Here’s an update on Camp NaNo for the first week. (I meant to do these more frequently, but hey, an update is an update lol.) I’ve been doing at least a tiny bit of brainstorming each day for the first draft of Flashover (book two). Having a general outline above my desk definitely helps! My goal by the end of the month is to have as close to a full outline as I can get. I’m also trying to write at least a few scenes so I can get words flowing again. It’s been literal years since I wrote new story words! Today I wrote part of a scene and it was simultaneously frustrating and wonderful. Wonderful in that I did it. The writing itself is cringe worthy. But I’m letting the tap flow again and that’s what’s important, or so @elliot-orion keeps reminding me.
The three notebooks are the ones I’m using today. The blue one is a mini binder so I’m using that to organize general series and character notes. The book takes place in two realities (the main one and a parallel reality that had recently split from the main one) so I figured it would be easier to keep the scenes separated into two notebooks. Ya know, rather than than try to figure out weeks or months from now which Dray scene goes where.
Speaking of Dray, I wasn’t sure what notebooks to use. I’d been putting off using the sequin ones because they remind me of bad memories of when I got them, but none of the other notebooks I have called to me. Dray got all pouty and was like “it’s my damn book, if you don’t use the red sequin notebook, I’m not going to talk to you.” Tempting, but I really do need them as the main dork. That left me with dark blue, teal, or purple for the other half of the book. Ametrine chimed in that he’s a POV in the one reality and he’d really really like the purple sparkles. Dray is already rubbing off on Ame. I’m doomed. Ame, I’m begging you, please take after literally any of your other parents.
A week into NaNo and it’s going about as well as my writing did in October, which is to say not very far at all. Brain fog has been awful this week and I’ve been mostly directing any creativity and spoons into my new living space and making it feel like home. Which is a really good thing! Having this space is ultimately going to make me feel a lot more comfortable and settled. But it also means that writing and Tumblr didn’t happen. Well, I did come close to having breakthroughs about one of my characters and how the trilogy will tie everything together. I’m hoping to get this answer soon, when my head doesn’t feel so foggy that it’s blocking my view of everything. (Heck, tonight it took me fifteen minutes to remember how to do a basic crochet stitch I’ve done so many times.)
I still have hopes that I can make writing progress this month, so maybe in a few days I’ll be able to give a good status update. My dorks are in my head, it’s just like a whole lot of static coming through when I try to reach them. It’s like Sol designed a really crappy walkie-talkie lol
So yeah, just wanted to give a heads up because I know I said I’d be back on here and doing NaNo, then vanished again. I might be a vanishing act for longer or my body could stop rebelling tomorrow, who knows? I hope everyone’s writing is going well, whether you’re doing NaNo or not. :-)
Every Thursday, we purpose to learn more about one another as humans and how our passions, preferences, and experiences shape us as artists. From simple pleasures to deep truths, we all share one aspect of ourselves each week in the hopes that it unites us as a community all the more.
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THIS WEEK’S QUESTION: What is your primary love language? If you don’t know, take the quick test here! Now, do you find your characters expressing or receiving love in ways that are similar to you or do you purposely diversify their displays of affection?
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I really like this question from last week so I’m going to answer it now. :) I’ve never thought about what any of our love languages are, me or my characters, so this was definitely never purposely diversified. So let’s see what me and these dorks would be!
With the test I got Words of Affirmation for myself, which doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. I know life’s put me into a position where what I want more than anything is to hear that I’m important to someone, that I did something well, that I’m appreciated. I have a hard time believing it when I do hear these things, though, so those I care about tend to have to drill these words into my head repeatedly to get them to stick lol
Adair’s is most definitely Physical Touch. What he craves is to be physically close to the people he cares about, be it hugging, kissing, snuggling, sleeping next to them, whatever. For him, physical affection carries more weight than words because in his experience words haven’t always been truths, but someone wanting to be physically near him hasn’t led him wrong.
