#WriteTuesday – Rejection and Preparing for Upcoming Panel Discussion!

So a few days ago I received word from Manawaker about the story I submitted for their Make Your Way anthology.  Unfortunately they decided to pass on the story as is; they said it has a good foundation, but needs some work to feel finished.  But I was invited to resubmit it if they’re still accepting submissions in the future after giving it some TLC.  Sadly I’m way too busy at the moment to edit it, but if they’re still accepting submissions in a few months, I’ll try to give it a go! 🙂

Speaking of being waaaay too busy, next weekend I was invited to take part in a panel discussion hosted by my local university!  I’ve never participated in a panel discussion before, so I’m really excited (but honestly a bit nervous about the whole thing).  After doing a bit of research, I started preparing what I’m going to say over the weekend (I’m going to have about 15 minutes to talk, then there will be a question and answer period after everyone has said their thing).  While it’s shaping up, I’ll probably be mainly working on preparing that all week now – wish me luck!

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#WriteTuesday – Not Much to Report

Happy Tuesday everyone! Sorry I missed posting last week – not that there was much to report. I did more work on the book editing contract, and watched a few of the Disney remakes with friends and family. Then I got sick over this weekend and spent a lot of time resting; I also watched a few movies on my own (which I very rarely do) because I was having a hard time concentrating. But I’m feeling better now, and should be getting back to editing this weekend!

I also went to a Giller bash last night with my mom and brother. I was super fun (thank goodness I was feeling up to attending!) and we’re planning to attend againg next year. 🙂

Oh, and I almost forgot – I submitted the Make Your Way story! I’ll let you know when I hear back from them (they said it may take a fair bit of time).

So how’s everything going for you? Have you had a good couple of weeks? Working on anything exciting? 🙂

#WriteTuesday – Book + Make Your Way Story Editing

Hey everyone, how’s the week been? Did you have a good Halloween? 🙂

Last week was mainly spent on editing the book.  I finished editing a third chapter and sent it to its author.  Then the first chapter came back to me, so I spent the weekend working on that (just finished those edits yesterday).

Once that was finished, I found myself with some unexpected extra time.  After reading some of The Wealthy Renter (which I picked up over the weekend – very excited to read it!), I turned my attention back to the Make Your Way story.  I’ve been wanting to go over the character’s dialogue for over a month now, but haven’t had the time (or energy to be editing more in the middle of book edits).  Going over the dialogue actually led me to a bit more worldbuilding for City of the Dead – I got stuck wondering what someone would say rather than “thank goodness.” “Thank goodness” didn’t sound right to me, coming from someone living in that particular world.  What immediately came to mind was “thank the gods,” but I hadn’t actually thought about whether or not people living in the City worship gods.  But they do keep altars for the dead, so I settled on “thank the ancestors” as what would probably be said in that case.

I did the initial edits to the story using the Game Book Authoring Tool (GBAT) file, but in the end decided to randomize all the sections and just start working off of a rich text format document instead (which is easier to search through).  I went through all 73 sections looking at dialogue; I’m not sure how well I succeeded in differentiating the characters….but there are some definite subtle differences in how they speak.  One character uses really long words and no contractions (assuming I got rid of them all properly) because she’s a lady who is extremely bookish/studious.  Another character uses more formal words, but they’re tempered with contractions because she is exhausted (and has more real world experience than her studious twin).  The minor soldier characters don’t use big words (again, assuming I successfully caught all of their dialogue).  The only character’s speech that hasn’t been changed is the avatar/player character.  I made that character purposely vague because they are the “you” in typical choose your own adventure-style books.  For that reason, I wasn’t really planning on giving them a specific style of speech, especially since the player has the choice between playing a smarter character or a stronger character (and I was not going to give different versions of dialogue depending on that choice! The story would have ballooned to double the length it is now!!)

Depending on how the rest of the week goes with the book edits, I’m hoping to go over the Make Your Way story a few more times (or at least once more really in depth); after that, I’d really like to submit it!  Wish me luck!!! 🙂

#WriteTuesday – Edits 2.0 Complete!

I am so excited – on Thursday I finished the edits for the Make Your Way story!!!! I sat down that afternoon and got through the first few sections. I had plans to hang out with my brother, so I wasn’t expecting to get much more done that afternoon, but our plans got delayed a bit so I kept working. I managed to get through all 15 sections just before going to his place, but I wasn’t happy with the last two (sections 70 and 71). So after I got home (and made really yummy Creamy Zucchini and Carrot soup), I sat back down and changed them up quite a bit until I was satisfied with them. And now it’s done!!!

I immediately messaged a friend to see if he was interested in giving it a read through. Ideally I’m hoping to get it to a few friends so I can get some fresh eyes looking at it. Depending on how that goes, I’ll give it another pass or two (I need to look at dialogue to make sure the characters sound different, and of course one last read-through to make sure everything looks good) then hopefully submit it before the end of the month! 🙂

So here’s the new flowchart for what the story now looks like:

You can see that it’s very similar to the old flowchart (just two extra sections added).

