I’ve Been Playing in an Among Us Tournament

Sorry to talk about Among Us YET AGAIN, but it continues to be fun. Well, my group is fun, and I like hanging out with them, so by extension, the game is fun.

Anyway, my Among Us discord has been hosting a tournament for the last three weeks. I signed up because it seemed like a safe environment to get some good practice. I mean, there’s games going on fairly regularly within the group, but they aren’t always serious affairs. Sometimes we play variations like Hide and Seek or Vent Tag, sometimes everyone is feeling silly and are more focused on being silly than finding the imposters, etc. It’s fun, but not always good practice.

They had 12 tournament sessions, and your first three were scored (I only did three, because that was all I could make). I ended up doing one on each map: Mira, Skeld, and Polus. Today all the points got added up, the top ten got announced, and the final is set for Saturday afternoon, my time.

(We have a lot of members from the UK, plus other European countries, so games are sometimes at weird times. For me.)

And I actually did really well. I was sick my first session, which was on my best map, Mira, but came in second for that session, which felt pretty good.

(I love Mira. I think it confuses a lot of people which means if you have any sort of semblance of an idea of how to use it, it’s really powerful.)

(Also all the vents are connected.)

My second session was on Skeld, which I am awful at. I can’t seem to figure out how to 1) kill without someone immediately walking in on me, or 2) not die immediately. I went into it dreading it, and it somehow went worse than I thought it would. I came in second to last.

Yesterday I did my final session, on Polus. And man, I crushed it. Everything went perfectly–I was voting right, I was staying alive, and the one game I got imposter, me and my partner won by the second round. I was only on the losing side one game.

I came in first for the session, which is madness.

So, for the tournament, I’m in 12th place. Way higher than I expected. I thought I’d be more, like, 18th-22nd. (There’s 35 people total.)

So I’m pretty proud of myself.

There’s also a chance I might play in the final. One of the top 10 people can’t play, so the 11th person has already been moved into the final, so if someone else can’t make it, I’m in the bullpen, so to speak.

I don’t really want to play in the final–that seems a little too exciting–but for my first video game tournament of any sort, it’s been pretty good. And it has been fun to really focus on the strategy of the game, though I don’t think I’d want to do it all the time.

(Also, perhaps I should never enter a tournament again. That way I can always think back to this time and remember how well I did this one time.)

Anyway.

Reading through the story continues. I’m deeper into the story, but finding it hard to focus on critiquing myself versus getting sucked into the story. But we persevere.

Hope you have a good weekend, squiders!

Thorny Beginnings

Well, squiders, I’m still working at reading back through the latest draft of Book One (we were out of town over the weekend, so I didn’t get much working time).

The beginning is worse than I remember. Or, well, not worse, but not as easily fixed as I was hoping.

For some context, the beginning part of the book takes place over several months. It’s actually less time than it originally took, because when I did the massive rewrite about three years ago I moved the beginning of the story and cut out a lot of stuff. But it still is difficult. My instinct is that the time frame is necessary, for the relationships and plot points to feel appropriate and not rushed, but that’s one of the things I’m evaluating as I read.

So, because each chapter takes places weeks or perhaps a month after the one before it, each of them feels more like a short story than interconnected with a larger narrative.

I’m only about halfway through–it’s either the first seven chapters that have this problem, or seven where it fixes itself–and some chapters are worse than others.

But here’s my going theories for how to fix things:

• Leave things more or less where they are. Add in some overarching character motivations and more plot elements.
• Move the beginning of the story and/or condense the plot elements/character arcs currently being represented by the beginning so not as much time has to pass
• Or, counterintuitively, start a little earlier. Now, hear me out. The first chapter feels really crowded–too many things to introduce: the world, the characters, the plot, etc. It’s possible that giving each main character–it’s dual viewpoint–an earlier chapter may help smooth everything out.

There may be other options. Still mulling.

I’ve reached out to a couple of betas whose opinions I trust to see if they’ll read the beginning and make suggestions, so hopefully I’ll get some feedback from them as well in the near future, or will at least have people to bounce ideas off of. I know that really helped when I was organizing the rewrite initially.

Anyway, things are going! Fingers crossed that the solution comes to me soon!

Digging Back In

Have I told you guys about RaTs? It stands for Runaway Tales, and is a prompt system based on flavors. It’s a fairly big deal over at WriYe, so when I reconnected with the community at the beginning of 2019, I signed up as well.

