A Super Low Week

Miss you so much, Daddy.

This was not a good week. And that's not even counting today.

For those who might not know, back in 1998 my father lost his battle with cancer. Today he would have been 57. He was a fantastic, fun-loving man who truly taught me what type of man deserved my love. So much so that I married a personality-clone of him. It's a shame Dad and Hubby never met. They probably would have been best friends; after Dad got over the fact that Hubby was "stealing his little girl away".

All of the nerdy video games and card games and board games and video games and Marvel and role-play games and football.... I enjoy them so much with my husband, and every now and again I picture what it would have been like to add Dad to the mix.

I love my mom and my sister so much. They are my rocks, and I miss them terribly. But they are far from nerdy; although my sister is slowly warming up to her inner geek. It's hard for the four of us - including Hubby - to find something we all enjoy to do because of that Nerd-Gap. Dad, on the other hand, he, Hubby, and I would have been thick as thieves.

Maybe it's for the best. If Dad had met Hubby, or if he had the chance to teach me D&D, then Mom would have never been able to escape from being forced to play with us. My sister too. They would have HATED us.


But, remembering the loss of my father wasn't the only reason this has been a crappy week. In all honesty, this has not been a particularly good month, either.

I have yet to open a book, let alone finish the one I started in February. It's been weeks since I've come up with a new concept for the rebooted X-Future - or had ANY ideas on an actual title for the thing. I haven't touched Please, Let Me Explain either for a couple of weeks. Haven't edited a blurb I sent to Ronoxym. Haven't written anything new.

I've been "An Adult" this week. I woke up at the crack of dawn to exercise. I then used that energy to clean and catch up on the finances. I went to a bridal shower on Saturday, hung out with Ronoxym and Cyhyr on Sunday, and celebrated my sister-in-law's birthday yesterday.

Aside from briefly Boffing with Cy on the laundromat lawn, I've been a normal 30-something this week. That sort of depresses me.

OH! And for those who don't know what I mean by "Boffing"; Boffer is the term for mock weapons made from foam to prevent injury. They are usually used in battle-simulation games, but there are also Boffing LARPS. These are what people typically think of when they hear Live Action Role Play. The most simplistic of definitions are "Nerf sword fighting Renaissance Faire" or "Live Action D&D". Granted, it's a lot more involved than that, but if you're interested to know more you can click on the link above.

Another downer this week is that exactly two months ago today, I put in an application for a corporate job with the store I work for. It was an awesome job that isn't production or writing based, but was otherwise "designed for me". I had three co-workers see the job posting and tell me they instantly thought I was perfect for it. Well, I found out this week - after a painfully long interviewing process - that it was a "really hard decision" and that they "loved [my] enthusiasm and energy", but there was just another candidate with more experience, so they went with that person instead.

Aaaaaand, I also injured my wrist at work this week, so I've been walking around with an ace bandage on it the past two days; at least I've had those days off so it can recover.... yay...


Back to the awesomeness of my writing fails this week. Cy and Ron talked to me about the Devon monologue I wrote a couple weeks ago, and then sent to him. They agreed that - while Ron has yet to take the time to sit and edit it for me - they felt it was "whiny and a bit repetitive." In other words: not my best work. I went over it again last night, and while I can see their concern about it being repetitive - I wrote it stream-of-conscious and didn't go back to edit - I really don't see how Devon's whining about anything. He's expressing his feelings. He's expressing feelings that Ron ALREADY HAD DEVON SHARE; just with a new twist to sort of combat Willow's arguments. So I don't get the "whiny" critique.

Maybe it's because it's almost all dialogue right now. I didn't take the time to interject action to break up the long monologue so it sounded more speech-like. So.... maybe it's not ME who pictures Devon as whiny and wrote him as such. Maybe it's THEM, and they're just projecting because I don't have the action I'm seeing in my head. Because I'm picturing Devon just full force growling at Willow....

Maybe I need to go back and drop some curse words so it sounds more aggressive?

Anyway, the fact that I don't even know what they're talking about with their critique further proves that I must be having an off week. I blink and the hours of the day are gone with little to nothing accomplished.

On the semi-plus side, I have more free time than I care for this week, so here's hoping one of two things happen:
1) I actually find the time to WRITE again, because I've been a super grump lately, too.
2) I can utilize the time to completely catch up on chores so that's no longer a distraction from writing.

Being able to accomplish BOTH is obviously ideal, but we'll see how I do.

Short post this week, but I'd rather take the extra free hours to do some chores/writing than drag out a post about virtually nothing this week.

I'm hoping I'll finally have SOMETHING for you fine folks next week. Until then...

Clearly, I Need A Calendar

Well, I'm a new sort of special this week.

As I mentioned last week, I was late updating because I was too busy writing a post I decided to hold off on publishing. The main reason is that it would be a perfect segue in to November's NaNoWriMo. So, I went ahead and scheduled for it to post the last week of October, and then wrote last week's update.

That's where the issue started. Even last week I stated that this delayed post would be "next week." I went to bed Tuesday night proud that I had this week's update set for close to ten days.

Then I went to work, came home, went to post on Facebook about the update, and realized it wasn't up. I checked to see what went wrong with my scheduling... only to discover that yesterday was the SECOND to last Wednesday of the month.

So, here I thought I was ahead of the game, and I was actually behind the 8-ball once more. Add in that I didn't get to the computer until about 3pm, and then I had laundry to do, and I ended up distracting myself with stuff to post on the Struggling Writers Society's forum... and then I had work first thing this morning....

Thank god this isn't my job; I'm so bad with these deadlines....

Well, at least I had another concept that I wanted to talk about anyway. I was actually partially lamenting not having one more week to discuss this, and settled on writing about it the first week of November, given it's about NaNo anyway. So... silver lining! I get to talk about it now like I originally wanted.

For the past week or so I've been trying to figure out what I wanted to write next month. I had a few ideas.

• Use NaNo not in its "pure" form of writing a 50,000 word brand-new story concept, but use the "write daily" idea to finally move forward again with X-Future: The Second Generation Begins
• Take on NaNo's new "Script" feature - a way to make up for them cancelling April's Script Frenzy - and start writing some pages of the X-Future comic reboot
• Work on the Gyateara Mythology collection some more
• Use a random plot generator and actually participate in NaNo the way it was originally intended: goofy and uninhibited writing.

I decided to go with my last idea though: Work on Lottie's story.

Who's Lottie?

Well, for my newer readers who may not know, I participate in a Live Action Role Play called Vampire: The Masquerade. Lottie happens to be the most recent vampire I created for the game. She's still relatively new to even me. She came to me randomly at work back in August and this Saturday will only be the third game I've played as her. However, her story kept getting revealed to me a little more and more each day over the past week or so. I figured, why not just ride this train while it's already passing by?

