Greetings from the cave!

(I believe that shall be my greeting from now on....) 

It has been another month of impatient watching and waiting, fits and starts, and otherwise a grinding "progress". Whomever said that the journey is half the fun obviously didn't suffer from cabin fever at the time.

But what has been happening in my corner? Let's take a look?




1. I helped edit Lia's first poetry collection. I'm excited for her to publish it!

2. An "emergency" order from Amazon resulted in me getting two new DVDs (Anastasia and Princess Diaries 2) and a new book (Redwall #1). No regrets. Though my sister can attest that the choosing of the latter was a huge existential crisis.

3. Shattered Chandelier is about 3/4 done with the first draft. I very much doubt that I will edit it any time soon, but some of the later chapters I'm not 100% happy with.

4. Created a couple more playlists on Spotify. One was a college playlist and another is a new writing playlist for non-fantasy, non-instrumental music. Once I figure out this embed thing, I'll start sharing some of them....

5. TWR's beta-reading is still occurring. So far, the world-building, imagery and some characters need to be beefed up in this next draft. I'm looking forward to July's edits with some anxiety.



For Working by Candlelight, I wrote 1 post: How To Drink like a Lady. Future content includes a post about the relationship between the Jewish and Catholic religions, a post on breads, and a secret post!

For The Rebelling Muse, I wrote 3 posts: Introducing Soul Sisters, End of Camp NaNo April 2020, and Taggy Tuesday: #awesomebloggertag. Future content includes 3 tags from the Avender sisters, and a review of the TV series The Chosen!

For The Cat in the Barnyard, I wrote 1 post: Grass vs. Grain Starters: A Summary Let me know what topics you would like to see on this blog!

For Rebellious Writing, I wrote no posts.

For Maidens for Mary, I contributed to April's Wrap-Up.

Goal #1 (TWR): It's in the hands of beta readers for the next two months and I'm sitting here anxiously waiting for the results. I'm already knowing that I need to do some more world building and fix some minor things in the plot....

Goal #2 (Platform): The latest news is the development of the brand....which is still in progress.

Goal #3 (April NaNo): Drafting has been following it's usual slow course and the story is about three-quarters done. You can view the on-going progress on Wattpad HERE.

Goal #4 (NaNo): No progress.

Goal #5 (Movies): No progress.

Goal #6 (Library): No progress. Unfortunately, my state is on lockdown due to the you-know-what, so no trips for me......

Goal #7 (Vlogs): FINISHED. You can view the Fandoms one HERE and the Bucket List one HERE.

Time to bid farewell to another Camp NaNo!

First thing, I want to give a shoutout to all three of the NaNo groups that I am a part of: Pen Dragons, Rebellious Writing and the Siena Society!! You guys were awesome to write with and I'm sure that we'll have lots of writing adventures to come!

Now for the meat and potatoes of this wrap-up. Ready?



Best parts of Camp:

- Finding legal copies of clips of the Phantom of the Opera movie and 25th Anniversary stage show on YouTube. Serious muse-saver, I assure you.

- Being able to show the actual story to people! Writing on Wattpad was definitely a new experience for me, and a positive one. Having total strangers comment on my story was a bit surreal, to be honest. It's really different to SHOW it, rather than talk about it.

- Expanding my novel playlist! While it's still not where I want it yet, it's getting there!



What I Learned:

- Jumping from edits in a fantasy story to drafting a contemporary story was a SHIFT. My writer's brain had quite some difficulty in transition. In hindsight, I really REALLY should have taken at least a month break to let it recharge. However, I clearly am a glutton for punishment and decided the shame of breaking the streak was worse than mental and bodily exhaustion.

- If you're going to restart a story....check ALL the story notes before you begin. There is nothing more awkward than doing all this world-building in one small town in Ohio, then to stumble across ANOTHER town name in a previous draft which is in a DIFFERENT section of Ohio entirely.



