Progress Tracker on Thread (1)

Progress Tracker on Thread (1)

For the very first time, I’m trialling the method of setting an actual date for a solo piece that I’m going to publish as a standalone novella, my story A Thread of Chance of which the first three Chapters have already been published in the first 2 issues of the anthology series Excursions from the Citadel (Chapter 2 and 3 have been published jointly as part 2) Following advice from the Creative Penn, I’m setting the deadline to be a date memorable to me which is my birthday on 23 October. To be honest, I don’t really celebrate it anymore and mostly forget about it but at least it’s a date that will stick in my mind.

 

In conjunction with this date setting, I’ve printed out calendars with one month to one A4 page so that I can assign daily writing goals, mark down absolute deadlines for specific aspects of the story as well as other important commitments and colour code things. Up to the 18th of this month, I will be doing planning and what I call pre-writing (which is half way between an outline and actual writing, where I work out what I want and need to write in each scene, often constructed from some kind of scene skeleton that I always make). From the 19th, it would be a minimum word count of 300 on each weekday and 500 on weekends. This means that I will be writing 10,500 words for Chapter 3 of Thread if I finish exactly on the deadline which is clearly overkill. But I figure it’s good for morale if I start with a deadline that I can easily meet.

 

In addition to my personal efforts, I’m recruiting my friend as motivation partner to help me to stay on track with this deadline in the following way: we have a deal whereby I will make a small donation to her social business as penalty if I miss the deadline whereas I will make a bigger donation if I meet my deadline. This basically gives her an incentive to bug me so that I will meet the deadline. Finally, I’m putting up this particular serial post that will keep running over consecutive weeks starting from this week so that I have “invisible eyes” monitoring my progress. *wink* Feel free to whip me if I ever report departing from stated goals.

 

For this week, the broad goal is to get rough planning done and I finished it ahead of time yesterday. The breakdown of actual work done by day is as follows:

Monday 5th Sept – no work done, this is usually the day where my time after work is spent watching this game show I had been following on a weekly basis

Tuesday 6th Sept – started on the scene skeleton (basically sequence of events in each scene) but I dug a hole for myself that got me excited instead of depressed LOL

Wednesday 7th Sept – finished up on the scene skeleton and also finished up what I call a scene purpose outline for Chapter 4 that sketches out for every purpose the main events and the purpose for the specific scene

Thursday 8th Sept – Re-read Chapter 1 and 2 but before too close to completion of Chapters 2 and 3, gave up on re-reading

Friday 9th Sept- wrote the scene purpose document for Chapter 1 so that I can have it on hand for revision of draft 1 for Thread as a standalone novella, something I found immensely helpful while I was working on Thread as a serial short story with standalone parts

Saturday 10th Sept- refined scene skeleton for Chapter 4 done (hole still unfilled), ready to move into pre-writing next week

 

Excursions from the Citadel- issue 2 out!

It has been out since 31 August. The full title for it is Wizards: Excursions from the Citadel Issue 2. There are more authors that have come on board for this particular issue which is great if you appreciate diversity. I am personally exiting this enterprise as contributing author and the grand finale to my serial story A Thread of Chance will now be published as a standalone novella by itself.

For those of you who have purchased either/both copies of the Excursions issue 1 and 2, I will be providing coupon codes in the future so you can get a free copy of the Thread novella when it comes out.

Moonlake’s Meta Fiction (4)

This is the last bit of meta fiction that I had written for the Citadel. It is part of a collaborative submission I did with MysticMoon for the Kaiju (monster of massive size ala Godzilla style) quest. This whole submission is based off on MysticMoon’s idea of a chimera creature created through scientific means i.e. DNA mixing and I mainly helped to create the underlying context of how such research came about. Anyway, the following meta fiction (mostly in diary entry form) is really about the lead scientist who created this ultimate chimera monster that became effectively Godzilla running amok. The original inspiration for this character is this youtube clip of a Captain from a space opera that MysticMoon pointed me to but the name of the show/movie never registered on me.

Dr. James Wooden

11:00 a.m., Sydney, Crown Center, Press Conference

With an air of self-assurance, Dr. James Wooden strode in, smiled and seated himself. In a charcoal black suit, Dr. Wooden conveys the image of a true gentleman.

“Welcome to the Press Conference on Project Chimera. As everyone here is well aware, now farming has to be done predominately either with animal or human labour. Also, the radical movement is gaining momentum and causing major disruptions to our lives.  Now, I ask all of you, what do we do about them? Well, my answer is that we create something that will simultaneously address these two problems…  Now, is there any questions?”