I've mostly figured out what she did the first 20years she was a human, that and researched southern United States during World War II; when Lottie was turned in to a vampire.

I debated writing in first person, but she has the older dialect with Southern pronunciations. Plus, despite her parents' attempt to teach her otherwise, Lottie has horrible grammar riddled with double negatives and improper use of words.

Yep. That's Lottie...

Lottie is also semi-up with the technological times, but being a vampire, she gets just as confused as anyone from that generation. Last game she tried to comment about Tumblr, but couldn't remember the site's name. She kept horribly attempting to describe it until Cyhyr's character Katelyn finally proudly cried out the site's proper name:

"Oh, whaz da name of dat site all the kids get lost on these days... I know it's somethin' acrobatic. Somersault? Cartwheel? Backflip?"

*Room is silent and staring*

"Oh, come on. Someone has ta know. Maybe one of you younin's. It's gymnastic of some sort. Dat site where e'eryone has all a deez pictures an' long comments an' fans of shows get lost foreva there."

*Katelyn jumps up giddily*

"TUMBLR!"

*Lottie snaps and nods*

"See!? I KNEW it was somethin' acrobatic!"

Well... as you can see, Lottie's a bit rough to read if I were to write her dialogue phonetically; like in comic books. However, even with writing the words out properly - not how she'd pronounce them - there's still a lot of grammatical errors that would hold people up. It's all fine and dandy for her dialogue, but to hear an entire 50,000 word story in her voice might be much.

So, I'm about 99% sure I'm going to go with Third-Person-Limited for my NaNo story. Then again, I have about eight days to change my mind, so we'll see.

I'm really hoping that writing about a character I'm trying to get to know better will give me the drive to stay on track this year with NaNo. I'm sure it doesn't hurt at all that we play our LARP every other Saturday, and so I should be actively in Lottie's head at least twice during NaNo. Throw in that I'm more-or-less going to be writing out what happens in-game - but with my own flare and flavor added in, just like with TSGB - and I shouldn't have to worry about running out of ideas during the month; only running out of time to write.

I'm going to aim for the same goal as last year: at least one new chapter each week when I update my blog. Given that I've been working Wednesdays now, I'm probably going to have my story update days actually be the Tuesday before; so that I can then link to the update when I post my blog.

I'll also most likely post in true daily diary form like I did the last time I participated in NaNo, as well as the two times I participated in Script Frenzy before the event was cancelled. I'm just hoping I give myself the time to write...

What about you guys? Are any of you participating in NaNo? What concept are you going to be writing about? Those of you not participating, what are your writing plans for November? Let me know in the comments section.

Happy writing, and I'll catch you next week. I swear this time the post will go up at noon since it's been scheduled since the 14th..

Super Late -_-

WOOOOOOOOW, I super suck at this! Once again I didn't even realize it was Wednesday... Monday felt like a Sunday. Yesterday felt like a Friday. Today? Well.... I'm not sure what day it felt like, but it certainly wasn't Wednesday. My mind must truly be going. Must be the age. I mean, my writing has been completely ceased since my birthday last Wednesday.

Yeah. That's right. I had a birthday last Wednesday.

Told you my mind must be going due to age. Last week I hit the big 3-0.

Alright, all of you over the age of thirty can hate me a little for that last joke.

What's worse is that I was originally going to post on time last week. I actually WANTED to post something SPECIFICALLY because it was my birthday; thought it would be a fun way to kick off the next decade.

Wellllllll.... then I just got lazy. My mom came up to visit for "the big day". We massively cleaned my house on Tuesday, we then slept in on Wednesday, and spent the full day out. I debated stopping at some point and posting, but I don't see Mom all that much anymore. So.... screw it.

I was then going to post something last Thursday after Mom went home. I started writing something, but I just zoned out after a long and hectic seventy-two hours.

My next thought was to work on something Friday, but it was my only "alone" day last week, and I had work on top of it. Sis came up for the weekend then. She had work when Mom visited during the week. Anyway, she, celestialTyrant, and I all had a "girls night" when he took us out to a little boutique strip by his house, then out to dinner, and finally back to my place to try out my new Zumba game for the Wii.

We died.

Monday I was so tired from my week of Birthday Celebration that I just zoned out until my evening shift. I passed out when I came home. It didn't matter. By then it was too late to bother.

Theeeeeeen I goofed again. As I mentioned, I lost track of the days of the week once more. Otherwise I would have worked on this yesterday so it was ready to go up at noon. Like it was supposed to.

I'm not sure if it makes it better or worse to mention that I was so screwed up today that I punched out at 1pm, only to see the clock tell me I was leaving early. I wandered back to my department, looked at the schedule again, and noticed that I was SUPPOSED to work until THREE today. Whoops.

So I punched back in and awkwardly slinked back in to my department.

I'm not sure what I'm more annoyed with: my inability to remember what day I'm on, or the fact that I signed up for the free On Track course AND Writers’ Huddle summer challenge only to NOT WRITE AT ALL since.

I really need to work on this, but I'm just drained. Constantly drained. And it isn't going to stop any time soon. I've got a full day on Saturday. Up at the crack of dawn, going in to work super early in order to set them up before cutting out early on them. Then The Bard is taking me and Hubby down to New Jersey for a combo 30th-birthday gift for the two of us. Once we're home we're going straight to our LARP! I'm going to be dead... again....

The first task in the On Track course is to actually schedule time to write. I'm guessing I'm going to have to do so.

Friday.

I have Friday off. I'll write on Friday. Mark my words!

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. ^_^

Oh No! NaNo's Starting To Wind Down

NOVEMBER 11^TH – SUNDAY

So I posted my last update super late again, but this time it wasn’t because I was slacking on my posting of the chapter. I had both of my new chapters up at about 11am. This meant I had an hour to post my weekly update here. That should be plenty of time for normal bloggers. Not so much for me since I’m so long-winded. However, since I’ve been writing these diary entries at the end of each day all I had to do was copy from Word and paste here on Blogger.

And then all hell broke loose.

Ever since January’s start of the weekly updates and new formatting I’ve instituted, I’ve been slowly learning HTML code. For almost a month now I’ve been writing only exclusively in HTML because it was easier and faster to write the code ahead of time; instead of going back through and finding all the places to add all my links and all of those yellow underlines so you get more info when hovering over with your mouse. For about a month this tactic worked. I thought I was slowly mastering HTML.

Boy, was I ever wrong! This past week when I tried posting everything I wrote at least half of it got erased because some line in one of the codes was off, and everything written after that bad code got deleted. I battled for almost four hours – Hubby sleepily rubbing my back to help calm me – before finally getting the post up. Didn’t even bother announcing via twitter or my Facebook account. I was too ticked and I didn’t have time. I was already running late for work.

