Writing

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148 entries. 61,715 words.

October, 2010

  • Star Wars Archetypes. 2010-10-26 2:04 AM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    It’s odd that so many web sites discussing literary archetypes use the characters from the movie Star Wars as their examples. Aren’t there ANY other movies that have classic archetypes? Or is Star Wars such a cultural touchstone that literally everyone on the planet recognizes it? 46 words.

August, 2011

  • John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt. 2011-08-11 11:06 AM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    What is the backstory of John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt? Why is his name the same as my name? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jacob_Jingleheimer_Schmidt 19 words.

December, 2011

  • Post-NaNoWriMo Depression. 2011-12-05 10:41 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I’m suffering from a major case of post-nanowrimo depression right now, which I would assume is pretty similar to post-partum depression. Or drug withdrawals. It’s pretty simple really. The act of creation is so thrilling and stimulating and awesome that when it’s over, there’s nothing left inside but a black empty void of nothingness. For me, it generally manifests as a fervent desire to stare at the walls and feel useless all day. It’s really bad after nanowrimo because a lot of concentrated creative energy is released in a short time, which makes the corresponding crash even worse. 196 words.

February, 2012

  • Reading Makes Me Sleepy. 2012-02-10 10:30 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    For some years now, I have spent roughly the last hour of my day before sleep reading. I now realize this was a gigantic mistake, and I don’t recommend any writers do this. Why? Because now when I try to read at any other time of the day, it makes me incredibly sleepy. I have accidentally trained my brain to associate reading with going to sleep. This is an awesome trick if you have trouble sleeping, but it’s not cool at all when you are trying to read more during the day. So I need to figure out how to reverse this. 102 words.
  • Tinderbox Demonstration. 2012-02-19 12:57 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I was about to write in my medieval fantasy story about a character entering a dark room and lighting a candle he found on a table. Then I thought, hey, how exactly would one have done that before the invention of matches? Apparently you would have used a tinderbox. But I couldn’t figure out from the descriptions and pictures how all the pieces of a tinderbox actually worked together, so I watched this YouTube video. Then I realized there is no way any medieval person would use a tinderbox just to light a single candle in a dark room. They would either build a roaring fire and light the candle from that, or they would not light the candle at all. Stupid reality! 123 words.
  • There Is Too Much To Read. 2012-02-28 10:27 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    It is said that new authors should read recently released books in their genre to get an idea of what publishers are looking for. It is also said that new authors should read everything in their genre to avoid repeating what has come before. The problem is, in the fantasy genre, that is quite a daunting task. I actually thought I was reasonably well-versed in the classics of the genre, but guess what? There’s an enormous list of people writing fantasy now (I mean books published since, say, 2000), and every time I look at another “best of” or “worst of” fantasy list I have to add more: Joe Abercrombie, Daniel Abraham, Jacqueline Carey, James Dashner, Steven Erikson, Neil Gaiman, Terry Goodkind, J. V. Jones, Scott Lynch, Robert Newcomb, Patrick Rothfus, Fred Saberhagen, R.A. Salvatore, Brandon Sanderson, Naomi Novik. Those are only the most famous names; there are probably ten times more out there. And these are not small books we’re talking about. Many of them are the 1000-page whoppers we’ve come to expect from epic fantasy, not to mention that many of them are series of anywhere from three to one-hundred-and-fifty-three books. 344 words.

March, 2012

  • Rolf Sighting. 2012-03-02 1:02 AM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I find it amusing and heartening for some reason to see “famous” authors using a character name that I’ve thought up for one of my novels. I somehow feel like it validates my own work as an aspiring author. The other day I was looking at the description for Fred Saberhagen’s Empire of the East, and noticed that the protagnist’s name is Rolf. The five of you who have read my Lute of the Sparrow may recognize that as the name of Jasper’s quirky sidekick. 135 words.
  • Critiquing. 2012-03-18 1:06 AM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I’ve signed up for a couple of online writing critique groups. I’m not ready to submit anything yet, but I thought it would be a good thing to try. It’s a lot more work than I thought it would be! If you think reading 5,000 words from someone else and writing a constructive criticism is easy, think again. The hardest part is being positive while still being helpful. I’m well aware of how fragile a writer’s ego is, so it feels like walking on egg shells. You want to say, “Wow, this is the greatest thing I’ve ever read!” But, well, it’s usually not. There’s always something that can be improved (I know this from my own writing). But you can’t exactly say, “Wow, this is terrible. Don’t quit your day job.” Because that’s probably what they’re telling themselves. 193 words.
  • My Outline Is Letting Me Down. 2012-03-20 1:03 AM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    For my current WIP, I spent what I considered to be a fairly lengthy amount of time writing a cohesive outline of the events that would take place in the novel. I actually did it three times because I had to toss out the first two. So imagine my surprise when I reached somewhere around the 2/3rd mark of the story, consulted the outline for what comes next, and realized, “This outline is incomplete, and all wrong.” 187 words.
  • Kindle Edition Editors. 2012-03-25 1:23 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Can I have a word with you people who take published books and turn them into Kindle books? Let’s talk about the Kindle version of The Stone of Tears by Terry Goodkind. Seriously, what kind of crack were you people smoking when you gave this project over to a high school intern? The number of typos is astronomical. The intern apparently speed-typed the text without ever looking back at what he’d typed. Possibly on a smart phone with auto correct enabled. Or, more likely, somebody OCRed it but never bothered to look at the results. 267 words.
  • Four Is Enough?. 2012-03-28 11:46 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I thought I would next tackle The Fires of Heaven, the fifth book in the Wheel of Time series. But I don’t seem to have the same enthusiasm I did with the first four books. After reading the prologue and one chapter of Fires, I’m getting a bad feeling. The Prologue was a mind-numbingly gigantic info-dump that went on forever. Chapter One follows Min with Siuan, Leane, and Logain. It wasn’t terrible but Min is the only one I care about in that bunch. Then Chapter Two gets us back to Rand, who, I’m sorry to admit, is one of my least favorite character in the books. (Possibly eclipsed only by Mat.) Reading Rand and Mat chapters always feels like a chore. 186 words.
  • Epic Terminology. 2012-03-30 11:37 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I read another chapter of Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings the other day. All right, I get that it’s an epic fantasy with an epic world filled with epic people, lands, animals, and plants. But in the first non-prologue chapter, the reader is slammed with an epic number of unfamiliar phrases and terms. I usually enjoy these kinds of things, but in this case I found myself asking “who or what or where is that?” quite a lot. So much that I started highlighting them: 279 words.

