mind.

Her dialect is slightly different from the others because she's from Ireland, but since I didn't research Ireland's typical speech patterns her voice isn't too authentic for her upbringing. The main way to know it's Crystal speaking is that bluntness. It's not exactly Willow's sarcasm or Trish's cruelty. She just speaks her mind with little filter. You creep the bejeezus out of her and she'll let you know. If she thinks you're hiding something she'll call you out on it. Not too many people like her because of this trait. That, and the rambling whenever she's excited or nervous.

Beyond that though, I also have different voices for my other two main characters: Neghya from the Vampire LARP and Amara from D&D.

Neghya doesn't know when to shut up or get serious. She's a much more intense version of Willow. Even when she knows her comments will get her in trouble she'll still be cocky or sarcastic. It's not so much to break up the tension, but it's her way of showing she's a bad ass. She had been living nomadicly on her own for nearly a decade before becoming a vampire. She used her sarcasm and wit to get by and bluff about how tough she was. It's sort of a defense mechanism. If she feels really out of her element the sarcasm and stupid remarks seems to increase to try to show confidence and cockiness where there isn't any. But she also knows when to just shut up and watch everyone else like a hawk to quickly pick up the lay of the land and the best action to take to keep from getting killed.

Amara tried to turn herself in to a closed off robot. I'm sure you've seen the time in movies, anime, or read about  them in books. It's the trope of being seriously emotionally hurt, and so the secretly overly emotional warrior becomes an emotionless robot to keep from being hurt again. Instead the character hides behind the Intimidating Warrior persona, militaristic strategy, logic, and might. Amara shies from showing emotion. She's very calculating and is slow to speak, making sure that when she does it's cold, precise, and worth someone hearing. Her conversing is mostly done through death glares.

So, what do you think? If you have your own original characters, how do they differ from each other? Are they bits of you as well? Is one of your characters a trope like Amara is? Let me know in the comments. ^_^

Holy Tolito! A Month Just Vanished!

Why hello, my lovelies. So sorry for the unexpected writing hiatus. I don't really know what happened there. I took a week off for my anniversary, and then I was again bombarded with both work and finally catching the sickness that was taking out all of my other co-workers at the time. Two weeks without a post or without finishing the latest X-Future chapter turned in to three as my mother visited. Soon the snowball-effect resulted in me not even having much of a drive to attempt to write anything. Next thing I knew it was over a month since my last post and longer since my last chapter update.

A whole month without writing anything - or even attempting to. Also, a whole month where I've been insanely stressed, drained, and all-around crabby.

I'm not saying the two are connected. I'm just pointing out facts. 

Anyway, with (inter)National Novel Writing Month finally upon us again, I decided to use it as a motivator to get back in to writing. I'm not sure how well it helped. On the one hand, I didn't write anything yesterday between work, chores, and overnight guests. On the other hand, I did finally finish that blasted X-Future chapter that's been sitting around for about a month.

I started that blasted chapter shortly after my last update. I got interrupted for some reason and then just never got back to it. I'd like to say that I can't believe it kept me a month to finish it, but I've had Hey Arnold fanfiction chapters that have been in waiting for just as long - if not longer.

Speaking of my Hey Arnold fanfiction, I've been hearing "Life After You" by Daughtry on the radio a lot lately. That song hasn't really played on the radio for a few years now. Add in the sudden revival of Gavin DeGraw's song "Not Over You" - which happens to be the inspiration for the chapter I've abandoned almost a year ago. So.... I think maybe Arnold and Helga are telling me to get back to work on their story. I'm not saying that there will be any updates in What Is Truly Meant To Be anytime soon - I'm too invested in X-Future right now - but I just may tackle the latest chapter a bit more before the end of the year. Sorry, folks, for going nearly a year without an update in that story.

Bad author. Very bad author!

The real irony is that the writing hiatus I stumbled in to over October was truly a complete stop. I haven't posted anything in X-Future either. No one really has. The game has halted completely - aside from Ronoxym doing a post as Devon about a week ago. Hubby's trying to think of a concept to kickstart us back in to playing. I'm just trying to get The Girls to start talking to me again.

Because of that - and because it's mad fun - I actually set up two cosplay costumes for My Girls. Eight bucks off of eBay and an additional two at the dollar store and I got myself a white wig with blue hair extensions. Roughly a ten dollar investment and I have a Willow Wig. Throw in some white shorts - or the white dress - and the white and blue cover-up my mother bought me for my birthday, and viola! I'm Willow! The playful, perky prankster who's a little bit of a flirt.

Or we could go the other way. Also for my birthday, my mother bought me pleather pants and a matching jacket. The pleather jacket has super wide lapels with little spikes all over them. The whole outfit just screams "Harley Davidson Biker". Add a red shirt I already own and the eight clip-on hoop piercings I also got off eBay. Mess up the hair so it's a bit wild and covering a lot of my face and BAM! I'm Trish!

Actually, that was legitimately my Halloween costume. I got all punked up. I wish I had the time and money to get my hair cut shoulder-length and re-dyed my normal gothic-red for October. That would have matched Trish PERFECTLY. I also wish I was able to get one of the clip-ons to act as an eyebrow piercing like I intended, but it kept popping back off, so I moved it to a lip-ring.

