tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59135944833551812962024-03-13T17:39:19.776-07:00Miko's Writing JournalVanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.comBlogger295125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-68245941757477062832023-10-01T09:41:00.002-07:002023-10-01T09:41:42.210-07:00September Wrapup<p> I wrote 117 micro stories in September - 41 for my daily post and 76 prompt stories (total may include 5 #writever prompt stories that I plan to write today to catch up, since I've fallen behind on those).</p><p><br /></p><p>I am still posting stories that I wrote in July, although sometimes something new strikes me as particularly good and I post it quickly. Usually I'm right. ^_^</p><p><br /></p><p>This month I got my first truly viral story post, I think. For me anything that garners more than 50 likes is fairly viral, and a couple of stories have racked up well over 100 likes. But a story I posted on Sept 3 has had 340 likes and 195 boosts, easily the most popular thing I've posted. I think it got about 12 likes on Hive too, which is pretty big for me there.</p><p><br /></p><p>And... I was a bit mystified as to why. It's a story about angelic beings, and one accidentally deletes the world he's been working on, and his backup is old. It was kind of a silly story to me, one that I waited a long time to post. Usually I can say: Oh, this story is about working for exposure, that's why it struck a chord with people. But this time I can only surmise that a lot of people have feelings about accidentally deleeting something, and maybe the idea of it being a planet was kind of novel. ^_^</p><p><br /></p><p>I am still trying to post 1 story a day + a #writever prompt story + a #mastoprompt story, and a #microprompt story if those prompts appear, which they haven't for almost two weeks. (Four stories a day is a bit much - I'm kind of relieved when I can skip one! Although I worry about my friend who was posting them.) </p><p><br /></p><p>NaNoWriMo is coming up, and I want to work on my long-suffering fanfiction story Nerima All-Stars again. It will be interesting trying to juggle that with writing micro fiction stories. I may give up on doing the prompt stories for November.</p><p><br /></p><p>I also joined Bluesky (@vanellopemint.bsky.social). They have a 300 character limit, and so most of my micro fiction won't fit that format, but I've figured out that I can post a screen capture of my Mastodon story post, and then copy/paste the entire text of the story into Alt Text for anyone who can't see the image. That works, so I've been doing that a week and... so far, very little engagement, but I know some of my friends are reading, and some random people come across my stories too. Mostly I feel like Bluesky is a chance for me to follow the notable people I liked to follow on Twitter, and hopefully when it goes completely public it will become a Twitter killer. We'll see. But it's still a corporate site run by people who don't care about you.</p>Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-71684076417440094552023-09-02T20:06:00.004-07:002023-09-02T20:06:46.761-07:00Writing Update for the Start of September<p><b> TL;DR version: </b> I wrote a lot of micro stories in August, and nothing else.</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Not Micro Fiction</span></b></p><p><br /></p><p>Before we talk about my micro stories, let's cover everything else I've written or intend to write:</p><p><b>Grandpa Anarchy Stories: </b>I really haven't written any true (IE non-micro) Grandpa Anarchy stories in over a year. But I keep thinking I'm about to rewrite the series of stories I was most recently working on, which kind of went off in a bunch of directions and didn't seem to hold together, which is partly why I stopped working on them. (And note that I have a lot of OTHER unfinished Grandpa Anarchy stories that I intend to finish at some point, but I haven't been working on any of them.)</p><p><b>Fan Fiction:</b> I have two big fan fiction stories that I intend to finish. One is a story called <i>The Nerima All-Stars,</i> which is very long and I've never shown to anyone outside of little bits read for my writer's group. I will probably work on this in November for NaNoWriMo, which is what I've done every November for the last 3+ years and it's still not finished. My other fan fiction story that I intend to complete, or at least work more on, is <i>Girl's School</i>. I've published a lot of it on Fanfiction.net and I have an Archive of Our Own account which I will eventually republish to... but nothing's there at the moment, and I'm focused on finishing <i>Nerima All-Stars</i> before I get back to <i>Girl's School</i>.</p><p><b>Everything Else:</b> I do indeed have some "other" stories that fall outside of fan fiction or my Grandpa Anarchy universe stuff. I published 3-4 of these stories many years ago on a story site that I don't even remember the name of anymore. It's amazing that I even finished 3 or 4 stories, because many of these are written without a plot in mind and wind up being weird fantasy stories that go nowhere. Some of them are, in fact, just ideas, barely fleshed out, and some of them predate any of my other writing, outside of the Elfquest fan fiction and Tai-Pan stories I used to write.</p><p>However! I recently reread one of these stories titled "Lavender" for no good reason, and I'd kind of like to flesh it out and finish it and maybe publish it to AOOO or even publish on Amazon. Maybe I will?</p><p>And that reminded me that about a year ago I was plotting just such a story for possible Amazon publication. I spent more than a month working out the details of this story, and you know what? I never even wrote the basic idea down. So goodbye to that story idea, I've forgotten most of it by now.</p><p> </p><p style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Micro Fiction</span></b></p><p><br /></p><p>I published 1 micro story a day for August, to Mastodon, Hive, and Tumblr. I've managed this for four months now, so that's something. I have a lot of followers and fellow writers on Mastodon, and I have a very small number of dedicated followers on Hive, and I have maybe 1-4 followers on Tumblr, which is weird because I find more writers on Tumblr (I haven't found any other writers on Hive) but that doesn't translate into people on Tumblr leaving likes, or any sign they've noticed you.</p><p>In August I managed to publish every micro story that I had written in May or June (which I had not already published).</p><p>I wrote 38 new micro stories in August (not counting prompt stories). I felt like I'd fallen off the pace, and it's true that I wrote 50 of them in July, but hey, still more than 1 per day so I think I'm doing all right.</p><p>I also wrote 92 prompt micro stories in August. These are almost entirely based on prompts from the tag #mastoprompt (one a day, published by <a href="https://www.tanweerdar.com/">Tanweer Dar</a>), the tag #microprompt (published most days by <a href="https://mastodon.art/@FrostPoem">Faerie</a>) and the #writever group, a group of French short fiction writers who also publish their monthly list of prompt words in English. There is an English bot<a href="https://mastodon.art/@WriteverJ"> Writever Jenny</a>, and a French counterpart named Writever Bob, and I only just noticed that these are controlled by <a href="https://mastodon.art/@aaribaud">Albert Aribaud</a> who is the writer from that group that I follow the most. He does at least one #writever and usually one #microprompt story per day.</p><p>I also set out to write a second #writever story every day of the month based on the Aug 2022 prompt list that I'd found, but I gave up on that idea after a week, because I was already writing 3 extra stories most nights (on top of at least 1 non-prompt story per day) and trying to shoehorn in a 5th story every day was kind of insane.</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Just Me Rambling About Finishing Stories for August</span></b></p><p><br /></p><p>Sometimes I jot down a micro fiction idea and I save it as a story file, and then it's in my file of completed stories even though I haven't actually written it yet.</p><p>I had four of these last night. Given that it was the last day of August, I really wanted to complete them. I have a file folder for all of the stories I wrote in May and June (all since published) and I had a file for July and August, so I was ready to start a new file for September and October. But I felt like all my stories in the July/August file really should be finished stories.</p><p>So last night I set about to finish these.</p><p>One story, saved as "bad things" had been around for ten days. This was a partial discussion on the idea that in fairy tales bad things happen to bad people, and good things to good people. I knew there was a story to be built around that (mostly refuting the idea) but I hadn't managed to come up with it yet. So I fiddled with it for a bit, and produced what passed for a story.</p><p>Another was titled "cute". This was an idea from the day before, "an ogress who likes cute things". I was thinking about an anime character, Sakaki from Azumanga Daioh. She's tall, beautiful, athletic, and all her classmates see her as this super cool girl, but secretly she loves cute things and she's afraid what people will think if they find out. I thought, surely you can up the ante on that basic concept by making the protagonist an ogre or giant or something.</p><p>So I managed to turn that into some sort of story as well.</p><p>I had an idea I'd jotted down just a few hours earlier, "lawn ornaments", which was this: what if a wizard had hundreds of lawn ornaments, but they were all actually golems? I managed a story out of that as well.</p><p>Lastly, I had a file titled "small god" which was mostly just the phrase, "if your god fears words then he is a small god indeed." I... still haven't turned that into an actual story. :P So I have one story file from August left to finish.</p><p><br /></p><div><br /></div>Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-60088375744401644312023-08-15T18:26:00.000-07:002023-08-15T18:26:13.689-07:00Recurring Characters in My Micro Stories<p><br /></p><p>I've been writing micro stories since May 1st of this year, and inevitably I've developed some recurring characters. In fact, it's become a bit confusing to keep track of what I know about a couple of these characters, so I decided to track down every story related to each character or group of characters and write down what I know. And why not blog about it! *gasp* Two blog posts on consecutive days? The horror!</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Medea the Sorceress</span></b></p><p><br /></p><p>Without question, this is the set of characters that I've reused the most. I've written 33 micro stories involving Medea the Sorceress and her unnamed raven familiar. So far we know that Medea is a powerful and rather famous sorceress who dwells in a sort-of European village set in the past (perhaps Renaissance more than Medieval, or perhaps even early modern/age of discovery. Of course, she lives in a world of magic, but she also lives in the same world (albeit in their past) as the Super Friend Squad, my hero team (see below). Medea is a practical sorceress, is addicted to coffee, likes good pizza and sometimes has it delivered from modern-day New York (so we can assume this world is mostly like ours, apart from the magic and superhero stuff). Her raven makes the coffee and answers the door, and little else. She has recently brought a brass raven to life, and perhaps a brass parrot as well. She is friends with a lich named Gygax who only wants to be left alone to read.</p><p><br /></p><p>Stories:</p><p>Raven<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052423</p><p>Clickbait<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052423</p><p>Story Pill<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060323</p><p>Pigmancy<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060523</p><p>Resurrection<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>061723</p><p>(writever) Amphora<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062023</p><p>(micro) Wings of Freedom 062323</p><p>Exposure<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062623</p><p>Patsy's Pizza<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062723</p><p>(writever) Responsibility 070823</p><p>(masto) belt<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070923</p><p>(micro) familiar<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071323</p><p>Coffee Story<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071523</p><p>Imagination<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071523</p><p>For the Birds<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072523</p><p>(masto) charm<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072523</p><p>(writever) management 072523</p><p>A Visit From Death<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>073023</p><p>Death Fairy<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>073023</p><p>Wise Owl<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>073023</p><p>(micro) Animate<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080423</p><p>Brass Raven<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080623</p><p>Selkie's Lament<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080623</p><p>Worship<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080623</p><p>(masto) Delay<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080623</p><p>(writever) Algorithm<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080623</p><p>Desire to Read<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080723</p><p>Fairy Godmother<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080723</p><p>(masto) Doll<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080823</p><p>Fearocious<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080823</p><p>Out of This World<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080923</p><p>(writever) Generate<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>081123</p><p>Witch Burning<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>081523</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">The Superior Friend Squad</span></b></p><p><br /></p><p>Most of my stories involving the Superior Friend Squad revolve around Meteor Lass and Mister Chronos. Meteor Lass can summon meteors from the sky. She has a master's in Forensic Science which she almost never gets to use, and her skin tone is mocha. Mister Chronos can travel through time, a skill that he abuses liberally. He's also the pilot for the team (their craft is the Friend Ship), and has recently learned to travel to other dimensions. His power comes from a magic medallion around his neck that was gifted to him by Medea the sorceress. Other members of the group are Kid Atomic and the Amazon of Atlantis. Their enemies include Doctor Cobalt, who dwells on Death Skull Island and has a talking monkey minion named Nix. Another enemy of theirs is known as Empire Cranium.</p><p><br /></p><p>Back in Time<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050823</p><p>Trapped in Time <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>051223</p><p>Drunk in Time<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>051223</p><p>Big Reveal<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052023</p><p>Fish Nazis<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052123</p><p>One Trick<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052123</p><p>AITA<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060223</p><p>Bloom and Doom <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060723</p><p>Volcano Theme <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062523</p><p>(prompt) Boring Machine 062923</p><p>Jump the Shark<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070623</p><p>Discombobulated <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072523</p><p>(writever) transition<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072623</p><p>Time Travel Party <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072923</p><p>(micro) Describe<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>081123</p><p>(masto) Meteor<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>081323</p><p>(micro) Skylight<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>081423</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Grandpa Anarchy</span></b></p><p><br /></p><p>I've been writing Grandpa Anarchy stories since the mid 2000's, although mostly in the last 13 years. I've written over 350 stories involving the world's oldest hero, so I could go on about him at length, but basically he's been a hero since the early 20th century, is mostly a brawler, his costume is a grey suit with an anarchy symbol on the left breast and a hat (sometimes he wears a domino mask and/or gloves). He's had a bajillion different sidekicks, he tends to have a new one every story, or at least he did until I got tired of coming up with new ones. Many of his former sidekicks are now heroes themselves. His favorite breakfast is strawberry pancakes, and he's in a supergroup known as the New League of Two-Fisted Justice. His key traits are that he is virtually unkillable (or rather, never stays dead) and he's been doing this for so long that he sees the tropes coming from a mile away. I have written only a few micro stories involving Grandpa, but I'm likely to write more.</p><p><br /></p><p>quips<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072323</p><p>(imcro) drape<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072223</p><p>(writever) meet<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080123</p><p>(visual) Air Fortress<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080623</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Hellbird</span></b></p><p><br /></p><p>Although my two Hellbird stories are jokes at the expense of Twitter/Elon Musk, the salient point is that Hellbird is NOT in any related to Twitter. I kind of like this character and he's very likely to appear in a future Medea story.</p><p><br /></p><p>Hellbird<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070423</p><p>Ex Hellbird<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072323</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Superior Being Pizza</span></b></p><p><br /></p><p>Superior Being Pizza is a pizza delivery service run by an advanced energy being, such as those that plague the Star Trek universe. Because why not? I wrote a Medea story where this guy shows up again so I guess he's a recurring character now.</p><p><br /></p><p>Energy Being<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>053023</p><p>Out of this World<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080923</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Viniculum</span></b></p><p><br /></p><p>I'm really not certain how much mileage I can get out of a supernatural death metal band, but I've named all four members and have learned a few things about them so far so I'm willing to try and work them into more stories. (Technically the story "Gig" was about a different band - but I've decided to retroactively make it about the band VIniculum.) Onni is the bass player; he's also a part-time demonic lawyer. Eevi is the lead singer - and also a werewolf. Edvin is the guitarist and Arvo is the drummer, I have no idea in what way those two are special yet. All of these names are Finnish because a lot of my favorite metal bands come from Finland, in particular Amorphis, and also Nightwish.</p><p><br /></p><p>(visual) Xenofan<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060323</p><p>(writever) gig<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072023</p><p>(micro) Imposter<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>081223</p><p>(writever) Convolution 081423</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Jalia the Shaman</span></b></p><p><br /></p><p>Jalia McMarrin was my barbarian shaman character when I played Everquest years ago. I've always wanted to write stories about her, so I've managed three micro stories so far. Eh, better than nothing. She very likely exists in the same universe as Medea?</p><p><br /></p><p>(prompt) names<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070323</p><p>(micro) matted<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071223</p><p>(micro) gall<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071923</p><div><br /></div>Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-18205099724344989512023-08-13T20:59:00.004-07:002023-08-13T20:59:57.775-07:00Lots of Micro Stories, Nothing Else<p> Here's my writing update for the summer of 2023: I've written a TON of micro stories, but I've written very little else.</p><p>What else should I be writing, you might ask? Well for one, I set out in January of 2023 to finish a very long (over 275,000 words) fan fiction story called Nerima All-Stars. I've been working on this for years - the original opening scenes were written maybe around 1999 and read for writer's night, and then shoved into a corner of my hard drive for many years. But I set out several years ago to "finish" my story, which has expanded exponentially and which I largely have not shown to anyone because I want to finish it first. I have too many fan fiction stories that I've started and never finished.</p><p>For two, I have my Grandpa Anarchy stories. I set out to write a series of short stories around 2021 that together told a larger story. These became my "Just One Punch" collection or "Book 13" collection of Grandpa Anarchy short stories - but I was not really satisfied with the direction the stories were going, and sometime in 2021 I stopped working on them so much, and in 2022 I did not get a lot of writing done. I want to go back and rework all of these stories, but it's another big project that I keep putting off.</p><p>In the meantime, I began writing micro fiction stories on May 1st 2023, and so far this has been going very well for me. On the one hand, I've written a LOT of stories. On the other hand, it amounts to not actually that many words written, since each story is between 70 and 90 words long. My limit is 500 characters for a Mastodon Toot, and usually I aim for about 480 characters or so in order to be able to add a tag at the end like #microfiction. I cross-post to Tumblr (which allows tags to be added very easily) and to Hive Social. I have some followers on Hive, and a hit for me there is 10 or 12 likes. A hit on Mastodon is at least 50 likes and my best stories have been over 100 likes. I don't know what a hit is on Tumblr because I get 1 or 2 likes a week there.</p><p>I'm going to post my master list of micro stories below. This list does not include any "prompt" stories - prompt stories are written and immediately published based on a word or picture prompt. I know of at least two people doing science fiction visual (picture) prompts on Mastodon, and sometimes I respond to these. I know of at least three word prompts that I've been responding to - in fact since early July I've been trying to respond to every one of these. There's a writer named <a href="https://www.tanweerdar.com/">Tanweer Dar</a> who does a one-word #mastoprompt every day. There's another writer/poet named Faerie (on Mastodon at least) who posts a #micropromt word every day. And there's a largely French group of writers on Mastodon who do a #writever word-a-day challenge - they usually post all the word for the month in one single post, like so:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBbZ-Pgxo3xDgLOfZlTnMMBj9MZrw0DBpUK3OUnStmREn4giptKYsuipcooVRxD-WZOES5KTvozseDmnkNW9pMU_doyr9a35_KvI10dBhDwh2kljAvkQ014Q-z_SAkvVkThEFQBBIF7lC4Wl3U8JlzO9Ir2TSDN1h5Yull7UFGdguuFCHs-LOyq074MIo/s1344/b4b108fda7335f53.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="756" data-original-width="1344" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBbZ-Pgxo3xDgLOfZlTnMMBj9MZrw0DBpUK3OUnStmREn4giptKYsuipcooVRxD-WZOES5KTvozseDmnkNW9pMU_doyr9a35_KvI10dBhDwh2kljAvkQ014Q-z_SAkvVkThEFQBBIF7lC4Wl3U8JlzO9Ir2TSDN1h5Yull7UFGdguuFCHs-LOyq074MIo/s320/b4b108fda7335f53.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>They do this in French of course, but also they publish an English version, and at least two of the writers I follow post a story in both French and English. I might be the only other English writer responding to these prompts currently (that I've noticed at least).</p><p>What all this means is that since July I've been trying to post three extra micro stories every day. So far so good! So in addition to having written 165 micro stories, I've written an additional 167 "prompt" stories. Which... has been somewhat preventing me from writing a new non-prompt story every day, but I'd written myself so far ahead that for the moment this isn't a problem.</p><p>I originally was posting these to mastodon.social (if I remember correctly) but it shut down in June, so on May 25 I switched to mastodon.art. This means that all of the stories I posted before May 25 are no longer on the internet. I was thinking I would repost them at some point, but I might wait half a year or a full year to do it.