Category Archives: Writing

November 24, 2018

Early Close to NaNo ’18

By Rebecca M. Horner

Well, this is not how I intended my try at this year to go.

Admittedly, 2018 has been a hard year for me. Lost my dog, lost my older cat. And while I am going to keep out details for privacy reasons, I have a relative that it is past the point of dreading a call if it will be bad…and knowing that the next could be the call saying it’s over. My mother had surgery around her throat, which is terrifying. I am going through a rather painful part in your late twenties that no one tells you about, where you no longer have the energy to maintain ALL THE THINGS, especially with difficult relationships. Basically the last, oh, six months or so have either been me being an emotional wreck, or me trying to be emotional support. Sometimes within a week of each other!

But despite all of that, I thought that NaNo would actually help me recharge my batteries. My goals for NaNo are never about the word count. For me, it’s about writing everyday, even if it’s just a few words. It’s about focusing on one project primarily over others. It’s basically calibrating my writing habits so for the next year or so, I am in a better place than I was.

Here is where things went wrong this year. For me, writing is emotional work. You have to have something to start with. And I’m running on empty, between all the sheer crap that has happened in the last six months, in addition to work and all my projects in the fire. I just don’t have the energy. I went through what I had in stores…and ran out. Which now leaves me in a problem of not wanting to write at all, and I have too many projects on the burner to let that happen.

So what’s the solution? Well, I’m calling this year early. I’d rather revert back to posting reviews and commentary once a week than leaving you all with no content for another few weeks. (Plus I have a new Amaranthine Saga book burning in my pocket for a review.) I should know what is going on with Sun’s Guard sometime before the end of the New Year (or so I HOPE, jeebus), and can get a plan/timeline set up accordingly–that dragging out as long as it has is not helping with my stress level. And I can start pulling some irons out of the fire so I’m not so exhausted emotionally that I have no stores.

One thing I’m definitely doing is finishing playing the game and getting graphics for the posts built. I’ve hit the point where I really need to start adding my own side-flavor and arcs to the characters, and until I finish the game, I don’t know where to put them. And with the graphics done, that’s less busywork for me to get distracted with. Also, I can return the game I borrowed, because I’ve had it way too long as it is. That’ll aid my ability to succeed at this whole thing I’m doing.

I hate admitting to something like this. I’m your stereotypical Capricorn–perfectionist, wants to succeed, will push and push and push until the job is done. But that isn’t going to work this time. I’ll stop writing for a huge stretch afterwards if I push to work on Evangeline despite not being a place creatively to do so. (Look at that, we’ve learned since grad school!) But as much as I want to put that story out for you all, it isn’t original work, and as a result, the MMO project with Ginny and (more importantly) my books have to take priority.

There is some sort of Camp NaNo, which I think is like NaNo just in April? Oh well, I can make it work like that, or at least dedicate the month to the Nuzlocke if the timing is right. I’ll keep you all informed if it looks like I’m in any condition to continue then. Hopefully before then I’ll have news on Sun’s Guard: Ten, have finished the first draft and possible edit of Sun’s Guard: Page, and have made some decent progress on the MMO. Come back next weekend for a review!

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September 17, 2018

Writing: Thoughts on Love Squares and Other Shapes

By Rebecca M. Horner

Maybe it’s because I was sucked into Miraculous Ladybug Season 1 like the sappy nerd I am, maybe it’s the fact that Caley (through no fault of her own) ends up in a love-shape drama. But I’ve been pondering on this trope, and why it is awesome and yet awful all at once (because it can be both!).

Why are these things so friggin’ popular? Well, some of it is that I believe we (both the writers and the audience) like to see the characters suffer before they get their chance at happiness. Otherwise, there isn’t much investment in what happens in the end. There is also the fact that no matter how well you do your job to convey the characters, they are still moderately malleable to the reader, who may see the protag better with Love Interest A or Love Interest B or the random character in the diner in chapter three–which is how shipping wars are born. It is the reader’s prerogative and can’t really be argued with (George Lucas tried).

The hardest part about writing a love-shape comes in two parts. On one hand, you have to keep the feelings conveyed as being sincere. If the reader/audience stops believing the love interest really cares for and about the protag, the ship is sunk. This can, however, be a useful tool for the second part–resolving all sides of the love-shape-of-choice. No one can be left hanging alone and heartbroken, but it has to be done in a way that makes sense. You also have to either ease the audience into getting in the same OTP boat (fat chance) or use a shocking event to drive a big wedge between participants.

