The Challenges Continue

Well, I'm doing moderately worse this week, but at least I have stuff to show you from the conclusion of last week.

The "writing for an hour and getting at least 500 words" daily goal seems to really be working for me. That is, when I get to writing.

Yup. Got a few Zero Days under my belt.

Still, as of right now I'm still holding on to my New Years Resolution of "no more than three in any given week". Well, holding on since I started the challenge. We're ignoring January existed.

Last week I did fantastically with the daily writing hour. Every day, 4pm to 5pm. Then I was stuck at work during my writing hour last Thursday. I managed to get two hours of writing in while working on the blog post, but I was too drained to write anything creative. One Zero Day. Friday I was just mentally shut down. I tried to write, but three hours later I still only had about 300 words. It wasn't a Zero Day because I accomplished SOMETHING; made the effort. Still, I was now behind about 700 words in my creative writing. Luckily, Wednesday's writing frenzy more-or-less covered those two days.

Saturday I was home alone most of the day, so I was able to finally finish the rest of the chapter I was working on for X-Future: The Second Generation Begins. I still had one more day left in the week, and so for Sunday's writing hour I cranked out the writing prompt story for this Tuesday's writing group. I honestly had no clue where I was going with that story. That was pure channeling. I just placed my fingers on the keyboard and let them do their thing. Still, I like what resulted from that.

If you were interested, you can see both new bits of writing I managed this week below.

"The Second Generation Begins:
Getting Into (Pseudo) Trouble"

On DeviantArt          On FanFiction

"Own Little City"

On DeviantArt          On FictionPress

After a mostly successful week, you'd think I'd be riding the momentum into another one, right? Yeah, me too.

Monday ended up being cleaning and errands day, followed by celebrating Shadow's birthday. I ended up not having the hour - or even fifteen minutes - to spare so I could work on the start of the next chapter. If you don't count last Thursday because I was at least writing this blog, Monday was my first official Zero Day since I started this challenge. Quickly followed by a second one.

Ironic that I ended up not doing any writing on the day I go to my writing group. I got home from work, had a few hours before Hubby needed to be home, had every intention of writing, and then Shadow asked me to call. Thinking it was a quick catch-up on what we were discussing the night before, I complied. Next thing I know, I only have a half-hour before Hubby would be done with work, and I was still in my own work clothes. I rushed around to get a quick shower, and then out the door I went.

Got home a few minutes after my daily writing hour started, but both Hubby and I - who neglected lunch due to the phone call - were starved. Once dinner was done and a few more neglected chores were taken care of, it was time for me to get to the writing group meeting. I honestly can't recall what kept me from writing when I got home, though. I know I hid in my room for the next hour in an attempt to still keep my daily writing. I'm pretty sure I spent the entire time instead chatting with Cyhyr online. I was trying to get her to poke her husband Ronoxym into doing one of three things:

1. Send me his prose. At the beginning of the year, when I was setting up my challenges with everyone, I sent Ron the challenge to complete one piece of prose per month. It could be a one-shot, a chapter, a scene, even a section of dialogue. I didn't care how large or small the prose was, I just wanted to see him complete SOMETHING every month. Last I chatted with him, Ron said he was ready to send me something by the end of January, and yet....
2. Send me his challenge. Since I sent him the above challenge, along with a few other writing stipulations to try to help him focus, Ron wanted to send me a year-long challenge in response. According to him, he has one already in mind for me, but it was too long and complex to try to send to me while on his phone. He was supposed to send it to me once he got to a computer, but it's a month later and still no challenge. Probably for the best considering how behind I am on my current challenges.
3. WORK ON PLEASE, LET ME EXPLAIN. Any form of "work." Write more, edit what I sent him, fix the outline, edit the middle section that has been waiting for almost a YEAR to be polished and published. I'd take anything....
   

Apparently, Ron wasn't really focused on writing at all last month; too busy trying to find alternative means of getting money - legally, I feel the need to add. It's a noble alternative to recreational writing, but the way he's going about attempting to get more money....

Knives from the Scott Pilgrim comics

Anyway, as Cy and I were talking, we decided that she would pick up the slack for her household. If Ron wasn't going to write, she would. She discussed how hard it was for her to have the mental energy to put anything down on paper nowadays. So I introduced her to the glories of "No Zero Days." She agreed that this was much more manageable - aside from her "Day of Rest" on Mondays, which are just utter chaos for her - and we decided on the simple challenge of "one sentence a day."

That's it. Just to say it wasn't a "Zero Day" and to help chip the story away a little bit at a time. Even one sentence will slowly get the story written. Much better than no sentences, and the story stays in your head forever. Who knows, these one-sentence-a-day writing briefs may lead to an exciting scene where she ends up spilling 2000 words onto the screen. The point is that she's writing.

Sure, losing 10lbs a week is exciting, but losing 1lb a week will still get you to a healthy weight. Maybe not as fast, but at a pace you can comfortably stick with, and that might lead you to maintaining that weight better than the fast-loser. Writing can be the same way. If you're frantically writing 1700 words a day, like you would during NaNo, you may get that novel done in a month. But who could keep up that pace and crank out a story every other month - one for writing, one for editing? More than likely, that kind of writing would burn you out, have you give up on writing for a while to recharge, and end up only getting one or two stories out a year anyway. So, why not spend the whole year writing that novel - still the NaNo 50,000 words - 137 words at a time? A simple 137 words, that's less than the number that's in this paragraph! Sure, it's a bit more than "one sentence a day", but not by much. And you can stick with this every day easily. End result will be roughly the same as that frantic NaNo-minded writer.

Now, that's not to say that people CAN'T write 2000 words a day. Some even knock out 10,000 words! It's all just a matter of how your brain is wired, and what your life situation is like. A person who sits in their ideal writing location for eight hours straight can most likely write 10,000 words easily. A person who barely has 15 minutes to sit down? Not as easy. Still, writing even that one sentence a day is important. It's telling yourself - and the world around you - that writing is important to you. You're not going to let it slip onto the back burner any longer. You are going to at least give it as much time and effort as you would brushing your teeth every day!

So, I say, if you're a writer as well, and are struggling to find time, even if you can't follow Ali Luke's advice to carve out 15minutes a day, you can follow Cyhyr's challenge and just write one sentence. Go ahead. Prove to yourself that writing is important enough that you won't let another day go by without doing SOMETHING writing related.

And now enough of that.
*Steps off soap box*

Back to my own writing; which I neglected for two days, even after that rousing speech above.

Yesterday I was determined. I took some time at work to go through my files, and organized what I wanted the next X-Future chapter to be. I hid away in my room for a little bit. Later in the day I did so again. I needed to get back on track. I needed more than 500 words. I needed the 1000 that I missed the first two days of the week. It kept me about three hours, off and on, but I did it. I got up to 1600 words. I have no clue how much of that I'll be keeping though.

The next chapter in TSGB is going to be focused on Lia watching footage of her mom's training in the X-Men War Room. It's an impressive room that will be brought up a few more times in the future. Thing is, I think it will only come up once or twice more before I break off for the 2yr time skip. In other words, the majority of the War Room use will be in the NEXT X-Future book I write. Which will also mean redescribing it for people who didn't read TSGB. Still, I wanted to paint the room. Painting the room is what took 1600 words.

I mean, I had Lia do some actions while she walked around the room in a self-guided tour of the sub-sub-basement she had never been in before. It's not ENTIRELY description of a room, but still, 1600 words seems like a LOT. I'll have to see what I can whittle it down to. In the meantime, it's there as establishment.

I can also relax a bit, knowing that I can comfortably go back to my daily writing hour from here on out, and still have my chapter done - in theory; we'll see how long it gets.

I can also relax a bit because I don't have writing group for two weeks, and Phfylburt has officially pulled my weekly challenges from him, at least until I'm done with the Writers’ Huddle challenge. It was a smart move. I thought I could conquer it all - the writing challenge, Phfyl's weekly challenges, and the bi-weekly writing group prompts - with the new daily writing regimen. I should have known better. Should have known that each TSGB chapter would take just about all 3500 words I aim for each week.

I tend to do this though. Spread myself too thin by taking on too much once I'm excited about a project. I mean, I do this ALL. THE. TIME. So, I'm thankful that Phfyl noticed my true ability, and pulled his challenge in the meantime.

Now, to get cracking on the actual, TRUE action of the next TSGB chapter....