</p><p>So that's the state of my writing - over 300 micro stories of 70-90 words, and very little else written in the last 4 months. Here's my list of non-prompt stories written and posted:</p><p> <b> </b><b><span> </span>written<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>story<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>posted<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>#likes</b></p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><b>001<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050123 my turn<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050123</b></p><p><b>002<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050223 delivery<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050223</b></p><p><b>003<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050223 hero<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050523</b></p><p><b>004<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050223 more creative<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050923</b></p><p><b>005<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050323 abyss gazing<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050423</b></p><p><b>006<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050323 castle in the sky<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050723</b></p><p><b>007<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050323 domestic hero<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>051123</b></p><p><b>008<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050323 frog<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050323</b></p><p><b>009<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050323 infinite lives<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>051323</b></p><p><b>010<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050323 magical girl<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050623</b></p><p><b>011<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050323 memes<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>051923</b></p><p><b>012<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050323 multi level<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>051423</b></p><p><b>013<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050323 not whats for dinner<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>051523</b></p><p><b>014<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050323 quesadilla wizard<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050823</b></p><p><b>015<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050423 secret society<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>051623</b></p><p><b>016<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050523 influencer<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>051723</b></p><p><b>017<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050523 nostradamus x<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>051823</b></p><p><b>018<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050523 sword in stone<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>082023</b></p><p><b>019<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050623 shy god<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052123</b></p><p><b>020<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050723 oh snap<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>061123</b></p><p><b>021<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050823 puppy love<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052223</b></p><p><b>022<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050823 back in time<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>051223</b></p><p><b>023<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050823 creatuib debate<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>051023</b></p><p><b>024<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>050923 garlic chicken<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052323</b></p><p><b>025<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>051023 sacred toast<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052523</b></p><p><b>026<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>051223 trapped in time<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062223</b></p><p><b>027<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>051223 drunk in time<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052423</b></p><p><b>028<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>051323 historical document<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052823</b></p><p><b>029<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>051423 dark green woods<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052723</b></p><p><b>030<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>051623 riddle of the sphinx<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052623</b></p><p><b>031<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>051623 cookie biscuit<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>053023</b></p><p><b>032<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>051623 silly king/mocking the king<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>061423</b></p><p><b>033<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>051723 bring your cucumber<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>061223</b></p><p><b>034<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>051723 chocolate cake<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>061823</b></p><p>035<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>051923 a late start</p><p><b>036<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052023 big reveal<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>053123</b></p><p><b>037<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052123 fish nazis (superior friend)<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060623</b></p><p>038<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052123 one trick</p><p><b>039<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052123 say my name<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060323</b></p><p><b>040<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052323 near death (bistro on styx)<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060123</b></p><p><b>041<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052323 pocket wizard<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>081023</b></p><p><b>042<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052323 witch<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072623</b></p><p><b>043<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052423 clickbait<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060223</b></p><p><b>044<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052423 raven<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052523</b></p><p><b>045<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052523 big freeze<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>061323</b></p><p><b>046<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052523 new world<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060723</b></p><p><b>047<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052623 treacle wars<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060923</b></p><p><b>048<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052723 noise in the walls<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052923</b></p><p><b>049<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052823 hoard<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062523</b></p><p><b>050<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052823 sound system<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>061523</b></p><p>051<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052823 stories</p><p><b>052<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052923 black water<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070623</b></p><p><b>053<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>052923 lesbos - week in Mytilene<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>061723</b></p><p><b>054<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>053023 black knight inc<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060823</b></p><p><b>055<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>053023 energy being<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080923</b></p><p><b>056<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>053123 burning bush<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>081223</b></p><p><b>057<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>053123 dark void<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062023</b></p><p><b>058<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>053123 retired god<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062123</b></p><p><b>059<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>053123 trap door<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062923</b></p><p><br /></p><p>(59 stories in May)</p><p><br /></p><p><b>060<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060123 bus stop<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070223</b></p><p><b>061<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060123 let there be light<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060523</b></p><p><b>062<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060123 magic beans<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060423</b></p><p><b>063<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060123 monster rental<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062723</b></p><p><b>064<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060123 mysterious tales<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>061023</b></p><p><b>065<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060223 AITA<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062823</b></p><p><b>066<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060223 romantic moon<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>063023</b></p><p><b>067<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060323 story pill<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>061623</b></p><p><b>068<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060423 master chef<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080823</b></p><p><b>069<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060523 creepy goth girl<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070723</b></p><p>070<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060523 otherworld bazaar</p><p><b>071<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060523 pigomancy/divination<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070323</b></p><p><b>072<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060623 put on the dress<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070923</b></p><p><b>073<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060623 space marine<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>073123</b></p><p><b>074<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060723 bloom and doom<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062623</b></p><p><b>075<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060723 strange fruit<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071623</b></p><p><b>076<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060823 fires burn<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>(published 060823 ???)</b></p><p><b>077<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>060923 departure<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062423</b></p><p><b>078<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>061123 justice warrior<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071423</b></p><p><b>079<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>061223 golden binoculars<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>061923</b></p><p><b>080<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>061223 time machine<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071323</b></p><p><b>081<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>061323 strange women<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070423</b></p><p><b>082<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>061323 the librarian<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070123</b></p><p><b>083<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>061423 worker bee<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080723</b></p><p><b>084<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>061523 moo!<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071223</b></p><p><b>085<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>061623 junk fairy<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071523</b></p><p><b>086<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>061623 zombie<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>073023</b></p><p>087<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>061723 resurrection</p><p><b>088<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>061923 going woke<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062323</b></p><p>089<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062023 sleek siler sting ray</p><p><b>090<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062223 cabbie<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071723</b></p><p><b>091<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062223 profanity<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072523</b></p><p><b>092<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062223 stagecoach/shotgun<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071923</b></p><p><b>093<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062423 eternal youth<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072823</b></p><p><b>094<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062423 legend has it<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072923</b></p><p><b>095<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062523 deterrent<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072123</b></p><p><b>096<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062523 volcano theme<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>081123</b></p><p><b>097<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062623 exposure<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072223</b></p><p>098<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062623 gateway</p><p><b>099<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062723 patsys pizza/future pizza<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080323</b></p><p>100<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062823 tooth fairy</p><p><b>101<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>062923 offering<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071123</b></p><p><br /></p><p>(42 stories in June)</p><p><br /></p><p><b>102<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070123 boat smash/sense of porpoise<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070823</b></p><p>103<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070123 cheese</p><p>104<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070123 deleted world</p><p><b>105<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070123 sea altar<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071023</b></p><p><b>106<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070123 submersible<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070123</b></p><p>107<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070223 city of books</p><p>108<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070223 daddy watching</p><p>109<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070223 ghost marriage</p><p><b>110<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070223 pretty dress<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080123</b></p><p>111<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070223 wardrobe malfunction</p><p><b>112<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070423 hellbird<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070523</b></p><p><b>113<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070423 lost things<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071823</b></p><p>114<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070523 neutral meeting</p><p>115<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070623 jump the shark</p><p>116<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070623 mirkgloom forest</p><p>117<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070723 gaia prime</p><p>118<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070723 too many books</p><p><b>119<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>070923 crop circles<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>081323</b></p><p>120<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071123 apocalypse sentence</p><p>121<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071123 paradise</p><p>122<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071123 worlds away</p><p>123<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071223 the ending</p><p>124<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071323 spicy sandwich</p><p><b>125<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071423 demon troubles<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072023</b></p><p><b>126<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071523 coffee story<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080623</b></p><p>127<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071523 imagination</p><p><b>128<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071523 shipwrecks of death<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072323</b></p><p>129<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071623 book of hate</p><p>130<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071623 statistical proof</p><p><b>131<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071923 gateway of worlds<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072723</b></p><p>132<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071923 quicksand</p><p>133<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>071923 weather control</p><p><b>134<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072023 hellsite<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072423</b></p><p>135<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072223 bath bomb</p><p>136<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072223 legal matters</p><p>137<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072223 megalodon</p><p>138<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072323 quips</p><p><b>139<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072423 sightless<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080523</b></p><p>140<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072523 for the birds</p><p>141<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072623 discombobulated</p><p><b>142<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072623 ex hellbird<span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> 080423</span></b></p><p><b>143<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072823 anchorage<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072823</b></p><p>144<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072923 absinthe</p><p>145<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>072923 time travel party</p><p>146<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>073023 a visit from death</p><p>147<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>073023 death fairy</p><p>148<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>073023 spilt milk</p><p>149<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>073023 wise owl</p><p>150<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>073123 armageddon</p><p>151<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>073123 leviathan</p><p><br /></p><p>(50 stories in July)</p><p><br /></p><p><b>152<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080123 ghost animals<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080223</b></p><p><b>153<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080223 ghost hunter<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080223</b></p><p>154<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080523 impossible exploration</p><p>155<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080623 brass raven</p><p>156<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080623 selkies lament</p><p>157<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080623 wicked piper</p><p>158<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080623 worship</p><p>159<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080723 alien discs</p><p>160<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080723 desire to read</p><p>161<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080723 fairy godmother</p><p>162<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080823 fearocious</p><p>163<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080823 seven seas</p><p>164<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080823 alien discs</p><p>165<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>080923 out of this world</p><p>165<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>081123 lavender strudel</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-32106368301946083022023-05-27T12:01:00.011-07:002023-05-27T12:41:48.826-07:00The Micro Story Writing Process<p> I've written 50+ micro stories of 500 characters or less this month. My goal was to average 1 per day, which I've easily exceeded. Although I haven't worked on any of my other writing, I feel pretty accomplished. And for that reason I'm going to keep writing these stories -- I feel good every time I'm able to fit an idea into only 500 characters, and if I get it just right then I enjoy rereading it even weeks later. When I post, I always get a few likes from other people so I know the stories worked for them as well, and it's something that I can manage in half an hour -- unlike trying to add to my massive 200,000 word fan fiction story <i>Nerima All-Stars</i>, which requires me to regularly reread what I've written so I can remember all of the balls I'm trying to juggle. ^_^</p><p><br /></p><p>I find the entire writing process fascinating and mysterious. Typically I have an idea and I write it out, and it's too many words, too many characters, and then I have to edit it down. I really enjoy this part because you're trying to figure out how to include the most detail in the fewest number of words -- it's a nice little writing puzzle.</p><p><br /></p><p>Two days ago I had an idea for a story about a person transitioning into a new life in a new world -- just the idea of the transition itself. I wrote it out, and it was well over 650 characters long. Which meant I needed to trim a LOT.</p><p><br /></p><p>I began with <i>"What are the advantages?" "You'll get a new life in a new world. You get to choose who you will become."</i> When I set about editing, I collapsed these two lines into a single statement: <i> "The advantage is a new life in a new world. You choose who you will become."</i> Much more compact. Likewise, I had a couple of lines about him being strapped in... to some sort of machine that facilitated the transfer to a new world. Then I had the new person stepping out into sunlight on another world.</p><p><br /></p><p>I wanted the ending to be the surprise in not remembering who they'd been, but it was hard to fit everything into 500 characters. Finally I decided that part of the problem was trying to include being strapped into a machine and then awaking in a new world -- it took too many words. Just have them step through a portal, and into sunlight, and that was enough to convey the transfer from one world to the next. That gave me just enough room to include a bit about trying to remember the past.</p><p><br /></p><p></p><blockquote><p>"The advantage is a new life in a new world. You choose who you will become."</p><p>"And the disadvantages?"</p><p>"You leave your old life behind -- your friends, family... and memories. You won't recall who you were."</p><p>He was old, with few friends. A new start was enticing. He signed the paperwork, and stepped through the gateway... and into bright sunlight.</p><p>She froze. What had she been thinking? Memories drifted then vanished like morning mist. She could not recall.</p></blockquote><p><br /></p><p>The next day, I had an idea involving time travel. I was thinking about how tiny mistranslations in a sacred text could turn into huge holy wars in the future. I'm not just talking about the Bible -- for example, if the United States founding fathers had more carefully spelled out what they meant about the right to bear arms in the 2nd amendment, we might not have people carrying assault rifles into a Starbucks to order a latte. It's tempting to think, if you could just travel back in time, you could save a lot of lives by changing how someone wrote down a few words.