Focusing on Organizing and Completing Projects

Happy belated Independence Day to all my fellow Americans!

Sorry for the delay on this post. This time it was Blogger technical difficulties that I just could not figure out how to solve.

Anyway, this week, as with the majority of the summer so far, consisted of me having a full work week. This resulted in me having little to no time to read or write. I STILL have three stories of ChibiSunnie's chilling in my inbox for me to beta read. I haven't attempted to work on any prose writing in MONTHS. I just get so worn and tired and uninspired. If nothing else, I've discovered that unless it's hidden away in my bedroom - like before I got married - I just cannot write or read stories on my desktop.

One of the things that Ali Luke frequently comments about is realizing the best times and atmospheres for your writing. Although I don't know what the BEST is for my writing, I do now know one of the worse places: My desktop.

Man, I miss my netbook.

I did manage to accomplish two things this week. One being cracking open The Red Pyramid yet again. It kept me a moment to recall where I was in the story since I haven't had any free time to read it in about a month, but then I enjoyed a few chapters before passing out. The second is that I completed at least the base of the baby blanket I've been crocheting for my niece since she was born in April! Her baptism is this upcoming Sunday - so there may not be an on-time post YET AGAIN - so I'm gonna try to finish it up before then. I don't have high hopes though. I'm working on crocheting all the details, plus I wanted to get a soft piece of fabric to use as a backing. We'll see how it goes.

As for the limited writing I was able to do this week, it was of course for X-Future. We started up a prom for the characters back on June 14th in order to celebrate the first anniversary of the game. That scene lasted a week until we felt we played it out the best we could with everyone. Then Tyler's player had him start up an after party complete with a concert. We all lazily played within that scene for twelve days without anything really happening. Finally, Hubby decided he needed to throw in a catalyst to really get us role playing again. So on the third he decided to have The Brotherhood - a villainous group of mutants who oppose the X-Men - crash the after party. They're after Crystal again, but Screw Driver is also out for revenge on Chayse after he thwarted the original plans of capturing her. It's been slow role playing again since we have all been super busy with the holiday; nearly every active player being employees of the local grocery store.

Still, there has been a lot going on, and a lot of it consists of important conversations going on at the same time. This results in an interesting dilemma in which I need to actually visualize who is saying what when and what part of which conversation my characters are paying attention to. After a little while of fighting with this hiccup I finally decided to just write everything out in pseudo-script format for characters talking over each other. In other words, I wrote all the dialogue out side by side, then timed myself reading it all off to make sure things lined up timing wise.

After doing so and actually accomplishing my task of updating with the girls I looked at my "diagram" and remembered an article I found over on Writer’s Huddle. The article showcases how famous authors outlined their stories in order to help keep things organized. It's really cool to see how people organize their thoughts. Then I thought maybe you guys would like to see the same of my work.

So, without further ado, here are some of my many diagrams and outlines.

This is the timing organization I just described. I edited out the parts that would be spoilers if I ever converted the game in to prose like I intend.

An example of my horrible, HORRIBLE ability to name things. These are places in the country of Kerizmar within the world of Gyateara. Kerizmar is mostly the country Amara's stories would take place in.
It also beautifully showcases my math skills... -_-

One of my early thought webs while I was building Amara.

My early timeline of Amara's life leading up to the start of the D&D campaign she'd be involved in. It's since changed.

I wish I could have found the long timeline I wrote out for my NaNo story.... That was intense.

Anyway, to any other writers among my readership, how do you organize your tales?

Who knows when I'll be able to write again, but here's hoping a blog post on time next week; highly unlikely given the crazy weekend schedule with the Baptism and all.

Anyway, one last "Happy Independence Day" to my American readers.
(And a bit of a "Nanner-Nanner!" to my British readers )