Writing

Hit 10K on my second Armello story

Writing

Worked hard (and exclusively) on my second Armello short story last week. This helped me through a tough part of the story.

Pro Tip for myself: when you hit the Great Swampy Middle, keep going!

At the beginning of last week, I dreaded writing, because I didn’t know WHAT had to happen next. But I bribed myself, saying, “Just do a little, to prime the pump.”

Ends up I didn’t have to know what had to happen next, because the longer I sat there, the more crazy interesting things began to happen! All of the sudden the section that looked murky and intimidating turned into a FUN SURPRISE FEST and I couldn’t wait to see what would happen next.

It feels like the ending’s around the corner. But a proper title? Nowhere to be found.  🙁

Right now it’s 22 pages long, (compared to Stone Seekers‘ 16 single-spaced pages) but I also have a much larger cast…After all, what’s a wolf prince without a pack?

(Oh, and according to my chart, I’ve written 41,948 new story words this year! Whoa!)

You win this time, willpower!

Writing

I like to put a cool giant artist-drawn Redbubble stickers on the front of my writing notebooks so I can tell them apart.

Today I deserve a cookie for using WILLPOWER and not BREAKING MY BUDGET!!!

See, I just decided NOT to buy a supersized version of this BEAUTIFULLY EXECUTED Luna Lovegood Nouveau artwork by Megan Lara. Even though I L-O-V-E LOVE it (and I’m not even a Lovegood fan!). So instead of shelling out $30 for fancy stickers, I’m only paying $10.

But the sticker’s still on my wish list. >>

PS You MUST see these adorable Wizard Lizards, drawn by Andrea Sutinen! I bought the yellow leopard gecko on the broomstick.

 

Writing

NOVEL EDITING MILESTONE

Behold my beautiful pie chart!  And the progress it indicates!

(I didn’t start this piechart until well into the home stretch.  
Otherwise I think I would’ve been overwhelmed with the amount of work I
had to do.  So my advice to you is don’t start a pie chart right away.)

Xposted from http://athenasdesk.wordpress.com

Writing

NOVEL EDITING MILESTONE

Behold my beautiful pie chart!  And the progress it indicates!

(I didn’t start this piechart until well into the home stretch.  
Otherwise I think I would’ve been overwhelmed with the amount of work I
had to do.  So my advice to you is don’t start a pie chart right away.)

Xposted from http://athenasdesk.wordpress.com

Writing

NOVEL EDITING MILESTONE

Behold my beautiful pie chart!  And the progress it indicates!

(I didn’t start this piechart until well into the home stretch.  
Otherwise I think I would’ve been overwhelmed with the amount of work I
had to do.  So my advice to you is don’t start a pie chart right away.)

Xposted from http://athenasdesk.wordpress.com

Yet another set of stupid Word tricks

Writing

First, if you enjoy tabs, you’ll love this free add-on that lets you have tabs in Word, Excel and PowerPoint (works up until Office 2013):

http://www.office-tabs.com/download.htm

Second, if you’re like me and occasionally have multiple drafts of the same story running around, here’s an easy trick to differentiate them (in Office 2010 anyway):

On the Ribbon, hit Page Layout, then Page Color.

There!  Won’t affect your printing unless you change things around in Options.

Now you can tell at a glance which version you’re working on!  And perhaps prevent eyestrain!

Finally, Control+Click selects a whole sentence at once.

The things you learn before 8AM on a Thursday!