Catch-up Week

Once again, I am on my front porch, enjoying the sunshine before noon, and I'm chilled. I have a sweatshirt on, and I'm thinking of running inside to get a lap blanket. Possibly also some dry shoes, since I'm wearing the breathable workout kind, and didn't think about that before stepping in dew-covered grass.

Point is, I'm yet again cold in the morning, just as I was last week. Oh! And speaking of last week, apparently I complained a bit too loudly about the sudden cold snap, because it was like 95-degrees (35 C) out post-1pm. And Wednesday was a "just step outside and you'll instantly sweat" kind of day. And then back to cold and "should we turn on the heat?" on Thursday. Us humans really need to stop screwing up Mother Nature. Her random chills and hot flashes are killing me.

BACK ON TOPIC!

I.... didn't really write anything this week. I didn't even really think about writing this week. It was 100% take a break from writing and catch up on other things week. It was also "holy hand grenades! Socializing!" week.

I literally had someone over post-work until roughly 10pm every night; Monday through Saturday. It's hard to write anything when you're hosting. Also, my netbook is definitely on its last legs, making writing anything while at work a bit tricky as well. I'll get to that.

To start, here was my social breakdown:

• Monday: had two friends over so we could all watch Steven Universe: the Movie on Cartoon Network together. Hubby put out a lovely spread that filled our entire card table. We had left over brie and fruit for days. I still haven't gone back to the brie yet as I'm making my way through the fruit.
• Tuesday: I didn't have writing group, but I did have draft for my fantasy (American) football league. I also had an exhausting and frustrating time of getting my pizzas from Pizza Hut for the draft. Ended up having to auto-draft my first 3 picks, because THAT'S what you want to do... I don't know what was up with that night crew, but... they were bad.
• Wednesday: I ended up kidnapping Rozsavaria. She was supposed to come over to watch a simple 20min cartoon with me. Then we watched Nintendo Direct, and she borrowed Hubby's Fire Emblem amiibos for her copy of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and we just watched YouTube videos for hours on end.
• Thursday: The weekly meet-up with Omnibladestrike. It was also the season opener for football, so after "pre-gaming" with some episodes of the anime Eyeshield 21, we switched over for actual football. Omni isn't much of a fan, so he and I casually chatted with the game on in the background, but he ended up heading home before the game ended. We may have to see if switching to Saturday hang-outs work better during the football season....
• Friday: I had Wolfhearted over to catch up on Miraculous Ladybug episodes, and... well... that took way longer than I intended.... I'll explain in a touch.
• Saturday: Hubby's one friend who had moved out of the area was back for the weekend. The friend was still over by the time I got home from work, so we played a game of Mario Party on the Switch, then got dinner, and watched various YouTube videos. Mostly Outside Xtra stuff. Also, while the rest of the world is watching Critical Role - we really need to get into that... - Hubby and I have decided we need to catch up on all the Oxventures. The storyline(s) might not be as emotional, but the OX gang certainly feels like our playgroup.
• Sunday: FINALLY! A day of just me and hubby. It's great to be social, but when it's a sort of all-or-nothing situation like we always seem to be in, it gets exhausting to not have time to do anything around the house, or even just chat with my spouse; one-on-one. It was the first Football Sunday though, so we mostly caught up on online stuff, watched the games, and vaguely chatted about random things that happened at work this past week. It was a total veg day, and I managed to get some more of my Ocarina of Time playthrough in. I now have the first two Spiritual Stones.... oooooooooooo.

So. Yeah. I don't wake up early enough to get anything terribly productive done before work. Then I went to work. Then at 6, when I came home, I entertained until roughly 10pm - sometimes later, sometimes a touch earlier - each night. I didn't have much true down time.

It was fun. Don't get me wrong on that. I loved each night hanging out with people. However, if my friends would be so kind as to maybe... spread out... your hang outs with us? So that maybe we don't go a full month without seeing each other, and then EVERYONE WANTS TO HANG THE SAME WEEK?

Speaking of.... I still haven't organized a good time to hang out with Cyhyr and Ronoxym. I need to get on that. I miss those two.

As for why things went a bit long when Wolfhearted came over? Well....

When we watch ML we pause in order to take time to react without said reactions making us miss the next bit of action or dialog or whathaveyou. There was some pausing while we watched "Reflekdoll" so that 20-some minute episode did take closer to the full 30minutes it would have been if it aired on TV. But then. THEN we watched "Desperada" and... well...

Let me get this out of the way first. I loved the episode. It was a good episode. It was a bit facepalm-y, mostly with Marinette, but it was a good episode with a wonderful villain and soooooooooo much to unpack. Plus... it had Luka. I love me Luka episodes. But it wasn't JUST a Luka episode. It was a sorta... Ladrien? Episode? Kinda? Anyway, I wanted to throw out the disclaimer that I DID enjoy the episode. That I appreciate the episode. That if you also enjoyed this episode, then yay.

HOWEVER!

HOW- EVER!

It was a RAGE INDUCING episode. For me, at least. I just.... I couldn't with Marinette in this episode. The way she completely and utterly forgot about Luka the second Adrien was in sight? Like? WHAT!? The way Ladybug actually allowed emotion to overpower strategy? NO! No, bad Marinette!

Knives from the Scott Pilgrim comic books
by Bryan Lee O'Malley

Also... I was never really much of an Adrien and Luka shipper before. Sure, in Luka's introduction episode they MAAAAAAY have looked at each other for a second or two longer than most felt was comfortable and appropriate for a platonic relationship, but I thought the fandom was grasping at straws. I was fine with it. If you are a Lukadrien shipper, you do you. You're not hurting anyone, and if you like that ship, you carry on.

HOWEVER. Holy smokes! Either there IS something there, or the writers are just leaning hard into the ship as fan service, or the animators don't know what they're doing. BECAUSE HOLY BI-ENERGY, BATMAN! It was making me wonder if Luka truly did love Marinette, and Adrien love Ladybug. Because... man. I still don't ship it; I still think canonically it's not supposed to be there. However, after that episode, I can see what the shippers see, and frankly, neither boy needs to deal with Marinette's unnecessary drama. I'm nearly on board the Lukadrien ship.

Luka, honey, precious son of mine, you are beautiful and wondrous and you deserve so much better than Marinette's chaos.

Haruhi Suzumiya from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
by Nagaru Tanigawa

Also... speaking of "do the animators truly know what they're doing"... does.... does Luka know Marinette is Ladybug? Because there are parts of that episode where it had me wondering if maybe he does. And... I'm losing my mind over it!

Like I said. There is a LOT to unpack after watching the "Desperada" episode. Even potential hints at Jagged Stone being the secret father of Luka and/or Juleka. Like. There is a LOT of romantic energy just bouncing all over this episode, and my fanfic-writing shipper-heart has no clue which direction to go in. I'm STILL trying to come to terms with what the heck it is I watched.

Most of the fandom seems focused on the 25,913 times thing. I won't say more than that because of spoilers, but, that's the main story people seem fixed on. I get it. I kinda want in as well. At the same time though, there's the whole Annika and Jagged Stone were former band mates - and perhaps more than? - route that I could follow. Or the "does Luka know?" route. Or the Lukadrien ship route. Or the "Luka deserves better than what Marinette is doing" route. Or I could write fluffy Lukanette fanfic to heal the hurt that episode caused. I mean, that seems to be the second-most focused on story idea post-Desperada.