I am very cautious about the shocking event part of the trope. It can be a good plot point, or it can come out of left field entirely. A good example of the latter is the original Star Wars trilogy, thus my digs at Lucas. The shippers weren’t letting Luke/Leia go, so she was turned into his twin sister (and the writer has since tried to retcon this as being his original intent, which makes it worse really). Did it make Han/Leia easier? Yes. Did it make a  lot of sense? No, but it’s Lucas. Lucas can’t keep any of his shit straight.

As much as it kills me to give the series any good press, the sparkle-vampire series actually did a better job of the surprising event. The wedding put a nail in the werewolf-shippers’ coffin, and while its way of resolving all the sides was full of ick, she did resolve them. This doesn’t comment on any of the other numerous problems, but the writer knew how to manage the relationships to milk the drama. I will say her stand alone book (last I checked it was stand alone, anyway), The Host, actually handled the resolving the sides a lot neater, and in a way that was both sad and satisfying.

This gives shows like Miraculous an interesting twist. One of the sides is suddenly two, and makes things so much more complicated. But this can quickly go from humerous and cute to stressful and frustrating for the characters and audience members alike. I think ending the love-shape is a clear sign the series is ending as a whole, because it resolves a plot-line and eases some of the tension. But you could phase it into new drama, depending on the situation, making it more of a season-ender than series as a whole.

Now we get to the worst example of that. Comic books. I don’t care if it’s DC or Marvel, they are notoriously bad about breaking up characters in established relationships on a whim, whether it’s by killing characters for emotional impact, moving the survivor on, and then bringing the victim back to life, or just causing really dumb out of character responses to drama, it’s a vicious cycle. Now, I will say that some of the characters, they make it actually work–Remy and Rogue have never exactly been “easy to handle” in terms of personality, and both are hot-heads. Them going hot-and-cold makes sense. And if the Bartons had divorced much earlier (rather than the shitty timing of it, especially with Bobbi coming off of a form of PTSD and the list is a mile long on the bad set up here), they also would have made sense–they got married within days! Obviously that didn’t happen, but you know, benefit of the doubt here this once.

But others are just flash fiction for no reason. Why? Because some writers just don’t know how to keep the tension going if they are in a long-running series. And that’s fine! If you don’t know how to handle them, you don’t know. But that’s what blogs like this for, and others who are more knowledgeable than me. My biggest advice is this: remember that love squares are tricky to manage, so plan accordingly. Know how it’s resolving, and when and in what way/fallout if you can. If you get an unexpected extension, evaluate what happened previously with your love square. Are there still underlying trust issues? Did someone go from attracted to one person to another, because that’s grounds for serious jealousy problems. Does someone have bad habits or experiences that are coloring the relationship? Falling in love and winning their affections in return isn’t the solution to your problems–it’s only the beginning.

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July 31, 2018

Writing: Unicorns Need a Publicist

By Rebecca M. Horner

…Okay, stay with me on this one.

While I spent the last weekend sick, I had time to do some musing on my novel getting type-casted as being middle-grade, despite knowing my prose is at 9th grade reading level, my main characters are seventeen (if sometimes decidedly immature, but…teenagers), and while the goblins are ridiculous, the hobgoblin is a real threat. I also knew most of the elements I used in my query/first 10 appear in other YA and even adult fiction books, so it couldn’t be them. What did that leave me with?

Unicorns.

Now, I don’t know about all of you, but I grew up watching The Last Unicorn on repeat from the ages of 6 or 7 till…present. I love that movie. I can quote that movie from memory, and I’m due for a rewatch. And I can quote most of the Butterfly’s speech at that. Around 10, I found Bruce Coville’s A Glory of Unicorns and then his Unicorn Chronicles series. (I discovered The Unicorns of Balinor too young for it to click with me, the shortness started driving me nuts.) As a teenager, I kept hoping unicorns would feature more prominently in the Harry Potter series or in Tamora Pierce’s Tortall books since they keep getting name-dropped along with the werewolves. I read the Acorna series by McCaffery, but it wasn’t the best thing ever since it was very much sci-fi and that isn’t my cup of cocoa most of the time (plus I got bored about the time the lead got a girl and gave up).

And now as an adult writer who keeps getting told her YA book is too MG in sheer concept, I have to wonder. At one point was it decided that after the age of 12, we no longer like unicorns? That they are meant to be cutsey and wootsey and pretty, but we have to grow up and start liking “serious” books that talk about the world around us, or that if we must do fantasy, shouldn’t we read about dragons, who can be both good or bad or neither and be beasts or companion?*

When I googled unicorns, I didn’t pull up images of Amalthea. I didn’t pull up pictures of fantasy artwork featuring them, like the poster that was in my childhood bedroom up until my mother sold her house four years ago. I didn’t even pull up pictures from old medieval texts, where they were trying to hash together what a unicorn looked like, and boy, were those a mess.