Writing Vacation Rekindles the Muse

Wow. It's been so long since I've used my netbook, I nearly forgot where I had left it. Worlds of difference from before it broke and I practically lived on this thing. Always on it while watching TV, or brought it with me to use on work breaks, or stashed it to work on writing while visiting a friend's place - in case said friend and Hubby decided they'd rather Magic - or even hide in my own bedroom with it in order to get writing done.

I guess the change is in part that I have more things that I need to work on now than I did over a year ago. Mostly, though, I think it's just because the laptop isn't fully fixed yet. I'm still stuck with my power cord needing to be plugged in at all times and the netbook itself lags way more than it ever did before. So I can't do as much with it as I used to.

Still. Going a week without touching it, or even realizing that I haven't touched it until I go to use it this morning... woah.

I've been spending my much more relaxing November week away from writing. Hubby and I used a free DVD rental to finally watch X-Men: Days of Future Past. For me, it's the same as the first X-Men movie that came out back in 2000. It was marvelously inaccurate to the actual comic book canon, but still very entertaining.

I've spent a few days getting back in to replaying Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. The real drive there, I think, is both the fact that I've had sea shanties from Assassin's Creed: Black Flag stuck in my head - so, why not go with a LoZ "pirate" game - and also the fact that Hubby lent Spink his copy of The Wind Waker. Watching her play it made me want to start up the digital copy we got with our Legend of Zelda themed WiiU. I have to say, the biggest kick I've been getting out of it is that they updated the game so Link can take selfies with his pictobox now. I also like that I can move the gamepad around to scan above me when using the bow and arrows, rope, pictobox, or telescope. It's neat to look around Link by looking around my living room. Plus, it's so much fun that I can still play on the WiiU while Hubby is watching TV or playing on the XBox. LOOOOOVE being able to just play on the gamepad!

I've also gotten pretty far in my long list of crochet projects. I'm nearly done with a belated birthday gift I needed done before the end of the month. I have the Christmas gift for my niece about 75% of the way done already. Which, is insanely amazing considering her blanket was completed AT HER HOUSE on Christmas last year, and the matching pillow was finished two days after her first birthday. I'm also just starting up another family Christmas gift. I may actually get these all done on time!

That doesn't mean I HAVEN'T been working on my stories, however.

I'm still mentally developing Lottie. Although, I'm now wondering if I should do with her what I'm doing with the X-Future reboot. Sure, the whole thing will still be a White Wolf "Vampire: The Masquerade" fanfiction - I can't change it too much - but I'm debating keeping the main characters as the players of our LARP. I'm leaning more towards just taking certain aspects of the characters and rework them in to originals for the story. For instance, instead of taking Dan exactly as Ronoxym created him, I can use the element of Dan being a Brujah Seneschal - essentially a Vampiric Vice President - that Lottie wants to manipulate in to Prince - Vampiric President of a city.

For Victor I can just make a generic tough-guy punk; perhaps a former rock star from the late 80s/early 90s. Quarthix hasn't put much depth in to Victor yet - or at least, hasn't displayed much depth - and so he's easy enough to customize in to my own story version. The group from Albany were all NPCs, and so The Bard didn't exactly create well-rounded characters, which leaves me with another spot where I can sink my teeth in to new characterization. As much as I love Hubby's two characters, aside from maybe using both as ways to manipulate the Cobleskill group, I don't foresee a need for either of them. In fact, aside from maybe including Katelyn as someone that is just as suspicious of Lottie as Lottie is of her, I don't see a need for any of the actual LARP characters besides Dan and Victor.

So, I've been trying to rethink my cast of characters. I know that I want to include the following:

• Lottie
• Dan and Victor - in some shape or form
• Flashbacks including Lottie's husband Cooper and her sire Minnie
• The Tzimisce that killed Minnie; who is still nameless - and technically genderless - at this point
• The Prince of Cobleskill; who is Prince Stone if I go by the LARP
• Possibly Katelyn and The Gangrel
• At least brief appearances by Molly, Hank, and Joe from the Albany group
• Possibly Hubby's characters Aiden and Billy

Obviously the big "bad guy" would be the murderous Tzimisce, but I need conflicts other than that. I need antagonists to push the story forward. I still need a plot. I'll have to see where my brainstorms take me.

Lottie's tale isn't the only thing I've been thinking about lately, though. The other day I randomly realized that I still haven't watched Joss Whedon's take of Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing". I then wondered - no matter how much I love Joss Whedon's work and the cast he picked - could it possibly dethrone the near perfection of Kenneth Branagh's version. Further contemplation about my favorite Shakespearean play resparked my urge to turn it in to a Hey Arnold fanfiction. So, for the past couple of days I've been mentally plotting out how to go back to my original fandom and write a story loosely based on Much Ado About Nothing; since I still can't find a good way to do a straight retelling.

Thinking about Hey Arnold again also rekindled my desire to get back to my long-forgotten What Is Truly Meant To Be. I actually had a comment about the story over on DeviantArt the other day. Funny how I was re-inspired to start working on it the day before someone commented on the tale. Please note, no one has read/commented on WITMTB more-or-less since I last wrote a chapter for it; about a year or two ago.

Fair warning though, guys:
Due to the amount of cleaning and crafting I have to do before the end of the year, the amount of WRITING I'll be doing before January will most likely be minimal. But I'll keep harvesting these plot bunnies and placing them in cages until I have the time and room to let them develop and mature.

1st Week of NaNo: COMPLETE

Sorry about the delay. I was too busy NaNo-ing yesterday that I didn't get to working on this post until about 11pm. I passed out about five times while writing it. I would wake up and notice that my sentence became something along the lines of "he's not a fan of 'a wall of text' and so I have to spread out mayonnaise and then add pickles to the right side door."

I don't even know where half the stuff came from. Yay, sleepy stream of consciousness.

My update wasn't done, but it also wasn't making any sense anymore. So I submitted to having a late update and I gave up for the night. Then I had work first thing in the morning up until 1pm. I did have my chapter done and posted before midnight last night though. Does that count?

Man, I need to remember to write up the short "what I did today" blips on the actual day they happen, not wait until Tuesday and then quickly try to compile them.

OCTOBER 29^TH – WEDNESDAY
I was excited to get started on writing during NaNo. Plus, I had Wednesday off in who knows how long, and for who knows how many more weeks. I was geared and itching to write. I ended up bombarding The Bard with a whole bunch of questions about our game, and some insight in to Lottie; my vampire character whom I'll be writing about during NaNo.

I spent hours researching 1940s lingo/slang, when the draft was extended to include 18-year-olds, and the different WWII attacks/campaigns that were getting started shortly after August. I just absorbed as much background info as I could.

OCTOBER 30^TH – THURSDAY

Mostly more researching in order to get as ready as I could for writing Lottie this month. I wrote down a bunch of info that I already knew about Lottie, and wrote down questions I needed answered about her.

I sent a copy of the list off to The Bard for him to look over. He was supposed to send me back some critiques and notes before I moved on to the actual project. Unfortunately, he's not a fan of "a wall of text" and so I have no clue if he actually read what I needed him to.

In the meantime, I'm a bit stuck until I get the answers I'm looking for. I'll have to focus on the plotline Bard came up for us for the game, and then branch out from there as Lottie's story starts to develop. Here's hoping it works that way...

OCTOBER 31^TH – FRIDAY
Thankfully it wasn't November yet, because this day was just a wash. I dropped Hubby off at work, messed around on Facebook for a little bit, cleaned up a touch, and then went in to the shower. After showering, grooming, tracking down make-up and putting it on - a very slow task for me since I rarely wear it - and figuring out what "Halloweeny" outfit I could wear, it was time to go to work for my two hours of wellness. I did my work, and then waited around a little bit for Hubby to finish his shift. Add in some grocery shopping and by the time we got home the Trick-o-Treaters were already heading out. The whole event was nearly done by the time Hubby and I finished dinner. Didn't even see any of the kids all dressed up. Such a bummer. Did get a surprise visit from the sister-in-law and niece. She was an adorable little owl for Halloween. We then finished the night with a few "monster" movies: UltraViolet and ZombieLand.