April, 2012

  • Book and Chapter Word Counts. 2012-04-01 10:35 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Since I’m an aspiring writer, I am intensely curious about some of the “inside baseball” facts of the books I read. A took a random selection of Kindle books (the ones that just happened to be on my hard drive at the time) and figured out the approximate word count for each book when converted to plain text.** In the table below, the number of pages is as shown by Amazon. 776 words.
  • 2012 Hugo Award Nominations Announced. 2012-04-07 9:35 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    2012 Hugo Award Nominations. I have to say I’m a little surprised that A Dance With Dragons is a nominee. It was an awesome book, don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t think it was quite as good as the previous ones in the series. Still, you could do a lot worse. I haven’t read any of the other book nominees. 61 words.
  • Like Me!. 2012-04-15 1:55 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Everyone go Like my Facebook page. Sometimes I put stuff there. UPDATE 8/8/2022: Yeah, don’t do that. 17 words.
  • Subject-less Sentences. 2012-04-16 11:28 PM.
    • Writing
    • Process
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I noticed another little trick Suzanne Collins used to pull readers along at breakneck speed in The Hunger Games. I hadn’t noticed it in the first two books, but I saw it often in Mockingjay, the last book. She often clips the subjects off of sentences, especially in scenes of intense action or confusion. For example, she might take a paragraph like this: I walk into the room. I open the curtains. Then I put some clothes in the washing machine. 199 words.
  • Scrivener for Windows 1.1.0.3 Beta. 2012-04-26 9:19 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    The folks at Literature and Latte released beta 1.1.0.3 for Windows. I am ignoring their friendly warnings and using it for my precious, irreplaceable novel project despite the fact that it could destroy all of my work at any moment, because I live dangerously like that. 46 words.
  • First Person Writing. 2012-04-29 12:55 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Read using a Seinfeld impersonation: What’s the deal with first person writing? It seems like nearly every popular book these days is written in first person. And it seems to be a mandatory requirement for the Paranormal/Urban Fantasy genre. They all have the same sort of dry sarcastic narrator. It’s almost like reading a blog post, except a really long one. It’s getting to point where I groan whenever I see another first person book. 398 words.

May, 2012

  • Four Dreaded Words. 2012-05-07 9:57 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    “What’s your book about?” It seems like a simple question, until I, as a newbie author, try to answer it. In my mind, my book is about 100,000 words of carefully interwoven plots that took months to get right, complex characters that grew and evolved on their own, colorful and exotic places and worlds, literary devices, clever uses of punctuation, good parts, bad parts, terrible parts, loathesome parts, unfinished parts, and a title. 114 words.
  • May Update. 2012-05-23 11:17 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Brainstorming for my next writing project is scheduled to begin in June. I intentionally left a month of “space” between projects because I figured I would need time to recharge, but I realized I didn’t want to stop writing altogether, so, when last we left our intrepid hero, I had decided to revise Kubak in this “off” month of May. I’m relatively pleased with the revisions so far. At one time I thought I needed to break it into two novellas, but then I realized that I couldn’t query two novellas, so I went back to working on it as a single novel. That basically meant trying to shift the focus of the first half of the book a bit more toward Caudren than Fen. I moved some Caudren scenes to the beginning, and wrote some new ones. I also re-wrote some scenes that were from Fen’s POV to make them Caudren’s POV. So far so good. 309 words.

June, 2012

  • Bad Character Habits in Wheel of Time. 2012-06-10 12:34 AM.
    • Writing
    • Books
    • everettrenshaw.com

    There are a few bad habits that the characters in The Wheel of Time have that they don’t seem to be able to stop themselves from doing even after six books, so I think it might be time for an intervention: Scrubbing their hands through their hair. Knuckling their moustaches or their backs. Gaping at anyone or anything. Smoothing their skirts. Sniffing. Obsessing over the neckline of women’s dresses. It’s sort of laughable to see these things in the seventh book. Here’s Rand scrubbing a hand through his hair again. Uh oh, Elayne’s sniffing again. And here are some women entering the scene. What kind of dresses are they wearing? Will their necklines be ‘swooping’ low or just ‘dipping’ low? Will there be an oval cutout? 126 words.
  • Not A Good Start. 2012-06-12 10:15 PM.
    • Writing
    • Curses
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Okay, this is not good. After a couple of weeks of brainstorming, I started writing on my new project, tentatively code-named “Curses.” I’ve written perhaps 4,000 words, starting not at the beginning, but at the first sort of exciting milestone. I did this because I wasn’t really “feeling” it so I thought I would start at a “high point.” I hate it. It’s not exciting. It’s not even interesting. The characters are dumb. The plot is moronic. It’s flat, lifeless, and dead. 170 words.
  • The Nuclear Option. 2012-06-14 9:22 PM.
    • Writing
    • Curses
    • everettrenshaw.com

    The other day I mentioned that I hated my current WIP (work-in-progress, for you non-writer-types). That night I decided to use the nuclear option. In NaNoWriMo, they say if you’re bored with what you’re writing, you need to shake things up by adding an explosion, or killing everyone off. That’s what I’ve come to think of as the “nuclear option.” So, I blew things up. An angry god descended and pulverized everything. He killed Lyeale, the mad old woman who was going to be an antagonist. He teleported Roduk, the brash young hero, back to his homeland, hundreds of miles away. And then he had the nerve to kidnap Emmie, the young woman who was on her way back to her family in the city. As if that weren’t enough, he took the crystal that the protagonists were there to find. 192 words.
  • Raking Instead of Scrubbing. 2012-06-15 12:19 AM.
    • Writing
    • Books
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Oh! I almost forgot to mention this: Raking a hand through his hair, he made himself turn to face her. Jordan, Robert (2010-04-14). A Crown of Swords: Book Seven of ‘The Wheel of Time’ (p. 668). Macmillan. Kindle Edition. Rand raked for once! He didn’t scrub! 46 words.
  • Home-grown Wheel of Time Encyclopedias. 2012-06-17 1:49 PM.
    • Writing
    • Books
    • everettrenshaw.com

    You know what the world needs? Wikis without spoilers. I just finished A Crown of Swords, Book 7 of the Wheel of Time. If you haven’t read these books, let me assure that you will not remember everyone and everything. It is physically impossible. You’ll see a name pop up and wonder who or what it is, and where you last saw him/her/it. In those cases, there’s only three things you can do: 1) Keep reading and hope that Robert Jordan fills you in on the details, 2) Use the handy search feature of your Kindle and hope the name is found somewhere earlier, or 3) Lookup the name on a helpful Internet Wheel of Time Wiki Page. 348 words.
  • Write Like the Wind (George R. R. Martin). 2012-06-28 10:19 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I think this sums up everyone’s feelings on the matter. Write Like the Wind (George R. R. Martin) 18 words.