Other fanfic story ideas I could run with includes the "Plagg feels abandoned" route. Again, I won't go into details for spoiler reasons. There's also the curiosity and point of view of Kagami. There's Desperada's perspective. There's the psychological damage that episode most likely caused. There's the potential after-math/PTSD from the episode. There's.... there's a lot. And I can't seem to zero in on one concept that I feel strongly enough to write about before I see another potential thought via tumblr posts. I just... I feel like this episode NEEDS something written about it, but I can't pin down what. That might be part of the reason I didn't write this weekend.

I DID kinda-sorta write this week still. Just... nothing fictional.

As I mentioned at the top of this post, my netbook is on its last legs. I've had the thing for probably about 10years now. Not bad for a dinky thing I got for $200 as a post-Christmas clean-out special at Best Buy. Sure, it did die on me a few years back, and I went roughly a year without it before my father-in-law was able to revive it, but that's still quite a long time to have any sort of computer. Let alone such a cheap one.

Say what you will about HP, but that HP Mini was well worth its price.... aside from the irony that a NETbook seemed to always have problems working on the interNET. Oh, irony....

For the main purpose I need the netbook, though - namely, to have something small I can easily slide in my purse, and have in order to work on my writing - it was splendid. It will be a sad day when I officially retire the poor thing. But retired it must soon be. The battery died a few years back - as one would expect with the amount of times I use the thing and how many years I've had it - and I had to buy a replacement. Then the charging cable wasn't working anymore and I had to replace THAT. Now, the actual charging port isn't working properly. I have to get the cable juuuuuuuuuuuust so in order for the netbook to recognize that it's plugged in. I feel like those old shows and cartoons where a character has to mess with the "rabbit ears" antenna for the TV, and ends up in a weird position they then have to hold for hours so the rest of the household can watch a football game or something. I mean, check this out.

I nearly taped the cable in place, because if any of it shifted even the slightest bit, the netbook no longer registered being plug in. Also, yes, part of the "magic" positioning IS having the netbook ajar like that.

I can't wait until I have the money to replace this thing, as sad as that day of replacement will be. The HP 11" Stream seems to be the descendant of my HP Mini. Anyone have any insight on this computer? Is the Stream good?  Or, at least decent for less than $200? I was also looking at Chrome books, but it looks like you can't put any actual programs on the thing, and so it's kind of useless offline. Does anyone know if the Stream is the same way? It looks like it runs normal Windows OS, so it should be functional offline, right?

Anyway, as you could imagine, it's kind of hard to actually work on my netbook when I have to charge it. So my ability to write while at my job has been limited. First World Problems, right?

Instead, I've killed time when work is slow by going through old emails via my phone. Mostly notifications of reviews on FFN or AO3. I truly do try to respond to all reviews/comments on my stories, but I had a backlog since July. I spent this week going through them, and I believe I responded to everyone. If I somehow missed your review/comment on any of my stories, please know that I did read it when you posted, and it made me smile. Thank you for reading.

Generated by Bitmoji

Feeling motivated after catching up on those reviews, I figured it was time to catch up on blogs I've neglected to read for MONTHS. One of which is Aliventures by Ali Luke. She was always so helpful with my writing before, but I just didn't have the energy to... learn... anything??? I guess? I still have to backtrack through the blog, but I DID read this week's update: What to Do When Your Writing Isn’t Working Out How You Hoped

As per usual, Ali manages to write a blog post that perfectly fits my writing crisis for the week. Thank you, Ali!

There are other blogs I've been ignoring, such as Rick Riordan's writer's update blog. However, the one I really wanted to focus on was catching up with Taurus Pixie via the Pixie's Chronicles and episode reviews she posts to her blog.

I was a machine the other day. I just tore through a month or so of updates, and my responses - especially to her episode reviews - tended to be so long that I needed two or even three comments to post everything I wrote. Now, the comments section for Blogger only allows about 4000 characters - not words; characters - per comment. So in the big scheme of things, none of my responses were THAT long... but... they were still LOOOOOONG within blog comment standards.

I managed to catch up on the August posts, and I think half... maybe most of?... her July posts. Only about 12 more to go through. And the Pixie's Chronicle and episode review she posted this weekend.

Tanuki Facebook sticker
by Yanare Ku

It's good. I got this. Pixie doesn't seem to mind that I sort of ghosted, so there's no rush or obligation to go through everything. Still, I want to. I enjoy knowing what's going on in her life. Also, her reviews of the ML episodes are a fun read. I just need to set aside more time to read things.

I also need to set aside time to write again. If I don't read my Bitterblue smut, I only have one thing left for me to read at group tonight: my Kyo and Tohru story. I mean, technically I could also read Painfully Close, but that story requires them knowing the episode "Puppeteer 2" and so I'd have to explain that. And the fanfics I read at group which are the most grounded in episode and canon specifics seem to get the least feedback. I think they're not sure WHAT to critique, especially since they don't know the episode(s) well enough to know what is the show's and what is mine.

So I don't think I'll ever read Painfully Close at group, and I don't know if I can PG Sparks for a Moment enough to read at group. Maybe? I mean the actual smut is only about 3 paragraphs out of the whole 3400-word story....

Point is, I'm running out of material to read at group, so I need to crack my whip. I need to see if I can finally get One and the Same situated. Which means more reading since I neglected my studies of 4-Act story structure vs 3-Act story structure. Maybe having a different breakdown of events will help. I think the big problem for me is that my 2nd act seems to be largely "MariChat bonding fluffiness" without any sort of drama. At least when I did a similar thing in Woven Heartstrings, the MariChat relationship didn't remain the core of the story. The idea of the Love Square having a good Christmas, Marinette not being awkward around Adrien, Chat Noir trying to find the balance of being able to gift something to Ladybug without potentially burdening her with his love, and Adrien's relationship with his father all were subplots that... wove together... to become the full story.

There was still drama there: what are the feelings Marinette is now feeling for Chat Noir? How will Adrien's Christmas be like with his father? What will everyone gift each other? How will Ladybug react to the scarf Chat Noir is crocheting her, and will she ever be able to wear it? Will there be an accidental reveal as Marinette wears the scarf Chat Noir made her? How will Adrien react to Marinette's gift? Will he have one for her? What is Marinette doing, talking with Chloe? There's not MUCH drama there. It's not a will-they-won't-they, or will-they-save-the-world, or will-Adrien-figure-out-his-father-is-the-supervillain level drama. Still, even with the much lower stakes, there still IS drama. There are still questions left for the readers; calling for them to come back for the next chapter.

For my current work-out of OatS, that isn't there. I need to figure that out. I need that act 2 drama so people aren't just getting fluffy chapters. Not that fanfic readers MIND getting those....

However, at least for my major projects, I'm trying to truly use fanfiction as training. I'm TRYING to write something as professionally as I can. I'm already going a bit non-traditional with my back-and-forth 1st person POV final chapter(s). I want to have the rest of the story structure be more traditional.

Here's hoping my Muse finally wakes up from her sunbathed summertime stupor and actually helps me figure this out. If anyone sees an ivy-covered minor-goddess around, direct her back to me, please?

Until next Tuesday.

Happy Anniversary! and "Leather & Lies" Release

This is going to be a short post this week, because today is my seven year anniversary with my best friend and love of my life.

I haven't really done much reading or writing wise this week anyway. I've been a bit burnt out, so I focused on other things. Mostly, I'm focusing on learning Japanese. So I downloaded the app Duolingo, and I've been a bit obsessed with this app ever since.

As of last night...

I've been averaging about 250XP per day.
My daily goal is 30XP.