(In case you’re wondering, the flavors I’m working on are Green Tea, Tangelo, and Rhubarb. There’s 20-30 prompts within each flavor, so I’m still working on my original three.)

People use RaTs for various projects, but I use mine mostly for little characterization snips, writing main characters when they were children or when they’re much older than in the actual novels, or digging through various backstory events that will never make it into the main story, or writing pieces from side characters that I don’t normally use for a point of view.

(I tend to do 1 or 2 RaTs a month, so it doesn’t take up a lot of my time. But I think it does help with story depth, so it’s fun and useful at the same time.)

(And it’s always nice to further explore worlds that are already built than having to always build new ones.)

Anyway, long story short (too late), Wednesday I went through and picked out my prompt for the month, with the thought that I’d write it from a side character’s point of view during the third book of my high fantasy trilogy.

Now, it’s been a while since I’ve touched Book 3 (I’ve rewritten Book 1 since then), so I thought it best to go into Book 3 and make sure what I was remembering happened actually happened, so my RaTs was as accurate as possible.

And…I ended up reading all of Book 3. This is a problem I have with the trilogy, at times. I’ve been working on it forever, so it’s never really all the way out of my mind, and Book 3, well, it’s pretty good. All my betas stayed up too late while they were working on it, which is a huge compliment. Of course, there’s some tweaking to be done, to update it off the Book 1 rewrite, but still, very solid.

None of that matters though, because Book 1 still needs work. And I’m going to start it today! The idea is to read back through it, leaving myself notes, then add in beta notes and make an editing plan. If I’m remembering correctly, most of the problems are right at the beginning of the book, so I’m hoping the revision will be fairly straightforward.

(I’m thinking that I’ve just got to end my first couple of chapters in different places, so they read more like the continuation of a longer story than a series of short vignettes. But that’s what re-reading is for.)

But the characters have been in my head for a couple of days now, and while I was lying in bed last night, I was actually super excited to get going on my re-read. I mean, like, full of happy anticipation. It’s different than the excitement you get before you start a new story–it’s more like getting to see friends you haven’t seen in long time and have been missing.

Here’s hoping this bodes well for working on the revision!

I hope you’re having a lovely January, squiders, and I’ll see you next week!

Poking Around

I finished my client edit! Woo, that was an undertaking. And now I find myself with time to spend on my own projects!

But I also feel a little burnt out. I mean, that figures , but holy cow, is it frustrating.

Oh, I learned something today! So, I listen to a podcast called Myths and Legends, which tells stories from folklore around the world. I’m about two years behind (in the end of 2018, which is better than the four years I was behind), but, you know, not really time dependent.

Anyway, in the episode I started this morning, the host mentioned that legends are based in history, and myths are based in religion. Google research holds up this assertion.

I thought that was a neat distinction, and, uh, now you know too!

In other news, I’ve been researching mystery short stories. I enjoyed writing the mystery for Nano, and I thought I might try my hand at some other stories in the same genre every now and then. But, while I regularly read scifi and fantasy shorts, I’d never read any mystery shorts, excepting that one time I got that Victorian mystery collection from the library. All the stories in that were at least 70 years old, so I figure they’re not good research.

(Great book, though.)

I thought I’d get some short story magazines from the library, except they don’t have any, so I ended up getting a couple “Best of [year] Mystery Stories” collections. Except even those were hard to find, so I ended up with Best of 2020, Best of 2019, and a suspense collection called Nothing Good Happens After Midnight. I’ve been alternating them with two scifi/fantasy/horror short story collections I also have.

(Too many short story collections, let me tell you what. But, anyway, the idea is that I read a scifi/fantasy story, then a mystery, then a scifi/fantasy, etc., as a palate cleanser so the stories don’t get confused in my head.)

(Oh, I ended up reading the other Shannara short in that one collection even though it wasn’t next chronologically. It was only a few pages long and more of a scene outtake than a story.)

And I have to say…these stories don’t feel like mysteries. Oh, sure, they all have crimes, and some of them are presented in a way where what’s going on isn’t known about til the end, but a lot of them are more straight forward than that.

(Suspense and mystery are different genres, so I’m not too put out about the suspense collection not being mysteries. But the mystery collections, on the other hand…)

I mean, I guess I’m getting a decent idea of what’s current in the land of mystery shorts, but I expected more…actual mystery, if that makes sense.

Also, I’ve yet to come across any cozy-esque shorts in any of these collections. I know, for example, Agatha Christie used to write Miss Marple shorts, so they do exist, but perhaps they’re out of fashion. It only takes a few hours to get through a cozy mystery novel, after all, so many shorts just aren’t needed in the great scheme of things.