NOVEMBER 1^TH – SATURDAY
Well, it was a bitter-sweet day. I had a long, tiring day at work. Saturdays are already crazy. The first of the month - when everyone gets their social security/benefits checks - is even more crazy. Both happening on the same day is already recipe for disaster. Now add in an unexpected: our store's main competitor was closed for three hours while the electric company did maintenance on the power lines. This meant all of THEIR customers became OUR customers. Sprinkle in that the power outage also hit residentials, and so now we also have people who couldn't make themselves coffee or a hot breakfast.

Not. A fun. Day.

One of the newest members of the X-Future board just happens to be my co-worker: Spink. Originally, we were going to swing by my place after work, allow me to get changed and grab the game, and then we were going to her apartment to Zumba; mainly because she actually has the floor space for more than one person to dance. Hubby even had my clothes all picked out, the game all packed up for me, and he had made me a lunch so I was all good to go. Problem being, after all the running around at work, neither Spink nor I wanted to Zumba. We wanted to stay at my place and play Hyrule Warriors.

Oh! That's right. I never told you guys. Hubby preordered the Dynasty Warriors/Legend of Zelda cross-over game.

It's so pretty!!! :D <3
How Hubby and I spent our October...

Anyway, point is, we decided to stick around and play that. However, Hubby already had a friend over and they were playing the latest Madden game. Spink still stuck around and we chatted for an hour or so before we could swipe the system away from the guys - who did end up playing HW as well - and that's pretty much how I spent my Saturday.


Normally, I would have used the time Hubby was preoccupied with his game to sneak away and write. However, I couldn't just disappear while Spink was around. Plus, we rarely get time to socialize outside work with her in college right now.

Sure, I missed a day, but it was only the first day. I can catch up. I can consider it a Last Hurrah before I have to give up socializing.

Ironically, while I wasn't able to get myself to write, I was able to convince Cyhyr to get cracking. She always seems like she WANTS to participate in NaNo, but never seems to actually do so. After a little nudging, she managed to write 3047 words before she called it a night. Pretty impressive for someone who was just going to let another NaNo slip by. Here's hoping she keeps up that momentum.

NOVEMBER 2^TH – SUNDAY

After failing at both writing during Saturday and writing while my husband was on the overnight shift, I had no other alternative. I had to write in the afternoon shortly after picking Hubby up. We had a delayed Halloween party - which, I guess, could have been considered a Dia De Los Muertos party since it was on that Mexican holiday - that evening. I didn't want to lose another day of writing, and so while Hubby napped before the party, I hunkered down and got to writing. I only got 1415 words in before I had to stop and get my costume together. Not nearly enough to make up for missing a day; not even enough to "complete" this one day of writing. However, I got words down on paper - er, up on Google Docs - and that's more than a lot of people do. I also didn't give up even though I had a moderately full day. So I consider that a minor win. Is it bad that part of me wanted to ditch the party and keep writing???

NOVEMBER 3^TH – MONDAY
Another tiring day. Part of the problem being that a co-worker screwed up so badly that our boss had enough and sent her home; leaving us short-staffed. Then the person who was supposed to come in early in order to help cover the staffing hole had some sort of issue and not only didn't show up early like she agreed, but showed up late for her normally-scheduled shift.

Fantastic.

I was also still a bit sleep-deprived from the socializing and attempting to still get some writing done. Finally, I think I'm coming down with a head-cold; probably due to the lack of sleep.

As soon as I got home I went in to the bedroom in order to write. I didn't care that Hubby had one of our couple friends over. I felt a bit bad for the fiance since she wasn't actively playing Madden with the guys, but she seemed content to be hanging out with them before I showed up. I figured she'd be fine while I knocked out a few words. Perhaps an hour or so and then I would have caught up to the target word count. I'd allow myself the reward of socializing then.

Problem was that as soon as I sat in bed I leaned against my upright stack of pillows and promptly passed out. Hubby woke me about two hours later when dinner was ready. We ate, the couple went home, and the primetime shows Hubby and I are really in to were on.

I'm sure I can push through and catch up Tuesday; as long as I drink enough coffee...

NOVEMBER 4^TH – TUESDAY
After two full cups of coffee, I was alert enough to finally finish off my chapter. I'm not at all excited about the pacing. It felt too slow, and I introduced about 10 characters at once. Probably not the best idea. But it's NaNo. We don't go for perfection. We go for getting the words on to the page. Sadly, the words just aren't getting to the page fast enough. Missing Saturday and Monday killed me. I even failed at hitting the suggested 1667 daily target word count; ending with only 1662 words. My end count for this first half-week was only 3077 words. A "full" two days of NaNo would be 3,333 words, and so I didn't even hit that even though I did actively wrote for two of the past four days. Having full - and tiring - days at work have been really killing my motivation; evidenced by my nap Monday. I'm hoping that I can catch up at some point this weekend. Or at the very least, Wednesday since I only have a six-hour shift, and I'll have the house to myself for a couple hours. Plus, I'm now working on the more exciting fighting chapter. My only concern this time is that I was never all that great at writing fight scenes.

In the meantime, feel free to read my first chapter. As I stated in my last post, I'm attempting to publish a new chapter every week during NaNo. However, that's only five chapters for a 50,000 word story; unlikely. Here's hoping I can really pick up the pace and write multiple chapters....

"I Don't Have A Title For This Story Yet"

On DeviantArt          On FanFiction

How about you guys? Anyone working on NaNo too? How far are you?

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!

My Muse Keeps Getting Hit With A Giant Flyswatter...

First off, an update.

Just before my blog went live Phfylburt did indeed give me a "legit" answer as to why he did what he did. I debated going back and editing my last post, but figured it would work better if I used it as an update in this one. It sort of ties in to what I want to say.

I'm going to try to avoid spoilers, sorry if something slips out. Take comfort that it will probably be a good year or so before I get to this part in the X-Future story, and so maybe any spoiler hints I accidentally slip will be forgotten by then.

Anyway, it seems that the underlining reason for Phfyl to do what he did was indeed simply "boredom". On three levels: He felt that with things the way they were he was in a rut, took the tale as far as he could and it was time for him to do what he did, and his number one reason? He was just flat out bored with what he had.

So, as I mentioned in my last post, I at least have an understanding; a reason. However, I'm still royally pissed off, and maybe even more so. Maybe it's because while HE was in a rut with everything and bored with it I was able to see so much more potential. I could have gone off on my own and ran with so many ideas if he had just turned everything over to me instead.

Plus, I'm tired of all the rage-quitting.

Sure, he's still on the boards, but he's just one of many - actually, most at this point in time - that just threw their hands up and said "This is boring me, nevermind."

Granted, for him this might be what he needed to revive his spirit in the game and move forward with more fervor. A way for us all to jumpstart the game again with his added interactions. For nearly everyone else, however, it means dropping out of the game completely and killing our momentum. It's hard to do a role-play-game with only two regular people, one moderately frequent player, and two players that sporadically show up to play.

If we don't get more players - or more players back - we might as well just call the game.

That enrages me more than anything because it would just be about par for the course for me.

As a teenager I started up fanfiction writing, although it wasn't in the traditional sense. I would mentally role-play scenarios that would be fanfiction if I ever got around to writing them down. The closest I got was joining an online RPG like X-Future. It was a Batman RPG.

They already had a player for the character I both really wanted and really knew well: Selina "Catwoman" Kyle.
Thankfully they had an opening for another beloved character of mine: Harley Quinn.

Problem being that this was back when I was still new to role playing, and even newer to role playing online. I don't like stepping on people's toes when I role play. I don't write in absolutes in most cases. While most would write "She punched him" - making it a definite that the swing connected - I tend to spin it as "She swung at his jaw" - leaving the option open for him to dodge or otherwise counter the punch. It actually annoys me that so many on X-Future write in absolutes....

Anyway, since Harley was generally just a glorified Joker Henchman, I didn't like doing too much without Joker's player directing me. I came in mid-plot and didn't want to ruin what they had set up or where they were going with it. Sure, it got Joker a bit mad because back then I could only go on the internet about once a week, and when I updated it would a simple sentence or two, but we got by.

Then the guy who was playing Batman graduated college and couldn't play as regularly anymore due to his work. He passed the character off to someone else who also didn't play regularly. Next thing I knew we don't have a game any longer, just when I was starting to get the hang of it and was able to post significant actions.