It was fun to roleplay as Willow and Trish. Hopefully that will get my juices going. At the very least I am picking up more and more the varying voices of my characters. I mean, I always knew that each of my characters - not just the X-Future ones - had their own personality. For the X-Future girls they were all sort of a bit of my own personality focused and refined. But given that they are all teenagers I was afraid that they were all using the same dialects and sounding similar to each other. I'm starting to feel more and more confident, however, that once my readers get to know my characters they'll be able to know who was speaking just based on how it was said.

I originally went more in-depth about what I meant; describing each girl and how her voice differs from the last. It ended up being this long-winded tangent. I think I'll have it as a bonus blog post to make up for the random disappearance.

As for this post, I'm just going to wrap up by stating that I hope I can get back in to the rhythm of writing again. I'm pretty sure I won't be able to write daily like a true NaNo attempt. I'm also pretty confident that once December hits I'll again disappear in to my little crocheting-hut while I make everyone's gifts. In the meantime, however, perhaps I can get back to at least updating this blog weekly and my X-Future story roughly every ten days.

Wish me luck!

Birthdays, Apologies, Vamps, and a LOT of Pictures

I had a TON of online buddies with birthdays this past month! Sheesh! September is BIRTHDAY MONTH apparently!

So let's pause a moment to give quick happy birthdays to the following:

• Chopfe
• DarkAngel1326
• Ronoxym
• ChibiSunnie

And sort of Duchess's little sister FMA:B since she was born this year at the beginning of the month. She actually shares a birthday with Chopfe.

Alright, so maybe that isn't a TON of people... but it's still a lot after months of no birthdays at all.

And since we're talking about my online buddies, AngelBlood666 has two new chapters up for his collection of the 30 Day Writing Challenge from last summer. He's now up to 26 out of the 30; better than my 14.

Final updating note on my buddies? Omnibladestrike just sent me his second chapter to read. This is pretty big. He's only done that once before. He usually gets so self-conscious about his work that he just sticks in an endless loop of reworking his first chapter. So the fact that he has finally moved on is fantastic, and in and of itself shows how much he's grown as an author. So big thumbs up there.

Now, if only I could just sit myself down to beta read for him and Chibi....

Gah, I miss having a netbook/laptop. I love my desktop, but computer chairs are so uncomfortable. I get a lot more relaxed and in the writing mood when I'm reclined or laying in the grass. Also, if I weren't tethered to the desktop - which is in perfect sight of the TV - I could remove myself from distractions so much easier. As it stands, I have to blast music through my headphones to drown out the TV and/or the talk of visitors playing MTG with Hubby, and then I have to try to angle myself so that I don't see the TV in my peripheral.

Although I can usually write while like that, I found it's increasingly difficult to beta while sitting at an angle to the computer and with music blasting in my ears. It's equally hard for me to proofread my stuff. Add in the fact that I'm getting sadly close to blind, and well...

Here, let me explain. I much rather prefer contacts to glasses. I look better in contacts. I don't have to worry about things in my peripheral being blurry since they are outside the range of my lenses. Plus, after a decade of almost exclusively wearing contacts, the extra distance between my eyes and the corrective lenses of my glasses is just enough to give me this weird fish-eye-lens feel that makes me a touch dizzy and kills my depth perception.

Problem is, like I said, I'm closing in on "blind." Without any corrective lenses of any kind I have to be within about five inches of something to see it clearly. Once your eyes get that pathetically bad it is impossible for contacts to be made in small enough increments to truly correct your vision. So, I can either stick with the prescription I have now which is a touch too weak, or go to the next level which would be majorly too strong.

Obviously I'm sticking with the touch too weak. This means I'm good for most sight purposes, but when it comes to reading something I have to be about two feet or so from it - depending on the size of the font, obviously - and items in the distance aren't as clear to me as they would be with 20/20 vision. To my guestimation, I'd say I'm at something like 15/20 vision. It's pretty darn close to corrected, but not quite there.

Add in the fact that I'm pinching pennies right now, and so I can only afford the contacts as opposed to the rough estimate of $200+ for new glasses. Ah, glasses. THEY can be made with small enough adjustments that they could get my exact prescription need and I'd be at full clear vision again.

Anyway, the reason I bring all this up is similar to why I brought up the whole desktop thing too. The way my desk is set up my monitor is probably about 2feet from my face, so it's at the edge of my clear vision with my contacts. Add in the normal eye strain of staring at a computer screen for too long. This results in me either adding a lot of stress on my neck and back as I lean forward to read, or really putting a strain on my eyes as I try to focus. Either way, it's literally painful for me to read at my computer too long in one sitting.

So, I apologize to Chibi and Omni for not being the quick-turn-around beta I vowed to be while coming up with my New Years resolutions. I apologize to my fellow members at the Writers’ Huddle for once again disappearing from the boards; it's just hard to read what conversations have been going on, let alone join in. I also apologize to AB666 for not reading/commenting on his chapters lately. Finally, I apologize to any other author whose story has been sitting in my inbox for weeks/months on end. Same goes for the three or so bloggers that I follow and haven't read in ages.

