Last night I made a decision. It’s been passed through and ratified through my supportive family, and it feels right. It makes me extremely scared, but also I am feeling more stable than I have done in several long months. It feels right.

This afternoon I am resigning from my part-time employment. I currently spend 7 contracted hours a week (sometimes more due to absences) working at a before and after children’s club based at the local Primary School. I’ve worked there for two years now, but things have hit a head this week with family changes.

Juggling around working days to try to accommodate the increasing after-school activities of my daughter, missing out in the social interaction with her peer’s parents, and on several days having to negotiate with other parents to take my child to an after-school activity like ballet class, then missing out on seeing those myself – it’s all got too much recently.

The hours, and pay do not balance out what I and my family is currently missing out on. When I first left full time work two years ago, it was for a purpose – to support my own family (and the adoption) by being there. Previously my long commuter hours meant that I missed out on time with my daughter and husband. Now, with my daughter’s recent commitments to dance classes, brownies, art and craft clubs, and certainly with my work, the family is actually missing out on more time together than ever before.

Add to that more – we have just this week had a visit from two adoption social workers. It was ‘National Adoption Awareness Week’ last week, with several media presentations towards needing more parents to adopt. The anniversary of our own entering the adoption process three years ago.

Our social workers have given us some assurances that now that we have gone off ‘hold’ after the mis-match of last summer, and gone through our so called ‘mourning’ period, that in the new year there are several local children that we might be top of the list for. They have also assured us that we are considered an excellent family to adopt into. I’m not so sure I trust and believe everything that social workers tell me, but I’m no longer willing to give up all hope that there may be a little boy out there to complete our family.

Making the best of the decision to resign my meagre hours, I’m looking at this positively – the additional two afternoons a week that I will have freed up next year will allow for much more possibilities. No longer will I be stuck at reciprocating play date invites for my daughter’s friends onto a Friday, I can use other days also. Therefore I can also utilise those free-er hours for both cooking for the family, and for other things.

Like – writing.

With the resignation (in mind as well as reality) towards leaving work, came the slowly growing feeling that with such a fresh start and commitment to my own family, that I can use that commitment also for my writing. I’d already set aside January for writing that novel. Now I have no excuses not to.

There is also a financial incentive here. My pay for the work I am about to give up was extremely poor, and didn’t help out at all for the household. I’ve always been frugal here anyway.

But with that work I never felt like I was at all helping out the family finances. It didn’t make a dent in the bills, wasn’t helpful even if something like the washing machine broke down in a month. The best it could offer was enough for a birthday present for my husband in the month. The hours worked and financial benefits didn’t seem to balance with the negative impact of working that early morning and those afternoons every week.

My money was going simply on supporting my ‘Second Life’ habit. Which I consider a writing gig anyway, because I’ve managed to maintain my SL blog through all of this, and it’s made me feel a little better about my own writing work, if unpaid.

So, I’m committed to finding ways to make my writing help the family finances. That means, for me – getting that novel out and published. And submitting short stories that pay -  and all of that means cutting down in the new year on supporting my second life habit – unless I find a way to make a little money out of that (whether from writing or perhaps in the niche hobby field I’ve developed, I’ll have to think about that one…).

We have a lot of things yet to get through, as a family. December finds everyone in the silly season, I also have little doubt that my own resignation from work and month’s contractual working may be met with some disappointment from the boss and committee, and we also have a lot of things to do regarding the adoption – more social worker meetings to get through over the next few weeks, more planning from our end regarding how we’re going to find the money, and much more hope.

Christmas this year will also be a little difficult for us. For many months this year we had expected to be sharing it with a new family member, a little boy. We have presents purchased for that boy still sitting in our wardrobe, and every time I go in there, it still hurts to see them sitting there. The door to his bedroom has been semi-shut for months now – even my husband can’t bear to go into there. We have purposely toned down our Christmas plans this year, and are cocooning down into a little family just happy to have a few presents, but the day will still hurt a little. So will having to go to a larger extended family Christmas dinner, where our daughter’s cousins still tend to ask questions about why we sent away that little brother we’d announced a few months ago.

The social workers acknowledged that we have gone through a mourning period and have lost a child, but nobody in the community knows how to react to that, because they never saw the child. I’ve found myself even ousted from the school yard where many of the parents are slightly uncomfortable around me, particularly the many who have little boys the same age. It’s understandable, and I don’t hold anything against them, but I would like a new start for the new year.