With the edits done Thursday (much sooner than I’d expected), I wasn’t really sure what to do next (besides giving myself a bit of space from the story before tackling the dialogue). That night I ended up finishing cleaning up this blog’s categories (I think I started doing that in April, then just put it off since). I’m now down to 14, which is where I’m going to leave things for now.  Originally I was going to get rid of all of my sub-categories, but in the end I decided to keep a few, like the one specifically for when I’m talking about using game development tools, and a few for writing like worldbuilding and characters. I also updated both worldbuilding and game development so they list (and link to) posts about the individual projects I’m “working on” (they’ve been on the back-burner for quite awhile unfortunately….)

As I was paring down the categories, I stumbled on the few blog posts about Memories. It’s been a few years since I put it aside because I didn’t know how to end it. So after I was done with the categories, I decided to play through the game again. I still really like the work I originally did on it, but unfortunately I’m still not really sure how to end it. 😦 But since that play through I’ve been puttering around with the game a bit, fixing some things I didn’t even realize needed to be fixed. A really big flaw in the game (besides the lack of ending) is that there wasn’t enough direction for what you need to do to progress. That first night I fixed a few spots, but got stuck on some others because there wasn’t an obvious  fix. I’m also very happy I made a picture with all of the NPCs (and that I noticed it while cleaning up the categories!)

The next day (Friday), I went back to working on Memories, fixing it up quite a bit. The NPCs now direct the player a bit more, explaining where things are and who needs your help next. I also had to close off one of the rooms that you could originally go through; closing it off directs your path a bit more towards certain goals earlier in the game. I also had to move a couple of NPCs to make them a bit easier to find.

Now that that’s all done, I’m back to needing to figure out how the game will end! I spent most of the weekend with that problem in the back of my head, and I’m still not 100% sure. I’ll have to keep thinking about it during this coming week; hopefully I’ll have some time to figure it out.

While I really want to get some more work done on both of these projects, unfortunately they aren’t my priority this week; ThunderCon is Sept 21 and 22 and I’m once again going to take pictures all weekend (while my friend Scott takes video footage for future ads and whatnot). I’ll be posting my pictures on my Flickr account at the end of the Con; I’ll share them here next Tuesday. 🙂

So how are your projects going? Any plans for the week? 🙂

PS, yesterday I stumbled on this Pinterest board I made for Memories a few years ago; I totally forgot it existed! That was a very fun find. 🙂

#WriteTuesday – Editing Sections 30,38, 39, 40, 41, 44, 45 + More!

Knowing that I had weekend plans, I made sure I started editing a bit sooner during the week (rather than wait until the weekend as I normally do). I got sections 30, 38 and 39 edited last Wednesday; I was pretty proud of myself – that was after a full day of work! I sat down to edit the remaining four sections (40, 41, 44 and 45) on Saturday in the evening; I got through them pretty quickly and decided to keep going! In the end I edited five more sections (37, 42, 43, 47 and 48).

I also waffled back and forth as to whether I needed to add some new sections to the story. Both sections 30 and 38 lead into the same options, but earlier in one of those story lines, you had already met some characters who show up again, while in the other story line you hadn’t. When I wrote the sections that follow 30 and 38, I guess I wrote them from the perspective of you not having met those characters. But while editing, I realized that if you had met the characters already, it was rather awkward to reread their descriptions  again. But the descriptions were needed if you hadn’t already encountered them! My first thought was to just add new sections so that the story line where you hadn’t met the characters got the description and the one where you had met them didn’t. But if I did that, I was pretty much duplicating about 8 sections to change maybe two lines of dialogue; that did not seem ideal! So in the end, I just simplified the text as much as I could rather than duplicating that many sections.

So here I am, over 3/4 of the way through! As I mentioned last week, this week I’m on vacation from work; I’m going to push to finish editing these remaining sections this week. Wish me luck!

#WriteTuesday – Editing Sections 9, 22, 23, 24, 28, 29

Ah, a long weekend.  Those are times that I don’t want to do any work at all, so it was a struggle to sit down and edit this weekend. Thankfully yesterday I got my butt in my chair and successfully worked through those six sections I planned to!

I’m starting to get really excited – this story is almost two-thirds edited now! It’s realistic to think that I can have the whole thing edited by the end of the month now. This week I’m going to editing only 7 sections (I have plans next weekend so I don’t know if I’ll have time to do more than this, but sections 30 and 38 will probably be similar); the following week I’m on vacation from work so I’m going to make a bigger push to get through more then.

Here’s where I’m now at, along with the plan for this coming week (editing sections 30, 38, 39, 40, 41, 44, and 45):

Once these 7 sections are done there will only be 22 left!

So how’s your week been going? What are you working on? 🙂

#WriteTuesday – Editing Sections 49-57

I didn’t think I’d get through my planned sections this week. Life has thrown a few unexpected things my way that I’ve been thinking dealing with this week and editing sort of slipped my mind as a result. Thankfully I had some time yesterday and powered through editing those nine sections.