And since I'm here apologizing anyway, I might as well add in that I'm sorry that I don't have a chapter update for you guys this week. Normally - so it seems - I would therefore not have a blog update, but I figured if I wasn't going to give you guys a chapter I might as well give you this, right? Besides, I do have something else - aside from the above - to talk about.

This week has just been rough at work. A LOT of my co-workers have been getting sick now that school started up again. In other words, school started, kids went back to school, the increased socialization within a confined space is causing these kids to catch each others' colds, said sick children are now bringing their colds home to their parents, and they in turn bring the sickness to work. Yay....

We're pretty short staffed to begin with, and on top of that a lot of my co-workers are college students who now have a very restricted work availability. So now that people are dropping like flies with these stupid illnesses, the few of us with open availability have to fill in the gaps. I personally gave up my day off today - as well as shifted my Friday and Saturday schedule a little to open up some hours for me to work before hitting overtime - in order to cover for someone.

When I'm not dead tired at work I'm home cleaning the apartment. Either that, or once more getting suckered in to my husband's siren-song of snuggling on the couch while binging on hours of anime. The meal of the week? Black Butler II, and now Fairy Tail.

Side note: I LOVE Gray!

HAWT (ironic for an Ice Mage...)

Grrrrowl... ;)

I LOOOOOVE watching him enter this stance in the anime. He looks so awesome! *swoon*

*Ahem* Right... I'm married... to an actual man, not an anime/manga character....

I was semi-creative this week though. I swear!

So when I wasn't dying at work, cleaning, or wasting my life by watching hours on end of anime, I actually had the vampire LARP this past Friday. It's been MONTHS since we last played, so it kept a bit to get back in to character.

I then couldn't get her out of my head. Yay, insomnia!

Anyway, the character I'm talking about is my most recent: Neghya. Yup, name "stolen" from online buddy Neghya.

She is for our Sabbat game; simply, very violent vampires who wish to rule over Humanity as farmers rule cattle. If one were an X-Men fan I'd say - very loosely - that Sabbat are the Brotherhood of Mutants to the Camarilla's X-Men. They are chaos to Camarilla's order. They also have a sort of bastardized mock Catholic Church set up to their society's standings. It's complete with such positions of stature as Bishops being the most powerful vampires to rule over a city or borough, and packs within said city who each have their own Priest that performs rituals every night and Abbots who protect their haven.

All that aside, Neghya's story consists of living in a dystopian present in which every man is more-or-less out for himself. There are little to no "heroes" among Man any longer. Vampires and other supernatural creatures control nearly everything from the background, still hiding supernatural existence from humanity. In this dystopia Neghya is a 25-yr-old runaway who has taken on a nomadic lifestyle for the past decade, more-or-less. One night, after working a shift at a New York City bar, she comes across a strange man. I have yet to work out enough of her backstory to know how she pissed him off, but I do know she somehow came upon a ring that is of great importance; although The Bard has yet to bring the subject of the ring back up and so I have no real clue of its significance. Anyway, she either won the ring off of him by besting him in some card game - probably though rogue-like cheating - or she just plain stole it off of him.

Either way, she had the ring - along with more of his valuables - and he wanted it back. Not only that, but he wasn't about to be bested by a mere human. He is from Clan Ravnos; originally the Gypsy Kings of the vampire world, now a nearly extinct race of common rogues, thieves, murderers, and delinquents. Being outsmarted by a human was NOT an option. So he took his revenge on her the best way he knew how, but more on that in a moment.

The real draw for me to play Neghya was that I'm still learning how to play Vampire: The Masquerade. We have games so infrequently - and the rule books are so convoluted in describing how to play - that I never really understand what to do or remember key points that any vampire character should know. We set Neghya up as a newly-embraced vampire. The first role play session I had with her she didn't even know what she had become. She was terrified after killing a homeless man and draining his blood. Hubby's character Javed found her and took her in as his surrogate Childe. There were some humorous moments when she mocked the most powerful vampire in NYC because she didn't quite comprehend yet that not only were "those creatures from TV, movies, and preteen novels" real, but she was now one of them.

Since Neghya is still trying to wrap her head around the concept that supernatural entities do exist and that she's no longer human, she's also learning the ways of the Vampire. This of course means that I can goof up during game sessions and then blame it on Neghya "not knowing". Win!

The story diverged a bit from Neghya's original storyline; mainly because it wouldn't be fair to the other players if the whole game was centered around her. So, for game purposes, she's just a new recruit being thrown in sink-or-swim style during a massive war between the Sabbat and the Camarilla for possession of NYC. We're about to hit the conclusion of this war as we played out the beginning of the final battle this past Friday.

If I were to turn this in to its own World of Darkness fanfiction, Neghya's story would consist of her tracking down her true sire - the Ravnos - and take her revenge on him. There is unbridled hatred for this man, and Neghya wants to unleash her full fury on him. Fair warning, though, if I were to actually write out her story - a thought I toss around every now and again - it would have to be a mature rating and the first chapter alone would be greatly disturbing.