So, my new start has the following commitments at a personal and professional level – Commencing January 2010

• Commitment to family – daughter’s after-school activities, support of husband’s work and family time. Cook dinner!
• Commitment to continue pushing social workers to locate and place a child/children into our family. Hold onto my heart and soul, this will be a bumpy ride for all of us.
• Commitment to writing professionally –
  • Maintain this writing blog – yes, this badly neglected Juiced on Writing blog.
  • Write first draft of (fourth) novel
  • Rewrites
  • Submit novel to agency / publishers
  • Write short stories or other projects to sell for money
  • Downsize on Second Life, and/or seek writing or work opportunities within SL to support it financially

Although the resignation side of things has been creeping up on me accumulatively over only a few weeks, if not this week, the writing commitment itself has been growing steadily in the opposite direction. It’s almost felt like as I let go of one portion of my life, another equal but more invigorating side has started to blossom.

Two weeks ago, as I was doing my Christmas shopping online (ah, the irony of buying gifts for my husband, when in truth – it’s he that is paying for them), I added some solidly big (in size and  price) books to my Amazon order. Manuals for me – my Christmas gift for myself (because husbands, no matter how hard they try, never actually get me what I really really want – or is that just mine?). Not books on ‘how to write’ this time, as I’m past learning how to, and just want to do it – but huge reference texts on the subject of forensic psychology.

That knowledge was a show-stopper towards my starting the novel, not knowing how my major character, a forensic psychologist, might react or her own career training – that was stopping me from starting properly. Now I have the research material – some of it anyway. I bought the books before deciding towards this resignation and accompanying commitment. Yin for Yang, or tit for tat, my world although disruptive and thunderous at the moment, is still coming out remarkably balanced.

It feels right.

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You’re probably right.

I had big intentions to get back into writing this month, with NaNoWriMo, almost inspired enough to join up with a supportive writing group, after attending some inspiring week-long writing workshops at the 2009 online Muse Writer’s Conference.

But.

No excuses. No procrastination. No tricks. There were many reasons this week not to start NaNoWriMo – including the added stress of having my study sessions come down on me to be completed.

But.

Really, it’s down to stress. My family went away for mid-term break last week, which was meant to see us relax. It had the opposite effect. More stress pored on top of sadness and stress, then this week’s study expectations, and I found myself finding that place where I just wasn’t coping very well. I leapt back to anger and fear, sadness and tears, just like I was two months ago. How easy it was to feel that hurt again, and not be able to stop it for a little while. It was scarey.

It’s been a couple of months now since the whole adoption thing fell out of the sky. We’ve not heard from our adoption social worker at all – I believe we’ve been written off. Except they did send out something in the mail – a council pamphlet on dealing with mourning. No letter, no explanation, just a brochure. My workmates and hairdressor think they know what it feels like, but nobody really does.

My family remains mourning about the death of a dream – a three year old dream. My hubbie talks of it like it’s the death of a child – that would be more easily understood by most of the people around us. But this child was intangible, we only saw him on paper, and some of those papers lied to us, as did the people we were forced to trust in.

To top it off, my next door neighbours, who have been going through infertility treatment for years, are finally pregnant, and my boss at work suffered through a miscarriage. I cried for both of them – tears of happiness that something can go right in the world for the former, tears of pain for the later. Despite what other people may think, I do still have the capacity to hurt or celebrate for others around me also.

My workmates walk around on hot coals around me, I walk around my boss and neighbours the same. But after two months my own family still seems to be working through this process in it’s own time, and we falter all the time, me in particular. Anything can set me off, yet I still work with children for a job, and feel paranoia around how people are watching if ‘I’m coping’.

Yeah, I’m coping. Slowly.

But I’m not writing much.

During Muse ‘09 I developed my two storylines further – one a steampunk fantasy, the other an urban thriller. The first I decided would be easy enough to blurt out during NaNoWriMo, but when I came back from my family un-holiday this last weekend, I’d decided against it. The other one, an urban thriller based on my own black emotions at times, is the one that calls for me. But I understand enough to realise that it’s dangerous territory at the moment, and not a novel which will grow during a period of self-driven stress within the NaNo format. I need to take this novel slower – and deeper – than any of mine have ever been before. It matters. Unlike my previous novels which I dismissed immediately they were born by calling them ‘pod-novels’ this novel really does matter.

So, I’m waiting until the hurt – both inside my whole family, and inside me, eases a little and we have decided what we are going to do about our life together. I’m waiting, and still thinking about the novel, still planning.

In the meantime, my own drive to write about writing has completely vanished. I have no energy for it. I should be telling you about the new Holly Lisle Redrafting course, and lots more. But I simply don’t have the energy for it.

Maybe I’ll return to this writing blog at a later date, but maybe I’ll close it down.