I still have quite a ways to go. I'm probably the equivalent of a pre-schooler at best. Still, I'm loving this app and I just may learn a second language yet! I may even add in Spanish to shake off the rust on that and MAYBE become fluent in it finally, instead of only remembering enough for exams and then apparently instantly forgetting everything.


I've also let a couple of other scenes for "One and the Same" stew a bit in my head. I really should start writing them down though. At least to get a rough rough draft figured out.

Well, since I've slacked with writing this week, I guess I should at least use this blog to help promote someone who HAS written.

Namely, Celeste Straub. Her debut novel "Leather and Lies" is available TOMORROW!!!! Kind of a nice birthday gift, since her b'day was yesterday.

Have you pre-ordered your copy of "Leather and Lies" yet? You still have time!

You can snag your paperback pre-order on Barnes & Noble or Amazon.

If you prefer the ebook version, the above links work for that as well. You can also pre-order the e-book version on Smashwords, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play.

I can't wait until I get the email on Wednesday to tell me my paperback copy is shipping. One last "Way to go!" to Celeste Straub.

And while I'm still waiting for an update of when "Not So Imaginary" officially publishes, I do have another update on Ali Luke. After a bit of a hiatus, Ali has unveiled her updated look to her writing advice blog Aliventures. The place is so streamlined and shiny! She did a great job with the rework of the blog. Another cool thing? She decided to rework the prices on her products as well. So, most of her items have dropped three or four dollars in order to make the prices a bit more universal and easy to add the 35% discount for anyone who subscribed to her.

So go check out her new look, and see if there's any writing help you'd love to pick up with the new prices.

Alright, as pathetically small as this blog is this week, I'd rather be cuddling my Hubby right now. Sorry, folks.


Until next week!

It's Summer Challenge Time Again!

Well, I failed at my task to get a new book to read this past week. Which means I instead spent that time writing. So.... win?

After my post last week the day went very sideways, and so I didn't have the time I thought I would before Writing Group. In fact, I ended up running late, so I sprinted up to the room, and saw that it was already pretty filled. That was kind of exciting, to see the group blossom like this.

Anyway, it also meant that I didn't take the time before group to set up a library card finally, and then borrow the book I was intending. Since group goes until the library closes, I couldn't very well get everything sorted out after group. And, as it turns out, Tuesdays are the only days of the week the library is open longer than my new job, so unless I have another weekday off, Tuesdays are my only Library Days. So, care to guess what I'm going to squeeze in on my day off today?

As for Writing Group, I discovered that Keaton has been with the group since it started five years ago. I had a feeling she was a "charter member" as it were. I'm fairly certain at least DFL is too. It would make sense that the two of them feel most comfortable leading the group if that's true. Although, DFL has been leaning more towards leading the group than actually participating in it. It makes me concerned, and so I tried to encourage her to bring something to read next time. We'll see how that goes. But Keaton being with the group for five years means that she's also been working on her weird anthology concept of "these are all random writing prompts all about Buster Keaton, but there's no true connecting story" for about as long. I'm curious as to why she's stalling on calling the story complete, and either moving on or working on a different volume.

Doesn't matter. There were other people there. There was a new gentleman who didn't think to bring anything to read, so he just listened and commented. Works for us. He is in the same boat as me: likes about three different genres - including High Fantasy - but isn't sure which genre he wants to write in, and/or has no story concept to focus on. It will be interesting to see him grow; it might give me more of a direction myself.

Another "new" member - she was around years ago and finally decided to rejoin the group - was this timid older woman. She was adorable. Her writing was good. However, for some reason because she went with tribal names like Snowy Owl and Shining Moon, three of the people in the room thought she was talking about anthropomorphized animals, like wolves, and were thrown off when the characters turned out to be human. I didn't get that confusion. I just pictured the scene as two Inuits in the woods, so my only confusion was that this was supposed to be a post-apocalyptic story, and I was picturing it as before Alaska was invaded by Americans/Canadians/whomever. To each their own, I guess. If those three were confused, others could be too, and so I guess it was a good thing that she took note of the critique.

We had one last "new" member. Again, someone who had already been a member, but hasn't attended in about a year. She was a really spunky older woman. Her wiring must be different than everyone else, because she was coming up with questions no one else seemed to even imagine asking. They were both very good points, and very left-field points. Frankly, I would have ignored the left-field ones because they were so odd, but the good points were definitely ones to take to heart.

The one gentleman who had been reading us his spy novel - did I name him yet? For right now I'll go with his main character's name: Carson - continued on his story. We had a nice round table about it: critiques, praise, questions about the over-arching plot, etc.

A woman who started coming a few weeks back also read. She's writing personal essays, which are works of non-fiction written sort of similarly to an autobiography, but laser-focused on just one event. She already read about her walking the college track to help her get over her painful divorce. Last week she read about the loss of an old colleague, and how that put her own career goals into focus. Since her theme unintentionally, but beautifully done, is "journeys" or "moving forward" I think I'm calling her Traveler.

We had another round table with Traveler, and the Left-Field woman came up with her many questions. One was that she wanted to know more about the colleague's goals, and how they were parallel to Traveler's. I personally figured it was unneeded information; that it was implied enough that it didn't need to be stated, but maybe other readers do need it spelled out a bit more.

Red - who hasn't been dying her hair, so it's not so red; gonna need to rethink her name - has been in a writing funk, and so we discussed ways to get her back into the rhythm of things. I suggested Ali Luke's concept of starting with just 15 minutes a day. That seemed to really inspire her. "Oh, I can do that. I can take 15 minutes." Thank you, Ali, for inspiring yet another writer! We also suggested that maybe she needed to just work on random writing prompts for the time being; to give her mind a rest from her grim murder/decent-into-insanity drama. She seemed to respond to that idea too. So, we'll see if that means she'll bring something new in next week.

Last up was Sandy. Like all the other published authors I talk about here, no nickname for her to protect her privacy. How am I supposed to promote her and her book once I'm done reading it if I'm using a nickname for her? Anyway, she read a bit more of her draft of her book's sequel. It was more of an establishing scene to introduce all the characters. For me it was a bit lackluster because it was everyone gathering for a barbecue, plus it was confusing because you have David - the main character - Danny, I think - I can't recall, honestly - and his wife Dee. There were just too many D-Names being thrown at me, and I was having a hard time keeping straight who was doing or saying what, because none of them have distinctly different characterists/voices yet. At least, not displayed in that little segment. We'll have to see how she tweaks it, or if she even can. For all I know all these D-Names were already introduced in the first story.

Snuggled about half-way through everyone else was me. I read off "The Fallen Guardian Angel" to everyone. As per usual, most seemed to really enjoy it, with virtually no critiques. The most round table discussion we had was me informing people what fanfiction was, and giving a quick synopsis of "Xenocide" so everyone knew the events surrounding the story I read. I didn't think to explain the Jane character though, and that might have resulted in the only critique I received. Carson felt that Novinha's arguments were so raw and passionate, that you sided with her easily. Comparatively, he felt that Ender's arguments seemed hallow and non-genuine. This is FAR from the truth. While no one else at the table either countered or echoed Carson's critique, it is still one of the few I've ever received. So I wanted to take it to heart as much as possible.

Could I have written Ender completely out of character? Did I make him too meek while fighting back with Novinha? What made his arguments seem hallow? Was it the comments about him already hurting Novinha because of Jane? While not terribly too off, did Carson believe that Ender had an affair with Jane, and therefore his profession of love to Novinha seemed untrue? I didn't stop to think to ask Carson WHY he felt that way, I just nodded and jotted the critique down to think about. And now I'm not sure where I went wrong. It's possible he's the only one who felt that way. It's possible I wrote Ender completely wrong. It's possible that Ender's counterarguments only seem false because Carson doesn't understand who Jane is.