18/05/3031

Finally, those walking monies have given me the funding for my Project Chimera! Imagine the fame I will get when I create the perfect animal that will solve the two most pressing problems of humanity at the moment.

19/05/3031

What specimens of DNA should I use to create my Chimera? Let me see, grizzly bear for its strength and ability to sustain mob attacks, the Tasmanian devil so that it will have a rapid reproductive cycle, snakes so that it would have a means to quickly immobilise those pesky radicals and yes, the giant squid from Japan that has that delicious gene with the propensity to mutate, why then my Chimera can continuously breed with other species, creating unique offsprings. Who knows that those walking monies won’t take the fancy to getting their special pet Chimera and give me follow-up funding on project extensions?

10/01/3032

Curse those radicals, here I thought this ghost town of Alice Springs would be the perfect place to set up my research compound and all my Aboriginal ‘assistants’ have escaped in the confusion as well. I know, I will move to Bourke in New South Wales, surely there the opportunities to ‘recruit’ more Aboriginal ‘assistants’ are plenty as well.

08/11/3032

Those ethnical guidelines that scientists are supposed to uphold are damn nuisances. What’s the difference between a non-lethal venom that will paralyse someone so that they can be killed and a lethal one that directly kills? Damn hypocrites

~ excerpts from a partially recovered personal diary of Dr. James Wooden found at the site of the destroyed research compound at Bourke, NSW

Moonlake’s Lyrics (24)

I’m rushing for the finishing line with the second part of my serial story for the ePub so it’s lyrics time again. It’s a love song sung together by George Lam and Sally Yip (who eventually married each other and are still married now) but I think it has much wider applications as it touches upon themes such as seeking and searching, staying in the moment versus thinking for the long term, following your heart etc. The title of the song roughly translates to “It’s still love at separation”.

 

The lyrics are:

(F) Wind             having blown through ten thousand miles of sand            having crossed my path

Having touched you on your travel                          maybe just because within both our eyes

There are the shadows of loneliness

 

(M) Walking       the direction is that way               it is I who am searching

For you who are also searching                  it’s late                 half dreaming or half awake

A certain type of emotional stirring won’t be able to be articulated anymore

 

(F) Hard to say should or should not        loving deeply with you at this moment

Pondering whether there is a future to love whilst one is travelling

 

(M) Hard to say should or should not      loving without restrain with you at this moment

If you stop by my road                   whether you would still be you

 

(F) Drifting          drifting through the first half of my life who knows which direction I will drift to

Ultimately the sound of tears and laughter          will only last a moment

 

(M) No                 don’t ask for results        tomorrow looking back to everything today with you

 

(F&M) Will we smile or cry bitterly           ultimately this night        is more important for us to cherish

 

*(F) Who still cares about should or should not  one only needs to be loving deeply at this moment

Given that one is travelling          there is no way to ascertain the future

(M) Who still cares about should or should not   one only needs to be loving without restrain at this moment

There are too many paths on this world                                where it’s still love at separation

 

Repeat * but duet this time

 

(F&M) Who still cares about should or should not             one only needs to be loving deeply at this moment

There are too many paths on this world                                where it’s still love at separation

What I learnt from the ePub (2)

Continued on from my post last week, here’s what I learnt about communication and collaboration from my involvement in the epub:

Communication

  • Never speak to each other under the influence of emotion. This doesn’t mean you push your own emotions aside or never speak up for yourself. Just wait till you feel you are calm before you start compiling your email responses or in the case of chat, just say “I’m not calm now, I don’t want to speak any more, we carry where we leave on now another day”. But make sure that you do actually come back to it with the other person promptly otherwise it’s like leaving stuff on the burner without attendance.
  • Words can hurt and there’s no means to undo or take back hurt. It doesn’t matter that your intention wasn’t to hurt and the other person misunderstood your intentions. If someone actually tells you that they have issues with your words/conduct, acknowledge their feelings first and then explain about your original intention. Please don’t rush to dismiss the other’s feelings (remember that all feelings are valid, you can disagree with other people’s opinions, you can’t disagree with other people’s feelings) and justify yourself by saying that the other person is just over-reacting or have an agenda against you.
  • To fulfil the purpose of real communication, both parties need to be assertive as opposed to aggressive or submissive. It’s not good enough that you intended to communicate but phrased things so aggressively that the other person gets offended and you effectively say “I’m just being yourself, I’ve always been like this, if you understand my true intentions, why are you taking me up on phrasing issues?” Well, if you really mean to communicate, the basic idea is to get the content of what you want to say across to the other person, not some negative tone underlying your words which then triggers adverse feelings in the other person who then closes down in intellectual comprehension due to such feelings. So really, everyone please read over your own emails before sending them off and when someone reports that they are upset over certain phrasing of yours, just acknowledge this as being valid.