Now the same is happening here it seems. Although we aren't dependent on one central character - Batman - we are still dependent on people who don't update frequently at all and hold up the board. Add in the fact that we have fewer and fewer players - mostly due to the same rage-quitting Phfyl essentially did - and we REALLY rely on the handful left to be active. At least if there were about 30players it wouldn't matter too much if people weren't on frequently. There was always someone else to interact with.

So, yeah, Phfyl, I'm pissed at you rage-quitting and shrinking our ranks some more.

Wanna know why else I'm pissed? Why this feels about "par for the course"?

Because whenever I find something that gives me any sort of momentum, any sort of drive, anything that sparks my passion for writing.... it gets squashed. Hard.

I was excited about writing on the Batman board and was thinking of actually writing out the fanfiction I've been mentally writing for years. After the board died I lost the desire to keep going with writing Batman stuff - especially after apparently sucking so hard-core as Harley. Clearly I didn't know the characters as well as I thought.

I was excited about becoming a journalist, and even more so about actually interning at the local newspaper during my senior year of high school. That is, until the editor wanted me to just do police blotters. That's it. My entire internship was walking down to the police station, gathering their reports that were redacted for public knowledge, and typing them up. She put NO effort in to taking me to actual stories in order to show me how it's done. No effort to actually educate me on how to be a reporter.

I gave up on journalism pretty much then and there.

I was excited to be a Creative Writing dual-major, and then I met my professor. No matter how passionate I was with my writing, no matter how excited I was to turn in something, no matter how much drive I had to get my story told... there he was repetitively telling me I wasn't cut out for writing.

While I still had to turn out scripts like a machine for all of my Broadcast Media courses - and then again while with a production company, I didn't write leisurely for about six years.

I got in to Hey Arnold and started writing for leisure for the first time since college. I was passionate about my stories and while What Is Truly Meant To Be is left unfinished, I was still turning out one-shots fairly frequently. Then I moved, and somehow lost most of the DVDs I had of the Hey Arnold series. Then the rights for Netflix to air the show expired. Finally, the drama within the fandom finished off my drive.

I still love the show and do eventually want to go back and at least finish WITMTB, but that desire to write from that source material is gone.

Ali Luke gifted me a slot in her online writing group Writers’ Huddle, and that got me going again too. I'm still a bit nervous about passing anything over to the critique section since it is mostly fanfiction of fandoms people aren't all that aware of, but the community is great. It was welcoming and I was getting great advice.

Then the laptop thing happened, and I don't really read things online anymore. To be fair, this one is on me...

I thought I would be able to solve the internet issue for interacting with other writers by creating a local writing group where we can either meet in person or on Skype. No screen-reading or eye-strain required. But that fell through after just two meetings.

I had a spark; an almost ITCH to write when I had that back and forth with Ronoxym, but then he fell off the planet.

And now the board. X-Future. My last drive to keep me writing. It's dying too, and Phfyl's post last night is just killing it all the faster. Especially since the only real dive for me to keep going with Lia was to interact with Phfyl's characters more. Actually, Willow just had a nice connection too, and Crystal was heavily involved with Phfyl's characters. So, essentially his big play last night stopped my ability to do that much more on the board. Whole plotline potentials lost.

My only drive left with X-Future is to drop the board entirely and just focus on it as a webcomic. Reboot it. Start it over. Don't transfer anything over except for the characters and maybe some of the more key plot points. Maybe just converting it completely in to our own universe, like I've been slowly working on.

The only thing THERE is that it feels a bit like cheating. Even if I do have Hubby, Phfyl, or even Ron join in on the collab, there's still about fifteen characters that aren't ours. I'm sure my friends wouldn't really mind, but it feels like cheap fanfiction. You're taking someone else's characters and creating your own story with them, but the characters are designed from your friends' imaginations; not a well-known piece of work. So, it's fanfiction, but with the drive to call it "original work"....

Oh, and then there's that whole "I can't draw" thing stopping the webcomic process....

So it might be unfair to Phfylburt that all my anger gets pooled and then spilled over on to him, but he's just the latest out of a long list of writing opportunities lost and muses murdered.

Then - on a more personal level - there's the fact that I don't really have that large of a social circle. I'm getting older, and while most of my friends are younger and the whole "they're getting married and starting families" trope isn't true quite yet, they are still not visiting as much.

The Bard spent the past weekend with us, but except for playing the LARP we haven't socialized with him for MONTHS before that... his birthday I think. Sucks since he and Ronoxym apparently talk every day.
CelestialTyrant has always been a bit "flaky" due to his job, but we see him even less after he had to more-or-less "reboot" his career. Once a month if we're lucky.
Omnibladestrike frequently uses the "I'm exhausted after work" excuse. Understandable; we've used it too, but still....

Cyhyr doesn't visit without Ron, and he doesn't visit due to working two jobs. I'm still a bit bummed that we somehow missed his one day off a few weeks ago...

So Hubby and I are more-or-less isolated except for any online socializing we do. In other words: Facebook and X-Future. So the possibility of losing X-Future is super hard on me. It's not only a large source of writing muse for me for nearly two years, but it's also one of my main social networks. A bit pathetic, I know, but there ya have it....

The final thing that I think affected me so much was Phfyl's writing itself. Two fold here.

On the one hand I have to admit how envious I am of him. As I mentioned in my last post, I have to give him credit for making me care so much for his characters and loving every plot he came up with. Nearly everything from this man was gold to me. He'd come up with a character and I instantly was like "MY NEW FAVE!" He'd come up with plot devices and twists, and I'd be beyond excited for him and Hubby to enact them. As much as I'd hate the trauma he'd put Kinney and Lincoln through, I still loved the updates. I loved seeing the character development. I loved going "OH SNAP!" as his tale took a new direction.

Then he shocked and kind of disappointed me. As I said in my earlier update, it felt lazy and cheap. He had a great opportunity he could have taken and didn't seem to even think of it. Actually, it may have been hard to remember since the role play has dragged out, but in-game something major happened a week or two earlier that he never explored. There was an interaction with Willow and some character development that he ignored.

The fact that he said he was bored enraged me because there was so much there that he could have worked with and he didn't seem to see it.

Here I'm struggling to come up with a muse of mine own and he ignored so many of his. If only I could have written for HIS characters or using HIS plot lines I'd be set. I guess that's the fanfiction writer in me.

Which brings me to the second reason why Phfyl's writing affected me so much.

What if all of this means I'm really NOT cut out for writing? I mean, seriously? Every time I have something that inspires me, something that drives me, something that is my muse it dies on me. I can't seem to be inspired unless there's an outside catalyst of some sort, even if its just a source material that I can write fanfiction for.

Think about it. I was inspired to write again by getting in to fanfiction. My "original" stories based in Gyateara are birthed out of source material I have to now manipulate: Legend of Zelda, Fable, D&D, Inu Yasha, and Vision of Escaflowne. My greatest drive to write something was the X-Men forum. Even then, a lot of the one-shots I've written were my characters interacting with another player's character based off of what recently happened on the board. Then there's the story where I'm literally just converting the board in to a narrative. Even on the board itself I need an outside source to inspire me; a catalyst such as Hubby creating an event, a character interacting with me, or something another character does somehow affecting mine, etc.

The strong "itch" to write was because something Ron wrote sparked my muse. Even now I'm using HIS story to rekindle my writing.

So what if I can't do this alone? What if I can't find a story that is wholly mine that grabs me and drives me to write? What if the fact that my muse is killed so frequently means I don't have the passion to write that I thought I did? If I was really meant to do this why can't I seem to push myself to do so? Why don't I have the discipline Cyhyr or Phfyl have?

Even if I could find a way to write without an outside source or catalyst, would I be able to write characters as compelling as Phfyl does? Plots as engrossing? Would I ever be able to evoke emotion as strongly as Phfyl did with me? Would a reader hate me as much as I hate Phfyl if I had pulled the same stunt he did?

I guess this whole blog post just sums up to one thing:

I'm sorry I dumped so much on you, Phfylburt. I'm sorry I'm so enraged at you for seemingly no reason. I'm sorry that I've made you feel guilty for your decision - even if I do still think it was a moronic one.

Clearly I have some of my own things to try to sort though and figure out.

A Rant About X-Future

This update is going to be hard for me. All I want to do is turn off my brain and not look at a computer screen. Yet, here I am.

I'm surprised actually. Not so much that I'm writing this blog, but that I have to struggle so hard to do so.

