Bleigh

Thank god for Dan's claustrophobia. Chapter's just writing itself at this point. All it took was two months of agonizing over the wrong material to have it work itself out in about 30 minutes.

Also, I thought I was a genius by combining two future chapters. Turns out I'm an idiot because the problem was a little more complicated than I remember.

In other news...bleigh.

40% = 100%

At least in the Fire Emblem world. Playing on hard mode is like being slapped in the face. With a fish.

Over and over.



Quick update because I'm quite ill and extremely tired.

I was reading Dan's interlude again on the train the other day and came across a lot of HORRIBLE typos. It was terrible...extremely terrible. For instance, I used "you're" instead of "your" in one sentence. That nearly killed me to read. Yes, I feel the shame.

At any rate, I went back and read it one more time to fix the really terrible parts. It still needs work, but it's readable. I realized the free-running part and the end of the chapter are actually not bad. I'm pretty happy with them. The beginning needs to be completely re-written I think, but that's not too serious. So I have a prettier version of the chapter now, which makes me happy.

Also, the new Within Temptation album is awesome. That also makes me happy. Now I'm off to sleep.


Or write some of my portfolio material...




Nah I'll just sleep. I still have five days.

Well Butter My Biscuit

This is the third post in a short period of time, but I'm done chapter 11 and I figured it was worth ranting and raving about. I technically finished last night, but I was so tired that the end of the chapter turned out rushed and...well stupid. Despite what you may have heard, there is no "L" in "machine." Herp de derp tired brain is tired.

I also felt the need to gather my thoughts and figure out what's what. Then I did something stupid. I looked at old chapters, skimming them to pick out related parts and make sure everything is working out. It is...more or less, but I have a lot of clarification work to do.

SO I'M USING COLOURS \(^.^)/

The only problem is I started highlighting the pink parts as blue because I thought that the blue was pink, but really it was pink not blue and therefore, I had to go back and re-highlight some of the pink parts so that they actually weren't blue. I had no difficulty with the green.

I also discovered that up until about chapter...7ish, my writing is mostly trash. That, my friends, is why looking back is DANGEROUS. I clarified some points, but for the most part I think I'm going to be re-writing all those chapters again. Not now, because I'm not allowed to (slap my wrists please), but in the second draft.
Also, I'm going to do something crazy. I'm going to switch chapter 12 and Dan's Interlude. Okay, maybe that's not so crazy.



NOW BARE MY ARCTIC BLAST!=DDDDDDDDDDDD

BALLS

So it turns out that the new release date for Republic of Thieves is JANUARY 10, 2012. BALLS AND A HALF. It's enough to make you cry rivers of madness. Yeah, even I don't know what that means. I was hopeful that it would be this year, maybe even October or November...but no. No that hope was dashed today at that fateful Chapters book search station in Chinook. I thought I'd post an update on that here since that's one of the reasons people are actually finding this blog. So...you're welcome?

Man, this book had better be good. At least it hasn't been 12 years (Duke Nukem Forever anyone? Not that I ever played the originals...and the game looks pretty...not what I'd like.)

Also, speaking of stuff that never gets made, published or written...I finished Dan's interlude. Finally. It's long. I'll probably need to cut a few parts out, but I'm not sure which ones yet. That or I need to make Dedrad's part A LOT longer. I probably should anyway because his interlude isn't as interesting.

I can't remember if I mentioned this, but I think that the place I'm going to insert a lot of explanation on the mechanics of my world in Chapter 1. I need to rewrite it anyways because it's...not fitting with the tone of the rest of the story the way I want it to. So right now I have Chapter 1 and Dedrad's Interlude first on the docket for overhaul when I'm done this. If ever.

Lordy I still have a long way to go. There's an element I'm debating about the end. I am no where close to writing it, but need to decide what's going to happen to two of the characters. I'm hoping that the story will just reveal the answer as I write, but either way, I'm not sure if I'll be completely satisfied with either alternative.

I've made tons of progress in the last year. It's funny because I look back to March of last year and I had JUST finished Dedrad's interlude. Calculating the progress from there until now, this means that I will take another two years to finish this. I'm not liking those stats. I'm going to try and get this done before summer 2012 (NOT BECAUSE THE WORLD IS "ENDING"). I'm planning a 3 month trip to Europe that summer and I want the completion of this to be a reason for celebrating with that trip (aside from...you know graduating university...). I have a lot of work to do, and that's not taking into account school work, work work and any other incidents that may crop up in the meantime.

I am also horrible at setting goals and deadlines for myself. Heh, heh.

The Second Interlude

Man, this really was the chapter than never ends. I started with a simple idea, and it kept going and going and going. I had my own personal energizer bunny by the end. This chapter taught me one main lesson: stories have a mind of their own. I'm sure I knew that before, but after this...I realized that I need to do a lot more work on poor Dedrad. He's my least developed character. He needs a little TLC, because he's an important foil for Ash. That and I need to rewrite chapter 1. This has been a long-term project, so naturally my style of writing has changed. Chapter 1 is a little too slap-stick for my liking. First half stays, second half needs help. I think this is the place where I'll explain the mechanics of my story's world. It's the perfect place for it.

I put a lot of work and research into Dan's chapter. First part, inspirational/fitting songs for the piece. Second part is reference material. My God those knives are beautiful. If I had $2000 dollars of expendable cash, I'd be all over that. Though, I'm pretty sure Canadian customs would have a few choice words about bringing tactical knives over the border.


