Author Archives: Sam

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bookwormchocaholic asked:

Ask Game for writers: 1, 7, 10. 😀

In which I should have read this more carefully đŸ€Ł I saw it was about WIPs and didn’t realise it was so fic focused. I guess I could answer this two ways. I could convert it to art which is fandom, or I could vague talk my original novels. Maybe both? đŸ€”

1) 🩈Tell us the name of your/ one of your WIP(s)

Hmm well I don’t want to share the name of my original novel đŸ«Ł I know I probably should but I get afraid about it. I sort of put up a division between “personal fan me” and “career me”. Not that I have a career (yet) but I can dream.

As for art well that doesn’t have names exactly, and also I don’t have WIPs in the same way. I have a list of ideas and I tend to take one, and finish it, rather than juggle several projects like I did fanfic.

I am currently signed up to the Librarians Exchange and I will be making something for that. I probably shouldn’t talk about that though because of the whole ‘secret’ gifter thing.

I would like to pick one idea off the list and say “I’ll do that next” and talk about it but truthfully what I am hoping to do is practice basic techniques. I spoke about this earlier with my frustration at being stuck with the ‘tracing’ and wanting to do it properly. I don’t know if I will be able to ‘teach myself’ to any level so that I can use it for the exchange. I mean I have had literal years to do so and not got anywhere with it so far đŸ€·â€â™‚ïž I got a new sketchbook (because clearly the half dozen I already had weren’t enough) but maybe this time I will commit. I got some erasable coloured pencils and sketching in purple seems very fun so đŸ€ž

7) 🖍Post Any sentence from your wip

As said I can’t really do this. I wish I had some kind of sketch to show, but again as I said art “WIPs” are more just ideas unless I am mid-project and I’m not right now.

To make up for not answering this I have picked another question for you.

11) 🛠Is there a scene or anything in the WIP you are struggling with right now?

For my original novel quite a lot of things 😂 but description is usually the hardest part. I can see it in my head but it’s so clunky when I try and write it down. Way too much frowning or smiling going on lol. I am trying to use more body language and less dialogue tags but I need to find more variety in it.

For the art it’s like I said I have my current process of bashing together a bunch of different references. Sometimes this includes selfies when I am struggling to get limb angles to match what’s in my imagination, but it just doesn’t work. It’s a) botched together so a lot of the angles are just slightly off/mismatched and it is unnatural and b) so stiff with no flow/life. It has zero style.

10) đŸ€ĄHow many Wips are you actively working on?

Well I am actively drafting one original novel. I have benched the redraft I am ÂŒ of the way through, the first draft I need to reboot, the first draft I am only about 70% finished with, and the first draft I only wrote a bit of (I think that covers them đŸ€”). But really it’s just the one for “actively working on”.

For art
 well I can’t lose sight of the gift exchange. I’m wondering if I should pick up ‘Sketch a Day’ again. I definitely want to do the 100 heads challenge. I got a copy of the Loomis Method book (heads and hands) and I think I should go through that. Same with Hamptons book (figure drawing). I was doing some screenshot redraws from “What If?” as I adore that art style. I can’t seem to pick a medium (paint, pencils, markers, ink) and so there’s so many options for rendering practice. It’s a bit overwhelming to be honest all of everything I want to work on.

Thanks for the ask ❀

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In other rambling type news today is the 10th anniversary of me falling in love with Stargate.

I had watched the first 3 episodes 11 years ago last month, but I had decided I didn’t like it as I was so mad about Kawalsky. Then we got Prime Video ‘for free’ (as we already had Prime) and I wanted to test it out. Stargate was the only thing I recognised so I stuck it on and the rest is history.

It’s shaped a lot of my life actually. Sam Carter such a role model. But the whole Ancients thing, the portal to other worlds – Atlantis, the whole team exploring and fighting aliens. I actually have developed an original novel series picking up some of these concepts (it’s also super fun for fanfic crossovers). I’m not the only one either. One of my favourite novel series (Dragon Gate) the author is open about Stargate being an inspiration.