I’m glad that personally I can find I can still continue writing – if only on the fantasy that is Second Life. Blogging about that means I don’t have to think too much about real life, and sometimes that actually helps me. I’m not disappearing into SL, though – I stay away from that virtual world for long days and weekends now, and am feeling things get quietly more in control.

There is a readiness now to start planning for a different life – I’m not certain what it involves, but there is one surety – that sometime soon that novel will get written and it will be a hell of a good one, and it will be published.

And eventually our family will be okay just as it is now.

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But as for my real life….

Having experienced a huge loss in falling out of the adoption process in August, my mind and body just doesn’t seem to be co-operating very well. The first few weeks were difficult and intense. One day I would be okay, and the next I would wake up – physically sick, and mentally worse off.

But still, I had to force myself to go off to work (with kids, now that was incredibly difficult) and smile and act like nothing much was wrong. People didn’t understand – there was no missing child, just missing hope. So even my hairdresser went all quiet when dealing with unexpected tears over the hair washing basin.

Things have lessoned now, in time for me to put some effort into the Muse Online Writers Conference which starts – tomorrow!

So I’ll give the workshops I did register in my best shot, and see how that goes. I’m registered on ones for world building, and others for some psychological sides – making monsters in fact.

My problems in writing are ones similar to those experienced when I was simply introducing myself on the workshop forums for Muse just now. I suggested I currently had two different novels planned – and that’s the crux of the matter.

One is the Steampunk Fantasy Adventure – a true by-the-book hero’s journey. The other is the psychological thriller I initially planned out earlier this year. Triller versus Fantasy – I still haven’t even steadied myself on my writing genre.

Before the adoption issues, I was all about the Fantasy – a week before and you would have found me having already devised most of the main plot, built (in my mind at least) most of the world, and many of the characters.

After the adoption issues, with my emotions and mental tiredness overriding much of my life, and I leapt back to the Thriller. That novel is based on the angry emotions of a domestic surburban wife. I could understand her point, now. I’d re-found her, within myself.

Understanding that I need to live through this mourning process, I crossed out my normal writing plans of joining in with NaNoWriMo this year. Although I think I could still do it, I don’t feel I’ll benefit from doing so. This whole process, which somehow includes my writing work intermingled through it, seems to need a more natural pattern to it. Putting myself into a stress-induced writing environment won’t do me well this year, as there’s still enough of it around in my every day world.

So, back to the Muse Conference – my first real writers conference. Registrations for this year’s Muse are now closed, but will be opening up again in November for the 2010 Conference. I’ll give some of the workshops my best shot, and see how it helps in getting back my writing mojo.

In the meantime, just by reading through some of the forum introductory posts, I’m finding that there are a lot of interesting writers out there that I can learn from.

For those who missed the news, Holly Lisle has closed off her How to Think Sideways course to any new participants – from last Friday I think. Anyone who is currently in the course, or has graduated from the course, still has access – and mentoring – into the class forums. Just no new registrations. Holly is using the time to move onto working on her new course on revision.

For those of you who joined up on my recommendation (and I got a little money as an affiliate) I would like to thank you. I hope you are getting the best out of Holly’s first big writing course, and would suggest to you that you will probably be seeing me around the Revision course when she goes live with it, if I can afford it.

Now, I’m off to have a think about what my favourite monster is, and what his motivation for his tasks is, and I also have some homework on creating an idea for a new world – which shouldn’t be too difficult, I hope.

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Even Holly Lisle, who was onto a winner with her How to Think Sideways, has her share of failures in providing for the new writer market, it seems. However there are several new things of interest to wannabe writers within the Holly Lisle websites, and below I will wrap these up for you.

1. The Writing Craft : Motivation

Some time ago Holly sent out one of her regular newsletters requesting those readers to take a multi-choice survey. The survey involved copious questions driving at what type of courses or classes we might like to see being delivered.

I personally voted for quite a few, with an emphasis on revising a first draft, something I’m completely rubbish at. My choice wasn’t the most popular at that time, in fact most responders voted for courses on how to motivate ourselves into writing.

Holly spent some time coming up with a new course based on those responses. The outcome was the release early this month of ‘The Writing Craft : Motivation’. This was available as a course for $34.95 which sounds very reasonable for the content.

The content for The How To Motivate Yourself course includes:

• seven videos
• the course transcripts
• mindmaps for each section
• a course outline
• and worksheets to help you drill down to the core of what motivates you.

The course still exists on Holly’s shop online as I write this, however —

On the 15th of September Holly sent out another newsletter with the following starter paragraph -

I ended up canceling further episodes of my video series THE WRITING CRAFT because of a major lack of interest combinedwith the huge expense in time, effort, and materials of creating video courses.