See, the Ravnos' revenge on Neghya was to "take everything that makes her who she is"; in other words, the most violently forced embracing he could think of. The whole thing was about dominance over her and stealing as much as he could from her. Poor thing is stripped down and shackled to a dumpster in a side alley behind the bar she worked at, is violently raped while being sliced open so he could slowly drink her blood while inflicting as much pain as he can, and then is turned in to a vampire just before he rips out her insides so she could survive the torture of it.

Jack the Ripper had nothing on this creep. In fact... maybe he once was Jack the Ripper...

When I started roleplaying as Neghya we knew that she was raped before being violently turned in to a vampire, but we didn't have the specifics. After Friday's game I guess Neghya wanted me to have the specifics.

I tossed and turned while having the most random bout with insomnia; something I've only suffered from maybe half-dozen times in my life. As I lay snuggled against my husband I couldn't turn off my brain as I witnessed the entire brutal scene of Neghya's embracing. I heard her Sire's voice as he berated her, screamed at her, threatened her, and mocked her. I heard her pleas for him to stop, forgive her, and spare her; I then heard her cries of agony. Actually, it's no wonder I couldn't sleep with such torturous visions playing out in my head.

At about 2am I caved and went to the desktop to type. I didn't get every single word or nuance, but I have more-or-less the entire vicious act written down now. Then during my break at work today I had Neghya's response to this vile deed. There is a trick that vampires can use on each other. Camarilla forbid its use - it's an executionable offence - but the Sabbat embrace it. In fact, Hubby's character Javed has an obsession with it to the point where he will frenzy if he is allowed the opportunity to do this feat and then it is denied him.

This action is called Diablerie; a heinous act, akin to vampiric cannibalism. One vampire drains another of his blood, and once the victim vampire is completely dry his very soul is consumed by the feasting vampire. Javed just taught Neghya how to diablerize a vampire during Friday's game. Now that she knows this trick exists, the extreme power and ecstasy it brings, and the complete irreversible death it causes; she's figured out how she'll enact her revenge. I have that whole scene written out too.

So, alas, there is no new X-Future chapter for you guys to read; almost exclusively due to me spending nearly two entire days watching anime with Hubby. However, I WAS creative over the weekend at least. Plus, I managed to get over my hurdle of "I can't torture my characters"; at least with poor Neghya. I think it's mainly because she was able to more-or-less recover from it. Same with Amara. I was able to torture her, but she also more-or-less recovered.

From what I hear, Hubby's co-storyteller - whom I idolize for his ability to create such compelling characters and side-stories - is thinking of doing something major that would result in a complete annihilation of one of his characters' personalities. I nearly cried when I heard that! And the guy hasn't even DONE anything yet. He's just THINKING about it! Man, to be so cruel and cold to one's characters after making everyone else fall in love with them!? That's talent.

So, while I sort out this whole mess of "can I truly torment my characters for the betterment of their development/the story?" I'll also debate writing out Neghya's story while I actually work on the next chapter of X-Future. Unless I'm called in to cover for more sick co-workers, I should have my scheduled two days off in a row this week. With any luck I can accomplish some writing on at least one of those days.

Wish me said luck!

The Value of Blogging and Snuggling

Yup, did it again. I totally missed a week of updating. But, hey, at least I'm still updating relatively frequently. Neither DarkAngel1326 nor Cyhyr have updated their blogs in a while. So, at least my semi-frequent updates "count," right?

Although, DA1326 IS still in school and that's obviously a priority. So her infrequent updating is understandable. Cyhyr is also in school, plus she just blew through something like 15,000 words in a little over a week! So I guess she also gets a pass. It seems that Cyhyr's priorities are more on writing her fiction and less on writing her blog. If she's going to spend time at the computer writing SOMETHING; it seems she'd prefer that something to be her stories. I have to give her credit for her priorities. It seems that it should be more important for authors to care more about their manuscripts and less on their journalistic blog updates.

Even famous writers such as Rick Riordan - if they have blogs or other form of social networking at all - only update online every once in a while. Riordan's only been updating about once a week because he's in a holding pattern while his latest story is being edited. Since he can't do any further work anyway until his editor is done, Riordan uses that free time to finally catch up on his online presence. I haven't been following him long enough to know definitively, but I'm assuming his blog and Twitter accounts are barely touched when he's in the full swing of working on his manuscript; be it the first draft or one of his many revisions.

So, to bring this full circle, yes, I can give myself credit for updating at least bi-weekly, as opposed to the infrequency of the other authors I know who blog. However, they seem to prioritize so that the craft of writing their manuscripts trumps any work on their blogs. Perhaps I should focus more on this priority outline. Perhaps I'd be further than I am with my writings if I let this blog fall to the wayside, and instead use the two hours or so a week working on my stories.

Then again, I do seem to have faithful readers here, and I'd hate to disappoint you by just abandoning this blog. Plus, it is important for authors to have a fanbase; a platform; a gathering of faithful readers. I feel this blog does help me in that realm, even if it's just a slight bit. I'd hate to alienate my readers here that may not enjoy my Hey Arnold or X-Men fanfiction.