Collaboration

  • This is specific to my own personality but it is almost a prerequisite for me to actually work out some basic premise of the conditions surrounding the collaboration before joining rather than jumping on board based on emotions and specifically friendship. I already had a taste of this when I automatically agreed to be my best friend’s bridesmaid but then pulled out upon further consideration. I’m happy to report that this didn’t end up blemishing our friendship but instead made it stronger. But in terms of the epub, this jumping on board on my behalf has been entirely disastrous. I actually wanted to discuss between all collaborators at the very start so we can work out differences or just compare notes in visions. But one collaborator of mine convinced me and everyone that we have an experimental enterprise and it’s better to fine-tune things as we go. And then it’s basically constant warfare between me and him because of our differing visions. Again, this is specific to me and him but I think in general, working out common grounds before a collaboration even started is a good strategy for ensuring group harmony.
  • When disagreements occur, don’t go for compromises. Instead, go back to square 1 and actually try to find the lowest denominator of agreement between the two of you over the issue and start from there.
  • Trust each other as collaborators. Don’t hold back when you encounter problems. Notify each other promptly. Especially don’t hold back with the view that you are sacrificing for the common good. If all of you are true collaborators, no self-sacrifices are needed, that is just some excuse you make up yourself because you are conflict avoiding in some way. And you can’t trust yourself to hold onto such a martyr attitude for the long term.
  • If you genuinely believe yourself to be incompatible with a collaboration, gracefully exit. No matter of your emotional attachment, if you’ve been genuinely accumulated a large stock of negative emotions associated with a collaboration venture and you just can’t resolve this with your collaborators, then just cut your ties. It’s really not worth your time, effort and emotional attachment to stay in a collaboration where you can’t work with people who share the same values with you.

That’s all of my self-reflection on the epub and it’s probably obvious that I went through some intense communication and relationship problems during the course of the epub. But I’m happy to report that I still feel that I gained more than I had lost and I have much more promising collaborative creative writing projects planned ahead with my other collaborator who co-wrote Empress with me in issue 1 of Excursions from the Citadel. I won’t be appearing in future issues of the Excursions beyond issue 3 but I’m not disappearing as a writer. You will continue to hear about writing updates from me so stay tuned.

What I learnt from the ePub (1)

Even though I ultimately decided that I’m a bad match for the Excursions epub, it has been a fruitful and educational enterprise for me across multiple areas. In this post, I would like to document all of the things I’ve learnt about myself as a writer and a person and about communication and collaboration. This is both for personal reference and general sharing.

Moonlake as a Writer

  • I am less a short story writer compared to a novel writer even though I had yet to finish a novel to date but had at least had a collaborative piece published in issue 1 of the Excursions from the Citadel and finished the first draft of my serial story Thread. I’ve always suspected this but through this epub, I actually find out exactly why: A short story is best matched to a single tight plot but I have a personal penchant for thinking up and preferring to write complex stories with multiple plot lines running parallel to each other AKA I’m Miss Complexity.
  • Some writers can write very fast and believe in writing very fast. I don’t. I like to work at my own pace and occasionally let things simmer so my speed fluctuates. But bottom line is that I am a slow writer overall. Sometimes I wish I’m faster but mostly I don’t. I like taking my time with things. It’s part of my life philosophy.
  • While I tend towards planning before writing (in fact, I just cannot completely wing it, I really need to plan somewhat before I can start writing anything), I still often under-plan. Part of this is an inability to completely imagine myself in the scene 100% of the time.
  • I’m very inflexible when actual writing starts deviating from m plan.
  • I really need to do pre-writing which I did for my stalled novel where I expand each scene out almost completely before I write actual words for a story. I discarded this completely for Thread, my solo serial for the epub and now things are in a mess in terms of revision.
  • I insist that I can’t function as a writer without feedback but I also need to balance this eager embracing of/chasing after feedback with an ability of reconciling feedback with my own author’s vision for the story where they differ. For Thread, the latter became an issue but luckily, I asked another contributing author for issue 2 for help and she very correctly encouraged me to pursue my own vision as the author.

