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!