Summer Time Struggles

Journal 56 27 June – 3 July 2022

Well, life in general continues to be a cluster F— And yet we persist.

I don’t have an incredible amount to talk about in this past week. But here we go. Once again, my writing time is still constrained by everything happening in my life. Work continues in clearing out my brother’s room, my family runs a Ren Faire and we’re in our second week already, I’ve had to do extra work and soon my co-worker will be on vacation and I’ll have to put in a full week.

Whatever. I know writers who used to write on the subway to and from work every day. They wrote for 40 minutes a day, and they still managed to get books written. And with their inspiration I will continue to carve out what time I can where I can.

Submission

But this week was not all doom and gloom. I do have word count to report and the book has continued forward. Even better I have other news as well.

As reported months back my desktop computer broke down and while I have a laptop to continue all of my novel writing, I DID forget to back up one important thing. My query letters and all of my Agent Search information (and all of my school work for my master’s degree as well). So, until I can get the desktop computer repaired, I can’t access that information. It sucks.

Last week, I noticed an email in one of my folders and discovered a publisher who had an open call for unagented manuscripts. I have not been able to query, but I could try to go it alone.

The Ordeal

I was a little pissed to find this email was sent in the 3^rd week of a 4-week open call window. Meaning I didn’t have time to revise my manuscript for a 5^th time, but 4 polishes should be ok? Right?

By pure luck I managed to find copies of my first drafts of my query letter, and my one-page synopsis for my entire novel. Let me tell you… writing a One-Page for my classes was hell… but on the cool side the publisher allowed a 1000-word synopsis and my original was only 600 words, so I was able to fill in a little more information.

Getting to the point, just a couple days ago I sent out the novel for submission. So, the next few months… or perhaps even year, might be full of tension. Or I might get a rejection any day now.

I will admit I am worried that I never got confirmation of the submission. A friend of mine also submitted and he got his confirmation yesterday. I’ll try not to worry.

It won’t work.

Words

I managed a single session. But it was a good one.

I finished the new chapter 8 and I still need to renumber all of the following chapters. Really I think I shouldn’t number them before I start writing, perhaps it would be best to just name them like I do…?

But I digress. We finished the uber long chapter 8 (it totals over 8000 words) by writing 3308 words, bringing the manuscript to 44,528.

The pace is starting to pick up. A bunch of the big reveals and “clues” have been dropped, the main characters of Story A are moving toward their path, I’m a chapter or two away from introducing one of my favorite characters. The B story is still in the early stages, their next chapter is more background and reminiscence, but the one after that gets them on the path as well. If I can manage to crave out some more writing time I should be getting into the action-rush section of the story where I throw my characters from worse-to-worse situation.

Hobby/TV/Stuff

Reminder that I have podcasts, tv, and movies on while I write, read, clean, paint etc. Whatever I’m doing is usually accompanied by something making noise or speaking.

The actual play games I’ve been watching has continued a pace. Despite no longer having my brother to talk to about Critical Role I find myself watching them even more now. Though it comes with the bittersweet problem that I can’t talk to him about the episodes. I’m currently watching Vox Machina battling Thordak and its pretty awesome.

Meanwhile I’m also watching Black Dice Society, and have almost caught up to current, and Glass Cannon’s Masks campaign. I started two different DnD Beyond games as well… Beyond Heroes and Beyond Silver and Steel… and I still have podcasts I’m working through. Crazy.

I watched Obi-Wan and haven’t decided if I want to watch Stranger things or not… technically I skipped season 3, so I would have to go back and watch that as well.

Gaming TTRPG

So, my regular Tuesday game came to an end. But we’re starting a new campaign with the return of an old player, and with a player from my Saturday games coming over as well. We’ve spent the last two weeks talking about characters and seeing the world building the DM has been slowly feeding us.

I am always most excited when giving life to a new character. Figuring out their life before hand and trying to project what their future might hold. The main theme/conceit of this campaign is based on Bad Guys having to be the Good Guys. So, we’re all not-good people who will have to step up to save the world… or maybe we won’t.

I’ll post in here how things go with the game as it starts up.

In my other gaming, my monthly CoS game didn’t happen and my other CoS game just happened. Both are so different. The monthly game is moving along slowly due to both the constraints of the game and also because most involved are new to gaming (at least online). The other game is moving along, but it’s moving to the side of the main story. Our characters are trying to settle down and just survive. We aren’t on a mission to mess with Strahd or deal with all the evils of the land… mostly because every time we go in the woods we end up with three encounters and nearly die… every single time.

I also got to run a little Cthulhu for some people who have never played. That was fun.

I know none of this is talking about writing, but it is all storytelling and what I love.

I think we can all use a little more love in our timelines and on our computers. Everything on the social medias is very depressing (and enraging) right now. I just want to have a little moment of peace here.

Thanks again for reading and next week I might remember to get back on a topic.