Point being, if any of my readers felt the same way about my latest one-shot, please respond either below or in the comments of the story itself to give me an idea of where I went wrong. Thank you.

Anyway, so that was last week's Writing Group. As I mentioned, life got chaotic, and I didn't have time to grab the book for this week. So, I ended up bringing my netbook to work in order to at least write during the painfully slow times.

I decided to take another crack at "Glitches." For those who may have missed it last week, I had decided to just go with "Glitches" as my working title for my X-Future Reboot story. I'll work out later if that title is already being used, and/or if it's catchy enough to draw people in for a first read.

Anyway, I converted my comic script into a movie one. Not a very good movie one, though, because it includes very few shots or transition marks. It's written more like a stage play, I guess, but it's too complicated to be able to perform on stage. Eh, either way, it's part prose narrative, part script. I figured it was the easiest way to read it aloud to the Writing Group without them being overly confused; hopefully. So it's not written as a proper script, so what? It's not supposed to be a screenplay anyway. I figured, write it out as this weird novel-script hybrid, and then once everything is figured out and talked through in the Writing Group, I can properly convert it back into a comic script.

I just need to figure out where the heck to post it so I can share it with you guys. I don't know if I want to share the WIP though, that's the thing. So, I may just talk about my progress more here, instead of actually sharing something from it each week.

To really try to get my butt in gear about this whole thing, I looked towards Writers’ Huddle. I disappear. I come back. I disappear again. Well, Ali is again starting up the Summer Writing Challenge, and it began yesterday. Seems like a great time for my Grand Return yet again.

As per usual, I have no clue what I want to do for the challenge since I have no direction or focus like everyone else seems to have. So, I decided - for the time being - to go full throttle with "Glitches." I'm aiming to write three more pages for my weird prose-script hybrid thing each day. That way I'll always have something new to read from it for Writing Group each other week.

Granted, I couldn't read ALL that I had if I keep with the 3-a-day pace since that's 42 pages each meeting. The general rule of thumb is that each page of script is about a minute of screen time. That's not even including the time it takes to read the action going on. No way. Too much to read each meeting. I'd take up at least half the time! Still, it would mean I'd have a LOT of "backlogged" writing to read after the challenge concludes and I go back to being a bum about this whole writing thing, or I switch gears. Whichever.

Plus, I'll probably chump out on my days off in favor of cleaning, watching TV, and/or playing video games. PLUS, Spink has her wedding at the end of July, and so I'll probably get a bit overwhelmed with helping her finish organizing that. PLUS, I still have that reading challenge too. So, maybe I should drop that down to two pages a day so I can easily pick up the slack from my days off....

Anyway, that's my game plan for this week: get my July Book from the library to start reading, work on some semblance of a plot outline for "Glitches," and write 3 pages per day for the "script." It may not be something I can then post to share with you to read, but I can still talk about my progress, right?

Daily Timelines, D&D, and World Building. WHOO!

Well, here I am again! Blog post number three this year already! It may seem a bit much, but I did comment that I had a lot to say after feeling like I missed the last week of December. True, I did post on like the 28th or something, but that was to try to catch up with the week before. To me, I missed a week, and now I caught up with it. Plus, even if this is only technically the second week in 2016, it never hurts to have a head start on that 52 post count. If I slack somewhere later, I'll be covered!

Now, with two blog posts this week so close to each other, I'm sure you're probably thinking that I'm back on the ball with this writing stuff. Eh, you may be right, but at the same time, yesterday was yet another Zero Day for me. I got up, patched up some work pants, went in to work at 9, back out a little after 5, did some quick shopping, had dinner, and then it was off to FINALLY go see "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." I then spent the rest of the night reading through every fantheory, review, and meme that I had been avoiding for hope of dodging spoilers.

Actually, now that I wrote that last paragraph like that - vague play-by-play of how I spent my day - I want to quickly check in on my "read in one day" book. Ali Luke had sent me an advanced copy of her super short e-book "Time to Write", an updated version of her earlier e-book "How to Find Time For Your Writing." It's only about 15 pages long, and kept me less than an hour to read - with me pausing to think about what she was proposing, as well as analyzing the book as a beta reader. Best part? It's a free e-book for anyone who signs up for her blog's newsletter; a helpful email once a week with informative tidbits on writing.

She still has to do a quick touch-up polishing and get a proper cover finished, but otherwise the book is done and will be ready for her newletter recipients soon. I highly recommend it to any writer who is having difficulty either finding time to write, struggling to make writing a priority, or even trying to shut that inner critic up long enough TO write. She has quick 2-page chapters about different reasons why people may struggle with sitting down and writing, as well as a simple exercise to try. When I say simple, I mean it. One exercise is to find 15minutes a day - that's it, you can even use your work breaks or lunches - three times a week. Write during those 15minutes. Then there's another challenge to change up your writing location: find a new one, or get noise-cancelling headphones, or find music to get you in the writing mood/drown out everyone else around you, or use an exercise ball as your chair, etc.

One challenge - which is what lead me to talk about this in the first place - is to jot down the timeline of an average day - or few, if the schedules are drastically different - in order to see where you spend your time, and if you could maybe cut in some writing. Sometimes, you don't realize you have the writing time - even those 15minutes - until you see it on paper.

Here's the example she gave in her book:

Here’s roughly how Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays currently looks for me:

• 5.45am – get up, shower, dressed, breakfast
• 6.30am – get kids up, changed, dressed, breakfasted, ready to go out. Drop Kitty at pre-school and pop to the shops with Nick. Play with Nick for a bit.
• 10am – Kids’ nanny arrives and I head upstairs to work. Brief lunch break around noon.
• 1.25pm – head down to take over from the nanny. Play with kids, normally take them out somewhere, then come home to prepare tea around 4.15pm.
• 4.45pm – teatime
• 5.15pm – Paul takes over on the kids and I have fiction writing time! :D
• 5.45pm – run kids’ bath, pop away any laundry
• 6pm – bathtime, stories, bedtime
• 7pm – cook dinner, eat dinner, and watch a bit of TV or chat to Paul
• 8.30pm – housework and mindless web surfing
• 9.30pm / 10pm – bed

... Pre-kids, my routine looked something like this:

• 7.30am – get up, breakfast, mindless web surfing
• 9am – work, with maybe a trip out to get groceries mid-morning
• 1pm – lunch break with Paul, maybe watching TV
• 2pm – work
• 6pm ish – Dinner (Paul cooked) :D
• 7pm – shower, washing up, TV, board games
• 10pm – mindless web surfing
• 11pm – bed

I have to admit that her pre-kids routine does look very familiar to me. So, I'm going to try to see if maybe I can make my life a bit more structured without kids forcing me to do so. I'll most likely fail miserably, but I can give it a shot.

