Fell Off The Horse

It is the 29th of November; I have today and tomorrow to finish my novel of 50,000 words. I am currently at 37,140. It is a decent amount written this month, but it will be a true grind to get the remaining 12,860 written. It's not an impossible task, though. I just need to write 6400+ words today and again tomorrow. I've written one shots that long before. I've written that much in one day before. Not THIS year, but I've done it.

It will be a challenge, that's for sure, but not an impossible task. Shame I don't count my blog posts as "words written." Yeah, it's cheating a bit if I did, because they aren't words towards my novel. Still, this post alone is 1729 words; which is over 100 words more than a day's normal Target Word Count.

It just bums me out that I'm so far behind, because Hubby took vacation time this week, and this is my only day off with him. Instead of spending it enjoying the day together, or getting errands done, or even cleaning the house, I'll be hiding in my room writing.

I had hoped to catch up at least a LITTLE last night so this last-minute crunch didn't seem so daunting. However, apparently the drain of the weekend was a bit more than I thought. As soon as I secluded myself in my bedroom to write, I typed up about 500 words, and then promptly passed out.

Poor Husband. He stayed out in the living room to try to not disturb me; patiently waiting for me to emerge and let him know I was calling it quits for the night, and that we could go to bed. He ended up passing out on the couch, and it wasn't until 3am did he decide to venture into the bedroom. Since neither of us had work today, he assumed I was downing coffee and grinding out words for the last five hours.

Nope. I was snoring away that whole time. Poor thing.

I did manage to get SOME writing done over the Thanksgiving weekend, though. The Saturday of our get-together, I managed to knock out over 2300 words, which kept me on track for my normal "two days off" word goals. Sadly, I had already missed three days, and I didn't write anything on Sunday. Four off; three on; and not hitting 2000 words most of those days. This week I did indeed fall way behind. I was doing so well this year, too.

I was on top of things week one. I began to slip in week two, but I managed to play catch-up, and was only a couple thousand words behind. And then this past week just killed me. I don't even have the "Oh, I was super depressed" excuse this time. It was just poor time management. November is just too chaotic, and instead of saying "NaNo; sorry, I can't hang out" I instead was like "Eh, I can catch up on writing later; let's do the thing." Dumb move.

I'm the closest to winning that I've ever been, and I haven't given up hope yet, but this will be an annoying final two days. I'll know better for next year, though. I really DO need to keep my writing time fiercely protected. I also will make sure to have the book play out in "real time," so to speak.

See, most books take place over the course of a few hours, or a few days. Some will take place over the course of a few months where the time jump happens between chapters. There are rare books that try to cover multiple years, and when they do, there's usually a consistency with it. The male and female protagonists meet up every summer. The main characters go back to school every September. The protagonist hits another growth milestone: walking; talking; school; first love; etc.

Jolene's story is similar to that last example, but a lot more chaotic. For the stories that cross over large passages of time - such as a memoir - each chapter is typically one major event before jumping to the next major event. This chapter is about a birthday. That chapter is about the wedding day. The next chapter is about letting the parents know she's pregnant. So on and so forth. Well, Jolene's story is about each of her boyfriends. I was going to have a boyfriend per chapter, but then I realized that a single chapter couldn't really cover months-long relationships from introduction, through the romantic gestures that got them to fall in love, to the chaos going on in the guy's head, to their inevitable break up. There is just too much to tell in just one chapter. Plus, there's too much time to cover. If I were to keep it as one chapter each, there would be about a dozen time-jump breaks through each chapter. I'm not a fan of that.

So, instead, I ended up writing multiple tiny chapters per beau. When I say "tiny" I mean they all average about 1900 words. On a typical 8.5x11" paper, 11pt font, these chapters are about two or three pages long. Upon the rework, I feel like I want to find a way to combine them into their own chapters, but I still don't know how to do so without either twenty time jumps, or really broadly showing each relationship.

As of right now, I give a quick recap of what advanced in the relationship since the close of the last chapter, and then I drop into a specific moment. I show them interacting and talking with each other. I go from fast forwarding through the mundane, to stopping at a specific moment to showcase their relationship. I then fast forward again.

To cut back on the time jumps, I'd have to not showcase these moments. It would simply be: this is how they were introduced; this is the nature of their relationship; this is when she realized she loved him; this is when he told her that he loved her; this is the moment he broke her heart. End of chapter; next beau! There really wouldn't be much dialogue and "show vs tell" except for the beginning and ending of each chapter. Showcase how they met. Give broad "telling" of the relationship as a whole, and hope the reader connects with the guy the way Jolene does; understands why she likes him so much. Then I can do another showcase for the reader to see their break up.

Now isn't the time to think about that, though. Now is the time to just get the story down on paper - as it were - and once I'm done writing everything leading up to Rensin, I'll stop. I'm fairly certain my readers would want to know how her love life story ends, but I don't have a conclusion. Also, I'm respecting Rensin's wishes - the player - in not including Rensin - the character - in any fanfiction. So, her story will stop upon the morning she's informed that a ship is about to crash land at Guthram. From there I'll set it aside; maybe read it at group to get insight on where to start with edits. Then I'll attack it again.

Getting to the editing phase will probably be later than my original January thought. Considering I'm still not done writing about Jolene's fifth main love: Searl. Once I have him kick her to the curb I still have close to four years of her life to cover.

She still needs to join a brothel, learn to become a prostitute, suffer there enough to get out of the brothel, and work solo until Bannerman Marcus sleeps with her and nearly kills her. Then it's off to the Thieves Guild to learn how to better protect herself. She's there a year learning a new trade while sleeping with Sandy, and the complicated relationship they had while she still prostituted and slept with the guild leader Pezer. Once she leaves the guild there's a huge blank space in her timeline where it's just generic "She prostitutes herself out, and then steals from her Johns before skipping town, and doing the same in the next village." She begins getting called the "Golden Succubus." Tragedy again strikes Jolene, which leads her to her first female "relation" while drunk in a bar with a pirate friend who is a repeat customer of Jolene's. Then she meets Orick, who falls madly in love with her, but she no longer believes that anyone COULD love her, so she skips town without giving Orick a second thought; he becomes a stalker of hers. Jolene winds up in a major city state, and ends up seducing the closing bartender and barmaid in order to steal the full night's till. That was when she noticed the wanted posters of herself going up, and heads to Guthram. I then need to write about her short experience while in the "Thief Port" for about a week leading into my conclusion: the serpent-wrecked merchant ship carrying Rensin crashing into Guthram's port.