July, 2012

  • The Blade Itself. 2012-07-09 12:16 AM.
    • Writing
    • Books
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I’m taking a break after Book 8 of The Wheel of Time and reading some other things. I’ve started Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself. Thusfar it’s not growing on me, but it’s still early. It is, at least, a very different style than Robert Jordan. I know, I know, I haven’t written enough in the last few weeks. I’ll get back to it any day now! I will. Don’t look at me like that. 74 words.
  • The Squared-Off Sine Wave. 2012-07-19 1:06 AM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I forgot to do a status update in June, so this will be a two-month report. So, yeah, I haven’t written much. :) I’ve been playing The Secret World and Rift and rebuilding my computer and watching tv and other non-writery type things. If I had a deadline coming up and an editor or an agent or something like that depending on me, they would probably be quite distressed over it. 332 words.

August, 2012

  • Getting Back Into It. 2012-08-22 2:04 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I’ve been distracted a bit by moving into a new place. Which is a flimsy excuse for not writing, to be honest. Even in the middle of moving, one can easily take an hour out of one’s day to write a thousand words if one really _wants_ to. The truth is I have gotten out of the habit of writing every day and getting back into it is kind of hard, which is why 95% of potential authors don’t ever write 179 words.
  • The Blade Itself, Part Two. 2012-08-24 10:00 PM.
    • Writing
    • Books
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I have heard for quite some time that Joe Abercrombie was more of a “gritty” fantasy writer, more in the vein of George R.R. Martin than Robert Jordan. So that’s what I expected in The Blade Itself. What I read was not gritty. I would describe it more as an action-adventure with a fantasy flavor. Actually it felt more like an urban fantasy style of writing in a medieval fantasy setting. The characters had a lot of flippancy in their dialog, and it was very fast-paced with no setting descriptions. But I’ll admit I only made it 15% through the book before I got bored. 134 words.

September, 2012

  • Airworld Experiment. 2012-09-02 12:03 AM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I’m trying an experiment. You may have already noticed it. I’m going to post the text of my novel draft “Airworld” as I write it (more-or-less). Some days I might post thousands of words, and some days I might post a couple of sentences or nothing. (Lately it has been more of the latter.) I’m also trying an email subscription plugin. The idea is that you subscribe and new posts are sent to your inbox, so you have a serialized story delivered right to your doorstep without the hassle of using a bookmark link. The emails don’t seem to be working yet, but I’m still tinkering with it. 184 words.
  • Dr. Who Season 7, Episode 2. 2012-09-08 11:57 PM.
    • Writing
    • Television
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Liveblogging Dr. Who stream on BBC thanks to a proxy … 00:35 - Sometimes it’s impossible to figure out what’s going on without rewinding a bit. 01:40 - Oh, the dog barking outside was actually on the stream … 02:30 - Wow, he doesn’t even ask anymore. 02:50 - That was a super-fast setup. 06:00 - Wait, is that a two-headed dinosaur? Oh, it’s just a pair of them hanging out together. 181 words.
  • Dr. Who Season 7, Episode 1. 2012-09-09 1:30 AM.
    • Writing
    • Television
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I really don’t remember how the last season ended, and I haven’t yet seen the Christmas episode. (Thank’s for nothing, Netflix.) 00:00 - Who’s Hannah? Oh. 02:30 - WTF! They’re all grown up! And broken! 04:15 - Why doesn’t Matt Smith look human? His face is all … weird … 05:20 - And why is he slurring his words? I mean, more than usual for British television. 06:00 - The intro looks different somehow. The tunnel is more blue-green than blue. And, oh, that red fire is definitely new. 240 words.
  • A Cavern of Black Ice by J.V. Jones. 2012-09-12 1:12 PM.
    • Writing
    • Books
    • everettrenshaw.com

    A Cavern of Black Ice by J.V. Jones was a hard read for me, but I made it all the way to the end. I should warn you that there is no resolution whatsoever; it’s one of those series books that simply stops, rather than providing a self-contained story. According to the Internets, there are four more books planned, but only two have been released. 403 words.
  • Dr. Who Season 7, Episode 3. 2012-09-15 11:00 PM.
    • Writing
    • Television
    • everettrenshaw.com

    00:00 - Took forever to get the stream running tonight. 01:48 - Dr. Who in the Old West is just weird. 04:45 - His face still looks weird. 08:13 - I guess this is a nod to steampunk. Well, more like a jumping up and down pointing frantically to steampunk. 09:38 - I wonder if this actor is American or if he’s a British dude with a great accent. 10:33 - So far Rory and Amy are props in this episode. 195 words.
  • Writin' Like A Pirate. 2012-09-19 7:39 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Arr! 'Tis fittin' that I do be a'writin' about piracy on Talk Like A Pirate Day. 16 words.
  • Dr. Who Season 7, Episode 4. 2012-09-23 10:31 PM.
    • Writing
    • Television
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Starting Episode 4 stream as soon as I find a working proxy… Ah, it’s working now. Starting the stream in a second… wait, maybe it’s not working after all… Ah, I see. Had to add bbci.co.uk to the auto-proxy-switch list. And here we go. For the record, I am eating heated up leftover vegetables from a can while I watch. 1:09 - “The year of the slow invasion.” Woo, cool concept. 281 words.
  • Not So Paranoid After All. 2012-09-28 5:44 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Yesterday I decided that I was being stupid and paranoid for embedding secret adjectives in my text, so I stopped. Today, I see in a Google Alert that someone jacked that exact same post!! On one hand, it’s really annoying and disappointing to see that my Internet fears were completely justified. On the other hand, it’s like, Yes! People are stealing from me! Hello, free exposure! Anyway if you find me on Google, make sure you’re actually clicking on a link from everettrenshaw.com. 83 words.
  • Dr. Who Season 7, Episode 5. 2012-09-30 10:31 PM.
    • Writing
    • Television
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Getting spaghetti made and getting setup to watch Episode 5, “The Angels Take Manhattan.” I’m not sure I really want to watch this one. It’s the “half-season finale” (whoever came up with such a ridiculous concept?) and … it’s the last episode with Amy and Rory. It says, “The Doctor’s heart-breaking farewell to Amy and Rory” on the site. This does not bode well. Okay, food ready, now playing! 2:25 - Neat imagery… 215 words.