Besides, the fact that I missed last week DOES seem to display that I do - at least to some degree - have the priorities of "manuscript first; blog second". I could have easily wrote a blog post last week explaining why it kept me until the last minute to work on my chapter. I could have discussed why I didn't have the time to proofread the chapter prior to posting my update. I could have promised that it would be up before the end of the week - a promise I was able to complete, by the way.

However, I much rather prefer to have used the time I would have been blogging as time spent to complete my chapter and proofread it. I'd much rather have the chapter posted before putting a blog post up so that I had something to show for my week. Instead of telling you what I accomplished, and then showing you later, I'd rather just wait until the task was done.

At the same time, I didn't anticipate it taking so long for me to complete the proofreading process. I honestly thought I'd have everything completed by Tuesday, and therefore would have the blog post ready by then too; having me be only two days late instead of a full week.

Considering all of that, having this blog truly is beneficial to my writing; and proves that I really should never neglect it entirely. Even if I sometimes do fail at posting weekly, it helps train me to be in a regular writing rhythm. It gives me a reason and/or excuse to seclude myself and just write. It may be a completely different writing style or skill set, but I do practice - and hopefully improve - my writing each time I write a new post. The icing on this little cake is that it also holds me accountable.

I feel guilty whenever I go a week without posting. This therefore keeps me from forgetting about this blog. It holds me accountable for my weekly writings. If I miss a week - as I did last week - I feel even guiltier if I miss a second week. It truly, and honestly keeps me on the "regular writing" path. Now that I've been posting weekly chapter updates for the Writers' Huddle Summer Challenge, I feel obligated to keep up that rhythm. That way when I do my weekly blog updates I also have a new chapter for you to read.

Reader base, practice, writer discipline, and accountability. These are the things this blog brings to me and teaches me about. These are the four reasons I will keep working on my blog. These are the four reasons I'm not fixated on the "Manuscript first; blog second" priority ranking. These are the reasons why I'm working on an update now instead of working on my next chapter.

So, please forgive the delays.

Now that all of THAT is out of the way, how about something fun? How about a new chapter update?

I had the darn thing written by Sunday, as I have been for the past month. However, between picking Hubby up from work, passing out, and going to work myself I only barely had the time to finish writing; much like the week before. I didn't want to post a non-proofread chapter for a second time, and so I opted to just wait until I was done proofreading before posting the chapter and this blog update.

Monday I had a full work day; nine long hours that completely drained me.

There was no chance that I was going to do anything that required thinking at the end of that day.

So, I set out to proofread after work on Tuesday; especially since it was my shortest work day this week. Instead, I ended up doing all the backed-up chores that have been piling up over the past week or so. That, and Hubby convinced me to rewatch Trigun with him after he completed his half of the chores.

Wednesday I was determined to get the chapter finished. After Hubby distracted me with more Trigun, I finally accomplished my goal, and posted the chapter both on FanFiction and DeviantArt that evening. It was too late for me to work on my blog post though.

Thursday I had every intention to finally get the blog update done, and to start work on the next chapter; maybe finally concluding the events that occurred on the forum all on June 22, 2012. However, Hubby informed me that  2-Feathers-And-A-Stone wanted to boot Maddog24 and Duchess over to our apartment for a few hours. She had finally had their second daughter - a few weeks early - and she wanted some time alone in the house to clean and finish getting the place ready for their new baby girl. Duchess usually gets in the way of cleaning, and sometimes MD24 does too. I welcomed the visit, and so I didn't really get too involved in things like my writing or finishing off my chores as I expected MD24 to show up at any moment.

The minutes ticked in to hours and next thing I knew it was close to six, we still needed to do laundry, and so MD24 decided to just stay at home. He then asked if they could maybe swing by on Friday. He never showed up then either. At least this time I was in "screw it" mode and just did what I needed to do around the apartment. My sister is visiting this weekend and I wanted to at least have all my chores done.

Sadly, the working 9days straight - plus not feeling 100% to begin with - took a toll. Instead of using the hours between me and then Hubby getting off work to clean or at least write.... I.... passed out.

Apparently I was so tired that I completely slept through my alarm. Hubby ended up waking me up by calling to see if I was going pick him up; since I had the car. I was already a half-hour late. WHOOPS! He understood and we laughed about it when I got there to pick him up.

So late on a Friday evening I gave up on the blog post. It was so close to my normal Sunday update anyway that I just allowed the week to pass. I did the same for the next chapter. Since I would be posting the links to the chapter I completed this Wednesday I decided to just go for the "vacation" from writing and not worry about the next chapter until this upcoming week. It also gave me the free time yesterday and today to just hang out with my sister during her visit.

Besides, allowing Hubby to distract me with Trigun also allowed us to do something that we haven't really done in a little bit. Something I desperately missed. We just ignored the world and snuggled on the couch for hours. It was a great stress reliever.

The only problem now is that I have the one song from Trigun stuck in my head. It's a "folk song" that was written for the show/manga that is periodically sung as a nod to the "old days" and the main character's lost companion. The song was released as part of a Japanese soundtrack to the series, but since only the first two lines are ever sung in the anime, only the first two lines were ever translated. So a normally five-minute-long song is stuck in my head as two lines that take about thirty-seconds to sing. So I have 30sec looping in my head and I'm singing it at work.