I am NOT going to get all that done in the next two days. The story will probably push 100,000 words when all is said and done. This was a much larger undertaking than I thought when I tried to conquer it.

So, I will write my little heart out to try to make it to 50,000 before midnight tomorrow. Then I'll probably calm down to only a couple nights a week of writing. I might finish Jolene's epic by February. Then I'll take a month off to let it process. Then back at it in April; if I don't try to again take on Script Frenzy with this new Plantser process. I might have the second draft ready for Shadow to read come summer. I wonder if he can hold out that long.

Life would be so much easier if I could get back into writing at work. Silly store actually getting customers; or the chain manager hanging around....

Oh well, you need to work with what you've got. And right now I've got a little less than two more hours before this blog is supposed to go live, so I'm going to try to use them to up that word count!

Climbing Out of a Little Depression; Don't Mind Me

I feel like I need to start off with the elephant in the room: Donald Trump is the United States' president-elect.

Now, I won't get into the politics of this and the social effects this has. That's not what this blog is for. What I will say is that regardless which side you were on with this election, this week was emotionally draining, and a bit of a shock.

So, I was already in a daze from the election. That Wednesday evening I was hoping for some much-needed distraction. Due to their move and lack of internet, Bear had to cancel two games, so he had one of the "make up" sessions last Wednesday. During said session Rensin - and Dunina - was frozen in stone by a basilisk gaze. So.... still emotionally charged.

I was itching to write Jolene's entry on this, but the characters weren't in a good resting spot, so it didn't make in-game sense for her to journal about it. I'm waiting until the "dungeon" is cleared before I post my next journal, but boy howdy will it be long!

At least two others couldn't wait, but I'll get to that in a bit.

This week for NaNo, I was writing about Jolene's third love: Parvil Kiv.

Addison by CrystalCurtisArt
Commissioned by WindyAutumnMoon for her character

It occurs to me that I don't think I shared the images I found for each of Jolene's loves, so I'll backtrack real quick before continuing on.

First up is the first - and strongest - love of Jolene's life. She's loved others since him, and Rensin is super close to being on par with the love she had for him, but this is the ruler others are measured against: Jacob Highwin.

How I picture Jacob dressed up
and while working the forge
Yvad Trevelyan - Skyhold Outfit by Slugette

Imagine Jacob with honey-brown eyes
instead of these purple ones
Yvad Trevelyan by Slugette

The last gentleman I'm going to share this week is Jolene's second love Teo Apenell. There's actually a really awesome scene that I wrote between him and Jacob. Poor sap didn't realize he'd hurt Jolene almost as much.

Image found via Pintrest
Original source unknown

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I was writing about Parvil this week. Sadly, I don't really have much on Parvil. His relationship with Jolene was basically "rebound boy after being heart broken over Teo," and he was more into a physical relationship than an emotional one. He was the "rebel" she was with for a brief stint. Good for backstory purposes, but now that I have to write out the actual relationship, I've got nothing. I'm running on empty.

I wrote the chapter that introduced him, but I just can't write the next one. I've been chipping away at it a few-hundred words at a time, but I really should have had this finished by Thursday at the latest.

Proof that planning really DOES help with writing momentum. I had so much figured out for Jacob, and he ended up sticking around for four chapters. Then I had a nice chunk of information figured out for Teo, and he was another three-chapter character. Now that I'm Pantsing the part I'm writing about Parvil, I'm slugging along.

It also doesn't help that I know this chapter is most likely the one where Jolene finds Parvil with the lusty barmaid. It's already an emotionally charged week; I just can't mentally put myself there without sobbing and curling in the corner to weep. It actually already happened this week.

See, along with the emotionally draining election, and the emotionally charged game where Rensin got frozen in stone, there were at least two other things that got me really emotionally raw this week.

While part of me doesn't want anyone to see my unedited work - which is why I'm not posting it here - I still kind of want input. So, since I was going to convert the edited version into the canonical back story for Jolene anyway, I decided to share my progress on the forum Mouse made for the game.

I warned people that it was raw and unedited. Not a problem. I then posted the link to the Google Doc I'm constantly updating. Still good to go. Theeeeeen I noticed that Rensin responded to my link.

Seems he was burnt, bad, by a fanfiction writer before. To the point where he cannot stand fanfiction or fanfiction writers. It felt like he thought them downright deplorable. This stung. This drove a knife right to my core.

Everything I had told myself over the past years - all my writing doubt - it came erupting to the surface. The thoughts that I'm not an actual writer because I need the crutch of someone else doing the work of world-building and/or character building. The hate that I'm incapable of doing something original. The slacker attitude that I was doing FANFICTION for NaNo while there are thousand others "doing it correctly" by writing something completely original this month.

It was like my inner editor and writing doubts were given a mouthpiece, and it was someone I respected for his writing; someone I wanted to better befriend. Instead, I now shrink away from him. I feel just completely unworthy, and almost fear meeting him outside of the game setting. It.... it was bad. I couldn't think about my story for a day or two. I just kept thinking that he was right, that I was deplorable for writing this fanfic instead of trying to do something myself.

Mouse came to my rescue. She told Rensin that it was fine; that she and Bear knew me and trusted me; trusted my writing. She then cheered me on.

Still, the wound was there, and her standing up for me - and Rensin's subsequent "Oh, okay then" - couldn't stitch it closed. I tried to ignore it. I tried to let it be, but every time I logged onto the board and I saw Rensin's name as "last poster" on my NaNo thread I hurt. So, against my better judgement, I explained my hurt to him. I tried to be diplomatic about it: This is how you hurt me, please think stuff like that through before you attack someone next time. However, I was still emotionally raw from everything else this week, so I guess it came across as me being the one doing the attacking. So, Mouse again stepped in by telling us to be civil.

