MilWordy Progress

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.” - George Orwell

What writers hope to achieve

It's been a long while. Sorry about that. I kind of got busy with life and I tend to forget about this place. Oops. As you can see, I'm around and hacking away at my annual Milwordy challenge.

And talk about hacking away at it this year. I'm at a little over 100,000 and half way through the year so nowhere near my normal numbers when it comes to this challenge. I didn't write a single word in February, March, or April. In January I didn't even hit 50K and squeaked by 50K last month. I might get by with over 50K words this month but I'm loosely aiming for it.

Why?

It's not for lack of ideas or content. I've got three ongoing series in Avalora School of Magic, The Interviewer, and The World of Ambrosia. I have an ideas list with around 70 story ideas ranging from short to novel and most of them fleshed out to the point where I can pick it up and start going. If you're wondering why I haven't been writing, well I don't know for sure. It's why I'm writing this after all as an introspective journal like entry.

I suppose my lack of writing could be simple burn out. I've been doing Milwordy and NaNo events since 2013. That's five full years of pressing myself to hit at least 80,000 words a month writing solely in the evenings and on weekends.

I've often said how doing the MilWordy challenge takes away from my social life and I'm not kidding. For me to hit 80,000 words by writing weekends and assuming there are eight weekends in a month, I need every day to be a 10,000 word day. Breaking that down, I would need 2,000 words an hour for five hours.

It doesn't seem like much (or it might)and really it never has been a lot for me. My average is 2,000 words an hour, sometimes more and sometimes less. I've had nights where I can hit the 10,000 in four hours and I've had days where I get 15,000 or more words.

But between work keeping me up until two am then sleeping till noon and wanting to go out to do something, I'm left with much less than 10 hours a weekend I feel like writing. I want to do fixes around the house and work on my garden. I want to watch movies on Netflix and catch up on shows I've been wanting to see since forever and a day ago.

Here's the kicker: I haven't felt like writing. There are times I plop myself down in front of the computer and don't put a word to page. These have become more frequent as of late and writing became a sort of chore.

Don't get me wrong, I like what I've produced and do want to continue working on everything. I think I'm plain tired. I've worked with Avalora for two years now which is one of my longest projects to date. Avalora is going to turn out to be the biggest too and my creative batteries needed re-charging. This brings me to my next point.

Eventually there will be a new link on this blog which will basically be a place for me to post some of my other creative endeavours. I'm mainly a writer so don't mistake this for me "retiring" from writing. I will never retire so long as I take breath.

But, I paint in acrylics, oils, and digitally, I make jewellery, and most recently I've started to repaint and reimage dolls. I've dabbled in pastels, charcoal, colored pencils, and water colors. As a child I took ceramics which essentially meant I got a white sculpture (Usually of a dragon) and got to paint it. I've started making pipe cleaner animals at work and my brain loves looking at something to figure out "hm, how can I re-create this?"

Sometimes my brain needs a break from putting words on page and I have to do something else or I'm lost. I have to give my brain the challenge of figuring out something new or I wander off into doing nothing. It helps I've taken until June 20th off for a kind of stress leave. I need a break from life every few years or I tend to snap which is never good for anyone involved.

So, this week is going to be about doing some painting around the house, working on my back garden, repainting some dolls, sleeping, and working on the new blog page. I might write a bit, I might not and that's okay. At one point I'll freak out because I'm nowhere close to MilWordy but I've got a week off in November so I'm not too concerned.

Until next time: comments and questions welcome. Keep a look out for the new page too. I can't promise a date because gosh knows I rarely keep a deadline and sometimes forget about this blog but I will get it going.

Ongoing Series: The World of Ambrosia

Where do I even begin with this? I mean, the beginning obviously but that was so long ago. I wish I was kidding.

I got the idea for Ambrosia a few years after I picked up writing. I saw these characters on a website called elfwood.com (I'm not even sure if it exists anymore) and made up this backstory. Technically, fanfiction but it's morphed into something entirely different.