Etri’s is Quality Time. He’s never been a fan of touch (although he comes to enjoy this from those he loves) but he loves being around the people he cares about. It means so much to him when they take a genuine interest in what he’s interested in, or when they’re patient enough to get through his anxiety to listen to what he has to say, or to just want to be there with him.
Blythe’s is Acts of Service. She shows her affection by doing things for people and helping them whenever possible. She isn’t very physically affectionate, she doesn’t really do gifts, and words don’t mean much to her– actions do. She won’t believe a thing until she sees it with her own eyes. I think it would surprise her to realize how much it means to her when someone she trusts helps take a task off her plate. She’ll swear up and down that she’d rather do everything herself, but she truly appreciates when the dorks help her out and have her back
Dray’s is Receiving Gifts. Like Addy, Dray’s learned not to trust words (especially not when Dray can spin words themself to get people to agree to things), they don’t trust actions any more than words because that could be deception, too, and they’re not big on touch much more than Etri is. But if someone gives Dray a gift that obviously has thought in it, like the person knows Dray enough to know what they like? Or if they had a moment in the day where something reminded them of Dray so they got it for them? That’s something Dray can’t doubt the sincerity of. And it’s even more so when flipped– Dray absolutely shows their affection by giving the dorks things that they want or need, frequently even before the dork in question realizes this. Dray is incredibly perceptive and it’s not unusual for a dork to find something sitting in their possessions that they didn’t have yesterday but they have a need for today. I think it takes the others a while to work out that it’s Dray doing this. (Dray also leaves their beloved stuffed dragon plush with the others’ stuff, like guarding Addy’s paintbrushes or sitting in one of Blythe’s potted plants. It’s a sign of trust and affection and a playful side of Dray that the others eventually bring out.)
Sol… he’s absolutely every single love language. He loves physical touch as much as Addy does (Sol gives the best bear hugs), he loves spending time hanging out with the people he loves like Etri does, he thinks it’s the coolest thing when people want to help him with his inventions and tasks similar to Blythe, he gives gifts just as frequently as Dray (in his case, he’s always building inventions that will help the others out), and like me he wants so much to hear people tell him positive things (that they’re proud of him, that he did something right, that they love him). Sol is so full of love that he shows it in every way possible all the time, so I couldn’t actually take the test for him because he couldn’t choose things he liked better lol
It’s Tender Tuesday! One of the two days of romance for writers! As I did before I will be posting this question for all to see and participate! Feel free to answer in a reblog or comment or if you feel like just posting on your blog tag this fellow writer so I can have a read! Happy romantic writing, lovelies!
The day it all started. How did your OTP (or if you’re feeling like writing more OTPs) meet?
Blythe met Etri after she returned to her carnival troupe after getting her medical degree and found him and his twin living in the upstairs of her home where her sibling-by-choice had been living. Dray had left the troupe without telling her, so that was… well, not exactly a shock becaus I think Blythe was expecting Dray to run away because of a fear of getting close to people, but it disappointed her anyway. She didn’t technically meet Etri until a few days later, though, when he stopped to talk to her at the troupe’s campfire late at night and she thought for a minute that a ghost was talking to her lol
Blythe and Etri, now very close friends who were absolutely crushing on each other without letting the other know, met Adair a few months later. He’d sleepwalked into the carnival and bumped into Sol, who decided to drag Addy under one of the floating homes the carnies live in because he was afraid Blythe was going to yell at him for being outside when he was supposed to be resting because he was sick. So Blythe and Etri’s first interaction with Addy? Was seeing him crawl out from under the house after Blythe had dragged Sol out, and seeing him standing there sheepishly in pajamas and quacking ducky slippers. Adair got shooed away by Blythe who wasn’t feeling particularly up to listening to why he was there when she was worried about Sol’s health. (Etri did hand Addy his coat so he wasn’t freezing since it was winter.) Addy came back a little bit later with a bribery pie, an apology, Etri’s coat, and a plea for help.
