Long time no see folks! [Price of Loyalty News]

Hello everyone!

Holy crap, it's been a while since I was last here. My last blog seems to be posted back in February, and Price of Loyalty still hasn't been updated and it's almost 2015.

Welp... guess I've got a lot to talk about don't I?

I'll start from the top. Real life's been absolutely zany these past few months. College has been a center focus, being followed up with a job at Kmart (which I just lost due to the store closing down just last week). I've also been spending time socializing, something which isn't a big norm for me, with friends from school. But more importantly for me as a writer, I've been taking classes to try and hone my skill as a writer and also looking into critically acclaimed movies to get some research on just what makes for good writing.

The reason I needed this incidentally is the main thing I'd like to address today in this blog: The Price of Loyalty.

This story's been the bane of my life, let me tell you guys.

On one hoof, I hate the @^&*ing thing. There's a lot of problems in the way it's written and I don't like how shoddy my drafts are, and I also hate going back to edit them. They literally make me angry. But on the other hoof, I've spent a lot of time pulling PoL's themes, morals, and ideas into a very clear focus and it's got a very strong identity in my head now than it ever did before. The only catch is I'm having the most irritating time putting it into a word document and in an appealing manner.

This is where recent school projects come in.

I've gone through a Creative Writing class and I'm currently in a Theater Appreciation class where I've been doing some writing exercises, most recently a play that I'm going to take a jab at submitting to a One-Act Festival here at my college. I've also spent a great deal of time analyzing critically acclaimed films (and games) to get a clear idea what creates a great story. This helped a lot with the aforementioned "bringing the story into focus" for Price of Loyalty. I've also gotten a lot of inspiration from these, trailers, various music, and random ideas to visualize various scenes in PoL.

That all said, I think with all that and the upcoming NaNoWriMo, I might be ready to tackle The Price of Loyalty again.

What I'll be trying to do is punch out first drafts of at least 4-5 chapters, then either continue with the first draft trend using a new method I've started with my aforementioned school projects or try and go back and get those 4-5 published to make up for all of the time that's gone by since Journal #3. I'll also see about going back to edit the current chapters to give them a bit of a spit and shine.

Onto the final piece of the puzzle; when can you expect the new chapters?

Good question.

Chapter 6, as I've said many times, is the milestone chapter I want to hit because that's when the plot is supposed to speed up and I can stop teetering around with build-up details for the story ahead, and I hope when I get there I can finally let my writing take off. But whether that will actually happen remains to be seen. One thing I do want to try getting myself to do at some point is to start writing scenes that take place far later in the story as a way to get my creative flow going.

But real life is an unpredictable beast. I may not even get done with these in the upcoming NaNoWriMo or get any work done at all. So I don't want to make promises I may not actually keep (and let's be honest, all of you know my track record by now).

One thing I can promise is I'm going to try figuring out deadlines. They worked to some extent for me with Journal #3, so if I figure them out right, maybe for first drafts, second drafts or what have you, I can probably use this to find a way to get some sort of progress. That or just hitting a word limits by certain hours or something. Either way, this is what NaNoWriMo will be spent doing.

I'll keep you all posted on what happens.

So that's all I got for now folks. Let's hope some of this pays off and Journal #4 will be a vast improvement over my last few chapters.

That said, thanks for sticking by me, and to all my supporters still waiting for PoL's conclusion, thanks for being the best damn fans in the world. You guys are why I'm still writing.

See you soon.

-M.

Comments

[Hope]

Good luck and glad to see you back.