Anyway I remember very specifically that it was February 26th because I watched 2 episodes, and was partway into a third when I went “oh shit” as I was supposed to raid Siege of Orgrimmar (Warcraft Mists expansion) and I hadn’t left enough time to get my dinner. It was going to be a case of eating with one hand when clearing trash. I had just got it out of the oven when mum came home, and the phone rang, and it was the care home to say my Grandpa had died.

So yes sorry for just dropping that in there, but today is 10 years since my Grandpa passed. Possibly why I am being quite so introspective and maudlin because how has it been 10 years? It doesn’t feel real. He had dementia and so he was gone a long time before he was gone, but I still miss him 🙁

Obviously I didn’t raid that night (or eat dinner). I went with mum to the care home to tell Grandma and to deal with everything. To this day I can’t eat oven fish or wedges (what I had cooked for dinner). The very smell of it just takes me back there. It’s quite good that Stargate didn’t suffer the same fate. Instead I watched it fairly obsessively. I think I finished all 10 seasons by that summer and got them all on DVD (thank you eBay) so they could always be mine.

I don’t know if it’s coincidence or my subconscious but I started a bit of a Stargate rewatch end of last month.

10 years. Hard to believe.

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Something I don’t see talked about (and yes I know that’s a loaded opening sentence but I have feelings so I’m going to ramble) is how it feels to come to art late.

Like people throw out examples like George Clooney being 40 or something? Or Samuel L Jackson, or you know there are many, of people who came into something older and then were fantastic at it. It’s like a “it’s never too late” reassurance and ok cool, cool, but that doesn’t really help.

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January – Your Future Author Bio

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So last year I managed a sum total of 2 blog topics for WriYe (January and December). I am aiming to do a little better this year. I probably won’t write all of them because some of them don’t speak to me, but I have made a note of the ones I think I could write a post on, and I intend to do a post for all of those.

Anyway the topic this week is to “write your future author bio / FAQ page” and I honestly laughed when I read that. Back in the day I had one of those pages, during my first attempt at publication. I got somebody on Fiverr to write it because I found it so awkward. Now I could cheat and just look in the depths of my hard drive and post that one, but I think I will make an honest attempt myself. It’s been
 well lets not think how long its been, but a while, and I’m older and maybe want to say different things I don’t know.

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Goals for 2024

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Look I’m actually making the post! I’m not sure I have done this ‘properly’ in a few years so let’s do this. What do I want from this year?

Now goals need to be SMART because when it’s intangible, how do you know when it’s been achieved? I can want inner peace, contentment, some amount of happiness etc. but that’s a feeling and an end result. Maybe I will get it one day, maybe I won’t, but I need to target things I can actually do something about.

This is the time of year I usually get an infusion of hope/optimism – wishful thinking – and I hope, hope with all my heart that the upcoming year will be different. I want it to be better, I want to feel better, so badly and then it never works out. It’s always a disappointment and I hate getting to my recap posts and going “well that was another sucky year”. It always seems like there’s some kind of external reason, but a lot of that is just excuses. I have depression, I have intense anxiety. I am autistic. I have physical symptoms even if I am unsure if I have actual physical issues (the mind likes to screw with the body). Life can be hard but I need to make choices that serve me.

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Art 2023: Year in Review

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In my WriYe 2023: Year in Review I quoted a couple of times from my 2022 review post, and I think there’s something important to quote from the Art 2022 post.

I just want to be good at things. I want to be good enough. I don’t feel like I ever will be, with writing or with art, and so it’s a constant crisis of faith everyday. I try and persist even as I ask why. I have dreams, of art supplementing writing – two careers in a sense. Which is perhaps why I am struggling to balance them as I want to work both of them full time, but I am incapable of doing anything full time due to my disability.

Art 2022, Year in Review

As basically that’s probably accurate. It’s a struggle.

This year I did not go through courses how I would have liked. I did not implement a regular habit. I did not act with discipline when it came to learning and improving at all. It was another year that I did not do those things. But I did make some pieces of art (posted about some of them):

First two are digital. Done in Clip Studio Paint and Procreate respectively.

Next three are markers and coloured pencils.

Final four are watercolour/watercolour pencils, plus maybe a little regular coloured pencil or gauche for cleaning up.

I think I learned some things and at least I kept my hand in. There is still so much to learn, and I am so far from where I would like to go, but I did something. I could have made nothing. There are 9 pieces in and I remember when I used to set a goal for “a big piece per month” and so in that light, I’m doing ok.