October, 2012

  • Doctor Who Redux. 2012-10-01 6:38 PM.
    • Writing
    • Television
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Back on the subject of Doctor Who for a moment. Tor.com posts “reviews” of each episode, which I find interesting to compare to my own reactions. In their review of The Angels Take Manhattan, the author had a lot to say about the “inaccuracies” in the episode regarding the Angels and how they affected their immersion. Sure, it makes no sense if you think about it. But I didn’t really notice. This is Doctor Who. Inconsistencies are not unusual. If you haven’t figured out that you have to suspend your disbelief by the seventh series, something is seriously wrong with you. Still, the author ultimately praised the episode. 373 words.
  • Back!. 2012-10-01 9:42 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Sorry, I forgot to update my credit card info so the page was down for a bit. :) 18 words.
  • Upcoming Schedule. 2012-10-02 5:22 PM.
    • Writing
    • News
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Looking at my schedule, which is really a virtual schedule, in that there is nothing to physically look at, I see that October has just begun, and I’m currently a little over 15k into Airworld, and writing at what I estimate to be a slothful rate of 500 words a day. NaNoWriMo begins on November 1 and runs through November 30. Naobi still has to have an adventure in Sarin Morn, some kind of discovery or adventure in Leavon, and, assuming nothing else happens, she still needs to deal with the Council. Which does not even consider events going on back in Motiva. Basically what I’m saying is that there is very little chance I’m going to be done with Airworld by the end of October, unless I miraculously begin writing closer to 2000 words a day. 162 words.
  • The Blade Itself, Part 3. 2012-10-09 7:15 PM.
    • Writing
    • Books
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I’m sure you’ve been wondering what I’m reading. After The Cavern of Black Ice I wanted to read something a little less heavy, so I went back to Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself. Previously I wrote such scintillating endorsements as “it’s not growing on me” and “I got bored.” Well, the book *did* eventually grow on me. In the second half, I was glad to be reading it. The author did some very interesting things with the narrative voice. Normally, books tend to have a single voice throughout, but Abercrombie was able to change the narrative voice depending on the POV character. For example, the chapters from The Dogman used very down-home, earthy style, like you might hear from a southerner. Whereas the chapters from Jezel, a cultured city-dweller, used more grammatically-correct language. Only the chapters from Glokta had self-dialog, the italicized talking-to-oneself kind of text. I found those things interesting, at least from a behind-the-scenes perspective. 355 words.
  • That or Which: The Bane of My Existence. 2012-10-10 12:10 AM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Is it: She thought it must be stuck, a problem that was not uncommon in her own Orderhouse. Or: She thought it must be stuck, a problem which was not uncommon in her own Orderhouse. Grammar Girl is not helping me. I think it is “that” instead of “which.” UPDATE: Looking at this post on 7/25/2013, I now think it should be “which” instead of “that.” 66 words.
  • Second Thoughts About My Story Seed. 2012-10-13 12:24 AM.
    • Writing
    • NaNoWriMo 2012
    • everettrenshaw.com

    NaNoWriMo is flying closer with every second, and I’m terribly unprepared. Last year, I spent months worldbuilding beforehand (and then used almost none of it). This year, I have a story seed that’s been in my head for quite some time, but I’m starting to have second thoughts about it. Mainly because this “seed” is not much of a story. It’s just a collection of ill-defined characters and the barest thread of an excuse for them to come together. It doesn’t feel “ready.” 281 words.
  • Lute of the Sparrow Available Again. 2012-10-13 7:57 PM.
    • Writing
    • News
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I have re-published my first novel Lute of the Sparrow on Amazon and CreateSpace. I disabled it a while back because … well, I don’t actually remember why. Possibly because I thought it might hurt my “career” as an author (such as it is). Perhaps I thought that if I ever did submit that novel to a publisher, they might Google it, find it on Amazon, see that only four people have read it, and drop my manuscript in the trash. However the odds of me submitting that manuscript to a publisher without significant alterations is pretty slim. 169 words.
  • Going Rebel for NaNoWriMo. 2012-10-22 7:12 PM.
    • Writing
    • NaNoWriMo 2012
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Drumroll, please! I have decided to go Rebel for NaNoWriMo this year and continue my current WiP, instead of starting a new one. Possibly as many as 2 people could like this news. I finally decided to drop my previous story idea (which I had sort of dubbed Mixtime - for mixing up people from different times.. get it?). I just couldn’t think of a goal for these disparate characters from different times to work toward once they were together. Every plot idea I wrote down sounded ridiculous, so I would have been writing 50k of pointless nonsense. 128 words.
  • What the heck are these things called?. 2012-10-22 11:31 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Consider this contemporary engraving of a woman by Wenceslaus Hollar, from around the mid-1700s: From here, btw. Sadly, I am a complete moron when it comes to clothing. If I look at that picture, I see a woman wearing an old-timey dress thingy, with a hat thingy on her head. But for some reason, that description wouldn’t go over very well in a published work of fiction. So, what the heck are these things called? 219 words.
  • NaNoWriMo-izing Imminent. 2012-10-31 7:13 PM.
    • Writing
    • NaNoWriMo 2012
    • everettrenshaw.com

    You may notice some changes in Airworld’s writing style now that NaNoWriMo is starting up. Until now, I have made some small efforts to write grammatically correct sentences, avoid too much repetition within a paragraph, find the right words to describe things, put events in the right sequence, etc. With the start of NaNoWriMo, all of that is going out the window. I will need to roughly double my daily output, so I will have to go into a more stream-of-consciousness sort of a writing mode and discard all filters. I will at least try to keep the story in order, although I can’t guarantee I won’t put in a “flashback” chapter to events in Rorco, if I find myself stuck. And I will try to avoid writing parts that have nothing to do with anything, like a unicorn charging in from nowhere and stabbing people, or a squad of WWII bombers flying overhead, or a hole dropping the characters into an alternate universe. 164 words.

