Fail so far

I've gotten very little written, but I felt bad about my progress on a lot projects...but I'm feeling better now, so I anticipate the next week will yield much better results.

Goals Resolved

School has forced me to refocus my priorities in writing but not give them up. I reviewed my goals at the beginning of the year, and of the 12 stories I originally wanted to create for the Fulcrum novel, I've done 2. The writing group helps some with that, since they've reviewed a half written second and I also did a fantasy story I'd been working on for a while, but I still want to finish all 12 before I start the novel in August, although I will also have to finish and plan the novel in August, so I plan to do 1 of these stories a week until they're done, with two stories done this week-Air and Water.

We'll see if I make it.

I'm also starting the seven sci fi/fantasy stories not related to the novel, at a rate of one a month until the end of the year.

Right now Ken and I are up to Chap 25 on the Pre Cyber novel.

I am way the frack behind

And I only have a month to get a new story (and a whole story) this time.

I'll be writing a lot in the novel when I get home.

Plus I'm opening up a new short story line, so I'll theoretically be doing two....but now that school is done, car is done(ish) I can focus a bit more.

Not much time

Not much writing was done last week or will be done this week because of the final final of my Grad Studies. Here's hoping I pass.

Writing Group met yesterday for the third time. Rita and Julie had awesome stories. Their recommendations on Water were to be sure to include ominous foreshadowing, ie 'why are the Abysmali paying attention now when they didn't before.' Makes sense.

Earth has been finished and submitted.

Skip and Rita now have the current incarnation of Micronation after Joyce reviewed it.

Ken and I have completed Chap 21, 22 and 23 of Precyber.

Writing

I plan to finish Earth this week for the writing group. I am to start Air later and work on Water as I can.

Air plan

Alright. So as I ponder the nature of the elves, it actually makes a lot of sense for them to have the froo froo gothicy frilly stuff they often have in fantasy tropes. Not because 5 year little girls like that kind of thing, but because when I ponder the Sopensen reaction to humans, it will eventually end up with the humans under their care after the Fulcrum event; as pets.

Sopensen are the Greeks/Native Americans of the setting in the sense that they have an extremely advanced and noble culture that gets stomped/stolen/borrowed/overshadowed by the humans. They were the ones that saved the world and made it livable after the Bleyoki. Of course, it also doesn't change the fact that they kind of did the same thing to the other four races that came before, but one could argue that in their case, unlike that of humans, they actually deserve some credit for two to three thousand years of impossible struggle to save the world as compared to gaining dominance simply because of a clever trick Pickle played on Fa and Sa.

Thus, they are going to love humans, but secretly hate them. The manifestation of this is an increase in life span, power, intelligence and beauty; all of the things that Elves typically have, but they are a culture of pets. And I think at the time of this story there is just one Sopensen that has not moved on to 'other things.'

The problem is, how do the pets react to normal humans? On the one hand, it will be the typical reaction of arrogance and disdain. After all, elves, like always, are better and more human than humans in virtually every way, and they live five to seven times longer. On the other hand, they, much like the Sopensen, will secretly hate and resent humans for their freedom for domination; even long after most of the Sopensen have left, their own culture and nature will continue to imprison themselves. A society doesn't stagnate on its own unless it turns inward, which means that is the way the elves will have to behave. However, I picture the elves having 'missions' to the 'lesser' human peoples, much like occurs now...

And the manifestation I see of this are Elven gifts. Magical abilities which are given to selected humans. Thus, our story will be about a human who is selected by a bunch of elves, taken back to the Elven city, made an Elven pet and given the gift. I'm thinking the gift goes wrong, the Sopensen steps in, chides the elves, and in so doing shows how the Elves themselves are 'pets' much the way they have treated the human visitor, and then the human goes back to the human lands with the gift in tow, much the wiser for her experience.

I'll have to take a day to think about our character and her gift.

Changes and Root Canals

So I realized that I'm the author of my own story.

Yeah, sounds trite and stupid, but the point is that if I'm not satisfied with a story, I should change it. It is true, that a balance must be struck between piddling around with the same story over and over again and putting stuff out. Well I've put lots of stuff out and its time, in my opinion, to notch up the piddling around with it until I get it to work.

I'll finish Earth and Water, but quite frankly, starting with Air, I don't do any more stories until I get it set up right, which I intend to do this week. I've also learned that when I compare novel 3 to novel 2 I do understand that it should all be written at once and quickly. I'm thinking that with air I write it all in three days. Which means I use the process I use with scripts, including putting down the entire plot ahead of time and THEN filling in the blanks. My stories come out much stronger that way.

My mother in law had as much difficulties with the 2nd novel as my mother did. Specifically the beginning. I'm going to perform a root canal on it, and radically change a few things whilst trying to save the core story. We'll see if it helps. If the foundation is not strong enough, I'll just have to move on, like I did with the first novel.

Which makes sense, since I usually have to do twice as much as anyone else to learn something, so if a natural writer doesn't really get to the good stuff until after their first novel, why not expect me to require at least two?