I've talked about the Ambrosia characters off and on in various NaNoWriMo postings, mainly about Daimin and his father Demek. Sometimes I've mentioned Daimin's hour younger brother Aiden and spoken about the Espers.

There's so much going on with this series and I don't write it in any particular order. Right now I'm focused on what I would consider to be in the third book, if such a thing existed. Again, Ambrosia is one of these stories which can go on forever and ever and ever until I decide to kill everyone off...which would be impossible since technically Daimin can't be killed.

Ha, right? And don't even get me started on all the worlds which come together in Ambrosia. I've got an ongoing list and it practically pulls in every world I've written in for my various universes, well the magical ones anyway.

Hell, Lyo and Tyo (Daimin's kids) will eventually make an appearance in Avalora. They've popped up in Mists of Time in the last two books. I'm sure I've made mention to them in other novels solely because the Ambrosians are that huge to me.

Anyway, what's this ongoing story about?

Demek, the King of Ambrosia and basically how he got there. Sounds boring but when you add in the fact his father's insane enough to almost kill Demek's other siblings and Demek likes only men when he you know, has to produce heirs, oh and the little issue of Ambrosia itself being on the brink of destruction when he takes over the Kingship, well, it gets fun. Plus the various wars he has to go through because Demek looks like a weakling but really isn't.

Then there are various issues when Demek tries to treaty with other worlds in the universe and is elected to be the "Keeper" of the worlds which makes Ambrosia the "Guardian World." Of course there's potential backstabbing with this. I mean, everyone wants to take his throne, heavy as it is, because who wouldn't want to be the ruler of the Guardian World and have the instant respect of every other Royal?

I don't know when or where this will ever be posted. I might start somewhere in the middle of the time-line I have (and it's a big time-line) then go from there and use semi-flash backs to fill in the important bits from pre-wherever I start.

I do know I've been working on the concept for this story and writing random scenes from it for years. Once such scene I'm working on as of the writing of this and it's morphed into an 80,000 word, 136 page novel. It's not done because there's this whole conflict going on with the world of Fengfu and, well, yeah.

Updates to follow. Eventually.

Ongoing Series: The Interviewer

So three years ago, I heard about Channillo.com, which gave me the inspiration to write Avalora School of Magic. Avalora isn't done yet and I doubt I'll finish it in the next five or so years. I've got ten school years planned for it and probably a couple of years after graduation to so, yeah.

Then while taking a break from writing, I found a tumblr post about a scuba diving vampire and decided "why not?" For some reason, it morphed into someone interviewing said scuba diving vampire then I thought "hey, I can do more of these interviews!"

String them all together with plot points which carry across all interviews and we've got The Interviewer, my other ongoing series. Now, I've got a lot of the interviews planned but haven't gone to far with many of them. I'm finished the scuba diving vampire (Cindy) and am currently working on Chad's interview. Chad is a traveling musician vampire.

The main character in all of this is Rosa who is the one interviewing the vampires. She's done this in the past and published the interview in her college's newspaper. Those interviews were short question and answer type but everything changed when she talked to Cindy.

See, Cindy took Rosa on a job with her. Cindy talked more about immortality and what it was like to be someone who could live forever having youth and beauty. It helped Rosa tell a story humans hadn't heard: the story about what really happens when you're immortal.

The world went a little crazy, enough Rosa could quit her job and begin to do this full time. Of course there's an underground forum where vampires talk about everything from the best blood type to trying to live with humans. Sure, there are the Hunters whose job is to put down the vampires who've gone completely insane. And yes, there are vampires and humans alike who don't want Rosa's stories to be told.

I'm not sure if I'm going to be posting this chapter by chapter on Channillo. I've toyed with the idea of making a Pateron and putting it up there with reward tiers and such along with Avalora. The Interviewer isn't exactly a novel format either so I can't gather a bunch into a book because I'm not sure when this one will end.

I honestly haven't planned an ending or gone too deeply into the groups working against Rosa be them vampire or human. All I know for sure is there are vampires. The non-sparkly kind who act a lot like people except you know, the blood drinking bit.
Hopefully there will be more news to follow and I won't forget I have a blog.