Write Sunday – February 5th

Life is busy.  That’s an extreme understatement.  Over the last sevenish months I haven’t been making any time for writing, which was extremely unfortunate.  So as my added fourth goal for 2017, I vowed to spend one hour a week on writing.  I didn’t do so well through January (I wrote a little bit here and there near the end of the month, plus built that chatbot, which took quite a bit of writing initially).  But it’s the beginning of a new month, which means time for a new start.

I started out by writing down an idea I had for a 10 minute play.  There’s a theater event called 10×10 here in Thunder Bay which I went to a writing workshop for back in 2015.  I didn’t submit anything that year (I was dealing with sorting out my NaNoWriMo blob around that time) and hadn’t really thought much about it since then.  But then I had a random idea from work that I wanted to get onto paper.  It’s way too late to work on anything for this year (the deadline was back in January), but maybe I’ll get this into shape in time to submit it for next year.  We’ll see!  It will definitely need a lot of work (and an ending!)

After that, I also finally tweaked my Imezza and Faeriia docs to reflect the work I did on Imezzan magic back in December.  Faeriia was an easy edit – the magic on that world will not use the basic elements at all now so I just had to take any reference to that idea out.  Imezzan magic is going to be the one dealing with the elements now because it’s way more appropriate there.

I have to say, I’m very happy to have taken the time to do this writing, even though it’s really not a whole lot.

I think my next project is to work on a short story.  There’s a local writing contest coming up that I would like to enter.  And that would go hand in hand with my goal to write some polished short stories this year!

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Writing Update – March 18th

Okay, I’m really proud of myself.  Remember when I said I had taken the NaNoWriMo blob apart?  At that time, I said my next step was to consolidate all my notes on Faeriia.  Well, this week I started to do just that!

All told, I had about 28 pages of notes on Faeriia, and this week I’ve managed to edit and organize about 12 of those pages.  And let me tell you: I’m falling in love with this setting all over again!  Prior to 2015’s NaNoWriMo, I had a Google Doc on the setting that was ridiculously vague and only 2 pages long.  It’s now 14 pages long, encompassing some stuff on the world’s history, various religious beliefs, the world’s magic system (thank you again, Brandon Sanderson – you’re blog posts on magic systems helped me with this once again during NaNoWriMo!), dragons, and daimons.

Still to be sorted: more history (specifically some big wars), the social organization of some of the denizens of Faeriia, and some notes on other denizens of the world, and a few notes on specific characters.  I don’t know how much time I’ll have for this stuff, but hopefully I can get it done in the next two weeks!

For comparison, my Imezza document on Google Drive is 9 pages long (but I haven’t thought through the world’s history in the same way as I did with Faeriia) and City of the Dead is 8 pages long (I have some history of the world, but not as detailed as Faeriia’s).  So I guess Faeriia is currently my most detailed world.  But it’s also the world that several older stories I’ve had from the past fit into, so in a way it’s no wonder it’s so much more detailed.

Oh, I also wanted to mention that tonight was Write NOWW, a panel that was held at a local coffee shop.  My brother was the moderator, and it featured blogger Dahl Botteril, comic artist Bry Kotyk, and blogger Leah Wellwood (who are all local people).  It was interesting to hear from different local bloggers and my brother did a fantastic job moderating (as usual!)

#WriteSaturday – November 21st

I still don’t like how it sounds, but it’s the truth – I didn’t write yesterday at all.  I actually haven’t written anything since the 17th, putting me 13,305 words behind where I need to be.  So time to get to work on that!

A couple of really exciting things happened this week:

1. I got to interview local artist Chris “Merk” Merkley for TBPL Off the Shelf!  Merk’s interview is going to be #25!  It’ll be posted in December (I’m thinking of switching things to the first week of the month, rather than leaving it on the second).
2. I finally joined NOWW.  My brother is one of the board members, and I’ve been going to their events, so I kind of thought I should probably join.  I was thinking about joining a few months ago, but finally got around to it yesterday.
3. I’ve had Merlin for a year!!!  Exactly a year ago today I went to Animal Services and picked him out (or more accurately, he picked me out!)  I didn’t bring him home until the 24th though (I was still living at my parents’ at the time and didn’t want their cat getting mad at having another cat around; after the weekend, my parents told me to bring him anyway because they’d only be in the same house for a week and wouldn’t have to be together at all).

So on to the writing!

Earlier this week I spent a lot of time worldbuilding Ayvlin’s World.  I even managed to give the world a name!  I was thinking something along the lines of “emotion,” because emotions have become so important to the way the world works and its magic.  but I couldn’t find any words I liked for that (I spent a lot of time last weekend on Google Translate looking for words in other languages).  But then I decided that this really is the fae’s world, so why not name it for them?  After a bit of research and trying out a lot of different letter combinations attacked to “fae,” I decided to call it Faeriia (pronounced “fay-rye-a” for anyone who cares.  Those who don’t, feel free to pronounce it any way you want to).  I wanted to call it Faeria (with just the one i), but i discovered this game and decided not to.  I was also tossing around the idea of calling it “Faerin,” but thought that was a little too close to D&D’s Faerun.  So now that that decision has been made (and I’m quite happy with the name – I’ve been calling the world that all week and find it fitting), I’m going to switch the category for the world from “Ayvlin” to “Faeriia.”

After I came up with the name, I felt like I was “done” with the setting, which is part of why I haven’t been working on the NaNo “blob” this week (but also because I seem to be ridiculously busy.  I also started reading a novel this week because I hadn’t read anything in almost a month!!!)  But after reflecting on the setting for a bit, I realized there are still a few major areas that need work.  So that’s my plan for tonight – try to tackle the 13,000 word deficit while developing Faeriia a bit more.  Wish me luck!