- Never, ever, ever, use similar sounding names for characters for stories that you write back to back. Jessamine's stage name CARISSA is very similar to CARINA, which is the name of the queen in The White Rose. AND I KEPT SUBBING CARINA FOR CARISSA ALL THE TIME AND IT GOT ANNOYING REAL QUICK.

- Writing a theater story when you've only been on the outskirts of theater (i.e. one acting class) is actually really difficult.





That being said, how did writing go?

In short, about the same as a usual drafting session. No consistency, low streaks. Low overall word count. Missed the goal.

Since this was a first draft, I tried to concentrate on the bare bones of the plot. But oh no, it was not happening that way. We have to add in ALL the dialogue. ALL the side threads. ALL the stupid minute details that are not necessary.

I will admit that writing a contemporary story after being so heavily invested in a fantasy WIP with a complex world-building system for so long was a bit of a refresher. In fact, I hardly consulted the notes at all during this drafting process - it is literally one of the most PANTSED stories I've written in quite a long while. It felt good at first....but then things started snarling in the middle once again.

I hate middles. I really do. They suck the motivation out of me every. single. time.

The other thing that kinda de-railed me was I took the bulk of Holy Week OFF from writing. I wanted to give that time to God, even if I wasn't camping out at church like I normally would. And of course, Holy Week was in the middle of the month.

I hit a decent patch of motivation after Holy Week, which points to the earlier argument that I sorely need a break. But it wasn't enough, and then PMS kicked in at the end which ruined every single other chance of making the goal.

The other thing that got me was watching the comments come in for TWR. I have to admit, I've been stalking the Google docs to pick up every single comment that comes in. It's bad. I'm so thankful that half of my betas have external copies otherwise I would not be able to handle it.

During this drafting session I found that I have a consistent failing to produce a full first draft. Every single work in progress I've done has had it's first draft done in stages. I guess that's just the way the muse works.

That being said, I do have a small group following this story consistently. So, I feel as though I should try to finish it as soon as I can so I don't leave them hanging. Wouldn't it be nice just to get ONE WIP finished?

How did your Camp NaNo go (if you participated)? What was one of your "best moments" or "lessons learned"? Feel free to share! 

Scribbingly yours,

Catherine

Hey everybody,

I'm just dropping in to announce that (thanks to a certain sister giving me the kick in the skirt that I WELL deserved), our "podvlogs" have been successfully edited!

Since it's been a while since I've talked about this (except for the passing reference in the monthly goals), I'd better explain what this is all about.

So many of you will recall the joint Ask Us Anything that Lia and I put together back in spring 2019 for our two year blogoversaries. We answered them in a 6 part audio vlog, which is on my YouTube channel, complete with pictures and sarcastic commentary. It's a work of art, I tell you. 

We really enjoyed recording this together and have played around with the idea of potentially doing more of these "podvlogs". Being the spontaneous people that we are, we decided to record three more audio vlogs when I visited her for Labor Day weekend in 2019, with the intention of creating them in the same style as the first one. 

Editing Catherine, who about went squirrely during the last edit job, resisted to her best degree. And in her laziness she ended up losing one of the vlogs because it got so out of date it was no good. But she stepped too far when she hinted that she would scrap the entire goal of editing them in the latest wrap-up.

That's when Lia said to put the vlogs up unedited.

Horrified, Editing Catherine got her act together and finished both vlogs in one afternoon (talk about productivity).

But it didn't feel right for them to be just....vlogs.

Lia and I have been talking about doing an official podcast together for quite a while now. And while we don't have any kind of schedule, we felt that this was as good of a start as we'll ever have.

And so, I give you the first episode of.....

Soul Sisters.




If there are two words that perfect sum up Lia and I's relationship, it is these. It's cute, punchy, attention-grabbing, and it's just....us.

The only downside is that we're keeping the videos on the shorter side until we can get things a little more material (i.e a reason to verify the channel).

So we've got this one, and the other episode will be published next week! Hope you guys enjoy!

Scribbingly yours,

Catherine