CIVIL!? I didn't realize I was being hostile. If anything HE was the hostile party, and yet she asked for us to be civil after I posted. That cut me harder; realizing how misunderstood I was.

I guess now I understand how Jolene could be misunderstood in-game. If I couldn't explain myself without people feeling attacked, how could she? No wonder arguments seemed to pop up out of nowhere around her. No wonder her calming, carefully chosen words meant to show concern were always seen as harsh and criticizing.

Again, I sunk further into my writing funk. If I couldn't properly explain or present myself in writing when it comes to my own conversation, how could I possibly do it in my fiction? If my simple words could be so misinterpreted how could I properly tell a story to another?

That inner editor that was supposed to be locked away this month busted out of his cage and was roaring around me about how inadequate I was. I'd read what Rensin wrote on the board in the Myths or Journal sections. I'd read what Corlmitz wrote in his journal, backstory, or Legends section. I'd read what Mouse would put in Mahtab's journal or more world-build info about the various religions. I got emotional. They all provoked such strong emotions in me: anger, fear, sadness, joy, etc. And I watch people react to these posts stating just that.

Then there are my posts: Jolene's posts. Nothing. I'm not even sure others read them. No one ever comments. I am amazed by the writing the others do, and I feel so subpar. It took everything I had to push through. To keep going. To just write this week, even when every ounce of me told me to quit; it wasn't worth it; no one cares; I enrage people with my effort.

If that wasn't bad enough, we then had game on Saturday. We had continued through the "dungeon" - it's a set of sewers under the city they were in - but we're not quite done with it yet. Hopefully, we'll complete it tonight.

Anyway, Jolene is already on edge from Rensin being turned to stone, but he's back to flesh, so she's kind of elated at the same time. Then they came up against a vicious monster. It should have been challenging, but a lot easier for us to take down. Sadly, the dice were not with us that night, and we all rolled far too low to do anything more often than not. This resulted in Rensin and Dunina again nearly kicking the bucket.

Mahtab was able to get them both to full-health - or close to it - easily enough, but she admitted that she probably wouldn't be able to do much more healing that day. That's when Jolene innocently suggested that they retreat, regroup, let Mahtab rest, and possibly get other means to heal so they didn't need to rely on her as much.

Mahtab wasn't hearing it. According to her, she never retreats. Then she basically told Jolene to hide in the back if she wasn't brave/strong enough to fight. That stung. Jolene announced that she was pretty much the only one who came out of the fight unscathed and that she was more worried about them than herself. Frustrated that she again got misunderstood and ridiculed, she stormed ahead. If they wanted to march to their deaths she was done trying to stop them.

That was when the shit hit the fan. Rensin called out for her to "go home" since he couldn't handle her whining and fighting all the time. Jolene argued back that her fighting all the time was to protect HIM since she had to watch him nearly die THREE TIMES within the past week. She couldn't handle it because she loved him. It was the first time she admitted - even to herself - that she loved him.

In truth, I didn't expect Rensin to scoop her up and start a make-out session, overjoyed by her confession; they'd been through too much and she cut him too deep for that. I did, however, expect him to at least sigh and state something to the effect of "about time you admitted it." Or for SOMEONE to state something to that effect. It was obvious to everyone but her that she was madly in love with him. "About time you admit it" and then a "but we have to do what we have to do; we'll discuss this further later." That was more-or-less the reaction I was expecting.

Instead, Rensin swung from left field. He blurted out that he was sick of hearing Jolene focus so much on herself and how what the party does - whether or not they survive - effects HER. He then accused her for not understanding him. That's when he dropped the bomb that he re-evaluated his feelings and realized what he felt wasn't love; never was, and never could be.

Well, I was right there sobbing beside Jolene. And not a single party member tried to comfort her or reprimand Rensin for his harshness. They all stood there, more-or-less releasing a sigh of relief that the volatile relationship finally came to a close. The only one who reacted was Corlmitz, but even THAT was unexpected. He went off on BOTH of them for acting like children and finding the most inappropriate times to hash out their doomed courtship.

The night kind of spiraled from there.

First, there was the emotionally draining election. Quickly followed by an emotionally charged D&D session. That was followed by Real-World Rensin's criticism about me writing fanfiction for NaNo. Which, compacted with how I view everyone else on the board and how I'm sort of the outsider of the group, just tore the dreaded Inner Editor out of my head and plopped him right in front of me to try to battle. I saw myself the way Jolene sees herself within her group: an outsider always misunderstood as selfish and uncaring; disconnected. Then there was character Rensin's random outburst to implode his relationship with Jolene, followed by even more ridicule from Corlmitz. Again, I felt like I WAS Jolene. Was Rensin's harsh breaking off of the relationship somehow emotionally backed by me and Real-World Rensin butting heads about my story? Finally, I have to break poor Jolene's heart a second time by writing her finding Parvil in the arms of another.

I couldn't do it! I couldn't keep working on my story this week. There was just too much. I was just too depressed. I had to climb out of that hole before I was lost to despair.

So I switched over to "Some Like It Flame Broiled."

Can't handle a break-up scene due to crushing depression? Switch over to a smut story filled with violence!

I finally finished it, but I have to also admit that once the foreplay was done the story kind of died off. Apparently I'm great at foreplay, but the actual sex scenes and post-sex fight scene? Meh.

I sent it over to Ronoxym while playfully yelling at him for it. I needed a happy place to hide from Jolene for a while, and apparently that "happy place" was a smut story between Trish and Dark Devon.

Ron got a nice chuckle out of it and we playfully teased each other over the weekend as I kept using SLIFB as my "safe space" to further avoid Jolene and the depression that came with her. However, after I sent the story over to Ron, he agreed with me: about 65% through the story it just kind of died off.

However, with just a quick read through my 13-pg story, that was his only criticism thus far. He even pointed out a line that was perfectly in-character for Dark Devon, and it was during the "meh" part of the story. So... win? I was so concerned that I wasn't going to keep Dark Devon in-character, especially after everything about fanfiction writing this week.

Ron still needs to give it a better read to actually put his Editor's Hat on, but the fact that there weren't parts that he instantly stated as "he's out of character" gives me hope. He joked that he'd help me figure out why the story went sideways at the end. "Together we shall save this smut!" HAHA.