What do you know, squiders? Any thoughts on mystery short stories? Or short stories in general? Or thoughts on myths and legends? Or random facts (preferably about octopuses)?

See everyone on Thursday, when hopefully I have gotten my act together!

January ArtSnacks

Sorry this is a little late, squiders! I’ve been feeling a little under the weather the last few days. Nothing serious, but I did take it pretty easy and now am feeling much better.

(Yesterday I basically watched Ghost Adventures: Artifacts or whatever it’s called.)

I know I keep saying I’m done with ArtSnacks, but then I get excited and keep getting it. So here we are. Possibly for the last time, but at this point I’d better stop saying anything before I look too ridiculous.

#artsnackschallenge

I remembered to put the materials in the picture this month, unlike last month.

(The snack this month is a dumdum, which continues to not actually be a snack.)

Okay, let’s get into it.

ShinHan Art Touch Liners, Cool Grey Set of 5
So these are ink pens in a variety of sizes/types: .1 mm, .3 mm, .5mm, a chiseled tip, and a brush tip. It’s kind of a silvery gray, as you can see. I outlined the circle in the .1 mm and filled it in with the brush tip, then used the .5mm and the chiseled tip for the words. The color is nice, and I can see using them instead of black ink for effect. The chiseled tip ink erased a bit when I used my eraser, though, so that’s something to remember. No smudging, though. Overall, very nice.

Karin DecoBrush Metallic Marker
Mine is gold, obviously. The paint comes out thick and fast, so it needs a careful hand, but it dries relatively quick. However, I got two gold things last month, so I don’t know that I needed yet more gold. It would be good to paint over things for effect, however. And it didn’t drip paint anywhere I didn’t want, which is also a plus.

Zebra M-350 Mechanical Pencil
I think this is the third mechanical pencil I’ve gotten. Maybe the second. It’s a mechanical pencil. I continue to not see any major differences between these, and at this point I probably do not need any more.

Marvy Uchida Pastel LePen Flex
That’s a mouthful for what it essentially a fine tip marker. Mine is yellow-gold, because if there’s one color family I don’t need any more of, it’s yellow/golds. Seriously, ArtSnacks, send me some purple! Green! Blue! Even orange. No more yellows, no more golds. That being said, this is a really nice marker. I would buy more of these (in more useful colors).

Also, the calligraphy looks decent, if I do say so myself, especially since I haven’t done any in about 10 years or so.

How are you doing, squiders? Any thoughts on art supplies or drawing in general?

WriYe and 2021

This kind of goes over stuff we’ve already talked about, but here we are anyway!

What’s your WriYe Word Count goal for 2021? Why did you chose it?

I picked a goal of 120,000 words for this year. Last year I wrote 150K, and that’s on top of wasting a LOT of time, so I could conceivably write more if so inclined, but since most of my time this year is going to be spent on revision, I didn’t want to go that high again.

I’m still waffling about counting revision words. I do tend to retype everything during a revision, especially if it needs a lot of work, because it allows me to tweak word choice, and I haven’t decided if I should count that or not. Things to worry about later!

What are your writing/editing plans for the year?

I’m not going to do this in great detail, since we did talk about it last week, but essentially I intend to focus on revising several (six) longer projects with the hopes that they’ll be ready for publication of some sort. They need various amounts of work so I’m going to start with the easiest ones first.

Bonus:

What are you most looking forward to in 2021?

Uh…hopefully being able to go places again? I know that’s not writing related, but I am so stir crazy I can’t stand it. I’d even love just to be able to go work at the coffee shop instead of my house.

(Speaking of which, I got a new laptop! It’s one of those 2-in-1s that turns into a tablet, though I haven’t thought of a need for tablet mode yet.)

Writing wise, I’d like to be able to focus better and get more done with my time. And actually finish some projects.

What are your goals for 2021, squiders?

Yearend Book Round-up 2020

Hi, squiders! It’s that time again! (stats stats stats!)

Books Read in 2020: 59
Change from 2019: +4

This may actually be the most I’ve read, since I started tracking.

Of those*:
13 were Nonfiction
12 were Fantasy
11 were Mystery
6 were Science Fiction
5 were Romance
3 were Children’s
2 were General Literature
1 was Adventure
1 was Contemporary
1 was Gothic horror
1 was Horror
1 was a Play
1 was Science Fiction Noir
1 was a Spy Novel

*Some genre consolidation was done here. YA or MG titles went into the general genre. All subgenres of fantasy or romance, for example, also went into the general genre.