This past week has been just a repeat of the previous ones: Go to work, be run ragged by the lack of staffing in the start of our busiest season, come home exhausted, pissed off, and emotionally drained, veg on the couch to try to ignore the rest of the world exists, and lose track of what day it even is.

There was no motivation there for anything - aside from playing a little more Lego Marvel Superheroes. Once again I had no drive to do any writing or research. I was doing the bare minimum to avoid Zero Days. Even with my sermon about bite-size tasks turning in to full project completion, I haven't really been able to do so myself.

I was able to accomplish NOTHING during my two days off this past week. Two days off in a row. TWO. I essentially had the equivalent of a weekend off for the first time in maybe a year. I did minimal cleaning, crocheted a teeny bit, The Bard crashed Friday in to late Saturday, and we more-or-less marathoned Lego Marvel Superheroes the full 24-hrs he was over.

Sunday I actually fell asleep just about when I got home. I even napped a little before work. I was still exhausted. Go figure. However, Sunday was also the start of me kicking my butt in gear with my slacking off with writing.

About a month ago I had a strong desire to continue work on the collab project Ronoxym and I were writing about Devon and Willow. Sadly, I can't actually CONTINUE the story since I have no clue where Ron wants to go with it. Yet he hasn't touched the story since March; maybe even end of February. Anyway, I had already edited the "inside Devon's head" portion we've written, but there were still 12pages before that. So I started editing those too.

That's what gave me Non-Zero days since Sunday. I've been slowly re-reading and editing the rest of the story. It's a slow start, but it's something. It gets me in the "how to edit a second draft" mindset; which is a process I need more practice in since I rarely do second drafts of anything. At the same time it got my writing juices mildly flowing again as I try to rework sections of our story.

That's the main reason I'm so surprised at my deep, DEEP desire to ignore all things writing and needing of brain function. I was all proud of myself for getting back in to the writing swing of things. I was getting excited about working on this post.

Then Phfylburt happened.....

For those who might not recall, Phfylburt is one of my husband's friends who is a prominent player on the X-Future boards. Hubby may be the Game Master of the board - in charge of all things plot-wise - but Phfyl is one of the main Storytellers. Hubby and Phfyl routinely bounce plot ideas back and forth in order to come up with some of the most intriguing story points in the game. Phfyl is one of the people I wish to work with in rebooting X-Future as a webcomic.

Still looking for artists, by the way....

Anyway, despite last night I do still wish to work with him on a webcomic reboot, but at the same time he's the reason I don't wish to write at all.

The reasoning is super spoilerific for the X-Future story, so please just quickly scroll on down if you don't want any spoilers. I made sure to keep the spoiler part inside a blocked quote so it's easy to see what part to avoid.

***SPOILER ALERT**SPOILER ALERT**SPOILER ALERT***
*****DO NOT READ IF YOU WISH TO AVOID SPOILERS*****
**ONE LAST WARNING THAT THIS SECTION HAS SPOILERS**

Just before I was ready to go to bed Hubby noticed that someone had posted on the X-Future Facebook group for the first time since early MARCH. In fact, it was the first time ever someone besides ME posted in the group - everyone else usually just responds to my posts.

Anyway, what was said new post?
It was Phfyl stating simply: "I am a monster. Of this I am aware."
I knew INSTANTLY that he meant Lincoln. My beloved and favorite character on the board: Lincoln. My heart started racing and I sprinted to my computer. Hubby chuckled at my concern for the character and told me I didn't want to read.

However, he warned me with that little playful chuckle in his voice. He'd usually do this to spook me as a prank. Typically if he warned me I didn't want to read or watch something with that playful chuckle it meant either a) nothing bad happened at all and he just wanted to freak me out, or b) something bad did happen, but it was mostly angsty feels that weren't so bad aside from me going "I NEED TO CUDDLE THAT CHARACTER!"

Since I was told to check out Lincoln's journal first I figured the later would happen. Phfyl would be a monster because he came up with a new mental or emotional torture for his little character. I was fully expecting to read what was posted and then find SOME way to get Lia over to Lincoln to comfort him. Hell, I had been trying that for weeks now, but more on that later.

I went to the Lincoln's Journal thread and saw simply: [Page had been torn out]
I was like "WTF? Why bother posting in that thread if it's just gonna say that a page was ripped out of the book?" I then saw the post in Lincoln's bedroom and thought maybe there was context there. Perhaps the bedroom had some narrative to explain what Lincoln wrote, and why it was torn out of the journal.

Nope. Still no clue why the page was ripped out...

Instead I ended up switching gears as I got excited about possible character advancement. One part of the bedroom post seemed to suggest that Darwin - the voice inside Lincoln's head that has been heavily implied to be a separate being of some sort - was able to unexpectedly take over control of Lincoln's body for a moment.

Lincoln was all Emo-Boy once again. Darwin was trying to cheer him up, and then demanded that he get out of bed and talk to someone. Lincoln refused, but bolted upright anyway. This was where I got excited and thought that Darwin somehow figured out how to take control of Lincoln's body. I even thought that perhaps this was what Phyfyl meant. Perhaps he was a monster because Lincoln got bumped out of his own body; sorta.

You could tell by the way he talked towards Lincoln that Darwin had a brotherly sort of love towards him, but Darwin also couldn't resist tormenting and teasing him. Perhaps Phyfyl's monster comment was regarding a grand reveal in which Darwin was really some villain. It actually just happened on the boards in which a supposed best friend turned out to be a sleeper spy. We also have a villain who literally head-hops, and so Darwin "living" in Lincoln's head wouldn't be too far fetched.

Maybe now that Darwin knew how to control Lincoln's body he'd create mischief in Lincoln's place. The groundwork was already there. Lincoln got depressed again because he got in a fight with Tyler, and got the two of them and Crystal thrown in to a detention session. Darwin wouldn't have needed to do much to create more hell for Lincoln and possibly bring the X-Men down from the inside; an ongoing theme it seems.

Then the rooftop scene blindsided me.

Darwin was driving Lincoln to finally go talk to someone - especially after the whole "Did I just control you?!" part. Lincoln agreed at first, but decided to finally use his newly healed wings instead of walking throughout the school. I was again excited for him. So much potential can be had in this character and I was so happy that he could possibly be happy again after being able to fly once more.

Except Lincoln randomly turned for the worst. He motions to talk to his mom - whom he had just found a week before after a lifetime of searching for her - but abruptly declares that there's no way she could help him. He then thanks Darwin for being a friend and begins a spell. Darwin recognizes the spell but can't do anything to stop Lincoln. He calls out for help, but being a voice inside a kid's head no one can hear him. At least, not fast enough.

Lincoln completes his spell and almost instantly combusts. Yup. Phfyl KILLED Lincoln! Just offed him! Had the kid commit suicide out of nowhere! What's worse is HOW he did it. The kid is now splattered guts, a jawless skull, and wings painting the roof of the Xavier Institute. Grotesque! It was pretty much an "Eff you guys, there's no way we can bring Lincoln back."

See, in the Marvel Universe - especially with the canon character we recently brought in to the fold: Elixir - characters rarely stay dead. Hell, more often than not a character's heart will be pierced and they will actually DIE, but then Elixir will come by and heal said character. Good as new and capable of fighting another day. If we REALLY wanted to, in theory I'm sure we could have found a way to revive both William and Liam. Hell, Hubby's waiting for the opportune time to reveal that two different deceased characters are revived.

But then there's Phfyl's masterpiece. He sure as hell made sure NOTHING was gonna revive that puppy.

Alright, now for some buffer text so that people who skipped the spoiler above won't accidentally see anything as they go back to reading the blog... if they ARE still reading the blog. Anyway, the non-spoiler section is where I'll explain why this event made me not want to write this update, as well as touch back upon my earlier statement about Lia and cuddles.

**END OF SPOILERS*END OF SPOILERS*END OF SPOILERS**
*IF YOU SKIPPED THE SPOILERS YOU CAN READ AGAIN NOW*
**NO MORE SPOILERS. FEEL FREE TO READ AGAIN BELOW.**

Anyway...
So the above happened and let's just say it blindsided and dumbfounded me. Phfyl just devastated me with the mildest of warnings, and when I called him on it and asked for a reason he simply reposted what he said in the Facebook group.

I was a wreck. It completely ruined everything for me. I was finally getting back in to the forum - one of the few remaining players - and now I don't want to look at it.

