20k/5 Days: An Experiment

 The structure of NaNoWriMo was something I really got into this year. I had tough points, but no matter the blow to my mood, or my word count, I managed to pull it back and get a win.

 Part of that, I think, was the method I developed (with great help from Sue, one of my region's Municipal Liaisons) of treating blocks of time as word wars, or, in my case, sprints.

 I learned that I can do five hundred words in half an hour pretty consistently, and with that strategy in use, I managed to do three thousand a day on my best solo days (Write In days were usually better because of writing in more than one place and in a social setting).

 With NaNo over, and a supplementary short story and my project from last year still unfinished, I felt a little bereft with no challenge.

 I was as Alexander, I wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.

 So I made my own.

 As it is my wish to be a professional writer, a daily minimum word count for non-NaNo times is something that I need to develop.

 With a successful NaNo behind me, I decided to think big, and so, I committed to spending the next five days, starting Monday, on writing twenty thousand words.

 Wish me luck, and do not weep for me if it all goes tits up.

 Monday

 Day's Word Count: 4063

 Log

 Phew, today was a hard start.

 I felt pretty good at the beginning, got an early start and had my first thousand words done by quarter past nine. (I woke up at five, these things happen.)

 I ended up taking a long break after, about forty five minutes, and I feel like this may have been a mistake. I felt like I was flagging pretty early on during my third block for the day.

 Block four forty five minutes later wasn't too bad, though.

 Blocks five and six came in rapid succession after lunch, that flagging feeling disappearing pretty fast.

 With the end of block six came the end of the last short story I wrote to fill up my NaNoWriMo 50k. So long Lesbian Witch Romance (working title, I promise.)

 Now, strictly speaking, I had a thousand words left for the day. It's the 500/30 method I mentioned above, after all.

 However, I spent the better part of two hours feeling way too intimidated to get back into the novel that had been my white whale since the end of last November.

 (Out of about sixty eight thousand words, forty six thousand were written in NaNo17. Twenty two thousand over eleven months is pretty dire, I think.)

 So my seventh block was just 250/20 to try and ease myself back into it, which worked pretty well, ended up with three hundred and forty, not too shabby.

 Unfortunately, though, the last block was back to 500/30 and I under performed by about two hundred words.

 No matter, though, I made up the shortfall to the total 4k for the day shortly after.

 Not the most brilliant start, but a start it is. Hopefully I can continue to build momentum on TWoA tomorrow.

 Tuesday

 Day's Word Count: 4042

 Running Total: 8105

 Log

 Why am I doing this to myself?

 Well, the good news is that I managed to get the first four blocks done with little trouble, under performed a little on block four, but not by enough to really put a dent into my progress.

 Block five is when I really started feeling the burn. I under performed slightly again, but it felt like a struggle in a way the previous four hadn't.

 Block six was an out and out failure, I put it off for hours and got less than half what I wanted to.

 Seven only came, with less of that burned out fog mind, after a half hour on my exercise bike. The blood being pumped a little harder helped clear the malaise.

 Since Six was a wash, I had six hundred words left over, and by this point it was five thirty, so I filled up the rest of those by starting something silly and indulgent.

 Finally finished that at about twenty past nine. I am a mess and want to go to bed.

 Wednesday

 Day's Word Count: 0

 Running Total: 8105

 Log

 I woke up today feeling exhausted and dreading getting up. I stayed in bed past the time I'd already written five hundred words avoiding the day.

 Now it's twenty five past one and I have failed to write a single word. If I manage to write anything, I will note it in an addendum, but my hopes are not high.

 Thursday

 Day's Word Count: 538

 Running Total: 8643

 Log

 So I ended up sleeping in until ten. Apparently I was that tired.

 I wrote one block after brunch, but didn't really feel the need to push myself to write more. Instead I actually did some housework.

 After such severe burn out, I'm satisfied with that count for the day. I will, however, try to get more done tomorrow.

 Friday

 Day's Word Count: 1623

 Running Total: 10266

 Log

 Well, I woke up on time and got three blocks done in the morning (although a bit later than Monday and Tuesday to start and took a long break).

Fifteen hundred was really what I wanted to do as a minimum today, and might have managed more if my Mum hadn't given me the change jar. So any possibility of writing died in the face of counting out well over a thousand coins.

 (It was a worthwhile exercise.)

 Conclusion

 Twenty thousand in five days was just far too ambitious.

 Just way too much to do.

 While I had achieved numbers higher than four thousand in a single day during NaNoWriMo, they tended to be spread out and at least partly done in a social setting.

 I think about a thousand a day is a good minimum for me personally (at least during a 'work day') and three thousand is a number that is definitely achievable on a day to day basis.

 Doing original writing in the morning and dedicating the afternoon to editing writing blog posts, or artistic pursuits may be the optimal method of organising my weekdays.

 Currently I'm not actively editing anything, so that will need to be tested in the New Year.

 Until the end of December, I'm going to take it easy.

 Despite NaNoWriMo being successful, I had a pretty rough time of it last month.

 Some personal issues, the DWP screwing me over, and the change of seasons laying me low as per annual tradition. all made my NaNo success a surprise to me.

 The New Year is something I'm particularly looking forward to because I'm going to be trying a new method to help organise my life and improve my productiveness (hopefully enough to get out of the hell hole that is the jurisdiction of the DWP).

 I plan to cover that at a later point in the month.

 As for now, have a nice weekend, everyone!

National Novella Writing Month

 This is the first, unedited, line of my NaNoWriMo project this year titled More Canals than Giza.