This means there will be no further editions of The Writing Craft video series of courses (the second of which was to have been ‘How to Write Dialogue with Subtext’), although if you are interested in improving your motivation it may well be beneficial to take a look at that first course which remains complete and available.

2. Audio Books of Classes

In the same newsletter of the 15th, Holly mentioned that she was now trialing interest in MP3 audio books of the courses available through her shop. She enjoys listening to MP3s on her iPod whilst exercising, and thought it an interesting idea to create some for the courses offered.

The ‘How to Write Page-Turning Scenes’ course available in PDF format from Holly Lisle’s webshop has now been recorded as an audio book by Kimi Alexander.

The full package – PDF plus audio book, will be available online from September 23rd for $47. However at the moment it’s available in a trial run for an introductory price of $37. And if you already have purchased the PDF version previously, you can pick up the audio version alone for just $20.

Logging onto your Shop.HollyLisle.com account will automatically show you any discounts you may be entitled to.

Holly is currently trialling this concept out to see if the idea will take wings.

3. Coming Soon : Revising Your Novel

As the Writing Craft : Motivation course went live Holly Lisle was already working towards her next project. Obviously my choice of needing more information on how to revise was another popular option in her surveys.

Holly put out a request for two first time novels to work with their writers in revising them. Her initial thoughts were towards working with four different novels and writers, but she’s since changed her mind on this. One novel will have been written during something like NaNoWriMo, another in a different way.

The writers and novels will be worked through with Holly, and the material from that exercise used to create her newest upcoming course. Novel excerpts will be used within the course also, although Holly will change characters etc if requested.

As a note, within the successful ‘How to Think Sideways’ writer’s training program, the last month of this course is spent on revision, using a technique Holly calls her ‘One Pass’ system. For many very new writers, there has been a request to understand the structure of revision a little more before going into that type of revision process. The upshot is the current development of the new ‘How to Revise Your Novel’ course, coming our way sometime in the future.

For more on this new course, you can read Holly’s thoughts on it at her blog, or she has already opened a website specifically for the course.

4. How to Think Sideways

Holly Lisle’s popular ‘How to Think Sideways’ online course continues, although the website has had a complete refresh on the frontend since I last visited. You can keep up to date with the latest news on that front blog-style page, pick up the free module examples, or register for the course.

As a graduate of the first ever session of this course, and any grads afterwards, I still have access into the forums for this course, and in fact, can run through the full course as often as I like.

The HTTS forums now have a ‘Back to the Beginning Board’ where students who didn’t managed to complete the course can start over.

Additionally, new material continues to be added to the course, and previous grads can grab those also. One example recently is the addition of the first section of the Writing Craft : Motivation videos into the relevant motivation section of HTTS.

And although now seemingly defunct, the aside website, WriterCrashTest.com remains accessible, containing a few video productions where Holly took some passages of writing and provided some critique on them.

LinkMe : How to Think Sideways (note – affiliate link)

5. The 33 Worst Mistakes Wrters Make About Series…

This e-book series is building all the time. Available through shop.hollylisle.com, the books are written by various authors, and topics vary from -

The ‘33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make about Courtroom Law’ to ‘The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make about Construction and Construction Workers’, with Russia, Genealogy, Mother Nature, Ballet, Horses, The Celts, Hunting, Being Blind, San Francisco, Disappearing in the U.S.A, Dogs, Firearms and Camping forming the current series.

The series, although predominantly US focussed, makes an excellent reference item for budding writers, and points out where much more experienced and even successful novelists have made some huge errors in their published novels before.

6. Write a Book With Me

Back to Holly now, with her writing blog, Pocket Full of Words. Within her normal update blog she now has a category called “Write a Book With Me” or WABWM for short.

In this category she adds her own progress on her current writing project, and others can share their own progress in the comments field of each entry. On one recent entry of Holly’s there were forty comments, so the category and challenge is quite popular.

There are some minor rules – you should shoot for a minimum of 250 words a day, five days a week for instance, and the important – It has to be fun rule.

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As it stands, LSB XE is structured around writing chapters then building these into a book. The amount of ways of doing that are limited only by the imagination in Liquid Story Binder, as there are so many different file formats such as listings, chapters, planners, builders, notes, etc. Some have wordcounts, some do not, some work with other file types, others can be associated with them, but not built into them.

For me, like many other writers before me, I found manual workarounds towards my own needs. I am predominantly a scene-led writer, although because I am reasonably structured beforehand, I normally come at writing with a whole scene structure. So unlike many scene writers, I already have chapters in mind.

I therefore use the builder module to write in (as well as keeping research notes in an overall builder) and stay away from the chapter functions completely whilst writing. Each new chapter has it’s own builder and within that builder I write scenes – already plotted out scenes. Each Scene item (a builder item) operates with normal text editing functions and has a word count.