Right now my schedule is:

• 6:30a - alarm goes off and I hit snooze a million times while snuggling the husband
• 7a - Finally work my way out of bed, groom, and grab a quick breakfast while checking in on Facebook
• 8a - Work
• 2p - This varies from day to day, but the average is that I leave work by 2, possibly get some shopping in, head home, grab lunch
• 4p - Definitely home except for extremely rare days. Usually plopped in the living room with Hubby; Netflix and snuggling while checking in on FB some more.
• 6p - Stomach starts growling; ignore it for another 1/2hr or so, finally cave and grab dinner; I'm generally distracting myself with more Facebook or DeviantArt.
• 7p - Get one or two episodes of CSI:NY in - thanks to Netflix - while having dinner
• 8p - Primetime shows or football. If neither are on/new, it's more Netflix & Snuggle
• 11p - I go "shoot! It's late!" and head to bed
• 11:45p - ACTUALLY make it to bed

As you can see, writing is no longer a general part of my scheduled day. Used to be all those "Netflix and Snuggle" parts - which seems to make up at least half my day - were still productive because I was crocheting gifts. Now that Christmas is over, I need to wean myself back off of the TV and get back to being productive.

For starters, I need to get back to having 4p-5p being my daily writing hour - with the rare exceptions for days like yesterday where I was at work until after 5p. For the most part, 4p-5p is just a time-void where I'm mindlessly watching TV while catching up on Facebook. It's generally after I'm home and able to have some unwind time, but before people would come over or our Primetime shows/football would start - Sunday excluded. Plus, it has a nice hour-long buffer before my bi-weekly writing group meeting, so that I can still make it to the meeting on time without cutting the session short, and I can have the session run a little long without being late to the meeting.

I've also started using the time while I'm home and Hubby's at work; such as now while I'm writing this post, actually. The house is quiet, and I don't have distractions. I do feel a bit unproductive still because I could also use this rare alone time to clean, work on finances, search for a better job, or even exercise. Heck! I could use this equally rare time where I have control of the TV and game systems to start up a game; I haven't played something myself in MONTHS, excluding my handheld games.

Nope. I'm using it for writing. I partially feel bad about it, but it's priority fixing. I can work on finances and job searching and cleaning with Hubby home. I can fight the siren's call of the TV while working on those chores. My writing, however? Even with headphones in, the gleam of the TV calls to me. I have to not have the TV on at all in order to write, and Hubby needs it on as background noise at the very least. We need to work on having a radio or something that we can have on as background noise instead....

Anyway, if Hubby's home, then I have to hide away somewhere. Not a bad option, but that either leaves me with sitting on the floor in the library, or snuggled in bed... which tends to lead to me falling asleep while writing lately.

So, writing while Hubby's at work - at least for an hour or so - and then hiding myself away between 4p and 5p. Seems like good options, we'll see how sternly I stick to them this time. The "Writing Hour" thing did work for a little while. Once Hubby knows the routine he usually shoos me away to make sure I stick with it.

There's still all that extra time though. Again, I really need to have us cut back on all the endless Netflix & Snuggle dates, and be more active/productive. More structured. As I mentioned in my earlier post this week, humans are actually fairly simple, and sometimes you need to revert back to how things were when you were a toddler. And toddlers need structure. They need to know what activity is next, when it will be, that it will be the same pattern daily, and that there's little to no "free time" where boredom or mischief can set in.

Even as adults we need that. Sure, it's out of necessity, but think about your friends, family, or even yourself after becoming a parent. Life HAD to become more structured, and with that, the new parent is surprisingly a lot more productive.

Structure leads to happier, healthier, and more productive lives. Now, to get Hubby on board so he doesn't unintentionally disrupt my new call to order by beckoning me to the couch to snuggle for seven hours straight.

But enough of that! I have been moderately productive with creative stuff, and I had every intention of talking about THAT today.

I'm becoming a Dungeon Master, or DM.

Two of my co-workers, who are planning on joining the X-Future game, are in a small D&D playgroup. The one co-worker asked Hubby to help him design a dungeon labyrinth. Hubby did, and the month it took to build it and come up with the traps in it, and all the discussions the three of us have had on the dungeon has really REALLY brought up my craving to play some D&D myself.

Sprinkle in that Hubby's been playing Skyrim, with is basically D&D the Video Game. The call for me to play this game is strong, and yet I'm sitting in Limbo with it.

For one game, a friend of a friend is supposed to DM, but life got crazy and he hasn't even thought of the campaign yet. All we have are the basic structures of the characters we built for a game that may never happen. Another game had Spink and her fiance asking Hubby to run it. He's still trying to figure out what he wants to do for that game. Then there's Hubby's Game of Thrones inspired game that he started over a year ago, and hasn't really done much with; no inspiration. Finally, there's the game that was sort of impromptu when we went to Mouse and Bear's house one day, but with our car out of commission, who knows when we'll be able to get to their new place and have the campaign continue on.

FOUR. Four games that I COULD be playing, but I am not. I lamented this. Then people suggested that if I wanted to play so badly, why not run a game myself? I have willing players that are waiting for a DM too. I'm a bit hesitant due to my inexperience with the game, but with Hubby as my co-pilot, my gift for storytelling, and four players just as inexperienced with the game as I am, it might work. I just have to remember to start simple and then work up to the heavily complex world that I've been drafting in my head.

Namely, Gyateara. True, I've been building it as a grand setting for multiple High Fantasy novels, but it was always about creating a new D&D realm as well. I want to be able to work my way up to the point that Skyrim and other Open World games are. You are the main character, but in the grand scheme of the world, you're not really important; at least, not at first. Wars are fought around you without you impacting them much one way or another. Raids happen that aren't meant to be random encounters, you may not even get there in time for it to be an encounter at all. Towns are ransacked before you can return to them. NPCs retire to a safer location before you get all the information out of them that you could have. The fortune-telling beggar ends up simply dying of hypothermia before your quest is done. The world keeps spinning with or without you. I LOVE this aspect of the Elder Scrolls games, and I am dying to be a skilled enough DM to be able to run a campaign setting like that one day.

For now though, I have to keep it small and simple as we all learn together. Which means that along with Ali's book, and making my way through "The Throne of Fire", I have also been setting aside some time to read the Dungeon Master's Guide cover to cover - although it specifically states that it's a reference book and isn't expected to be read as such - in order to learn how to do this task.

It's a great way to get my mind going again. Brewing up some plots and story ideas. Get the creative juices flowing. A lot of writers and Hollywood Big Wigs actually used to play D&D for this exact reason. Even if you don't self-identify as a geek or nerd, I do suggest finding a playgroup and joining in on at least a few sessions if you feel stuck. It's a great way to shake off some rust and have you think creatively while on your toes.

I even finished off 2015 with finally creating a map of Gyateara. It's a preliminary one and I already have some notes on how I want to alter it, but it's a start. Sadly, even after avoiding drawing a world map for years out of fear of just recreating Earth, I somehow still managed to do just that. Stupid subconscious having me create something familiar to me.

Anyway, here's the first map of Gyateara, remember, it will change, but I'm not sure by how much:

Please excuse the folds in the map....

I don't have any of these continents named, and I only have the pantheon structure figured out for about 5 of them, and so that's part of the issue that I need to work out. I have been having some fun with it though.

The equivalent to Europe will have a Greco-Roman pantheon; much like the original pantheon designed for D&D. The island grouping along the top of the page is made up of a pantheon of four goddesses, maybe one or two minor gods as well, and is structured pretty much identically to that of the Legend of Zelda games. It's also an off-shoot of the Greco-Roman pantheon.

I was wondering if the basic structure of Norse mythology is unique enough for a pantheon stylized off of it to be at all different from a Greco-Roman one, or even a war-driven one such as the Aztecs. So, I'm still debating having one of the continent pantheons be stylized Norse.