 It's only tangentially related to the rest of the novel, as the story begins with workaholic Tonina Lagoria breaking out of her work groove as an illustrator in the wee hours of the morning.

 After that point, she is swept up in a story of aliens coming to Earth and running into a cute guy.

 My inspiration for this story was based entirely around my irrational worry that a pale face will pop up outside my window in the dead of night.

 Or rather, considering the somehow less terrifying thought of a dark skinned face popping up outside of that window.

 Attached to a person, not just a disembodied face. It's not like Idris Elba's visage decided to go for a post midnight walk without the rest of him.

 (In that instance I'd still scream like it was a pale face, but I'd also be charmed. He's very handsome.)

 So this entire plot was born of coming up for a legitimate (as in logically consistent and not crime based) reason for someone to be in your back garden at two o'clock in the morning.

 All I could think of was running away from some threat, and my brain supplied giant alien cats as said threat.

 Which I am so glad my brain supplied because writing this story was a lot of fun.

 I'm both seriously looking forward to January to begin revising the story, and dreading it, because I've never edited anything this long before.

 For my sins, this is the first finished draft of anything longer than a short story I've ever managed. Even though it's only about 35k long, it's still an intimidating length for a novice like myself.

 So, with the writing relatively fresh in my mind, here are things I want to address in the edit:

1. Giving currently nameless characters names.
2. Improve the romance
3. Improve the humour
4. Improve the deeper social commentary (that there is. It's not much, tbf)
5. Improve the ending
6. More descriptive detail for Tonina and other characters
7. Drive home Stephen the Newsreader losing his goddamn mind
8. More horror elements

 I'm pretty satisfied with the first draft and keeping these points in mind to improve it for the second.

 I mean, honestly, if it had been a white guy in her back garden, Tonina probably would have assumed he was a ghost and left him there to die.

 I know I would.

Post NaNo Blues

 So, another year, another NaNoWriMo has passed.

 Same old, same old, right?

 Wrong!

 This year I actually managed to pull it off!

A winner is me.

 I feel like a proud mother.

 And like any mother, not everything I did is worth a damn, but this is a risk of any creative process.

 Including making people.

 Unfortunately.

 This year I didn't do one long novel I haven't finished.

 No!

 This year I managed to create a complete story.

 More than one, actually.

 Yeah, my initial idea couldn't hold on for a full fifty thousand words, so I ended up having to supplement my word count with a few short stories.

 Three, to be exact.

 Two I have finished, and a third that still needs to be completed.

 In the spirit of sharing, I shall leave the first lines of each of these four stories below in a suitably aesthetic manner.

NaNoWriMo Extract

 So my sleep patterns been playing me right up these last ten days or so, and I just couldn't think of anything to post about. My apologies for both of these things.

 However, not what the post is about, this post is an extract from yesterday's NaNoWriMo efforts that I fancied showing off.

 It revolves around one of the newer characters in the story, Carwyn.

 (For reference he calls his sister Padi)

In the Shadow of the Stonehearted King

 He'd decided to name it Padikin.

 It was barely the height of his palm, standing in the awkward arms held straight out from the shoulder position that was depicted in the book on his desk.

 A small sculpture of a girl with pigtails and a long dress made from clay he'd taken from the arts rooms. Padikin didn't have much detail, except for little dot eyes and a smiley mouth on her face and tiny snakes of a necklace and bracelet.

 He'd made her small so she'd be easier to fire, but it made her harder to paint. She had a big black splodge on her right cheek from when he was painting her hair.

 Carwyn thought it made her cuter.

 He re-examined the pages concerning the ancient rites of golem animation. It was complicated, with many glyphs and a strange chant that the book was determined could not be sung.

 He was certain that the T'schdem had streamlined it since the book was written, as it did not need to be as complicated as it was.

 He drew one glyph on the desk in chalk coloured with the blood of a ram. The book called for fresh billy blood, but he couldn't get his hands on that at such short notice. The long dried blood of a similar looking male would have to be enough.

 He placed an inverted plate on top of it and carefully wrote the chant in a circle around it.

 With a knife he wedged the plate up so he could remove it without smudging the chalk.

 A few careful curves and curls to fill in some space and the cirle was finished.

 It didn't look much like the diagram, which was designed to give a general idea and not the actual circle of magic used, that was all straight lines, glyphs and the suggestion of vines. Carwyn's was all organic looking shapes that reflected no actual living thing caught between a glyph and the carefully written chant in the alphabet of the Lords.

 He admired his handiwork and gently placed Padikin in the centre of the circle.

 "Gentle Padikin, sweet child of clay," he sang trailing his finger around the circle before spiralling through it, "to you I give the gift of life."

 Once his finger reached her feet her turned her with his free hand, causing the chalk on his finger to leave gradually fading marks on her dress. At her shoulder he stopped, pressing his finger tip against her little smiley mouth.

 "As once the gods granted it to man. I wish you a duty of nothing but joy," he crooned before blowing gently into her face, some of the trace of chalk he'd left with his finger blew away.

 Her arms fell to her sides.

 "Padikin?"

 She tilted her head at him before nodding.

 He smiled widely.

 "Welcome to the world little Padikin, and thank you, I'll be able to revive Southern soon thanks to you."

 Padikin pushed out her chest and put her little mitten hands on her hips in pride.

 Her pose of triumph didn't last long though, as she started trying to brush off the chalk the second she touched some with her hand.

 Carwyn chuckled and handed her a tiny scrap of cloth.

The Slangebarn (Part Two - Cultural Narrative)

 Long ago in the time before the Lords, there was wise king in the lands of the north.

 She ruled well and protected her people from both invaders and the villains from within.

