Theoretically Speaking

Let’s recap last week for a minute. It was my last week of babysitting, plus it was a short week – holiday Monday, plus a free day on Thursday. Theoretically I should have been able to get all kinds of writing done, right?

I can see you know me well enough by now not to have such high expectations. LOL

Here’s the sad truth. Tuesday I had my yearly (because I’m diabetic) eye exam. Later (much later) that night I had a bad reaction to what I suspect were the combination of drops used in my eyes. So when I wasn’t babysitting I pretty much spent the rest of the week curled up on the couch watching TV.

I was starting to feel better on Sunday, but then I accidentally shattered the chimney from the floor lamp in my office over my head. Who knew those things were so fragile? Anyway, that’s my sad little story. I’m thinking things can only get better. Right? (knock on wood)

It’s been so long since I’ve worked on Wandering Wizards I’ve kind of lost track of where they are. And, if I’m perfectly honest, I’ve kind of lost interest in the whole thing too. I need to re-read and maybe edit a little to catch up/regenerate my mojo.

What’s that, you say? Why didn’t I catch up/regenerate yesterday, which was my first full day of non-babysitting? Well, uh, I got busy taking pictures of butterflies, looking for a replacement chimney for my lamp, and catching up on my journal. Don’t judge.

I’ll do better today – promise!

Prompts of the Week

I went through a whole bunch of prompts (another time waster) and generators before settling on these two from Springhole. This site has a whole lot of options and if you don’t like the prompt it generates just click it again. Maybe I’ll just go straight here next week.

First I clicked on the Fairytale Plot Generator, which gave me this:

The story is about a lonely wizard who must outwit a faerie, defeat a giant, and find a magic mirror to solve three riddles. Assistance comes in the form of a magic ring.

Then as a bonus prompt I clicked on the Really Random Plot-o-tron, which gave me this one:

An ordinary dinosaur gains control of a monster from under the bed and discovers the princess.

Go ahead, play along with me. Or go to Springhole and generate a prompt of your own.

You know you want to…

Once More, With Feeling...

Short Fiction - 0
Long Fiction - 1140
Poetry - unknown
Total Words - 1140+
Paragraphs of Notes - 11

Well, that didn’t exactly work out like I expected it to.

Just when I thought I was getting things back on track I got slammed with the stomach flu. So no writing at all, let alone posting, last week. I was far too busy being sick and recovering from being sick. I did get a bunch of reading in, if that counts. Maybe I should start including a weekly reading report too - after all, reading is just as important as writing when you’re an author. ;-)

Now to be completely honest, I was recovered enough by the weekend that I could have spent some time writing, and I actually planned on it, however the characters in the book I’m working on stopped for a rest after escaping from some dark elves and now they refuse to budge. And that’s pretty much my own fault.

I’m not entirely sure where exactly the elven enclave that’s been taken over by the dark elves that my heroes escaped from is, let alone how far it is to the shrine they’re supposed to be headed for. In fact, I’d never heard of the shrine until they decided to head there. Apparently it’s on an island on an inland sea.

I need a map. And I need a proper map, not one of the namby-pamby ones I drew 15-20 years ago when I first came up with the idea for this story - it was more fun working on maps and character sketches than actually writing back then. Some of the names on those maps are cringe-worthy and a lot of the places have changed. Not to mention there are a bunch of places that have been mentioned in back stories that aren’t even on those maps. I need a map like this one:

Okay, maybe not as fancy as that one, but I do need a more comprehensive idea of the lay of the land. So as a starting point I figured I could use the outlines of my old maps and just fill in new details. Only I can’t find them. I have a file folder marked “Maps” that had several pages of maps that when pieced together made a really big map, only I can’t find it. Somewhere, in the Great Office Shuffle, I seem to have misplaced it, along with all my other notes, etc. on the Moonstone Chronicle universe.

Now after a very long frustrating search I did manage to find the maps I’d traced from the smaller pages onto three really large pages, but my first thought there was - TOO BIG. Which leaves me in a bit of a dilemma. Do I keep searching for smaller maps, tearing apart filing cabinets, drawers, and offices (and probably my hair) in the process? Try and trace the pertinent sections of the huge maps onto smaller, more manageable pages and make the necessary changes? Or suck it up and just make the changes on the big maps, which would take copious amounts of white out and leave me with a really messy looking map?

As excuses go for not writing, I thought this was a pretty good one.