November, 2012

  • Walking Dead, Season 2, Episode 1. 2012-11-04 11:08 PM.
    • Writing
    • Television
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Okay so I’m a little bit ahead in writing today, so I thought I would finally sit down and watch the first episode of Walking Dead Season 2 on Netflix. I thought the first season was “okay” but I didn’t see where it deserved all the nerd praise it got. I guess it’s a generational thing. Zombies are “cool” with the kids and whatnot. But since Walking Dead is now in it’s third season and everyone is still raving about it, I thought I should give it another chance. 651 words.
  • It's all fun and games until someone gets their throat cut. 2012-11-14 12:04 AM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I started out writing Airworld as a sort of light-hearted adventure. Despite a somewhat serious premise (the home town is dying!), I didn’t intend for anyone to get into any real trouble. But somewhere along the way, things got pretty serious. People are getting their throats cut. People are getting their heads smashed on stone walls. People are getting framed and tortured. People are coming face-to-face with their worst nightmares, and doubting their own convictions, and having to make life-altering decisions. 99 words.
  • The Missing Word. 2012-11-18 1:32 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I am sure you have all seen this photo by now. https://twitter.com/whitehouse/status/269785942326398976/photo/1 I am SO glad that this picture came to light, so I can ask this vitally important question: WHAT IS THIS EXPRESSION CALLED?? Preferably in a past tense verb form. The president _____ ed for the photo. Here is the context in which I would like to use this word. 277 words.
  • When The Pitch is Better Than The Book. 2012-11-20 1:30 AM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    In a fit of inspiration, I wrote out a “pitch” for Kubak Outpost, in case I wanted to write a query letter for it. This is what I wrote: Fen, a man who has lost his love and his livelihood, enlists in the army to fight in the war against magic-wielding kaanfar warriors encroaching on the border. Along the way, he meets The Demon Hunter, who has to drink the blood of his victims to power his own form of magic. Together they must find a way to stop the kaanfar from summoning a powerful ancient foe before the king’s defenses are overwhelmed. 133 words.
  • Comments…. 2012-11-22 12:49 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Hrm.. something wonky is happening with comments. I am investigating. UPDATE: Okay it’s working again. It was not displaying any comments, even though they were there in the system. The Facebook plugin was the culprit, so I have disabled it. 40 words.
  • Rachel Aaron Talked To Me!. 2012-11-28 1:19 AM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Squee! A real live fantasy author answered my question! (This was actually the second one she answered - the first one was more about my own personal insecurities though.) This is what I asked: Hi! Me again. Early in this thread you said: “Fantasy has changed a LOT as a genre over the past few years, and if you’re not reading modern books, you might be surprised.” I didn’t see where you had already done this, and if you did, feel free to ignore this, but I wonder if you could expand on that a little (or a lot, that’s fine too :). In your view, what’s changed about the genre? I am curious to hear your take on it. Thank you! 1,050 words.

December, 2012

  • This Is First Publication? Really?. 2012-12-01 2:21 AM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Soooo um, ahem. I may have screwed myself a little bit by posting the Airworld story as I go. There’s this concept of “First Publication Rights” which is apparently kind of a big deal to publishers. For some very strange reason, many of them are only interested in publishing things that have never been published before, and some of them might think that posting on the Interwebs is publishing. Oops! 226 words.
  • How To Keep Reading Airworld. 2012-12-02 11:50 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Okay, if you want to continue to be an Alpha Reader, here’s what you need to do. Click on the link on the right that says “Register,” under Meta. (If you’re reading on a tablet or mobile device, it might be way at the bottom of the page.) Pick a username and an email. Don’t use a fake email because it will send a password there. Copy the password in the email and click on the link below it. Enter your new username and paste the password into the box below. That will take you to your profile page, where you may want to change your password into something that you can actually remember. (It’s near the bottom of the page.) It would probably be best not to put anything secret in your profile, since this is WordPress and everybody likes to hack WordPress. 204 words.
  • Airworld Agenda. 2012-12-04 12:05 AM.
    • Writing
    • News
    • everettrenshaw.com

    After two whole days without writing anything (where it felt like I had about 5 hours of spare time each day), I’m back on it! However, I’m going to take a short break from Naobi and Cheton and work on some scenes from Motiva that have been in the back of my mind for a while, which will hopefully become relevant toward the end of the story. I’m also going to wait a few days before I start posting again. Thanks! 81 words.
  • Adult Fantasy–Worst Genre Name Ever. 2012-12-07 1:39 AM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I stumbled on this post from Rachel Aaron entitled “We need a new name…” which made me laugh. Me, “I’m a fantasy author!” (always so cool to say) Lady, “Oh wow! So like Harry Potter?!” Me, “No, Harry Potter’s YA, I write adult fantasy.” Lady, “………….” Me, “NO! Not THAT kind of adult fantasy!” This is probably one of the main reasons I’m using the name Everett Renshaw. Because it is unbelievably embarrassing to say to real people in real life that I write in a genre that the industry calls “adult fantasy.” I don’t even like telling people that I read in this genre. It would be marginally better to call it “epic fantasy” or “urban fantasy” but unfortunately I’m not writing those. Pretty much anything with the word “fantasy” in it makes me cringe and want to resign myself to a life of cubicles. 225 words.
  • Outlining The Rest of Airworld. 2012-12-13 2:34 AM.
    • Writing
    • Process
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I’ve not forgotten about Airworld. I’m outlining the remainder of the story. I find that I can only be a pantser up to a certain point (usually that point is about now, where the story needs to start moving toward a resolution), at which time I really have to sit down and figure out how to resolve things without using magical faery dust. In this case it’s harder than I might have expected, because Airworld became rather complex, and there are many threads flying about loose right now. I suppose this is why writers always advise you to know your ending before you start. It’s good advice, but extremely difficult for me. Unless you count something like, “Then they figured everything out. The end.” 399 words.