I'm slowly playing through a mission as Willow, but I think I'll just have Hubby relay over what he did, and then have him post my responses so I don't have to bring the board up. I even hid the link in my favorites bar so I wouldn't be tempted.

I have no real clue what to do with Crystal - Hubby keeps reminding me that she's technically an NPC, and so I don't have to do anything with her; just respond as her - but I REALLY have no clue what to do with Crystal now. I have no idea how she's gonna react. It could go one of about ten ways!

So, I'm down Crystal. I've also been down Trish since January. I had already "lost" one of my favorite characters because Ron is still MIA.
He's never on the boards, and he has two characters keeping a third one sort of locked in a role play that he has to finish up. So even if Ron ever DID hop on the boards, Hubby would slaughter him if he role played "the past" with Trish; since the Brotherhood section hasn't been caught up with the "current" timeline it's still considered "pre-time-skip". Since - as I just mentioned - The Brotherhood hasn't been caught up - aka: nothing past "Rescue Trish Mission" posted yet - and since I can't role play with Ron's characters Devon or Nys - again, as mentioned, Hubby would slaughter him - the only way I can do anything with Trish is to do solo-plays. What was Trish doing during the two years skipped on the boards? Trick there is I'm not really sure; hence not posting as her even though I wanted to.

I temporarily lost my favorite character until the board advances far enough - which isn't gonna happen any time soon since no one goes on to role play anymore - and I can't think of what to do with another character who MIGHT be able to advance things, mainly because the people she'd most likely interact with don't really frequent the boards at all anymore. So if I tried any sort of role playing with them she'd be just as stuck as Phfylburt's one character who is waiting for Devon and/or Nys to do ANYTHING.

Then there's Lia.
My first character. She used to be my main character. She's taken a backseat to Willow - whom Hubby claims is mostly my personality which is probably why she became my new main - and to Trish. Lia's broken and emo-rific. She's really struggling emotionally right now, and that's one of the main reasons I haven't done anything with her for a month. I'm not really sure what she'd do next.

Part of me thinks she'll just want to hide in bed for a few more days, but would Ripley, Chayse, Willow, or even Lia's dad allow her to isolate herself like that? Would they be understanding that she needed space? Would Crystal's wonderful bluntness show itself by way of telling Lia to suck it up and get over it? Option two would be that Ripley was able to cheer her up enough to at least shower and leave her room. But where to? Probably to grab something to eat, but at the same time I feel like Lia might be all "I'm too depressed to eat anything" and just poke at the food regardless of her stomach's protest of the fasting. Lincoln has also been in a rough patch lately - although Lia DID miss the small stint of his wings being hindered - and I REALLY wanted to have Lia and Lincoln sort of interact more. Emo Corner Twins Unite!

I think this is why I'm most pissed off at Phfyl. I wanted Lincoln to be sort of Lia's Last Hope. She's on the breaking point right now and needs some sort of way of redeeming herself. Lincoln could have been that option for redemption. The two of them could talk and interact and maybe life would be able to get better for Lia. She'd stop being so emo and I'd have a useable character again.

Instead, what Phfyl did pretty much nails Lia's coffin. I really don't see a way for her to bounce back. There's been too much drama, turmoil, emotional dive-bombs, death, and betrayal for a 17-yr-old to handle. Too much for even Ripley to fix. Now, because of one super stupid thing that Phfyl did, I feel like I have no choice but to retire Lia.

I need away from the forum for a while. Maybe I'll think of a better resolution, but right now I'm just seeing Lia throwing up her hands, shouting "NOPE! I'M DONE HERE!", and packing to move back home to Long Island. Screw you all!

I can't even express how much last night's solo-play upset me.

It felt like it came out of nowhere. Phfyl hadn't really been on the boards for a few weeks - partially because his one character waiting on Ron to do something - and when he returns he does THAT!? It seems so cheap. Kinda lazy, actually. And there was so much story potential lost now. It's just gone! So many questions left unanswered. That pisses me off.

There was also emotional turmoil for MYSELF there. I wept. By god, I was a MESS last night. I yelled. I sobbed. Legit SOBBED. I ranted. I was PISSED! I was inconsolable as I stormed around the house. I tried to get my mind off of it by going through my FB notifications, but I couldn't focus. I tried to work more on my crocheting, but I kept losing count. Hubby tried to cheer me up with some humorous shows off of Netflix. Eventually he gave up and we did just go to bed.

Yet I continued to rant. I continued to call out how stupid of a move Phfyl made, and how pissed off I was at him for doing so. I then vented that I felt guilty about being so mad at Phfyl because I didn't want Hubby to see me so anguished and then HE'D hate Phfyl for pulling such a stupid stunt - and therefore ruining my night. I was then even ANGRIER at Phfyl for making me feel guilty about the possibility of Hubby also hating him - me for the stupid move on the board and Hubby for pissing me off so royally.

I couldn't sleep. I was just so irritated by what Phfylburt did on the board that I couldn't turn off my brain. I went from being infuriated to depressed to calculating any minute possibility that we could reverse his moronic move.

I hoped that Phfyl would at least explain to me why he did what he did.
Did he have a master plan? He and Hubby usually do. Some intense over-arcing plotline that would take this imbecilic play and make it EPIC in the long run.
Was he just bored and figured "eh, why not?" I'd still hate the decision, but I'd at least UNDERSTAND it.
Did he feel that he was taking on too much with the boards and wanted a way to cut back? Again, I'd be pissed at how he went about doing so, but I'd get it.
Hell, I was so agitated by the post that - even though I HATE this trope - I was even hoping for a "it was all just a dream" sort of scenario explanation from Phfyl.
Instead he answered my "Why'd ya do it!?" with a repost of what he said on the FB group, with the addition of a devilish grin.

That just made me more pissed.

I guess that's just the power of well-written characters. Phfyl - although an almost crucial player on the board - doesn't actually post all that much. We see his characters slowly grow, but at the same time it's quick since there aren't many posts to go off of. There aren't many interactions with his characters. They mostly hide in the background of the action and drama that mostly centers around my characters - since I tend to be on the boards most frequently and have the highest amount of active characters.

And yet this one simple post was able to emotionally strike me like nothing else has in a while. The last time I felt so many conflicting emotions was about 4yrs ago. It's personal family stuff so I won't get in to the details, but it was REAL LIFE and REAL PEOPLE that got me so flustered that I would quickly flip-flop back and forth between angered and depressed. This is only the SECOND TIME IN MY LIFE that I was this uneasy about something... and this time it was about a FICTIONAL CHARACTER IN A FICTIONAL WORLD!

So, let's pause a moment to give props to Phfylburt for writing so expertly. And then give him a Dead Arm for the same reason.

Anyway, my ranting about this can go on for another couple-dozen paragraphs, and this post is already epic. I think I'll stop here. Perhaps I'll continue in a double-post today. Either that, or save it for a post for next week. Regardless, if I do continue I swear it will be a little more soul-searching and a little less straight out ranting.

So much for "I didn't want to look at a computer for a while", huh?

Passing The Buck Might Be A Great Plan

Blech. I can't stand being sick. I've had a nasty head cold all week long and I haven't even had a chance to nurse it properly because I've also worked a full 35hr work week. True, a measly 35hrs doesn't seem like much to those who have full-time jobs, multiple jobs, live outside the United States where a day's shift is about 16hrs long, or if you're a parent and therefore are ALWAYS on the job.

However, it's a long, tiring week for me when I just want to curl up in bed and sleep the week away.

Virtually no cleaning was done this week. I attempted three different times, and each resulted in one or two loads of dishes being done and the laundry washed, but nothing else. Pretty much the entire week consisted of me going to work first thing in the morning, coming home early afternoon, and then staying in bed the rest of the day.

Normally I don't mind weeks like this. Since I'm hiding away in my bedroom anyway, I would spend the time writing on my netbook. If I fell asleep, oh well, at least I did more work than I normally would. Otherwise, I just spent the last 8hrs writing!

Sadly, I still haven't found the money to purchase the last few things my father-in-law needs to finish fixing my netbook. So it's still out of commission. I have taken up stealing Hubby's laptop while he's at work, but the rest of the time he's usually on it.

Still, I do have those few precious hours where Hubby's working and I can thief his laptop. It's been a slow writing progress, but it IS progress. I've even added a new step in my writing process. If you're one of my personal Facebook friends you'd already know this, but I now request that everyone "poke me back in to my writing corner" if they catch me messing around online while Hubby's at work - and I therefore have his laptop to write on.