The scenes within the builder (chapter) can be rearranged in order, but currently can’t be moved into another builder. If I want to do this I have to copy and paste all the text out of that scene item and into the other builder.

From a builder where I have the scenes all written, I can then hit the build [to chapter] option, and the whole thing goes into a proper chapter file. I then need to manually add that chapter into a planner listing so that at the end, on publishing the book all the chapters are printed in order.

Because the builder itself doesn’t have an overall word count of it’s contents, I manually keep this in a note record type. Each scene that I complete I will need to go and add that to my manual record, and keep a tally as I go. That’s because I don’t normally finish a full chapter for a few days, and I want my day’s wordcount – especially when writing to a target.

My way of working within Liquid Story Binder is individual and suits me, but many on the LSB Yahoo group have recently become quite vocal about needing to write in scenes rather than chapters. As found in that chat, many who already use LSB use roughly the same process as I do, using the builder to write scenes into, but are frustrated by not being able to move scenes around as you can do in something like YWriter, for example.

The upshot is that Black Obelisk has suggested that the next release of LSB will include the functionality within builders to move builder items (in our cases, scenes) from one to the other.

Whilst other novelists want even more (ie. the ability to title scenes and have these appear in the draft publication under chapter headings, numbers and titles) the above changes will make me very happy indeed.

Whilst I was on holiday last month, I missed not one but two new upgrade releases of LSB. I’ve only just updated my own versions sitting on a PC and laptop from downloading from the website (the current public version available is V4.31d), and await the next version to see how well the new scene functionality will improve my own writing processes.

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LinkMes :

• The Muse Online Writers Conference
• The Muse Online Writers Conference Forums for 2009 (Conference Cooler)
• Muse Blog with details
• 2009 Agenda online

The Agenda is available to download from a yahoo group setup for the conference. Participants have until September 20th to register for workshops or pitch sessions. If you are interested and still haven’t registered for the conference itself, you can do that from the Muse Online website (top link above).For more details on the workshops, publishers and chat sessions, the 2009 Agenda is online now also (fourth link above).

Pitch Sessions at 2009 Muse

The pitch sessions include going up in front of a publisher for a 2 minute pitch on your book idea, within a chat room online. So you have to be prepared for those crucial 100 words or so to glean their interest.

The Workshop agenda document available to download gives some tips on preparing the pitch also, and each publisher provides a link to submission guidelines. Additionally there are two workshops available already for How-tos on Online Pitching. Register for the conference quickly to allow the attendance of these – the first is scheduled as a chat session for September 11th (tomorrow!) and the second on September 24th.

Pitches are available to the following Publishers -

• Crescent Moon Press – Romantic science fiction, fantasy and paranormal
• Freya’s Bower – erotic and romance
• Wild Child Publishing – mainstream
• Breathless Press – romance or erotic
• 4RV Publishing – mystery, romance, mainstream, historical, Christian, sci-fi, fantasy, action/adventure, Nonfiction, Young Adult, Juvenile, Childrens
• Samhain Publishing – romance and erotica, fantasy, urban fantasy, sci-fi with romance
• Red Rose Publishing – romance, mystery-fantasy, dark fiction, chick lit, interracial.
• Larsen Pomada Literary Agency – fiction and nonfiction (must check guidelines provided).
• Lyrical Press – electronic format and print on demand for selected titles over 70,000 words
• Eternal Press – 10-40K words fiction – Romance, Erotica, Cont.fiction, paranormal, sci-fi, mystery, horror. Interested in erotica and paranormal.
• Andrea Brown Literary Agency – childrens, young adult, fiction and nonfiction, chapter books, picture books.
• The MacGregor Literary Agency
• White Rose Publishing – romance
• Damnation Books – dark – horror, fantasy, thrillers etc
• Morrigan Books – dark fiction

Week Long Forums / Workshops

These forums are set up for private access. Once you enter the forum (any time zone) you can enter workshop rooms, read questions and answers, read presenters lesson plans, and post questions and exercise answers.

There is a large range of these All Week Forums to register for, from meeting with publishers and editors, to workshops on finding your writing voice, writing personal stories, writing teachers guides to accompany your children’s book, pet writing, using social media, horror writing, world building, writing for atmosphere, creating characters, steps before copy editing, or how not to kill your editor. As well as those there are workshops on promotion, dialogue, article marketing, some mental courses, writing love scenes, creative block busting, and visual storytelling.

And I’ve missed out 50% of the many workshops available.

Chats Only

Many of the workshops or presenters of those workshops are also available in chat only sessions. You can attend chat sessions with the presenters on topics as varied as world building, online pitching, plotting, and chat with several of the publishers or editors participating in pitch sessions also.

