lavenderbard | Recent Entries

I visited medical establishments three times last week (all for routine stuff), and also went out to celebrate my 31st wedding anniversary. I think if it wasn't for all that running around I would be "fully recovered" by now. As it is, I managed to make my wordage goal for the week, even though I still haven't managed to work anything else back into my life yet and my overall activity levels were down from the week before.

But whether I didn't quite manage to make my wordage goal, or I made it just barely, I have continued to keep the story progressing for all but the one week when I crashed completely. As a result, this week I completed the third quarter of the script for A Lily Besieged. Go me! And because I finished off another quarter, I have started a fresh file, and it feels really wierd to have my word count only showing four figures. Especially since total wordage for the project should hit 200 000 in the next couple weeks.

Every once in a while I consider the possibility of naming the four quarters of A Lily Besieged something other Part 1, Part 2, etc. If it were really going to be made into a tv series there would be no point, and if I were to turn it into a series of graphic novels instead I'd probably want more than four volumes. But with each quarter of the script weighing in at just over 60 000 words, four books really does seem like the most likely way for a novelization to go -- adapting it from the script ought to add wordage, but not enough to require splitting the quarters in two. So if this story is ever published in novel form, I will need four titles. If I named the books after the various clans/characters in them, I would have a great excuse to use the clan/rank insignias as cover art. Not that I really need an excuse, but there does need to be some way to figure out which insignias get featured on which book. Hmm. Maybe go a little astrological: The Inception of the Bear, Conjunction of Hawk and Owl, the Moon in Occlusion, Red Eagle Ascendant -- people might be disappointed at the lack of astrological references in the text if I go that route though. Maybe... Rouse a Sleeping Bear, Enrage a Hovering Hawk, Guard a Battered Eagle, Catch a Shadowed Tiger? (There is no Tiger insignia in the book. But a cover showing the actual insignia of the person being "caught" in the final volume would be a terrible spoiler -- the true identity of the 'big bad' isn't revealed until near the end of the story.)

For Last Week... Writing: 5278 words Pedometer: 17438 steps

So I had a mini-health-crash that took me down for a week, and then I spent last week doing recovery. Hopefully this week will be more productive. Ironically, after dragging myself out of bed, having done nothing but watch shows for a week, my WiiFit cheerfully informed me that I had the body of a twenty-year-old. I pity that twenty-year-old. It's normal for me to score higher on any kind of physical assesment if I've just come off a multi-day break, though -- is that the way it works for everyone (the story of the famous violinist who if he didn't practise for one day he could tell the difference, etc. seems to indicate not) or is it another side effect of whatever ails me?

On Saturday I got a request for one of my books from one of my kids, so yesterday I hunted up the latest story file to send to her... and ended up spending a good chunk of the day reading it myself, and chuckling. There is this wierd feeling when I do that -- these are my own lines I'm laughing at, isn't there supposed to be something wrong with that? But the reason I write has always been because I like my own stories. When I was doing nothing for a week, I was irked that I wasn't accomplishing anything, (I like having my progress bars that go up, and my list of things to do that I check off) but the thing that bothered me the most was that I had really been looking forward to the next bit in the story I am writing, and because I wasn't feeling well enough to write, the story had to be put on hold. Last week I could only write every other day or so, but at least my story was happening again. That made me happy.

For Last Week... Writing: 5369 words Pedometer: 18 607 steps

We got the second dose of our Covid vaccine this week, which sounds like a good reason why my numbers are down in pretty much everything, but it isn't the real reason. I had insomnia a couple nights this week, and I just don't seem to be all that productive on less than four hours of sleep. Still, I did make my wordage goal, and that's the important one, right?

Since everyone was suffering from shots, and it rained a lot, for this week's outing we headed out to Seibenthaler Fen, where the marsh-marigolds were fading, and no spectacular new flowers had showed up to replace them yet. But that's okay, becuase one of the appeals of the fen, is looking for turtles and frogs, both of which made an appearance. :)

I also put together a basic version of a new webgame. Word Scrambles -- or perhaps more accurately, word unscrambles? I'm doing it for a friend from LibraryThing's Hobnob With Authors group, although I plan to use it myself also, of course. She wants a space theme for her version, but I'm thinking that for me, it would work better as a 'Coral Palace' themed game.