Moonlake as a Person

  • I’ve always classified myself as mild-tempered and this is also my public image. Also, I’ve always abhorred conflict, whether it’s being involved myself or even just observing it. But when it comes to something I really care about, then my real temper can show and it did show for this epub. While it had led to ugliness, I celebrate the fact that I had stood for myself and my genuine feelings.
  • I still hold back too much, especially my own emotions. This only gives them a chance to fester, leading up to explosions later and grudges being built up with long shadows.
  • My intuition is strong and I should learn to trust it more.
  • While I tend to get along with everyone, there are certain communication styles that I dislike. I should accept this aspect of myself and remember it for future reference.
  • Internet friendships are to be taken cautiously as there are little that they are based on other than the words you write on a keyboard to each other. I shouldn’t have the expectation that they would be as steadfast as real life friendships. While this might not be true of and for everyone, I should again accept that this is just my nature.

Giving

“If you think you’ve given other a lot but they are still unhappy with what you gave them, then you need to start thinking about whether you’ve given what they want/need.”
~dialogue from the Hong Kong TV drama, Between Love and Desire.

Does this resonate with any of you? It certainly does with me, especially in light of recent events.

I’ve put in oblique references to these events before in earlier blog posts but let me talk about them directly here to provide the context for how this quote relates to me on a personal level. But before I do that, let me start at the beginning, which is the collaborative epub venture started at the Citadel – my chosen virtual writer’s home, a site for writers and gamers (or most likely writer-gamers). It started some time towards the end of last year and we released the first issue of Excursions from the Citadel on 1 March this year. We are now working on issue 2 and I will exit this enterprise as a writer after the publication of issue 3.

Why am I exiting? The predominant reason is that I find myself a bad match to the enterprise which needs a writer that can produce a short story that’s ready for public eyes within a set time period of about 3 months. I am just not that type of writer. I talked about this before but what I’ve never made clear explicitly is that there is a secondary reason that has at least 20% weighting in terms of pushing me towards the decision of leaving the venture that I had helped to build from the ground up and invested substantially in both in terms of time and emotion. By the way, I know this to be true of the original circle of 3 who were the only contributing authors towards issue 1 of Excursions. And yet despite this common passion, periodic rows always erupt between me and a specific person out of my two collaborators. Both of us had exploded at the other, one each across the two issues respectively. Big and small disagreements and arguments have peppered all throughout our collaborations and it just made me absolutely exhausted. But this is not a rant post and I will stop here in terms of talking about contexts. Also, the good news is that despite this personal disagreement, I parted from the epub and this particular collaborator of mine in peace.

Now, onto the actual meat of this post. I’ve been reflecting on this rather nasty turn in the communication and relationship between me and this collaborator of mine (who I actually considered friend at one point). There were multiple contributing factors of course but I really feel that the crux of the matter lies in the opening quote. I think that each of us believe in some sense that we had done a lot for the other that was underappreciated (he specifically said this in one correspondence between us and I must say that I echoed this sentiment too and told him so in my own way later on). I would say that we are correct in thinking that we each had given a lot to the other in terms of support in our respective creative endeavours and tolerance of unintentional bad choice of wording etc. But what I now feel is that each and both of us should take the opening quote to heart as the lesson to be learnt out of our disagreement and parting. When we peel back all of our emotions and just examine cold hard facts, I think we will find that we have each compromised on the other’s behalf but what often happens is that we ‘forget’ this about the other’s efforts and sacrifices in the heat of our emotions and unconsciously revert back to demanding having what we each wanted fully. But this means that we each become stuck in our subjective realities and that’s not a way we can operate on a long term basis as collaborators. The opening quote gets me out of this unhealthy mindset and now I would share it with everyone.

Anyway, this is the end of my own reflection. What about yours? Care to share below?

Words hurt

Recently, I’ve had a first hand experience of how words hurt though of course I didn’t do anything so dramatic but I admit to not being on my best behaviour. It’s more or less over with me now but I still feel for the original author who wrote this. Secondly, during this incident that I’m referring now, me and the other person have been alternating between aggressor and victim and now I think that both of us should have read this post.

Moonlake’s Meta fiction (3)

The following three bits of meta fiction are written to tease out a set of two legendary places called Still and Limbo that I wrote up for one of the quests at the Citadel. And I don’t think I can sum up these two places better than the following tagline I wrote:

“Two forgotten places there be- Still and Limbo,
Still where Time is forever Still,
Limbo where Naught is ever Remembered.”