January, 2013

  • What Would a Professional Do. 2013-01-06 12:20 AM.
    • Writing
    • Process
    • everettrenshaw.com

    So yeah, I’m still stuck on Airworld. The main obstacle I think is my complete lack of confidence in the outline I have sketched out for the rest of the book. It sounds like it will be terrible. Nothing makes sense, nobody is anywhere for a reason, entire plotlines are pointless and stupid. And what’s worse, according to my 3-books-a-year schedule, I should be starting a new book in February. That’s less than a month away, if you’re somehow unable to look at a calendar. 456 words.
  • Finished A Memory of Light. 2013-01-15 8:22 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    The Third Age is finally over. I powered through books 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14 all in a row, which has left me exhausted, yet exalted. Say what you want about it, but you can’t deny that The Wheel of Time is EPIC. I quipped on Facebook that they should retire the category of “epic fantasy” after this because nobody else could possibly write anything as epic. I’m trying to think of anything I’ve read that had a similar scope. Lord of the Rings, obviously, but that was only three tiny, tiny books. The only other books I can think of (that I’ve read) that came close in terms of sheer immersion were Stephen R. Donaldson’s _The Chronicles of Thomas _Covenant and possibly The Sword of Shannara, which I remember as incredibly epic in scope, even though it was only one book, and I read it when I was a teenager. 291 words.
  • Dissecting What Went Wrong. 2013-01-16 1:35 AM.
    • Writing
    • Process
    • everettrenshaw.com

    In the continuing saga of what to do with Airworld, I believe I have figured out why I don’t particularly want to continue it. Somewhere along the way, the story stopped being fun to write. It seems pretty obvious in retrospect. If it was fun to write, obviously I’d still be writing it. But what happened? This exact thing was something that Rachel Aaron addressed in her NaNoWriMo question-and-answer thread again and again. She advised not to continue writing something that wasn’t fun. She also advised that you should figure out why it isn’t fun to write, because it probably indicates a problem that needs to be fixed. 296 words.

March, 2013

  • Update on the Lack of Writing. 2013-03-02 9:24 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Since it’s now March I should probably write an update. I am still struggling with writing, and failing miserably. This is the result of many factors which are incredibly easy to identify, but not very easy to resolve. The first is NaNoWriMo. I’m wondering if I should skip it in the future, because the blitz of writing during that one month has always been followed by a period of severe burn-out which is hard to recover from. As it is now three months later, that’s probably the least of my problems. 402 words.

April, 2013

  • A Writing Uniform?. 2013-04-06 3:30 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    The most recent episode of Writing Excuses introduced me to the concept of a “writer’s uniform.” I think they were referring to the clothing an author wears while conducting writer business, but I am thinking about it in terms of clothing to wear while writing. In general, I don’t particularly like dressing up. But I have to admit that the act of putting on business casual attire does make me “feel” more like a professional in the ol’ day job. So I’m wondering if there is an outfit I could wear that would make me “feel” more like writing. 246 words.

July, 2013

  • Deconstructing The Hunger Games. 2013-07-24 12:45 AM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    (This unpublished gem has been sitting in my drafts since April 16, 2012.) Stolen image of The Hunger Games’s book cover from Amazon.com. Okay, I have figured out the magical formula for making a hit Young Adult book. It’s really quite easy. The story elements in The Hunger Games: A smart and tough, but emotionally vulnerable hero. 283 words.
  • I Think It's Dead. 2013-07-26 2:34 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Iconic image of a funeral pyre.. you know the movie, right? I think it’s dead. Airworld, that is. It’s been almost a year since Naobi strode from her Orderhouse without looking back, determined to move forward. It was an opening sentence that was carefully crafted to show that the character had autonomy right from the very beginning, taking action instead of reacting, physically moving through space. All the things that we aspiring writers are told will make readers more likely to keep reading. 846 words.

August, 2013

  • He Had His Liberty. 2013-08-03 4:16 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    What does “he had his liberty” mean? Say, in the early 17th century? I came across it reading Edward Wingfield’s account of his removal from the first Council in Jamestown in 1607, in the book The Jamestown Adventure. (Edward Wingfield could be considered the first elected governor of Virginia. Or the first elected president of North America. Or something along those lines.) 266 words.
  • Jamestown is a Fertile Source of Story. 2013-08-05 4:53 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    For the last few days I’ve been researching the beginning of the Jamestown colony, because I’ve been tossing around the idea of basing a story around similar events. (I know, everyone else has done it — Disney, James Cameron — so why not me? It’s a freakin’ timeless story after all, even if you totally leave out the whole John Smith/Pocahontas angle.) Actually “researching” is probably not the right word. “Voraciously obsessed with reading about” is probably more accurate. I can understand why it’s been a popular story for all these years. It’s the perfect storm of human drama, all rolled into a 5-10 year period. 372 words.
  • Page of Scribbling Technique. 2013-08-05 11:57 PM.
    • Writing
    • Process
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Just for posterity, here is a page of scribbling I did trying to block out what I thought would be the final 10,000 words or so of Airworld. What ended up happening is that I raised more questions than I answered, and all the answers started branching off into all these other fairly massive sub-plots. You may also notice there is a whole new, vitally important character in there that was introduced very late in the story. (Just in case I ever do finish the story, I blurred out some spoilers.) 106 words.

October, 2013

  • One Month Until NaNoWriMo. 2013-10-01 10:21 PM.
    • Writing
    • Tel
    • everettrenshaw.com

    With NaNoWriMo coming up in a month, I’m not sure what to work on. There’s a distinct possibility that I might free-write 50k words. That would probably be good for me. It will be an exercise in keeping-the-writing-fun and not-worrying-if-it-doesn’t-make-sense. First I need to come up with a character that I like, because I feel like that’s the main thing that keeps me writing. I’ve been having a lot of trouble getting started on any other writing projects, so I’ve been spending most of my writing time revising last year’s Sovereign of Tel. I figure working on revisions has got to be better than doing nothing at all, right? 175 words.
  • NaNoWriMo Starts Tomorrow. 2013-10-31 2:13 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow, and I couldn’t be more apathetic about it. A few weeks ago I was very excited about a story idea, but now I’m in that classic writer’s mood that goes something like this: “So what if I write a cool story, nobody is ever going to read it anyway.” At least I think it’s a classic writer’s mood. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it means I’m writing for the wrong reasons. Shouldn’t I be writing because the writing itself is fun? But if nobody ever reads my writing, there is exactly zero chance of supporting myself as a weirdo reclusive author who lives in a cave. 109 words.