There will be an Asian-inspired continent with 12 gods, much like the Chinese zodiac. I was also debating having Japanese culture - since it is so distinct and even separate from the rest of Asia - as its own pantheon. I'd focus on the yokai, or even one centralized god - Budda-equivalent - with the yokai as his servants that helped him in the Divine War and in building his continent.

One of the smaller continents will have a pantheon inspired by the Native American beliefs and lore. One of the other island groupings will possibly be an off-shoot using other native beliefs such as the Mayans, Incas, Aztecs, Inuits, and Native Hawaiians. Since these beliefs can be drastically different from each other - Aztecs and Mayans, for one - I may reserve these smaller, more centralized beliefs for the different island groupings in order to have enough pantheon diversities for all of the continents.

The Africa-inspired continent will have a combination of an Egyptian-stylized pantheon, as well as one focused more on the tribal beliefs of the jungle sections of Africa. Namely, a pantheon made of people with animal features and a structured hierarchy. Then there will be one focused on anthropomorphed animals such as Anansi the Spider.

I'm thinking that continent in the center that looks like Africa and has a second continent attached to it might work. The one side will be "Egyptian" inspired, where the gods are all half-animal people, and the other side will be "tribal" inspired, and the gods will all be humanoid animals. The gods will create beings in their image; tweaking the agreed upon human structure that is seen across the entire globe.

The "Egyptian" gods will create creatures such as centaurs, lamia, merfolk, harpies, D&D Driders - also known as an Arachne, and to a lesser extent - mainly because they're so important to Egyptian lore - the sphinx. Whereas the "Tribal" gods will create creatures such as kobolds, gnolls, kuo-toa, catfolk - in all their variety - and minotaurs, which I define as humanoid bulls instead of half-bull half-human. Although, I guess you can make the same argument for harpies... maybe it's because minotaurs have the animal head and harpies have a human one?

Like I said, I've been having fun with this.

So, I guess I'll have to see what other inspiration learning how to DM and watching Hubby play Skyrim will bring. I'll be sure to keep you posted.


**EDITING NOTE: Soooo, um, it was brought to my attention that the term "Netflix and Chill" is not as innocent as I had thought.... I have since gone back and changed all of them to the "Netflix and Snuggle" that Hubby and I actually do...**

Great New Advice Site, But Don't Fear Ignoring Harmful Advice

20,000 hits! Well, OVER 20,000. Still don't know how many READS that translates to, but it's still awesome that people have at least found my blog about 20,000 times.

Roughly 20,000 times people have come to read how I've been doing with my writing. Come to read my struggles and how I overcame them. Come to see my growth. Come for my encouragement. Come for my insight. And that insight is what I'll be presenting today.

See, I once again failed to really put anything to paper this week. I've been sore from my wrist injury a few weeks back. I've been sore from exercising a bit harder than I should have; mostly due to excitement over nice weather FINALLY being here coupled with guilt over not really exercising over the LOOOOONG winter months. I've been exhausted with a full work week; a TRYING work week where - I must admit - I've nearly quit about nine different times; six of which were from the same day. I've been exhausted because - for one reason or another - I haven't been able to get to bed before 1am three nights in a row.

While I did have a social high point in being able to hang out with Ronoxym, Cyhyr, and another couple that I met at the beginning of the year: Mouse and Bear, the rest of the week was a stupid waste. Aside from having a pretty decent "cleaning day" yesterday, my production level was about 5%. I wrote last week's blog post, I made minor advancements on the X-Future board, and I did some more naming research last night. Whoooo....

Okay, enough complaining. How does any of this relate to the supposed "insightful post" I was going to share with you? Give me a couple minutes. I'm getting there, I swear.

On Thursday I read Ali Luke's grand return to blogging after being on maternity leave: There’s Never Enough Time to Write: Here’s Why.

While she was giving her own great advice on the subject she shared a link to the blog Productive Flourishing. A fantastic blog that tends to lean towards writing advice - since it is written by a writer; doi - but is presented that the advice can be used for nearly EVERYTHING. All-in-all, another great blog that I strongly recommend adding to your reading list.

The post Ali linked to was about The Two Hour Rule as a way to push through projects. Sadly, every time I've attempted this during this week I've passed out....

Well, while I was reading Charlie's insight about breaking projects down in to 2hr portions, I ended up getting lost in some of his links. Much like Cracked.com, Charlie tends to write one post with about seven others in mind, and links to them as he references them in passing. Which means, much like with Cracked.com, I bring up about three more pages every time I read one. Getting me lost for hours... Ironically, Charlie has a post precisely advising AGAINST such tactics: Use the Two-Tab Rule to Stay Focused

Point is, I found about three more articles on Thursday that I shared with my Struggling Writers Society group. The first is something I'm guilty of, as is Ron - although, I don't know how helpful Charlie's advice is for someone with ADHD...
Stop Shuffling and Start Creating

Sure, shuffling helps me out with at least the ILLUSION of being productive all the time - "Don't have ideas for X-Future? How about I think about my High Fantasy story? No? My Hey Arnold fanfic? Or maybe adapt more of the X-Future board to prose?" - but it DOES result in me having SIX open projects and nothing getting completed.

Then there's Charlie's concept of the Idea Garden. Now, ChibiSunnie and I call ours Plot Bunny Farms, but I like Charlie's more generic term for the same concept being used outside plotting out fiction.

The final article I shared with everyone is where my own insight comes in; sorry for the slow crawl to this: Stop Lying and Start Creating

This article had me actually sobbing a little bit. Mostly because of how true it is: I do "overly research" as a way to "pretend" I'm productive. Just check everything I've written so far about this week to see my point. I mean, right now I'm talking about all the information I gathered by reading other people's blogs. I'm probably a master at the "excuses for not writing" department:

• I'm so far behind on my latest crocheting project
• This house is a disaster
• I'm learning how to improve via blog posts
• I can't seem to get in a comfortable/creative spot with my laptop the way it is
• My job is just too mind-numbing; I can't think of anything right now
• It kept forever to go through my Facebook notifications first
• I'm exhausted and passed out instead
• I should be exercising instead
• My computer lags so hard core!!!!
• etc, etc, etc

So, why do we do it? Why have the above list of excuses? Why spend six hours avoiding something, instead of just spending two hours doing?

Well, last fall I wrote responses to two different articles commenting about their thoughts on why writers might "Meta-do", as Charlie put it.
Procrastinate to Avoid Fear
Monkeys, Monsters, and Playgrounds

In short, the articles call out the battle of Pleasure Vs Fear of Failure. Truthfully, I consider myself one of the lucky ones. My main procrastination flaws due to fear are that I'm a "meta-doer" and that I favor Instant Gratification too much. I know some people that have slipped so far that they have stopped writing all together, all because of Fear of Failure. Sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy: they fear failing, and so they never push to succeed.

And that's the true tragedy. All the insight and helpful blog posts can't help with that. In fact, in some cases it might cripple people even more. As Charlie pointed out in "Stop Lying..." the more we research the more we might get scared that we're not on par with our peers. Adding to the fear. Adding to our self-doubt.

This week a friend of mine posted as a status: "It's kind of hard to be a writer when you haven't written anything in years."

Granted, this could have been a vague rant about a beloved author taking FOREVER to get the next book out, but I took it at face value: self doubt over one's authenticity as a writer.

I remember that moment. Heck, I've had that break down a few times throughout the course of this blog's lifetime. The major one, however, was when I believed my creative writing professor when he told me in college that I wasn't going to cut it. I went the next six years without writing anything recreationally. It was a dark time, but one I crawled out of.