I pulled up My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic characters. I pulled up cute, stout little chibi figures. I pulled up rainbow and glitter silhouettes. I even pull up a couple of collections of Unicornos, a collection of figurines big out of Asia with different crazy designs that reminds me of MLP in a lot of ways. Or I pull up the horn with a smile and big eyelashes underneath, which is the latest fad, particularly for these “unicorn” cakes. Worse, I pull up super cheap figurines and stuffed toys that are fine for those about age 9 and younger, but any older and you will get some funny looks.

This strikes me as odd. Now, I liked the first two seasons of MLP, but let me tell you, I’d have never admitted to that in high school. (Especially since the show got increasingly juvenile after Faust left.) And as for what I did have… Amalthea faced hardship, and had to change the fundamental core of what she was in order to save the others. Lightfoot and his people went to war, so people could continue to be happy, could continue to have art and music and joy to their lives, for without them, humans were a sad, miserable lot. I wasn’t embarrassed about enjoying those characters, because I knew that they could withstand the scrutiny. Yes, I was able to immerse myself in a fantasy about unicorns, about creatures called to young girls mostly, but they weren’t these one-dimensional ideas, they were actually people with personalities and flaws and growth.

So that now leaves me with a question. Has the world changed? Have teenagers decided they are too old for unicorns, that they don’t need the ideals but instead need the dark and the gritty reality of their world, or only knights and dragons? Or have we, the adults, just decided that they don’t need it anymore? That it’s just a security blanket of childhood, and that there is no depth to be found there?

I hope it’s the latter, and that we can change it. Because I don’t know about you all, but I still need unicorns. I still need to believe in something fundamentally good…even if some of them are jerks, like Moonshine, or a little too interested in fighting, like Sunny will grow up to be.

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July 8, 2018

Writing: My Thoughts on Twitter Pitch Events

By Rebecca M. Horner

I am not a huge social media person. If I tweet more than once or twice a day, it’s a weird day, and my Facebook is even worse, both personal and for the blog. I am slowly getting into it, but you know, I also am crazy busy with a crazy level of commitments. Including query, which hasn’t been going well. Lots of, “Not right for my list,” not a lot of feedback, though some have said that my writing is good.

Thankfully, Ginny is much more active than I am trying to engage as she promotes her own books.. She clued me into two different pitch events–#pitmad, which is open to all genres of fiction, and #sffpit, which is specifically for science fiction and fantasy.

What are these? Basically, you including the hashtag in your tweet along with specific tags for your genres and give a short description of your current book that you are trying to get representation for. The book has to be finished and fit in the specified genres. If an agent likes your tweet, they usually previously tweeted special instructions to help jump your query to the front of the slush pile. There are a ton more types, though, but I stuck with what was relevant to Sun’s Guard: Ten.

Now, both are pretty upfront. Mostly this is getting your book out there, and the odds of getting a like by an agent aren’t very high. It’s more of a community exposure sort of thing, and a roll of the dice. But I figured it couldn’t hurt, right? The answer is no, it didn’t hurt, but it did show me how these events tend to run.

Pitch events are very dependent on what agents are showing up, how interested are they, and what events have recently happened in the publishing world. Example, right now the big thing in publishing is “own voices.” They want minority writers, of race or sexuality, telling stories about similar people. This is…awkward for me. Yes, I’m a girl and plus-sized and one form demisexual…but even with Caley being also white and demisexual (all the way down to asexual at the moment), it wouldn’t count as own voices. They are very specific about what they want, and I am not it. Until that rush of wants fades a little in the pitch events, I’m fighting up river.

The other side of it is it’s possible for some people to get forty or thirty likes…and almost everyone else gets nothing. That irks the part of me that considers fairness important. Like, I’d understand being in the teens or twenties, because sometimes, you think you’ll like a book and then you don’t. But it is very hard and discouraging for other people to receive nothing and someone else is just swamped in requests to be queried, especially with how competitive this industry is and how hundreds of writers are shouting to be heard at all.

Which really got me to examine how I felt about these events. I thought about all of the queries I’ve sent out, and how some of them took months for me to get a response on, and I wondered how many times my query had been skipped over because a pitch event query had just come in, and those get priorities. And it just felt weird. On one hand, you want to take every advantage you can in this industry to try and get an agent. But on the other, that feels crappy and doesn’t seem fair to me.