By the time I got home, celestialTyrant was hanging out with Hubby and we stayed up until 11pm playing Super Mario Bros. Wii. So, the day that is normally fantastic for my writing availability ends up being a day I crash my writing streak. *sigh*

NOVEMBER 12^TH – MONDAY

Hubby coerced me in to watching Highschool of the Dead before work. So there goes three-some hours I watched TV instead of writing. I then did my shift, which ended up being longer than it’s supposed to be because no one else took out trash the entire work day and so the trash bags were piled up higher than the container could handle, and the bags were stuffed heavier than they could handle, so I’m doing a balancing act trying to get these bags to the back. Meanwhile, at least two bags ripped on me when I tried to lift them. Awesome.

By the time I got home all I wanted was a shower, late night dinner, and watch my Monday night shows.

Therefore, I go from a super-awesome writing streak to yet again going days without writing. I need to seriously tweak some things in my life if I’m going to get a proper writing rhythm down.

NOVEMBER 13^TH – TUESDAY

After wasting my Monday evening checking in on Facebook and DeviantArt in search for the winners of the Hey Arnold Halloween contest, I started off the day nervously checking once more.

Sadly, as predicted – especially catching all those stupid typos – I didn’t even place. I’m hoping to one day read all the other entrants in the contest, since I’ve now seen all the pictures entered. Sadly, ChibiSunnie didn’t place with her picture, which I thought showed so much more attention to detail and creativity than any of the other drawings – no offense to the other contestants. However, the winner and runner up were very well executed in their own right. I think they demonstrated more mastery over the art than Chibi – cleaner; more polished.

Here’s the runner up:

And here’s the winner: 

And here’s a refresher on what Chibi’s looks like:

Although Chibi didn’t place with her picture, she still took SECOND PLACE WITH HER STORY! XD Hazzah!

For a girl who claimed she couldn’t write prose; for a girl who never wrote prose outside of school work; for a girl who never wrote any fanfiction before; for that girl to get second place WHEN I DIDN’T PLACE AT ALL…. now THAT is saying something! And it should be saying it pretty loud and clear to all of you self-doubting writers.

NEVER DOUBT YOUR SKILL TO TELL A COMPELLING STORY!!!! 

You are always going to be your worst critique and doubt how good you are. However, you’ll never truly know until you get those words out there and see how people react to it.

SO STOP DOUBTING YOURSELF YOU SILLY PEOPLE!

Also… this story holds the lesson of

“LISTEN TO ME WHEN I TELL YOU THAT YOU’RE GOOD, DANG IT!” :-D

Yes, that goes for ALL my writers – as well as my readers here that might also write, but haven’t let me know so I could read their works. *hint, hint*

But there’s also a flipside to this lesson. And that is how to bounce back from rejection.

Yes, I was “graded” by “my peers” – the administrators of the Save The Jungle Movie Hey Arnold group – and not a publisher or professional editor. Yes, my career didn’t sink or swim with this contest. Yes, my story wouldn’t be “otherwise published” or “made money” if I had won. And finally, No, Craig Bartlett – the show’s creator – was not a “secret guest judge” for the contest and therefore my lack of winning was not him telling me that I suck at writing episodic-style stories. So, aside from not getting my name announced and not receiving the autographed book – which I would have given to Chibi anyway if we actually did collab on her gourd scarecrow story – nothing changed in my world.

But not winning still stings. Knowing that at least two other stories were better than mine – when I only know of five submitted stories total, including mine – is a bitter taste. Although having my name announced as a winner isn’t a groundbreaking achievement, it still could have been. My name could have finally been out there as a fanfic writer. I could have actually gotten more of a following. And there’s that nagging “what could I have done better if I had time to proofread” question – as well as the “should I have gone with one of the seven other ideas bouncing in my head” quandary.

I’ll admit that I tried to psych myself up. I tried to tell myself to just focus on my NaNo story now that I knew the results. I tried to tell myself that it didn’t really matter because I still have a faithful following regardless. I tried to tell myself that I could just start breeding plotbunnies for the Christmas contest coming up next month. Yet I still got in my writing funk and couldn’t shake it. Rejection – no matter how tiny – stings and all writers have to learn how to deal with it in their own right.

But enough moping! I say we celebrate those who properly beat me out of my prize!

So here is a reminder of Chibi’s amazingly awesome, secondplace earning, first ever fanfic!

But let’s have a drum roll for the fantastic winner of the writing portion of the contest.

Well, now that I’ve done almost an entire blog post just about the contest…. Let’s get back to the NaNo updates, shall we?

As I mentioned above, I was in a funk. I TRIED to concentrate on my NaNo story, but I just couldn’t really get in the mood to write. I punched out about 600 words – which is better than the NOTHING I’ve done the previous two days – and then stalled.

Part of the stall, however wasn’t because of the funk. It’s because I got to a part where I need to write a prophecy. I know prophecies tend to have significant years and that certain significant events usually occur on significant anniversaries of other significant events. All this said; I went to my handy dandy word document where I wrote down the backstory timeline of the world of Albion – well, the current era of Albion at least. But as I read through it I realized I based my dates too much on the ages I wanted key players to be when main events happened, but didn’t put any thought in the years between the events. For instance, the events of the main story take place 73 years after the main villain is born, 33 years after the cornerstone event, and 26 years after the main antagonist is born. These main events should definitely have more of a significance in the years passed between them. I tweaked and tweaked and tweaked for about two hours and still wasn’t content in how everything turned out. Such a waste of a day!

NOVEMBER 14^TH – WEDNESDAY

I just could NOT get started on my writing again until I had that timeline figured out. It was driving me bonkers! Working and re-working the timeline in my word document just wasn’t working. I needed something more visual than that.

So I got some of the multi-part continuous printer paper that we have stored with our D&D resources. I only had four sheets to work with, so I divided the full sheet in to four rows and 27 columns – each column just barely wide enough for half a sticky note. Although I knew most spaces would be blank, some of the events were moveable by a single year or two, so I needed exactly the count of 100 years. I then wrote down all of the important points of the backstory on half-widths of sticky note, and proceeded to place them on my gridded out timeline.

I started with the timeline I had after fussing with it yesterday. I then tweaked and adjusted so years were more significant to each other and people didn’t seem insanely old in the grand scheme of things. Creating world backstory is HARD WORK! Sheesh.