It might be cheating a little bit, but I discovered that I really have no drive to write lately, except for when I make myself accountable. And I also discovered that the best way to make myself feel accountable for writing is to pass the buck - so to speak - to my friends online. I now make THEM accountable for keeping me in check; kind of like a parent making sure I get my homework done.

I tried holding myself accountable simply by having a new chapter up every week, but my ability to write is so limited that I never seem to hit my deadlines. As the weeks slip by with no update my sense of accountability wanes. That's when I realized that maybe it's not the need to hit deadlines that kept me writing, but the knowledge that people KNEW I was writing and expecting me to do just that.

The daily challenges back in July 2012; maybe it wasn't the deadline of getting a new story done by midnight. Maybe it was actually the fact that people knew I was participating in the challenge and were expecting a new story to be posted daily. They knew for a fact that I was attempting to write every day, and they were anticipating that notification to let them know that I was done and the work was up. Same for the weekly challenges over on Writers’ Huddle back in August. People knew I was participating and were awaiting my weekly updates. Granted, the opportunity to win a prize didn't hurt.

The thing though, is that people didn't know the specifics of when I was writing for the Writers' Huddle challenge, so how was this not a case of the deadline alone being motivation to write? Well, because it had a forum connected to the challenge. I could see others posting their progress and I could comment about my own. They were expecting an update from me by that Sunday. If I missed my deadline - if I didn't write that week - they would certainly notice and have a place to discuss that.

Not to say that they would; we had a few people who - due to circumstances beyond their control - missed out on a few challenges. We didn't mock those people or talk down to them or question their devotion to writing. We were understanding and welcoming. We usually eased the person's sense of guilt over missing the challenge.

Regardless, the fact that there were people who were holding me accountable for this challenge forced me to stay on point.

I tried to tell myself that the same was true about my Hey Arnold! and X-Future stories. If I told people that I'd post weekly or monthly that they'd notice that I fell short, and they might not be as kind about it as my Writers' Huddle buddies. Yet, even with a few of you as known readers, the vast majority of my audience are nameless and faceless to me. I really have little knowledge that my stuff is being read aside from the slow tick on the "visitors" counter and the very rare comment.

So, even though I KNOW that you want new chapters and that you're waiting patiently for them; even though I know that you notice the days, weeks, and months fly by without an update; even though that SHOULD be enough to hold me accountable, it just doesn't for some reason.

Distancing, maybe?

But knowing that there are people who can ride me about not writing? That's motivation for me. So, I guess thank God for professional editors and publishers who could harass me in to keeping my deadlines if/when I become a professional author. Until then, I'll try to keep up with this "Hold my Facebook friends accountable" approach.

Eh, it seems to be working so far. I've had a few sticklers. I had an aunt who responded to a comment I made on my sister's wall; telling me to "get back to work" even though the comment was an hour or so before I posted that I was attempting to write. I also have The Bard sending me pokes and "get back to work" messages if he sees me activate in his IM contacts; problem there is that I actually wasn't online whenever he sent me those messages. The mouse must have been bumped or something, making him THINK I was messing around on Facebook.

Oh well, at least I know I can trust my friends and family to keep me in check.

Seems to be working well, too. I almost exclusively wrote while Hubby was at work this week. Because of this drive and the passed-on-accountability I'm doing fairly well with NaNo this year. Granted, that's partially because I'm not strictly counting the words going in to a 50,000 word novel. For this year's NaNo I'm just aiming for 50,000 words of creative writing.

This means I'm counting everything I type for this blog, for the X-Future story, as well as my X-Future roleplaying. I did miss a few days last week, however, and so I'm still about 7000 words behind where I should be. It's still better than last year when I was about 12000 words behind at this point.

I can't wait to see how much more efficient I can be once I do get my netbook back! Whoot!

As for you guys checking out my progress? Well, I don't have the chapter quite done yet, so I'll have to post the link to it next week. You can still keep an eye out, if I post during the week I'll try to remember to tweet about it, and/or post it on facebook.

In the meantime, here's the Snippet I promised you about Trish's run through the latest Brotherhood obstacle course. Devon decided to poke his head around and try it out himself, and so now I don't know if it will become significant enough to keep in his companion story that I'll eventually write. If so, this portion will be sort of footnoted since the story will be through Devon's perspective. Anyway, Devon wanted to really provoke Trish before his run, and so I tagged that at the end of her run; originally the story ended with her collapsing after finishing the course.

So, let me know what you think of the snippet and/or my new accountability tactic. That comment section under each post looks so empty and lonely.

Birthdays, Apologies, Vamps, and a LOT of Pictures

I had a TON of online buddies with birthdays this past month! Sheesh! September is BIRTHDAY MONTH apparently!

So let's pause a moment to give quick happy birthdays to the following:

• Chopfe
• DarkAngel1326
• Ronoxym
• ChibiSunnie

And sort of Duchess's little sister FMA:B since she was born this year at the beginning of the month. She actually shares a birthday with Chopfe.

Alright, so maybe that isn't a TON of people... but it's still a lot after months of no birthdays at all.

And since we're talking about my online buddies, AngelBlood666 has two new chapters up for his collection of the 30 Day Writing Challenge from last summer. He's now up to 26 out of the 30; better than my 14.

Final updating note on my buddies? Omnibladestrike just sent me his second chapter to read. This is pretty big. He's only done that once before. He usually gets so self-conscious about his work that he just sticks in an endless loop of reworking his first chapter. So the fact that he has finally moved on is fantastic, and in and of itself shows how much he's grown as an author. So big thumbs up there.

Now, if only I could just sit myself down to beta read for him and Chibi....

Gah, I miss having a netbook/laptop. I love my desktop, but computer chairs are so uncomfortable. I get a lot more relaxed and in the writing mood when I'm reclined or laying in the grass. Also, if I weren't tethered to the desktop - which is in perfect sight of the TV - I could remove myself from distractions so much easier. As it stands, I have to blast music through my headphones to drown out the TV and/or the talk of visitors playing MTG with Hubby, and then I have to try to angle myself so that I don't see the TV in my peripheral.

Although I can usually write while like that, I found it's increasingly difficult to beta while sitting at an angle to the computer and with music blasting in my ears. It's equally hard for me to proofread my stuff. Add in the fact that I'm getting sadly close to blind, and well...

Here, let me explain. I much rather prefer contacts to glasses. I look better in contacts. I don't have to worry about things in my peripheral being blurry since they are outside the range of my lenses. Plus, after a decade of almost exclusively wearing contacts, the extra distance between my eyes and the corrective lenses of my glasses is just enough to give me this weird fish-eye-lens feel that makes me a touch dizzy and kills my depth perception.

Problem is, like I said, I'm closing in on "blind." Without any corrective lenses of any kind I have to be within about five inches of something to see it clearly. Once your eyes get that pathetically bad it is impossible for contacts to be made in small enough increments to truly correct your vision. So, I can either stick with the prescription I have now which is a touch too weak, or go to the next level which would be majorly too strong.

Obviously I'm sticking with the touch too weak. This means I'm good for most sight purposes, but when it comes to reading something I have to be about two feet or so from it - depending on the size of the font, obviously - and items in the distance aren't as clear to me as they would be with 20/20 vision. To my guestimation, I'd say I'm at something like 15/20 vision. It's pretty darn close to corrected, but not quite there.

Add in the fact that I'm pinching pennies right now, and so I can only afford the contacts as opposed to the rough estimate of $200+ for new glasses. Ah, glasses. THEY can be made with small enough adjustments that they could get my exact prescription need and I'd be at full clear vision again.

Anyway, the reason I bring all this up is similar to why I brought up the whole desktop thing too. The way my desk is set up my monitor is probably about 2feet from my face, so it's at the edge of my clear vision with my contacts. Add in the normal eye strain of staring at a computer screen for too long. This results in me either adding a lot of stress on my neck and back as I lean forward to read, or really putting a strain on my eyes as I try to focus. Either way, it's literally painful for me to read at my computer too long in one sitting.