Will I do any more pitch events? I don’t know. I didn’t get much feedback (though hey, my follower count on Twitter doubled and I got a few small publishers reach out to me), and no likes from any agents because I am not currently in the fad. It also rankles against what I consider fair, and I know that there are plenty of agents who don’t even participate in such events. I’m also nearing the end of the agent list on Query Tracker, soooo… I don’t know. I’ll probably play it by ear, decide what I want to do as I go.

Would I recommend it? Again, I don’t know. I haven’t had an intensely positive experience. I haven’t had an intensely awful experience either. I just had very little experience at all, which is the chance you run, and like flipping a coin, it resets with every event, there is no increase of chances of being noticed each time. So I say if you are going to do it, be prepared, have everything set up, and try it. But I also wouldn’t pin your hopes on being one of the few success stories either.

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June 27, 2018

Review: Don’t Buy Star Stable Online

By Rebecca M. Horner

I am actually even deeper in this wagon than Ginny, but I was willing to hold stuff up until I had my Nuzlocke up to replace it. (Also, since there has been a minor site reconstruction as a result, it seemed like a good post to come back with, more on that next week.)

As I’m sure you all are aware of, I have gotten very disenchanted with SSO (Star Stable Online) since I originally started playing. Heck, I was the one who got Ginny involved. I found the game originally in under-grad, and then once I graduated, I found an ad, remembered how much fun it was, and bought the game. Ginny getting involved was an organic part of the process–I’m a casual, story-driven gamer, she is much more involved than I am in gaming mechanics but pretty much the same way, it was something fun we could do together.

The purchase of the game should have been our first red flag. It always took me two or three tries to get any kind of transaction to take, and Ginny had even worse luck. I think part of offering a game on an international level is being able to function in that country for purchases. It was a pain in the ass, to put it mildly, and I had to stay on their tails to get it resolved if I made the purchase during the week. If I made it during the weekend (you know, when most of their specials were going on?), I was on my own.

But we got it purchased, and for a while, we had fun. There were regular story updates, even if some of it was really weird, and Ginny and I had a game we could play together. We even started making the avatar into different personas, and then they turned into characters of their own. We admittedly got a little lost in what quest we had to do to keep going at one point–both of us only had so much time and energy in a day, especially with me working full-time, and the game’s story isn’t exactly laid out in a logical fashion. (Not to mention, it’s front-loaded as all get out. Like way more than any kid’s game should ever be. The crazy insanity of Zelda games is in the middle/end, people, not the beginning!)

Cue the second problem with the game, which I’ve ranted about before (not that it matters now). Nothing matches. Like, even things that belong to the same set don’t match. It’s bizarre and painful. I don’t know if they aren’t keep swabs, or if they don’t have someone on staff who is like me and can tell if colors are more than two or three shades off by hairs. (I’m terrifying.) Just, way to drive me nuts. Not enough to drive me from the game.

The big turning point for me was when the intro to the game changed (which was about when Moorland got its makeover and Josh changed). Suddenly this goal that the character had, as weak as it was, to attend this special academy (I’ve lost the name to time) was gone. And with it, I felt like we lost a lot of drive as a character. Why were we at this camp that was not very camp like? How could we be Aideen reborn when nothing let us actually be a hero? To make matters worse, story updates started dying out. Instead, it was frequently special events and new horses being announced, maybe a new area, but nothing was being resolved.

I thought maybe if we were patient, it would get better. They would dangle something in front of me–like something advancing what happened with Marley and his brothers and the Baroness…only to get something about horsemanship so appallingly wrong that I spent HOURS afterwards ranting at Ginny about it. And that’s with me giving them enough rope to hang themselves with. In addition to that, we discovered that story we had already completed was now changing, with no way for us to replay it. So sometimes when a character seemed out of whack to us, it was because we were playing with the original personality rather than the blandness that exists now.

By this point, I am disillusioned. Like, it had been fun originally to sort of mock the ridiculousness of some of the scenarios, but now I was looking at them from a writer’s stand point. And I was disturbed. As writers, we have a certain level of responsibility. Not a lot, but enough. Keeping the story straight and logical is part of it. So is showing civic responsibility. Giving a young teenager kerosene and a match? Or carrying a torch on horseback across the country side? Not so much. And I can’t even begin to touch on all the plot holes, we’d be here all day.

The game became a giant stress ball of disappointment to me. And that was the exact opposite side of the relaxing activity with Ginny that it was supposed to be. I had to stop playing to prevent myself from bursting into tears on a regular basis as each update, I was only going to be disappointed again. I thought maybe, maybe there was just something going on behind the scenes. Give it five years, and I could come back and it would be my game again. I hoped. If nothing else, it gave me more time to focus on my own stuff, and to start designing a dream-game with Ginny rather than playing a game that wasn’t fun anymore.

