Breaking my Rules
Journal 109 20 Nov- 10 Dec 2023
When I started to skip weeks, I made a promise that I would never skip two in a row. Then scheduling, holidays, and my own laziness made me a liar.
I’m still having issues with my back and sitting at my desk. I need to divide my time between writing, painting, and any other hobby I wish to indulge.
I’ve spent almost four months going to PT three times a week to work on my back and the surrounding muscles. While it’s made me feel better, and recover faster, it has not stopped the seizure that happens when I sit for more than 2-3 hours.
Even getting up every hour and walking around the house doesn’t make it any better, nor extend the time I can sit in the chair.
Writing and Art
I have done neither in the last three weeks. All of my time has been spent either working, at PT, or painting for my one long term client.
That all said, looking over my notes and background material I am pretty much where I need to be to start the next novel.
Right now, it is a battle of procrastination and time management.
The procrastination is really me facing my own bad habits. I still have not secured an agent. I’ve ignored the business side of things this year. I’ve made no attempt to look for open calls, submissions, or done anything with the previous novels. I haven’t even worked on revising the 3rd book.
I spent a lot of money going to college to learn more about the business side of things. To bolster my weak side. And yet, thanks to covid shut downs, and agents never reopening for submissions (and also having my desktop computer brick itself with all of my query letters and agent info in it for almost three years. Credit where it’s due) I just haven’t done the work.
New Year?
Part of me feels like I’m once again leaning on the symbolism of a thing.
“Wait for the auspicious day and then start!”
I know it’s a very silly thing, to add gravity and meaning to a date, or specific day. But it seems to work for me. If I give myself a strong start date. I must sit down and get my ass in gear deadline. I usually tend to make it.
And once I get my hands on the keyboard, I just love the act of writing. The clack of the keys, the ideas coming hard and fast and messing with my plans and outline. Realizing that despite all of my planning, I missed very large plot holes and issues.
This book is probably going to start a little differently as well. In set up.
Scrivener Plan
The last two novels, written on Scrivener, began with complete chapter guides. I literally named, organized, and wrote a synopsis of EACH chapter before I ever started the novel. The entire thing was laid out in scrivener and even color coded to pov.
My current notes for the new novel are broken down into arcs and sections, and have a hint of chapter break down into them. But I have NOT sat down and counted out chapters and I DON’T have a plan to pattern the POVs.
Yeah, I patterned the POVs in my thesis novel and in the first invasion book. But in Daeria and Dusk, I plan to really change it the whole thing up.
Story Plans
I haven’t shared much on this book and I also haven’t done a lot of writing over the last four months. So, I’m sure a lot of you have not stayed reading this… I mean the handful of people interested in writing probably left by now. I actually don’t know who keeps coming in and reading other than a handful of friends and family.
Though my analytics tell me that several people in odd places around thew world do visit quite often. But I’m digressing.
Dusk is going to have a bunch of changes. I do worry that each book has its own pattern. I change up the POV dynamic, secondary characters become mains while mains step back into secondary. Both of the previous Invasion novels are told in two stories that meet at some point in the middle or end of the book with a lot of overland travel.
This book is going to be mostly in the same location, with travel only in the very beginning and the last third. The story is also broken over alternate times, with four or maybe five distinct sections.
Section 1
Section 1 (the slimmest) introduces the outsider characters and takes my Prologue character into a main in his own right.
So, characters from Invasion 1 journey to Dusk in a quick series of vignettes, my Pro-Char sets up the events, the book, and gives a short synopsis of events in the previous two books for those weirdos who don’t read a series in order (or who need a refresher on who these secondary characters are).
I then do a brief mention of what’s happening right “NOW” in the story and end the section with Barnabus and Jaime (I’m sure I mentioned both of these characters in past blogs?) topping a hill and looking over Dusk.
I’ve written the view of Dusk from the hill inside my head a hundred times. So much so that I feel I should have sat down and actually written the damn details down. In any case, this moment is very important to me because it is the same scene I want to start my D&D campaign on.
If I can ever get that up and running again.
Section 2
In the first section I introduce twin brother (anti-)heroes inside Dusk. Noir and Sanguinis Drake are very important characters within the city.
Section two goes back thirty years in time to when the two were young boys and their family fell apart, they were separated, and then we follow both of their paths to power and finally their reunion in the city of their birth.
Plot wise this tour through their lives brings to life the setting, introduces all the power players, politics, and thirty years of history.
Section 3
Life in the city. Our four main characters cross paths as life goes on in the city. A city full of intrigue, back stabbing, power struggles, and dark magics. Murder, Mayhem, and Politics. Fun.
But what about the invasion? All over the rest of the world blackships darken the skies and siege cities or still resources, or are in outright war. The perpetual gloom, the eternal dusk the country is named after, has clear skies. Where are the invaders, or why have they ignored this place.
And, of course, they have not been ignoring this place. Rather they have been more insidious with their invasion here. Landing their ships in hidden places, searching for what they lost, and stirring up trouble. Stirring up enough trouble that characters from other ends of the country discover them.
Section 4/5
And this is where everything goes off into the “Invasion Part” of the storyline.
If you haven’t read any of the previous journal entries the Invasion series has dual stories in each book. You have the main story of the setting of the book, and then you have the invasion story.
In the previous 2 novels the pov characters were split between these two stories. You have the A-team being the characters who know what is going on and trying to thwart the power behind the Invasion. Then the B-team are the “local heroes” dealing with their own problems and meeting the A-team.
Dusk departs from the conceit as the story is taking up a larger and larger section of the world. The A-Team is 3000 miles to the west when the events of this book happen. Here the story is more about the locals dealing with everything, with Barnabus and Jaime having been part of the B and A teams, respectively, in the first novel.
This part of the book kicks off with two of the main characters of book four arriving in Dusk (the city) and giving real intelligence on the plans of the invaders. This allows Noir and Sanguinis to change their plans and react decisively.
And I won’t tell you how the rest of it goes as that would be telling too much.
Media Consumption.
Moving away from book talk and stopping myself from revealing further details.
I went on an anime kick over the last month or so. Watching most of the Universal Century Gundams and then trying out a number of oddball series.
I watched 6 episodes of Bastard on Netflix. That was interesting and lewd, so I kind of like it. Then I started Code Geass on Hulu… I hate watching anime on Hulu, so I can only manage about 5 episodes at a sitting. I’m about 15 or 20 episodes in and I 100% am on Lelouch’s side.
I don’t know what that says about me but I will say I strongly hate Sazaku and his self-righteous bullshit. His whole thinking he’s the good guy and infallible. His belief that he can “change things form the inside” while doing evil for the really, really evil empire is just stupid.
But anyway… I went almost a whole month without a k-drama as well… not surprising as last year I took about four months off from them. About this time as well. But I ended the drought by starting a new drama the other night.
Loving it already as I thought it was a rip-off/ retelling of an earlier show I really love. But it is officially same universe/ sequel to that series. It’s different characters in a different section of Seoul but they had the original characters show up in an episode and claim that they were related. Lovely.
I’m still weeks behind in my comic book reading but I‘ve been trying to put in time every week either reading or putting them away.
And finally, I have plans for a couple model builds over the winter. A gundam, another TIE fighter, and a few other odds and ends.
Holy Hell!!
I just realized that this journal is almost at 2000 words. One of the longer entries since I stopped doing the Gaming recaps.
Speaking of gaming… I haven’t talked about the various games I’m in for a long time. Maybe next week I’ll talk about the characters that have recently died. I’ve lost two characters in games recently and that hasn’t happened in a long time.
But I don’t have time now…
We’ll talk next week.
Thanks for reading this far.