So, stop doubting yourself. If researching is causing you to put-off the actual creative process - like I tend to do - then stop! If researching makes you fear that you're on a much lower level than the rest of your peers - again, a situation I find myself in, especially when I discover people have hit milestones while younger than me - then stop! If reading other people's works becomes intimidating instead of inspiring, then stop! If forcing yourself to create ends up enraging you more because it's too much of a struggle, then stop! If the advice you receive adds to the void because you don't think it can apply to you, then ignore it!

You need to find your own way, no matter how well-intentioned everything else around you may be. Sometimes you have to sink in to the non-writing abyss and turn off your brain to the creative until you're in a better spot in your life. Ignore that "you're wasting your talent" or that "maybe you're not meant for this creative career" or that "you'll never improve".

Those are more roadblocks that either you or well-intentioned friends/family are putting in front of you. True, you won't improve if you let your talent grow dust and rust. I know that first-hand in regards to my production training. However, don't let that worry or fear bog you down any further. Once you're out of your slump - however long it lasts - you'll work on your craft because it's your PASSION again, and you'll start improving THEN. Don't force it NOW if it brings you more anguish than joy.

I think the bit of advice I read the most in regards to concurring procrastination is basically: "If it's important to you, you'll find time for it." While it is sage advice, I feel it's also the most hurtful advice out there. Does that mean parents who have to work 16hrs a day to make ends meet don't think their children are important? If they did, they'd find the time for them. Does that mean someone who is working full time AND trying to earn a degree no longer finds friendship important? Because if it still was then the working student would find time for friends too.

Granted, those were EXTREME examples, but it works on a more minor scale. Is my health not important to me since I don't find the time to work-out as much as I should to get to a better state of wellness? Or because I don't find the time to cook healthier meals?

Or... is writing not important because I'm not putting enough effort in to finding the time to work on it? I didn't do anything terribly productive writing-wise in May.

At its core, "if it's important, you'll find time" is indeed good advice. I'm sure spending three hours a day on Facebook or watching TV isn't more important to me than writing. I'm sure if I took the advice the way it was intended I would re-prioritize and - SURPRISE - find time to write because it's important to me.

Still, if you're already in an "Am I Really A Writer?" mindset, having someone call you out about it not being at the top of your to-do list can really sting. Instead of the intention of "rework your priorities" it sounds more like verification that what you thought was important actually isn't, otherwise you'd be doing it already.

So, keep this in mind while you scour the rest of the internet for advice on how to pick yourself up by the bootstraps.

Not all advice is for all people. Everything is circumstantial and context is largely in the mindset of the receiver. The best we - the advice givers - can do is go as generic as possible and hope to hit home. However, if advice EVER makes you feel worse about yourself, just ignore it and find something else.

For instance, at the top of this post I commented that the article about shuffling may not be as helpful to Ron as I would hope, simply because with his ADHD he might not be able to help but shuffle projects. Maybe creating an Idea Garden or Plot Bunny Farm isn't enough to help him focus. Perhaps reading the article that makes something so difficult for him sound so simple ends up upsetting him; and anger him that he can't control the ADHD. If that's the case, then he needs to ignore the advice I handed him and instead figure out what DOES work for him, and then stick with that.

Obviously, with all things, the "ignore what doesn't fit" advice should be used in moderation. You're not going to magically master something overnight. Some things you just may never be good at, no matter what. Sometimes the hard truths of reality are exactly what you need to hear, so don't ignore EVERYTHING just because it's hard to hear/read. Same goes for allowing a "creative slump." If you're there simply because "practicing is too hard" then you need to push through. Everyone is crappy at first, but you WILL improve with practice. It may not be easy to spot day-to-day, but go ahead and check out what you made a few months ago; a year ago; a few years ago. See the progress you've made then?

Anyway, I'll trust you guys can use your judgment to figure out which advice is "hard to swallow, but needed" and which is "harmful and should be ignored." I'll also trust that you guys will know when you're "avoiding practice" and when you "need to step away from your talent for a while."

Just know that I do have faith in you and your creative dreams. Push through, look for encouragement, but don't fret if you have to put it on the back-burner for years on end. You are still that creative, and you'll enjoy it all the more once it's a passion again. 

The Ins and Outs of Creating Gods

Well, here we are on our first OFFICIAL Wednesday update day. Hello, everyone!

I am currently writing this on my new "elevated" bed. In other words: Hubby and I finally have a bed frame and box spring. YAY! Look at us being adults and no longer sleeping on a mattress on the floor! *Ahem* Anyway....

I did mostly researching this week, and so I don't really have much to show to you guys. I'm hoping to change that soonish. My big thing was to use that digital copy of Demigods and Deities I found last week. It has certainly helped a little. I now have a better understanding of roughly how many gods need to be in my pantheons. I also recently hit a realization that should help me better structure them too.

The book suggests breaking down the most basic character classes available in the Player's Handbook. For those not real big on D&D and other such fantasy games, the basic classes are things such as "Fighter" or "Monk" or "Bard" or "Cleric." You get the gist. Well, the book suggests breaking those classes down in to more generic branches such as "Martial Arts" or "Magic Users" and then come up with roughly three deities that would be able to cover the full spectrum of character alignments for each grouping.

Again, if you're unfamiliar with the term "alignment" it's very simple. Every character in the D&D world is somewhere on a nine-point scale between Good and Evil as well as Lawful and Chaotic. Lawful Good people are like your police force. They defend the people, defeat evil that threatens innocents, and follows a strict code. The exact flipside would be Chaotic Evil which are like demonic anarchists. They want nothing else but unorganized pain and torture of every living being. The more innocent, the better. Then you have seven other alignments in between: Lawful Neutral, Lawful Evil, Neutral Good, True Neutral, Neutral Evil, Chaotic Good, and Chaotic Neutral.

Alright, now back to pantheon creation. So, the basic trick is to have three gods with different enough alignments that there is at least one god that a character can pray to given their alignment. For instance, if you have a Lawful Good deity he can be the patron to Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral, and Neutral Good characters. The only restrictions is that the god should have at least ONE element on the scale that is the same as the character - which is why Lawful Neutral and Neutral Good can pray to him as well - and that no part of the alignment opposes the characters. This is why no Chaotic characters would pray to him - it's in opposition with the Lawful side of the god - as well as no Evil characters who would have a problem with the god being Good.

So I have my break-down. Essentially it's just easy to have nine gods - one for each alignment category - and then double or triple up somewhere in order to have a god that fits that particular fighting style. For instance, just having one Lawful Good god for both magic-use and melee seems a bit odd. The god would have a fighting preference, and so he should favor one class type over another; creating the need for at least one more deity within that alignment.

It's also suggested to sprinkle in some deities that are patrons to specific races: halflings, elves, dwarves, gnomes, orcs, and possibly some patrons to the monsters the adventurers will come up against.

So now I have my ranks by way of alignment, class, and race break-down. How do I fill them, though? I feel weird just arbitrarily naming by way of "This Chaotic Good god will be named Rothbar; moving on." I fear missing something and not having the pantheons feel real, which is weird because the likelihood of my readers ever knowing of their existence is slim. But world building is world building, I need to know all because I don't know how it will affect something.