But now there’s the latest bomb dropped. See, I was what is referred to as a lifetime Star Rider. It means I shelled out twice (if not three times) as much as what I would ever pay on a video game in order to never have to buy it again, and that’s just for the game, not the extra Star Coin packages I would buy for myself around the holidays. This is versus their subscription rates, which go for varying amounts of time and rates.

Except Lifetime doesn’t mean lifetime, apparently. Instead of deactivating free players who have never paid for the game ever and have had accounts for years, they instead free up server space by deleting accounts that haven’t logged on in two years. Including Lifetime.

Ya’ll, I don’t know how to even explain to you how I feel about this game. I guess because at this point, I am completely apathetic. I found what I thought was a fun, inviting game for a casual player that didn’t require me to have five to six friends who also played. Instead, it turned into a money-grabbing, greedy corporation that I can no longer support in any way.

My SSO Diaries and other reviews will be up until Sunday, when I will be back with another blog post, and I’ll be taking those down. As much as I love the traffic they bring me, and get all nostalgic sometimes, I just can’t continue to offer free publicity for a game that I don’t think is worth the time or money to play.

(But don’t worry if you are super attached to Misty. She has been revamped into a new character that is much more rounded, and has a lot more personality. I’m hoping for Ginny and I to start a new blog for her and the rest of her friends/world in 2019.)

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March 22, 2018

Writing: Thoughts on Querying…

By Rebecca M. Horner

I feel like preemptively labeling this part one, I’m sure I’ll have more as the process continues for me. For those curious, yes, I am still querying. I sent my full draft to an interested agent, but seeing as how staying in contact with her over the last six months became…difficult…I am actively seeking other options. Query Tracker, btw, is a great tool. I was reluctant to use it because I wasn’t sure it was verifying the agents, but nope! It’s safe!

So some funny (or annoying) things that have happened or I’ve seen, and my reactions.

One agent actually had a note on submissions: “No more vampires, sorry.” That made me laugh, and it also made sense? I wish more agents did that. Like rather than giving us broad genres, they specifically said, “I am sick of seeing this, I want to see this.” And no, telling me you want “strong storytelling” and “books I can’t put down” doesn’t tell me anything. That’s super subjective. If you are sick of first person narratives, say so.

I ran into two rather curious things, too, that gave me an amused rant to put on Twitter if no where else. I saw a lot of agents listing interest in LGBT fiction. And my immediate thought is, “Errr, you’re missing a letter?” A is important, especially for my books. In addition, romance tended to run through extremes–either EPIC or don’t bring it to me, it has cooties! Which all of that makes me laugh, since my main character is so far down the gray scale of demi-sexuality she is almost ace. (Which is the A.) It definitely shows room for growth, at least in my opinion.

Another thing I’ve noticed is there’s a mixed situation to the flooding of inboxes that agents get. There’s basically three things going on, and all of them have their pros and cons. Though to be honest, one super annoys me more than any of the others.

One solution is the no response means no. Ugh, that’s harrowing. Because of their work schedules, agents can’t guarantee when they will get to a book outside of a pretty long time frame. I get just wanting to hit the delete button and move on to the next, but I wish they would at least have a form they sent back to end the misery. But again, that takes time, and it’s time they may not even have. Others do have a form response that they send, and they guarantee replies within a certain window. Obviously as a writer, I love that, but I wonder how much it pulls away from the writer’s work.

The third solution is the one that cheeses me off if it’s not handled properly. Having an intern help with the slush pile of new submissions. On one hand, if it’s used as a tool, I feel like it’s the perfect solution here. The agent can go through the queries while giving notes out loud to the intern who is keeping track themselves, and then the intern can go generate the responses while the agent moves on. My issue is when its the intern who is going through the slush pile themselves and determining what the agent even sees. (What I have dubbed “intern-gating.”) I know one agent who does it of the ones I’ve done so far and even stuff that she has requested in a contest or conference to see gets turned back. Thankfully those people email her directly and get told to send it to her, but ugh, what a waste of people’s time.

The amounts of material requested also run the friggin’ gambit. Could we not come to a consensus, particularly one that doesn’t handicap the writers involved? The more pages there are, the more the agents have to read, I get that. I just think five pages isn’t enough. Ten, at a minimum, can at least get you to the action…or if it doesn’t, the writer has bigger problems. (There is a reason Sun’s Guard: Ten went through so many drafts, I was desperately trying to get to Moonshine faster.) I mean, I’d prefer the first three chapters, but I know that’s a lot for some to get through too.