My Problem Now…

…is obviously culling down my own choice in what I can participate in. When scanning over the Workshop agendas I was like a child in a sweetshop, with my toungue hanging out. For me, Muse Conference allows my first participation in a real-life (given it’s virtual) writers conference, as I’ve not been able to attend any from my small country village location.

Although I want to register for all of them, I will have to cut down to only a few, and I’ve made the decision to not enter the pitching realm or any workshops / chat sessions which are to do with post-writing such as promotional work etc. I feel that personally I’m not mentally prepared to make that step from beginner writer to somebody trying to sell their works as yet. So I’m sure that you’ll probably see me around some of those world building sessions, and some more intriguing ones based on the psychology of characters.

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Hence the fact that unbeknownst to me, in my personal absense from the site the site went awol itself. If there are any readers left, my vast apologies. But the website seems to be up and working again, and I’m going to test it out with this remote post to make sure. No images on this one, just a test entry.

On a personal note – our family adoption went greatly wrong. The little boy we had lost our hearts to on paper, and promised in front of a panel of interogators to be the parents of – that little boy who we’d been waiting for, for over three years, and whom we built a bedroom for, found places for him in our community, and even worse – who we engineered an excitement and acceptance of in our six year old daughter over these long summer holidays…that boy didn’t exist when we went to meet him.

After four long wearingly days of going to see the little real boy, we had to make the hardest decision in our own lives. Due to some chronic behavioural and developmental issues, and missing information on his files, we had to look at our daughter and say – ‘No, he can’t come home with us, he’ll hurt our household, and he’ll hurt our daughter’ And we had to walk away.

Except you can’t walk away from that kind of thing. You find yourself going through a mourning process as heart-felt as any for loved ones who have passed away. The Social Services have put it down into one sentence – We failed to form the attachment needed. But that’s a lie to obscure the real truth of the situation around that boy, and it denies the fact that our family has been devastated by the loss of hope and an attachment to a boy on paper, now as intangible as any dream.

I’ve spent the past week after our decision crying, screaming, weeping, questioning, angry, inconsolable, but still having to return to work, and to the community with the news. There are so many people out there waiting to see that little boy walk along hand in hand with myself, so many people to explain that it wasn’t right, that the last three years of our lives have at this time been a waste of sacrifice. There are so many days when he was scheduled to be here with us, to be avoided by going off to zoos or museums or anything really to take our minds off it. And there’s the family to consider here, and the normal domestic routines, even school to go back to.

I’m still obviously – even to myself – running around lost and falling back into a body slowdown, trying to make everything appear normal for the sake of the family and for the sake of community members who can’t fathom these depths of feeling, of bewilderment, loss of trust of a process we’ve been in for so long, and loss of the hope – that’s the worst of all.

In all of this, I grabbed hold of one thing which could possess my mind even momentarily – I continued to develop my steampunk novel. I can’t yet start writing because I haven’t been able to grasp the very essence of the political motivation behind why my main character might go on his epic journey, but it’s nearly all there. There’s a world, a geology, a technology, even a storyline. In between the tears and anger, my new novel remains as a force of creativity and sanity in my world of slowdown.

Perhaps because my real life is less than wonderful at the moment, I also find myself shrinking away into my second life much more than I should. However, my characters within that virtual world have continued to grow along with time, and the blog is now gaining a readership. With that has come more of a need to retain those readers in the niche of which I’ve created the blog and my personas, and to also spend more time in-world to develop blog posts.

Happily, Second Life at the moment supplies fodder for my novel also – I am currently doing the rounds on a hunt for free gifts from over 100 Steampunk themed stores. Second Life has made Steampunk real, with many regions themed towards the culture. There are truly amazing contraptions and gadgets, architecture and fashion on display, and all add to the depth of the world I am building for my own novel. It’s actually working as a proper but productive escape, and I make no apologies for the focus at the moment on that blog and my own Second Life.

But reality and writing call, and I do have a post to write for this blog also, so it’s nice to see that I’m coming up for air and getting on with it a little better this week than last. One writing piece at a time.

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My dream now leaves me ready (within half an hour) to world build as I go. On-the-fly worldbuilding – with a structure behind it. That’s what I’ll share for you today, with my resources used to build the structure.

Based on my journeys through second life (and my growing love of the steampunk culture within second life), the novel ‘idea’ or ‘sentence’ which is quickly forming in my mind has overtaken me today – through horse and cart rides, swimming pool activities, lunch out at a restaurant, and through a full on production of Mo Town classics with audience participation and a cold buffet to gorge on beforehand.

