Monday, February 10, 2014

Hack, Hack, Wheeze, Wheeze. Oh, What a Miserable Week it is....

Another late post. Although, I HAVE been posting on Mondays since I started to post again. So, maybe I'm posting on time and my new "update day" is Mondays? Honestly, I can't recall the last time I was scheduled to work on a Monday, so maybe it would work best in my favor to just shift over a day....

Anyway, I did have every intention of posting yesterday. I was geared up and everything.

Then the sickness struck again.

Monday I was all excited. I had written for two hours, posted my blog update, and I worked on world building research the entire time I was at the laundromat. Tuesday I was flooded with writing ideas for that one-shot I told you about last week. The one that Ronoxym sent me on the first.

When I had sent him my little bit that was inspired by his story I actually really threw him off.
Ronoxym: I've kinda hit a wall, so I'm muddling it over for a bit while I work through this spot to get it where I want it to go.... I was going to chain your version of the end (because, yeah, it does seem more like Willow's actions.) and circle it back to my original idea.... I'll make it work. It's gonna be fun and exciting. I'm also seeing some major emotional agony in it, which is not normal for my writing, so I can't wait to get to sit down and see where the characters will tell me to go.
Sorry to have thrown you off so badly, Ron!

See, the issue I threw at Ron was that he needed Willow and Devon to further interact, but at the end of the scene I wrote she had stormed off in anger. So Tuesday I had all of these ideas on how to bring Willow back to the scene.

It was fantastic. It was a bright day - even though a storm was supposed to hit within 24hrs - and I was actually bubbly and energized. The fact that I also was highly inspired to write may or may not have had anything to do with my mood. I'm actually still trying to figure out the Chicken/Egg about that. Am I in a good mood and energized because I'm inspired to write, or am I inspired to write because I'm in a good mood and energized?

I'm way off topic.

Anyway, so I thought I was in a good spot for my Writers’ Huddle Winter Challenge goals this week.

But then the coughing started.

I kept poor Hubby up most of Tuesday night. By Wednesday morning I was lightheaded, but could keep the coughing mostly in check with meds. Thankfully the winter storm meant that there were barely any customers. A shift of nothing but cleaning and not worrying about speed or getting worn out taking care of people. Score!

I was still exhausted when I got home and didn't really do much writing as I started my road to mending. Thursday both Hubby and I had off and so I didn't budge. I stayed curled up either in bed or on the couch while mindlessly watching movies/TV shows to keep my mind off my throbbing head. Friday I went in to work, felt miserable, and came home about nine hours later. I once more curled up in bed and pretended the world wasn't out there. Saturday: same thing, only my shift was a short 5hrs.

Then I didn't move for about 48hrs. I spent the weekend under about three blankets, cursing that the medicine wasn't really doing anything anymore, downing gallons of water to try to ease the cough, and tag teaming between sleeping and reading "Mark of Athena." Actually, it was pretty adorable. Aside from maybe 10 chapters, Hubby and I have been taking turns reading the book to each other; mostly him to me since I can't go 10min without hacking.

It's really hard for me to not run to the couch, curl up, and finish the last 100pgs or so.... but Hubby and I took this journey together this far.

Anyway, so my week was shot thanks to this cold. Awesome.

I did get another two hours of writing in yesterday. I woke up refreshed, and - aside from feeling like a hairball was lodged in my throat - I had no coughing fits/issues. I then wrote in that blue "Willow's Journal" I showed you guys last week. I had finally figured out not only how to bring Willow back in to the scene, but to also get the story full circle back to how Ron finished the original tale. Apparently he was able to figure it out too and had sent me the next section later that day.

Hubby came home from work at about noon and we had lunch together. He snuggled next to me to read more of the story, and then passed out after being at work for about twelve hours. I tried to nap with him; but it didn't work too well as my hacking finally kicked back in.

If I was able to sit at a computer and write this post yesterday I might have actually hit my goals for this week's challenge. Oh well, maybe this week I can finally make it!

The thing I didn't have any chance of getting accomplished was the mini-challenge Ali had presented to the group: make a mind-map.

I showed off my mind-map about Amara before, but here's a refresher so you know what I mean by "mind-map":
Now, for my world building of Gyateara I wanted to have an original pantheon of deities. I created the world as kind of a merger of the games Dungeons & Dragons, Fable, and Legend of Zelda. Therefore, I brought with them the pantheons of those games as a starter:
If I was going to have Gyateara stories be original instead of some form of fanfiction I needed to remove these ties. So, while I was at the laundromat I intended to mind-map my own pantheon based loosely on the collective of the above 20-some deities plus the main 12 Greek/Roman gods. The extent I got was to list each of the Greyhawk gods and the domains they ruled over.

I was going to attempt again yesterday, but I ended up getting too caught up in reading to stop and accomplish my goal.

The more I think about X-Future the more I feel like this could be the story that grips me enough to really jumpstart my career, even if that jumpstart means a collective effort with Hubby, Phfylburt, and Ron.
So my next mind-map idea was to find a way to "Fifty Shades" our "Twilight fanfic". Need clarification? Alright, so, for those who don't know, the (in)famous "Fifty Shades of Grey" book series started off as Twilight fanfiction posted online. So many people enjoyed it that... well, here I get fuzzy on the details, either E.L. James decided to give it a shot and brought it to a publisher, or someone with publishing connections got in touch with her. Either way, the only way it could be published would be if it wasn't fanfiction. So James worked some magic to shift her characters to originals instead of Edward and Bella, shifted the setting out of Forks, Alaska, and dropped the vampire theme. "Fifty Shades" was then born.

So, why not do the same with X-Future? X-Men is our "Twilight" - very loosely speaking - and X-Future is the fanfic. I just need to drop all blatant ties to the Marvel Universe - which doesn't really play THAT big of a roll in the story - and it could stand on its own as an original story. Best part is that there are tons of non-Marvel shows/movies/books that have teenagers with supernatural powers, so I don't need to worry about taking THAT part out of the story; since the powers IS the backbone of a lot of stuff.

The mind-map's goal was to help me come up with a new universe backdrop that X-Future - the name also needs to be changed - could cozily drop in to. I'm actually so excited by this idea I just might do this mini-challenge this week on top of the new one Ali will come up with.

I'm actually so excited by this that I'm just going to work on that now! Until next week!

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