I’m on the fence about a synopsis. On one hand, I think it is a handy tool for agents. On the other, I think it also can be very misleading? I tried to keep mine focused, but that was hard. Ginny had to hold me in from going down some of my subplots, partly to save space and partly to keep agents from getting distracted by seeing what isn’t there. I can’t imagine the trouble that other people went through. My professors weren’t much help, I remembered talking to Chester about not knowing what I was doing, and she said no one does when it comes to synopsis.

So there are my funny stories/observations. If you’ve got anything of your own you’d like to share, give a shout. As it stands now, I’m going to keep poking away at things. Hopefully someone will take the bait…

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November 30, 2017

NaNo 17: Final Thoughts

By Rebecca M. Horner

Technically, I could write till I’m brain dead tonight and try to make 50,000 words. However, I have some final thoughts on NaNoWriMo that I want to write instead. (Plus, I’ve been fighting a sinus infection for the last week and lost miserably.) So, there’s the “official” goal of NaNoWriMo, which is…a lot more complex than it sounds, and then there are personal goals that you might have within the context of the challenge. Here’s my stance on this year.

The official goal is to write a complete, original book of at least 50,000 words. Well, this has always been problematic for me. Why? Because I am, as Professor Davis put it, a put-er-in-er. What he means is I get my basic framework out of the way in a rough draft, and then I spend the next couple of drafts adding to it to flesh out characters and scenes that might need it, fix my stimulus and response, and if there are any “blank spots” in terms of background or character descriptions, fill those in. Even then, my original books tend to run around around 40,000 for the first draft, and how much it gains varies considerably. I’m not a door-stopper writer, probably because I hate reading those. (Exception being Ginny’s stuff, which I get in nice bite-sized snippets for the actual story, and then when I’m editing the big book, I couldn’t care less.)

The second problem with this goal is that… I already know I can do it if pushed. If I absolutely have to, I will almost kill myself to turn out 50,000 words. But I will then suffer through three months or so of burnout trying to recover my health and motivation to write anything other than RP posts and the occasional fanfic. Not good, especially when I have an agent interested in Sun’s Guard: Ten, and I might be working on future books for that series soon… *crosses fingers*

This is where personal goals come into play. I realized that I was still in the same sort of “brain” as I had in college/grad school. Short bursts of turning out a ton of work, and then long breaks. The problem is without a set deadline, it’s harder to get the bursts going. I also work full time now, I am stepping up in my medieval group, I have a house to keep up with and no spouse to help, plus all my RPs (most of which I paused this year) and other things I do for fun. Add in the neglect I’ve been showing Ginny’s and my MMO concept, putting far too much work on her shoulders, and my crappy health lately? Yeah, writing hasn’t been happening.

Which just makes me more exhausted. Writing is my outlet. I enjoy it, it lets me create a world and people who have an important part to play. But God, it is exhausting to the old brain pan as much as it’s refreshing. And I have forgotten (if I ever knew) how to pace myself when I don’t have anything other than self-applied deadlines, and now that I’m out of school, I don’t know what is considered reasonable for me to do without causing burnout.

So my personal goal for NaNo was, while not to write every day because I knew that was impossible, but to write more and when I got tired, stop. If my head was hurting, or I had an anxiety attack, I was allowed to take the day off. Since it was Thanksgiving during this month, I made time for my family. And at the end of the month, evaluate what I learned.

The end results are pretty satisfying. In a rehearsal month (because yes, I have medieval fair rehearsal in November) when there is a major holiday where I am expected to see my family, and with not only a major anxiety attack one weekend and fighting a sinus infection, I turned out 33,000 words. That is at least half if not more of a novel. I also averaged anywhere from 1700 to 2500 a day on days where I could write, though the 2500 I could tell was me pushing a little harder than I should have. That’s about one chapter for me. It’s definitely a blog post, as you all can tell.

Right now, Heir to the Sky is at a good stopping place, so I’m going to call this the end of “arc 1,” even though I only gained one badge. Next year, unless I’m stupid behind on a deadline for a publisher, I’ll pick it up again for November 2018 and see if I can get us to the Mega Evolution. I’m still going to play the game (once I buy a new charger for the DS, Kari wrecked my only one) and get all my notes done so all I have to do is write… I might even do super-prep and get all my art graphics done instead of doing it as I go, just to save time.

While I may not have met the official goal of NaNoWriMo, I definitely met my personal goal. I know my pacing now, and I have a plan for the next few months. December is gift writing, January is working on Ginny’s and my game and querying Ten some more, since the agent hasn’t given me yes or no yet and isn’t exclusive yet either. February is actually going to be dedicated to some first-arc plotting for both Bree’s first book, Truth of Justice: Touched and Caley’s second book, Sun’s Guard: Page, and then I might start writing Touched if there’s time. March is going to be a “rest month” where I focus on fanfiction and catching up any RPs I’ve let slide, giving my brain a break, mostly because it’s the last month before medieval fair and that’s going to be eating me alive.

