And it is once again time for an open mic! My only news is the 7″ of wet snow we got, appropriately enough, on April Fool’s Day. At this rate, I will be able to stop shoveling my driveway somewhere around June…
And it is once again time for an open mic! My only news is the 7″ of wet snow we got, appropriately enough, on April Fool’s Day. At this rate, I will be able to stop shoveling my driveway somewhere around June…
I bought a new snow shovel and never needed to bring it out. So it’s probably my fault.
I’m just still feeling pleased that I got the first draft of my fourteenth novel done this week. I’d feel nothing but joy…but that means it’s time to start revisions on the thirteenth. Oh well. :}
Congratulations! That’s amazing and awesome!
I’ve finally finished the first draft of the WIP novel that had been taking forever (including the entire year spent on a rolling-rewrite). Now I’m letting it cool off, and pulling the back-burner novel up to the front burner.
How exciting! Congrats!
Writing along. I may have another fairy tale story published this year. Or possibly two, but the other one is a doorstop, which takes more time.
Good luck to you on both!
Honestly, my writing has slowed down a lot (most days to nil) due to a spike in chronic health issues beating me up and all my limited energy going to the day job, but I ran across a song that reminded me not to beat myself up for mistakes or failures, but to remember that part of the process is making mistakes and crashing and dealing with “life rolls” and then getting back up and just keep going. So I’m trying to stress less and just focus on what writing I can do and it helps me get more story brainstormed when I can’t write and more writing done when I can if I’m not stressing about it.
I had hoped to be a different place right now than I am, but I’m grateful for the fact that I’m far enough into both of these books to know exactly what sections I want to write next and to be able to feel the whole shape of the books, even though they’re novels. Usually I can only do short stories by feel, but these ones are definitely at the point where I can know the payoff and thus know what’s necessary for those endings to actually pay off. The one without much of an external plot was a lot harder to find the shape of, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got it now. It’s really just capturing those feelings in words at this point.
Which is itself a little harder than one might think. Because the point of it definitely isn’t to just write down events and scenes I know need to happen; it’s to capture those emotional turning points, since that novel is very much focused on a character journey during two different holiday seasons of their life. If I just focus on hitting the plot points, the whole scene feels dead and I have to scrap it and do it again. And since I write out of order, sometimes I have to scrap a payoff scene and redo it because I include too much setup in it, and it doesn’t work at all.
So I guess, TLDR: trust the process, be grateful for where I am in it, and don’t beat myself up for things I can’t actually control that get in my way.
Having resumed work on that formerly back-burner novel, I’ve now found myself fallen down a smeep-hole of world-building. I’m expanding and making minor revisions to the list of unearthly mammals in the setting.
The setting has an arcane-mystic connection to Earth, which is how the protagonist guy-from-our-world got there. I’ve decided that the plants, cold-blooded animals, and birds in the setting-world are all earthly ones (with only very minor variations like a different breed of chicken). I’ve also decided that the mammals are all different, with the exception of humans and dogs (and dogs are rare).
I’d already made a starter-set for the previous novels in the setting, with both coined names and “call a smeep a rabbit” names, and I’ve been putting off expanding the list until “later.” It is now “later.”
Also, I’m expanding and regularizing the list of earthly mammals that are mythical in the setting. And the creatures that are mythical in both settings. And the earthly mammals that are completely unknown in the setting, even as mythical creatures.
How are you going about designing your mammals? I’ve tried something similar to this in the past and I didn’t get very far before I realized I knew nothing about creature design.
I’m not really designing them. I’m doing permutations and amalgams of earthly mammals, fitting them loosely into niches. I’ve looked at extinct real-world mammals (which wasn’t as helpful as I hoped). And I’ve kept in mind what I know about general biological principles so that I don’t have to lean too heavily or arbitrarily on the magic wand of “it’s a world with magic.”
For this iteration, I looked at Wikipedia for the major groups of mammals, picked out the ones most likely to be “common knowledge,” then started the permutation and amalgamation process, creating new orders and families of mammals while fitting in my previous work. And assigning & coining names (because names are magic for me).
I’ve also shaped things by eliminating certain groups. The business of mammals being non-earthly (unlike the other animals) started largely because I didn’t want horses or any horse-like riding animals in the setting. In this iteration I’ve also decided on “no marsupials.” Instead there is a group of primitive mammals that lay eggs, and that are rare and exotic critters from a few remote and isolated locations. Except for the wyverns, which are flying, egg-laying mammals that take up the various ‘bat’ niches.
Huh. That sounds like a fascinating world to play around in. Good luck with your reiterating!
With brainstorming/noodling, there are many bad ideas to go with the good ones. Sometimes the bad ideas are humorously bad.
Working out names for the “like rodents, but not,” critters. I had the idea of calling some of the burrowing ones “hobbits.” Then I thought better of it.
I also have half-rabbit smeeps. The non-jumping ones with long ears I considered naming “radars.” Then I decided not. Then I got the idea of saving that name to use in a science-fictional setting.