Get Even the Trash on Paper

We all know what this means for my writing, right?

It will go straight into the toilet....

Hacker Girl Facebook Sticker
by Birdman Inc

It already started this week. Sorta. Thursdays, Sundays, and Mondays are all going to be trash writing days, because I'm going to more-or-less go straight from work to watching a football game. I thought that maybe I'd put in my headphones and write while the game is on in the background; peeking every once in a while to keep on top of what's going on, but who am I kidding?

My writing and any nutritional eating just fall off a cliff the first week of football season, and it takes me a little while for them to heal and return strong.

I did try my darnedest to push myself to write the rest of the week, though. Didn't always work, and I didn't write nearly as much on the days I did write, but it's better than no writing.

My mantra this week.

You can always edit later. You don't have a story if it stays in your head, though. I mean, you DO, but what if you lose it? What if you wait to find the perfect words the first go and never find them? What if you need the whole story first before you can find the perfect words?

Just write. Get that story out of your head. Go from there. It may be a painful read through when you're done, but no one but you has to do that read. Then you polish until you're excited to share it.

Anyway, back to this week. I was coming off an awesome high. I had plowed through nearly 7000 words in one week, I wrote six out of the seven days of the week, and I wrote over 1000 words nearly every writing session.

Without the added drive of the challenges, though, I kind of went back into "research mode"... kinda.

OK, I spent the week more-or-less watching dubs of Miraculous fancomics on YouTube. I wanted to see how others dealt with the "big reveal" vs "one knows about the other, but both don't" and other such tricky plots. Mainly because I was stuck as to what everyone's reaction would be.

The last 1284 words I wrote in a desperate sprint to finish the Summer Challenge weren't terrible, but they weren't exactly good either. I saved them all in a separate document in case I want to revisit the feelings there, but then started over with that whole scene. It went in a semi-different direction that stayed more with Adrien than my original version did. I'm still not 100% happy with it, but it's better. It still needs more tweaking, but I think I just really need to lengthen this whole story into chapters. I feel like the story is getting way long, but moving at a breakneck pace at the same time.

Well, as I tripped my way through this scene in an attempt to move back into the ones that more-or-less wrote themselves, I managed a whopping 1347 words for the week. Whooo.....

I feel like I wrote more. I feel like I did something aside from this blog last Tuesday, but I forgot to log the words, and with all the editing I've been doing with my story, I couldn't confirm nor deny that I had advanced it at all on Tuesday.

I know for a fact that I wrote on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday... so there's that at least. Each session was under 1000 words, and nearly all three were less than 800 words. Still, I hid myself away, determined to write, and I did, at least for a little bit. I may not be excited by the scene I'm writing - which doesn't bode well for people reading it - but I'm at least getting it on paper. I'm pushing through.

I'm pretty positive that this month will just be a bunch of bouncing back and forth between working my way through this fanfic and redoing the fight scene for the STILL untitled Trish/Devon showdown story.

To help me out with the latter, I actually ordered a couple of things. Meet Body Kun and Body Chan.

They're flimsier plastic than I expected; aren't as easy to pose as I'd like; the stands fall apart easily, so you have to have a gentle touch; switching out the multiple different hands is harder than depicted due to the wrist joint moving abruptly while trying to snap on the hand you want; I had to pop Body Chan's shoulder back into socket when I first opened her up from the packaging; I couldn't find a proper hand to keep the pencil accessory from slipping to the table as soon as I let go; and I can't seem to get them to stand on their own like the pictures on the website suggests. All that being said, they are well articulated, have multiple hands to choose from, and you can do a fair amount with those stands, which double as storage for the accessories.

All-in-all, I'd give these guys a 7 out of 10. Not worth the $89.99 they are originally listed as, and may not even be worth the $39.99 they're currently on sale for as of this writing. However, they are worth the $45 package deal I got for them, I think. For nothing else, they're probably worth that much due to the accessories included. Whatever their value, I don't know how good they'll be for actual posing references for artists, but they should be posable enough for my purposes: visually "watching" fight scenes play out so they seem more realistic. We'll see if it helps.

Sadly, the one member of my local writing group who really pointed out my flaws is now studying abroad, so I probably won't see her again for a year or more. Maybe I can still convince her to give it a read-over via Google Docs or something.

On top of the new narrative projects I've got going on this month, I'm now on week three or four - I think - of a major work project. I'm apparently in charge of writing an orientation handbook for my job.

Technically, it wasn't an official order. It was more of the owner of the company asking my manager if I would mind writing one in between the other projects I have to take care of at work. I feel so over my head, and yet again I'm following the mantra of

I'm up to something like 40pgs - including the cover page, index, and about 10 pgs of appendices - and I'm just now getting to the meat of the handbook. I have everything else related to the job described and explained, but now I have to figure out what bits of sales itself I need to include.

Bun Facebook Sticker
by David Lanham

As of right now I'm dumping everything I can think of onto the page so I make sure I don't forget anything. I'll condense later. Might even gain some faith in potential future co-workers and assume they have some common sense. We'll see.

Either way, it's a tedious job that I kind of dread doing. I don't write non-fiction. I'm terrible at knowing what people need to know and what is overkill. I mean, even without the appendices and intro pages, it's still something like 25pgs of information, and I'm not done yet! Help!

At least I have my fiction writing to escape to over lunch breaks. As well as the book I picked for September's Book of the Month for the 2017 Reading Books Like A Boss challenge. Years ago for a birthday gift, my one friend got me the book "The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy: I Link Therefore I Am" edited by Luke Cuddy. I haven't made it to the meat 'n' potatoes of the book, so I can't really say one way or the other what my thoughts are, but it's at least interesting thus far. I did get pulled out at one point because the author of a particular segment wrongly, and repetitively, called Link's home island in "The Wind Waker" Outcast Island instead of Outset Island. It made me wonder how much they really played the game before trying to philosophize, but aside from that....

I'm going to use it for the "outside comfort zone" category because I almost exclusively read fiction. The last time I read non-fiction that isn't a writing related was in college. Plus, I'm not enough of a "thinker" to really get into philosophy, but it's about Zelda, and I do have an open mind, or at least try to, so I'm intrigued. I'll keep you posted, and I hope this also gets me back on track for finishing up the year with all 12 books for the challenge read. I already know I have more than that read as well, between the mangas, fanfictions, and novels that don't fall into any of the categories.

Oh, and I might be going back to "Ready, Set, Novel!" soon to try to figure out my Varekai fannovelization. I even have a fancy new orange notebook to jot my thoughts down in. I blame my first job out of college, but I equate blue, orange, and white to Icarus: blue for the sky, orange for the sun, and white for the wings. But also because of our mascot: a blue-skinned ginger Icarus with attached angel-like wings so he wouldn't fall.

Logo designed by our then art director Julie Fox Moyer
Icarus design and commercial animation by Thomas Pollock

So I have three projects! Four if you count the work one.... Five if I find the time to finish the "Hey, Arnold!" fanscript of "The Jungle Movie" with ChibiSunnie before the official movie airs in November!

Um... I might be overdoing it with the WIPs....

Tanuki Facebook Sticker
by Yanare Ku

Mom is also coming back up at the end of this week to tackle two more of my chaotic rooms. I may have an organized apartment yet! It will also mean I might not get much writing done this weekend, or the start of next week. We'll see.

I did just state last week that I seem to do well with my writing when my time is limited. We'll see if I strike oil again.