November, 2013

  • NaNaWriMo First Weekend. 2013-11-04 2:55 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    NaNoWriMo is off to a mediocre start this year, as I am running about 900 words behind after the first weekend. Not too bad, really, considering what a collosal chore it has been to get writing. I feel like there’s a compelling story in this mess of text somewhere but I’m having a hard time getting to it. I am writing this year with zero preparation, by the way, other than some ideas jotted down so I wouldn’t forget them. Also, I’m not doing very well with my main goal of making myself laugh, because what I’m writing is not very funny so far. 104 words.
  • NaNoWriMo Mid-Month Update. 2013-11-15 5:58 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I am all over the place with this year’s NaNoWriMo. Some days I write enough, some days I don’t. Overall I am behind, but not so far behind that it’s impossible to make it up. My heart is definitely not in it, though. This story is bad. I mean, really, really bad. There is a kernel of a seed of an idea that I don’t think is too bad, but everything else around it is as bad as it can possibly get. And also the writing is bad. 387 words.
  • A Typical Day In The Life Of NaNoWriMo 2013. 2013-11-19 6:57 PM.
    • Writing
    • Process
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Last night I once again approached my NaNoWriMo writing at about 9:00, which is the absolute latest I can possibly start writing with any expectation of getting anything done. Once again I stared at a blank document, not even looking at the previous day’s writing, wondering how on earth I could possibly come up with 1,667 words to write of a story that has no outline. Not just 1,667 words either. I actually need slightly more than 2,000 words a day to catch up again. 553 words.

December, 2013

  • NaNoWriMo 2013 Post-Mortem. 2013-12-06 3:46 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    This is an example of how to make nanowrimo harder. I won NaNoWriMo, barely. Scrivener said I had 50,140 words, but NaNoWriMo only gave me credit for 50,005 words, which I turned in on the night of the 30th. You might be surprised to know that I actually did “end” the story as well. I didn’t just stop writing. 997 words.

February, 2014

  • Sovereignty Summary. 2014-02-21 12:35 AM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    So yeah, somehow two whole months have disappeared and I haven’t done much writing. It’s actually more intimidating to try to revise existing manuscripts than it is to try to write new manuscripts. Anyway, in order to spark some positive momentum, I challenged myself to write a 100-word summary of the plot of The Sovereign of Tel. That probably sounds trivially simple, but for me to zoom that far out from the story and give such a super high-level overview of it is quite a challenge. I have tried to write “pitches” of my books before, but those only included the setup for the story. For this, I wanted the entire story arc from start to finish. 459 words.

March, 2014

  • Sovereignty 1000-word Summary Completed. 2014-03-07 5:08 PM.
    • Writing
    • Process
    • everettrenshaw.com

    FYI, I completed a 1000-word summary of Sovereignty, but I won’t post it here because it’s filled with spoilers, just in case it turns into a real book some day. It’s now abundantly clear that there is no place for my original story in the book. Not even as a side plot. One of the original driving forces for this book was: What if there was a culture of people who bred servants in the same way that we breed pets? The original main character was going to be one of those servants. 460 words.

June, 2014

  • June Writing Update. 2014-06-24 5:56 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    It’s been a while since my last writing update, so I will now write one. Ha-ha. Get it? Write a writing update? So funny I am. Let’s see. Where was I? Hold on a moment while I read my last post from March. Oh yes, I was writing 50-100 word summaries of each scene that would be in Sovereignty. That did happen, sort of, but I never actually finished an outline that I felt comfortable with. There are still holes in the plot that I can’t fill in. Still, I wrote about 1,000 words of a new first chapter. Unfortunately I was not happy with it. I just can’t find a “hook” for that story. It remains tantalizingly out of reach. 507 words.

July, 2014

  • RE: The Leftovers. 2014-07-23 12:17 AM.
    • Writing
    • Television
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I feel like there should be some sort of law against television shows (or the books they are based on, I guess) that only raise questions without giving any answers in the first four episodes of the series. I can handle two episodes of story without context. I could even go to three episodes without any context. But four? Nope. That’s too much. I should have a basic understanding of where The Leftovers is going by now. (I have talked before about my need to understand the goals of the characters early in a story.) But now I have lost faith in the writers. Didn’t we learn anything from Lost? They are clearly just making it up as they go. 120 words.

August, 2014

  • July Camp NaNo Results. 2014-08-13 1:36 PM.
    • Writing
    • NaNoWriMo
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I suppose I should finally reveal the results of my July Camp NaNoWriMo experiment: Total failure. I was doing all right until things at work took a turn for the stressful, and then it became impossible to write in the evenings. I’m sure you can imagine that it’s hard to be creative when you’re totally drained. I tried to set myself up for success anyway, by changing my target word count from 50,000 to 15,000. (You can do that in the summer NaNoWriMos.) That goal was well within reach until things at work took a turn for the even-more-stressful and exhausting on top of it. So I wimped out and gave up. I ended up completing a little over 10,000 words. 234 words.
  • August Writing Update. 2014-08-29 4:00 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    With August coming to an end I thought I would release another writing update. Being temporarily unemployed (which I prefer to think of as a short sabbatical), this is the first month in forever (aka. 2000-ish) where I have had nothing but time to write. So you would think that I would have written tons of stuff, particularly when I’ve had this ongoing crazy notion that I should someday get paid for writing. 640 words.
  • Two Days In A Row. 2014-08-31 2:20 AM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I’ve written about 1200 words a day for two days in a row. That may not sound like much, but it makes me feel like a rock star. I’m working on adding the middle part that goes between the beginning and ending of Moving Day. I couldn’t just leave it hanging the way it was. (Also I did some brainstorming and came up with some neat ideas for it.) It’s sort of morphed from a science fiction story to… I don’t know… horror? But not the frightening kind of horror. It’s like the later-era Stephen King kind of horror that is really more of a plain story with some external supernatural forces that put characters into conflict, but it still gets labeled horror because he’s Stephen King. I’m not sure what you’d call that. “Fiction” I guess. 137 words.