For last Week... Writing: 5026 words Coding: 3 hours (Not counting Sunday) Art: 3 hours Music: 1 hours Pedometer: 37 465 steps

The week before last I was up in everything except art. Last week was down for everything except writing and steps taken. But at least I managed to keep my wordcounts up, even though I had a rough week. I was picking up again by the end of the week, so I'm sure this week will be better. It also snowed that week, which wouldn't have been particularly notable where I grew up, but here all the trees were already in flower. Our baby cherry trees lost all it's pretty blossoms. :(

My husband is no longer between jobs, so I have been doing most of my walks along the bike path instead of dragging him to a different park every day. Along the bike path we are getting mostly dandelions and creeping ivy. (Which are pretty, I guess, but I see them all the time, and they are not native -- I became a native plant snob when I started researching for a book I plan to set in the historical locale: if it isn't native, I can't use it in my book!) A week ago Wednesday I took myself off to Indian Mound. But that was the day it snowed, and most of the wildflowers were looking pretty bedraggled. I did find one Wild Geranium that was sheltered by a rock that looked fine.

Wild Geranium was where it was at last week too. Last year I visited the Cox Arboretum and stumbled on their "wildflower spot" which was lovely, but it was clear we had missed the best time for it. So I put in my calendar that Saturday the First of May, 2021 I was supposed to go back again, so I could see the location in the full glory of its late spring color. That actually worked. There were wild geraniums, wild blue phlox, shooting stars, blue stars, and several other flowers I haven't identified yet.

For the Week before last...
Writing: 6020 words
Coding: 6.5 hours
Art: 1 hours
Music: 6 hours
Pedometer: 34 790 steps

For last Week...
Writing: 6412 words
Data Entry: 4 hours
Music: 2.5 hours
Pedometer: 35 813 steps

Last week the flower of the hour was Marsh Marigold. The biggest most beautiful blossoms were at Sieventhaler Fen, but down in The Narrows although the plants were smaller they completely carpeted the river valley so that the all trees were growing up out of a sea of yellow.

My activity continues to increase -- perhaps a little too much. On Saturday we went to a "new" park for our walk, (although I'm pretty sure I've been there before once, only not recently, and with my son rather than my husband.) I put in my my "best" day since getting the new fitbit, and as a result was pretty sick yesterday.

But it was a super pretty walk! Bluebells and dutchman's petticoats all over the hillsides, and violets and spring beauties in the valley. And a great big sycamore, looming up and over the waterfall.

For the Week... Writing: 4156 words Coding: 2 hours Pedometer: 24961 steps

My state is locked down, but not a whole lot has changed for me. I already avoided crowds and left the house mostly only to take walks or play some disk golf.

One thing that is different is that the main ''social media" site I hang out on, LibraryThing.com, a 'social book cataloging site', has dropped their paid membership paradigm and gone to all free for everyone -- still with no ads! They were planning to do this soon anyway since the commercial services they sell on the side were already fully supporting the site. But now seemed a good time to go live with it.

If anyone wants to drop by, I'm the administrator for the Hobnob With Authors Group, so a post there is sure to find me. My username is LShelby.

In writing related news I have finished writing the glossary entries for Sails of Everwind today, so I'm on to editing now. Finishing the copyedits for Eyes of Infistar is next, then cleaning up Sails before it goes off my copyeditor. I hope to have that much done at least by the end of the month, even with my stir-crazy husband prowling the premises. Worst to worst I will recruit him to help. :)

So here is my workspace:

It's a pretty nifty arrangement, but I wish it was slightly more stable. But if I set the tripod legs on the stand further apart (thus increasing the stability), that will push the main pole of the stand further away from the bed, and in order to keep the tablet in a comfortable position I will have to adjust the tablet clamp so that it is further out on the arm (thus decreasing the stability).

So would the outcome of all that adjusting be a tablet stand that is more stable or less stable?

This past week I wrote for more than ten hours. At least it was supposed to be writing, but sometimes it seems like I'm spending more time looking stuff up in my worldbuilding database, and adding things to my worldbuilding database, and occasionally fixing some aspect of my worldbuilding database. Ah, well, that's all important stuff too, right?

According to screentime I spent almost as much time doing artwork as I did writing, but it was really my daughter who was doing the artwork this week. I was too busy sewing and tatting. My music practicing suffered a bit, too. And, as I expected, I did a lot of show watching and didn't get any books read. But since I was doing that on purpose I'm okay with that. This week I'm sure it'll be more music, art and books and less shows.

I did go disk golfing, worked out almost every day, and averaged more than one walk a day. (Gosh, that almost makes me sound healthy!)