The construction of the grid, plus writing out the events, and shifting everything until I was satisfied took a total of about two hours! Either way, I feel accomplished and I think this visual representation was a LOT easier for me to navigate so I could progress faster. I’ll have to keep that in mind for future endeavors – although I sort of always knew that… I mean, I need to stop and draw nearly every character I’ve ever created to get them fully in my head. Same for house layouts. When I did the Halloween story last month I stopped for a few hours so I could research normal layouts for rowhouses, then take the rough layout of the Pataki home – which ALWAYS changes if you pay attention, I don’t think even the creators knew the layout – and finally compiled my own layout for the Old McKinney house. Even though the reader didn’t really know much of the layout, *I* needed to in order to continue my writing. u_u boy am I pathetic…. :-P

Well, I sat waiting for Hubby at work – similar to what I’m forced to do on Sundays when he does the price changes – and in my two hour wait I managed to finish off chapter 4. So even if I’m still over 9000 words behind, I’m at least hitting my secondary goal of at least one chapter completed each week. It’s only Wednesday, though. Perhaps I can get a second one done again.

NOVEMBER 15^TH – THURSDAY

The Great American Smokeout.

Once a year in November, Americans quit tobacco use for at least 24-hours in an attempt to have it kickstart a lifetime of being tobacco free. As the Wellness Champ of my store, one of my job duties required me to do SOMETHING to promote the day. Thus I spent about four hours of my own time to organize. That’s my OWN TIME, unpaid, at home, while CT was visiting last night. I put together Quit Kits with a whole bunch of information and goodies for people attempting to quit today, I made a promotional poster, and I “laminated” some anti-smoking posters using transparent contact paper. This resulted in me listening to the guys while they played Mario Party 8, but I couldn’t join in… :-( It also resulted in me not writing another word for the rest of the night. So add another 400 to the tally of how far behind I am.

As for today, I woke up bright and early to get ready – dressed professionally and whatnot. I set up one of those sample carts they have at grocery stores; I plastered it with the anti-smoking promotional posters and the Quit Kits. I called it the “Propaganda Cart”. I then stood by Customer Service all day while every single smoking employee avoided me like the plague. I did give away seven of those Quit Kits to customers, so I guess it wasn’t a total wash.

By the time Hubby and I both finished with work, did some quick shopping, and picked up Chinese food – Hubby had a craving and some extra cash in his paycheck - it was roughly seven when we got home. We ate dinner, watched our Thursday shows, and I didn’t write a friggen word! So much for catching up.

NOVEMBER 16^TH – FRIDAY

Both Hubby and I had to be at work bright and early today, but I did notice before heading in that I had a Facebook message from one of the admins of the Hey Arnold group that hosted the Halloween contest. She sent me the grade sheets five of the admins filled out for my story; even though PinkLotus27 kept saying there were nine judges. Unfortunately, I had to wait until I got back home at about four before I could see what I got. I averaged out to having roughly an 84% on my story. Not too shabby in the grand scheme of things, but still not good enough to have placed. Now I’m super curious what Chibi got for her story, as well as what she and Chopfe got on their drawings.

The thing that really got me though were the conflicting comments. How am I supposed to improve on stuff like that? Some people told me that everyone was in character for the most part, but I slid Arnold out of character a little here and there – which I’m inclined to believe; I’m horrible with keeping the stupid football head in character. Others told me that I had everyone dead on the entire time and that it was like they were reading an episode. Then there were some comments stating that I did the transitions perfectly, and others who said they were a bit “robotic” and “rushed” – whatever that means.

Another thing that got me was that I lost points in originality! The main reason why? Because I purposely wrote the story to play out like an episode. I ended up losing points in originality because of that! One of the judges even commented that I lost originality points because I wrote an urban legend which “has been done”…. Um… the rules said “Halloween-themed, ghost story, or URBAND LEGEND”. Since I purposely avoided them doing something on Halloween specifically – a refreshing twist I would think – I therefore HAD to do either a ghost story or urban legend in order to fit the criteria. I then lost points for it? Worst part? I thought my story was a GHOST STORY and not an urban legend at all. :-P

I do have to say though, that Hubby was adorable. Yeah, I was a bit bummed out when I saw exactly what my marks were – and the comments that went with them. However, I tried shaking it off. Again, this is an inconsequential fandom contest. If I can’t brush off this “rejection” how can I handle publishers telling me no? Hubby on the other hand – who hasn’t read the story yet, mind you – started raging. “What are these people’s criteria for judging? Why is grammar part of the grading when most of these people speak Spanish? How can some of them say something like ‘You did great with your transitions,’ and then give you 14 out of 20 in that category? It makes no sense! How can they possibly think your story wasn’t original? Who else thought to write like an episode? That’s unique!” The overly protective and defensive comments continued. I think he got more riled up than I did. I kept trying to remind him that he hadn’t read the story yet and so most of the comments COULD be very valid, but he wasn’t hearing that. He’s adorable and I love his support!

Anyway, after the Contest Grading Raging, Hubby and I quickly got ready for our Vampire LARP. I personally wanted to skip it since I was still so far behind on my NaNo writing, but we haven’t played in about three weeks, and since I was in the fight scene we were finishing today if I didn’t attend I would sort of screw it up for everybody. Especially seeing as how “everybody” ended up being Hubby, his BFF who runs the game, and Omnibladestrike. There was no way they’d be able to do anything with any fewer players.

Considering the last time we played I sat around twiddling my thumbs for about an hour or so while we were waiting on Omni to show up – time I COULD have spent working on that Halloween story – I decided to bring my netbook with me this time. Perhaps I could get some writing done.

Nope. For the first time like…. EVER… when it came to LARP we actually started up more-or-less on time. Yes, we again had to wait on Omni, but BFF had something planned for one-on-one with my character and his, so we just played that out.

I did manage to type out forty words before he decided to do that quick scene…. So I got SOMETHING typed today. Does that count?

NOVEMBER 17^TH – SATURDAY

Another semi-worthless day.

Did my normal wake up early for work thing. Got out of work super early – 11:30am – and hung out with Hubby and the guys. If you haven’t noticed, it’s now become a thing for the guys to crash my home on Saturdays. Since Cyhyr and her boyfriend can no longer make their weekly Monday visits it’s nice to have this new weekly social get together – even if I miss out on a lot of it due to work and them playing Magic.

Anyway, I caught up on my massive amount of Facebook notifications – since I hadn’t checked FB since reading the grade sheets – ate, and waited around downstairs for a little bit. Since Omni and CT were both at the house we were gonna continue our Super Mario Bros. Wii game and try to beat it today. Instead they Magic-ed.

At about 1:30 I gave up and went upstairs to write. I managed a little over 900 words before passing out. Whoops. Well, fully refreshed, I woke up when I got called back downstairs so we could play Mario. That lasted until about 11pm. OMG, I’m so awesome with this “Don’t be sociable for just one month; just write, everyone will understand” thing, aren’t I? :-P So….. yeah…. So much for catching up on that word count today as well.