</p><p><br /></p><p>So I started by writing: <i>Brother Ignacius studied the parchment by candlelight. This was an X, was it not?</i></p><p><i>With a flash, a stranger stood before him. Brother Ignacius fell to his knees. "An angel!" he exclaimed.</i></p><p><i>"I'm not an angel," the man replied. "I am a traveler in time. That word is not X, it's X."</i></p><p><br /></p><p>Normally I try to pick names that are shorter than "Brother Ignacius" because of space considerations, but that name felt right for a Middle Ages or earlier monk. My two biggest problems were that I hadn't decided what my mistranslation would be just yet, and I wasn't exactly sure how to end the story. My first ending just had the traveler imparting his knowledge and Brother Ignacius was like, thanks for telling me, and that ending didn't have any surprise or twist to it. Then I considered having Ignacius consider telling this story to the abbot, but no, he would never believe it -- which was a slightly better ending, but not one I could fit into 500 characters.</p><p><br /></p><p>I tried researching mistranslations, which first yielded a lot of stories about presidents and Soviet leaders giving speeches that were not translated well, then yielded pages that talked about how the Bible is full of translation errors, but didn't give specific examples. Finally I landed on the Wikipedia page for Bible errata, which deals with weird translation errors (and is the basis for some jokes in Good Omens that I was half-remembering). This lead me to the treacle bible, in which a Hebrew word that could mean balm or medicine was translated as treacle -- which at the time also could mean cure-all.</p><p><br /></p><p>That was what I needed, because the word treacle is inherently funny and specific words always trump general ideas. I could refer to the "treacle wars of 2300, in which millions died" and you didn't really have to know the details of how a holy war turned on a mistranslated word, you'd get the general idea.</p><p><br /></p><p>I also wrote a line along the lines of, <i>"I understand," said Brother Ignacius, who in fact did not.</i> And I immediately liked that idea and that line. Why should a medieval monk, even if he's convinced that this angel is really just a human, understand in any way how a simple word choice could lead to millions of lives being lost in the future? So that became part of my ending.</p><p><br /></p><p></p><blockquote><p>Brother Ignacius studied parchment by candlelight. This word meant treacle, did it not?</p><p>With a flash, a stranger stood before him. "An angel!" Ignacius exclaimed, falling to his knees.</p><p>"Not an angel," the man replied. "I am a traveler in time. Please translate that word as 'balm'. Doing so will prevent the Treacle Wars of 2300, in which millions died."</p><p>"I see," replied Ignacius, who did not. The man vanished. Ignacius shrugged. Treacle, balm - what was the difference?</p></blockquote><p><br /></p><p> I really like working out what makes the best ending, and how I can manage to fit it into 500 characters. ^_^</p><p><br /></p><p>Here's my last story: over the past week and a half, for several days when I walked into my bathroom, I could sometimes hear someone filing on metal. It sounded like someone was slowly sawing through a steel pipe. I live on the ground floor of an apartment building, so it wasn't coming from below me (although I had visions of someone trying to break into my apartment from underneath). It was most likely coming from the apartment next door, but I never did find out what it was. It eventually stopped.</p><p><br /></p><p>I was thinking about that this morning, and I decided to write a story around the idea. So this morning I wrote:</p><p><br /></p><p></p><blockquote><p>He heard scratching and pounding through the walls of his bathroom, as if someone were trying to break through. His house was set apart, down a lonely lane -- there could be no one on the other side. He ignored the noise.</p><p>One day he heard a faint voice calling, "Let me out!"</p><p>But he knew there was no one there, so he ignored this as well.</p></blockquote><p><br /></p><p>As you can see, I have yet to figure out what the ending should be. ^_^ The voice fades away? Something breaks through from another dimension? The police show up? I'm still trying to figure out where this one leads. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p>Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-33368435884272222602023-05-11T20:38:00.004-07:002023-05-12T05:56:56.750-07:00Micro Stories<p> I've started writing micro stories. I'm posting one a day to my Mastodon account, @vanellopemint@home.social. (I recently found out that home.social may close down this year. :( It seemed like such a stable instance!)</p><p>Anyway, I've been fascinated by microfiction for quite a while. For years I've followed two accounts on Twitter that write within the 280-character Twitter limit, @microflashfic and @microsff. The first account posted several times a day for over a year. They've both collected into books, I believe.</p><p>I wanted to try doing this as well, but I was intimidated by writing a story within the 280 character limit. It seemed like a very daunting task, an amazing trick. I do write a lot of short stories -- usually 1,000 to 2,000 words -- but writing such a tiny story seemed impossible.</p><p>After the Musk invasion of Twitter, I moved to Mastodon where @microsff@mastodon.art also posts, and I followed several hashtags, #microfiction, #flashfiction, and #smallstories and discovered other people who do this, including @humpbuckletales@mastondon.social, @idle@writing.exchange and @neverworn@social.retrodon.net. Mastodon allows for 500 characters which seemed more do-able to me.</p><p>On Monday May 1st I tried again to imagine a micro story, but came up with nothing. I went to bed, and an idea finally popped into my head. I got up and wrote a 200-word story involving Grandpa Anarchy, the hero I've written many stories about. I was really proud of this -- I'd found one definition of micro fiction online that set the limit at 300 words or less. But then I realized my 200-word story was over 1,200 characters -- far too long to fit into a Mastodon post. So I went back to bed.</p><p>And then! I got another idea for a very short story. I got up and wrote it and published it, and I was very proud of myself. I thought: I can do this!</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></p><blockquote><p>Carlos beheld a beautiful woman in flowing robes. "I was struck by bus..."</p><p>"While saving someone," she said. "It often happens."</p><p>His eyes widened. "You're an isekai reincarnation goddess?"</p><p>She smiled. "I send people into new worlds on new adventures."</p><p>"Like a Game Master who decides everyone's fate." He sighed. "I ran RPGs. I'll miss that."</p><p>"But I never get my own adventure," she added. "Unless...."</p><p>"Yes?"</p><p>"How would you like to be the new God of Second Chances...?"</p></blockquote><p></p><p><br /></p><p>The next day, I managed to write three more while at work. I thought: Hey, this isn't so hard! I could maybe publish once a week!</p><p>The day after that, I wrote 8-9 more, and I realized I should probably try posting one story a day for the month of May. So I posted two that night to catch up.</p><p>Thursday i wasn't able to write anything. I had one idea in my head most of the day -- about vampires and garlic. Why do they hate garlic? It turns out one possible reason is that people thought vampirism was a disease of the blood, and garlic has antimicrobial abilities. In other words, there's no intrinsic reason why vampires would hate garlic.</p><p>That seemed like good story material. I could imagine a vampire that loves garlic bread, for example. But I couldn't manage to turn that into a story.</p><p>In the evening I watched the rest of season 3 of Lower Decks, and that gave me ideas that also went nowhere. Later I was trying to work out a story involving the plethora of secret organizations that supposedly rule the world from the shadows -- surely there was a joke in there somewhere that I could tell.</p><p>Maybe this is not as easy as I thought?</p><p>I woke up at 1:30 AM, and the idea for the story popped into my head, based on secret societies. I immediately got up and jotted down the idea, lay back down, got back up and wrote the idea out, lay back down, got up and rework/edit more than once. Finally I went back to sleep.</p><p>In the morning on the way to work I came up with another. So! Not so difficult after all! That's one story for Thursday and one for Friday. One a day is all I need to keep up. ^_^</p><p>I've managed at least one micro story a day since -- sometimes 2-3. At this point I'm 10 days in and I've written about 24 stories, so I'm well on my way to doing one a day for at least a month. I can probably do this for several months at least. Could I do it for a full year? I guess we'll find out. ^_^</p><p>Some are better than others. One story I posted late last week got about 25 likes/boosts. This counts as viral for me on Mastodon. :D I was lucky that a person with a large following boosted me, and that exposed me to many more people than normal.</p><p>You might not think 24 likes sounds like much, but when I was lying on my bed my desktop computer would beep, followed by my iPad, my iPhone, and then the old iPhone that I use for playing Pokemon Go. So it was a lot of beeps each time someone liked and boosted. ^_^</p><p><br /></p><p></p><blockquote><p>"Become a hero?" the girl exclaimed. "Defeat the Dark Lord? No thanks! I'd rather run a bookstore!"</p><p>As she left, Miardolyn the wizard said, "Apologies, Lord. Summoning an otherworldly hero who truly wishes to be one is daunting."</p><p>Lord Danozlan nodded. "The previous one became a cook."</p><p>"Do not despair, Lord!" Miardolyn drew a new circle. "I shall try yet again!"</p><p>"Please," said the Dark Lord. "If we find not a hero to defeat me, I must conquer the world. Who wants that?"</p></blockquote><p></p><p><br /></p><p>I average 2-4 likes/boosts per post. But a story I posted a few days later got no likes or boosts until near the end of the day, when my friend Matt liked it. Well at least I know someone looked at it! The story I posted the next morning had several likes/boosts in the first hour so I know people are reading, just not every one is a banger.</p><p>I've cross-posted some of them to Hive Social as well. Maybe I should post to Tumblr. I haven't left Twitter completely but I refuse to post there anymore.</p><p>In other writing news, I wrote very little Grandpa Anarchy fiction last year. In November I worked on my fan fiction novel called The Nerima All-Stars. Afterwards, I decided to give up on writing Grandpa Anarchy stories and try to finish my novel instead. That... hasn't happened. I've got a bit of writing on it done in the past few months, but not as much as I'd like. I wrote only a couple of scenes in April, I think.</p><div><br /></div>Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-75132058550450210912022-12-15T18:41:00.003-08:002022-12-15T18:49:23.603-08:00Down the Storm God Rabbit Hole<p> </p><p>I'm still working on my fanfiction story that has been my main focus for the last several November NaNoWriMo's, titled <i>the Nerima All-Stars</i>. I generally don't work on it except around NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writer's Month) time, but I want to try and finish it and get it published so that I don't have to think about it anymore. That means working on it in December as well, and probably January and February.</p><p><br /></p><p>I haven't written much since Dec 1st, but I picked it back up this week. I was thinking: <i>every character ought to have something they're passionate about</i>. This was advice that I'd read recently, and it makes sense, it makes your characters more interesting and memorable. And I have this one character in my story, her name is Jin -- she's a storm controller, but she's kept her abilities a secret her whole life.</p><p><br /></p><p>And -- what I'd written so far, she really didn't stand out. I imagined her as a kind of mousey recluse who worked from home and did most of her socializing online. But I <i>had </i>figured out what she was passionate about, it just didn't come through in my writing. Jin is a fan of a made-up magical girl anime series called<i> Mahou Shoujo Stormbringer Akari</i>. She owns figurines and drama cds and all kinds of merchandise from the show, and she even writes Akari fanfiction. I had decided that when her house gets destroyed, along with her precious collection, this would be a dramatic moment when she decides to unleash her power over storms and weather, to announce herself to the world, to "fight back" at the villain who was mostly responsible for this destruction.</p><p><br /></p><p>The problem was, I had failed to write her as actually <i>passionate</i> about this anime. At first she didn't even mention it. Later I had her mention it in an off-hand manner, but this was hardly good enough. A true fan will talk about the show, compare things to the show, quote the show, say things like, "this is <i>just like</i> that episode where Akari did X!" When you meet her, you should learn at least this one thing about her.</p><p><br /></p><p>Of course, it's hard to refer to a show you know nothing about. What do I know about <i>Mahou Shoujo Stormbringer Akari</i>? Her name is Akari. She controls weather. She's a magical girl. That's it, and that's all in the title. I knew literally nothing more.</p><p><br /></p><p>So I decided to work on background info for my made-up anime show. Often, working on background info is a way for me to "start writing" before I actually add to the story. It's always useful in the end.</p><p><br /></p><p>I gave Akari a full name -- <i>Akari Harada</i>, and I came up with two names for her best friends. I came up with the name of a local police officer, a young man she is infatuated with. Then I needed her major enemy. "The Queen of Storms", I thought. A weather-controller magical girl who battles with a weather-controller villain, why not? As for a name? I'd been picking names at random from lists of Japanese first names and surnames, but a villain required something more unusual. Like, all of the villains in Sailor Moon are named after gemstones. I needed something like that.</p><p><br /></p><p>I decided that "Montana, Queen of Storms" sounded good. Why <i>not </i>name her after a U.S. state? It sounded like an anime thing to do. Her minions could be other states -- not Washington of course, and not California, that's too famous. How about Arizona, Colorado, and Dakota? I imagined they were like the three storms from <i>Big Trouble in Little China</i> -- Wind, Rain, Thunder. <i>Dakota of the Wind</i>. Yeah.</p><p><br /></p><p>So far I had some basic details but didn't know much about the story or the background of the character. I decided, maybe she's the daughter of a storm god, and that's where her powers come from. So I did some research. <i>Raijin</i> is the Japanese storm god; he always appears with his brother <i>Fujin</i>. He's kind of a trickster god, kind of associated with death and destruction. That doesn't sound like a great father figure, although of course while storms bring death and destruction, rain also brings forth life so there are two sides to his character. But he also has a son who is a storm god as well, <i>Raitaro</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>So I figured, maybe Akari is the child of Raitaro. There's not a lot of information on him really, he's just the son of the thunder god, so Akari might be better thought of as the <i>granddaughter of the storm god</i>. In Japan, I think "storm god" usually just means Raijin.</p><p><br /></p><p>There's also a storm beast called <i>Raiju</i>, who appears as a lightning wolf or dog but also as just about any other animal in existence. So, her magical girl guide/companion would be a cute puppy named Raiju, or a puppy who was <i>a</i> raiju but not necessarily <i>the</i> raiju.</p><p><br /></p><p>So far so good! I wrote up a short paragraph about how Akari grew up, and how she discovered that she's really the granddaughter of the storm god (Raiju shows up and tells her of course), and she is forced to become a magical girl and battle with evil forces (who are also mostly storm based).</p><p><br /></p><p>But there was also a paragraph about Raijin that compared him to other storm gods -- they all have similar powers and tempermants. It compared him to Leigong, Chinese god of thunder, and to Parjanya, Hindu god of rain, thunder, and lightning. It compared him to Thor (Norse god), Zeus (Greek) and Taranis (Celtic). And also to El, or YHWH, who historically was a Semitic storm deity before he evolved into the god of everything.</p><p><br /></p><p>My first thought was: Oh, she needs to discover <i>other</i> daughters or granddaughters of <i>other</i> storm gods! That would be cool! Let's just go <i>all in</i> in the weather controller thing! So I came up with names: Penelope, a granddaughter of Zues; Damini, a granddaughter of Parjanya, and Keshet, who was descended from the Hebrew storm god.</p><p><br /></p><p>And then I was like -- do I <i>really</i> want to declare a character the daughter or granddaughter of Yaweh? I was well familiar with the idea that Yaweh was a storm god first, and god of everything later. But did I want to treat the Christian god as just another mythological deity?</p><p><br /></p><p>I did some research on Yaweh the storm god, and I was still debating whether to do it when I realized that I've really fallen too far down the rabbit hole. This is a side character to a fake anime that will only be mentioned in passing in my story because one fairly minor character is a fan of said anime. Like, <i>let</i> her be the grandchild of Yaweh, it's not going to even get mentioned in my story anyway!</p><p><br /></p><p>I still need to come up with a few key phrases that Stormbringer Akari regularly says, some "In the name of the Moon, I shall punish you!" mojo, but for the most part I have my anime background. I realized part way through this that I can just make the rest up as I go along. Saying "This is just like that time Akari battled the demon Zograag in the Rainbow Kingdom!" does not require me or anyone to know anything about the anime episode in question, and the more outlandish the situation referenced the better. I can borrow famous scenes or battles from other anime or movies or science fiction shows or whatever, change the names, and it will sound like this magical girl has had some outlandish adventures that we will never get to know anything more about.</p><p><br /></p><p>So... mission accomplished I guess? Now I actually need to rework actual scenes and dialogue in my actual story... you know, <i>real</i> writing.</p><p><br /></p>Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-66632414607560023402022-11-27T19:17:00.000-08:002022-11-27T19:17:10.780-08:00NaNoWriMo 2022, and the Wrong Way to Write a Plot<p> </p><p><br /></p><p>I haven't written much about my writing this year, and in part that's because I've accomplished very little in my writing. I've struggled on and off to rework or move forward on my current Grandpa Anarchy Story Arc, but it's been very difficult and at most I've rewritten parts of stories or completed a few paragraphs on this or that story, and that's all I've managed for most of the year.</p><p><br /></p><p>I really wanted to work on NaNoWriMo though, and I wanted to "finish" my unpublished fanfic story <i>Nerima All-Stars</i>. I tried to work on it in September and October, but I really wasn't able to get anything accomplished until NaNoWriMo started. The pressure of getting something written every day for NaNoWriMo has helped kick-start my writing and to date I'm behind but cruising along and I think I'll be able to manage 50,000 words in the next few days.</p><p><br /></p><p>So let's talk about this story, because as always I'm trying to feel my way forward with the plot.</p><p><br /></p><p>The story, in short: some gods and goddesses and one demon decide to play a "superhero" game where they transform a Ranma 1/2 world into the kind of universe where superheroes exist. Then they each pick one of the main characters to transform into a hero, while the two people on the "bad" team get to pick someone to become a supervillain.</p><p><br /></p><p>This was the entire idea for my original story, which consisted of the first few scenes as setup, and which I wrote quite a few years ago -- more than twenty years ago now. Originally I thought, I'll make a few heroes, we'll have a fight, maybe I'll write sequels involving one or two more villains. But when I finally decided to work on the story in earnest, it became evident that I was incapable of writing even one single battle with a villain that didn't take me multiple years to write. Currently my document is over 250,000 words and I'm not close to done -- although this does include a lot of research notes at the end of the document, because NaNoWriMo.</p><p><br /></p><p>My story takes some weird twists and turns that probably do not make for a good way to tell a tale, but I keep following my instincts and writing what seems best to me at the moment. To whit:</p><p><br /></p><p>I set my heroes up to fail, because I knew it would be funniest if Ranma Saotome was supposed to somehow become a sorcerer supreme and Akane Tendo was meant to be the next Tony Stark/Iron Man. Then I wrote the inevitable confrontation with the villain, and of course they failed. That's okay, heroes aren't supposed to succeed at first -- but I began to realize that there was no believable way to transform Ranma into a competent sorcerer in just a few weeks. He couldn't believe in himself enough to overcome his shortcomings. Same for the other characters.</p><p><br /></p><p>So i wrote a very long chapter in which Ranma is placed in another universe where he can spend ten years learning magic. This seemed like a workable solution, and I enjoyed writing it, and it involved Lina Inverse which was fun because Lina and Ranma make a fun combination (and they had the same voice actress in Japan, so there's one drawing of Lina where they gave her a long braid and leaned into the Ranma resemblance). But! This chapter is kind of a side-step narratively -- instead of dealing with the main plot, now we're going off to another world and having some adventures there.</p><p><br /></p><p>But I enjoyed writing it and I assume it will be fun to read. This became Chapter Six of my story, titled Sorceress. Yet that only fixed things for one character. I had to come up with something to explain why Akane and Nabiki suddenly got much better as well, so I wrote two more very long chapters involving them doing something similar -- I stuck them in heaven to learn their powers, again as a kind of "time here doesn't count back on earth" setup. These were Chapter Seven: Temporary Goddess, and Chapter Eight: Spider's Web and Shattered Globe.</p><p><br /></p><p>Two years ago I was working hard on Chapter Nine: Time Stands Still, which I had planned to be the next "real" chapter in the story, but I had a lot of plot threads to tie up from my previous two chapters and so this chapter became a third straight chapter of things happening up in heaven with all of the characters there.</p><p><br /></p><p>So my story does not flow in a very direct manner, plot-wise. We have four long chapters where characters go off to other places to become good at what they do, before a final showdown with the villain. But I really thought that after this we would dive right into the big conflict.</p><p><br /></p><p>As I wrote Chapter Ten: Asleep in Nerima, I came to realize that just explaining how all of the heroes prepared for the big fight was a chapter in itself. So I still wasn't even to the point of the actual battle. I've rewritten this chapter and rearranged things a few times, and I did some of that this November, but I think the chapter's pretty firm as written right now.</p><p><br /></p><p>I've been working on Chapter Eleven: One Night in Nerima. Last year I did a few scenes that take place at the start of the final battle, so to speak, but in the meantime it had become apparent to me that my heroes had become immensely powerful in the last several chapters, and I would need to also explain why the villain was powerful enough to still be a threat to them. So I came up with yet ANOTHER time manipulation trick, in which the villain has a sorceress place the heroes within a time bubble, which gives him about three months with no interference during which he takes over Tokyo and most of Japan.</p><p><br /></p><p>And... I was originally just going to have them wake up next day and discover that all of this has happened. But it seemed to me that I should document his rise to power a bit. It gives me a chance to show how he becomes powerful, and what his allies are capable of, before the final fight.