Well, next up on the "creating gods" docket was to make sure the gods all had control of the main 22 Cleric Domains. If you didn't have 22 gods, it was fine as long as they doubled up. For instance, there are only 19 deities in D&D. What is so important about these Domains? Why were they called Cleric Domains? Why 22 of them? Well, the simple answer there is that the 22 Cleric Domains are the different concentrations clerics could take based on the god she followed; hence Cleric Domains. They're so important because if you are replacing D&D's pantheon with your own and not all 22 Domains are covered by your custom gods then a cleric can't choose that path, and the spells specific to that Domain are lost to your campaign. Finally, I believe 22 was an arbitrary number. The creators of D&D did the basic list that included such things as the four elements, good, evil, law, chaos, life, death, etc. They needed at least one domain for each god. Plus, as I said before, some gods had multiple Domains. Obad-Hai, for instance, is the god of nature and so he was obviously in charge of the four elements.

Alright, so I have at least nine gods that should include the 22 Domains. Not crucial to storytelling, but imperative if I want to use Gyateara as a basis for any D&D campaigns I run; which was the whole reason I started creating it in the first place. The easiest way to organize it would be to group like-domains together and hand them to one god. As I mentioned, Obad-Hai is god of nature and so he can cover four domains just by grouping the elements together.

Now that I know what I need in my pantheon, I now need to figure out who these gods are. My biggest thing was getting all nine alignment options. I had this world set up as "pantheons were gods that allied together during the Divine War." So, why would a Chaotic Good god ally herself with a Lawful Evil one?

I could go down the traditional route by way of Greco-Roman or Norse mythology: they are one huge family either by blood or marriage. I didn't want all of my pantheons - I'm planning on having at least four - to become essentially "Four Major God Families Fighting For Control" in terms of the Divine War. I needed another reason for opposing alignments to work together.

I then had my epiphany: Gods are just divine D&D parties. You have your warrior, cleric, magic-user, and rogue. You have differing alignments. You have some overall goal: a quest, if you will. It works. I'd like to thank the webcomic Order of the Stick for that insight.

The comic's creator Richard Burlew periodically sprinkles in reminders that while the party leader Roy is Lawful Good, his longest traveling companion Belkar is clearly Chaotic Evil. Why do these drastically opposing alignments join forces? For one, Belkar is willing to do whatever needs to be done to complete their quest and/or save their hides; things that a Lawful Good character would never fathom of doing. Therefore, Belkar gets to fulfill his bloodlust and Roy gets out of tough scrapes without having to compromise much. Roy understands that the party as a whole is better having someone being his foil. Belkar, on the other hand, couldn't care less as long as he gets to kill - which he does; frequently. Another reason for this pairing? Teaming up with Belkar is the lesser of two evils. It is better to have him as an ally - and possibly curb his destruction - then it is to oppose him and/or let his bloodlust run free and wild.

Burlew went so far as to demonstrate this point in one of his comics. ***Spoiler warning for 444-strips in.***

I'm pretty sure I'll be using a similar tactic. Sure, I'll most likely have family alliances in at least one pantheon, but I think I'm just going to look at my deities as if they were D&D characters instead. Make them mortal first, if you will. If they were an adventuring party that brought in more allies, how would that structure play out? Would there be love interests? Family? Rivals? How was the opposing alignment recruited? Why? Now that the Divine War is over will these opposing alignments and rivals now feud? I'd be alright with that. Every pantheon - including Christianity's - has at least two warring divine powers. Thor vs. Loki. Osiris vs. Set. God vs. Satan. Nearly everyone in the Greco-Roman pantheon was battling against someone else within their ranks. I'm sure if I went in to Aztec or Mayan or Native American religion I'd find at least one god who battled against another. Even in the D&D pantheon there are a few gods that don't play well together.

So anyway, that's my newest weekly goal. I am going to forget that they are supposed to be deities for a week and just come up with characters like I normally would. I have guidelines to help me form the "right" characters, but all I need to concentrate on is building a campaigning party.

Speaking of weekly writing goals, still nothing with the local writing group I started. Omnibladestrike has once again hit the "self-doubt" wall that has crippled him. So his task is to learn how to keep that inner critic in check so he can get back to writing. Even with the mantra of "Dare to be bad" when it comes to his first draft, he can't shut that stupid critic up. Cyhyr has seen my quandaries as to what the group is doing since we've become dormant, but she hasn't responded to anything I've posted. So I'm not sure what's up with her right now. Ronoxym has gone full radio-silence. I haven't seen him even online since we had our Skype session last month.

I know that Ron and Cyhyr have a convention coming up that they're going to with The Bard. It's a weekend-long LARPing session where they will be in-character pretty much the entire time. I know they were working hard on getting their characters ready for that, so maybe that's where they disappeared to.

That being said, I fear that my venture in to running a local writing group crashed and burned fairly quickly. Sad, really, I thought maybe we had something the four of us could be really excited about. We'll see if I can revive the group. I'll keep you posted.

The real thing that's been killing me though about this silence between the four of us is the fact that Ron seems to have vanished from the internet this month. The forum is pretty much dead because he hasn't been on to role-play. I have no clue how his latest venture in writing has been going. Also, I spent two days this week going back through portions of the collab story we have about Devon and Willow; editing it and practically pleading for him to continue on with the story since he hasn't in nearly two months.

It's driving me BONKERS that this story isn't done, and that I can't even come up with my own ending for it since I have no clue what he was planning for the last portion of it.

I guess that's karma for not updating my own stories; especially What Is Truly Meant To Be which hasn't had an update in a year by now. I really need to start using some of my non-zero days to work on that again...

OH! Before I forget, I want to state that it seems I've had a recent flood of new readers lately, and they all appear to be coming from www.Aliventures.com. Why is that, you might ask? Well, it seems dear Ali Luke linked me in her post on the 7th: 17 Ways to Make the Most of Your Writing Time - Even When It's Limited. Apparently Ali has joined the "No More Zero Days" bandwagon, and wanted to thank me for the idea. In turn, I made sure to thank Summer for introducing me to the idea in her blog, and Reddit member Ryan for posting the idea in the first place.

The main thing I wanted to convey here, though, is how friggen awesome it is that *I* inspired my own writing mentor with a way to keep up her writing! I'm so ecstatic about this, you don't even understand! Plus, the fact that Ali clearly keeps up with my blog is awesome. The fact that in inspiring her to ban "Zero Days" from her life - and her wanting to pass that along to her readers - means that I'm inadvertently helping other writers is mindboggling. Finally, I just get such a kick out of the fact that this guy Ryan was trying to help out a guy who was feeling bummed out, and it got so much energy online that Summer wrote about his post in her blog about panic attacks, and then I shared the idea as my own personal motivation for writing, and now all of these writers have this tactic idea. The internet is cooky, and I love it! How else would Max have had Ryan's advice? How else would the WORLD get Ryan's advice? How else would information be handed over to such a diverse set of people? I'm in awe.

Anyway, WAY off topic in regards to writing. So, I'll take that as my cue to finish up.

In order to do so, I'd like to conclude with a few words for my former writing group in case they're reading:

Omni, you really need to figure out what is stopping you from writing. Don't tell me "I don't know" or "I'm not sure." Figure it out. Is it lack of drive? Fear of being bad? Intimidation when comparing yourself to other writers? Do you not have the passion you thought you did? Is it because you can't focus? Are you not in a good writing environment? Is this the wrong story for you to tell? What is stopping you!? Do some soul searching to try to figure that out.

Cyhyr, what's going on? Why the radio silence with you two? Was I right? Are you too busy creating your characters? If so, just let me know and I'll stop bugging. Otherwise, give me some sort of heads up as to why you guys seemed to disappear. I'd understand, I'm just confused right now.

Ron, WRITE SOMETHING ALREADY! YOU'RE DRIVING ME UP A WALL!!!!!

Well, until next week.