NOVEMBER 18^TH – SUNDAY

Alright, so, admittingly, considering how long this one post is, if I did give up on the diary blogging and just stayed offline throughout November – like I do in April – I probably would be a lot farther in my story. I just spent an hour updating this blog post, and I’ll probably spend another hour fighting with the formatting like I did last week.

Anyway, I had a sandwich and a nearly-full mug of coffee chillin’ next to me first thing this morning. So I once again attempted to conquer my story. Especially since this boring thing is four chapters down and STILL in the exposition phase. We haven’t even started the epic tale of them searching for the jewel shards, meeting the antagonist, or finding out the secrets of Connor’s past.

I did manage to at least tear through today’s 1667 words while I was awake via shots of my mug of coffee. Woke up at 2am to bring Hubby in to work and have been up since! Sheesh! To be fair, though, between this blog update and a lot of time doing more research – I really need to stop doing that - I only wrote for about two to three hours in the six I had available. Still, that just demonstrates that if I get my act together and find two uninterrupted hours I should be able to at least avoid falling farther behind. I mean, if I keep up the pace of 1667 words per day from now on out I’ll only hit 33,487 words, but it’s better than stopping at my current 16,513… right?

I’m just super nervous about this upcoming week. The house is a disaster. There’s crap EVERYWHERE. The dishes are all in the sink. So I have at least one full day of cleaning to do, but I’m working every day until Friday – yup, that includes working Thanksgiving. We’re hosting Thanksgiving on Wednesday, which means I have Monday and Tuesday to clean – like THAT’S gonna happen! @_@ We also need to fold and put away laundry as well as packing for our trip to PA for Thanksgiving with my family. We’re going to attempt to head down to PA after I’m done with work on Thursday. We’ll probably miss the Thanksgiving dinner my mom is making, but we can have leftovers! Then I’ll spend time with my family on Friday and probably won’t have any writing time. Saturday is the extended family Thanksgiving gathering. Sunday we’re heading home. That’s pretty much an entire week that I don’t foresee any writing time! I’m hoping to at least finish Chapter 5 so I have that new chapter for you folks next Sunday, but who knows.

So, I guess I just need you guys to wish me luck and we’ll see how well I do next week.

For my fellow Americans – I sound like such a politician – I wish you a very happy, healthy, and safe Thanksgiving. 

The Story is Finally Done!

Oh man, this week flew by so fast I legitimately can't recall what I did.... I only have the chaos of Friday and Saturday in my head.

I remember being annoyed with myself on Tuesday and Wednesday because I had about seven or eight hours alone in the house and I accomplished NOTHING. I didn't do chores. I didn't write. I didn't even continue playing Fable so I had more to think about for my story next month for NaNo.

I honestly can't recall what I actually did on those two days. I know I continued pondering my Halloween Contest entry. One of those days I think I actually spent about five hours putting together a "creepy music" playlist so I had background music to inspire me. How do I spend five hours putting a playlist together that only has 18 songs!? Sheesh! My tunnel vision is HORRIBLE! Do they have meds for this reverse ADD? They should... I lose HOURS of my time and don't know how!

Thursday both Hubby and I had the day off, but I don't recall how we spent most of the day. I know I sat next to him on the couch for an hour or two scribbling out a rough outline of how my story would go - after spending all week harassing him and poor ChibiSunnie about what I should do. At around three I gave up and decided to use the good pre-hurricane weather to mow our lawn. I figured, "The grass needs to be cut anyway, and the exercise and quiet might help me think."

That quickly blew up in my face. I mowed three quick strips of the grass and nearly tossed the darn thing. The wheels or the actual reel-blades were rusting and giving off this high pitched squeak that was grating on me. After storming through the house - which apparently scared the daylights out of my husband - we both went to the store to pick up our paychecks and some WD-40. This, that, and the other thing happened in regards to people talking to us about work-related topics and we didn't get home until almost an hour later.

I was now ticked because I hadn't accomplished anything - even chores - throughout the week and I didn't have enough sunlight to mow the entire yard with our reel-mower. I still mowed the large section of the grass next to an apartment complex next door. It's silly that we have the property, actually. We have two trees with insanely low-hanging branches - which scratch me up like crazy when I try to mow under them by the way - cutting off this patch from the rest of our property. Plus, the apartment complex has a strip of grass maybe two feet wide and that's it. Why our landlord doesn't try to break off this part of the land and attempt to sell it to the apartment complex is beyond me, but I hate cutting something that doesn't even feel like my lawn.

Anyway, I go to mow under the empty trees without a care that I didn't rake first. One - I just wanted the grass done and didn't feel like I had time to rake. Two - I figured I could just mulch the leaves like I would with a gas-powered mower. I soon realized that I don't have enough horse-power in me to actually tear up the leaves and all they did was clog the mower. That meant I couldn't actually cut anything. So a little more stomping around before spending an hour raking leaves - and now grass clippings - in to a huge pile. I didn't even reach the trees where I actually wanted to rake before I ran out of sunlight. I did have one of the apartment tenants comment about the huge pile. Sheesh.

Friday I got in to a battle with my department manager, and was run ragged by the herd of people at the deli in preparation for the hurricane that's supposed to hit on Tuesday. I also stayed later than scheduled to wait for Hubby to be done with work. Originally I was going to use that time to FINALLY get to my story so I wasn't waiting until the last possible second to write it. I ended up using that time to work on stuff for my Wellness Champion position at work. I did manage to write a little bit during my lunch break - about a page's worth - so that was something.

When we got home I instantly changed in to crappy yard work clothes and headed out to get rid of that pile of grass and leaves. I raked the pile, as well as the leaves I intended to rake the day before, in to an old tote I had from our move. We now have a huge pile of leaves by our driveway because I have no clue how to dispose of the compost. At my mom's house you line the curb with it and a truck comes by to collect everything. We don't have that service here.

The intent was to finish the yard work - screw the mowing on "our side" of the property, no one notices the tall grass but us - by the time dinner was done and then write the rest of the night. Then Hubby reminded me that we had the LARP. I'm still so use to it being once a month that this new every other week schedule throws me off every time.

I really need to remember to bring either my netbook or an actual paper notebook with me whenever we do LARP and just lock it away in my car when we're playing. I should know by now that we won't actually start playing until an hour or so after we're supposed to - usually waiting on players to gather or update their character info. I wasted two or three hours that I could have been writing. Flarg....