Um, thanks, Ron. I'd really like to have something that is strong all the way through, but at the same time.... all this effort on a story that will most likely never see the light of day....

I also used my depression a bit this week. I did write up Jolene's journal entry while the emotions were still raw. I just have it saved to add to and edit depending on how the rest of the dungeon goes. I'll then post once I'm done.

I've also started writing Jolene's farewell letters to everyone. An individual letter for each party member. I have Mahtab's, Rensin's - which he can't read himself yet...., Corlmitz's, and Dunina's written already. And they are LONG! Sorry, players!

So, I have written a LOT this week. More-or-less 1227 words in SLIFB, 1360 words for Jolene's journal, and 2897 words for the farewells written thus far. Add in the words that I did write, and the fact that I'm scheduling myself Saturdays and Sundays off, and I'd be ahead of the overall word count I should have been at, instead of about 8,000 words behind. I wish I could count it....

Before I get even more depressed with tonight's game, I'll have to push past Parvil's break-up scene. Maybe if I get to the point where I'm writing happy thoughts again - like the start of Jolene's relationships when they believe they're in love - I can push through. I can write.

Wish me luck.

Jolene, the Tsundere Hot Mess

I did it again. I focused too much on prep work, and not anything on actual execution. So, yet again, I have nothing to show for this week's writing.

While trying to figure out Jolene's many past loves and paramours, I started up a timeline of her life. I'm still tweaking it, but I think I have it more-or-less figured out. Thing is, I spent so much time creating and altering this timeline, that I didn't get any actual writing done.

That is, aside from another couple of Jolene's journal entries for the sessions I did this past week.

Boy, is she going down a spiral.... She's also increasingly Tsundere. For those who don't know the Japanese loan word, I'm going to swipe from TV Tropes for a simplified definition: "The Japanese term tsundere refers to a character who "runs hot and cold", alternating between two distinct moods: tsuntsun (aloof or irritable) and deredere (lovestruck)." Sometimes, this alternating happens within a sentence of each other. For instance, a mother scared to death about a potentially hurt child. She'll rush up to him, look him over, cry about how worried she was while asking if the child is ok. Once she knows her child is fine, she might smack him across the back of the head for making her worry so much. It's kind of a reverse Tsundere, but that's the basic idea.

And, boy howdy, is Jolene becoming almost destructively Tsundere!

The more that she falls for Rensin, the more terrified she becomes. Both of her emotions, and of the thought that she could lose him. She doesn't have a constructive way of dealing with her feelings, and so chaos spews from her. I guess it's a self-destructive, self-fulfilling prophecy. She is terrified of losing Rensin, and so she'll unintentionally push him away in order to prove that she's been right all along: he'll leave her.

Rensin's even talking about exactly that in his journal: he can't stand the constant fighting, and her tearing him down; not wanting him to be himself. He might have to give her up emotionally.

Oh, Jolene! And the worst part is, I can obviously empathize because she's my character, but Bear has no sympathy at all: "*shrugs* By her own doing. Really can't feel bad for someone that knowingly does it."

She doesn't though! Not really! She believes this is normal behavior. No one taught her how messed up she is! That's why it's such a struggle for her to change. But, since most are seeing her from the outside in, they are judgmental of her; just like in the real world.

True, I wouldn't want any of my friends or family dating someone like Jolene, because I want to protect them from the vortex of chaos that would spew forth, but I wouldn't necessarily judge said chaos-bomb without knowing the facts. I know. This has actually happened in the past year a couple of times....

So... an example of Jolene's Tsundere-ness being misinterpreted; although, it's an understandable misinterpretation due to no one else being in her head....

Jolene went on a solo-quest this week to go pick paralyzing mushrooms for a local business, and while on said quest, nearly got mauled to death by a pair of bears. With a little help of an elf ranger that Jolene hired to come along, she managed to take down both bears essentially by herself. A feat she should have been proud of, and one she probably would have been if her quest was "successful," by her standards.

She volunteered to pick mushrooms - something she knew NOTHING about; couldn't even pick out which mushrooms were the right ones to pick - because she figured it would be a simple way to make some coin. Plus, she had heard rumors that the shop that wanted the mushrooms also does black-market dealings on the side. She wanted to use the mushroom request as a means to "get in good" with the store, and then possibly use that connection to find out about the demon-blood drug ring that the party had been tracking.

Diddly squat. The blacksmith that paid her for the mushrooms had no clue what Jolene was talking about, and was offended at the implication that the store sold more than honest wares. Plus, Jolene now had to share her loot with someone that wasn't with the party. She got no info, and only half the gold she could have brought back to the group. So, killing those bears felt like a waste. They didn't have to die, because the whole quest was a flop.

Had she been able to get information, she'd proudly proclaim to the group how she got the lead, and gloat about taking down the bears. Oh, the highs and lows....

Instead, she hid that she even had an interaction with bears - aside from Mahtab, whom she went to for healing - and didn't mention the quest at all. However, the fear of those two bears attacking her stuck with her, and Rensin - while he took two others with him, and Dunina was the one who nearly died this time - went off to kill a wyvern in order to save a town. A noble quest that ended up being TWO wyverns. Well, Jolene found out about this, and it terrified her.

Rensin was nearly killed THE DAY BEFORE by the main drug runner they were looking for. Instead of resting, he was determined to train and become stronger, so he took on one of the most dangerous quests they came across. One that was a noble quest that seemed perfect for him. He would be able to save/help the most people through this quest, it required strength - his main contribution to the party - he had allies to help him, and his father became famous for taking down a dragon on his own. Surely his spawn Rensin could take on smaller wyverns with a group with him!

Rensin was proud that he took the two wyverns down, and lived to tell the tale; something not many could do. He was proud that he helped save a town. He was also proud of the craftsmanship he put into making Jolene a rapier to help her become stronger in battle; something she constantly whined about.

Does Jolene praise him for helping the village? Does she stand in awe at his bravery and strength in taking down not one, but two wyverns? Does she thank him for putting in the time to make her a gift?

