I thought about putting a question mark on that title, but I realized it would be rhetorical. I certainly meant to Camp with great vigor this July, but that’s not how it turned out. I’ve done nothing but reduce my project goal. (Bless NaNoWriMo, by the way, for allowing goals to be edited through the end of the month.) I’m still planning to write a short story, but unfortunately (for said story), as soon as I sat down to work on it, I immediately started getting ideas for the first Olivyn book. Which is typical.
I’ve been reading about writing (finally finished Stephen King’s On Writing, and working my way through two others), and although I can’t boast any daily consistency, I do have more pages of notes regarding the first book. I have a better idea of what events should be where, or more precisely when, which is slightly encouraging. My heroine’s motivation is finally starting to take shape — I’ve known for a while what she has to do, and where she ends up, but I had yet to understand why she was doing it. “Always a good thing,” the writer said, rolling her eyes emphatically. (Stephen King told me I can use adverbs, SO THERE..!!)
In completely unrelated news, I may be on my fourth binge-watch of The Lord of the Rings (extended edition, of course.) Said binge is making it rather hard to complete my first binge-watch of The Hobbit extended editions, two of which I had not seen until this month (which is criminal… but explainable… but not appropriate here.) Fourth LotR binge is brought to you by finally (as of today) owning them on Blu-ray, also known as FINALLY SEEING THEM IN GLORIOUS HIGH DEFINITION. (It’s so inspiring, and I use it partly as background noise, but one does not simply not watch certain parts of the films….)
And to end on some actual related news (but not exactly writing, per se), I’ve been obsessed all week with sketching designs for a pillar worthy of displaying a large plot point star sapphire. It needs to be sufficiently splendid, whatever form it finally takes. My plan is to provide at least small illustrations of objects, to accompany the text, if not full-on renderings of scenes. (I’ll leave that to my mother, who is keen to collaborate and figuratively standing by, paintbrush at the ready. You really don’t want me drawing the people.)