So, I apologize to Chibi and Omni for not being the quick-turn-around beta I vowed to be while coming up with my New Years resolutions. I apologize to my fellow members at the Writers’ Huddle for once again disappearing from the boards; it's just hard to read what conversations have been going on, let alone join in. I also apologize to AB666 for not reading/commenting on his chapters lately. Finally, I apologize to any other author whose story has been sitting in my inbox for weeks/months on end. Same goes for the three or so bloggers that I follow and haven't read in ages.

And since I'm here apologizing anyway, I might as well add in that I'm sorry that I don't have a chapter update for you guys this week. Normally - so it seems - I would therefore not have a blog update, but I figured if I wasn't going to give you guys a chapter I might as well give you this, right? Besides, I do have something else - aside from the above - to talk about.

This week has just been rough at work. A LOT of my co-workers have been getting sick now that school started up again. In other words, school started, kids went back to school, the increased socialization within a confined space is causing these kids to catch each others' colds, said sick children are now bringing their colds home to their parents, and they in turn bring the sickness to work. Yay....

We're pretty short staffed to begin with, and on top of that a lot of my co-workers are college students who now have a very restricted work availability. So now that people are dropping like flies with these stupid illnesses, the few of us with open availability have to fill in the gaps. I personally gave up my day off today - as well as shifted my Friday and Saturday schedule a little to open up some hours for me to work before hitting overtime - in order to cover for someone.

When I'm not dead tired at work I'm home cleaning the apartment. Either that, or once more getting suckered in to my husband's siren-song of snuggling on the couch while binging on hours of anime. The meal of the week? Black Butler II, and now Fairy Tail.

Side note: I LOVE Gray!

HAWT (ironic for an Ice Mage...)

Grrrrowl... ;)

I LOOOOOVE watching him enter this stance in the anime. He looks so awesome! *swoon*

*Ahem* Right... I'm married... to an actual man, not an anime/manga character....

I was semi-creative this week though. I swear!

So when I wasn't dying at work, cleaning, or wasting my life by watching hours on end of anime, I actually had the vampire LARP this past Friday. It's been MONTHS since we last played, so it kept a bit to get back in to character.

I then couldn't get her out of my head. Yay, insomnia!

Anyway, the character I'm talking about is my most recent: Neghya. Yup, name "stolen" from online buddy Neghya.

She is for our Sabbat game; simply, very violent vampires who wish to rule over Humanity as farmers rule cattle. If one were an X-Men fan I'd say - very loosely - that Sabbat are the Brotherhood of Mutants to the Camarilla's X-Men. They are chaos to Camarilla's order. They also have a sort of bastardized mock Catholic Church set up to their society's standings. It's complete with such positions of stature as Bishops being the most powerful vampires to rule over a city or borough, and packs within said city who each have their own Priest that performs rituals every night and Abbots who protect their haven.

All that aside, Neghya's story consists of living in a dystopian present in which every man is more-or-less out for himself. There are little to no "heroes" among Man any longer. Vampires and other supernatural creatures control nearly everything from the background, still hiding supernatural existence from humanity. In this dystopia Neghya is a 25-yr-old runaway who has taken on a nomadic lifestyle for the past decade, more-or-less. One night, after working a shift at a New York City bar, she comes across a strange man. I have yet to work out enough of her backstory to know how she pissed him off, but I do know she somehow came upon a ring that is of great importance; although The Bard has yet to bring the subject of the ring back up and so I have no real clue of its significance. Anyway, she either won the ring off of him by besting him in some card game - probably though rogue-like cheating - or she just plain stole it off of him.

Either way, she had the ring - along with more of his valuables - and he wanted it back. Not only that, but he wasn't about to be bested by a mere human. He is from Clan Ravnos; originally the Gypsy Kings of the vampire world, now a nearly extinct race of common rogues, thieves, murderers, and delinquents. Being outsmarted by a human was NOT an option. So he took his revenge on her the best way he knew how, but more on that in a moment.

The real draw for me to play Neghya was that I'm still learning how to play Vampire: The Masquerade. We have games so infrequently - and the rule books are so convoluted in describing how to play - that I never really understand what to do or remember key points that any vampire character should know. We set Neghya up as a newly-embraced vampire. The first role play session I had with her she didn't even know what she had become. She was terrified after killing a homeless man and draining his blood. Hubby's character Javed found her and took her in as his surrogate Childe. There were some humorous moments when she mocked the most powerful vampire in NYC because she didn't quite comprehend yet that not only were "those creatures from TV, movies, and preteen novels" real, but she was now one of them.

Since Neghya is still trying to wrap her head around the concept that supernatural entities do exist and that she's no longer human, she's also learning the ways of the Vampire. This of course means that I can goof up during game sessions and then blame it on Neghya "not knowing". Win!

The story diverged a bit from Neghya's original storyline; mainly because it wouldn't be fair to the other players if the whole game was centered around her. So, for game purposes, she's just a new recruit being thrown in sink-or-swim style during a massive war between the Sabbat and the Camarilla for possession of NYC. We're about to hit the conclusion of this war as we played out the beginning of the final battle this past Friday.

If I were to turn this in to its own World of Darkness fanfiction, Neghya's story would consist of her tracking down her true sire - the Ravnos - and take her revenge on him. There is unbridled hatred for this man, and Neghya wants to unleash her full fury on him. Fair warning, though, if I were to actually write out her story - a thought I toss around every now and again - it would have to be a mature rating and the first chapter alone would be greatly disturbing.

See, the Ravnos' revenge on Neghya was to "take everything that makes her who she is"; in other words, the most violently forced embracing he could think of. The whole thing was about dominance over her and stealing as much as he could from her. Poor thing is stripped down and shackled to a dumpster in a side alley behind the bar she worked at, is violently raped while being sliced open so he could slowly drink her blood while inflicting as much pain as he can, and then is turned in to a vampire just before he rips out her insides so she could survive the torture of it.

Jack the Ripper had nothing on this creep. In fact... maybe he once was Jack the Ripper...

When I started roleplaying as Neghya we knew that she was raped before being violently turned in to a vampire, but we didn't have the specifics. After Friday's game I guess Neghya wanted me to have the specifics.

I tossed and turned while having the most random bout with insomnia; something I've only suffered from maybe half-dozen times in my life. As I lay snuggled against my husband I couldn't turn off my brain as I witnessed the entire brutal scene of Neghya's embracing. I heard her Sire's voice as he berated her, screamed at her, threatened her, and mocked her. I heard her pleas for him to stop, forgive her, and spare her; I then heard her cries of agony. Actually, it's no wonder I couldn't sleep with such torturous visions playing out in my head.

At about 2am I caved and went to the desktop to type. I didn't get every single word or nuance, but I have more-or-less the entire vicious act written down now. Then during my break at work today I had Neghya's response to this vile deed. There is a trick that vampires can use on each other. Camarilla forbid its use - it's an executionable offence - but the Sabbat embrace it. In fact, Hubby's character Javed has an obsession with it to the point where he will frenzy if he is allowed the opportunity to do this feat and then it is denied him.

This action is called Diablerie; a heinous act, akin to vampiric cannibalism. One vampire drains another of his blood, and once the victim vampire is completely dry his very soul is consumed by the feasting vampire. Javed just taught Neghya how to diablerize a vampire during Friday's game. Now that she knows this trick exists, the extreme power and ecstasy it brings, and the complete irreversible death it causes; she's figured out how she'll enact her revenge. I have that whole scene written out too.

So, alas, there is no new X-Future chapter for you guys to read; almost exclusively due to me spending nearly two entire days watching anime with Hubby. However, I WAS creative over the weekend at least. Plus, I managed to get over my hurdle of "I can't torture my characters"; at least with poor Neghya. I think it's mainly because she was able to more-or-less recover from it. Same with Amara. I was able to torture her, but she also more-or-less recovered.

From what I hear, Hubby's co-storyteller - whom I idolize for his ability to create such compelling characters and side-stories - is thinking of doing something major that would result in a complete annihilation of one of his characters' personalities. I nearly cried when I heard that! And the guy hasn't even DONE anything yet. He's just THINKING about it! Man, to be so cruel and cold to one's characters after making everyone else fall in love with them!? That's talent.

So, while I sort out this whole mess of "can I truly torment my characters for the betterment of their development/the story?" I'll also debate writing out Neghya's story while I actually work on the next chapter of X-Future. Unless I'm called in to cover for more sick co-workers, I should have my scheduled two days off in a row this week. With any luck I can accomplish some writing on at least one of those days.

Wish me said luck!