Saturday was my Last Chance day. I went to work, got almost nothing accomplished because of yet another pack of customers fearing the worst with this hurricane, wrote a little more during lunch, and then dragged my tired butt back home to a house full of guys.

Granted, I was the one who invited everyone over. I figured if I was done writing we could all hang out, if not then Hubby could play Magic: The Gathering with the guys - a game I have no interest in - while I write so he wouldn't be bored. I then "sequestered" myself in my room with a couple sandwiches, a bag of M&Ms, and two bottles of water. Aside from a few bathroom breaks, I was in my room writing like a nut for SEVEN HOURS!!!

I felt a little guilty since Omnibladestrike brought his laptop and wanted me to maybe help him out with the next chapter of his story. At the same time, Chibi wrote her first fanfic - YAY - for the contest and wanted me to beta read it; which I didn't have time to do. I hope she does well. I still need to beta the story anyway. She wants it nice and polished up before posting on DeviantArt. I have off tomorrow, so aside from massive dish washing and laundry - in case the impending hurricane knocks out the water supply - I guess I'm beta reading as well. YAY! :-D

Anyway, the Drop Dead Line was 11:59pm Central Time, October 27th. I finish my story and submit it at 11:30pm ET. I'm just as bad as when I wrote that birthday story for PinkLotus27 last year. Seven hours, sending it to her right about 11:30 my time, which meant she had an hour or so her time before her birthday was over. Nearly identical situations! XD
Major difference is that "I Thought You Liked Redheads" is one of my shortest stories due to the limited time and my Halloween story was able to make it to 6,000+ words and 11pgs. Let me remind you that the minimum it needed to be was 2500 words. I feel sorry for the judge(s).

I'm also a little ticked off at myself. Since inspiration - or opportunity - didn't hit until the last possible moment, I was still finishing up my story, in bed, next to my poor husband who was trying to get a few hours rest before going in to work at 1am. I felt so bad about keeping him awake - but he didn't want me to leave the bed - that as soon as I concluded my story I just sent the dang thing. No proofreading. No editing. First draft and submitted to the contest. There are only three rules to the contest: 1) 2500 words minimum, 2) must be "Halloweeny", and 3) PROOFREAD! Admittingly, I probably wouldn't have proofread anyway. After staring at a screen for 7hrs straight - yup, laptop came with on the potty breaks - my eyes were killing me.

Once Hubby was at work and my eyes were a bit rested up I went back through and found a typo - I used a singular noun instead of the intended plural - in the THIRD SENTENCE. There were three or four typos in the first page alone! I think I had about a dozen throughout the whole story. I don't think my story is going to do so good in the contest after all. *sigh* Oh well, at least I tried, right?

Chibi's drawing for the contest - she did one story and one picture to put in each category - is amazing so I hope she wins! Sorry, Chopfe, I know you entered as well, but hers is just.... WOW... so much detail! She hasn't posted the picture at the time of this update, but be on the lookout. If I find the time I might go ahead and do a Halloween Post this Wednesday! If I do I'll be sure to include Chibi's picture as well as other pictures and writings I can get my hands on that were submitted in to the contest. I'll also announce - if I know at that point - who won the contest!

In the meantime, you can read my entry either on DeviantArt or over on FanFiction. This is the first draft with the typos edited out. I'm probably going to update both once Chibi gets me her notes, but I wanted to have them available for you guys to read now if you so chose. I'm going to try - depending on when Chibi has time to beta - to have the edits done and up by that Halloween post. That is if I have time with work, the hurricane, and Halloween itself to write one.

Given that Thursday starts National Novel Writing Month I'm certainly going to try to squeeze that last blog post in on Halloween. I'm still not sure if I'll be blogging during the month of November.

Regardless, I WILL have one more post before I go in to writing craziness, be it Wednesday or Sunday.
Love you all! Have a safe and happy Halloween and take every precaution you can if you're in Hurricane Sandy/Frakenstorm's way.

Catching Up and Hating Halloween Stories

Boy do I officially suck! I was so all over the map lately. When I posted my “temporary post” last week I never anticipated that I would never go back to replace it! So I guess this is Catch Up Week.

So let’s backtrack and review the month so far.
October 1-4 Hubby and I were on a mini-vacation to celebrate our one year wedding anniversary. October 3rd I became an official member of Ali Luke’s Writer’s Huddle. The first week of October I also decided to participate in a Hey Arnold Halloween contest over on DeviantArt. I now sort of regret that decision….But first… Writer’s Huddle…

October 8th and 9th I sort of tinkered with my Writer’s Huddle profile and checked out the site.
Wednesday the 10th I had the day off and Hubby was at work. The house was still clean from our mad scrub down before our trip, so I had no chores. A perfect set up for me to get lost for hours in writing. Instead I got lost for hours on Writer’s Huddle. I ended up spending a full 7hrs straight on the Huddle’s forums, reading and responding.

Seven hours straight! As in, I didn’t even stop to eat….

I am such a forums junkie. I have always been this way with every forum I’ve been on. I make sure I’m a prominent presence on them all. I lose HOURS just reading, responding, and refreshing to see if there’s any new posts. I lost hours at the Huddle, I lost hours on the X-Men RPG, I lost hours on the short-lived Hey Arnold forum, I lost hours on the forum for the webcomic Game Destroyers, and I lost hours on the forums of the MMO “DragonFable”. What most people do on Tumblr, I do on forums. Ali herself had to stop by my main facebook account and “yell” for me to get off the forums and go eat something!

So anyway, that was Wednesday.

Thursday I spent almost literally the whole day mowing our stupid lawn with that stupid push mower. I started wearing a pedometer at the beginning of the month and push myself to get to that 10,000 steps per day mark. It’s relatively easy to do while working a Deli. Anyway, this 10k steps goal is because it’s the rough equivalent to walking 5 miles a day which in and of itself is like working out the 1/2hr a day recommended. Well, I hit that 10k mark just mowing my friggen lawn! In fact, I hit about 11k mowing and 13k the whole day. That means I walked over 6miles on Thursday! I was in NO mindset to write anything that day.

Friday was the bi-weekly get together for the vampire LARP. So I didn’t really write anything more that day when I only had about four hours at home, but I did talk things over with Cyhyr. It didn’t really help matters because it was just broad generalities when it came to writing and NaNo coming up next month.

Saturday I researched TONS of urban legends and ghost stories, as well as watch all of the “halloweeny” Hey Arnold episodes to really try to nail down what I wanted to do for the contest. I have a word document filled with notes and bullet points. Nothing seems to really work though. Nothing seems to feel “natural” if you get what I mean.

Last Sunday I wrote to ChibiSunnie to see if she could help me out. I also sent a note to my sleeping husband for him to respond to once he was awake. I was really hoping that they could help me really figure out what I could do for this contest.