 Her people loved her and the gods blessed the name of King Slange.

 Like many powerful monarchs, she struggled to find a suitable helpmeet, a man who would support both her and her kingdom and be able to provide her with an heir.

 Many men approached her, but none could be what she and her people needed from a consort. Some were good commanders but little else, some were lovers who lacked the skills to rule, many sought to take her power, and many more were entirely unqualified.

 A sad few, though, they were good men with strong spirits and warm hearts, but could not provide the heirs Slange and her people needed.

 Heart broken after turning away another of these suitors, Slange petitioned the gods of her people.

 She asked not for the perfect helpmeet, but for heirs, resigned as she was to that man not existing and wishing to no longer have to turn good men away.

 The gods listened, and two descended in the form of animals, offering to give her children to bear.

 Both wished for the child they granted to be her heir, but Slange was as fair to gods as she was to men, she asked to bear both children as twins and would choose her successor from between them.

 The gods agreed, each confident that their child would be fit to rule Slange's kingdom.

 Using their magic, they granted Slange the gift of motherhood.

 The people rejoiced the announcement of her quickening, and a great feast of many days was prepared for the birth of the twins.

 When they blessed day came, the first born of the twins was a son Slange named Svan, and she named his sister Alga.

 The children grew to be healthy and strong, and Slange was happy in her motherhood.

 As the twins learned to read and write, a man came to court who caught Slange's eye.

 He was a handsome man who was also wise and caring, and saw no issue with opposing Slange when he did not agree with her.

 She grew more attracted to him by the day, and one day she invited him to her private chambers for a meal.

As they ate and drank, she confessed her interest in him, and he replied that he too was attracted to her. He'd come to her court out of admiration and had since, he believed, fallen in love.

 The two began a short and passionate courtship and it seemed to all that knew them that they would be wed within the year.

 The seasons changed, and much sooner than before, Slange felt the quickening.

 Before the sun set, the father gods of Svan and Alga descended in animal form once again to confront the pair.

 They spoke of betrayal and lies, not of Slange, but of her paramour. For he was a god in disguise.

 The lie cut Slange deep.

 The father gods of Svan and Alga presented the god with an ultimatum from their king, either the god was to return to heaven and never return to Slange's side, or he could give up his godly powers and status to live along men.

 In a heartbeat, the god gave up everything, becoming the man that Slange had believed he was.

 This act of sacrifice proved to Slange that he never wished to hurt her and she felt that she could forgive him.

 The father gods of Svan and Alga left them, their task completed.

 Once the pain of the lie had faded, the pair wed, their honeymoon blessed with Slange's third child. A son she named Earn.

 For many years the family lived happily, until the twins showed signs of adulthood, it was then that they began to compete for their role as heir. The following years saw their competition turn to rivalry and then to fighting.

 Slange and her husband tried to stem their conflict, but by the time Earn had earned his manhood it had become irreconcilable.

 Svan and Alga could barely stand the sight of each other and their skills in war and rule were evenly matched.

 Slange could not choose either of them to take her throne, and her promise to their father gods prevented her from taking the suggestion of Svan and Alga themselves and select Earn as her heir.

 Instead she split the kingdom between them, into the land of Alga bordered by Svan's kingdom.

 With no land of his own, and wishing not to choose between his beloved brother and sister, Earn struck out his own path west.

 Over the sea he found an island of two nations, with kings who fought and warred constantly, with his experience gained from serving his mother and the fights of his siblings, Earn began to create his own kingdom. He took lands as payment for fighting the northern king for the western one, and his people prospered as they claimed the land.

 Before long, he rose and army of his own and pit the kings against each other enough to take as much land as he could before he began to push them back to the north and the west. His success continued until the terrain prevented his expansion to the north and the sharp bite of magic to the west.

 His mother, father and siblings were proud of his accomplishments, and Slange lived out her life the mother of three kings.

 Her fate was not the one she had wished and hoped for, but she could not have been happier with it.

 This story is incredibly old, it was old even at the time of the arrival of the Lords, an event recorded as happening two and half thousand years ago.

 The scholars of the Slangebarn believe that the spirit of the story is true, that there was a group named the Slange and it split into the Svani, Algmen and Earnmen, with the latter striking out to establish a kingdom between the borders of Damhtir and Maharentir.

Writing Eyes: My Experience With Dilated Pupils

 So I have a nevus in the retina of my right eye and it showed up there sometime in the last four years.

 Nevi are basically freckles in the eye, they can appear on the front of the eye, like in the iris, or they can be like mine and show up inside the eye. Like freckles, they are usually benign, and also like freckles, they can turn malignant.

 Due to it appearing recently and the fact that it's very close to the macula (vision centre) of my eye, my optician wanted to have a better look at it to make sure it was benign.

 This meant that she put tropicamide drops in my eyes to dilate my pupils to make it easier to see my retina.

 Yes, this stuff has the same basic function as belladonna, the fancy name for deadly nightshade.

 Since this was a thing that fashionable ladies did once upon a time to make their pupils look larger, I thought it would be a good idea to write about my experience of having ridiculously large pupils.

Is this pretty? I don't know.

  It doesn't kick in immediately, so when it started I was in Boots (regular Boots, not the Opticians Boots who put the drops in) buying vitamin pills and a new hairbrush, and the thing I noticed first was that everything between one and two arm lengths away was incredibly and unnaturally clear.

 Everything else was intensely blurry.

 I'm short sighted, so I'm used to things at a distance being blurry, but not my own cleavage being blurry and difficult to make out.

 Yes, I could not see my own boobs clearly.

 It was really weird.