I made my (college-aged) son a stuffed frog for Christmas. (Why I thought my son would want a stuffed frog is a long story that I will share only if requested.) The frog has a wire skeleton, so that he is posable, and is magnetized with large magnets in each foot and teeny tiny magnets in each finger. After making him, I dressed him in a dark suit and a bright red tie and sent him on his way.

When he called me up for my birthday, my son informed me that he has had numerous people tell him that they would pay money to get a frog like this one.

It's heart-warming, but the frog is entirely hand-sewn, and getting the magnets into the fingers was a bit of a challenge. I don't think anyone would be willing to pay a price commensurate with the time spent. Still, at least the present was a hit. :)

According to screentime, this past week I spent 6 hours on art, 5 hours practicing languages, and only 3 and a half hours writing. Possibly because I spent time I should have been writing, trying to get caught up with the online friends I have been mostly ignoring for a painfully long time? But I don't remember using social media during my usual work hours. Maybe its because I'm working on a glossary, and working on glossaries always goes really slow for me, so I'm spending so much time staring blankly at my screen that screentime isn't counting it as active time on my text editor?

At any rate, I read two books and spent less than two hours watching shows. I also did morning workouts four out

It’s my birthday today, and so when my husband took me out on Valentine’s Day, he bought me a bigger, better iPad with an Apple Pencil as a birthday present, which made me very happy, because: pressure sensitivity! Yay! (It’s an artist thingy.)

I have spent at least a couple hours since then drawing with the pencil. And even when I’m not actually drawing anything, I have this tendency to use it to type on the little mini-onscreen-keyboard, write handwritten notes, or even sometimes navigate with it.

And so, when I was eating breakfast this morning while continuing to use my shiny new birthday present I kept having my Apple Pencil attempt to attach itself to my spoon. (Maybe there is a romance brewing there?)

In other news, I am almost afraid to say I’m doing well, because it seems like shortly after I do so, my health collapses. Nonetheless, I am almost recovered from the cold that took place barely a month after the previous cold. I still can’t sing. :(. But for this cold, unlike the last cold, I didn’t get so sick that I ended up breaking my Duolingo streak, nor did I stop getting writing done. (Duolingo, for those unfamiliar with it, is a language learning app that I use to try and prevent deterioration of what little French I managed to acquire in Jr. High, and also maybe pick up a little bit of Korean.)

Setting the new iPad up to replace the old iPad as my main writing tool seems to be going fairly well. (Transferring my story files was the easiest thing to get done, since I was already transferring them back and forth between my old tablet and my desktop). I should have no trouble getting back to writing a glossary for Sails of Everwind on Tuesday. 🙂

I have no music on the new iPad yet though. My husband does not want the desktop system software updated, so iTunes and my new tablet won’t talk to each other.

I have just reached the designating stopping place (halfway) on the current project (a screenplay for an Asian-style tv drama with a vaguely wuxia feel to it) which I wasn’t supposed to have been working on. (But I have a better excuse than usual, because any excuse that involves the words “spinal surgery” is way better than average.)

That means that I can now convince myself to go back to all the other projects I was supposed to be working on. At least that is the plan. I have too many projects that I stopped somewhere in the middle, and I want to get some of them finished and off my mental to do list.

So there’s this website overhaul that is long overdue, and likewise four books in need of editing, and four covers that need to be painted…

… and then finally I can get back to finishing this novel (Song of Asolde Vol. 4: Fencing With Waves)) that I was in the middle of writing a year ago when my neck went kablooey.

It’s a bit difficult to figure out where I’m going slot the completion of this project into my schedule, though. Stopping here is like stopping at the end of a volume of a multivolume epic. I’ve been doing that for Song of Asolde for years… but it’s a bit wearing. Twenty years later I just want to get the story done, already.

I hope I don’t end up putting off Lily Besieged for as long…. but at the same time, why am I writing this project at all? (Answer: Because I wanted to see if typing on my tablet with a bluetooth keyboard was a viable way to write. Since I didn’t have any projects on my tablet, I started a ‘test’ project from scratch.)

Alas, I have no use whatsoever for a screenplay. I’d probably have to convert it into novels before I can do anything with it anyhow. (But as an exercise in working within an imposed structure it has been interesting.)

So apparently after spending six months trying not to move much, I have no endurance at all, (instead of the hardly any I usually have). I didn’t make it through even a 5 minute routine on my WiiFit before getting too dizzy to continue. But at least I actually got on WiiFit. Which means that for the first time in about six months, I checked off every item on my morning to-do list today.