NOPE! Tsundere Jolene just feels the rush of fear from the bear attack, imagines the danger increased tri-fold in regards to two wyverns, remembers the terror she felt as Rensin's breath was slowly leaving him after the drug runner's attack, and she can't handle the fear. She starts shaking as she yells at him for being an idiot. For not resting up to make sure he's fully healed. For going after a dangerous quest where he could have been killed. For seeing his father's tale as an honorable love story - as it was intended - instead of a cautionary tale - as Jolene sees it.

She doesn't see Balthazar slaying a dragon literally single handed - his other arm was bitten off - while on a hunt to prove his worthiness to Rensin's mother as a story of Balthazar's endless love for his intended wife and their son. Instead, Jolene saw it as selfish; trying to bolster his own pride to "prove" himself, instead of doing so by simply being there for the family he loved, and providing for them.

Jolene just doesn't get the Northerners' ways or their strict devotion to their pride. Because of this, she sees these acts of great deeds as selfish, foolhardy, and suicidal. Why risk your life for the sake of pride, when you could live a long, quiet, safe life with the people you love?

So.... she went off on him. She loved the sword he made her, and was instantly overwhelmed by the gesture, but her fear of losing Rensin on that mountain to two wyverns took precedence. She screamed at him and belittled his quest. Even her ignoring his gift wounded him.

Once again, much like when she flirted in front of Rensin in order to try to find info to regain the sentimental trinket stolen from him, she showed her relentless love for Rensin in the most self-destructive way possible. The more she loves him, the more she unintentionally pushes him away. And in the end, when he does finally leave, she still won't realize it was because of her. She'll find him stupid for not understanding her, and consider it "typical": everyone she loves ends up leaving her.

It is entirely her own fault. I do not excuse her of her actions, but it's still a bit of a bummer that I can't even get sympathy from my DM.... Maybe because he's been burned by people like Jolene....

To be fair, though, his quote about her doing it to herself was actually in reference to a curve ball he just threw at me.

I was joking with Mouse that maybe Jolene was being so overly emotional because she was pregnant with Rensin's kid, and no one knows this yet since it's only been about 20 days or so since they slept together. This then led to the realization that Jolene was a prostitute.... for the better part of three years.... and had very frequent income.... which means a WHOLE BUNCH of customers. Especially since she kept moving from town to town to town, I guesstimated around 500 men over the course of her career. Shear volume alone called for Bear to do some rolling. There was just NO way - unless she was sterile or purposely avoided clients while ovulating - that she didn't get pregnant at least once.

I never even took this into consideration when I built her. I just waved the magical "fantasy world" wand that decreed: unless I wanted it in my backstory; pregnancies aren't a thing....

Well... the Dice Have Spoken, and apparently Jolene got pregnant within the first year of prostitution, but miscarried. Got pregnant again the second year, carried it to term, but it died shortly after birth. The third time around, though, she gave birth, and it survived. So..... why doesn't she have this kid? What did she do the two times she carried a child to term? How did she handle the one child dying? How'd she handle the miscarriage?

Her backstory got a hell of a lot more interesting, but these are all questions that I didn't even consider. I now have to figure them out, as well as work the answers into her psyche. As well as figure out why she didn't confess about her motherhood during the great Expelling of Deceit scenes....

And, frankly, given what I know of Jolene's psyche, I really don't see her giving up the second child. I see her attempting to settle down and raise the kid. All she really wants is that unconditional love; a family; a deeper connection. Why give that up? Was it forcefully taken from her? Did she go for the "I want what's best for my child" approach? Also, WHEN were these pregnancies? Because that's about 5 months or so each late-term pregnancy, where she'd be showing, and most likely not getting customers....

I sent Bear my timeline of Jolene's life - minus the pregnancies curve ball - in hopes of him helping me sort this out. We'll see how it goes.

So.... yeah.... that's what I've been doing this week instead of writing my 1000-word story for Ronoxym's challenge....

But, hey, maybe it's still good NaNo prep?

Jolene Obsessed

I really hate the last quarter of the year. My writing always seems to get away from me at the last quarter of the year.

Sorry about missing last week's post, folks. I guess I owe you two catch-up weeks now.

An old college friend of mine that I haven't seen since graduation was on a week-long getaway with her husband to celebrate their first year anniversary. On their way home, they swung by to visit us. So, that's what I was doing last Tuesday instead of working on this post. I should have done so ahead of time, but Sunday and Monday Night football has been killing me with that.

Anyway, I want to give a shout out to Massachusetts and Boston, as well as Mouse and Bear - whose anniversary was yesterday - Happy One Year, you guys!

Now, as for my writing..... it's both good and bad. My freetime at home seems to be getting smaller and smaller, and so I have to really work on breaking down my time there to try to get more organized. In the meantime, my only time for writing and reading is at work. With Holiday Season creeping up quick, the store has actually been moderately busy, so not terribly too much writing there either.

So, sadly, I have nothing to show for these two weeks. Not to say I haven't written, just not anything that holds well on its own.

I'm still obsessing over Jolene, to be blunt.

A few weeks back Mouse started up a forum for the D&D game Bear runs. It's kind of an unofficial Wikia page for the game and the world it's played in. She's slowly posting about locations, the religions, and legends that the bards would sing about. That way we know more of the world and the stuff our characters should know being raised there.

The big thing, though, are the sections for our characters. Each of us has one with three sub-threads: life goals; profile/backstory; journal.

I posted Jolene's backstory, but it doesn't seem nearly as in-depth as some of the others. Both Mouse and Corlmitz's player have a multi-post thread of their characters' backstories. I have to say, I'm a bit entranced by Corlmitz's writing. Leave it to me to role play with a bunch of writers that are so good I again feel pathetically inferior!

As I said, I didn't really focus much on Jolene's past. I gave the broad strokes: She was a lonely child, trusted/fell in love with the wrong person, did the same thing four more times, gave up on love, became a prostitute, was nearly killed by a client, gave up on humanity and trust, became a thief as a side-business to prostitution, met up with the group. Obviously my backstory post is a bit more detailed than THAT, but it's not multi-chaptered like Corlmitz or Mahtab.