 This also meant that I had a really hard time taking the picture above because I couldn't see what was on my phone without holding it at arm's length and my eyes look really dark when they're photographed in anything dimmer than direct sunlight. (I had to expose the shit out of that picture.)

 So I took about five pictures while unable to see if the camera had picked anything up.

 For the first half hour or so, I had this weird relationship with light.

 If I kept my eyes open for too long, I started getting a headache that was centralised in what I like to call 'the migraine warning area'.

 No wonder migraines show up in oldy timey fiction if people were doing this to themselves.

 The other thing that happened was that I kept getting after images of the weirdest things.

 One thing this happened with was a poster advertising half price frames where the frames themselves would singe themselves onto my retina for a few seconds. Which is odd as they were by far the darkest thing on the poster.

 I'm also pretty sure I got an afterimage of a large mirror at one point. It was very strange.

 After my appointment was over I had some shopping to do in my local town centre, which is a mid range activity most of the time, so I was too busy to really notice much for the next few hours.

 Well, apart from how weirdly difficult finding stuff in Lakeland was. Which was the first shop I went in and has been rearranged for Christmas stuff.

 Once I got home though, I found that sitting at my computer was giving me a mild headache and felt really uncomfortable for my eyes. I was about half way through the life span of the effects, so I chickened out and took a nap because everything was really bright.

 So bright, in fact, that I had to use a long sock as a makeshift blindfold because my room is white and closing my eyes only made it so that I couldn't perceive my surroundings but I could still see a lot of light.

 By the way, it doesn't look like my nevus will cause me any problem in the short term, but I have an appointment for proper eye doctors to look at it. Which may or may not change my lens prescription depending on if I need treatment and what that might be.

 So sadly I can't get new contacts for up to three months.

 Eye based drama aside, I hope this comes in handy if you want to write about Georgian era ladies or women from Italy back when this was in vogue.

The Slangebarn (Part One - Etymology and Inspiration)

 The Slangebarn (Slanguhbarn, with slan rhyming with slam) as an ethnic group in the world of my Epic Fantasy Story came about due to two major factors.

 One, as I set the story in a country based on medieval Wales, I wanted to use it as an opportunity to represent Mercia. For those of you who don't know, Mercia was the kingdom that occupied most of England north of Bristol and south of Liverpool and had Tamworth as its capital.

 Like most of the kingdoms of the period, it changed borders a bunch over time, growing larger until it was eventually absorbed into the Danelaw.

 I wanted a representation of the Anglo-Saxons prior to the Norman conquest, because things changed fast and hard after that invasion.

 Two, as part of that representation of the Anglo-Saxons I wanted to concentrate on their cultural ties with Scandinavia and Germanic groups.

 These ties were essentially severed by the Norman conquest. (Personally I attribute a lot of England's cultural isolationism to this, as the Norman ruling class dragged it into line with a country with a fundamentally different language structure and different religious and cultural roots. Yes I am saying that if the Normans hadn't invaded then Brexit wouldn't have happened.)

 As I'm trying to streamline my real life inspirations to stop me from making hundreds of different countries with thousands of different ethnic groups, I've decided on two different countries to ally with my Mercia expy, those being a Denmark expy and a Sweden expy and I'm going to fold various aspects of other Nordic and Germanic countries into all three.

 Why Denmark and Sweden?

 Well, I started off wanting a Denmark because a. the Danelaw and b. I know a few Danes on social media and have swiftly learned that Danes love being included in things, so why not do so?

 As for Sweden, before the modern period Denmark and Sweden were constantly getting into fights, and that makes for good drama and political machinations.

 So, let's name these countries.

 I've decided on an animal theme for all the countries, with most countries being some variation on animal-land and most ethnic groups being some variation on animal-people.

 For Mercia I went with a silver eagle, a bird that doesn't exist in the real world but does in the fantasy one, I did this because I found it as the symbol for a regiment known as the Mercian Regiment and I wasn't sure what else to go with so I went with that.

 The Anglo-Saxon for eagle is earn (which I pronounce as 'airn', I believe this is accurate. A Danish friend says it this way too so I'm sticking with it) and Mercia itself is the Latinised form of a a name that means 'borderland' and shares a root with the 'mark' in Denmark (Hjaalmarch in The Elder Scrolls and The Free Marches in Dragon Age are also derived from this root).

 Combine these two elements and we get Earnmark.

 For a citizen I went with Earnman and for plural we have Earnmen. I did this as the word 'man' has been used as a gender neutral term for centuries and only started to not be after, you guessed it, the Norman Conquest.

 Thanks Bill.

 Why not go with a lion? you may be wondering.

 Because the golden lions on a red background you see in the royal coat of arms is, you guessed it, a Norman symbol.

 (This means that Godric Gryffindor has the same iconography as the group who invaded England and fucked over all the Anglo-Saxons about fifty years after he helped found Hogwarts, which makes the association of Slytherin with the simpering Norman descended upper classes really damn confusing.)

 Denmark, luckily has a national animal that I could find instead of flailing around for any animal I could latch onto like with Mercia.

 Denmark's national bird is the mute swan, which in Danish is called knopsvane. Since Knopsvanemark sounded weird, I went with just Svanemark (Svaynuhmark). Which is also useful because I can call the people Svanes and the people as a whole the Svani, which I derived by smashing Svane together with the name of the people Denmark is named for, the Dani.

 Sweden's national animal is the elk, in Swedish this is älg. Which is a pain in the neck for me because I don't know how to put accents on letters using keyboard shortcuts.