</p><p><br /></p><p>That's the current chapter I've been working on, and until recently I was struggling to write it. It wasn't <i>interesting</i>. I decided that this was because there were no sympathetic characters to follow, and I had two that I could write about -- Akane's friend Yuka, and a storm controller named Lady Leviathan who really just wants to be left alone. So I tried writing chapters involving these two, and this included going all the way back to chapter three or four, so that I could introduce my storm controller as a character who <i>just might</i> have some interesting abilities, and establish that she and Yuka had met.</p><p><br /></p><p>I wrote a few scenes, and it was still pretty boring. Yuka hides out in a library. She lives on the streets. She evacuates to a shelter when Nerima is placed under a state of emergency. She meets Lady Leviathan again, and they talk. <i>All very boring</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>One of my problems was that I've written scenes in which Yuka finds her friend Sayuri in a bombed-out Nerima, and Sayuri is dying, and at this point she is offered power by a demon and decides to accept in order to save her friend's life. And I was having trouble figuring out why she goes back into Nerima after she's already evacuated. I mean, she wants to save her friend, but then why hasn't she tried to do so before now?</p><p><br /></p><p>And I told myself, the way to make a story interesting is to imagine what's the worst thing that can happen to your character, and try doing that. I was writing Yuka as being a reasonable citizen -- avoiding any confrontation. She can't save her friend, so why have her even try? Well, because <i>that's</i> more interesting, yes? </p><p><br /></p><p>So I came up with a secondary reason for her to return to the Tendo Dojo, where the villain is holding court, and suddenly the story was more interesting again. And I thought, what if she accidentally discovers Akane's secret base? And that sounded interesting, so I did that. She escapes from certain capture by finding the entrance to the base in the back of Akane's closet. Then I thought, what's the worst that can happen now? The villain's henchmen -- a demonic assassin and a powerful sorceress -- get into the base. So I did that.</p><p><br /></p><p>Then I had to figure out how Yuka avoids becoming ensnared a second time. The base has an A.I. that controls several spare suits of armor, and there's a robot there as well, and they help fight the villains and allow for Yuka to escape. Behind her, the base explodes, which prevents the villains from following her. </p><p><br /></p><p>Anyway, I think I've crafted a more interesting story -- at the very least, it was more fun for me to write. It's turning my "Dr. Pineapple takes over Japan" chapter into a massive section of the story that might need to be broken up into 2-3 chapters, but if it's interesting then I guess that's okay?</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-7245999402263021532022-01-08T12:37:00.004-08:002022-01-08T12:37:59.257-08:002021 Wrapup<p> So for 2021, I wrote:</p><p><br /></p><p><b>413 I Swear</b></p><p><b>414 Collateral Damage</b></p><p><b>415 I, Gardener</b></p><p><b>416 Maid Ex Machina</b></p><p><b>417 Infinite Dojo</b></p><p><b>418 Princess of Pluto</b></p><p><b>419 The Return of Normal</b></p><p><b>042 Hot Stuff</b></p><p><b>420 Get Down Tonight</b></p><p><b>421 Free Advertising</b></p><p><b>422 Inevitable</b></p><p><b>423 All I Ever Wanted</b></p><p><b>424 A Different Me (formerly My Clone Sleeps Alone 2)</b></p><p><b>427 Girl Squared</b></p><p><b>432 Wrong Number</b></p><p><b>436 Doomscrolling</b></p><p><b>433 Endorsement</b></p><p><b>435 Transformations</b></p><p><b>437 Frills and Bows</b></p><p><b>438 Mating Ritual</b></p><p><b>449x Afterglow (moved to "unusable")</b></p><p><b>441 My Own Daughter</b></p><p><b>442 Ambassador</b></p><p><b>443 Real Girl</b></p><p><b>445 Academy</b></p><p><b>444 Hate Crime</b></p><p><b>446 Revenge</b></p><p><b>447 Powerslave</b></p><p><b>428 Amaranthine Shores</b></p><p><b>429 The Spice of Life</b></p><p><b>425 Buttercup</b></p><p><b>426 Chaos Theory</b></p><p><b>430 Good Vibrations</b></p><p><b>431 Woofy</b></p><p><b>434 Optimal Performance</b></p><p><b>439 For One Night</b></p><p><b>439b Stranger Danger</b></p><p><b>440 What I Yam</b></p><p><b>461 Wisdom and Badassery</b></p><p><b>448 Library of Dreams</b></p><p><b>449 Tutti Frutti</b></p><div><br /></div><div>Technically, I wrote a couple of other stories that were also retroactively tossed into the bin of "unusable" -- <i>Mother's Treasure, Trust Mother, Orphan White</i>. But I hadn't listed those as completed stories because I rejected them almost immediately, while <i>Afterglow</i> was a story I considered good for several months before deciding I didn't like it at all.</div><div><br /></div><div>So that's 41 Grandpa Anarchy stories last year, give or take. I also wrote approximately 20,000 words on my fan fiction story <i>Girl's School</i>, and roughly 50,000 words on my fan fiction story <i>Nerima All-Stars</i>. Neither reached a point where I was ready to publish anything, but progress is progress. I only really wrote three Grandpa Anarchy stories after July, so most of what I accomplished in the second half of the year was that work on my fan fiction stories.</div><div><br /></div><div>My goals for the coming year include getting both of those fan fiction stories to a point where I can publish what I have, and to write more Grandpa Anarchy stuff. At the moment I've decided to backtrack and try to finish up some of my unfinished work, so I'm working my way through the stories in <b>Book 12, A Bomb In Heaven</b>. I've completed one story so far and I'm completely rewriting another.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-54435324512622968342021-11-02T17:10:00.003-07:002021-11-02T17:10:55.313-07:00NaNoWriMo Day 2<p> I spent Day 1 of NaNoWriMo just reading my story Nerima All-Stars. It's some 150,000 words long. The file is actually 177,000 words long, after I deleted some stuff, but this also includes a lot of research.</p><p><br /></p><p>Things included in my research:</p><p>1. An incomplete List of Heroes and Villains and their abilities</p><p>2. An incomplete List of Gods and Goddesses used in the story.</p><p>3. Magical Girl Spells</p><p>4. "Regular" Magic Spells (pulled from Ah! My Goddess and Slayers)</p><p>5. Magical Instruments Made of Bone. (includes Maui's bone fish hook; the first kantele made by Väinämöinen; the magical harp in the Cruel Sisters / Twa Sisters ballad (I added names to everyone); and a reference to Sampson, who slew a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass. In my story, this was actually a magical weapon made of bone. ^_^</p><p>6. The Doublet System in Ah! My Goddess explained</p><p>7. Notes on Hawaiian Pidgen.</p><p>8. Notes on how the Japanese government is structured and run and where it is located.</p><p>9. TV Tropes article on Heroes vs. Villains</p><p>10. Notes about the Völva, the Norse witch, and the song Allison Gross.</p><p><br /></p><p>*******************************SPOILERS************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Note that I am providing spoilers to a story that nobody has been allowed to read yet. :P</p><p><br /></p><p>At this point in my story, here is what has happened:</p><p><br /></p><p>Thor, Urd, Skuld and Belldandy agree to a game with Loki Odinsson and Mara (a demon).</p><p>As a result, Ranma, Akane and the cast of Ranma 1/2 wind up in a superhero world overnight.</p><p>The god/goddess team pick four champions to become heroes, while Loki and Mara choose a suitable villain. Early chapters involve training, but Loki cheats to get his villain up to speed. Because of course he does.</p><p>Doctor Pineapple soon has all of Nerima under mind control, and that includes some of our heroes, and some other prominent heroes. There's a fight, and the heroes manage to rescue their friends and escape.</p><p>At this point in the story, Urd, Skuld, Belldandy, and Thor decide to break the rules a little bit too. Urd sends Ranma to the world of Slayers for ten years, and then returns him to Nerima just minutes after he left. He's now a very skilled sorcerer. The others send their charges away as well, allowing them to become highly skilled in mere moments.</p><p>All of this takes multiple chapters to detail, but finally we are all back where we were: heroes holed up in a secret base, ready to fight Doctor Pineapple again, and much better prepared.</p><p>However, by this point other demons have taken an interest in what's going on, and Doctor Pineapple is able to trap the heroes in time for three months while his plan to take over Japan succeeds.</p><p><br /></p><p>This is pretty much where I'd written to by the end of NaNoWriMo last year. I had "several big fights and a final showdown" planned, but not <i>really </i>planned. I hadn't really worked through what the villain would do, and how the heroes would respond.</p><p>To start with, Doctor Pineapple has three months to plan and knows when the heroes will be released from their time trap. It would make sense to attack them immediately, before they have a chance to orient themselves. However, many of his allies are mind-controlled heroes, and he can't send them against the heroes as long as those magical girls are able to break his enchantments. So he'll want to assassinate the magical girls if he can, and/or send in only those who are willing allies, and those who he doesn't care about losing (lots of minions). </p><p><br /></p><p>IE I'm still at the planning stage. ^_^ I've written about 1,300 words so far today in working out my plans, however.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-85128178016688903732021-10-29T21:10:00.006-07:002021-10-29T21:26:36.205-07:00October Writer's Update<p>I've been working on <i>Girl's School</i> for the last month. This is a Ranma 1/2 fanfiction story, and the most massive story I've ever worked on. It is more than 500,000 words in total, including parts that are not completely written. I believe I've added about 25,000 or 30,000 words to the story this past month.</p><p><br /></p><p>First, let's start with my fanfiction adventures.</p><p><br /></p><p>I started writing Ranma 1/2 fanfiction in the early 2000's, maybe a few years earlier. I can't remember exactly. I was a big fan of Ranma 1/2 at the time, and I wrote a bunch of short stories and several longer works. The longest of these which was actually complete was called <i>Monkey Head-Butting</i>, and was a body-swap story. I also had several unfinished stories, including a 5-part story for which I wrote the first 4 parts and then just never managed to finish part 5, called <i>I Can See Clearly Now</i>, and a very long, open-ended story called <i>Muyami Academy</i>, which I had intended to continue writing but eventually abandoned.</p><p><br /></p><p>Basically, I was really good at imagining open-ended stories which were much more massive than I ever had the time to write. <i>Muyami Academy</i> involved nearly every high school anime character from a series I liked attending the same weird high school. I liked it, but it was a massive undertaking that continued to spiral out of control as I worked on it. I'm not sure how long it was, my old files are .doc files that I can't open at the moment, although most of it is uploaded to fanfiction.net.</p><p><br /></p><p>Along the way I started an open-ended story called <i>A Brief Bit of Insanity</i> that I never finished; I started a story called <i>Both Halves</i> that I intended to write more on, but didn't; I wrote the first couple chapters of a Ranma 1/2 next-generation story about the Saotome kids (and the kids of the other characters) called <i>Seven Fiance</i><i>es</i>, which I always wanted to continue, but I haven't; and I also sketched out a couple of massive story ideas that I was wise enough to never actually publish, because I wasn't going to finish those, either.</p><p><br /></p><p>One of these was called <i>Imaginary Knights Dimsdale</i>. This was also a Ranma 1/2 spinoff story, and really, this was an isekai story that I plotted years before isekai stories were a big thing. (Isekai stories being ones where the hero or heroes are transported to another world, or reincarnated in a new world after their death [which, like, 75% of the time involves saving someone from a runaway truck and dying in their place].) In my story, the Ranma 1/2 cast are summoned to a fantasy world to help stop a great evil and save a kingdom, but they are transformed into other anime characters. The idea was that they were given avatar bodies, and if they died, they would wind up back in their own world again, no worse for wear. But really it was another body-swap scenario that I dreamed up. I remember Ranma was going to wind up in the body of Lum from Uresei Yatsura. Anyway, it was a massive, massive story that luckily I didn't write very much of.</p><p><br /></p><p>I had another one of these stories called <i>Nerima All-Stars</i>, in which the cast from Ah! My Goddess were guides helping the cast of Ranma 1/2 to adjust to a super hero version of their world. One was going to be a sentai hero with a super suit, one was going to be the avatar of Thor, one would be a master magician, one would be a magical girl, etc. I wrote the opening scenes that set things up, and even read them at a writer's night for my friends, and then I set that one aside, too, because it was another massive undertaking that I didn't want to get into at that moment.</p><p><br /></p><p>Because the story that I <i>did</i> want to get into was a story called <i>Girl's School</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>The idea behind this story was simply that Ranma would be forced to attend a school for girls -- <i>St. Hebereke's School for Girls</i>, in fact, the one Kodachi Kuno attends. I wrote the opening for this story, and set it aside, and forgot about it completely, and then rediscovered it and I thought: <i>I need to write more of this</i>. So I did, and the story grew in scope. In November of 2008, I made this my NaNoWriMo project, and that month I wrote over 52,000 words, starting with chapter 16 and working my way towards chapter 24.</p><p><br /></p><p>The next year I did this again, only by this point I'd been struck with a weird new idea: what if Ranma and company became magical girls? This would have to take place in the future of my story, but for NaNoWriMo 2009 I wrote another 52,000 words that comprised chapters 40-42 (estimated). In these, Ranma and company not only become magical girls but take on multiple contracts t hat lead to three long adventures in other worlds.</p><p><br /></p><p>In 2010 I wrote 55,000 words on <i>Girl's School</i>, chapters 25-28, trying to write my way forward to the magical girl chapters. In 2011 I attempted to write more to fill in the gaps, but that year I failed and only wrote about 11,000 words.</p><p><br /></p><p>In 2012 my project for NaNoWriMo was to write Grandpa Anarchy short stories. This has been an on and off concern of mine ever since, which normally prevents me from working on my fan fiction stories. I've written more than 400 Grandpa Anarchy stories since 2012.</p><p><br /></p><p>However in 2013 I used NaNoWriMo to again work on <i>Girl's School</i>, and filled in more of the gaps and even began working on the third of the otherworld adventures, which was the biggest one of the three. I added 55,000 words to my story. After that I spent a lot of time writing more Grandpa Anarchy stories, but in 2015 I again set to work on my massive fanfiction story, adding another 70,000 words.</p><p><br /></p><p>At this point my story is stored in seven files: Part 1 is chapters 1-15, and is 70,000 words. Part 2 is chapters 16-24, and is 75,000 words. Part 3 is chapters 25-34 and is 91,000 words. Part 4 is chapters 35-40 and is 85,000 words. (Note: I've published through chapter 38 on Fanfiction.net). Part 5 is chapters 41-43, and is 61,000 words. And Part 6, which is the section I'm still working on, covers chapters 44-50 and at the moment is 122,000 words, although that includes maybe 10,000 words of research material at least, which is only temporarily added to the file.</p><p><br /></p><p>And if that's not enough, I have a Part 7 file covering everything that I've envisioned and partially written that comes after the third magical girl adventure, and that file is approximately 50,000 words.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now, after 2015 I was a bit burned out on the story that never ended, and I took a break to work on other things, although I would pick it up now and again. Before this last month, I last worked on it around 2018 or 2019, but I hadn't written a <i>ton</i> on it since 2015. But I still wanted to finish the magical girl adventure chapters, and publish everything I had up to that point.</p><p><br /></p><p>However, in the meantime I decided in November 2016 to do something different. I picked up my weird Ranma-and-company-as-superheroes story, <i>Nerima All-Star</i>s, and work on it for NaNoWriMo that year. As per usual, I grossly underestimated how long this story would be. I mean, characters wake up in a world filled with superheroes, a villain arises, they learn how to use their powers and fight him and win -- I can fit that in 50,000 words, yes? I mean, I had plans for more than one villain to appear, but at least the first big showdown I could manage in 50,000 words?</p><p><br /></p><p>Well... no, I could not. I wrote 57,000 words that year, and by that point I'd decided that Ranma needed to travel to the Slayers universe to learn how to be a sorcerer, and Akane should visit heaven to learn how to science like a goddess of the future by learning from the same master, and... these turned into huge side-story detours on the way to my main showdown with the big bad guy.</p><p><br /></p><p>The next year I skipped anime fanfiction and worked on Grandpa Anarchy stories for NaNoWriMo, but in 2018 I attempted to work on <i>Nerima All-Stars</i> again and hopefully finish it. I failed to write anything that year, and I attacked it again in 2019, and wrote another 62,000 words. This did not finish my story however, and in 2020 I returned to it again and wrote another 51,000 words.</p><p><br /></p><p>This means that my story that I was going to manage in 50,000 words is now 183,000 words long, and needs <i>at least</i> 50,000 words more to wrap up. So that's my goal for this November.</p><p><br /></p><p>I haven't published any of <i>Nerima All-Stars</i> yet, because I'm a little smarter in my old age and I wanted a complete story before I published it. And granted, this will still be an open-ended story in that I can always start another villain up and write another chapter to the story -- but I don't actually plan to do that, for now. I just want to get the story to a possible conclusion, and publish it. Keep in mind that this is another story that I started writing in the early 2000's.</p><p><br /></p><p>In the meantime, I've spent the month of September working on Girl's School. I was hoping to get chapters 48, 49, and 50 written and that would complete my entire third magical girl arc. Instead I've managed to complete chapter 48, written about half of chapter 49, and, well, that's where I'm at. I think I've written about 25,000 words total, which isn't bad. But I'm still nowhere near the end.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-84883015134386347702021-09-11T17:01:00.004-07:002021-09-11T17:15:46.138-07:00September Writer's Update<p style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">The Short Answer</span></b></p><p><br /></p><p>I wrote some stories in July for Camp NaNoWriMo, I did not write as much as I wanted, then I wrote nothing in August. In September I decided to write a story a day, and I actually managed to write 1 1/2 stories in 11 days. (The second one is nearly finished.)</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">The Long Answer</span></b></p><p><br /></p><p>I've rambled before about my thought processes as I've tried to navigate this year's series of stories, so I'll try to not ramble <i>too</i> much.</p><p><b>Book 11: A Fists to the Face:</b> I think it was late 2020 when I decided that my current "book" of stories had grown long enough. I capped it at 42 stories, including some I'd written as far back as 2018.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Book 13: Just One Punch:</b> I tossed some of my more recent stories into a new book file by this title. I didn't have any particular plans for this collection of stories, it was meant to be random Grandpa Anarchy stories like the last volume. However over the course of 2021 it's become more of an episodic tale, with most of the stories following directly after the last.</p><p><br /></p><p>The first stories in this volume were ones I wrote earlier in 2020, including <i>407 Robe and Wizard's Hat, 408 Asylum, 409 It's Complicated, 410 University of Hard Knocks, 411 To Punch a Hitler, 459 Internet Villains </i>(which I just realized I'd also numbered 411), and <i>412 Indestructible</i>. <i>Robe and Wizard's Hat</i> is the story I've read most recently, for August writer's night. People liked it quite a bit so that's cool.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>The Annie Two Robot Tales:</b> I set out to write several semi-related stories involving Annie Two and her clones. These were <i>I, Gardener, Maid Ex Machina, Infinite Dojo</i> and <i>Princess of Pluto</i>. By the time I'd finished these, I'd decided to bring an old enemy of Grandpa's back to life, and this story was <i>The Return of Normal</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>At this point I had five stories that formed a cohesive narrative, and I wanted to continue it -- and so just about everything else I've written in 2021 is part of a linear narrative, which has complicated my writing and caused me to back up and rewrite things several times, or scrap stories that I've already written, or insert stories in between two already-written stories to try and make more sense of the linear narrative.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>The Miss Anarchy Tales:</b> This started when I wrote the story where Victory Honesty St. Normal is resurrected, in a clone body of Grandpa's sidekick Glory Ashes (daughter of Julia Judas, head of Omnigen and an enemy of Grandpa Anarchy). Almost immediately I rewrote it so that Grandpa Anarchy also dies and is resurrected in another clone body. I had Grandpa pose as Miss Anarchy, and then tried to write a story in which Julia Judas kidnapped her. This story I called <i>Orphan White</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>This didn't work, and I backtracked and rewrote several stories, ending with the new Miss Anarchy leaving for a short adventure in space with her two great granddaughters Elsie and Kelli. I then wrote two stories that were to take place after those space adventure stories, which again involved Julia Judas trying to adopt the new Miss Anarchy and gain control of the Anarchy Estate. These were <i>Mother's Treasure</i> and <i>Trust Mother</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>These stories were frankly terrible, and I decided to set them aside and forget about them, and instead focus on a series of space adventures. The idea all along was that Miss Anarchy would spend some time in space with her great granddaughters, and then show up for the premier of the movie <i>The Girls of Two-Fisted Justice</i>, which was a live action movie based on the cartoon show, starring Miss Anarchy of course. This was meant to happen in just a couple of weeks, so the adventures in space were meant to take about two weeks.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Space Adventures:</b> However, I had so many weird ideas about what might happen that I just began writing whatever crazy idea popped into my head. What if Miss Anarchy decided to remain a girl? What if she married the actress who plays her in the movie? What if she were adopted by Julia Judas after all -- not as part of an evil plot, but as an above-board arrangement and cover story? What if Annie Two created a robot Grandpa Anarchy as another cover story? What if Eternia the Watcher -- an alien with godlike powers -- owed Grandpa Anarchy a favor, and Miss Anarchy decided to use it to change the past? What if, because of that, she has a mysterious rival/enemy that she doesn't even know about, because we're now dealing with two different histories? What if Miss Anarchy were a magical girl? What if a ghost from her past who has haunted her for many years, can finally be seen only because she's now a girl?