My main focus was that journal section. The big thing with Jolene is that her trust issues prevent her from really speaking her mind and feelings about what has happened each game. The journal section now allows her to do so. Granted, this is all Out-of-Character knowledge for any of the players that may read it, so it won't really help Jolene in the long run, but I'm hoping this helps the other players at least get a better understanding of why Jolene is the way she is. Poor, closed off, misunderstood thing....

So, my main task since Mouse created the forum, has been to reread the entire game log session by session, and write out Jolene's journal reaction to them. No one else seems to be utilizing the Journal threads as much as I am, but it really helps me get into Jolene's head. It's kind of moot since any grand discoveries I have with her on past sessions can't translate INTO the sessions that have already past, but it helps me build up to the next one. And from now on I can update the journal right after sessions to keep her emotions fresh.

I like watching her feelings for Rensin grow, and with them, her denial that they're real; her need to rebuke her attachment, and her desire to cut him off. I also knew that Mahtab annoyed her, but I didn't realize to what degree she actually DISTRUSTED the cleric. Poor Mouse. It's okay, I the player understands Mahtab! Jolene just isn't a trusting person.....

Which brings me to the biggest surprise of them all when I was journaling. The person Jolene trusts the most out of the whole group - including Rensin - is Corlmitz. There's a connection there that she can't quite figure out. It would be fun if she was emotionally torn between the two men, but it's not even that. There's no attraction there - sorry, Half-Orc... she's a bit shallow... - but respect. She kind of thinks of Corlmitz as an older brother she'd hate to disappoint. So she hates herself for doing exactly that. Especially since it seems to be him that rescues her all the time; speaks up for her all the time.

Well, as I said, it might not be something that I can share with you guys - without the context of the game play, I don't know if any of her journaling would make sense and/or be enjoyable to read. Still, I wrote over 3400 words the first week the forum was up, and this past week I wrote a little over 3200 more. It's something, but I don't know if it's really helping anything.

I haven't been working on Ronoxym's weekly flash-fiction challenge because I can't think of anything aside from Jolene. The best I had was an 800-word start to a psuedo-backstory tale for Jolene. An explanation as to why telling the truth is so hard for her; namely, because she thinks she IS telling the truth when she tells the lies she believes or when she tells half-truths. She doesn't know HOW to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The snaffu - aside from breaking the "no fanfiction" rule for the challenge - is that the concept of the story is Deceit, one of the Prime Evils, is telling the story of how he's "raised" Jolene since conception. However, the story is told by Deceit, so naturally the reader is going to go into it taking the story with a grain of salt; never trusting that what Deceit is telling them is true.

I thought of flipping the script and having the Virtue of Wisdom telling the story instead, but the joy of Jolene's slip into deception and living on lies would have to be reworked. I'm still not sure what to do with this tale, but at least it's more words....

All the word count; none of the content to show. I don't even know what to read at group tonight. Plus, I'm not prepping at all for NaNo. I may have to shelve the Gyateara story rework until next year and just figure out how to write a Jolene story next month. Especially if I'm so obsessed with her.

I don't even really know anymore. I'm hoping to get some clarity this week so I know what the heck I'm doing next month!

I Think I'll Set Up Shop Here In The Gutter

I read my "smut" at writer's group last week....

To be fair, I did spend the last two hours of work leading into the group frantically writing an opening to the story in an attempt to drop the story down to a bit more of a PG-13 rating. I was able to get to about three or four pages into the story before it starts getting "naughty," so I was able to read that much at least.

Nearly had a heart attack in doing so, though. I just sat in the meeting mentally riffling through all of my writing to think of SOMETHING else that I could read. No dice. At least, not unless I decided to bring up something that I wrote YEARS ago just for S&Gs. Then it hit about 7:30. We had a half-hour to still fill. Everyone else already read. We were just kind of staring at each other trying to figure out what else to talk about. That's when I sort of bashfully went "Well, TECHNICALLY, I wrote about 10,000+ words since last session. I just don't know if anyone would want to hear what I wrote.... it's.... kind of.... MATURE." I then proceeded to explain the rabbit hole I dove head first into.

They all chuckled that we were all adults, and that it would be fine. Granted, there was a gentleman - fairly new, this was his third or fourth meeting - that seemed to be around my age; probably older, though. Then there were two women that may have only been about ten years older. The rest of the group, though, were definitely closer to my mom's age, and older. Being the clear youngest in the group, it still felt awkward to read THIS kind of story for them to critique. What happens if the sex scenes need tweaking? What if they don't? I don't know which would be more awkward, them being like "Well, I think that it would seem more realistic if he...." or if I got a resounding "WOW! Well done." Because that would mean that I now know where there minds were....

It's bad enough that I know family members that enjoyed "Fifty Shades of Grey," I don't know if I could handle actually knowing people who enjoyed my smuttiness.

Anyway, I was later informed that just about as soon as I spoke up with "Well, TECHNICALLY, I wrote..." that my face just FLOODED with a blush. I was like a human strawberry for the last half-hour of the meeting. And that blush stayed for at least an hour! I'm not cut out for this!!!!

I read the intro to the story, and stopped before anything "naughty" actually happened. Both parties were still clothed - although Jolene was quickly remedying that - and it was just a bunch of flirting leading up to that point. Nothing terribly too bad. I probably would have read it proudly if I didn't know what was going to start happening in the next sentence.

When I stopped, the room kind of filled with a whining "awwwww," so... I guess that means I caught their attention? I don't know if that's because I was doing good, or if they wanted to hear the sex portions I wrote. The only other comment was from one of the newer regular members commenting about my sort of voice change. Normally, I'm about 80% dialogue and only 20% action/scene setting. To try to let the reader know the situation leading into the sex scene, I did a quick recap of the roleplay that inspired me. It was a LOT of background info. She noted that: "You normally do mostly dialogue, and this time we barely had any."

Well, she would have had a lot of dialogue if I had continued, but I wanted to just quickly set up the scene, and including all the dialogue leading up to it didn't seem practical. Still, the way that she said it, I wasn't sure if it was a good thing, a critique, or just an observation.