Worse yet? Hubby finds it amusing to sing the opening two notes to get the song stuck in my head again.... Thanks, Babe...

Bah, anyway, if you want it stuck in your head too - for some crazy reason - then here's the song.

Otherwise, here's the chapter I completed this past week. It consists of Chayse's attempt at the Danger Room at a higher difficulty level than recommended for him.

Rescues and Robots on FanFiction
And over on DeviantArt

I'm excited to say that I actually have two people who have faved the story on FanFiction. I also have good old ChibiSunnie devouring the chapters. She's a bit confused now and again because she doesn't know anything about the X-Men fandom, but she still seems to be greatly enjoying these chapters. So... YAY! Maybe I can convert her in to the fandom before I'm done. Muahahahahaha.

Delay Post

Yup, pushing the writing to the last minute again. I'm working diligently on it still, but I kept passing out at the computer all week while working on it. I'm hoping that's simply due to me being tired coupled with the strain on my eyes, and NOT because this is a boring chapter.... Anyway, I didn't start really working on it until 1am this morning, worked on it until 5am, fell asleep, and started working on it again about 1/2hr ago. I'm not sure if I'll get the chapter done before I go in to work at 3:30, and I don't want to post an official blog update for the week until I can link to this week's X-Future recap. So please excuse the delay, I hope to have the official post up either tonight or Tuesday. I know tomorrow will be shot since I'm pulling a nine-hour day at work and I have to keep cleaning the apartment for my mom and sister possibly swinging by this upcoming weekend.

Ending the Summer Challenge With A Weak Bang

Ugggh... this was not a good writing week.

It was not a good motivational week.

It was not a good week.

My work week consisted of insane hours, cranky co-workers, incompetent co-workers that made me want to punt them across the store, managers that couldn't stand still long enough for me to accomplish anything I needed to for the Wellness portion of my work week, and finally a rarity for me.
Customers that just irked me.

Normally I love customers. I love interacting with them. I love the quick brain teaser of trying to figure out how to make a mad customer happy. I love the diversity. I love the repeats that you get to know and vice versa. Even if I get a cranky customer every now and again I can shrug it off as "eh, they're just cranky" or "They probably had a bad day."
This week though.... *sigh*

Add in that tomorrow is Labor Day - that glorious ringing out of Summer in The States - and my week was insane and tiring. To be honest, I can't really recall what I did day-to-day like I normally do when I write these posts.

So when I was home I had no energy to actually think. I zoned out by either watching TV, putzing around on Facebook and DeviantArt, or playing one of two video/computer games. A few days ago I started up playing Fable on the Xbox again - only to be ticked off that I failed one of the side quests for probably the seventh time since starting up that game file. My main go-to, since I'm already at the computer, is to play the game King's Bounty: Armored Princess.

The worst part about my burn out? It just might happen again this week. As I stated, a holiday is tomorrow, and I have an equally crazy work schedule. Joy.

Anyway, enough griping about how I didn't WANT to write this week. Point is that I still did. I forced myself, but I got through it. I guess sometimes that's just what you have to do. Especially if you write for a living; you can't just give up a full work-week because you don't feel motivated.

So, in the end I guess it's good training for future weeks like this when I'm writing for a living.
*knock on wood*

It was a bothersome week for the forum recaps as well. The first recaps were easy. Aside from the second one about Nix - which was easy enough to gather; just go through the listing of his early posts and get the info needed - the first and third recaps were live role play sessions. This meant I had enough interaction and "story" to write out my recap chapter without much effort. Just read the session and write what happened. Simple.

Well, for this week it wasn't so simple. The day after the Danger Room session a whole bunch of us players just did a ton of individual roleplaying. Simple things to set up what our characters do in our day-to-day and/or how we reacted to Nix's control loss and/or the Danger Room session. So, there were a bunch of posts scattered across the multitude of boards that we have on the forum. When I say "multitude" I'm not joking at all. We have six different sections of the board: a section for character bios and the like, a section for general out of character discussion, a section for polls, a section for important Moderator/Administrator announcements, a section for roleplaying as X-Men characters, and most recently we added a section for roleplaying as Brotherhood characters. Out of just the X-Men role play section there are 136 topics. Granted, a large portion of them are closed but are available for reading; a large portion are still open for people to continue roleplaying in.
That's a LOT of boards to sort through!

So I started off my weekly task by going to Hubby's and celestialTyrant's accounts since the two of them were the most active when the game first started. Through their profiles I was able to track down their posts and when they posted them - the same tactic I used to figure out everything for Nix's control slip-up recap. From there I noticed that a LOT was going down on June 22, 2012. I then used this information to sort though the over-hundred topics to figure out which ones were created on or before the 22nd. This narrowed it all down to 22 topics. Still quite a few, but not nearly as overwhelming as 136.

From there I went through and found all the posts that were up on the 22nd specifically. This narrowed it down to just 10 topics, but it was still a LOT of posts. It was too much for me to try to organize them while still on the forum itself. So I thought a touch out of the box for that.