</p><p><br /></p><p>Obviously some of this worked, some of it didn't, and some of it came from so far out in left field that it felt like I needed to backtrack and establish some things before it all made sense. (Some of it I haven't bothered to write at all.) I wrote a story called <i>Just Like Miss Anarchy</i> which involved the actress Catherine McDowell showing up on the station, but then I backtracked and wrote a different story called <i>Mating Ritual</i>. I wrote a series of stories that all took place on the Space Babes space station, and I'd planned several more. There was a story file called <i>Beauty Treatment</i>, about the mothers of Elsie and Kelli showing up on the station. Another is called <i>Becoming the Story</i>, about a reporter who is on the station to do a story on Miss Anarchy. There's <i>Ghost</i>, which was the idea that the ghost of a girl who died many years ago suddenly appears to Miss Anarchy (her death is mentioned in another story, it involves one of Grandpa's adoptive sons). There's a half-completed story called <i>True Colors</i> which takes place directly after <i>Revenge</i>, and also involves a magic ring that shows up in another story, so I kind of have to write it. Lastly, there's <i>Noticeable One</i>, which is a very long story involving a Miss Anarchy stalker trying to kill her. I wrote some good stuff for that but I may never complete it.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>But What About the Space Adventures? </b>I reached a point where I'd written at least ten stories which took place in space, but only one of them was an actual space adventure. The others were things that happened <i>on </i>the space station, but didn't involve Miss Anarchy, Elsie, Kelli and Trinity doing what they were supposedly there to do. In late May/early June I backtracked to try and fix this problem, and I wrote a series of stories in June and July that involved the four of them actually going on missions to other planets. These stories were <i>Buttercup, Chaos Theory, Amaranthine Shores, The Spice of Life, Good Vibrations, Woofy</i>, and <i>Optimal Performance</i>. By the time I had all of these stories written (and had reworked them several times), I felt much better about the whole "space adventure" part of the narrative.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>The Miss Anarchy and Cat Conundrum: </b> My biggest problem, however, was explaining why Grandpa Anarchy would decide to remain Miss Anarchy and marry Cat (the actress from the movie). This happened in the story <i>Mating Ritual</i>, and I'd written a story called <i>Afterglow</i> that was meant to explain why Miss Anarchy would agree to the new status quo, but it really didn't work at all. I'd written myself so far past that point -- seven additional stories that took place afterwards -- that I really didn't want to walk it back. But also it needed to make sense, and I could tell that it didn't. For a long time, I couldn't really figure out a way to make it work.</p><p><br /></p><p>While working through my Miss Anarchy conundrum, I worked on a story idea with the temporary title of <i>Marry Her</i> that was supposed to bridge this gap between <i>Mating Ritual</i> and <i>Afterglow</i>. Eventually I spun two stories out of this file, <i>For One Night</i>, that dealt with Miss Anarchy's struggles over her relationship with Cat, and <i>Stranger Danger</i>, based on the idea that if Grandpa did become Miss Anarchy, then surely Miss Anarchy had travelled into the past to warn Grandpa Anarchy about things. But when I finished both of these stories, I was no closer to a workable resolution.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Four POV Stories:</b> I considered writing a story from Cat's point of view to explain why she was in love with Grandpa/Miss Anarchy. Around this time I also felt like I wasn't getting into the heads of Elsie, Kelli and Trinity like I wanted to, so I plotted four stories, one from each of their points of view. <i>Cat's Story</i> was the one about Cat (obviously). <i>Honey Bottom</i> was the one about Elsie (her name for the demon Hanubatum whom she's contracted with). <i>Nova Child</i> was the one about Kelli -- unlike Elsie she didn't inherit a ring from her great grandmother, but she leans more heavily to the Nova side of the family and the Space Babes. The last one would be <i>Core Program</i>, which would explore how Trinity thinks and how she relates to Annie Two, if they are in fact separate entities. I really want to write these stories, they could prove very interesting, but so far they're just ideas.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>The Anarchy Verse: </b> I also created a story file called <i>Strange Girls</i>, which was another attempt to explain or work through the whole <i>Grandpa Anarchy becomes Miss Anarchy</i> thing. It included a conversation between Miss Anarchy and Kelli. I briefly considered having everyone travel back in time to meet Sappho of Lesbos -- mostly just because it sounded like a fun idea, I didn't have a good plot built around it yet, but the file also includes everything I wrote on that. Around this time I also wanted to create a multiverse crossover in the style of <i>Into the Spiderverse</i>, and I began coming up with alternate-universe Anarchy people. I used the <i>Strange Girls</i> file to write all of this down. The cartoon Miss Anarchy would be one, of course, but also I imagined a Victorian Gothic Miss Anarchy, a post-apocalypse Mad Max-style Anarchy, a universe where Old Man Anarchy is a black man from Chicago, and even a cartoon universe with an Anarchy Aardvark.</p><p><br /></p><p>I didn't necessarily have a plot for all of this, but one of my wilder ideas was that the Mad Max Grandpa Anarchy from the Post-Apocalypse universe would decide to stay in this universe and become the <i>new</i> Grandpa Anarchy, since Miss Anarchy no longer was. I might still do this, because the idea of a Grandpa Anarchy who has spent most of his life in an apocalyptic wasteland, and knows nothing of modern society, appeals to me. In any case, I eventually decided to handle each alternate universe separately, in a chain of four stories, which I titled <i>Into the Time Slip, In Another Dimension, The Void Would Be Calling</i>, and <i>Fantasy Free Me</i>. Who knows when or if I'll write these though.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Other Story Ideas: </b>Other story ideas that I came up with in the last two months include a story in which Black Dahlia and company summon Cthulhu to get his autograph (which, I decided would be fun to do since Cthulhu is in public domain). That was titled <i>Sign Here Please</i>. Working from the same idea, I decided that a Barsoom crossover would be fun since that's also public domain, so I created a file called <i>Pauline, Maid of Mars</i>. I wanted Miss Anarchy to try and change the culture of the Space Babes, now that she's an official representative of them, so I created a story file called <i>Exploitation Station</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>I thought Miss Anarchy might talk to the fairy princess version of her (Princess Paulina of Lialoshi), who had previously wished to replace Grandpa Anarchy, and see if she still wanted the job, only to find out she no longer wants it. For this idea I created a file called <i>Take My Life Please</i>. I came across the name of a Nazi villain that Sgt. Anarchy fought in World War II, The Angel of the Iron Cross, and I thought it would be fun to bring her back to life. I created another story file called <i>Time Angel</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>Obviously, I'm much better at creating story files than I am at completing stories, or ensuring that each story follows the next in a logical order. But this past week, I came up with a way to explain why Miss Anarchy would chose to remain Miss Anarchy. It makes sense for the character and it was far more simple than I'd imagined. This story is <i>What I Am</i>, which I've been working on all week and hope to finish this weekend.</p><p><br /></p>Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-48867375629677141702021-07-13T21:39:00.001-07:002021-07-13T21:46:03.754-07:00Camp NaNoWriMo -- Update for July<p> I'm participating in Camp NaNoWriMo for July, even though no one else I know is doing it (apparently) and even though for some reason I almost always fail July's Camp NaNoWriMo. Writing in July seems hard for me.</p><p><br /></p><p>Anyway, I started out working on a story I called <i>Buttercup</i>, which was meant to be an introduction story to the space adventures arc. This is where we meet their spaceship, and introduce more properly the idea that we're going on a series of space adventures with these characters. I'd been working on this story idea for much of June, but I finally managed to finish it this past week, after working on it a bit the first two days of July and then failing to write anything for several days.</p><p>After this, I managed to write another story called <i>Chaos Theory</i> which happens right after <i>Buttercup</i>, and I guess it works okay. I had yet a third idea for a story called <i>Baby Sat</i>, but I don't think I will write that at this point. I might come back to it as it seemed like a fun idea, but for now I figured the actual space adventures should follow.</p><p><br /></p><p>I spent the other night reworking the order of all of my space stories -- I'd "filled in" gaps in the numbered order of stories several times and consequently my numbering order no longer made any sense, with two, three, even four stories sharing the same story number at different points. Here's what I came up with:</p><p><br /></p><p><b>423 All I Ever Wanted</b></p><p><b>424 My Clone Sleeps Alone</b></p><p><b>425 Buttercup</b></p><p><b>426 Chaos Theory</b></p><p><b>427 Girl Squared</b></p><p><b>428 Amaranthine Shores</b></p><p><b>429 The Spice of Life</b></p><p><b>430 Good Vibrations (unfinished)</b></p><p><b>431 Woofy (unfinished)</b></p><p><b>432 Wrong Number</b></p><p><b>433 Endorsement</b></p><p><b>434 Optimal Performance</b></p><p><b>435 Transformations</b></p><p><b>436 Doomscrolling</b></p><p><b>437 Frills and Bows</b></p><p><b>438 Mating Ritual</b></p><p><b>439 Marry Her (unfinished)</b></p><p><b>440 Afterglow</b></p><p><b>441 My Own Daughter</b></p><p><b>442 Ambassador</b></p><p><b>443 Real Girl</b></p><p><b>444 Hate Crime</b></p><p><b>445 Academy</b></p><p><b>446 Revenge</b></p><p><b>447 Powerslave</b></p><p><br /></p><p>Unfinished Stories that I still plan to write:</p><p><br /></p><p><b>450 Ghost</b></p><p><b>450 Beauty Treatment</b></p><p><b>450 Becoming the Story</b></p><p><b>450 Kitten</b></p><p><b>450 Noticeable One</b></p><p><b>450 True Colors</b></p><p><b><br /></b></p><p>Right now I'm working on <i>Good Vibrations</i>, which is a space adventure story that I should have no problems finishing by tomorrow or the next day. I plan to finish <i>Woofy</i> after that, and then tackle one or two stories for which <i>Marry Her</i> is the current stand-in -- stories that help set up the marriage to Cat better. Then, we'll see.</p>Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-50619999003245192132021-06-15T19:58:00.001-07:002021-06-15T20:01:13.032-07:00June 2021<p> </p><p>I've written very little this month, and I haven't been happy with what I've written. In fact, I don't think I've completed a story in June. That said, I'm still ahead of my goal for the year. I've written 30 stories so far in 2021, and that's more than one a week.</p><p><br /></p><p>Yesterday and today I was in a situation where computer problems prevented me from doing very much at work, and as a consequence, I read through a bunch of my stories from earlier in the year -- starting with story 410, <i>It's Complicated</i>, and reading through to story 424 <i>My Clone Sleeps Alone</i>, so 14 stories total. These encompass some random tales of Grandpa Anarchy working with Glory Ashes as they confront various villains, and then I start stringing together stories that are related and clearly follow one after the other. Mostly I think these stories hold up well, and tell a coherent story arc. There's <i>I, Gardener</i> and <i>Maid Ex Machina</i>, which deal with two of the new robotic members of the Anarchy Mansion (I had always planned a third one which I still haven't written). Then comes <i>Infinite Dojo</i>, <i>Princess of Pluto</i>, and <i>The Return of Normal</i>, all of which more or less work I think. These cover the new complex beneath the Anarchy Cave, Magical Girl Anne Arqui and the palace on Pluto, and the resurrection of St. Normal.</p><p><br /></p><p>After that we have three more stories that lead to Miss Anarchy and her great-granddaughters winding up in space, and a series of stories that happen while they're in space. Here is where I've had problems the last few months.</p><p><br /></p><p>First, I felt that the stories at this point become less episodic and more random, even though they all happen in space. I had wanted to write a series of space adventure stories, but I'd only managed one, <i>Girl Squared</i>, followed by a bunch of weirder and more esoteric stories (which, I like some of these stories but I felt like there wasn't a thread connecting them all together.)</p><p><br /></p><p>Second, I had written a story in which Miss Anarchy gets married and decides to stay a girl, and it felt like I really hadn't set all of that up well at all, so it really didn't make sense.</p><p><br /></p><p>Thus in May I first tried to backpedal and "fill in the blanks" a bit, and come up with one or more stories to help explain/set up where I was going with the marriage better... then I backpedalled further to pen a few simple space adventures to take place before things get weirder. Ultimately I plotted some stories that never really got off the ground, and I managed to write two "space adventure" stories that I guess are okay, and I half-wrote three others -- <i>Uncanny Valley, Woofy</i>, and <i>Good Vibrations</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>My story numbering is out of whack because I want the space adventure stories (some of which I'm still trying to write) to take place at the start of their adventures in space, and then I want to write 1-2 stories that take place between Mating Ritual and Afterglow to help set that plotline up better. Once I get those stories written, I can renumber all of my completed stories.</p><p><br /></p><p>Anyway, here's what I've written in 2021:</p><p><br /></p><p><b>413 I Swear</b></p><p><b>414 Collateral Damage</b></p><p><b>415 I, Gardener</b></p><p><b>416 Maid Ex Machina</b></p><p><b>417 Infinite Dojo</b></p><p><b>418 Princess of Pluto</b></p><p><b>419 The Return of Normal</b></p><p><b>042 Hot Stuff</b></p><p><b>420 Get Down Tonight</b></p><p><b>421 Free Advertising</b></p><p><b>422 Inevitable</b></p><p><b>423 All I Ever Wanted</b></p><p><b>424 My Clone Sleeps Alone</b></p><p><b>425 Girl Squared</b></p><p><b>426 Wrong Number</b></p><p><b>427 Doomscrolling</b></p><p><b>428 Endorsement</b></p><p><b>429 Transformations</b></p><p><b>430 Frills and Bows</b></p><p><b>431 Mating Ritual</b></p><p><b>432 Afterglow</b></p><p><b>433 My Own Daughter</b></p><p><b>434 Ambassador</b></p><p><b>435 Real Girl</b></p><p><b>436 Academy</b></p><p><b>437 Hate Crime</b></p><p><b>438 Revenge</b></p><p><b>440 Powerslave</b></p><p><b>426 Amaranthine Shores</b></p><p><b>427 The Spice of Life</b></p><p><br /></p><p>"Space Adventure" stories that I'm currently trying to work on: <i>Good Vibrations, Woofy, Nova</i>, and <i>Uncanny Valley</i>. And then <i>Becoming Anarchy/Marry He</i>r.</p><p><br /></p><p>Other stories I plan to write very soon: <i>Ghost, Kitten</i>, possibly <i>Frienemies</i>, <i>Becoming the Story</i> and <i>Noticeable One.</i></p><p><br /></p><div><br /></div><p><br /></p>Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-36580646115860844652021-05-06T20:32:00.002-07:002021-05-06T20:39:08.066-07:00May 2021 Writing Update<p> Stories Written For April:</p><p><br /></p><p><b>434 Ambassador</b></p><p><b>435 Real Girl</b></p><p><b>436 Academy</b></p><p><b>437 Hate Crime</b></p><p><b>438 Revenge</b></p><p><b>440 Powerslave</b></p><p><br /></p><p>Stories I'm working on:</p><p><br /></p><p><b>True Colors</b></p><p><b>Noticeable One</b></p><p><b>Frienimies</b></p><p><b>Becoming the Story</b></p><p><b>Beauty Treatment</b></p><p><b>Entourage</b></p><p><br /></p><p>I feel a sort of ennui about my writing the last few months, as if I don't really know where I'm taking my characters or whether any of it is worth reading. Initially my plan was to greatly expand the number of robotic helpers that worked with Grandpa Anarchy -- and this seemed like an interesting direction to take things. This was building on stories I'd already written -- <i>The Emancipation of Philip Dos</i>, <i>Wilfred 2.0</i>, and <i>Miss Trinity</i>. I wrote<i> I, Gardener</i>, <i>Maid Ex Machina</i>, <i>Infinite Dojo</i> and <i>Princess of Pluto</i>. Halfway through doing this, I came up with a plan to resurrect an old villain of Grandpa's named Victorian Honesty St. Normal, a mad scientist he'd fought in the early 1920's, and this became <i>The Return of Normal</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>In writing these stories, I decided that killing Grandpa Anarchy would be a fun way to end the above story -- and resurrecting him in the clone body of his sidekick would be funny. This led to Grandpa posing as Miss Anarchy for a short time -- thus my stories <i>Free Advertising</i> and <i>Inevitable</i>. But then things took a sharp right turn again when I decided to take Miss Anarchy and her two great-granddaughters into space, with <i>All I Ever Wanted</i>, <i>My Clone Sleeps Alone</i>, <i>Girl Squared</i>, W<i>rong Number</i>, <i>Doomscrolling</i>, <i>Endorsement</i>, <i>Transformations</i>, and<i> Frills and Bows</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>My plan was always to have a series of pulp space adventures involving Miss Anarchy, Elsie, Kelli, and Miss Trinity. But the actual stories I wrote did not always match what I'd envisioned -- and then things took another right turn when I wrote <i>Mating Ritual</i>, <i>Afterglow</i>, and <i>My Own Daughter</i>, which involved Miss Anarchy suddenly getting married and deciding to stay as she was for the time being.</p><p><br /></p><p>This is where I was at the start of April. I participated in Camp NaNoWriMo for April, and I wrote 20,000 words. Originally my plan was 25,000 but I reduced it when I felt I was too far behind to catch up. 20,000 words in a month is pretty easy for me to manage.</p><p><br /></p><p>I managed to finish the above six stories, but I also wrote a bit on <i>True Colors</i> and <i>Noticeable One</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>True Colors</b> is meant to come immediately after <i>Revenge</i>, which is why my numbering is a bit off. In fact, <i>Revenge</i> was originally meant to be a part of <i>True Colors</i>, until I spun it off into its own story. Dark Dr. Dark and other members of the <i>New League of Two-Fisted Justice</i> come to space to create a photo op in which they pose as members of the <i>Girls of Two-Fisted Justice</i>. I had two ideas for what might happen here: Dark Dr. Dark helps Miss Anarchy investigate the wizard who is trying to kill her, and Cat does a sort of proposal when she presents Miss Anarchy with a magical ring. I spun the first part into its own story; the second part was based on the idea that Dark Dr. Dark has a magical ring made that allows him to easily become a girl for just long enough to pose for the photo; Cat takes the opportunity to have another ring made which she gives to Miss Anarchy which allows her to temporarily become Grandpa Anarchy again. The theory behind this is that Grandpa Anarchy might need to travel into the past to warn his past self about something.</p><p><br /></p><p>When I considered all of this, several different ideas popped into my head:</p><p><br /></p><p>1. The ending of the photo op story really needs to involve everyone having to fight a criminal or have an adventure as their Girls of Two-Fisted Justice alternate selves;</p><p><br /></p><p>2. The ending of the magic ring story would probably involve it's immediate use to warn some version of Grandpa Anarchy from the past about something -- for some reason which I forget now, I thought it would be hilarious if Grandpa had to warn a prehistoric / cave-man version of himself about the future;</p><p><br /></p><p>3. Now that I consider things, Grandpa (or Miss Anarchy) might have already warned Grandpa about a future in which he becomes Miss Anarchy and marries an actress. And/or Grandpa may have been warned about the future from a young Miss Anarchy who has forgotten to put on the ring, and then does so halfway through the encounter, cluing him in to part of the future accidentally.</p><p><br /></p><p>Some of this probably stems from the idea that I haven't handled the entire <i>Grandpa Anarchy becomes Miss Anarchy and marries Cat </i>change-of-direction as well as I'd like, so I feel like I should go back and write one or two more stories to flesh out the idea better. (I also want to go back and write 1-2 stories that involve Miss Anarchy/Elsie/Kelli/Miss Trinity having more space adventures, before all of the other stuff happens.)</p><p><b>Noticeable One</b> is the story I was working on at the beginning of April, but it was turning into a much longer story than my usual. I wrote several scenes, and I want to finish it, but it's a bigger undertaking than my normal story so I set it aside for the moment. It may actually be a 15,000 or 20,000 word story, by the time I finish it.</p><p><br /></p><p>Also, the story <i>Academy </i>might possibly spawn several sequels. Eternia the Watcher creates a specialized high school that has already existed a dozen years. Miss Anarchy has attended several years, retroactively. Possibly Elsie and Kelli have retroactively attended. Miss Anarchy has friends and enemies that she's made during her time at the school, that she knows nothing about. There are a lot of fun things I can do with this, which so far are just ideas, but that's what the file <i>Frienimies</i> is about. But there are probably 2-3 stories to be written here.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>Hate Crime </i>is my long-anticipated third shaggy dog story from the Electric Bluejay. (The other two were <i>Hurricane Punch</i> and <i>Time Trip</i>, both of which I wrote in 2017.) I may write a fourth -- I at least jotted down an idea for another. <i>Powerslave</i> is a silly story about travelling back in time to watch an Iron Maiden concert, which Cat wants to do. I think both of these stories were things I came up with to avoid trying to figure out the next story in my more complicated series of interlocking stories -- these were both one-off stories that didn't really depend on What Has Come Before.</p><p><br /></p><p>Anyway, that's about it. Like usual I barely managed to finish my NaNoWriMo goals, and then I immediately took a break from writing.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-71588079298709331172021-03-24T19:37:00.010-07:002021-03-24T19:53:11.094-07:00The End of Grandpa Anarchy!<p style="text-align: center;"> Stories that I have written since last week:</p><p><br /></p><p><b>430 Frills and Bows</b></p><p><b>431 Mating Ritual</b></p><p><b>432 Afterglow</b></p><p><b>433 My Own Daughter</b></p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">Stories that I still plan to write:</p><p><b>Noticeable One:</b> This has been my "next story that I write" for nearly a week now, and I keep thinking of other things to write instead. This is the current version of my long-anticipated "Miss Anarchy in popular media / Miss Anarchy is insanely popular" story. I have an opening written, which I probably need to cut down, and I have an idea for someone to assassinate Miss Anarchy (which... just means she's resurrected -- but it's during an interview so it's shocking). Right now my problem is that I haven't figured out how this ends, where it's going, what is the central theme (other than Miss Anarchy is really popular and this also means many people hate her.)</p><p><b>Becoming the Story:</b> Part of what I wrote two weeks ago for the opening of <i>Noticeable One</i> includes two newscasters joking about how much money it would take for the male newscaster to allow himself to be transformed into a young girl as has happened for Miss Anarchy. It was mostly written as a scene to demonstrate that people are talking about Miss Anarchy and she's a big news item, but I struggled to figure out how to fit it into a story where it wasn't just filler that extended the story for no good purpose. Then one day I thought, what if the male newscaster jokes about becoming a girl, in a way that makes it clear he would never want that, and then you immediately cut to a scene where he's begging Miss Anarchy for help in doing exactly that? He tries to pitch it as a way to get an "inside scoop" on the Miss Anarchy story, a way for him to become a part of the story process -- but really, he'd just rather be a woman. And maybe also his female cohost would rather be a man?</p><p>As you can see, this idea is kind of entwined with <i>Noticeable One</i>, since they'd take place at roughly the same time.