No audiobooks this year. No road trips on which to listen to them.

New genre(s)**: adventure, contemporary, gothic horror, science fiction noir, spy novel
Genres I read last year that I did not read this year: anthology, young adult, science fantasy
**This means I didn’t read them last year, not that I’ve never read them.

Genres that went up: nonfiction, science fiction, romance
Genres that went down: mystery, fantasy, general literature

That’s the monthly nonfic books coming into play.

33 were my books
26 were library books

I guess making sure I read some of TBR list every month paid off!

53 were physical books
6 were ebooks

(Hmmmmm.)

Average rating: 3.58/5

Top rated:
The Bookish Life of Nina Hill (contemporary – 4)
The Falcon Always Wings Twice (mystery – 4)
Differently Wired (nonfiction – 4)
Bet Me (romance – 4)

Interesting that nothing is in my normal categories of fantasy and science fiction.

Honorable mentions of 3.9: Dark Matter (science fiction), Kiki’s Delivery Service (children’s fantasy), The Chinese Orange Mystery (mystery)

Most recent publication year: 2020
Oldest publication year: 1883
Average publication year: 2002
Books older than 1900: 1
Books newer than (and including) 2015: 36

A lot of newer books this year. A full 20 from 2019 and 2020.

The first book I read this year was Reverie by Ryan La Sala (YA fantasy) and the last was A Match Made for Thanksgiving by Jackie Lau (romance).

How’d your year of reading, squiders? Any books you’d recommend?

Obligatory New Year’s Post 2021

Okay, I’ve gotten my act together and made goals for the year. I don’t really feel like going back over 2020 as a whole–I certainly made a lot of progress posts through the year, but it wasn’t all bad. I wrote a little over 150,000 words for the year, had a few stories published, completed two drafts and had one critiqued, and wrote most of another draft. I read lots of writing books and took a few writing classes, and I read some drawing books and took a lot more drawing classes.

I also spent a lot of time wasting time. I have a coloring game on my phone that I have spent a lot of time on, just saying. I think a lot of that came from having everyone around all the time, and trying to manage all their stuff too. It’s been hard to focus around all that, and when I have managed to squeeze out some alone time, I’m often too tired to give a story the attention it needs.

The small, mobile ones are back in school, though, so maybe I can turn that around. That being said, I do have a client edit that must be finished soon, so that takes priority. And who knows how long school will happen this time.

But, hey, I got my goals together. As I mentioned last week, my word for the year is polish.

As such, my main focus for the year is going to be revision, with the hopes that I can finalize some projects so my to-do list isn’t quite so long and overwhelming.

For drafting new words, my goals include:

• Finish the first draft of the Changeling story (at about 55K) or decide if it’s a lost cause
• Finish the first draft of World’s Edge (also at 55K)
• Perhaps poke the sequel to City of Hope and Ruin (which continues to be stuck in the mire)

I’m going to continue to do my drabbles related to larger stories, but I think I’m going to drop my Pinterest prompts for now. And, of course, there’s always the possibility that something new will come along.

For revision, I’ve got six projects:

• Boughs of Fate (Book One of the Ri’shan Trilogy, high fantasy)
• Rings Among the Stars (scifi horror novella)
• What Lurks Beneath the Bleachers (YA horror)
• Excalibur-1 (science fiction) (aka the space dinosaur story)
• Broken Mirrors (YA or MG fantasy)
• The cozy mystery I wrote in November

These are all in varying states. Book 1 is on its third complete draft, and I suspect just needs some finetuning in the beginning. I have feedback on the scifi horror novella, Bleachers, and Ex-1, but I haven’t gone through them yet. (Bleachers is on its second complete draft. You may remember me doing a fairly massive overhaul on it a few years back.) Broken Mirrors is the first story I ever edited, and I actually queried it for a bit, but when I read through it last year, it needed quite a bit of work. Also I need to make it solidly either YA or MG. Right now it’s kind of in the middle. And the cozy, being a different genre, well, I’ll have to figure how to handle that.

Other than that, I still need to query that picture book (has been ready since, like, March, I’m mostly avoiding it), work on my shorts, make some new SkillShare classes (any requests?), and look at making additional materials to go with the Writers’ Motivation series books and workbooks.

So! That’s my plan for the year, kind of in the order I’m going to work on them.

Planning anything big for the year, squiders?