Plus there’s always next year. As always I have hopes and dreams. Hopefully next year I will have a lot more to show off – key word, hopefully.

WriYe 2023: Year in Review

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So here we are again.

To be honest I could copy and past a lot of last years ‘year in review’ and it would apply. I’ve got to the end of another year and I feel like I’m no further forward towards my dream.

I started the (2022 goal post) by saying that in my review of 2021 I had put “that I really didn’t want to get to the end of the year and be disappointed again – but I was.” – that is the dream and it is yet to be obtained.

2022, Year in Review

And as I said – here I am again. Another year, another disappointment.

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OMG đŸ˜±đŸ«Ł my usual “open tumblr in incognito mode” to send anons for gift exchange doesn’t work anymore! It says I have to login. Oh man. The paranoia is going to be so real 😬

What’s your game?

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I’ve never been as good at blogging here as I hoped. In the beginning this was my Warcraft blog, and then I expanded it to Swtor and Marvel Heroes (and not bothered changing the header since). I now ramble about all kinds of things. I mean let’s not pretend otherwise, these are rambles. I pretend like there’s a difference as I separate out my copied over tumblr rambles from the ‘real’ blog posts, but really they are much the same stylistically. In the beginning I think I tried to make them more legit – just as I tried to keep a blog theme – but this is what it’s become. As this is basically my private ramble spot, as I don’t think anyone reads these even if they are technically publicly accessible, I guess it doesn’t matter.

Anyway, I’m not too sure why that was on my mind as an intro but it feels related somewhat because this is a blog post about Warcraft, and about approach I guess.

I have made a number of posts about Warcraft over the years. If you track back through them you’ll see I change my opinions about some things. I’ve been playing this game on/off for a long time (since January 2010) and as I have changed, the game has changed. There have been times I’ve felt the game has become incompatible with me, and that was the case recently.

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Victory Number Ten! (of a sort)

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So I ‘won’ NaNo.

The inverted quotes are because I got the 50k (and for the 10th time in November) but if I look back at my intentions post, I didn’t really get what I wanted.

“my primary motivation this November is to try and find my joy again.”

“I wanted to feel excited to write it, I wanted to obsess over it, to have my mind wander to that world – like it used to years ago.”

That’s what I wrote. That’s what I wanted. That is NOT what happened.

NaNo usually follows a pattern of sorts. I have zero days, and then I have high word count days to make up for it. While there was some of that this month the graph was actually more stable than I think I have ever seen it – consistently a little below par. Usually when I approach the end I get a real whoosh and my final day is a downward hurtle to the finish line. I’m pretty sure on almost all NaNo’s I finish before Day Thirty due to that headlong whoosh. Well it was Day Thirty and it was a double day (3k) because that’s what I needed to scrape the 50k and so that’s what I did.

It was a total slog, and the only thing similar to the downward whoosh is when I got a “fuck it” mentality and just embraced the crap. There wasn’t any moments of joy, there weren’t any moments where I felt it flowed well. I had one brief moment where I felt I might have captured one characters voice, but that lasted for a single writing session and hasn’t repeated.

The only moments where I felt any kind of ‘magic’ were when I had to plan. I did like the idea generation for the episodes. Starting with nothing and then coming up with the episode plot and I think I came up with some cool stuff. It’s implemented very badly but there’s some cool ideas there I think.

I ended up with basically discovery drafts of the first three episodes, plus the first couple of scenes and half an outline for episode four. So I have something to build on I guess.

I knew going into this that joy was a state of mind, and that my lack of it isn’t really related to the writing – it’s me. So I know I shouldn’t be surprised at this result, and I’m not I mean I flat out said in the intentions post that I doubted it was possible to find the joy, but that doesn’t mean I’m not disappointed. I really would have liked to enjoy this month. I really, really, REALLY, wanted to remember why I do this writing thing, to feel some smidgeon of hope again.

I wish I had something more positive to say in this NaNo wrap-up but right now this is how I feel. In December obviously I need to think about my goals for 2024. Finding joy is likely to be my top priority but I really don’t know how to do that. It’s not about what I write, it is about me, and I don’t know how to change me. I really wish I did.