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I'm trying to think of a plausible way for a character, who gets trapped in a flooded mine to dig his way to the surface. I won't have him digging from the bottom, because there's much more rock, but... I''m thinking maybe he goes to one of the levels closer to the surface. Mines can be very long and if it starts in the side of a cliff, it can possible end up meeting somewhere. xP

Basically, a little mine disaster ends up being this miner's ticket out of the hard life and into the life of a traveler. XP

So it's really weird to realize I, technically, have written a 200,000-word novel.

And I'm nowhere near my imagined ending.

That's why there are 4 editions/3 edits that an author should write before they are considered "done".

The first is the bullshit rough draft. <--- you are here

The second is where you START to actual put it into some semblance of a story. Cut out at least 100,000 of those words. You'll probably be adding new scenes here, though. <--- I am here

The third, rinse and repeat. Time to trim out some more of the fat and edit those new scenes. (since you probably added in 100,000 more words)

The fourth, writing this should be the actual story. You shouldn't be adding anything new here. It's all just cutting and mending. Rewriting scenes.

Of course, don't be afraid to do this a fifth or sixth time. ^_^

Well.

The fact remains, it's a lot of material to have composed, even if half of it is at least 4 years old -- the other half, 100,000+ words, is just the shit I've added since December.

I just think it's funny because I don't consider it "real" writing.

inb4 Jubelon can pop up and tell me otherwise ;p

How is it I can go months on end without being interested in my Little Questors story, but the moment I start up a Dailin story BAM instant 25 pages of writing. *sigh*

I've returned again to my Dailin Diaries story. You know the one with the super powerful sorcerers and their many rules



This time I started it farther into the story and as I write, in first person point of view no less, I'm gradually threading in the story details and the life of Dailins. It creates a fun "what the hell is going on" effect for the reader without doing a lot of info dumping.

:\ I've always felt that these stories which are fun to write for me are more of a personal story that I've never intended to publish. I'm beginning to wonder though if maybe I should go with it. I LOVE LOVE LOVE writing these stories, and there's so much potential there. The only problem is the lack of an overarching plot line. It's more or less at this point a "life and times of Salean Dailin in the point of view of her best friend Jarith Orlander". Even now I've got this set of chapters under the heading "Dailin Game 1: Journey Home" in which Salean is kidnapped and thrust into a Dailin Game to make it back home in time so her father can continue to stay on his throne.

Whatever. They are just so fun to write! ^_^

*while in shower, randomly thinks about how someone would give a recap of a series of events turns into a defining character moment, followed by a series of other tidbits*

Son of a bitch-What have I created and why haven't I actually created it yet?!

I know the feeling, Maxine

I careened off-course for a week by coming up with the idea for a novel, and then getting assaulted and left for dead by 30K+ words of a completely unrelated story.

And now I'm back on track plugging away at my stupid epic not-writing. Which, incidentally, I don't know if I really mentioned, since I'm really shy about it, but... picked back up my fanfiction. Been steadily updating.

It's getting to the point that I'm seriously thinking of putting TLQ on the back burner and focusing on Dailin Diaries and actually deciding to publish it.

I have begun to sift through ideas of "what am I going to put in this". I have SO many versions of this story. I mean, Salean and several of these characters have been part of my life since I first started writing. In this version it seems Jarith is going to be her love interest, which in EVERY other story it is an assassin she meets later on in her life that becomes her lover. So does this mean that I do not include that character? Or maybe I should and let him be A love interest and have a triangle thing? ^_^ Hehe.

One of the biggest changes in this story is that the characters are starting at young ages. Salean is 13. In my original stories, Salean has always been much older. It was kind of a Wizard's First Rule thing. Assassin, Thief, and Sorcerer characters come to Salean to reveal that she's a princess that was hidden away and they want her to take over the throne to try to change this accursed tyrannical family that has fucked them over. The assassin even tells her that if she agrees to this and becomes as tyrannical as every other Dailin asshole, he would kill her.