The Abbot cordially greeted the Lord who strode in regally clothed in fineries that would not look out of place in court but somehow had an unkempt look about him. He looked about to speak but then being lost on the choice of words, was irked and started fretting about. Seeing this, the Abbot smiled knowingly and calmly reassured him, “You have come to the right place. Fret not over it. But this is not the right time and place for the kind of talk we’ll be having, not yet. Let us retire to a more private place.”

The Lord seemed pacified by the words and followed the Abbot meekly into the Inner Sanctuary. He did not take note of anything but the white-robed figure drawing him onwards as they traversed through a long corridor. Otherwise, he might have noted and indeed given voice to the contempt in his servant’s eyes of the dilapidated state of the Abbey and its measly decorations.

In the Lord’s mind, the concept of time passage had fled entirely. All of a sudden, he found himself alone with the Abbot in a study.

“Now we can speak freely.” The Abbot looked at him with his keen eyes. “Now which are you, one who seeks a quiet place for a contemplation, or one who seeks contemplation indefinitely?” An amused smile came onto his lips when he said the latter.

The Lord was confused. “What difference does it make?”

“None and a great deal.” The Abbot smiled enigmatically. Then an otherworldly gleam came onto his eyes. He recited the following verse in a grave tone:

“Two ever that seek Still while One only craves for Limbo,

The Two urgently need Contemplation and the One yearns for not Remembering.

One of the Two pursue falsely for the Hope of Longevity,

Yonder the Lust for Limbo is ever Pure.

Be it the Two or the One, seek Still or Limbo need not be.

Still and Limbo calls its like, whether or not Like beware.”

A series of images flashed past in Garmon’s mind. Garmon knew not from whence they came for he had never seen or even heard of the ritual depicted. For all that those images rippled and undulated and everything seemed to be shrouded under shadows, Garmon knew instinctively that what was shown was a ritual to achieve one purpose. A purpose that fitted with his need, at least for now. Without further contemplation (which was somewhat strange if he reflected upon the instance later, he had always been a cautious man), he started performing the first step of the ritual that would start a process that there could be undone once started…

When he came to again, he found himself in a place that contained no sound nor any odours. Neither was there any sight to behold. Everything here was of a murky colour- it looked like grey at first but upon closer observation, it contained a little of every possible shade he had ever seen and more. When combined together, the murky colour gave off an impression of desolation, comfortable desolation. Just then, Garmon felt something… a concept evaporating from his memories like wisps of smoke that faded to nothingness. But he shrugged it off as it was not important. What was important to him now was the contemplation of this place that he was in now. It was a misty place. No, that’s not right. It was a shrouded place, for sure, but not by mist. Even the lightest mist had weight but this place was shrouded by something… impossible to cipher but definitely weightless. When he reached out his hand to touch it, he felt nothing as if it did not exist at all. But Garmon knew it was there. Just as he knew that this place, this realm he had just entered was a forgotten place, a thoroughly and completely forgotten place, a place that does not exist in his world nor any others. It is a place where you get to forget everything, even yourself, pure bliss for someone who wants to forget, wants to forget everything, wants dearly and most of all to forget himself.Just the place for him.

Iblinikalis, Master of the Ebony Tower, Loremaster of the Uncharted Realms, Paramount Explorer of Arcana Extraordinaire, looked into the scrying orb in front of him. He was looking on the landscapes of a realm lying outside of the physical world (an arcane realm by definition) that he was thinking of claiming fief rights to as First Discoverer. Actually, looking on would not be the correct words for the experience. For Iblinikalis had perfected the art of scrying. Not only could he determine at will what sights to see of a location, he could actually experience of the location as if he had truly visited it.

This arcane realm he had just recently discovered was a strange place. It was not bizarre with a totally different of basic laws governing over its functioning like some of the others that he was Lord of. No, in that aspect, it operated much as the realms of the physical world. Its physical landscape was also ordinary- it had mountain ranges, rivers and streams, flat land covered with vegetation and all other types of terrains that could be found on Taineer, his own home Realm. And yet there was something odd about it. No wind stirred the plant lives, they lay dormant on the ground like creatures that had been hibernating for eons. The streams and waters did not flow, their waters lying stock still like those of a lifeless lake. Yet, there were no unpleasant odours as one might expect from a place without any exposure to the winds. No, in fact, the air was filled with a light crispness of a morning in early winter. It was just that there was a complete absence of any movement- and therefore any sound, at all in this place. It was a place that was still and idling. It was a place that seemed entirely frozen in time.