 Combined with the word landa (guess what that means), we get Älglanda (My Danish friend sounds like she's saying Ilglangda, but neither of us know for sure. Swedes? Some help?). I went with the Earnmen scheme to get Älgman and Älgmen. I just guessed that man is used similarly in Swedish, and if I'm wrong I'll justify it by it supplying a cultural connection between the Earnmen and Älgmen in the way Earnmark and Svanemark suggests one.

 Coming up with the name for the ethnic group as a whole was more difficult.

 For starters I needed to decide if I would go with an animal theme again for this, which in this case I decided to (it's different for the Crύbdoine).

Our animal of choice is the snake.

Why the snake?

Because of a guy named Sigurd Snake in the Eye (or Sigurðr ormr í auga in Old Norse), he was said to have been born with a mark in one eye that resembled the Ouroboros. Science of today insists on ruining our fun by telling us it was likely a common or garden mutation.

Thanks, science.

I decided to go with Norwegian for this name, but it's basically in Danish too. (See what I mean when I rant about the Normans?)

So Slange means snake, and barn means children.

So, why are they called the Snakechildren?

Well, this ties into their cultural narrative of their history, which I'll have to put into a separate post because this post is already over nine hundred and fifty words long.

Look out for that on Wednesday! (By which time I'll hopefully have a working title for the series as a whole.)

Electrics is surprisingly tiring.

 On the plus side, I know how to do a ring main and a two way lighting circuit now.

 I can't do it without an actual electrician to sign it off, but it's still something, right?

 When I'm not on my course I'm mostly playing Stardew Valley or staring at yWriter trying to write the Epic Fantasy Story.

 It's at over twenty thousand words at the moment, which is encouraging, but still, I'm more than a little stressed out on it at the moment.

 Mostly because my villain hasn't shown up yet.

 Is that normal?

 To be honest, I've not read all that much epic fantasy.

 I've not had much desire to.

 Let's be honest, it hasn't had the best reputation over the decades.

 The best of the genre has strong themes and/or characters and/or settings, and the worst are generic and overuse violence, misogyny and hamfisted racism metaphors.

 I've asked my friend, and he says that I should really put villain stuff in earlier, which is fine, but writing this novel has been much more up in the air about what I'm actually doing than any of the others I've tried writing in the past.

 Herd, My Name is Medea and Silver Crosses (NaNoWriMo projects in reverse order) all had clear antagonists from the outset.

 In the Shadow of the Stonehearted King has swapped antagonists during these first twenty thousand words because the way my story is set up means that, while the original antagonist is still totes evil, I can't use him as the villain for this book.

 So I have a brand new antagonist, who I do really like, who has not even been mentioned during the first twenty thousand words and likely won't show up for the next five to ten thousand because I have other shit I need to set up in those words.

 I know this is what rewrites are for, but it still punches me in the metaphorical gut.

 Bah.

 And I'm also intensely worried about how to work the new villains in without undermining the idea that all the shit that's happening is because of the Stonehearted King and his impact on the world around him.

 But on the other hand I love the idea of my villains not being intimately involved with the Stonehearted King, like they don't even have the same goals as him.

 Working all this out is hard, man.

 Oh, well.

 I'm going to try and get a post up about one of the ethnic groups from EFS up by the end of this weekend.

 It's either going to be an overview of the Crúbdaoine (including a guide on how to pronounce that), or an overview of the Slangebarn (also explaining how to say that) including a 'folk story' about how they view their own origins.

 Probably the latter, but I may change my mind.

Writing and Streaming (along with some life stuff!)

 I've not had another editing crack at that longer story yet.

 I was kind of worn out on the whole editing thing after I finished the last edit, so I need to get back to that.

 Lately I've been working on an epic fantasy story. There's a lot of information about it on my tumblr, I'll be tagging it all with the same tag to make it easier to find at some point. I'm not sure what the tag will be, but I'll post when I've done it on this blog as well as my tumblr.

 It's about thirteen and a half thousand words at the moment, and I have a hefty cast of characters planned for it. A lot of them are quite minor, but you need bit part characters, otherwise you'll find yourself with a small cast who are all inexplicably related to each other (coughOnceUponATime/cough).

 I should probably post on here about it.

 I've got some worldbuilding notes that would make sense to go up here, and I'm planning on posting the full short story here about how one of the characters ended up in his current position.

 At the moment I'm slowly building it scene by scene on my tumblr account, but once it's done there I'll edit it and have the final polished version up here for you all to read.

 So my short story to do list consists of:

1. Finish editing Two Thousand Lenses for submission to a literary agent
2. Finish and edit The End of Holger's Military Career
3. Come up with a snappier title for that
4. Finish that Lois Lane/Batman story I posted up the first half of up on AO3 last year because I see people giving it kudos and I shouldn't leave it unfinished. Seriously, I got Kudos on it today, and three weeks ago, that means there's at least two people who want to read it.

 I've got a lot to pack into my schedule, especially since I'm starting an introduction to electrical work course the week after next.

 I'm pretty excited.

 The only downside is that I need to get there by half eight two days a week and that's intimidating to the vampire that I am.

 I've started getting up at 6:30 and going to bed at 22:00. I'm not used to it yet, so I'm really tired during the day.

 I'll get used to it soon enough, though.

 Finally, I've started streaming. I did some a while ago, some yesterday and some today, and I'm going to stream once a week from 19:00 GMT on a Thursday. Which is also a challenge, 'cause that's one of the days my course is on from 8:30.

 I'm trying to challenge myself more because the only way I'm going to get better and be able to support myself is by being able to handle hard work and more of it.

 Part of that is starting to post on here more often, so expect some world building posts on that Epic Fantasy Story.