I copied and pasted all of the posts from the 22nd in to a word document. They were all still in their forum comment layout of member name and picture, timestamp, and comment all nestled in to table cells. Because of this the posts - roughly 130 of them - take up a little over 31 pages!

And we're back to overwhelming... just a touch.

Well, thank GOD for time stamps, because while I was going from one topic thread to the next I was able to organize all hundred-plus posts in to the order they were originally posted. It definitely helped flow everything easier, especially when certain "scenes" flow from one location to another - therefore going from one topic thread to another.

Needless to say, just tracking down everything that happened on the 22nd and organizing it was a task that lasted about two days.

I then attempted the last mini-challenge of Writers’ Huddle's Summer Writing Challenge: Spend exactly 5 minutes planning the scene/chapter/post/article before writing. Five minutes and that's it. Not a minute more or less. It was basically a challenge to see what you could accomplish in such a short period of time - much like last week's writing for 10minutes. It was a nice exercise for those who never plan ahead of time, as well as those who spend hours or even days writing out the planning before writing. Ya know, like how I write for What Is Truly Meant To Be.

Anyway, as I was re-organizing the posts according to their timestamps I of course glanced over them to get a basic idea of what was going on that day. I figured "alright, five minutes? I got this" and started to write bullet points about what happened; periodically glancing at the posts to make sure I didn't miss anything. Well, 5minutes quickly came and went, and I was maybe a fifth of the way through the posts.

The later third - or maybe even as much as half - of the posts were all two large scenes, and so I was able to make it through bullet pointing the rest of the posts in another 15minutes or so. I now know that there was just so much going on this third day of playing that I'm going to get either three or four recaps out of it - depending on how long the second recap ends up.

The first recap is basically what the full day of roleplaying was: everyday happenings and people dealing with what happened in the previous recaps.

You can find it on DeviantArt here.
It's also up on my FanFiction version of X-Future: The Second Generation Begins.

Quick aside: I actually had someone favorite this story on FanFiction this week! The X-Men stories haven't been getting much love/attention, and so to have someone fave the story was like "WOW!"

So, thanks, ItsAlexO!

Okay, back to the recaps.

The first recap ends with Lucas Kinney racing towards the Danger Room after getting an alert. The next recap will be why he got that alert in the first place, as well as why Nix is so nervous. This was tricky because when the game was first set up we didn't have a lot of the things we have/use now to help game play flow easier. For one, we didn't really know how to create hot-links in our comments. We now use this to help refer to either a crucial event that will make our current post make more sense, or as a means of directing people to the previous location we were at in our scene. It would have been VERY helpful to help me sort through everything. The other real key thing we do now is have blank posts - aside from a single blue line - separating one scene from another in the same location. The last thing - the one that would have been super helpful for the Danger Room recap - is that double-posting was defaulted to condense down in to one post if the posts were within an hour of each other.

How this works is if you post a comment and then went back to that location thirty minutes later to do another action - but no one else posted in that location in between your two posts - the two posts would condense in to one with a blue line breaking the posts apart. When it did that the timestamp on the non-original post(s) is lost.

So Hubby had a Danger Room session going on in which he had nine posts in a row. These all condensed in to one large post with lines separating them. I have no clue what time the individual posts were up aside from the original one. That in and of itself isn't that big of a deal. What makes this whole scene a pain in the butt is that while Hubby was posting in the Danger Room a whole bunch of players had their characters reacting in the Danger Room Observation Deck, therefore including their reactions in to the scene. So I had to read through both and try to figure out where the Observation comments fit in relation to all of Hubby's posts; a task that would have been easier if I had timestamps to go off of. *sigh*

Even better is that Lia wasn't one of the people watching - she was off doing her own training. CT wanted to interact with Lia - I think mostly because I was off on my own while everyone else was roleplaying in the Observation Deck - and so Nix came to talk to her. Thing is, according to the Observation Deck posts Nix was there until like the last five minutes of the session, and yet he somehow managed to miss how it ended..... The timing is tricky, so I'll probably fudge it a bit when I re-work the recap.

Anyway, depending on how long the DR session is - which will probably be very long - I may make the next portion of that extended story a third recap... Danger Room Aftermath. The scene for that went on for a bit as well, so it just might be enough for its own recap.

The final one for the day would be **Spoiler: Sorta. Not really, but whatever. Hover cursor over to see.** going on dates. So keep your eyes out for those updates. Whooo!

As for the Snippets... still no love for them; ItsAlexO didn't fave that story set. Maybe people are purposely avoiding the Snippets to avoid the spoilers???? *shrug*

Anyway, I haven't even THOUGHT about working on the next Snippet I have in the works. I'll keep you guys posted though.

At least X-Future has been at sort of a crawl/stand still for the past month. Kinney - who is Hubby's right-hand-man and fellow storyteller for the game - wanted to do a Danger Room session for some of the guys, but he then had to go on a week-long vacation to visit the in-laws before the session was done. Plus none of the guys seem to be online at the same time and so there are hours and even a day or two in between postings. This session is literally taking a month to conclude.