</p><p><b>True Colors:</b> In this story, Dark Dr. Dark, Circuit Girl, Sister Fryer and Unpossible Girl show up on the space station where Miss Anarchy is in order to assemble a group <i>Girls of Two-Fisted Justice</i> photo. With Miss Anarchy, it is nearly possible to assemble a full team of girl heroes like the ones in the cartoon. Of course, not everyone is as young as fourteen, and Sister Fryer would have to cosplay as the girl equivalent of her dead uncle, but it mostly works. The only exception being Dark Dr. Dark, who would use a magic ring to temporarily become Dark Sister Dark. Also, they don't have a little girl to play Little Nina Ballerina, but there was a contest among fans and the winner will get transformed into Little Nina and will be part of the photo, and will probably wind up at many future promotional events should they opt to stay a little girl.</p><p>All of that is background material for the real story, which involves Dark Dr. Dark and Miss Anarchy trying to determine who the sorcerer is trying to capture and curse Grandpa Anarchy.</p><p><b>Beauty Treatment:</b> I have an idea where Elsie and Kelli's mothers show up. These are Grandpa Anarchy's granddaughters, and they generally don't approve of all of this silly superhero business. I still think I'll write this one but it's not an earthshattering idea.</p><p><b>Spirit Animal:</b> Earlier this week I had an idea for a body swap story. This would be an adventure in space story, where my cast of characters encounters a kind of blink dog / blink beast animal who has a peculiar defensive trait whereby when it's trapped or scared it can swap bodies with people -- the idea being that it swaps through several bodies and then back to it's own, leaving behind a bunch of people (or predators) in different bodies and completely confused.</p><p>I wrote a little bit about the beast for this story, but I quickly realized that this would never work. All of my characters at the moment are young women -- not very different from each other physically. Most are related. What makes a body swap story fun is taking people that are very different from each other and putting them in each other's shoes (and bodies) to see what happens. In my version of the story, there seemed to be very little that could happen that would be funny or interesting. I briefly considered having Miss Anarchy comment on why this entire body swap situation made for a bad story, but that alone did not make for a better story. :P</p><p><b>Shadow:</b> Catherine McDowell spent several weeks following Grandpa Anarchy around, about two years ago, as preparation for playing Miss Anarchy in the movie. Although Catherine is a lesbian, she grew very fond of Grandpa Anarchy and even surprised him with a kiss at the end. All of this is backstory which sets up the events in stories I've written recently, <i>Mating Ritual</i> and <i>Afterglow</i>, but I realized actually crafting a story around that earlier time would be a very good idea. If I write it, I will place it in an earlier book of stories so that it fits chronologically with when it happens.</p><p><b>Woofy: </b> Possibly titled <i>Woofy Drumdik</i>, this one is a silly idea. Jennie Nova speaks in a nearly incoherent spacer slang (space surfer slang actually, which I originally used for the Bronze Beach Bum) which is composed of multiple slang words that I've borrowed from science fiction books, interspersed with slang terms that I created myself. Elsie has been imitating her second cousin in using a lot of this slang, and when it gets to be too incomprehensible, Miss Anarchy tries to retaliate by overindulging in 1920's flapper slang.</p><p><b>Uncanny Valley: </b> I want to write another space adventure that involves a valley that is almost, but not quite, real.</p><p><b>A Better Tomorrow:</b> I don't really have an idea attached to this one, but I like it as a story title.</p><p><b>Real Girl:</b> I keep expecting to write this story soon. When I planned it, I had just finished story # 419, <i>The Return of Normal</i>, and I envisioned a series of several stories, with <i>Real Girl </i>happening at maybe story 425. Then I bumped it up to 428, 430, and finally designated it story # 437X, because I have no idea when I'll get it. The basic idea of the story remains unchanged.</p><p><b>Entourage:</b> Since this story was viewed as one of the "end" stories for this long arc I've been working on -- the point which the movie <i>Girls of Two-Fisted Justice </i>gets its premier -- I have yet to be on the verge of writing it -- it's always some distance in the future. But I had originally planned to write it after a series of maybe six other stories, and instead I've written 13 so far with several more planned.</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">Stories that I will likely never write:</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Just Like Miss Anarchy:</b> This was meant to document the rise in popularity of Miss Anarchy as the real-life version continues to fight crime and have adventures. Ultimately, all of the ideas I had for this story are elements that appear in the other stories I've written; there's no story at the center of this idea that needs to be told.</p><p><b>We Meet Again:</b> This was never more than an idea, and it wasn't a good one. I don't plan to ever write this.</p><p><b>Custody Battle:</b> Yeah, I won't be writing this one either. It was an idea whose time never actually came.</p><p><b>Trust Mother:</b> This was a "Miss Anarchy gets kidnapped and adopted against her will by Julia Judas, in an attempt to control the Anarchy estate/Anarchy fortune" story. The timeline of events that I wrote instead made this entire idea obsolete.</p><p><b>Mother's Treasure: </b> I actually did write this one, and it sucked, and I went in a completely different direction that meant I didn't even bother to rewrite this.</p><p><b>Orphan White:</b> I think this one was replaced by <i>All I Ever Wanted</i>, but it's another story that I wrote completely and then immediately discarded.</p><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">The End of Grandpa Anarchy?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">All of these stories revolve around a central premise. The wildly popular cartoon show <i>Girls of Two-Fisted Justice</i> has been around for several years. It features Grandpa Anarchy and his companions in the <i>League of Two-Fisted Justice</i> as a team of fourteen-year-old girl heroes.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I wrote the original story <i>Girls of Two-Fisted Justice</i> in 2015, so we can imagine that Girls of Two-Fisted Justice came out in 2016 and has been running for five years. It was story # 169, and I'm up over 430 stories now. A lot of things have changed since I wrote that story. Nina Ballerina had already quit the group, but was included anyway (that part is in the story). Deep Fat Fryer is dead -- his niece Sister Fryer took his place. Unpossible Man is now Unpossible Girl (she asked a godlike being to transform her into her <i>Girls of Two-Fisted Justice</i> counterpart). The <i>League of Two-Fisted Justice</i> was replaced by the much larger <i>New League of Two-Fisted Justice</i>, with multiple new members including Circuit Girl, Geothermal Jenny, Guy Shadow, and Girlbot 9000. They all join in the story <i>No Surprises</i>, and it's strongly suggested that they will all be given counterparts in the<i> Girls of Two-Fisted Justic</i>e cartoon.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The central premise of my current stories is that Grandpa Anarchy winds up as a girl by accident, but decides to spend the time fighting crime as Miss Anarchy, the character from the cartoon. The live-action movie is due to release in a month and Mal is keen on getting any extra advertising in that he can. Over a series of stories, Miss Anarchy is transformed into a more accurate version of her cartoon counterpart; she complains a bit but also decides to stick with it until the movie premier; she adventures with her two great granddaughters, who are now 15 and 16 respectively (while Miss Anarchy is meant to be 14, so she is kind of the junior member of the trio).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I had planned to write a series of six or so stories along these lines, but as I went along I began to accept that it would be a longer series of stories, all featuring Miss Anarchy instead of Grandpa Anarchy. At various times I had plans to magically create a version of Grandpa Anarchy that was separate from Miss Anarchy, so that both could exist at the same time -- or maybe I wouldn't do that, and Miss Anarchy would go back to being Grandpa in the end.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Then I wrote several stories where Miss Anarchy falls in love and decides to remain a girl, and the question becomes can I continue to write Grandpa Anarchy stories without a Grandpa Anarchy?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Mind you, another Grandpa Anarchy might still appear. At the moment we have a stand-in robot named Grandpa Anarchy II. But I am contemplating writing an extended series of stories focused on Miss Anarchy and her companions, with little or no involvement of an actual Grandpa Anarchy. I don't think there's anything that says I can't pull that off at least as well as everything I've written up to this point, and technically Miss Anarchy is<i> still </i>the oldest active hero around, even if she's also a teenager.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-31931980556847098172021-03-18T21:19:00.004-07:002021-03-18T21:32:58.476-07:00Mid March Update<p>Stories I've written in 2021:</p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><b>413<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I Swear</b></p><p><b style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;">414<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Collateral Damage</b></p><p><b style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;">415 I, Gardener</b></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><b>416 Maid Ex Machina</b></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><b>417 Infinite Dojo</b></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><b>418 Princess of Pluto</b></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><b style="font-size: 14.85px;">419 The Return of Normal</b></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><b>042 Hot Stuff</b></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><b>420 Get Down Tonight</b></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><b>421 Free Advertising</b></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><b>422 Inevitable</b></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><b>423 All I Ever Wanted</b></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><b>424 My Clone Sleeps Alone</b></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><b>425 Girl Squared</b></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><b>426 Wrong Number</b></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><b>427 Doomscrolling</b></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><b>428 Endorsement</b></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><b>429 Transformations</b></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><b>430 Frills and Bows</b></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;">Stories that I think I am working on:</p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><b style="font-size: 14.85px;">431 Noticeable One</b></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><b style="font-size: 14.85px;">432 Beauty Treatment</b></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><b>433 True Colors</b></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><b>??? Just Like Miss Anarchy</b></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><b style="font-size: 14.85px;">??? Trust Mother</b></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><b>??? Real Girl</b></p><p><br /></p><p>So obviously, I'm doing much better than my goal of one story a week. I wrote a lot of stories at the end of February -- at least 5 or 6 in the span of about two weeks. I didn't exactly follow the "Bolt from the Blue" vision I had last month where I plotted an entire group of stories in my sleep -- but that's okay, the whole experience still sparked me into writing a bunch of new stories anyway. Sometimes the ideas I have for stories don't actually work out, but I manage to come up with something else that does work.</p><p><br /></p><p>I rewrote <i>The Return of Normal</i> and <i>Free Advertising</i> and <i>Inevitable</i>, and then I came up with the stories <i>All I Ever Wanted</i>, <i>My Clone Sleeps Alone</i>, <i>Girl Squared</i>, <i>Wrong Number</i>, <i>Doomscrolling</i>, and <i>Endorsement</i>. The first three fit into my plan for Miss Anarchy to go out in space and have adventures with her two great granddaughters Elsie and Kelli. <i>Wrong Number</i> was a spontaneous idea I had that started with Miss Anarchy complaining to Mal about <i>still</i> being Miss Anarchy. <i>Doomscrolling</i> evolved from a half-finished story involving the Holy Terror, which I adapted for an outer space adventure. I had plans to do this for two or three existing story ideas, but this is the one that I managed to write.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>Endorsement </i>was a new random idea that popped into my head, but stemmed from more stuff I'd written about Miss Anarchy becoming more popular and getting new advertising offers.</p><p><br /></p><p>At this point, I had plans to write: </p><p><br /></p><p>* A story about the <i>Girls of Two-Fisted Justice</i> fan club and how popular Miss Anarchy suddenly is. This was my <i>Just Like Miss Anarchy</i> story idea.</p><p>* A story where the mothers of Elsie and Kelli show up in space. This was <i>Beauty Treatment, </i>which I still plan to write.</p><p> * A story in which several members of the <i>New League of Two-Fisted Justice</i> arrive for a <i>Girls of Two-Fisted Justice</i> photo shoot (possibly with a group of journalists from earth). This might be <i>Noticeable One</i>, or maybe <i>True Colors</i>, or I don't know yet. I have a lot of things in my head that I want to happen, but what makes a good story may be something entirely different.</p><p>* Possibly one more adventures in space story involving Miss Anarchy, Elsie, and Kelli. I had plans to adapt one or two old story ideas/prompts called <i>Uncanny Valley</i> and <i>Every Alien Loves Shakespeare</i>, and <i>Transhumanist</i>.</p><p>* Eventually, the story <i>Trust Mother</i>, which involves an attempt by Julia Judas to kidnap/adopt Miss Anarchy and gain control of the Anarchy estate</p><p>* Followed by <i>Real Girl</i>, in which the robot Magical Girl Anne is transformed into a human girl</p><p>* And finally, <i>Entourage</i>, which happens at the opening of the Girls of Two-Fisted Justice movie</p><p>* Oh, and I never wrote <i>I Think Therefor</i>. I have plans to write that one too.</p><p><br /></p><p>Plus I feel like I should mention, March is <i>Magical March</i>, the month where people on the internet draw magical girls with a theme for each day of the month. In 2018 I wrote a story for each day of the month, using the theme for that day, and I had fun doing that. I tried to do this again last year and I only managed the first three stories, but I had plans to try and finish that project this year. Obviously, I blew that idea off this month because I'm in the middle of a different group of stories at the moment.</p><p><br /></p><p>I really felt like I needed to write <i>Just Like Miss Anarchy</i> next -- the story about the growing popularity of Miss Anarchy and how the fan club was reacting to daily videos of her exploits. Only, the more I tried to turn this into a story, the more obvious it became that there was no story there to work with. Where's the surprise? Where's the twist? We already know Miss Anarchy is becoming incredibly popular and the fans are growing more rabid. At this point, this idea may never turn into a story.</p><p><br /></p><p>I thought, what else could they do? Maybe there's a convention coming up -- one being held virtually. Maybe they want Miss Anarchy to appear at the con, virtually, from many light years away. Maybe they use magic to make that work.</p><p><br /></p><p>I came up with a list of things that might happen at a con or that they might give away to fans, and... none of it really sparked any actual story ideas. Meanwhile, other ideas were going through my head, so I eventually tried to assemble them into a story called <i>Noticeable One</i>. I had some scenes of news reporters talking about Miss Anarchy, I had some dialog between Miss Anarchy and Mal where Miss Anarchy complains about being stuck as a girl again. But it also seemed to me that I'd played on this idea too much, so I also wrote a bit where she explains to her great granddaughters that she just likes to complain, she isn't trapped, she's doing this of her own free will, etc.</p><p><br /></p><p>Somewhere in the middle of this I had a new idea to have the actress that plays Miss Anarchy in the upcoming movie to show up at the space station they're at. They've already greenlit a sequel, and she wants to follow the "real" Miss Anarchy around for a while. And I thought, what if she shows up and immediately kisses Miss Anarchy? I liked that idea, and I tried to make it a surprise ending for my story, but even as I assembled the story I realized that there was no central thread or idea to the story, nothing to hold it together, just some scenes strung together with a random ending that really had nothing to do with what came before and didn't really count as a surprise or twist ending, because it just comes out of left field and isn't all that shocking.</p><p><br /></p><p>I finished the story anyway, but then almost immediately after, I began to tear it apart. I'd also come up with the idea partway through this story that Elsie, as Hellfire Lass, is essentially a demon, and might be able to possess Miss Anarchy and transform her back into Grandpa Anarchy. I'd even written that into the story, but didn't actually have her do it, because if Grandpa Anarchy appears again, based on the events in <i>Wrong Number</i> he'd be summoned by a wizard who is searching for him to curse him.</p><p><br /></p><p>But I realized I can't bring that idea up and <i>no</i>t do it. The entire idea that Miss Anarchy might want to become Grandpa Anarchy again, but is afraid of this wizard, and hasn't told this to Elsie and Kelli, and Elsie might spontaneously decide to demonstrate that she can transform Miss Anarchy in this way if she chooses to -- <i>that </i>was the story. Of course, this meant the wizard would locate Grandpa, and I had to figure out how Grandpa Anarchy would avoid being cursed, and I realized, what if the wizard summons Grandpa while the demon still possesses his body? Does he have Grandpa, or a powerful demon?</p><p><br /></p><p>So I rewrote the entire story the same day. I removed the news reporter bits, and the ending with the actress showing up, and focused the story entirely on whether Miss Anarchy wants to become Grandpa Anarchy again or not. I think this time the story works. I called this <i>Transformations</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>This thing -- where I have an idea but I'm afraid to pursue it -- is kind of a theme with me sometimes. I was planning to write <i>Noticeable One</i> next, or whatever story I can come up with involving Miss Anarchy in the news / the actress portraying her showing up / several members of the New League showing up for a photo shoot. I had no idea which of these would make a great story, but I do know that one story ought to involve Miss Anarchy and Dark Dr. Dark discussing who this wizard is who is seeking revenge on Grandpa Anarchy, and what can be done about him.</p><p><br /></p><p>But I also thought, what are Glory Ashes and Magical Girl Anne doing back on earth while Miss Anarchy is gone? I had an idea for Death Medal complaining that kidnapping them just wasn't the same as kidnapping Grandpa Anarchy, so like always, I wrote the thing that was already in my head. And once again I came up with an idea and then was too shy to go with it at first. Magical Girl Anne has transformed several demons into articles of clothing that she wears. Her dress was a demon, her boots were two different demons, her staff was a powerful demon. At the end of <i>Princess of Pluto</i> she'd transformed a demon into some bloomers. I thought, she'll threaten to transform Death Medal into something -- he's a demon, after all. But I can't <i>actually</i> let her do it, can I? Death Medal is a recurring villain. Nor can I allow her to transform Death Medal's girlfriend Miss Kid Gloves, nor his best henchman Private Growley Monster.</p><p><br /></p><p>So! I wrote my story with the idea that she'd threaten to transform them, and be told that she couldn't, and would pick some random other demon and say something like, "You'll do!" And that would be my ending. But as I wrote the story, I had trouble figuring out why an unknown demon would show up randomly at the end. So I added an accountant demon at the beginning who is following Death Medal around and taking notes, and <i>he</i> was going to be my target. But this presented it's own set of problems -- there wasn't really any surprise in Anne deciding to transform the unnamed demon who only existed so she could have someone to transform.</p><p><br /></p><p>I wrote the story anyway, and tried to make the<i> real</i> surprise that this demon accountant actually liked the idea of being transformed into clothing. I finished the story, but it was a weak ending, and once again I almost immediately decided to rework it -- and it was the same thing as before, because I realized that the<i> real</i> story is that Anne is told she can't transform Death Medal into an item of clothing, and then she does it anyway. I already had her complaining earlier in the story that even if Grandpa follows and exploits story beats (he allows himself to be captured, and waits until the villain explains his master plan, for example), Anne does not feel like she should be constrained by these ideals. So why would she avoid transforming Death Medal? He's threatening to destroy the world, and this gets rid of him, and what does she care if he's a recurring character or not?</p><p><br /></p><p>This story I called <i>Frills and Bows.</i> I finished it twice today, and the second version is much more satisfying.</p><p><br /></p>Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-35247127192439340602021-02-25T15:55:00.003-08:002021-02-25T15:59:29.007-08:00Bolt from the Blue Update<p> </p><p>According to Blogger, a whole 5 people read what I posted yesterday (or at least visited the page for a moment) even though I did nothing to promote it. So, instead of changing anything in that post, here's an addendum as a new post.</p><p><br /></p><p>Having pretty much worked out where I was going with these two stories, I rewrote <i>Orphan Black</i> (again) this morning, and renamed it <i>All I Ever Wanted</i>, a title I like better. It's a reference to the song <i>Vacation</i> by the Go Go's -- calling my story <i>Vacation</i> was too obvious. I <i>think</i> it works well now -- but I may rework it a bit later, we'll see.</p><p><br /></p><p>I wrote the opening portion of <i>My Clone Sleeps Alone</i> and reworked a bit of the middle scene, and now that one's finished as well.</p><p><br /></p><p>I had intended <i>Trust Mother</i> to happen not long after this, but instead I've plotted several new stories.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>All I Ever Wanted</i> sends Miss Anarchy into space, and <i>My Clone Sleeps Alone</i> deals with the illegal clone body problem, but I still wanted at least one story that actually involved an adventure in space. I'd already created a file for it, called <i>Girl Squared</i>. Miss Anarchy is in space with her two great granddaughters and with a teenaged version of Miss Trinity/Annie Two. Four girls, <i>Girl Squared</i>. I also came up with an ending for this that I think works, tied into one of the ideas I wrote about yesterday.</p><p><br /></p><p>But then, I decided to write a story that involved the mounting fame Miss Anarchy is generating as all of her adventures in space are recorded and sent to earth. She's becoming a sensation! At first I called this <i>Paparazzi Story</i>, then considered <i>Famous on Prokone 4</i>, and then <i>Space Famous</i>. But I'm thinking, with two previous stories based on songs that I like, possibly something like <i>Noticeable One</i> (a Missing Persons song) or possibly <i>Celebrity Skin</i> (Hole) or <i>Pretty on the Outside</i> (Dollyrots).</p><p><br /></p><p>Aaaand... I decided I should address the issue of Elsie and Kelli's over-protective mothers, since their two daughters will be showing up on video all over the world getting shot at and and possibly even injured or killed. At least, I know Miss Anarchy will be killed on video, then resurrected again of course. But that just seemed like the sort of thing the girl's mothers would react negatively to -- and they probably are not too keen on the girls hanging out with "Miss Anarchy" who happens to be their grandfather as a girl.