And of course, you can return here for your expected blog post once a week. ^_^ I’m not sure what next week’s is going to be, I have a couple half-started, so we’ll see!

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October 27, 2017

Character Study: Xavier

By Rebecca M. Horner
Xavier Headshot

Artwork courtesy Kynim

Name: Xavier
Nickname: ???
Age: 16
Home Region: Kalos
Family: Father, Mother
Starter Pokemon: ???
Hair Color: Blonde
Eye Color: Emerald Green
Build: Athletic, on the slim side, sure-footed
Personality: Confident, likes exploring new places
Favorite Colors: Shades of green

Growing up in a small town, Xavier was raised by two highly experienced and richly decorated trainers after they settled down to have a family with their combined spoils. He made friends with other children his age, and was quickly pegged as both their leader and the one who knew the most about catching and raising Pokemon. Charismatic and sure of himself, he took to the role like a Psyduck to water, and has enjoyed the benefits to the status.

Recently, Professor Sycamore has asked him to round up his friends for a special mission. But he’s asking for the new girl that they haven’t even met yet to join them. Xavier isn’t entirely sure what to make of having a new “student” of sorts, but he’s willing to teach her what he knows, figuring it can’t hurt. His main focus is on figuring out the type of trainer he is going to be, and pursuing that goal with all he’s got.

 

….Xavier is 90% framed by my exasperation with the tutorials, not gonna lie. I wish there was an option to skip, since if you’ve played the game at all (or you know, since Pokemon Yellow like me), most of the rival’s dialogue is just pretentious. Could it be taken a better way? Probably. I just get easily frustrated and hit the A button a lot to keep it moving so I don’t go out of my mind in boredom.

The rest of his personality is a bit of taking everything in the worse way possible, but also trying to hang on to the character. From what I’ve seen, the rival is portrayed as a mentor type rival, one who does honestly want you to succeed, even as he goes about figuring his own self out. Am I making him more annoying than need be? Oh, probably. And who knows, my opinion might change the further in the game I get.

To be honest, the set up I have for Evangeline and Xavier is probably my hatred of certain anime tropes rearing their heads. Seriously, my biggest pet peeve ever in anime is when a girl works her ass off or has talent, but some blowhard comes in and yells alot and is a total idiot and becomes the best at whatever the focus of the story is. Seriously, cheeses me off and nine times out of ten, turns me off from the anime entirely. It’s probably a cultural thing, but still. Irksome. So if my NaNoWriMo is me mostly having fun and writing what I want to write (and hang the Mary Sue/good writing arguments), then Xavier gets shafted…at least a little bit. 😛

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September 30, 2017

Writing: Comfort Food (okay, and some real food)

By Rebecca M. Horner

Most writers have things they are super comfortable writing. Whether its because that’s what they preferred reading before the writing bug hit, or it’s just where their interests lie, it’s a comfort food for the brain that makes you feel better, or can help you get unstuck. Especially if you’ve otherwise been stepping out of your comfort zone with your current works.

Now, what exactly this means for different writers…varies considerably. For example, high fantasy is always going to be my comfort food. If I’m feeling exhausted, I always reach for the Valdemar series to reread in hopes that reading other people’s work will tire me out enough to sleep (or keep me awake!). If my brain is too tired to work on my current original works, I turn to random fanfic ideas that will never see the light of day, but let me dive back into medieval/high fantasy ideas for just a little while. (My current projects are all urban fantasy, or not fantasy at all, which you can guess is a real challenge for me.)

For some writers, comfort isn’t even necessarily found in fiction at all. For example, Ginny has been fashion designing to give herself breaks from the monotony of typing. I have another friend who finds comfort food in the form of doing cellphone games whenever she gets stuck. Maybe you marathon Barbie movies, or play some Pokemon. Either way, comfort food-type writing, reading, and tasking gives your brain a little bit of relaxation, especially from the hard work of learning new tasks or trying new things. I always encourage writers to improve and to try new things and genres, but you can bring those things back to your old favorites too, and it’s important to take breaks or you’ll burn yourself out.

And sometimes, it even unsticks you! We all have moments where we need to walk away from a project for a while. Having several projects going at the same time can be an utter headache, speaking from experience here. But as long as you stay very casual about it, working on something that qualifies as “comfort food for the brain,” can give you a chance to stew about what is blocking you. (Sometimes you won’t like the answer to your stewing, but it’s there.) Of course, if you’re comfort zone is starting new things, then you might end up in a different sort of problem.