Dead Inside - X-ray Dog
Enigmatic Soul - Two Steps From Hell
Morrocan Roll - X-ray Dog (and no I don't know why it isn't spelled "Moroccan" aside from the play on words...more rock 'n roll...har)
Lake of Fire - Nirvana

Jay Fisher World Class Knife Maker

I am now OFFICIALLY done one third of my novel. I expect the final product in rough to be around 300 pages by the end at this rate. Take that number and subtract 10-15%. Therefore, we should be sitting around 255-270 pages and 131500 words...which will probably be too much. Lots of editing to be done ladies and gents, though I took a few extra liberties with chapters than I should have. Maybe I'm over-explaining. Meh, it's only version 3 of WMRR (technically 2.5, but we'll say three for the sake of keeping the concept simple).

Hell Must Have Frozen Over

And not because it's -30 degrees outside.

What an eventful reading week. I've been meaning to post something for days now, but either skiing or censors have stopped me from doing so. The place I play badminton and go bowling does not like Blogger...or DeviantArt...or Freewebs. So I'm limited to other sites I'm sure they would block if they only knew about them. Let's just say I probably shouldn't be reading Scandinavia and the World comics when there are mothers with their four-year-olds sitting behind me.

EXHIBIT A: Ten pages worth of writing in the past two days

That...doesn't seem like much, but it's pretty good for me. My story on bowling has been going well, and has been fun to write. I have to be careful with the style and content though. Style because it's mimicking another author a little too close. Content because I want to avoid being too technical and I need to have some sort of "point" to it.

EXHIBIT B: WMRR exceeding 100 pages

Yes ladies and gentlemen, I have surpassed the 100 page mark. Well, technically I'm at 104 pages, but 3 of those pages are more or less blank. They have notes on them and that's about it. Dan's little bit has turned out to be longer than I anticipated, but I'm loving it. I might need to rewrite the freerunning bit. It's a little...lacking. Also Chapter 10 so far needs a lot of revision. I made the mistake of reading it again, and the writing is weak. Oops.

EXHIBIT C: An article everyone should read

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

Given to my fiction writing class by our prof to read over our break. It makes a lot of good points and I agree with most of it. A good way to make your writing better. Also I will point out that there are a few mistakes in the piece, but I think that's caused by it's reproduction on the web. At least I hope so. I'd laugh hysterically otherwise.

EXHIBIT D: A video everyone should watch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UouP8cRYZ8

Because I'm beginning to hate Facebook. A lot. Mostly because I realized that I would have no idea when, where and if people were planning events, social gatherings or sports teams otherwise. Essentially I'm counting on Facebook to have a social life. Permission to shoot me granted.

This is also a little loaded coming from me since I get half my viewers from links on my Facebook. Creepy.

EXHIBIT E: Editing success?

What is this "suck-cess" word and where did it come from. I have actually received requests from people to edit their work. AND GET PAID. Oh lordy. I may or may not be a little insane with my edits though, so I think I need to tone it down a bit. Just a bit. At any rate, I have a big job coming up. Yay.


------

ARGH MY ANKLES. I MEAN LEGS. I MEAN CALVES. I MEAN MID-CALVES. Seriously I've been having problems defining the injured body part after the French medic told me multiple times that the pulled muscles were NOT IN MY ANKLES. Then he insisted on checking my arms, neck and upper legs for injuries before asking me if I remember what happened and if I hit my head. I realize it could be standard procedure, but I don't understand why since it was only my legs that were messed up and he didn't bother asking what happened. Regardless, it hurts like hell. I still skied with injured legs for three hours after, but it hurts.


And apparently peanuts do not make bombs.

Down to Business

Editing business that is. So far so good is my report. I've only edited three papers (two people), but a lot of people seem to have taken the tags on my posters. And posted other stuff over them...but that happens at the uni. Which reminds me of a genius advertising scheme, but I'll get to that in a moment.

I'm convinced that I'm a terrifying editor. I get a little nuts about the edits at times. I was supposed to edit another paper of someone's, but after I gave them the first edit I never heard from them again. In my defence, I received the paper late Sunday night when it was due on Monday. I didn't have time to do the type of content edit I would have liked and ended up skimping a little on the comments. I was up all night preparing for presentations and document analyses, so I was a grouchy bitch all day. A lot of the time when I'm tired I look extremely sick. I might have frightened my poor customer off.

So back to the advertising. Some sort of poetry event is going down at the university (I'm not sure what that's about, but let me explain) and to promote it the people organizing it have torn down other people's posters, turned them and wrote the name of the event on them. The event is entitled: Deface. It's offensive and awkward, but at the same time enticing. That and it's a great way to get attention. It's either arrogance or brilliance...probably both.

All in all, not a bad week despite my exhaustion. I even got a small bonus on my last edits. Either he thought I did a good job or was grateful for doing the one so late, but it certainly made my day.

I've actually been working hard on WMRR over the past few weeks whenever I've had time. I have my fourth short story to complete, which has been fun to write so far. It's about bowling. Bowling can be surprisingly sexual. I was shocked. As for WMRR, my order of writing is a mess. I am essentially writing four chapters at once (chapter 10, 11, 12, Dan's Interlude). Let me just say that Dan's part has been going exceptionally well. I have the first portion and part of the middle done (middle is hand-written on paper in my notebook). I still need to add a lot of details concerning free-running. I'm still working out how to write 10 and 11 (half done 10...it's a short one, and I'm only done about five sentences in 11). I haven't started 12 yet, but it's going to be quite different, told from the perspective of a character I haven't introduced yet. It's going to be a fun one, especially when I introduce his status and how he fights. OHHHHH THIS IS FUN. Insert excessive amounts of smiling faces here.

Also, my spelling is getting better. I made it through this entire post without my spell-check underlining anything. Go me.