Editing and some other stuff

 So, in a previous post I talked about editing a pair of short stories.

 The shorter of the two I did actually manage to finish editing, and I'm happy to send it off to a literary agent in the near future.

 The longer one, however, was indeed a complete pain in the proverbial. I didn't just need to clean up the prose, I needed to change huge parts of the story.

 I managed to drop one and a half thousand words because I took so much extraneous crap out.

 This presents me with something of an issue, though.

 With such big changes, I feel like I do need to give this another few rounds of editing. Which is an issue because I'm challenging myself to submit to a literary agent by the end of August.

 So these big changes are making me even more nervous than I was previously about doing that.

 I suppose I should stop being such a coward and start a new edit of it.

 I've heard changing fonts can help with this, so I'm going to try that out. I just need to decide which one to go for. Hmmm...

 In other news, I'm in the process of tidying the office (it's saddening that I won't have this when I move out, but I needs to be freee you guys), so I'm going to start painting again, and finally finish this thing:

Other brands of cider with fruit flavouring are available

 I'll also be able to fit my exercise bike in here, so my dream of playing Dark Souls while on an exercise bike will finally come to fruition.

 My friend Doug suggests turning up the resistance every time I die, but I reckon that's going to put me on the highest setting in about fifteen minutes.

 Prepare to die, indeed.

 I'll keep you updated on the progress of that short story editing, and I'll be sure to blog the horrors of searching for an agent (although I won't name names, that'd be a dick move.)

 I'm looking forward to when this longer short story is done, it's been a long time coming.

A Drabble from a Rabble - Twenty Nine

 Thanks person who thought it would be a good idea to drag a Tumblr argument over to my writing blog, you reminded me to do this.

 Our theme today is The Sea.

Where Worse Things Happen

 You’re not made for this.

 You can’t support your own weight, you gasp and pant as you slither around, attempting to push yourself around on land with limbs made to push through water.

 Your eyes are dry, you fear that they’ll split and crack, but you can still see as you turn back towards the world you were meant for.

 A blue green blur gently lapping against the shore, looking so calm.

 If you could sigh, you would as you slither back. Back towards where you can breathe and move freely.

 Where the monsters live, and where you will die.

I should be writing...

 It's been so long since I wrote a drabble that I've kind of forgotten how to do one.

 Inspiration has been severely lacking, so here I leave my apologies.

 As for right now, i should be rewriting a short story, but I'm so bored and it's so pretentious that I'm doing this as a method of procrastination.

 (Okay, it's not that bad, but looking at old work is always pretty cringe inducing.)

 I've been on a course at a local mental health charity, and one of the goals I've come up with while there has been to finish editing two of my short stories and submit them to literary agents.

 Of course, I would like my tutor to read my short stories, so I've given myself a pretty tight deadline of a week to do this.

 This seemed like a fine idea at the time, and a pretty good one while writing notes on the shorter of the two short stories, but this longer one is a complete pain in the proverbial.

 For starters, it's over twice as long as the first one, and for seconds, it's older and less well written.

 I hate looking at this thing, I swear.

 I'm going to have to accept the distinct possibility that I might not be able to get a final draft worth sending out by next Wednesday, but be happy with the fact that I can at least finish another draft of this story.

 Being a writer is difficult.

NaNoWriMo 2015 Roundup

 Yeah, I know this post is a fortnight late, I know I only put up one NaNo post this year, I know I've basically been letting Doug run my blog with his The Apprentice posts lately. I know, I know.

 But enough about that, let's talk NaNo.

 In the end, I managed to get twenty five thousand words done during November, which is still pretty good. It's brought my total word count up to forty seven thousand, which is almost halfway to my minimum word goal for the novel.

 Yeah, I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't manage to get the fifty thousand, but I don't seem to take the transition into winter particularly well.

 During this NaNo I had to change my plans, especially when it comes to the protagonist's relationships.

 There is only so long you can have a character be oblivious to someone else's feelings before, well, I'm sure it'll be annoying to at least some readers regardless, but before it becomes so ridiculous that it's really infuriating to everyone.

 Besides, this is a first person novel, there's only so much she can see but not notice.

 Especially when a scene like this happens:

“I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that it’s a personal matter that killed it?” Tracey asked, putting a hand on Pankaj’s shoulder.

Pankaj nodded.

“Yeah, man, I do not blame you. Somebody being a dick about that is gonna kill any friendship.”

“You are my brother in suffering Tracey.”

“You’re my sunbae in suffering, Pan.”

Pankaj laughed, deep and throaty.

“You know, that’s really cheered me up, Tracey. Thank you.”

“No problem, sunbae.”

Pankaj shook his head with an affectionate smile.

“I think we should talk about this later.”

“Yeah, probably a good idea,” Tracey agreed.

Tracey likes Jane, this has already been established, so you can see the problem.

Yeah, I suppose that I could cut this stuff out, but having written it, I realised that my original plan was going to be difficult to pull off, so it was best to change tack.

I don't think sticking slavishly to an original plan is a good idea, you've got to be able to change your mind when the draft organically throws up issues with that plan. Unless your plot is heavily dependent on whatever it is that's changed, don't feel like you need to get rid of it.

The other reason to change tack is that it adds more conflict.

 Wonderful, delicious conflict.

It's a writer's bread and butter and dessert all in one.

As it stands, I'm not going to be able to get the first draft done by the end of the year, which is sad, but I'm still doing quite well, I think, all things considered.

Oh well, I should get some writing done.

NaNoWriMo Chronicles - Week One

 I'm already behind.

 By about a full day's word count.