All of these things fell by the wayside today – I know I was there, but I was an automaton as I began the process of world building for this new novel. As my resources here are limited, I did a quick ‘builder’ up in my writing software, Liquid Story Binder, then decided I’d better refresh my memory of how to worldbuild so as to be ready when I need it.

For this novel, I’ll world-build as I go with the writing – my gut instinct tells me this is best. No overplanning, just in and write. But to get ready for that, I have to have a structure set out which will allow me to quickly flick over and put in the facts (or fantasies) as I write them.

To do this, I’ll share with you some resources for more information and my own quick and dirty structure. Mine will change, no doubt, but it’s already ready, and within half an hour.

Resources for World Building for the Fiction Writer

1. Holly Lisle – How to Think Sideways and Create a Culture Clinic

One of my first purchases as a noob writer were Book i and ii of the World Building series available through the HollyLisle.com shop – Create a Language and Create a Culture Clinic e-book. These large e-books take the writer through world building with a structured concept. For $9.95 each, they may be all you possibly need to begin world building.

Holly later went on to building and tutoring the How to Think Sideways writer’s course, and I signed up for the first ever session of this. This 6 month (or a year) course includes an entire week of World Building – with four different PDFs available – Time, Maps and World, Culture and Language.

On HollyLisle.com you can also read a one-page essay entitled ‘Worldbuilding – Rollicking Rules of Ecosystems’ where Holly gives you some fundamentals of what makes a world, or not. And there is the comprehensive Worldbuilding Workshop available also as a free read, entitled ‘How Much of My World Do I Build’. This workshop lists such things as Special Physics, Organized Terrain, etc, and formed the basis for the PDFs available through the How to Think Sideways course.

LinkMes:

• Holly Lisle’s Writing Clinics – purchase Create a Language and Create a Culture (or a four-pack of some excellent PDFs including Create a Plot and Create a Character)
• How to Think Sideways (affiliate link) – online writing course for 6-12 months with various payment options.
• Worldbuilding – Rollicking Rules of Ecosystems – a Holly Lisle essay.
• Worldbuilding Workshop – How Much of My World Do I Build – a comprehensive essay listing a technique for worldbuilding, and story elements to make notes of.
• How I Drew a Map and Sold Thee Books and a World – another Holly Lisle article which includes steps used in building her own world map – this map also features in the How to Think Sideways course.

2. SWFA – Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions

The series of worldbuiding pages written by Paticia C. Wrede are relatively famous, and very thorough. The pages are categorised down, with each category providing a series of questions to help the writer consider how their world might operate or exist.

LinkMe: SFWA Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions

3. Fantasy WorldBuilder Guide and 30 Days of World-Building Exercises

The Magical World Builder’s Guide by Stephanie Cottrell Bryant provides a starter  long article on some aspects of creating a fantasy world.

In 2004 the author posted a series of 15 minute exercises to that year’s NaNoWriMo which have now been published onto the www.web-wrter.net/fantasy website with a creative commons license.

The 30 Days of WorldBuilding provides 30 exercises towards world-building, indexed with a side menu. At 15 minutes per day, that’s seven and a half hours this month to come up with some ideas for a fantasy world. There is a particularly interesting discussion on deserts in the Map section (Day 5) worthy of consideration if building a large continent.

LinkMes:

• Magical World Builder’s Guide – article on world building
• 30 Days of WorldBuilding – 30 x 15 minute exercises.

3. Other Worldbuilding Resources

Below are my own chosen listings for web resources I found useful in understanding the elements needed in world-building, or in creating specifics for a new fictional world. In random order -

1. Are you a god? Art, Writing and Worldbuilding Blog – this blog is reasonably kept up to date, with the author, Nils Jeppe, providing a sound list of worldbuilding resources, and also taking us throgh some of the processes used. I particularly have enjoyed the map buildings of late.
2. Wikipedia entry – Worldbuilding
3. The Language Construction Kit – a series of webpages designed to help you develop a fantastical language
4. Ad Hoc Writers Outlines – a series of worldbuilding facts to form a basis on which you could build a new world.
5. A Way with Worlds – Steven Savages columns on worldbuilding, held at Seventh Sanctum.
6. World-Builders.org – has an online world building course which concentrates on providing data on areas such as solar systems, ecologies etc. Free, from California State University.
7. Creating an Earthlike Planet – Geoffrey Morven runs through the scientific aspects of earth.
8. Creating a Fantasy World – Sara Douglass provides a long article on her own thoughts, based upon a workshop.
9. Memorable Limyaael’s Fantasy Rants Entries – rants on all of the pitfalls that writers or world-builders may fall into with various elements of a new world.
10. World Builder Projects – this tripod website lists lots of references. It’s slightly out of date, so there are quite a few dead links, but many are worthwhile bookmarks for the world builder.
11. Worldbuilding from the Ground Up – a transcript of a live interview with authors Dave Duncan, Dennis Jones, Anne McCaffrey and Juliet McKenna.
12. Shakespeare and Dragons – www.ImaginaryWorlds.net – this website, which is currently under renovation, contains a blog, forum and podcasts on worldbuilding. The forum and podcasts are still linked to and operational.
13. Creating Fantasy and Science Fiction Worlds – a large series of articles at FARP (Fantasy Art Resource Project) discussing everything from weather to anthropology.
14. Fantasy Worldbuilding Resources – this is a Squidoo Lens, and a very good one, listing many resources on various subjects.