</p><p>I'm calling that story <i>Beauty Treatment</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>After that I should squeeze in the <i>Just Like Miss Anarchy</i> story, and maybe then I can write <i>Trust Mother</i>, and after that will come <i>Real Girl</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>So my list of stories currently looks like:</p><p><b>415 I, Gardener</b></p><p><b>416 Maid Ex Machina</b></p><p><b>417 Infinite Dojo</b></p><p><b>418 Princess of Pluto</b></p><p><b>419 The Return of Normal</b></p><p><b>420 Free Advertising</b></p><p><b>421 Inevitable</b></p><p><b>422 All I Ever Wanted</b></p><p><b>423 My Clone Sleeps Alone</b></p><p>(the rest are not yet fully written, but are planned in this order)</p><p><b>424 Girl Squared</b></p><p><b>425 Beauty Treatment</b></p><p><b>426 Just Like Miss Anarchy</b></p><p><b>427 Noticeable One</b></p><p><b>428 Trust Mother</b></p><p><b>429 Real Girl</b></p><p>This also means I've written six stories this month, and may finish at least one or two more before Sunday night.</p>Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-23661058127148795582021-02-24T19:21:00.003-08:002021-02-24T19:29:44.612-08:00Bolt from the Blue<p> This will be a needlessly long description of my recent writing process, which probably interests no one but me. I think I will publish it but not post to Twitter or anything.</p><p><br /></p><p>In the beginning there was a story called <i>The Return of Normal</i>. I had envisioned bringing one of Grandpa Anarchy's old enemies back to life, and this would be the story about that. As I got closer to writing it, I decided that the spirit of Victorian Honesty St. Normal would possess a clone body in a resurrection station set up by Glory Ashes, making him a version of her that is only 10 years old, because the clones were not fully grown.</p><p><br /></p><p>I wrote the story, and it involved a battle with a demon. Almost immediately after it was done, I considered that the battle had been too easy. Surely I could kill Miss St. Normal, and it would be okay because his/her spirit would claim another of the Glory Ashes clones? (I figured there were at least four available). My plan was that later, he would be adopted by Julia Judas, the mother of Glory Ashes and the CEO of Omnigen Inc, and a nominal enemy of Grandpa Anarchy.</p><p><br /></p><p>Then I thought, what if I kill Grandpa Anarchy too? The existence of resurrection chambers has led to Grandpa dying rather frequently.</p><p><br /></p><p>Then I thought, what if Grandpa's spirit accidentally possesses another of the Glory clones? Oops! Grandpa's accidentally become a girl again!</p><p><br /></p><p>Now, I have to admit that this is kind of a fetish of mine and therefore I've used this kind of ending as a joke far more than I need to -- it's not really a surprise anymore. And yet, I was still mulling over the idea.</p><p><br /></p><p>Second, there was the "next" story I was planning to write, which I'd titled <i>Real Girl</i>. This was based around the idea that the robot known as Magical Girl Anne (another version of Annie Two) would be visited by a being known as Eternia the Watcher. Eternia's thing is magical girls, so I thought, what if she shows up and offers to make Anne human?</p><p><br /></p><p>At first this struck me as a great idea. The new girl could be made a daughter of Grandpa Anarchy, whether he really wanted that or not. Of course she's far more knowledgeable than a typical child but also possibly quite naieve about being a living creature.</p><p><br /></p><p>The more I pondered this story in my head, however, the less it worked. I mean, the basic idea is: Goddess shows up, says Hey, want to be a real girl? Robot girl says yes. Boom! She's a girl.</p><p><br /></p><p>I couldn't come up with a version of this that included any surprise or twist ending. Eventually I wrote a portion of the story in which Anne herself points out that there's no surprise involved, and therefore this does not make a good Grandpa Anarchy story. It seemed to me that the A.I. that works with Grandpa Anarchy might be self-aware about how everything he does revolves around stories. He can do what he does because he's the hero of the story.</p><p><br /></p><p>And then I thought, well, in that case, maybe Eternia transforms Anne into twins -- or even triplets! The prospect of Grandpa suddenly having three super-smart daughters amused me quite a bit.</p><p><br /></p><p>So! These things were in my head when last Saturday morning I woke up about 2:30 or 3 AM, and I not only had an idea for a story in my head, I had ideas for MULTIPLE stories in my head. I had to jump out of bed and write them all down. Even knowing that maybe most of this would turn out to be unworkable junk ideas formed while half-asleep, I was excited at how many stories I had spun out of my current proposed setup. My ideas went like this:</p><p><br /></p><p><b>What A Waste It Is: </b> Grandpa decides to remain in the 10-year-old clone body of Glory Ashes, on the theory that it's a waste to immediately destroy the body and he'll probably get killed soon enough, and resurrected in a clone of his old body. But weeks go by without a single death.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Just Like Miss Anarchy:</b> Grandpa fights crime as Miss Anarchy. Miss Anarchy is a fictional teenage female version of Grandpa Anarchy that appears in the cartoon series <i>Girls of Two-Fisted Justice</i>. A REAL Miss Anarchy fighting crime would be a sensation for fans of the show.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Real Girl:</b> My proposed make-robot-girl-Anne-a-real-girl story.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>My Own Daughter:</b> Julia Judas attempts to adopt not only Miss Normal, but also Miss Anarchy, in an attempt to take over the estate of her rival. But she has Grandpa's demonic lawyer Mal to contend with, and Mal has already drawn up paperwork proving that Miss Anarchy is actually the daughter of Grandpa Anarchy, rather than Grandpa himself. After some negotiation, it is established as "fact" (via paperwork trail at least) that Grandpa is the father of both Miss Anarchy and Miss Normal -- and that Julia Judas is the mother! (This may not mean they slept together -- as the head of a genetics company it probably means that Julia "borrowed" Grandpa's DNA, or something.)</p><p><br /></p><p><b>We Meet Again:</b> Kid Anarchy and Prof Victorian Honesty St. Normal once fought each other over the fate of the city and the world. Now they have a fight over clothing, as sisters.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Entourage:</b> Miss Anarchy and all her relatives and siblings show up to the premier of the live-action movie version of <i>Girls of Two-Fisted Justice</i> and create a scene. There's Miss Anarchy and Miss Normal, Glory Ashes, and also the three adopted Anne triplets, perhaps at least one version of Annie Two as a robot, possibly F8Wasp and Miss Bloodraven, Possibly Grandpa's great granddaughters Elsie and Kelli, possibly his granddaughter the Russian Eagle as well. And then, Grandpa Anarchy himself shows up! Is this some evil doppleganger assuming a disguise? Miss Anarchy would know immediately. Or perhaps Miss Anarchy has decided to remain who she currently is, and "resurrected" Grandpa as a separate person?</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Custody Battle:</b> Now that Grandpa is back, he fights with Julia Judas over who is going to raise their two "daughters". This would be an all-out war in the fashion of villains and heroes doing battle of course, not just some courtroom drama.</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">Execution</p><p><br /></p><p>I began working on these stories immediately, starting with <i>What a Waste</i>. The idea here was that Grandpa would decide to remain in the Glory Ashes clone body, on the theory that he was going to die sooner or later and it was a waste to just kill that body off before this happened. I also wanted to deal with the aftermath of The Return of Normal, where the base gets partially destroyed, and where it's implied that Grandpa and St. Normal are now in clone bodies of Glory Ashes, but none of that was shown or confirmed. So I wrote a section where they wake up the clones, figure out who's who, and then go back to the main base to get clothing for the two.</p><p><br /></p><p>At this point I was referring to them both as girls and calling Grandpa "Miss Anarchy" which is the name of the cartoon character and a name that has been applied to Grandpa as a girl before. I also thought it would be funny to have Grandpa complain about clothing made for girls, even if it's just jeans and tee shirts with Disney princesses or My Little Pony or whatever. But it was here that I realized that if Grandpa is annoyed at being treated as a girl, he should say so, because optional gender identity is more of a thing these days. Even Grandpa knows that now.</p><p><br /></p><p>I rewrote parts of this story several times. First, Grandpa declares his preference to be treated as a boy. I decided to call him "Master Anarchy" instead of Miss Anarchy. Then, I rewrote it so that the other characters anticipated the gender identity question from the start, and even provided boy's clothing as well as girl's. I struggled to figure out: did I call Grandpa a girl, before he states his preference? Did I just say "the child?" It's not like I need worry about offending my own characters, but....</p><p><br /></p><p>Eventually I settled for something in between the two approaches. Glory Ashes and Miss Trinity (Annie Two) do not anticipate the gender issue, but quickly realize that Grandpa would prefer to be called a boy. Grandpa is surprised he has the choice, but happy. They send the maid back out to get boy clothing.</p><p><br /></p><p>This was all well and good, but my story had little punch or direction. It meandered, and I had no idea for a good ending, or how to Grandpa would decide to fight crime as Miss Anarchy. In fact, the direction I took with gender identity moved him further away from that idea.</p><p><br /></p><p>Instead I focused on a new story. Forget conversations about clothes and gender -- I wanted an action story with Miss Anarchy! I wrote this story fairly quickly, and came up with a good ending. I called it <i>Inevitable</i>, because here is where Miss Anarchy swears she's destined to die soon, but it fails to happen. This was the first of the stories I finished, and I knew it worked.</p><p><br /></p><p>Next: how did we get from "treat me as a boy" to "I'm Miss Anarchy, just like in the cartoon show!"? I went back to the previous story and quickly realized that the sudden switch was the entire <i>point</i> of the story -- the surprise at the end would be Grandpa's sudden reversal. And the reason for the reversal? Grandpa's lawyer Mal shows up to remind him that the <i>Girls of Two-Fisted Justice</i> cartoon show is a half-billion dollar enterprise, with a live action movie about to come out, and it would be <i>great</i> if the <i>real </i>Miss Anarchy made a few public appearances. I retitled the story <i>Free Advertising</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>With those two stories sorted out, I started working on the idea of St. Normal and Miss Anarchy both becoming adoptive daughters of Julia Judas. This story was called <i>My Own Mother</i>, and I soon realized that I had too many ideas for a single story. I split this into <i>My Own Mother 1, 2, and 3</i> -- the first ending with Miss Anarchy asking to be adopted, the second involving negotiations and formal acceptance, and the third one -- which might take place later -- is the court scene where everything is hammered out, Mal gets involved, and possibly Miss Anarchy is legally defined as the daughter of Grandpa Anarchy.</p><p><br /></p><p>I tried writing the first two at the same time. Neither came together, however. The first I retitled <i>Mother's Arms</i>. I wrote a bit where a robot burst into the complex to "invite" Miss St. Normal to become the daughter of Julia Judas, then I scrapped that scene. Instead I wrote a scene where this had already happened while the others were out fighting crime (the story <i>Inevitable</i>). My problem with this story was that it really didn't make sense for Miss Anarchy to ask to be adopted by her enemy, even as a temporary ruse that she didn't intend to follow through with. I was trying to force the characters to do things that they wouldn't actually do, and I knew it.</p><p><br /></p><p>In addition, not much was happening in the story. "Something random and unexpected needs to happen!" I thought. "What if the great granddaughters of Grandpa Anarchy suddenly show up? They're dressed as Space Babes, and they want to take Miss Anarchy on a space adventure! Maybe this is another idea from Mal, with an eye to a future Space Babes tie-in for the cartoon, or a spinoff series?"</p><p><br /></p><p>I liked this idea. Then I considered what might happen if Miss Anarchy, as she currently is, travels to the Eieio Empire in space. They may very well have a genetic record of Glory Ashes already on file, and would then declare Miss Anarchy an illegal clone. (Which, technically, she is!)</p><p><br /></p><p>I liked this idea even more, and immediately wrote about two-thirds of it. I titled it <i>My Clone Sleeps Alone</i>. But at the same time I was trying to finish <i>Mother's Arm</i>s, and I was writing a large chunk of <i>My Own Daughter 2</i>, which I retitled <i>Mother's Treasure</i>, and not only did both of them refuse to come together, but I also ran into a conflict between two stories. My plots for <i>Mother's Arms</i> and the subsequent <i>My Own Daughter</i> hinged on Miss Anarchy being a clone of Glory, but <i>My Clone Sleeps Alone</i> ends with Miss Anarchy in a new body, because, you know, ILLEGAL CLONE BODY. I even considered having the space adventure story take place after the big meeting with Julia Judas -- and I finished both <i>Mother's Arms</i> and <i>Mother's Treasure</i> with that in mind, but I knew as I wrote them that they didn't really work. I had Elsie and Kelli (Grandpa's granddaughters) show up in the first story, then hang around through the entire second story, waiting to drag Miss Anarchy off on their adventure -- and that was an additional problem for the story. Basically Mother's Treasure wound up being a long, boring discussion without action, and with these two other girls just sitting around waiting for it to be over.</p><p><br /></p><p>Sometimes you have to write the wrong story before you figure out which is the right one.</p><p><br /></p><p>I had also come up with a possible idea for <i>My Own Daughter</i>. My first thought was that Miss Anarchy could have Mal and/or Annie Two write up whatever paperwork was needed to prove that Miss Anarchy was not Grandpa Anarchy herself, but his daughter. This was part of my original idea as listed above, of course. But I realized a paternity test could disprove this easily, and we are talking about the CEO of a genetics company. So then I thought: what if Miss Anarchy has something which can summon Eternia the Watcher? She probably owes Grandpa a favor for something in the past, so that's entirely plausible. Then Miss Anarchy asks Eternia to "make her the daughter of Grandpa Anarchy" (so that the paternity test will show this), and in order to do that, Eternia has to separate Miss Anarchy into two people -- the father and the daughter.</p><p><br /></p><p>Thus, Grandpa Anarchy reappears, but Miss Anarchy remains. I really liked this idea, and it would explain why Eternia is around and offers to make Magical Girl Anne a real girl (I still plan to write that story), but it also seemed to hinge on Miss Anarchy being in the clone body still, which she would not be after the events of <i>My Clone Sleeps Alone</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>Currently I'm still trying to figure out how these story ideas can work and coexist with each other. I rewrote <i>Mother's Arms</i> and retitled it <i>Orphan White</i> (not really a good title) and one thing I did was rewrite the whole bit where Miss Anarchy is desperate to keep tabs on St. Normal, to the point where she begs to be adopted herself, and changed it to an offhand comment, "She could just adopt me as well!" Then they go off on their space adventure.</p><p><br /></p><p>I re-plotted <i>Mother's Treasure</i>, and gave it the name <i>Trust Mother</i>. My new idea is that Miss Anarchy doesn't even remember suggesting that she should be adopted, and Julia Judas convinces her somehow to sign a contract, without Mal's oversight, which includes numerous things designed to trap Miss Anarchy in the role of a Judas daughter forever, and grant control of the Anarchy estate to Julia Judas. I really like this more sinister approach, with the villain being more manipulative and actively nasty, but... I'm still not sure how Miss Anarchy would ever agree to sign such a contract, unless she's blackmailed, mind-controlled, or mentally impaired somehow.</p><p><br /></p><p>Part of this idea involves Julia getting rid of all the Grandpa Anarchy clone bodies stored on earth, to make it impossible for Miss Anarchy to become Grandpa Anarchy again. (Which would be foiled of course if I introduce the idea involving Eternia.)</p><p><br /></p><p>I had one other idea that came out of <i>My Clone Sleeps Alone</i>, and it was this: if the Eieio Empire is concerned enough about the illegal clone created with their cloning technology, they might show up on earth and insist on shutting down or changing all of the resurrection stations that Dark Dr. Dark has set up. This could ALSO lead to all of the Grandpa Anarchy clones being removed, since at this point their records show that Grandpa Anarchy is now Miss Anarchy, and there should not be any clones based on who she was previously.</p><p><br /></p><p>But I haven't decided to write that yet.</p><p><br /></p><p>So... I've written five stories this week, but three of them are being rewritten, and two of those have been completely written more than once. ^_^</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-51351461277446631802021-02-15T16:42:00.003-08:002021-02-15T16:47:44.397-08:00Mid February Update<p> </p><p>Things have been going well. After finishing <i>Infinite Dojo</i> at the end of January, I proceeded to write the second and third parts of that trilogy of stories... <i>Princess of Pluto</i>, and <i>The Return of Normal</i>. I'm fairly pleased with both of them.</p><p><br /></p><p>I worked for a bit on <i>The Body-Snatchers of Ator</i>, and I reconceived how to structure this novella-length story -- and I wrote the first chapter/scene. That almost counts as a short-short on its own.</p><p><br /></p><p>However, I turned back to other things, because I have a ton of planned, unwritten stories to work on. I feel like the definition of a writer ought to include that you have more ideas than you can ever manage to write. For example, after finishing <i>Princess of Pluto</i>, an idea for a subsequent story popped into my head, tentatively titled <i>Real Girl</i>. The idea was that Anne the robotic magical girl would be visited by Eternia the Watcher, a powerful, godlike being who fancies magical girls. What would they talk about? What if Eternia offered to transform Anne into a real human girl?</p><p><br /></p><p>My first thought was that of course Anne would decline. As a robotic sorceress, she is unique in my universe -- and as an extension of Annie Two she is in many ways more powerful than any human, and has access to more knowledge. Nor does she have to worry about dying one day.</p><p><br /></p><p>But a day or two later I thought about it again, and I changed my mind. Becoming human is an adventure of discovery that Annie Two hasn't <i>quite</i> accomplished yet (Miss Bloodraven is partly Annie's personality though). Annie Two has been wondering recently if a computer A.I. or a robot can have a soul. Why not become human, when she can build another magical girl Anne anyway? What's to lose?</p><p><br /></p><p>So I think she would agree to the proposal -- which would leave Grandpa and company in charge of a young girl who is far smarter (but not necessarily wiser?) than any normal kid.</p><p><br /></p><p>Annie Two would have to create a nanny version of herself to watch over the newly-minted child.</p><p><br /></p><p>I haven't written any of this down but I've been thinking about it quite a bit so I may do it.</p><p><br /></p><p>In the meantime, I had decided to work on some older stories that are unfinished -- so I began with two unfinished stories from the end of Book 9 that I was convinced should exist. These were: A) a story involving Wings of Liberty, B) a story called <i>My Gun Is Sharp</i> (the title of that volume of stories) and C) a story about what happened to the reincarnated Gentleman Brawler, which I called <i>Tremors of the Earth</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>I had already decided to combine A & B into one story -- a story that includes Wings of Liberty and is titled <i>My Gun Is Sharp</i>. I also had plans to include the villain Holy Hatemonger, so I wrote a partial opening scene for this story.</p><p><br /></p><p>Then I switched up again, went back even further to Book 2, and wrote two proposed stories for that volume: <i>Hot Stuff</i> and <i>Get Down Tonight</i>, two stories involving the disco trolls.</p><p><br /></p><p>I finished both of those this past weekend. Now I'm looking at the other (much larger) unfinished story from that volume, <i>World of Hero</i>. I think I've figured out how to make this story work. The really good news is that there's a lot already written, and it looks like I can use much of it. I could maybe pound together the first part of this story in just a few days.</p><p><br /></p><p>Anyway, that's what I've been working on. A little of this, a little of that.</p>Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-8758758183850032642021-01-28T19:27:00.003-08:002021-01-28T19:27:34.346-08:00Writing Update for end of January<p> It's not quite the end of the month but I decided to post an end of the month wrap-up.</p><p><br /></p><p>New Year's resolution: write a story a week. This month I've written five. So far so good.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>413<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I Swear</b></p><p><b>414<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Collateral Damage</b></p><p><b>415<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I, Gardener</b></p><p><b>416<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Maid Ex Machina</b></p><p><b>417<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Infinte Dogo</b></p><p><br /></p><p>Sometimes I feel like, for every story I finish, I begin 2 or 3 more. This is literally true for <i>I, Gardene</i>r because I conceived it as part of a trilogy of stories. Why a trilogy? Three just seems like a nice round number for so many situations. I wrote the story <i>The Emancipation of Philip Dos</i> last year. In this story, we end with Annie Two, Grandpa's computer A.I., assuming control of a robotic Nazi assassin. They call her Annie 3-D. Then a bit later I wrote <i>Wilfred 2.0</i>, in which Grandpa Anarchy got a robotic butler.</p><p><span><br /></span></p><p><span>T</span>hen I wrote <i>Miss Trinity</i>, in which I proposed a whole series of robotic aids and helpers, all of them variations on Annie Two, Grandpa's computer A.I. (And I should note here, these three stories form a trilogy of their own.) But I wanted to explore all of this further, so I envisioned three stories centered on the maid, the gardener, and one of the other Annie Two robotic clones. I titled these stories <i>I, Gardener</i> (written earlier in the month); <i>Maid Ex Machina</i> (finished this week) and <i>I Think Therefor</i> (not yet written.)</p><p><br /></p><p>So far so good, yes? I mean I plotted three stories and wrote two of them. If I finish the third then surely I'm finishing my story ideas rather than creating more of them, yes?</p><p><br /></p><p>Well... not quite. For you see, I initially had no idea what <i>Maid Ex Machina</i> was about, other than it involving the robotic maid. I also had an idea for a villain named Riddle Me Rhino, and so I wrote an entire opening scene in which Grandpa and sidekick investigate the scene of a bank robbery, and it's clear that Riddle Me Rhino was the perpetrator.</p><p><br /></p><p>And... this did not seem to fit my goal for my story. The maid wasn't in the first scene and I didn't have a reason to bring her in later. Obviously based on the title <i>Maid Ex Machina</i>, I could just have her pop into the story at the end, completely out of the blue, to solve everything... but then I would be guilty of writing a story where the title was the ending. Instead I came up with a new idea involving the villain the Clichémonger, who is just the type to kidnap an innocent maid and threaten her life, because he's a very traditional villain of course.</p><p><br /></p><p>Thus, I spun my first scene off into a new story file called <i>Riddle Me This</i> -- to maybe be completed later.