Problem there is that it freezes the rest of us more-or-less to make sure our characters don't get too far ahead time-wise. In other words, the rest of us will be roleplaying a day or two ahead of those guys and it's a pain to catch people up.

• So Crystal and Tyler are in roleplaying limbo until "the next day" can start up.
• I have no further advancements for Trish since her day was pretty full already and is probably on the next day at this point. Plus... she's in a cell, what can she really do? Hubby's trying to figure out what Deadpool can do to mess with her this time.
• Willow and Chayse are very slowly chugging through the day, but neither of us really know what to do with them; especially since Chayse wants to ignore the two huge elephants in the room: who Screw Driver is and the identity of the traveler from the future.
• Thanks to my taking over as Jamie "Multiple Man" Madrox and playing the "insanely over protective father" card, Lia and Ripley are advancing slowly but surely; with a bit of a cameo from Ronoxym's secondary character Oswald, Ripley's best friend.

OH! Random little fun tidbit about Trish that happened this week. Those of you who are friends with me on Facebook already know this, and originally I wasn't going to include it on such a public venue as my blog, but it was just too good not to.

As I was getting ready for bed on Wednesday I put on my red nightgown. I've been wearing a lot of blue lately and Hubby jokes that I'm just in "Willow Wear" or that I'm "Cosplaying Willow". After noting to myself that I had worn red I chuckled that I was finally in "Trish Cosplay". I quickly corrected myself that the nightgown had to be "Lia Cosplay" instead since a nightgown was way too girly for Trish - who would be more likely to wear shorts and a t-shirt to bed.

After another second of pondering I realized that she - in an extreme case - just might wear a nightgown as an act of seduction. Thing is, I MEANT to think to myself that she'd wear one to seduce PYRO. Ya know, the Brotherhood baddie who is Devon's father and the object of Trish's affection? Instead, what I accidentally thought to myself was that she might wear one to seduce DEADPOOL. The wackjob Merc With A Mouth who had been interrogating her.

I then shuddered at the thought.

That's right. MY CHARACTER Trish was so repulsed by the thought of trying to seduce Deadpool that not only did SHE shudder in my mind, but she actually got ME TO PHYSICALLY SHUDDER AS WELL! As an experiment I then purposely thought "What? Deadpool and Devon both start with D... it's close."
I then gagged.
WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL!? This is a whole new level of characters taking over....

Does this ever happen to any of my writer readers out there? Or am I just a nutjob????

Speaking of my writer readers - although I'm not so sure she reads my blog... I know Ron does... anyway - I have great writing news in the world of Cyhyr. First off, her collaborator finally finished her chapter for the fanfic they're writing, and so they were able to update after a year hiatus. Kind of makes me feel better about not updating WITMTB since February. The real reason I bring up Cyhyr, though, is because the woman has been a writing machine as of late.

Cyhyr: I wrote 25 pages in my session yesterday. How many can I write today? I'm shooting for at least 20; I've already got 9 though, and I think I can challenge for 30...
I'm at 17 pages now but I'm hungry and I don't want to leave...
Update: just finished scene 6 and I have a total of 48 pages written, so 23 today...
[I'm working on] a completely new fanfiction that slapped me across the face and said "write me" on Thursday night. So I started it a little then and now I'm almost 50 [frigging] pages into this shit.

So, let's give her a cyber round of applause for her great stamina and drive. Now... for me to find that same drive...

Alright, I just want to conclude by announcing one last thing that I accomplished this past week; last Sunday, actually.

For nearly a year now I've been thinking of branching out and starting up a more conventional blog - one that's informative instead of journalistic - but I couldn't figure out what I have enough knowledge about to write more than one post. That doesn't really matter if I write the one or two posts I know about such-and-such subject, submit it to a blog as a guest post, and repeat for the next topic, etc. However, I'm too lazy to spend hours on end tracking down a variety of blogs, and then attempt to write a guest post for each of them; although this is the best way to get started with a paid gig as a blog writer. Ali and I tried working on figuring out my specialty for a little bit at the beginning of the year, but it didn't really get far.

Well, Sunday I realized that I goof up a LOT, and in a wide array of categories. I've also figured out how to fix these goofs. So I've decided that my next blog should be a sort of "self-help catch all" in a sort of "learn from my mistakes" way.

I've reserved the url CritFailing.blogspot.com for when I start up this new blog:

Crit Failing: A Guide to Goofs and Screw-ups

Thanks to my co-worker Sergeant Strudel for the blog name idea. My other title possibility is "I Roll Ones", but I think that's already a "fail blog" on Blogger.... Eh, the name has time to change/evolve. The important part is the blog url.

Sadly, I don't have nearly the time to dedicate to running two blogs, especially when I barely manage to update this one weekly. Plus, I need to figure out how I'm going to write professional, article-style posts. On top of everything else, I need to set up a cache of articles; really focus on the mess-ups I do that may also plague others as well as advice on how to avoid/fix the problem.

It will be a bit of an undertaking and the new blog probably won't launch for another two years, but I at least have a plan! Whoot!

Now off to work on that next recap.... or to sleep.... probably sleep....