Then I got an email from one of the group members asking if I cared enough about improving the story to want a beta-reader for it. We could do a story exchange: my smut for his super dark murder scene that he fears will make him look like a twisted psycho. I've written fairly dark and grisly murder scenes - I asked a bunch of people my senior year of high school if they knew what happens to human eyeballs when you burn to death - so I could easily read his bit. STILL not sure about sending him mine, though. Again, I don't know if it would be more awkward if he gave me advice on how to improve the sex scenes, or if he told me it was amazing.

Still, on the off chance that I decide to send it his way, I wanted to polish it first. Slowly but surely, I went back over the story about a dozen times the past week trying to get it to a point where I'm confident that I can't improve it on my own. I still have a couple of lines that don't seem quite right, but it's the best I have for right now. Rensin's a bit harder to get the voice right than I gave him credit for. I just can't give him that spark of bashful innocence like his player managed. So, super added props to his player for being such a great writer. I even asked Mouse to pass along my praise.

She offered to get the two of us in touch - me and Rensin's player - but I just feel that would be super weird considering the circumstances. I'd rather just know the character and not the player at this point....

Despite my better judgement, I DID share the Jolene/Rensin story - titled "Rensin's Conquest" - as well as the Devon/Trish work-in-progress story "Some Like It Flame Broiled." I don't know why, but I just NEEDED to share it with someone, and Shadow happened to be online while I was still trying to calm my blush from writing group. I freaked out to him; basically a "WHAT DID I JUST DO!?"

He chuckled, and told me that he was fairly certain it was good since I'm such a good writer. This of course lead me to tease that he's like my mom: barely actually reads my stuff, but still has unwavering faith that I'm an amazing author. More talking back and forth along those lines, and eventually I just sort of caved and sent him "Some Like It Flame Broiled" with the understanding that I hadn't finished the story yet, let alone went back to polish it.

I dunno. I guess the fact that he's a close friend makes it somehow less awkward for him to read the dirty bits? No real critique one way or the other from him, aside from "<3 Trish" and "You should finish it." Positive reviews, I guess.

Well, last night I finally finished my polishing of "Rensin's Conquest" and sent that over to him too. He's part of the online D&D group with Rensin and Jolene, and so he'd probably be one of the best suited to have an outside perspective on whether or not I have everyone in-character. We'll see if he reads it and/or what his thoughts on the matter will be. I'm predicting it will be raging hatred for Jolene for playing with innocent Rensin's heart, but at least evoking emotion means I did something right, correct?

I also tried to switch gears by talking to Shadow about the MASSIVE love triangles - knots; web? - that I'm trying to set up in "Glitches" between multiple different characters; mainly Chayse, Lia, Willow, Devon, Nyssa, Ripley, and Lincoln. It sort of wobbles between Chayse being the center of a triangle, to Willow being the center, to Devon being the center, to Lia being the center.... I feel like there needs to be more romances in my story that isn't interwoven with those seven characters, but right now the only other option I have is Colette and Joseph.

Anyway, while talking to Shadow about all of this - just to have SOMETHING to talk about that isn't sex-related - I started to get a real passion for "Glitches" again. I think I'm going to finish off "Some Like It Flame Broiled" just so that I don't have ANOTHER work-in-progress hanging around, and then try attacking "Glitches" some more. I need to get an outline figured out. A road map so I know where I'm going with everything.

I think the easiest way is to come up with the individual story arcs for each character and then find a way to weave them together. That was SUPPOSED to be what I wanted to tackle this month while also doing my MasterClass on screenwriting, but somehow I ended up down the dirty-birdy rabbit hole instead. People keep reassuring me that it's perfectly fine; "romance novels" are a big seller. Still.... what a debut into the writing world.

Speaking of my MasterClass, my mother's birthday present to me this year was to sign me up for the Aaron Sorkin class on screenwriting. Isn't she just awesome!?

While Sorkin is entertaining, he also is super awkward to listen to. He's kind of like this:

He even more-or-less said this in a
disclaimer in the intro lesson.

He meanders when he talks, and tends to share examples of what he's trying to teach as a means to prove his point. However, the examples are so specific it's hard to still grasp what he's trying to say. I'm still going through the "pre-writing" portion of the class, and so perhaps it seems only vaguely helpful because I'm not actually trying to do things such as research quite yet. I'll keep you posted on how the class goes once he gets into the actual "this is how you write a script" portion.

To finish up, a quick touch-base on my reading progress:

OH. EM. GEE! "Ready Player One" is quickly jumping up the ranks to one of my favorite books! I'm so in love. All the geekiness. All the 80s pop culture. The actual suspense keeping me on edge. The main character's voice, how he tells the story, is witty and I can't stop promoting this book to everyone I see. Almost literally. I had a customer in the store the other day that basically had the 80s Saturday Morning Cartoon line-up tattooed around his left leg, and so naturally I talked him up about "Ready Player One."

I have no clue if I can finagle things around on the reading challenge check-list so this book still fits, but at this point I don't care. I may not fit all 12 challenge points in before 2017, but I'll definitely have at least 12 books read!

Alright, now off to try to finish "Some Like It Flame Broiled" so I can FINALLY get out of this gutter and start working on something I can read without looking like I replaced my head with a giant tomato.

This Rabbit Hole is Filthy....

I think I'm officially down the Rabbit Hole, guys!

Working on the smutty Devon/Trish story was NOT my only trek down this road! I added about 1000 more words to that story - I'm not sure it has the same intensity though - but most of my time was kinda focused on a new story. Remember Jolene? My new D&D character for Bear's online campaign? Yeeeeeaaaaaah. Remember how she's a prostitute? ......yeah......

Let me rewind. So, Bear started up this game in like June or late May, but I never got to join the original campaign. Bear decided to do a reset with new characters in the same world setting, and re-invited me. Spink's wedding was the night of the first game of the new campaign, and then two Saturdays ago was the second session; where I froze up in character-creation so I couldn't play.

The game keeps a perpetual game-log of everything shared via the IM component. Which means, not only could I go back and read the session I missed, but I could also read the original campaign; for generic entertainment purposes. I ended up copying both into two different Google Docs for later consumption.