I’m trying to keep the story True-To-Show. Therefore I want to keep them nine and I want them to follow the traditional formula used for the “creepy” episodes:

• Kids are bored/at a sleep-over 
• A ghost story is told (usually by Arnold’s Grandfather – or in one case Arnold after his grandfather told HIM the story) 
• The kids go to check out to see if the story is true 
• The kids find “proof” that the story is true, but the “proof” is logically explained away 
• Everyone is convinced the ghost story isn’t true, but then the ghost reveals itself to the viewer – and in some cases, one of the characters as well. 

 My main issue is that I don’t know how to create a ghost story. I had a handful of ideas bouncing around, but none of them seemed to work.

• Urban take on the Blair Witch 
• The kids hear about the Witch of Elk Island, and it turns out to be the author. Not sure if I like this though since there's already the Wheezin' Ed myth about the island and I have to set up that this story takes place before the "Crabby Author" episode so Arnold doesn't realize it's Agatha.  
• There's a run-down industrial district with a shack snuggled in the middle of all the buildings. So the legend goes that a witch lives there. The companies tried to buy her out, but she refused to move, so they built around her and she cursed them all, which is why the buildings are now all vacant. Little "eh" about this one too. 
• Regardless of which angle I take with this, I sort of want it to play out like "Ghost Bride" in which the "proof" is just people pranking, and I want Wolfgang and Ludwig to team up to scare Arnold's group. Then the real witch will scare the 5th graders as they laugh about how the 4th graders were so easy to scare. 
• I dunno, I’m just not really feeling these… 
• The school is haunted 
• The school hosts a haunted house for halloween and the kids hear a tale about a janitor (or something) haunting the school. 
•  Again sort of want the 5th graders to prank Arnold et. al and then come across the real thing. 
• I sort of want this to go along the lines of the halloween episode of Ouran High School Host Club with the bravery test. 
• The kids have been at the school after hours already, so would they really fall for a "ghost haunts the school" if they haven't witnessed this before???? 
• I think this is the most plausible to write…. 
•  Haunted Hay Ride 
• Arnold's class takes a field trip to a farm and it just so happens to be Arnie's 
• Who is going to tell the ghost story about Arnie's farm/town? Doesn't seem like something Arnie would do.... 
• There was a hay ride in "Arnold visits Arnie" and a carriage ride in "The Headless Cabbie"... would it be too overdone if I did hay ride again???? Or is it just "The Haunted Farm"? 
• Not sure what the "haunting" would be about... 
• Not really feeling this tale…. 
•  The Midnight Man 
• Was going to do a parody of The Midnight Channel from Persona 4, but couldn't figure out how. 
• The Midnight Man is a Pagan game. 
• You turn off all the lights, light a candle, write your full name on a paper, prick your finger, and let a drop of blood soak in. Place the paper with your name on the floor in front of the door. Knock on the door 22 times in time with the ticking of the clock. The 22nd knock must occur at 12am. Open the door, blow out the candle, close the door and immediately relight the candle. Now the goal is to "survive" until 3:33am by avoiding the Midnight Man. You know he's near when it gets chilly, there's a low whisper, the candle goes out, and he appears in front of you. You must relight the candle within 10 seconds to ward him off, otherwise throw down a circle of salt around yourself and stay within it until 3:33. 
• Checking to see if the Ghost Bride is true was sort of a dare and so doing stupid dares like this and Bloody Mary seem to be in-canon. I just need a better way to do this. No 9 year old will prick their finger and run around the house with a lit candle to avoid being tortured to death.... 
• I could possibly do something with this idea…. 
•  The Escaped Convict In The Woods 
• Based off of how we freaked out this one girl in my Girl Scout troop when we all stayed at a hostel on a white water rafting trip. 
• My girl scout troop (split in two vans) were driving down the highway towards the hostel and turned off in to this rural town. The hostel was along the Appalachian Trail, and so we drove down these rural back roads. Meanwhile, a thunderstorm came in, making it mad dark even though it was only about 6pm in May. That’s when we turned off the main roads and on to a well-driven dirt path in dense woods. The “driveway” to the hostel was easily 2 miles long, and windy, and dirt/gravel, and flanked by insanely dense forest that created a tightly-knit canopy. The canopy blocked out even MORE light, making the drive pitch black except for when the lightning struck. 
• We pass through a large, stone wall/fence that lined the entrance to the hostel’s property. The wall looked worn down – as if it were built in the 1800s and never cared for. As we continued down the road we passed a burnt down utility shed, but the stone skeleton of the structure almost looked like it could have been a mausoleum. Two other girls and I started joking about how the building used to house a vampire. As our discussion started to freak out another girl in our van, we switched the conversation over to the more-likely scenario of "have you heard about the escaped serial killer that's supposedly hiding out in the Appalachian?" The lightning flashes, “things” (tree limbs, animals, whatever) moving in the woods with the limited visibility, and the feeling that we were in “the middle of nowhere” just made everything creepier. 
• We get to the hostel and it’s this insanely old farmhouse that used to be part of the Underground Railroad. We enter the hostel through the basement/lower front door. Because of how old the hostel was, going through that door took us through this long, narrow hallway lined with rock walls and an unfinished floor. Once we climbed the stairs to the main portion of the hostel it looked like a warm, cozy farm house. Very welcoming. But up until that point it was MAD CREEPY. 
• I was going to switch up the creepy farm house for a family cottage/cabin in the woods. Grandpa Phil never took the boys there before because when he got the boarding house his twin sister Mitzi got the cabin. Now that Arnold helped the twins reconcile, Mitzi allowed Phil to use the cabin. 
• I wanted to have at least Helga, if not also Curly, with the group pranking everyone a la “Ghost Bride” episode, but I couldn’t figure out a reason they’d be out in the middle of nowhere. Arnold wouldn’t have invited either of them on his sleepover/camp-out with the rest of the guys. 
• Chibi suggested an overnight class trip to get everyone to a hostel, but then I’d have too many characters to worry about. It’s a great idea and I might use it someday, but this feels like it would easily lend itself to a multi-chapter story and I don’t have enough time to write that much. 
• This, among other things that I thought of but didn’t list here, is nice and creepy in person because the ATMOSPHERE is what’s creepy. It gets people thinking, doubting, and freaking out. However, there really isn’t a story here…. 

Pretty much all I’ve done this past week was mentally try to figure out what to write. Every free moment of the day was spent bouncing around all of the above ideas – plus others that I’ve dropped – to see what I can do with any of them. I’ve watched Hey Arnold episodes to get in the mood to write. I’ve researched more scary stories. I also tried using a technique I learned via the Writer’s Huddle forum: The Secret to Writing 4,000 Words A Day. Namely: Daydream whenever possible.