So here’s what’s been edited so far, along with the plan for the coming week (sections 9, 22, 23, 24, 28, and 29):

I’m now officially over half way through the edits!

I decided to go back to editing just six sections at a time this week since this weekend is the labour day weekend (and the way previous long weekends have gone, I generally don’t have a ton of time to work on writing).

So how’s your week been going? What are you working on? 🙂

#WriteTuesday – Editing Sections 13, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 32 + More!

I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t get any edits done on the Make Your Way story this week. On Friday night I found myself hooked on Stardew Valley again. I played the game a year or two ago and had to stop because I logged 26 hours in 48 (the remaining 22 hours involved sleep and work). A few weeks ago, a friend of mine wanted to play co-op; I agreed with the caveat that she host the server so I wouldn’t be tempted to keep playing. That was all well and good until I started my own game and then got hooked on Shane’s storyline on Friday.

But thankfully I managed to tear myself away from Stardew on Saturday with the help of real-life fishing. That evening I kept myself off of the computer (which was surprisingly difficult – I really wanted to keep playing Stardew Valley!) On Sunday I spent a lot of the afternoon and early evening cooking and baking (I made banana bread and potato salad). Then later in the evening when I *almost* booted up Stardew, I pulled up the Make Your Way story instead and started editing. Despite a few Merlin breaks (he wanted me to pay attention to him, not the computer), I got my planned 7 sections edited….and just kept going! By the time I was ready to stop, I had edited 7 more sections, plus added in a new one. Originally sections 32 and 33 both led into 34, but that didn’t really work; I wrote a slight variation for 33 (73), which bridges the way to 35. Thanks to editing these extra sections, I’m now about 40% done this draft!

So here’s what has been edited so far, along with the plan for this week (sections 49-57):

If I can get these nine sections edited, then one whole branch of the story will be done!

So how’s your week been going? What have you been working on? 🙂

#WriteTuesday – Editing Sections 10, 11, 12, 14, 17 and 18

One week later and I’m still plugging along on the edits to the Make Your Way story. 🙂

Last Wednesday I got sections 10, 11, 12, and 14 all edited.  Then I finished off sections 17 and 18 yesterday.  No new sections have been added to this chunk of the story with the edits; the story remained the same, it just needed to be fixed up a bit.  I found sections 10, 11, 12 and 14 all relatively easy to edit because they were all pretty straightforward.  17 gave me a bit of trouble just because a lot of my descriptions were really awkward (which is why I didn’t continue with it on Wednesday).  But when I worked on it yesterday it didn’t seem too bad, and I got section 18 edited pretty quickly.

So here’s the plan for the next week: editing sections 13, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21 and 32. I considered moving to the right side and starting those edits, but it made more sense to me to fix up the one side of the story first before moving onto the other.

I’m also working on a project at work that I’m really excited for.  Me and a coworker are writing a radio drama-style podcast for the library. He has been writing the first drafts then I’ve been going back and editing them. We’ve got the first four scripts done, and 5 and 6 are written as first drafts (I’m now working on editing them this week). The one problem I’m having is that it’s getting harder and harder to leave the podcast at work (even though we’ve both agreed that we’re only going to write it on work time). The current plan is to have all 10 episodes written for the fall; we want to do a read through with all of the cast in October, with the hopes of starting to record not long after that. I was going to be voicing one character, but after writing it, I now really, really want to voice a different character. I’ll give you another update on the podcast once all of the scripts are written. 🙂

#WriteTuesday – Editing Sections 3-8

Happy long weekend everyone! I hope you had fun. I went out to camp for a few nights, spending a lot of my time swimming, fishing, and reading Sharon Shinn’s Unquiet Land, the fourth (and final) book in the Elemental Blessings Series.  It was a great weekend!

With the long weekend coming (and my nights filling up with plans), I was a bit worried I wouldn’t make time to continue the edits on the Make Your Way story. But on Thursday night I managed to sit down for a little bit (despite my cat’s annoyance that I was writing rather than entertaining him). During that time I edited sections 3, 4, 5, and 6, which all involve the main character meeting another character, Clara (the reader gets to decide if they approach her openly or cautiously). I ended up adding a new section to the story (72); now section 4 moves into 72, which then connects back to the main story at 7 instead of 6.  I’m so glad I made this change!  When I originally wrote these sections, they were way too similar.  With the new section added, they’re now a lot more distinct (originally you kind of cautiously tailed Clara for a bit before deciding to approach her, no matter which option you chose.  That definitely doesn’t work if you want to approach her openly!)

I brought the story with me to camp, but didn’t end up working on it there (thanks to reading Unquiet Land instead).  So after unpacking and hanging out with Merlin, I got to work on editing the final two sections for this week.  With that done, I chose the next section of the story that I’m going to work on (I went with another 6 sections since that’s the amount I worked on this week). So here’s the new plan:

So what have you been up to? I hope you had a great weekend!