I always joke that how the dorks all met should have been a weird AU because there are so many much more logical ways they could have crossed paths, but nope. Sleepwalking and carnivals is the canon lol
Work is busy again unfortunately, so I’m just leaving an open ask for everyone today!
My question is a more generic writing one, as I couldn’t think of a good character-related one:
What are your favourite romance tropes? Are there any you love reading but never write yourself, and vice versa? Are there any tropes you have subverted in your writing?
I mean, I guess I’ve subverted the love triangle trope by making a culture where triads are the norm. I always love me some good polyam rep and that’s definitely all throughout the series. :) Friends to lovers is a good one. I also really love queerplatonic stuff so that’s in everything I write, too. I love soulmate tropes, but more like in the way I’m doing it– by being compatible with someone and close to someone, you can become their soulmate, it isn’t fated.
Happy Worldbuilding Wednesday! Let’s talk Fate! I wanna know about everything: deities of fate, gambler’s games, superstitions–anything and everything related to destiny and luck.
This is an open ask, for anyone to answer! For more open asks, check out@worldbuildingwedasks
It’s kind of weird in my writing. I have canon soulmates as a running theme, but fate isn’t involved. Soulmates are to balance magic and keep a person from using too much of their energy or losing control over it.
In Concordia, my main culture/country, you make the choice of who you want to be what’s essentially your soulmate. This usually just happens when someone’s magic is strong enough to need the empathetic link, so not everyone with magic ends up linked. Traditionally it’s a romantic triad of two people with magic and one sentinel, which is a bodyguard of sorts. Things have become far less dangerous the past few generations, so mostly the sentinel takes care of their artists’ art, guarding it from thieves and also selling it. It doesn’t always have to be three, it doesn’t always have to be a romantic relationship, and it doesn’t always have to be two artists, but there does always have to be at least one person who can do the protection side of the link. The link is granted through a series of tests to determine if the artist is ready to advance with their magic, while also testing the loyalty and devotion the usually-triad has to each other. It doesn’t have to happen via tests, but since things have become so safe, it kind of gives a mock dangerous situation for the link to spark.
(Fun fact: My five main dorks spark this link entirely by accident. They’re definitely exceptions to the rule, considering it is usually three, usually romantic, and doesn’t usually happen on an oops.)
My other cultures have balance with magic, too. Like my Salamanders, the lizard people who have some shapeshifting ability and can control fire, have a connection to a sibling. Usually Salmanders are born as twins in that both parents get pregnant at the same time, but occasionally someone else is chosen to be a sibling, particularly if the one passes away later in life, but there isn’t always another person to bond with. This is less than ideal.
And in Montglace, the country where magic is only inside the temples of light and shadow, it’s supposed to be that people from both temples work together so that there’s an overall balance between the two kinds of magic. What’s been happening lately is an imbalance, though, because there’s been something of a falling out between the temples. Magic is less than stable there as a result and control over their elementals can be somewhat iffy.
I kinda veered off topic, but soulmates are my favorite trope ever. I love twisting the trope around so it isn’t like, fated to be with someone romantically. :)
I’ve been having trouble getting back into writing, so it felt really good today to work on book one. I know there are big changes I need to make to the plot and those hadn’t been working right, but I think I’m heading in the right direction now. I hope. The main plot got changed to something kinda similar, but different enough that the next draft is going to need to be outlined from scratch. Which is why I was getting stuck. I kept trying to make the new plot work with the old outline.
Also brainstorming while sitting in a pile of art books feels so right. Both because I’m getting back into art and because the Adair’s the main character of book one, with the whole being an artist and arcane painter thing.
Yesterday was my happy place. I got to go to the lake at the state park with my family and just relax. I even worked on some writing ideas, which is big when my brain fog has been awful. I realized that all the changes I was making to book one to try to streamline it are causing more problems than they’re fixing, though. I’m not really sure what to do with this book, so I think I need to look at the story less specifically. If I can go back to knowing what the key points have to be, the solution might be obvious.