 With that out of the way, let's cover what I'm writing this year (largely to avoid this becoming the 'Murphy talks about The Apprentice funtime blog', at least any more than it already has, that is).

 Of course, my focus this year is Herd, because I will finish that novel if it kills me.

 I'm about ten thousand words into the NaNoWriMo attempt, but I do have over thirty thousand with what I already wrote, which is about a third of the way through my word goal for the project. So NaNoWriMo has already been a massive help.

 If I can manage to get fifty thousand by the end of the month, then I'll have knocked off about three quarters of the project, which would be exceedingly useful.

 If I can't, well, I'll have still knocked out a good chunk of the novel.

 Of the chunk I've done so far this month, here's an excerpt.

The next gallery was more things about the founding of, and early history of, Park City, the one after was the portrait gallery dedicated to Jason Park.

The picture Syed’s group had shown us had a large oil copy prominently displayed in the exhibition. The artist had taken a slightly more impressionistic approach (according to the information card), but it was still a good likeness. I liked the slightly dreamy approach.

But as nice as that painting was, it wasn’t the real reason why we were there.

There were a lot of paintings and photos of him as a young man.

He was gorgeous.

Boyish good looks, fluffy black hair and a smile that could melt anyone’s heart.

My favourite portrait was of him in a traditional formal hanbok (Maxwell explained) looking to his side out of a window.

“I look good in a hanbok too, you know,” Maxwell pouted.

“You’re not wearing one right now,” I pointed out, not looking away from the painting.

“You’re tough to please,” he teased back.

“I don’t ask much, just found a city and constantly wear a hanbok.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he smiled.

We emerged from the museum after an additional half an hour talking discussing Jason Park’s impact on history and stunning good looks.

A Drabble From a Rabble - Twenty Eight

 Today we start filling out the last theme for the rabble of drabbles, and the theme is ecstasy.

 We're going to start off with the obvious one, and I tried to go for something more realistic and less scaremonger-y than a lot of drug related stories.

 Still don't recommend taking recreational drugs, though. Especially if you're on any kind of medication.

Molly

 “You’re very warm.”

 She grinned at me from between my hands.

 “And you’re hot, have I ever told you that?”

 My cheeks burned hotter than hers.

 “No, no you haven’t.”

 She wrapped her arms around me, face slipping from my hands.

 “Shame.”

 “Er, you’re very huggy today.”

 “Hmhmm, ah, you’re super cuddly. Like a big fluffy bear. I should hug you more often, it’s really nice. Like you, but not like me, I’m not super great. You’re super great though.”

 “You’re rambling.”

 “Yeah, I am. It’s a side effect.”

 I sighed.

 “I should have known. Let’s get you some water.”

Catchphrases

 Oh my god, if you are creating a world with any, and I repeat any, pretence to being dark or serious, do not have a major character have a catchphrase.

 It gets old really fast.

 Not to mention that people do not talk like that. Well, most people.

 Game show hosts, sure, but not the average person.

 Why do I mention this?

 Well, I've actually started playing 358/2 Days and Axel's 'got is memorised?' thing makes me want to rip his head off, it's so damn annoying.

 And it is a catchphrase.

 Some people do have words and phrases that they repeat a lot in everyday speech, my dad was very fond of the word prevaricate for example, but this 'got it memorised' thing clearly isn't a case of naturally repeating the phrase.

 How do I know this? Because Axel's dialogue is built around giving him opportunities to say it. He looks for opportunities to say it.

 He says it when he's asking if Roxas understands what he's just been told.

 He says it when he introduces himself.

 He says it when Roxas tells him he's been keeping track of how long he's been in the organisation.

 He says it like someone who has heard a catchphrase and wants to use it all the time to seem cool says it.

 It's not natural, and it is really annoying.

 Do not make a character like Axel.

 For my sanity, please do not make a character like Axel.

 The Doctor in New Who is a much better example of how to pull a repeated signature word or phrase off. As much as I do not like Stephen Moffat, he's managed to do this reasonably well.

 Russell T Davies did it best with the Ninth Doctor because although he's strongly associated with the word 'brilliant' it was only ever said in regular dialogue.

 This goes further to the basic problem with Axel and characters like him, he never just says it. He always says it with this air of self awareness that makes it clear that he knows this is something he says a lot and wants to make it his 'thing'.

 Basically, what I'm getting at is that Axel may be the perfect example of how not to do a repeated word or phrase.

 Not just because it's annoying, but also because it manages to overshadow the rest of his character.

 I'm always expecting him to say it, so I can barely stand to see or hear his dialogue.

 And that's a real problem.

 Do not make this mistake.

Writing Hair: THE Problem with 'White' Dreads

 Now, last time I went a little bit mental with my problems with dreadlocks on white people, and while I maintain that they're legitimate, they're not the big problem.

 No, the big problem is that dreadlocks, and other protective styles, have come with racially motivated scorn and social censure.

 I would make the argument that to people who don't know the difference dreadlocks would look unpleasant, but the thing about that is that it takes about a five minute conversation to 'know the difference'.

 It isn't hard to know better. Heck, live around black people for long enough and it's harder not to.

 Some would make the argument that 'well it's just personal preference!'. Which would be fair, if it wasn't such a wide spread attitude.

 That's the real issue here.

 For all I rant about it looking bad on white people, and being bad for natural European hair and being nothing but artifice by pretentious people, the real problem is that these hairstyles are ones that black people have been and are scorned and punished for having.

 To make something that other people are punished for doing, despite it being a sensible thing for them to do, a fashion statement just isn't okay.