Okay, I promised food in here too. So here’s something that is apparently either a Horner family thing, or a very eccentric Southwest thing. I’ve made it to where it’s a little better quality than what I grew up with, and proportions are a bit to taste.

Ingredients:
Rotisserie Chicken, bite sized pieces (I buy one at the store and debone it, I’m lazy)
Spaghetti Noodles (1 box)
Mushrooms, rough chop (I just buy a carton of pre-sliced ones and break the pieces down with my fingers)
Bell peppers, diced (1 or 2 peppers is enough)
Garlic, 2 cloves diced
Butter, 1/2 tablespoon
Can of Cream of Chicken
Can of Cream of Mushrooms x2
Shredded Mild Cheddar (this is an eyeball it till it looks right situation)
Salt and Cracked Black Pepper (to taste)

Get your noodles going in salted boiling water. You want them just under al dente, meaning undercooked (it will finish cooking later, you just want to avoid the pasta turning to mush). While the pasta is going, get a hot pan and melt the butter, then add the garlic, mushrooms, and bell peppers, with a pinch of salt and pepper. Give the ‘shrooms a chance to get toasty on the outside, but don’t get too concerned if they don’t finish completely, they will also get a chance to finish cooking later.

In a REALLY BIG pot (I use the biggest stew pot I got), mix all three cans of soup to heat it up. Once it’s bubbling, start whisking in handfuls of cheese until it’s a pale yellow in color and tastes alright to you. Add the chicken meat first to warm it back up, then the mushrooms/pepper mixture. Taste your seasoning now, it may need a little more pepper (I doubt it will need more salt, but you never know). Then turn off the heat and add your pasta. It should be a little too heavy on the sauce, a lot of that is going to dry up. If you want, you can stop here, just add more pasta and chicken to soak up the extra sauce.

Alternatively, you can pour everything into casserole pans, top with a layer of leftover cheddar cheese, and pop it into the oven at 350 to melt the cheese and finish everything off.

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July 14, 2017

Writing: Music as Inspiration

By Rebecca M. Horner

Okay, so when it comes to music and writing, there are a lot of different “camps” as it were. Some people listen to music as they write because it helps them focus, while others find it to be a distraction. Some writers make playlists for their stories, either before they start writing or after. Some only touch music if they have a dancer or singer or whatever as part of the story and need music for that reason.

I’m sort of in an odd camp. I can’t listen to music as I write most of the time, because it inevitably distracts me. I do have to have some sort of noise, which is why I have YouTube or the TV on with some sort of background nonsense, be it a series that I have seen almost all of the episodes of multiple times (Criminal Minds or Law and Order: SVU), or a movie I’ve also watched several times (with exceptions, Marvel movies don’t work), or video game let’s plays. But I do use music for writing.

See, sometimes when I listen to a song, I will peg it as a background song or an inspiration song for a scene, and listening to it always reminds me of how the song will go. This was particularly prominent in writing Ten, because several of the scenes (some of which got cut) came to exist because of listening to particular songs. I even ended up using songs as chapter titles as a result. When I got stuck writing something because it was giving me issues for whatever reason, I’d go listen to the song I’d assigned to that chapter to help my brain get in the mood and emotions of that particular scene. In my case, I built my play list both before and as I was writing, because I plotted an arc, wrote it, and then plotted the next arc. It helped the story shape itself organically, and the music helped me set the tone for each chapter and the book as a whole.

The trick with using music as inspiration is to not to be extremely literal with it. Problem one with that is because if you are literally including lyrics as dialogue in the text, you are going to run into copyright issues. Problem two, most music has the same topic, they just have different phrases and tones. For me, I listen to what the rhythm and words are telling me. Songs of defiance or even upset at an ex turn into fight music for me, because of the speed and the anger that they emote. Break up songs can sometimes be about families or friends rather than loved ones. Love songs can apply to someone that the main character is interacting with that doesn’t necessarily mean romance between them, just wanting a relationship, platonic or otherwise.

Music appeals to people on different levels, and you really have to figure out which camp you belong to on your own. I can’t tell you to turn off the music if it helps you put words to a page, and really if someone tries to tell you how to handle music with your writing and acts like they know it all, well, they are lying. To paraphrase Mercedes Lackey books, there is no one true way. I will say, don’t get stuck in a rut with it. If you are struggling, the first thing I would suggest changing up is your sound environment. If you listen to music, stop for a while and see if it helps, or do what I do and change to a non-music sort of background noise. As you age, your preference will probably change, so just keep an open mind to trying different things to see if they help you when you get stuck.

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