This probably deserves some small celebration, but I’m thinking I’m going to be too tired to party, (see earlier comment about lacking endurance.)

I also have made some progress on getting the ‘local’ version of my website working, am back to tatting while watching shows, (which somehow makes watching shows feel less like a waste of time), and have made some progress on some long overdue betareading.

I think I’m ready to attempt some ‘real’ work now, but not today. I have discovered that without my laptop, making Fridays my coding day doesn’t work out so well, because my husband does stuff for his work on the family desktop on Fridays. So Monday has become Code Monday, and my task for today is to backup everything and then update the php on the online version of my website and hope nothing breaks.

Since early in March I’ve been having trouble with a pinched nerve in my neck. Except for the first month I wasn’t in a lot of pain, but the reason I wasn’t in a lot of pain was because I very carefully stayed in the ‘good’ positions that didn’t irritate the nerve, and so I had trouble getting anything done.

So on Sept 5th, I had disk replacement surgery. So far, post-surgery recovery seems to be going well. 🙂

While I was having troubles my aging laptop finally died, so I’ve been trying to transfer all my work processes to my iPad and the family desktop computer. This is apparently going to cost me quite a bit since essentially every app I use needs to be upgraded. ::sigh::

In the meantime, since none of my current projects were accessible to me, I ended up writing 70K+ words on a totally new and possibly useless project… the screenplay for an asian-style drama. There’s no way I can actually have an asian style drama produced, but I’ve been watching asian dramas, and so naturally, being who I am, I have to invent stories that feel like they are for that medium. But maybe it isn’t entirely a waste of time – I can always do a novelization version later, right?

…But I’d really rather get a Good Ending.

So, news: During the past two weeks my health was only so-so, and I had a lot of downtime. Bummer.Fortunately I’ve a whole lot of practice trying to look at things positively. Although I didn’t make my weekly wordage goal for either week, if you add the wordage for both weeks together, the result is easily over my weekly goal.

So I didn’t have two bad weeks, I only had one bad week, it just wasn’t a consecutive week. 😉

Which brings me to the post title…

I watch a lot of asian dramas when I’m not feeling well. But IMHO one of the weaknesses of the medium is the endings. I just ran into one what particularly irked me. According to the reviews it had a “ambiguous” ending. Apparently “ambiguous” means that after forcing the heroine to tragically sacrifice herself by means of a scientifically-unsound plot device, and establishing that it is essentially impossible for the heroine to have survived, we will none the less show you scenes that make it look like she might have survived anyway.

I can appreciate a clever explanation of why the inevitable maybe isn’t inevitable after all, but I didn’t GET an explanation. So it doesn’t even matter whether she’s “really alive” to me or not, at this point, because either way it just feels like someone tried to play a very cheap trick on me.

I still have ~60K words to go to my next ending. But when I get there, I swear I will do a MUCH better job.

… I want to do everything.

Now that I’m writing regularly, instead of setting down with a sigh of relief, and saying, “Ah… good!” I start going: “let’s go back to every online community I’ve ever joined and become active again. Let’s join the two writer’s groups the library is running. Let’s do art, and music and, and, and…”

So, I’ve been keeping myself busy, lately. Maybe a little too busy. But as long as I keep hitting my wordcount goals, I’m hoping it’s okay to indulge myself a little.

I was supposed to go to a song circle on Saturday, but it was cancelled due to bad weather. Sunday I went out view the post-storm scenery. I am accustomed to ice storms that encase twigs in a cocoon of ice, making it look a bit as if the trees were made out of icicles. This was different. The ice was not continuous, but clung (mostly to the upper branches) in spots or chains. It made it seem like the trees had been hung with crystals, rather as if some over-energetic fairy children had been enthusiastically decorating for some winter festival.

It was also a good day for viewing animal tracks. All the usual suspects were represented, deer, feral cats, rabbits, and squirrels. I saw several trails of teeny-tiny footprints, clearly left by a critter of mouse size or smaller. And also dog prints… although stray dogs are rarer than stray cats in this neighborhood, so maybe they were actually fox tracks. I know we have foxes in the area. There were also some messy tracks I couldn’t make out well enough enough to identify the owner. Skunk maybe? Or raccoon?

Eyes of Infistar is at my copyeditor. (She reported that she was enjoying it and that it was nice to be working on something that is “actually good” which gives me a glow of accomplishment, but also makes me thing that there might be some drawbacks to being a freelance editor-for-hire.