Well, I read through the session I missed, and then re-read the session I was present for, but didn't play; to make sure I had a basic understanding of how the game played and the world Jolene was in. Hubby suggested against doing this to avoid me accidentally including info my character shouldn't know - Metagaming - but I've always been fairly good at keeping Out-of-Character-Knowledge separate. To the point where Lia and Willow have both done super stupid things even though I'm on the outside going "NO! Don't do the thing!" but they didn't know better... so they just went with what was in-character.

Sorry, I'm rambling. Point is, I went back and read through - which took up some of my free time at work - but I'm SOOOOO glad I did. It's so entertaining! Plus, this one character Rensin is just too adorable. I really like how he was built; nice and complex. And, if you know anything about me, you should know that if he's my favorite character it means he's fairly broken.

Rensin is part of a race of Northern barbarians who are claimed to be decedents of giants. There are no adults less than six-foot tall, and most are closer to seven-feet. Even Mouse's character Mahtab, a young woman still possibly capable of growing, is about 6-foot-2-inches. Then you have Rensin. Poor guy is 6-foot-3 and is therefore the smallest full-grown male in the village. He's routinely called "runt" which is only made worse by three things:

1. Rensin is the orphaned son of a great warrior of his village; one of the renowned "living legends" - or, at least FORMERLY living - of his region. Being a "runt" makes him seem even more of a disappointment to his father's name.
2. The person who seems to call Rensin a runt the most is his master - he's an apprentice; not a slave - the local swordsmith Alric.
3. Alric's daughter Mahtab also picks on him on occasion about being a runt since he's only an inch taller than her - there abouts - and she seems to be Rensin's closest friend; also, she's the king's granddaughter. The King of the North is a mountain of a man at about eight-feet tall; so it makes Rensin feel even MORE inferior.

Still rambling, I know, I'm almost to my point.

So, there's adorable Rensin who tries to bolster his pride, only to be quickly deflated by the playful Mahtab who doesn't seem to realize the anguish she actually causes him. He's already fairly down on himself because he doesn't think he could measure up to his father, both figuratively and literally. He keeps trying to say that he'll surpass his father's greatness someday, but in the same breath seems to mutter how useless he currently is. The man is also a bit of a blockhead who doesn't seem to understand subtlety or sarcasm. Completely clueless when it comes to matters of the heart.

Plus, the avatar for Rensin is friggen ADORABLE!

JUST LOOK AT THIS SAD FACE!
FFXIV: Gharen by YanareKu

Doesn't he just look so wounded? And I don't mean all the battle scars. He needs huggles! Lots and lots of them!

And THAT'S where Jolene comes in. He's a bit of a handsome fella, and, being a barbarian, he's only wearing a loincloth and a very large, shiny sword made from a dragon's fang. Honestly, I'm not sure if it's the body or the loot that caught her eye first. Still, he seemed a good mark, so she went for it. There was LOTS of flirting involved; he didn't catch any of it. So the half-elf Prisys chimed in to try to lead him towards the "lightbulb moment"; it worked, but he still didn't quite get that Jolene was willing to sleep with him. That needed more nudging from the other two women in the group: Mahtab and the dwarf Dunina.

FINALLY getting that he was being given the green flag, Jolene leads him and his female party-mates to the house Jolene is currently staying in as their lodging for the night. For all intents and purposes, the screen fades to black, everyone knows what went on behind closed doors with Rensin and Jolene, fade back up to him gleefully exiting the bedroom the following morning. Play continues as usual.

Then I was left alone with no customers, for five hours, completely undistracted, and bored... and tired. My mind wandered into the dark recesses of "What exactly DID happen behind those closed doors?" because a) Rensin was clearly a virgin trying to hide this fact from the women around him, and b) Rensin had nothing worth stealing aside from his sword, so what was Jolene's angle?

Eight pages later - which I'm still polishing up a bit - I got my answer, and a blush of embarrassment that THIS is what my writing has come to!

Part of me is shamefully proud of it, as evidenced by my telling everyone that I've written it. The larger part of me, though, is mentally locking this thing away with the Devon/Trish AU story; never to be seen by the light of day.

Which begs the question: What am I going to read at writing group tonight?

Maybe I could read either of the smut stories and just skip over the sex parts? I mean, it's "smut" and not "porn" because the ratio between actual plot and sex is at least fifty-fifty.... I hope I come up with something a bit more PG-13 at least for tonight.

Still, I find it ironic that, aside from "naming things" being the bane of my writing existence, one of the things I say I'm terrible at writing are "repetitive action" scenes such as long conversations/monologues, chase scenes, fight scenes, and.... you guessed it.... sex scenes. Yet, here I am writing two different "aggressive romance novels," as Bear put it.... Part of me again wants to actually read the "dirty bits" to someone so that I know if I'm at least improving on this skill.

Sheesh. What a skill to have....

You proud of me, Mom?

Well, like I said last week, "Fifty Shades of Grey" is a thing.... Eh, at least I'm writing. I could be... um... not.... writing..... right?

Aside from all of that, and reading through the backlog of old campaign sessions, I not only finished "Reformation" but I also started up a new book.

"Reformation" still wasn't my cup of tea. There was a good story there, but I feel like the book didn't follow it. I walked away still disliking Langston's tactics, but not only did I not HATE her, but I was curious about her. I felt the story should have been focused more on her. I'm an odd duck, I know. Either way, the ending seems to rush to a conclusion, and I just wish there was MORE there. So much so that when I started up my MasterClass: Screenwriting with Aaron Sorkin this past week, one of the assignments is to take an already existing story, and adapting it into a screenplay, at least for 10 pages. I decided that "Reformation" would be my "existing story." Sadly, I had to return the book to the library before I could finish the assignment, but I have the basis, so I can go back and work on it more the next time I have the downtime to re-borrow it from the library.

I'll talk more about the MasterClass next week; this post is already super long.

The book I'm currently reading is called "Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline. One of my co-workers found it at a garage sale and figured it was perfect for me. Boy was she ever right! Seven pages in and I'm already in love. Geeky gamer references, 1980's pop culture, a relatable main character, and glorious humor; awesome. I'm not terribly far into the story, but I'll keep you posted.

For now, though, I think I've spoken my fill for this week. Lord knows what I'm going to talk about next week.....