#WriteMonday – Short Story Submitted!

I did it!  I actually got that short story edited and submitted!

I had a really hard time sitting down to deal with it.  I kept putting off the editing.  Finally on Tuesday I sat down and started writing whatever was on my mind (it was a free write, much like I did years ago in a writing class).  By the time I was at the end of the page, I actually felt inspired and read over the story.  It was in okay shape and didn’t need too many edits.  So I worked on those when I could and finally finished on Friday.  I ended up calling it “A Friend from the Deep;” it’s set on Imezza and deals with a kraken (which is why its working title was the ever original “kraken story.”) I submitting “A Friend from the Deep” to Martian Migraine Press’s Monstrous Outlines: an Anthology of Camouflaged Horror Friday night.  I kind of doubt it will get accepted since that anthology specializes in horror and weird fiction and this piece is probably closer to fantasy (I could have sworn it said it accepted fantasy somewhere but I can’t find whatever I read now). Oh well, the worst that happens is they say no, right? I guess we’ll see what happens.

I need to make sure I remember to free write next time I have a hard time sitting down to work on a project like this!

On Friday I also followed up with my last submission (oh my gosh, that was a year ago!) I *think* the story has been published but I haven’t heard anything from the publisher.  I’ll give more details once I hear back from them. 🙂

So with all that happening on Friday, I had the rest of the weekend for whatever.  I took the rest of Friday night to look over (and clean up) my favourites list on Duotrope.  In doing that I found a few markets that sound pretty interesting; I decided to try writing something for the Make Your Way anthology. Make Your Way is looking for pieces that the audience will have to interact with in some way; I’ve written for projects like Holdfast in the past, so I’m hopeful that I can pull this off.  So I spent a bit of time later on Friday night coming up with a really simple RPG system for use with my story, with the rest of the weekend spent plotting things off and on.

I also spent a little bit of time trying to research tools to help me make this.  I’m a fan of Articy Draft but do not currently have my own copy (I was able to use it for a project I worked on in the past; the license was provided by the company I was working with).  Twine shows some promise, but it’s the type of thing I’ll use if I ever decide to publish this story on the web rather than in a book.  So I ended up defaulting to using my physical white board to plan this out.  Well, until I discovered The GameBook Authoring Tool, which I downloaded and tried out.  I think it’s exactly what I need to link everything together as I go.  So between my white board, my trusty notebook, and The GameBook Authoring Tool, I think I’m good to go for this project!

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Autumn Update

I’ve been rather quiet on here since talking about refreshing my writing space  and submitting that short story (omg I forgot to mention – it was accepted!!!) The reason was that I was working on a big freelance project that came my way.  Once it was over, I had to deal with a couple of personal things (and honestly rest my brain!)  I read four books over the last week, which was great (I hadn’t read any fiction since early September); one of them, Brandon Sanderson’s Warbreaker, was absolutely fantastic!

Today was a day spent catching up on email and whatnot.  I went through all the Duotrope emails I’ve ignored over the last few months, looking into a few more listings that sounded interesting.  I also signed up for my very first game jam, which will happen in mid-January.  I don’t have a team yet (as far as I know, I’m the only local person who has signed up so far); I figure I’ll just make a small game on RPG Maker or Twine if no one else signs up (since I do not have the coding know-how to make an engine or anything fancy like that).  I’m really excited though – I’ve always wanted to participate in one, and now there’s one being held locally (previously this particular game jam was held only in Sudbury – that’s not too far away, relatively speaking, but the time of year is so iffy with the weather).

So now I’m not quite sure what I want to be working on.  I have two RPG Maker projects on the go (both Tears of the King and Memories), so I wouldn’t mind working on one of those.  But I also wanted to write four polished short stories this year (and to date I’ve only written one).  With just over a month left of the year, it’s looking like I may have to sacrifice one in order to achieve the other.  So I’m going  to take some time to decide on what exactly I want to be working on through December.

Working on Cut Scene Dialogue

So after my paper prototyping adventures last night, I felt like I was ready to actually work on a few of the important cut scenes in Memories.  The only one I have somewhat built is the one I showed you in my post about tinting the screen (and that literally has “blah blah blah” as most of the dialogue).  I didn’t feel like writing the cut scenes in RPG Maker right now because I wanted a bit more flexibility for editing.  So first I thought to try using Chat Mapper, but that wasn’t a great fit when I started (I was thinking about the mechanics of how the program worked more than actually writing).  I had the same problem with Twine.  And then I remembered: I have Final Draft!  Why not write the cut scenes with that?

Sure, it took a few minutes to remember how the program worked (it has literally been YEARS since I last used it), but that was no big deal; I was back up and writing in no time!

I forgot how easy it is to read a script for dialogue.  Final Draft has been the perfect tool for my current needs because I don’t have to think about formatting, I can just focus on writing the words right now (and I can very easily edit whatever I write).  I managed to get a couple of key scenes written before making dinner (and quickly edited one after dinner).  Once I am happy with the text, I’ll be able to copy and paste it into RPG Maker. 🙂

Writing Goals

I know, I know, this is a bit late.  The new year has been here for a month already.  I came up with my goals for the year about two weeks ago and have been meaning to post about them for awhile.  You know how it is; life gets busy and sometimes the best of intentions get waylaid.  But better late than never, right?

Back on January 14th, I wrote down ten goals for the coming year.  About half of them were writing related, so I’m going to share them here:

• Submit at least six short stories for publication
• Figure out Chat Mapper and write some branching dialogue with it.
• Figure out StoryNexus and write a game with it.
• Build 2+ of my worlds that need building (I have a list of ten and counting).
• Build a game on RPG Maker.

Of course, when I wrote those goals, I managed to somehow forget about my NaNoWriMo novel, so a bonus goal is editing that, putting my goals up to 11 for the coming year.

There are many narrative systems that you can build a game with nowadays.  I chose RPG Maker because I own it already and have been meaning to make a game with it for awhile.  StoryNexus and Chat Mapper were both recommended to me by friends.  I’ve checked StoryNexus out a bit and am intrigued with it, especially after playing Winterstrike (it’s well worth checking out!)  For the branching dialogue, I wanted to give both Chat Mapper and Twine a try, but didn’t want to inundate myself with systems and so chose only one; if I manage to find more time I’ll be checking Twine out as well.

So what are your writing goals for the coming year?