Poor Talan and Rosalie are stuck in a revolving door as I try to figure out if they need to be in here or not. I think taking them out is what’s making things fall apart, even though they both feel like extras I don’t necessarily need. So we’ll see.
Working on the series for the first time in what feels like an eternity. Realized my huge newsprint sketchbook is perfect for this outlining. I don’t want to take down the outline for the next book that’s on my huge whiteboard, and I wasn’t currently using this sketchbook. I think I’m going to try to pin it to the whiteboard, though, so I can have both outlines handy.
I think I found a way to make the time travel subplot work, so we’ll see! I’m going to write out the main plot next to make sure the two plots intersect.
Also cat help. Not my cat, but she wants to help anyway.
Working on the series for the first time in what feels like an eternity. Realized my huge newsprint sketchbook is perfect for this outlining. I don’t want to take down the outline for the next book that’s on my huge whiteboard, and I wasn’t currently using this sketchbook. I think I’m going to try to pin it to the whiteboard, though, so I can have both outlines handy.
I think I found a way to make the time travel subplot work, so we’ll see! I’m going to write out the main plot next to make sure the two plots intersect.
Also cat help. Not my cat, but she wants to help anyway.
It’s been forever since I was on tumblr, but I’d like to get back into it again. I’ve been mostly avoiding social media for a few months and doing a lot of personal art things, one of which is learning how to paint. At the moment I’ve been working on watercolors. I was super excited when I saw that one of the lessons had us painting a sky with constellations! Concordia, the main country in the Unexpected Inspiration series, has a ton of history and mythology about their constellations, which they call the Muses. It’s said that these were beings who came down from the sky to teach the original Concordians art and magic. This is partly true. There were beings who granted this magic and knowledge, but they came from other worlds via a portal, not the sky. The humans simply assumed the sky when the beings seemingly popped out of nowhere when they heard the call for help. Each of these constellations became the Muse of a specific branch of art/magic because they granted that particular flavor of arcane creativity. Most of the Muses are no longer remembered as their original appearance; over the centuries stories have made them larger and stronger (or at least stranger) than they were.
They’re not in quite the right locations, but artistic interpretation, right? I included all nine Muses that make up my world’s sky. From sort of left to right: Piquant, Pritchel, Chiaroscuro, Stele, Andante, Mortise, Tessera, Twisen (which is Whorl and Weft in one spiral constellation), and Scriven. Here’s a bit about them:
Piquant: Muse of the culinary arts. I introduced him ages ago as a human-shaped imp who had a few small mushrooms “growing” on his body. He is now remembered because of the mushrooms; his constellation is a mushroom turned on its side. His name comes from a flavor. He helped grant food magic to the early Concordians because he saw they were hungry and wanted to help.
Pritchel: Muse of metalwork. Pritchel (along with Scriven and Stele) were Creators, who were beings from another world who moved into what became Concordia and joined together with the humans there to create one culture. At some point, these three Creators lost their human forms, however briefly, because they’re remembered for what they actually looked like. (They’re also remembered for their human forms, too; somehow the humans never made the connection that these three beings were the same as the “human” newcomers who helped unite the two groups of people into one. This means Pritchel, Scriven, and Stele are remembered separately as the founders Petra, Dee, and Elda.) The Creators’ original forms, before they crossed through the portal that shifted them to human, were all of one species, but took on the appearance of the material they worked most. This means Pritchel was golden with flecks of silver to represent iron. Her constellation is based on her namesake: “a pritchel is a type of punch used in forging, particularly in making nail holes in horseshoes.” In this case, the constellations is the punch and the horseshoe. Concordians have never kept horses, but back before the Concordian humans were sent to Concordia, they did. Pritchel had lightning and metal magic, so she granted the ability to work metal, as well as use lightning to power magical inventions.