My Own Down and Dirty WorldBuilding Structure

I promised to show you what I have created in note-taking form, ready for when I begin writing. This is a work in progress – the Daily Life section in particular can get quite huge, so may need to be split off into separate builder notes where necessary.

1. World Basics – a brief few paragraphs summarising the world (in this case, an alternative earth-like continent).
2. Geography and Climate – maps, topography, climate, weather patterns
3. Flora and Fauna – the plants and animals of note, both agricultural and otherwise. Also ecosystems – related to climate and geography also.
4. Peoples – races, peoples, breeds, biology, lifecycles, cultures and potential cross-pairings of these.
5. Culture and Languages – I’m not sure on culture, as it’s split up later on, but languages certainly.
6. Family and Relationships – family units, relationships, marriages / divorces / unions, sexuality
7. Calendar and Time – overall calendar(s) and time units
8. Rulers, Leaders and Government – rulers and leaders, governments and politics, crime and law, foreign relations.
9. Sociology, Customs and Beliefs – also includes religions and community
10. History – historical events and figures of note.
11. Daily Life – technology; medicine; transport; communication; food and diet; education and ; dwellings / architecture; gadgets and tools; arts, literature and entertainment; clothing and dress; etiquette / manners.
12. Magic and Magicians – rules of magic, magic and technology, magic users, social status of magicians.
13. Science and Scientists – rules of science, science and technology, scientists, social status of scientists.
14. Commerce, Trade and Economies – commerce and business; business and industries; trade and economic relations; economies, currencies / monies.

And there you have it, that’s what I’m working on right now. Well, not right now – I’m currently off to dinner and a show.

Update : well, the dinner and show did me in but the upshot was a sounder night’s sleep and a eureka moment on waking. I now have the premise of how this whole story idea and the world is meant to work. I love when muses do that to you, out of the blue.

Image Credit : seeks2dream on flikr (Creative Commons)

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Liquid Story Binder V4.31

Last week Liquid Story Binder had another upgrade for those with licensed copies. Version 4.31 is out. This holds enhancements to just about every module going, including multi-level undo levels, and some backspace enhancements to the typewriter module. Here’s a quick list of those I find important, but there are many many more -

Multi-level undo has been added to various file types.
The Listing file type has been completely re-written, now with Outline style functionality.

It is now possible to extend individual Timeline items beyond the confines of a single instance. Stretch items using the `Extend Items’ and `Shorten Items’ menu options.
Choose your own Checklist item symbols using the Checklist ‘Content’ menu. Beyond the standard double-click checkmark, there are now over 200 symbols to choose from.

The Typewriter tool now includes TAB functionality and a `Typewriter Backspace Key Editing’ preference. The Typewriter display response has been increased. Enable the ‘Formatting Options’ preference to allow the use of the BACKSPACE key.

Jesse Wall of Black Obelisk Software sent out the upgrade with a download link to members of the LSB Yahoo Group last week. However at this point, the download is not yet available on the Black Obelisk website, which is still showing version 4.21.

If you are keen to always get the latest update of this writing software, join the yahoo group from the Newsgroup menu at the Black Obelisk website.

Incidentally, the typewriter (full screen) writing functions, including the enhancements, are available in the completely free to download Momentum Typewriter which is available from Black Obelisk also. Momentum Writer 2.01 contains the enhancements LSB will do, but is already available to download from the website.

LinkMe : Black Obelisk and Liquid Story Binder

100 Essential Tips and Tools for the Writer of the Future

Amber wrote me to suggest an article might be of interest, and I agree. This article sitting at the Associate Degree website simply lists 100 numbered points for the writer, with links to the websites mentioned. From designing your own business card, to using google trends, there are many tips in amongst these 100 which I found useful for myself also.

LinkMe : 100 Essential Tips & Tools for Writers of the Future

Image Credit : Wikenden on flickr (Creative Commons)

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