 Of course, that's just my opinion, for a more relevant opinion you should see this article on forHarriet.com.

 Since this is a post nominally related to writing, I'll share my thoughts on writing white characters (or members of other non-black ethnic groups) with protective styles.

 Basically, it's always going to be a big deal. (Well, varying size of deal, depending on ethnic group, but whiteys are our focus in this post.)

 Unless they're a dirty hippie type, meant to attract scorn, and/or are going to learn better as part of a character arc, I'd say don't do it.

 Unlike with black characters, this isn't just an aesthetic choice on your part. It's going to inform the reader about the character in an unflattering fashion. No matter how nice they are, the fact that they're appropriating a hairstyle like this shows them as being unpleasant.

 Self absorbed, racist and/or stupid. Which are just what I'd gather from a character like that.

 If they're meant to be any of those things, that's fine. You want to physically reflect those traits, this isn't a terrible way to do it. But even then, boy you need to be careful. If you don't have the confidence that you'll do it well, don't.

 If they're not meant to be any of those things... just don't do it.

 You're bound to regret it if you do.

Writing Hair: Problems with 'White' Dreads

 UPDATE: I've expanded on the biggest problem with 'white' dreads in this post.

 I was going to just put up a ramble about various things that I've been up to lately and dedicate a large part of the ramble to my burning envy of natural African hair (my hair is straight, like the tracks of my tears) but literally as I started this post I realised that there's a really important point I'm going to make and it deserves a post in its own right.

 It's also a point that bears keeping in mind when you're writing.

 The point being:

 It takes a specific kind of white person to get dreads.

 Or at least it used to. Whatever the hell Kylie Jenner thinks she's playing at has somewhat muddied the waters, but I can't see that lasting.

 Why?

 Because dreadlocks look awful on white people and are really bad for straighter and oilier hair types (which includes you, Japan. Don't think I haven't noticed this trend). It won't take long for people who actually care about their physical appearance and the health of their hair to notice that the dreads look dirty, are dirty and are putting completely unnecessary stress on their hair.

 Now, don't misconstrue that, I said they look and are dirty on people with straighter and oilier hair types. I never said that they look or are dirty on black people. Natural African hair and natural European hair (which is our main concern in this post) are two very different animals.

 You can see this just through traditional methods of maintaining and dressing hair.

 Just sixty years ago it wasn't unusual for white women to only wash their hair once every two weeks, and a scant few decades before that, white women would avoid washing their hair for as long as they could. This often meant upwards of a month.

 What did they do instead? They brushed their hair with boar bristle brushes and combed their hair with wooden combs. This evenly distributed the oils down into the length of the hair and allowed it to be conditioned. What they couldn't reach with their natural oils, they supplemented with botanical oils.

 Let me be clear here, they did this every day.

 Hair styles could be left in, but not for more than a few days at a time.

 Contrast this with African hair care which developed the 'protective style'.

 Natural African hair can't handle the same amount of combing and brushing as European hair. Because of the nature of tight kinks and curls the hair is more fragile and needs to be protected from environmental stress. The scalp is also less oily, so brushing the hair everyday wouldn't have the same effect as it does on a European head anyway.

 Protective styles include things like canerows(/cornrows), mini twists, box braids and dreadlocks.

 How long can you leave these in?

 This depends on a number of factors, but with proper upkeep and depending on the style and the individual, somewhere between three weeks and a couple of months.

 Dreadlocks specifically have a potential life of years if properly maintained. I had a hard time finding out about natural African dreadlocks because if you search for information about them on Google then you're going to encounter a lot of white people explaining how to do it on natural European hair.

White People: Ruining everything for everybody.
Always.

 Okay, so what's all this got to do with my opinion that white people with dreadlocks always tend to be the same kind of people?

 Because they are, and that kind of person is a dirty hippie.

 You know the type, organic food, probably vegan, sometimes a raw foodie, goes on about mother nature and the 'chemicals' in everything. Maybe an anti-vaxxer, possibly into new age religions, that kind of person.

 Basically every parent's worst nightmare during the Nixon administration.

 Notice earlier that I said people who actually care about their appearance and the health of their hair. Dirty hippies do not care about their appearance.

 Well, not in the sense that the average square Joe does, you dig? (I know that's more beatnik than hippie, but it'll do.)

 Being a hippie means not conforming to society's standards on things, which includes appearance. Since white society values clean, sleek and styled hair, these people have chosen a hair style that has been considered ugly and 'dirty' by white society and decided to roll with it.

 All without understanding why dreadlocks were considered undesirable in the first place.

 Natural European hair doesn't lock, it mattes. The only way to get European hair to look like dreads is to matte it, so to people who didn't know the difference, dreadlocks would look dirty.

 Yeah, hippies are basically like those early European douches who originally coined the term, they do not know the difference between locked hair and matted hair. All they care about is the artifice, the appearance.

 They want to appear natural and down to earth, so they wear their hair in a way that they think advertises that, despite the fact that natural European hair cared for by traditional methods does not look like that.

 Wanna know what it does look like?

Yeah, that's her own hair. She was famous for it.

You can find information on her haircare here.

 But that's too old fashioned and square.

 So the only thing to do is to appropriate hair dressing techniques developed for a completely different ethnic group.

 So yeah, if you're writing a white character and you're considering giving them dreadlocks, this is the kind of person you're going to make them look like. A pretentious idiot who doesn't understand how their own hair works.

 Since I am attempting to illuminate here, here's a link to a website that has information on the upkeep of natural African hair types, go and research my children and write natural African hair appropriately.

 Please don't just take my word here, you've seen me, I'm clearly not an expert.