</p><p><br /></p><p>Likewise I thought it would be funny if the Clichémonger threatened to reveal Grandpa's secret identity, because he doesn't really have one. I was trying to write this angle into my story but it wouldn't work, because (of course) the kidnapping of the maid and the revealing of Grandpa's secret identity are two different crimes, and trying to shove them together was confusing and messy. So I spun all of the secret identity stuff into another story file called, appropriately enough, <i>Secret Identity</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>So, yeah... wrote one story, but created two more story files. :P</p><p><br /></p><p>In the same manner I've managed to finally write most of <i>Infinite Dojo</i> this week. This was a story I planned after writing Miss Trinity, in which I expanded on everything Annie Two and Glory Ashes have been up to... namely not just building a bunch of robots, but first building a complex beneath the Anarchy Cave which included the manufacturing facilities for said robots.</p><p><br /></p><p>Of course, along the way I thought of too many different things to do with said complex, and before I knew it I had enough ideas for a second trilogy. The first story is <i>Infinite Dojo</i>. The second story I titled <i>Princess of Pluto</i>, and for the third I am calling it <i>The Return of Normal</i>. The second involves a robotic magical girl based on Annie Two, and the third involves a demonic entity buried deep beneath the Anarchy Mansion which the new complex has awoken... and/or also the return of Victorian Honesty St. Normal, an enemy and neighbor of Kid Anarchy's in the 1920's.</p><p><br /></p><p>So, again, I write one story, and create two more story files. :P</p><p><br /></p><p>Of course I've had other story ideas as well. In the last week I've created these story files: <i>Day Trader</i> (a story inspired by the GameStop day trader shenanigans. Not sure where it would go but I suspect Annie Two has made more money for Grandpa Anarchy), <i>Oumuamua</i> (about the weird asteroid/satellite from outside our solar system, of course), <i>The Great Pillow War</i> (about... well not really about the My Pillow Guy, but that was my inspiration) and <i>Save the Cat</i> (a 'save the cat' moment is when a horrifying person/creature takes pity on a kitten or other cute animal, thus showing you that they're only ugly on the outside and are really one of the good guys).</p><p><br /></p><p>That's what I'm working on. Current goal is to write <i>I Think Therefor</i> or else <i>Princess of Pluto</i> next.</p>Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-85816671316018275382021-01-16T18:17:00.004-08:002021-01-16T18:35:37.518-08:00January 16 2021<p> I've been pretty lax about posting to my writing journal, in part because I've been pretty lax about writing the past several months. But I have once again vowed to write a story a week for 2021 (this is a common New Year's resolution for me). It's January 16th and I've written three stories this month -- so far so good!.</p><p><br /></p><p>In November I participated in National Novel Writer's Month (NaNoWriMo) and I "won", in that I managed to write more than 50,000 words. I was hoping to finish a Ranma 1/2 / Ah My Goddess fanfiction story that I've been working on for years but haven't published. It's called <i>Nerima All-Stars</i>, and it's basically a take on what if the cast of Ranma 1/2 were given superpowers. I originally started this story as early as the year 2000, but I only really started working on it in earnest for NaNoWriMo 2016. I didn't finish it, and so I worked on it again for NaNoWriMo 2019.</p><p><br /></p><p>I still had not finished it but I had this idea that I was almost at the big final battle, and another 50,000 words would come close to wrapping it up. So I set out to do that this past November, and as I noted I wrote another 50,000 words. The problem however was that most of what I wrote was finishing off the previous chapter, and setup for the final battle. I'm also not happy with what I've written -- the story lacks focus and kind of wanders. I think I know what the problem is -- aside from it maybe being too long. I have two long "side quest" chapters that delay the main plot, but the first one seemed to work fine, and I think that was because the focus was on the growing friendship between two characters. The second side quest chapter is much longer and doesn't develop any of the friendships or relationships between the characters, so it winds up seeming pointless.</p><p><br /></p><p>I think I can fix that but it's going to take a lot of work, maybe another NaNoWriMo next year. ^_^</p><p><br /></p><p>In the meantime, I had not finished a Grandpa Anarchy story since the ones I listed in September, but I have a lot of ideas and I've written three new stories for 2021. Those are:</p><p><br /></p><p><b>413 I Swear</b></p><p><b>414 Collateral Damage</b></p><p><b>415 I, Gardener</b></p><p><br /></p><p>The first story was just an idea that popped into my head, that I managed to turn into a complete story within a day or so. The second is the setup for a Christmas story that I plotted in December and did not write. It occurred to me that the explanation for what Grandpa is doing in the Christmas story could be a story in its own right, and I came up with<i> Collateral Damage </i>on the spot.</p><p><br /></p><p>The third story is part of a planned trilogy, and is related to three other stories and an incomplete story. Last year I wrote <i>The Emancipation of Philip Dos</i>, which ended with Annie Two (Grandpa Anarchy's self-aware computer) in control of a Nazi gynoid/death bot, named Annie 3-D. Then in <i>Wilfred 2.0</i> I introduce Grandpa's new robotic butler. Later I wrote <i>Miss Trinity</i>, in which I introduced a slew of other robotic characters -- a maid, a gardener, a non-heroic physical counterpart to Annie Two, and robotic versions of Annie Two who work with various other super hero groups and/or are stationed at the hidden resurrection stations.</p><p><br /></p><p>I then plotted a story called <i>Infinite Dojo</i> which would reveal that all of these robots were built by Glory Ashes, Annie Two, and friends in a brand new sub-sub-basement complex below the Anarchy Cave. I didn't have an actual plot worked out, just a rival ninja showing up to challenge the mistress of the Infinite Dojo -- which Grandpa knows nothing about. I had a lot of plans for what lay beneath the Anarchy Caverns, but the story didn't develop in my head so I've yet to get anywhere on it.</p><p><br /></p><p>However, I thought that I should also introduce these robotic helpers better, so I plotted three stories around them -- the gardener story, titled <i>I, Gardener</i>; the maid story, titled <i>Maid Ex Machin</i>a; and a story about one of the Annie clones called <i>I Think Therefor</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>I mean I really had no plots in mind at first, just the idea that I wanted to feature each of these robot characters in a story. But I soon came up with a villain and a setting for <i>I, Gardener</i>, and I managed to finish it this past week.</p><p><br /></p><p>Other ideas I'm developing:</p><p><br /></p><p>1. There is an ancient evil buried beneath Grandpa Anarchy's mansion that has been awoken thanks to the newly-installed Infinite Dojo sub basement. (Which may be the plot of <i>Maid Ex Machina</i> or might be part of the story of <i>Infinite Doj</i>o, or it's own story, I haven't decided.)</p><p><br /></p><p>1a. This is something that was summoned and then buried by Professor Victorian Honesty St. Normal, a mad scientist neighbor of Grandpa's in the 1920's. One of my other ideas was that perhaps the professor himself is trapped deep beneath the ground, or his spirit, or something. I've written one story in which the good Professor actually appears, and partially wrote another; otherwise he's just referred to as the person who built the St. Normal Tower which is the building next door to the Anarchy Mansion. Bringing him back to life would be a lot of fun. ^_^</p><p><br /></p><p>2. Glory Ashes has a rival who is a rich spoiled girl of some sort, maybe with super powers or just a lot of gadgets. This may or may not be part of a story I started called <i>Recipe for Disaster.</i></p><p><br /></p><p>3. Glory Ashes may be working with F8Wasp and Miss Bloodraven, who were last seen travelling to Intersect (the city where dimensions meet) in the story <i>My Sister the Computer</i>. F8Wasp is the creator of Annie Two, and Miss Bloodraven is a heroic companion of Kid Anarchy's from the 1920's, but whose personality is partly or mostly derived from Annie Two. I haven't decided who else they might be working with -- Annie 3-D I think, but maybe someone else -- or if they have a name for their group. I'm not sure if there's a story here or it's just part of the story <i>Infinite Dojo</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>4. Glory Ashes and Annie Two have set up their own resurrection station -- somewhere. There should be a gateway to it from the Infinite Dojo sub-basement. Again, not sure if this warrants a separate story or if it's just another part of <i>Infinite Dojo</i>. Although one of my ideas is that the ancient evil mentioned in item 1 takes over one of the bodies in their resurrection station (which, unlike those built by Dark Dr. Dark, does not have any magical wards. Yet.)</p><p><br /></p><p>5. There's a version of Annie Two that is a robotic magical girl called Little Morphin' Annie. This is actually mentioned in <i>Miss Trinity</i> so it's cannon. ^_^ I have an idea that somewhere in the Infinite Dojo sub-basement is a gateway to another planet or moon or other realm where Little Morphin' Annie is based. I haven't figured out where this bit of info goes, either.</p><p><br /></p><p>6. I want to write a villain named Riddle Me Rhino. He's a classic heavy with a rhino theme, but also a genius-level villain who poses riddles for Grandpa Anarchy to solve. Because why can't that be a thing? Or maybe he just thinks his riddles are clever and they aren't. I also want to write a story about a villain named Plaid to the Bone, who was mentioned in passing in <i>I Swear</i>. I want to create a villain who hates robots and computers (seems a natural now that Grandpa has all of these robotic helpers), and I also am working on an idea for a doll-themed villain who I'm calling Lucille Dahl.</p><p><br /></p><p>Stories that I am theoretically working on:</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Maid Ex Machina</b></p><p><b>I Think Therefor</b></p><p><b>Infinite Dojo</b></p><p><b>Recipe for Disaster</b></p><p><b>So Good It's Plaid</b></p><p><b>The Trouble With Annie</b></p><p><b>Micronation</b></p><p><b>Fear and Loathing in Frosthaven</b></p><p><b>Every Alien Race Loves Shakespeare</b></p><p><b>Doomscrolling</b></p><p><b>Badge and Gun</b></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-61535632763367406342020-09-24T20:55:00.003-07:002020-09-24T20:57:48.283-07:00Writing Update Sept 24 2020<p> I wrote a blog post on August 13. I never posted it. It was a bit rambling and incoherent, because I was trying to figure out how to get my story <i>the Return of Sally Stardust</i> off the ground -- to figure out what the central plot of the story was, and how to introduce it at the beginning. But at the time I hadn't figured this out.</p><p>I wrote another blog post around the first week of September. I also never posted this, but I felt it was a much better explanation of my struggles on my story, and I really felt like I'd solved the key to making the story work. I liked that blog entry, even though I didn't post it. I meant to, but then I started working on other stuff and even though I was certain I'd figured out how to write my story, I didn't actually write it. Just the blog post.</p><p>...which I can't find now. Either I didn't save it, or I saved it under some weird name in some random folder that I can't remember. It's not where it ought to be. I do vaguely remember saving it with whatever default name popped up based on the first line of the text file. But I can't find it now, it's lost.</p><p>Part of my problem is that I tend to write more at work, on my breaks, but I'm no longer able to view or update my blog from work as the company decided to block web access to blogs. For some reason I have a hard time bringing myself to do these things when I'm at home. I think I wrote my second blog post at home, late at night, but... can't find the file now.</p><p>Anyway, here's everything I've done since July:</p><p>For Camp NaNoWriMo in July, I finished X stories:</p><p><br /></p><p><b style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;">403 Miss Trinity</b><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 14.85px;"> finished 7/5</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;" /><b style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;">404 Pillar of Light </b><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 14.85px;">finished 7/8</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;" /><b style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;">406 COVID Warrior</b><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 14.85px;"> finished 7/10</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;" /><b style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;">407 Robe and Wizard's Hat</b><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 14.85px;"> finished 7/12 (working title was </span><b style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;">Balrog</b><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 14.85px;">)</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;" /><b style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;">408 Asylum</b><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 14.85px;"> finished 7/13</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;" /><b style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;">405 Fox Con</b><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 14.85px;"> finished 7/15</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;" /><b style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;">409 It's Complicated</b><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 14.85px;"> finished 7/16</span></p><p><b>410 University of Hard Knocks</b> finished 7/18</p><p><b>411 To Punch A Hitler</b> finished 7/19</p><div>From July 20th, through all of August and into the first week of September, I was working on <i>the Return of Sally Stardust</i>. Along the way I added a lot of background lore in an attempt to understand my characters better. I did a lot of writing but I don't have a great deal to show for it at present since my story still doesn't have a completed opening scene.</div><div><br /></div><div>From the first week of September up until this week, I was trying to work on my <i>A Bomb In Heaven</i> cycle of stories. This is a group of related stories with an overall theme/plot that I started last year. I have about 20 or so completed stories, but I still haven't finished the cycle and wrapped things up. In any case, I reworked the first several stories and I wrote a new "interlude" that is not finished, and... that was about it.</div><p>This past week I decided to go back and work on regular one-off Grandpa Anarchy stories, which for whatever reason are much easier for me to do. I've completed two stories this week and I'm working on another titled <i>Micronations</i>. My two completed stories:</p><p><br /></p><p><b>412 Internet Villains</b> completed 9/21</p><p><b>413 Indestructible </b> completed 9/23</p><p><br /></p><p>And... that's what I've done with my writing the past three months.</p><p><br /></p>Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-74248546137772224292020-07-16T22:54:00.005-07:002020-07-16T22:57:32.402-07:00Camp NaNoWriMo July 16<br />
So far this month for Camp NaNoWriMo I've written approximately 11,000 words and finished 7 stories. To date:<br />
<br />
<b>403 Miss Trinity</b> finished 7/5<br />
<b>404 Pillar of Light </b>finished 7/8<br />
<b>406 COVID Warrior</b> finished 7/10<br />
<b>407 Robe and Wizard's Hat</b> finished 7/12 (working title was <b>Balrog</b>)<br />
<b>408 Asylum</b> finished 7/13<br />
<b>405 Fox Con</b> finished 7/15<br />
<b>409 It's Complicated</b> finished 7/16<br />
<br />
Currently working on:<br />
<br />
<b>University of Hard Knocks:</b> I wrote about this story in June. I've added to it, but it's not an actual story just yet.<br />
<br />
<b>To Punch a Hitler:</b> I should be able to turn this into a story, there's a lot already written.<br />
<br />
New ideas:<br />
<br />
<b>Boy or Magic:</b> I saw someone on Twitter talking about a trope that strangely does not appear in TV Tropes (yet) -- that of the (most often) female character having to "give up" magic in order to find true love. Most often found in stories about magical girls who have to give up their magic when they find a boy to have a relationship with, but also encountered in other stories where young women have to give up whatever makes them special in order to enter into a relationship with a man. Often this is portrayed as a noble sacrifice or a testament to how strong their love is, but the man never has to give up anything. See: Arwen in Lord of the Rings, and to a lesser extent also<span style="font-family: inherit;"> <span style="color: #222222;">Éowyn.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;">I don't have a specific story in mind for this but I agree that it's a stupid trope and magical girls should not have to give up their magic for love or as a transition to adulthood, and I wanted to write a story that specifically dealt with this trope. And why is it not listed in TV Tropes anyway?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #222222;"><b>Mission Briefing:</b> An old idea/old story file, built around the idea that you would not brief people on a mission until you're already in the helicopter on the way to the mission. Because they do that in the movies all the time and it makes no sense whatsoever.</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #222222;">I<b>nfinite Dojo: </b> After I wrote <i>Miss Trinity </i>I decided that there is now a sub-basement below the Anarchy Cavern that Grandpa does not yet know about, set up by Glory Ashes and Annie Two. This includes the manufacturing facilities where the various Annie robots were built, a base of operations for several magical girls including Little Morphin' Annie, possibly gateways to a magical girl base in space and perhaps the base of operations for F8Wasp and Amelia Bloodraven, possibly a resurrection station run by Glory Ashes for her own use; and of course the Infinite Dojo -- which at first I imagined as a dojo with mirrored walls and ceilings, but then I also imagine robotic sparring partners, and possibly other "danger room" style additions.</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #222222;">I don't have an actual story in mind for this yet, but at some point Grandpa is going to find out about it. Also, I have plans for Glory Ashes to team up with F8Wasp and Amelia Bloodraven to form some sort of super group of their own.</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #222222;"><b>Micronation:</b> I want to write a story about how many micro nations run by villainous dictators there are in the Grandpa Anarchy world. Hundreds of them, I assume.</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #222222;"><b>Indestructible: </b> Based on an idea that popped into my head while rereading PS238, I want to write a story about an entire superteam of "flying bricks" or as they put it in the PS238 universe, "FISS" heroes (flying, invulnerable, superstrength, superspeed). At the moment this team is called the Indestructibles of Miami, although nothing is set in stone. I imagine each gained their powers a different way -- one is a god, one is magically cursed, one is a mutant, one was exposed to cosmic radiation or somesuch. Because they all have the same powers, they are actually quite easy to game plan against.</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #222222;"><b>All About You:</b> I'm not sure this even qualifies as a story idea. It's just the idea that super villains such as Kid Calculus see themselves as superior to everyone else. Grandpa Anarchy does not think this way.</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span>Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913594483355181296.post-62457729475507772392020-06-28T21:31:00.004-07:002020-06-28T21:35:55.762-07:00June 2020 Writing UpdateI haven't updated in several months, and that's because I have written very little in the last several months.<br />
<br />
Magical March -- I managed about four stories I think. I continued to try and write on these stories throughout April and May without much success. In June I finally decided to switch and write some regular Grandpa Anarchy stories, and also I started posting to my Grandpa Anarchy Blog again. Things have gone<i> slightly</i> better.<br />
<br />
Stories I have written this month:<br />
<br />
<b>Disposable </b>- Grandpa must contend with a sidekick whose entire goal is to be the girl whose death motivates Grandpa enough to defeat the villain. This is a play on the stereotype of a disposable love interest/sidekick/friend who serves no other purpose in the story except to die and advance the plot. Of course, death is not permanent in Grandpa's universe, but he still objects to having his sidekick die just as a plot device, even if it's been done before.<br />
<br />
<b>Loopholes</b> - Grandpa objects to cheap tricks to resolve seemingly impossible situations -- such as "no man of woman born can slay me" and the hero was born by cesarean section so somehow that works. All the while, Grandpa employs the same sort of cheap tricks when it's convenient.<br />
<br />
<br />
Stories I've been working on:<br />
<br />
<b>Balrog</b> - I got this idea while rewatching Lord of the Rings (obviously). The idea is that Death Medal summons a Balrog, and then geeks out about it because he's a Tolkien fan and just thinks it's really cool. I haven't actually got a plot or a joke/twist ending for this one yet, but it was very easy to imagine the scene and the dialog and I'm sure I can come up with a way to make it work at some point.<br />
<br />
<b>Fox Con</b> - This is a story about a Chinese security company soliciting to install a security system for Grandpa's mansion. Of course, there's a Chinese tech villain involved. This is a story I've had on the back burner for a long time, and I think I could make it work but in a way it feels too similar to <i>Punch 'Em All</i>.<br />
<br />
<b>Spanish Restoration</b> - with the recent news of yet another botched art restoration in Spain, I thought, what if there were a villain behind all of these botched restorations? My first idea was a villain whose entire goal is to deface works of art by "restoring" them. My second idea was some sort of demon who possesses people and does this, which explains the woman who defaced Ecco Homo for example. My third idea is maybe it's a villain who can bring these botched painting restorations to life so that Grandpa has to fight Monkey Christ. Anyway, I don't have a fully-fledged story idea for this yet.<br />
<br />
<b>To Punch A Hitler</b> - I've written quite a bit on this one. The idea is that every May 8 Grandpa Anarchy becomes depressed because it's Victory Day in Europe, and he never got the chance to punch Hitler in the face. He's punched Hitlers from various other timelines, he's punched Hitler's brain in a shark, he's punched all sorts of alternative Hitlers, but he failed to punch our timeline's Hitler in th face and it's one of his greatest regrets.<br />
<br />
My biggest problem with this particular story idea is that it's all setup, and I don't have a satisfying punch line yet. However it did give me an opportunity to explore more of Grandpa's comic book/film history, including the realization that there was a black Mr. Anarchy in a 1970's Blaxploitation film called <i>Funky Anarchy</i> (black Mr. Anarchy got to punch Hitler, of course).<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>University of Hard Knocks </b>- This is a dialog between Grandpa Anarchy and the villain Idiot Ball about whether villains are born or made. Idiot Ball naturally subscribes to the theory that he was forced to be a villain, that he had no choice.<br />
<br />
I don't actually know where this story is going at the moment but I liked the idea of including this sort of discussion in the middle of a fight. I think this stems from some podcasts I listened to which explored the idea a bit.<br />
<br />
<b>Pyramid</b> - The idea is that a villain is running a create-a-villain pyramid scheme or "Multi-Level Marketing" company, which is code for it's a pyramid scheme but it hasn't been proven in court yet. ^_^ Possibly this is a create-a-hero pyramid scheme, I haven't worked out the details yet.<br />
<br />
<b>Pillar of Light</b> - Having just watched <i>Suicide Squad</i>, I noticed that they also use the famous "pillar of light" trope that you see so often in fantasy/sci fi/superhero/horror movies. I need to write at least one Grandpa Anarchy story that involves one of those.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Vanellope Minthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17983682854669548152noreply@blogger.com0