Oh, and on Monday, October 15th I officially set up my NaNo profile. So go ahead and send me a Writing Buddy request if you’re NaNo-ing too! 

Anyway, here I am, 6 days from the contest deadline and I STILL haven’t even decided on what to write yet. I have no clue if I’m going to make the contest deadline, let alone polish the story up enough to actually win. And since I’m spending all month working out the logistics of my Halloween story I haven’t continued playing Fable, which I was trying to finish so I was more prepared with my “base story” for NaNo. So I’m flying blind there too. Still haven’t really figured anything out – including a name – in regards to my female lead for the Super Massive Crossover Hybrid Story. 

On a sidenote, Chibi linked me to an AWESOME interview one of the Hey Arnold fandom members had with the show’s creator Craig Bartlett! It’s two hours long, but I listened to it while doing house work, so I suggest you take the time to listen too! You can find it here. Soooooo much awesome stuff there! 

Chibi and I are actually super excited because of two things in regards to scripts/TJM. 1) Craig’s scripts would be roughly 2pages/minute of screen-time, which means where I was with our fanscript was actually about right-on time-wise, instead of INSANELY LONG like we originally thought. 2) Craig just sort of thought “The Green-eyed people can live in a place like that and even have a hidden city that’s probably in the crater of a dormant volcano.” When I had to figure out where the GEP hidden city was I placed it inside a dormant volcano! So both the volcano thing and the “on the write page count track” thing really made us think that perhaps our fanscript was kinda spot on! So now we’re rejuvenated about the whole endeavor and will try to pick it back up again come January. In the meantime, Chibi has the script thus far and is figuring out any tweaks we should do and where to go from where we left off. I’m just SUPER interested in getting this done and sending it to Craig as a “thanks for the inspiration” sort of thing. Sure, he doesn’t read fanfiction – and probably makes super sure not to read TJM fanfiction to avoid being influenced in case he ever got the chance to make the movie – but maybe…. maybe he’ll read ours if we snail-mail it……….. 

Speaking of Craig Bartlett acknowledgement and praise, I want to give a shout out to the awesome Chopfe who excitedly posted this status on October 12:

Chopfe: Craig Bartlett, the creator of the Nickelodeon cartoon HEY ARNOLD, liked my picture of Crime Inyy. There are no words to describe how awesome that is.

And here’s his awesome picture that got such high praise: 

 

And so now I’m off to again ponder how I’m going to manage this story before this upcoming Saturday… wish me luck. Any advice would be welcome.

Yeah.... About that writing....

Well, I don’t really have much to show for the past week. There have been a couple of days in which I spent my 15min breaks and 1/2hr lunches playing computer games instead of working on writing. I had some major stuff weighing on my mind. One or two things are related to work drama, and then there’s a major thing that is mostly a happy thing that I’m excited about, but it could also have the potential of being a not-so-good thing. It’s kinda hard to explain while being cryptic like this.

Basically, one of my husband’s friends celestialTyrant has become a super-close friend of mine too, and he’s majorly crushing on my sister. I’m beyond excited to see these two together – especially since it’s not a secret that I don’t like my sister’s current boyfriend; however, my sister DOES already have a boyfriend, so the fact that cT is crushing on her could end in disaster.

Every time I try to open up a document to work on one of my many projects I just think about cT’s situation, as well as the work drama, and then I can’t focus on the story.

I have been fairly active on the X-Men RP though. So I guess that’s something. My one character Willow is coming up with a plethora of pranks that she and another character Devon can pull, so it’s fun to not only come up with pranks – I myself was never much of a trickster so it’s actually hard to think of pranks – but also have these long posts describing Willow and Devon talking about said pranks. Hubby decided to throw a monkey wrench in to the works by having one of the NPCs eavesdropping and deciding to pull some pranks on the pranksters. We’ll see how that turns out.

Then we have celestialTyrant. Well, his character Nix is actually dating my sister’s character Annika – which is how the two started talking IRL – and so it’s fun to read their interactions in-game, especially since Hubby just had Nix kidnapped. However, both Nix and Annika are telepaths, so they still talk to each other while trying to figure out where he was taken to. XD

In the meantime, Hubby’s main character Cajun is roommates and best friends with Nix, and so my main character Lia – who is roommates with Annika – is torn between comforting Cajun and comforting Annika, who are both broken over the disappearance of Nix!

And finally, there’s Lucas. He’s a character run by one of Hubby’s friends he met through work. The friend is like a walking comic book encyclopedia, and so he is Hubby’s assistant story teller. The two talk back and forth to come up with plot devices for the game, and they come up with some awesome stuff! Anyway, because of the friend’s vast knowledge, Lucas is the only character that was allowed to be made old enough to be a teacher – the rest of us are students. Well, Lucas also recently had an experience of being held captive for two weeks, breaking out of the facility that held him, rescuing three kids that were also held captive, and taking the children to the institute. Lucas – who was raised in the future and came back in time to the present in order to live in a more peaceful time – soon finds out that one of the kids he just rescued is destined to be the mutant that kills him. Dun, dun, duuuuun! On top of that, another one of the kids he rescued is killed the same day that Nix is kidnapped! Finally, one of the people that held Lucas captive has a mental link with him and – presumably – forces him to have violent blackouts. So far all Lucas has done is destroy the landscape around the institute, but he fears for the students and is now leaving the school in hopes of figuring out how to handle the blackouts.

This game is like a mini soap opera! I love it and want to write those webcomics even more each week! I just might open up Celtx and start up writing the scripts. In the meantime, I’m trying to make it easier for everyone to follow what-happens-when by writing up a “calendar” of all the events. It's kind of like the calendars used in dating sim games. So that’s my most recent little project.

Hopping RPGs to the Vampire LARP Hubby’s BFF runs, Friday was the first game with the new vampire character. I was pleasantly surprised at how much fun I had. Normally, I’m so lost my characters just hang off in a corner somewhere twiddling her thumbs. This time it was alright that I was lost because my character was SUPPOSED to not have a clue about what was going on. It was just amazingly fun to come up with her reactions to things like “First time attacked by another vampire” or “First time seeing a vampire killed and turned to ash” or “Surprised to have staked a vampire first go-around and is excited to have ‘survived’ the attack”.

Throw in Hubby and I visiting celestialTyrant on Wednesday, and one of Hubby’s high school friends and his wife visiting us yesterday… well, the week’s been a touch busy.

I really do want to write, and I have plenty of options to choose from. I just need to find the drive to just sit down and start tappin' on the keyboard until words show up on my screen! XD

Maybe I’ll have something for you guys next week.