Chiaroscuro: Muse of illustration. He’s a celestial being of both light and shadow, who had come to Concordia’s world centuries before events of the Muses. This makes him very, very old, even at the time these Muses visited Concordia. He had no physical form except as an amorphous dark spot with glowing golden eyes. Mostly it’s his eyes that are remembered and the constellation is simply these. “Chiaroscuro” means “the treatment of light and shade in drawing and painting.” I know Chiaroscuro best of all because he’s important to both Concordia and Montglace and he comes into play in the current books. He granted illustration and illusion magic.
Stele: Muse of sculpture and another Creator. In her case, her appearance took on the look of either marble or clay. A “stele” is a variation on “stela,” which is “an upright stone slab or column typically bearing a commemorative inscription or relief design, often serving as a gravestone.” The constellation was supposed to be an upside-down gravestone. It became a clay teacup pretty quickly because this was too morbid for a Muse remembered as fondly as Stele. The reason Stele is associated with memorials was because when she was alive, she helped create the walls that contain the names of everyone in Concordia who has passed since the founding; these update automatically because of the magic tied into them.
Andante: Muse of music. He was originally some sort of bird person and is somehow still remembered as a bird person. The fact that this constellation looks like a bird person with wings and a tail is probably the reason. I’m still amazed that the program I used to generate stars threw some together in a way that made this shape form so well! His name is a musical term involving tempo. The magic he granted involves sound, both in terms of music but also in recording and amplifying.
Mortise: Muse of woodwork. They were a being of the same species as Chiaroscuro, but even older than Chiaro. While Chiaro stayed a celestial, Mortise bonded with the land and became one with the planet. They’re remembered as a tree because their voice came from the grotto at the center of the early Concordians’ homes. It’s not barbaric to have a tree be the Muse of woodwork because Concordians use fallen wood whenever possible and always replant. The earth magic granted by Mortise makes the land flourish; they’ve grown weaker over the centuries so now their magic can only stretch as far as Concordia. A “mortise” is a woodworking joint and Mortise granted magic over wood.
Tessera: Muse of glasswork. She was originally a Salamander, a human-sized lizard person, but over time she was remembered as a dragon. Possibly this is because large, scary dragons are more exciting than lizards, but more likely because the constellation’s arms got mistaken for wings. The tail probably didn’t help since the constellation is all tail. Tessera did have a tail, though, so that part’s okay. “Tessera” means an “individual tile, usually formed in the shape of a cube, used in creating a mosaic.” She granted light and heat magic, which generally manifests in control over glass.
Twisen (Whorl and Weft): Muses of textiles. They were sisters or at least appeared to be sisters. They’re from the same world as the Concordians, but their kind was there long before the humans arrived and long long before Concordian’s founding. Their species lives deep underwater and most of the world doesn’t realize that they share their planet with other people, even now. These two are remembered as a pair of waterspouts and they’re closely tied into wind and water, such as the wind in the sails of boats. Their names are spinning and weaving terms because they granted textile magic.
Scriven: Muse of words. This also includes poetry, stories, and words both spoken and written. Scriven was the third of the Creator-Muses and was the Creator who called on the other beings and their worlds for help. This constellation looks weird, but I see it as the side view of a person holding a book or a piece of paper. It could also be an old-fashioned desk where the chair is connected. Either would work for Scriven. While Pritchel looked almost like metal in her true form and Stele looked like stone, Scriven’s skin had the appearance of parchment and whenever he used magic, his words would show on his body. He granted power over words, such as an ability to bring emotion from the audience/reader.
Concordia’s culture revolves around art, hence the art-themed names, so painting this felt wonderfully appropriate. Chiaroscuro, the Muse of illustration, would approve. Years ago I introduced three of the Muses and I’d like to get back into that soon.
I know I had a tag list going, but at this point I’m not really sure who’s still around, so if you’d like to be added, let me know!
