What are you writing about now?

[WatcherWraith]

Which format is better? First or second?View attachment 45511

I also find the footnotes a better means of including the meanings of words. Unless, of course, the character themselves ponders the words they heard. Still, either way, the parentheses jar one's reading flow.

 

[david_wendelken]

I'm down to 2 ToDo items that need to be done before I go into editing for grammar and wordsmithing.

@todo: "Duty’s Journey to Love Lost: Review Dirgon’s language style. Make it more poetic as his time with Míri becomes more intense, particularly after her magical song of sorrow. Make his descriptions and observations more complete and descriptive, and add more musical sensitivity to it. Explanation: Dirgon is spending months of exhausting travel and mental training by a fascinating woman bard, he's going to unconsciously pick up some of her way of expressing herself.

@todo: "Love Conquers All": Make full story in first person real time or third person close, instead of summarizing the finale of the spy episode. It's dramatic, so milk it! Explanation: This was orginally written as an RPG module scenario, it needs a better transition to a book chapter than it got in my first attempt.

 

[david_wendelken]

Finished the 2nd item, decided to do the first when I edit those chapters. They are towards the end of the book.
Just finished editing chapter 8. I upped the description but not really the word count. The Emotion Thesaurus is the bomb!

 

[david_wendelken]

First 17 chapters are edited. That is the bulk of the 1st Tale (Emissary of the Valar) in A Tale of Two Tales. The next chapter starts the 2nd Tale (The Forest Maiden), though there is one more chapter from the 1st Tale interleaved with The Forest Maiden's tale.

That's exciting!!! 1/3rd edited!

 

[david_wendelken]

Thanks for the idea to put superscripted parentheses around the footnote numbers! It really makes them pop!

 

[david_wendelken]

23 chapters edited!

 

[david_wendelken]

This is the printed design on the "stays" (think corset stays) for Volume 4, Lorien in the War of the Ring. An attached photo shows what they look like on the inside and outside of the book, the other 3 images show the linework printed on the 3 sheets of paper it takes to make the full fanfold design element.

Hope you enjoy the pictures!

I just made a list of my planned name-pairs for the stays for Volume 1, A Tale of Two Tales. But I have to do new artwork for almost all of them. One character's is the same as in Volume 4, two characters have similar badges but they are different that far back in time.)

I need to do new artwork for Olfaen in Volume 4, too. I just put in the Eye of Sauron as a placeholder 'cause I didn't have any inspiration on his badge at the time. Now I know his backstory, so I can come up with a better one. (In fact, in the process of writing that last sentence, inspiration came to me! Woot!)

Outer view of the spine.

Inner view of one fanfold "stay":

Panel 1 of the printed design on the inner stays:

Panel 2:

Panel 3:

I'm particularly fond of the Mumakani Tribal design:

 

[david_wendelken]

28 of 53 chapters edited.

 

[david_wendelken]

I thought the eye of Sauron from the old hardback edition of my youth was a nice touch for the eyes on the shadow version of the Mumakani tribal emblem.

 

[WatcherWraith]

Oooo, that's what that was. It is a nice touch!

 

[david_wendelken]

31 1/2 of 53 chapters edited. The last two have been pretty brutal. When I write fast and creatively, I switch from past to present tense and back, pretty much randomly. It takes a bit to clean up.

 

[Maedhros_Nelyafinwë]

Hey guys, someone in my local writing group just shared this on our group chat, and I thought some of you might appreciate the heads up.

It's a good reminder to create local backups of anything you might store primarily on cloud storage. I don't use Google Drive for my main personal writing projects, but they are all on OneDrive, so I'm definitely going to work on establishing local backups of all my work sometime soon!

 

[Glorfindel Goldtress]

Wise thoughts from your pal, indeed.

Then there's myself-- I'm the weird person who's still handwriting out all my stories. I... am... my... backup!

 

[Maedhros_Nelyafinwë]

I used to hand-write everything in physical notebooks. I believe my fantasy novel in its earliest form was over 1,000 handwritten pages! There are things I miss about that format, like being able to write in a scenic spot outside, but unfortunately it's just not feasible for me anymore. I can type much faster than I can write, and with how busy I am, I'd never get anything done if I hand-wrote my manuscripts. Especially since you have to type it up into the computer anyway. Also, I like knowing my word counts.

 

[Beleg_Cúthalion]

Thanks so much for that! I have quite a few of my stories written on google and docs, so I will be transferring all that to a notebook.

 

[Maedhros_Nelyafinwë]

Thanks so much for that! I have quite a few of my stories written on google and docs, so I will be transferring all that to a notebook.

By the way, I'm not sure if my meaning was clear, but by "local backup" I just meant you should have your documents saved on your computer's hard drive, and maybe a USB as well.

 

[david_wendelken]

Your own personal hard drive. Your own personal USB. Another personal USB. A remote "Cloud" storage device. A paper copy.

All five if your writing matters to you.

 

[Server Room Gremlin]

Hey guys, someone in my local writing group just shared this on our group chat, and I thought some of you might appreciate the heads up.

View attachment 45710

It's a good reminder to create local backups of anything you might store primarily on cloud storage. I don't use Google Drive for my main personal writing projects, but they are all on OneDrive, so I'm definitely going to work on establishing local backups of all my work sometime soon!

Also, wherever you store your digital documents, there's always the possibility of files getting lost or corrupted accidentally. A friend of mine used Google's cloud storage to store things she was writing, and they got lost because of an error on their side. A huge amount of recent work lost, with no backup copies.

All my own documents are saved on my laptop (I only use cloud storage for sharing and collaboration). And most times after I finish a writing session, I save a copy of that document on a USB. Less frequently, I also do a full backup of my laptop onto an external hard drive.

 

[david_wendelken]

I say this as a software professional with 35 years experience in the field.

NEVER EVER trust a system administrator to do a good job on backups. NEVER.

Follow the maxim: Trust, but verify.

And since you have zero ability to verify what cloud-based services are doing, you CANNOT trust them.

You can use them for convenience. Use them as an EXTRA backup that's remote from your home (in case of fire, flood, theft). But do not trust them.

NEVER EVER trust a software developer not to screw up a software upgrade. Trust, but verify. And since most people don't have multiple computers (and the time) to test software upgrades before they get to your "real" system, you cannot trust them either.

That's why you keep backups on different, local devices you control.

 

[david_wendelken]

33 of 53 chapters edited. But I've decided to add a short scene to chapter 33.