Sails of Everwind has been edited according to editorial demand and is ready to be reread and hopefully approved to go off to the copy editors next.

Lioness is being read by readers…

I just ran out of editing projects to work on. Looks like I get to start writing the next book already. Only a few weeks after finishing the last one. Awesome!

Fencing With Waves, it is your turn!

I have just completed a major update for my website, removing outdated code from hopefully everywhere. (And that’s a lot of everywhere!)

For the past two weeks I have been writing (or editing) Monday through Thursday, and coding Friday through Sunday, and its been working wonderfully. I’ve been going around grinning, because it makes me so very happy to have both kinds of projects moving forward at a reasonable pace. Here’s to hoping that it continues working for me for months and months and months!

(Although, I do have to figure out how to work Art in there also, somehow. I’ve currently got 4 books all at the editing phase all at once. That means Cover Art will be needed. Eeep!)

I think I have got Lioness to the point where I really need to get some outside feedback.

Here’s a go at a blurb for same, see what y’all think:

As the daughter of a wealthy merchant lord, Veldy grew up rich and sheltered, spending her days weaving and making lace. When her father convinces her to marry a nomadic lion hunter, she embarks on a bridal journey that will carry her deep into the dry and windswept highlands — facing physical hardships she previously could never even have imagined. But Veldy has far more to overcome than a harsh climate and an extreme change in lifestyle. Her bridegroom has many enemies — and not all of them are entirely human.

Anyway, the vital statistics: Lioness is a ~160K word story (I’ve currently got it split up into a duology), set in an Africa-esque fantasy world. (The same world as Cantata and Pavane, but on the other side of the continent). It could probably be considered YA. It’s got action, “cultural stuff”, and, of course, a bit of romance. And I’m looking for people who would be willing to read it and tell me what they think of the pacing, and whether I have any plot holes or I didn’t explain something well enough — that kind of stuff.

Mirrored on My Website.

I have finished the first draft of a historical pirate romance set on the same world as Across a Jade Sea. It took me about a year to write. I don’t know exactly how long it is, because I wrote it out by hand, but at 281 pages, with my average page of longhand being somewhere between 150-200 words, it is clearly a full novel in length. That makes it my 13th completed novel.

Unless Lioness ends up getting split into a duology. Which is very possible.

Either way, 13th or 14th, it’s still a milestone, and I still get to celebrate. 🙂

I started working on it because I wasn’t feeling very well, and I was having trouble putting in a regular work day (especially since my computer had been moved out of my bedroom due to family computer-shortage issues). But I really wanted to be writing something, so I said: ‘Why don’t I write longhand? That way I can take it to bed with me, and I can tell myself, ‘it doesn’t matter how good it is, because I can fix it when I type it up later’. Also, I can just work on one of the random shorter things in my head that isn’t in the regular queue, so that if I start feeling better I won’t mind abandoning it for something else.” (I thought it would be ‘shorter’. I don’t always guess right when it comes to length.)

By the time I felt better — several months later — I had at least 50 000 words, and I didn’t want to abandon it. I wanted to get it written.

But now it is written, and I can finally get back to my ‘regularly scheduled’ work. Yay!
Which means: getting the two Bambi books ready to go off to my copy editor; finishing my first pass edits on Lioness, so I can get reader feedback; and then writing Book Four of Song of Asolde, Fencing With Waves.

I’m kind of eager to get to Fencing With Waves, because while in the middle of the rush to the end with the Pirate thingy, I took a week off to get the previous Song of Asolde book into a state where I could send it to my oldest daughter as a birthday present — she has been eagerly awaiting the next installment in that series for a few years now. So now I have that story in my head, but I really need to finish off some of my other projects first. Sigh.

Mirrored on My Website.

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L. Shelby

Confessions of a Creataholic

June 2021

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L. Shelby

Recent Entries

Three Quarters Completed

Could be Worse

To the Accompaniment of a Frog Chorus....

Snow in April

Another Week Goes By

Carefully does it!

My Own Pocket World

A Physics Question

A Small Brag...

My Apple Pencil sticks to my Spoon

122 178 words. Woot.

Still alive, and once again kicking

So Surgery Happened...

A Bad Ending may be Better than No Ending...

As soon as I can do one thing...

After the storm

That Was Quick

Behind the Scenes

Looking for Beta-readers

Number 13… or maybe 14.