In this one, Salean has never been "whisked away and hidden". So it's a big change, but not so major that things are drastically different. I've given her a new intro that makes her want to change the family and become the future heir.

On the other hand, this makes things far more fun as I can give a closer look at the inside of this rather fucked up family.

So, I'm pretty much rebuilding a world I kind of wiped the slate clean on the last time I used it. No retconning, just a massively destructive storyline. So, I'm working on the new storyline and I'm wondering if there are any kinks with how the world/storyline is working so far:

It's been 1000 years since the Three Heroes defeated the Gigan Beasts and saved mankind from destruction. However, the cost was losing the very source of magic in the world. For those weak in magic, namely humans, it began to disappear. The other humanoid races such as elves and dwarves also found their bloodlines thinning and slowly became extinct(though there are whispers of a few who still live--less than 5-10). As all the races interbred, you end up with a predominantly human race with trace amounts of blood from the now ancient races.

With the loss of magic, only those strong enough to maintain their powers were able to keep them. The mages of the present are so rare that they are gathered and sent to a school in a far away place to learn to use their powers and keep them for as long as possible. Unlike mages of the past, they must grow up fast, if they wish to use their magic for the good of the world. Compared to mages of a long time ago, these ones are extremely fragile and weak. With age comes a weakening of magic and even bad injuries can cause a loss of magic, due to the healing arts being lost. If I introduce any mages, I'm going to have to decide on whether I want experience on power in terms of their skills. Generally the older ones are more experienced, but usually by the time you hit 30, your magic is going downhill.

The technology is about the equivalent of 1918-1930 and the world has seemingly recovered from the disasters of the past. The fallen kingdom of Parth rebuilt itself as a neutral hub for guilds. These guilds take on jobs for any number of reasons: From teaching at schools to slaying monsters. They only ask for their place to be neutral, in exchange for maintaining confidentiality about their clients and their requests. The protagonist of the story is pretty much someone who investigates old ruins, generally finding safe paths and clearing them of dangers. He is allowed to take anything small and not very important from these ruins, leaving the client to take the credit for big discoveries.

The story involves the protagonist getting requests from the tundra country in the north and the desert country to the south. When he goes to the first ruins, he finds a sword that he gets a weird vibe from for some reason. He takes it, because it really doesn't look that special. It basically is just an ancient sword. Then when he goes to another area of ruins, he finds another weapon that gives him the same vibe.

Basically, the two countries racing to obtain the swords of the Three Heroes. The Protagonist ends up causing a huge mess, because not only did he not know the value of the sword he stole from those ruins. So, now the guild town finds itself as the rope in the game of tug-o-war. It won't be long before the rope breaks under the pressure.

From that point, I'm stuck on what to make the protagonist do.

After a five month period of time with no writing, I broke my dry spell with...black rock shooter fanfiction. It was the first fanfic I ever wrote and it was done for a request. But still. Black Rock Shooter fanfiction.

Sigh. I used to write a lot more than I do now (like, a lot; I wrote hundreds of pages for one story in particular) and I really, really, really want to write, but then I go to the computer and sit and stare at a blank page. And then I write nothing.

I haven't been able to write at all the past whatever.

Is it I'm sad because I can't write or I can't write because I'm sad?

Ahh a vicious cycle.

Not being able to write is the worst feeling I want to write, but nothing is coming to my head at all. Also I find writing fanfiction really hard, is it just me? It's IMO really restricting in terms of possible plots/setting, and I don't know the characters as well as I know my own.

Nah. I think fanfiction is really easy in a lot of ways.

Then again, I write GW, and I know those characters so well because I've been writing them for about 10 years now. And there's always AU, so that really opens up plot and setting.

Post-canon or AU, that's really the only way I can go.

Hmm...maybe it's because I haven't written a lot of fanfiction. What's GW? And true there is AU! I love reading AU stories, those are always a lot of fun to read in my opinion.