September, 2014

  • The Killing, Season One. 2014-09-01 4:17 PM.
    • Writing
    • Television
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Why didn’t anyone warn me about this show? Don’t start watching The Killing unless you’re willing to put in the time to finish the entire thing in one sitting. Because it’s really addicting. And in case you’re thinking you can get away with just watching one season at a time: The murder is not resolved at the end of the first season. The story just keeps right on going into the second season. I’m writing this paragraph to avoid spoilers, but my full thoughts are way down below: I had an idea of who the murderer might be after four or five episodes, based on my award-winning strategy of “picking the least plausible person it could possibly be.” Through the whole first season I was more and more convinced I was going to be right, because they never showed anything that directly refuted my theory. Once, it was close, but I can think of a way to explain it. At least until they arrested that dude in the last episode of season one. But then some evidence surfaced that made me think my theory could still be plausible, so I’m sticking with it as I start watching season two. In many ways, The Killing is a stereotypical cop show. It’s got the cop obsessed with finding the murderer at the expense of her family. It’s got the victim’s family coping with the loss of their daughter and the morbid depictions of how a victim’s body gets back to the family after the crime. It’s got the cop who went too far undercover and got hooked on drugs. It’s got the crusty police lieutenants. It’s got the city hall with their political agendas that are more important than the truth. But somehow it’s still a compelling show. 436 words.

January, 2015

  • My Writing In 2014. 2015-01-05 12:50 AM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Well 2014 wasn’t my greatest writing year ever, although compared to some years where I didn’t write anything I suppose it was still pretty good. I started the year trying to revise the Sovereignty manuscript, which ended in miserable failure. After a lot of fiddling, I still couldn’t figure out the story I wanted to tell and basically realized I needed to start over. By June I had hit rock bottom, so to speak. 262 words.

February, 2015

  • February Status Report. 2015-02-06 4:21 PM.
    • Writing
    • Process
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Perhaps if I update my blog more often, it will inspire me to do more writing, so that I’ll have more to talk about in my blog. So… As February begins, I’m still working on my post-apocalyptic novel that I started in NaNoWriMo 2014. I’m up to about 70,000 words, so you can probably figure out that I’m not writing very fast-typically I only put down about 500 words a night, somewhere around four a five nights out of a week. (I went from 50,000 words in one month to 20,000 words in three two months.) 372 words.

March, 2015

  • February Status, Part 2. 2015-03-09 1:24 AM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    My last post was a “February Status” but it was posted at the beginning of February, so in reality it was more of a “January Status.” It’s now the beginning of March (sort of), so this writing update will actually cover February. As of now my manuscript from November is over 80,000 words, and Scrivener says I wrote nearly 12,000 words in February. Not great, but better than nothing. A couple of interesting story twists occurred in February: 1) I killed off a character that was no longer doing anything interesting, and 2) I came up with a new idea for an interesting group of people to encounter in the post-apocalyptic wilderness. 263 words.

April, 2015

  • April Camp NaNoWriMo. 2015-04-05 10:09 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I am off to a terrible start in the April Camp NaNoWriMo event. I set myself a modest goal of 30,000 words (since I don’t think this story is a full novel), and I’m already about three days behind schedule. I’m just not “feeling it.” My story idea seems like an awful idea again that makes no sense. (Exactly what happened to me the first time I started writing it.) 137 words.
  • April Camp NaNoWriMo. 2015-04-05 10:17 PM.
    • Writing

    I thought I might start crossing over a bit and post more about my writing here on this blog. It seems to me that the subjects of MMORPGs and genre fiction are pretty closely related anyway. I am off to a terrible start in the April Camp NaNoWriMo event. I set myself a modest goal of 30,000 words (since I don’t think this story is a full novel), and I’m already about three days behind schedule. I’m just not “feeling it.” My story idea seems like an awful idea again that makes no sense. (Exactly what happened to me the first time I started writing it.) 173 words.

June, 2015

  • Years in Westeros. 2015-06-08 1:00 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    It occurred to me: The seasons in A Song of Ice and Fire are many years long, right? In the show, Old Nan said that men were born, lived, and died all without seeing the sun (presumably in winter, in the north). But when the characters talk about how long the seasons are, they use the word “years.” (At least, I think they do. I would have to comb through the books to be sure.) But since for us a year is defined as one revolution around the sun, or one cycle of seasons, how do the people in Westeros know how long a “year” is, since it would be some fraction of the length of their seasons? Why would they even have a concept for a fraction of time shorter than a season? 275 words.

July, 2015

  • It's July!. 2015-07-04 1:20 AM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Oh crap! It’s July! This is Camp NaNoWriMo month, and it’s Day 3, and I haven’t started writing-haven’t even thought of an idea. Didn’t even realize it was July until this third day. Should I write something? Coincidentally, I’ve had a story in my head for the last few days. Actually, I should say I’ve had a setting in my head for the last few days. It’s from an old idea I wrote down years ago, which was rekindled by running across The Conjunction Of The Spheres in the The Witcher 3 which I’ve been playing. 173 words.
  • Gearing Up For Blaugust. 2015-07-28 3:00 PM.
    • Writing

    This past weekend I spent some time gearing up for Blaugust next month. It’s a little daunting because July has been a very light gaming month for me and there’s no reason to think next month won’t be the same. I’ve been pre-occupied with a lot of work stuff. So what the heck am I going to write about? One thing that I think will help me is giving myself permission to write shorter posts. I generally don’t feel like I’ve written enough unless I get to 500 words, but most of the time I don’t have that much to say about a topic. Thankfully this new Yoast SEO plugin that I’m using tells me my posts only need to be 300 words or more. And the Blaugust guidelines say I have to write ten sentences, which at the recommended average of 15-20 words per sentence comes out to 150-200 words, which is pretty short, but when you have nothing to say, it might as well be 10,000 words. (This post, as of this sentence, is still a bit shy of 200 words.) 211 words.

August, 2015

  • A Dream About Enemy Base Infiltration. 2015-08-03 3:00 PM.
    • Musings
    • Stories
    • Writing

    Blaugust Day 3 It’s Sunday morning as I write this. I had the strangest dream last night. That’s not unusual because, honestly, a lot of my dreams are strange. I think the scientific explanation of dreaming* involves your subconscious re-processing things you’ve experienced, but that doesn’t explain a lot of my dreams. Quite often I see things in my dreams that I have no memory of ever seeing, hearing, or experiencing before. Sometimes I’ve heard complete songs with melodies and lyrics. Sometimes I’ve seen stories with plots and dialog. Of course the next morning they are completely gone, which makes me wonder if those songs really had melodies and lyrics, or if I just thought they had melodies and lyrics. 600 words.

December, 2015

  • Listmas 2015: Recent Audible Listens. 2015-12-23 4:00 PM.
    • Reviews
    • Writing

    I’m sort of trying to merge this and my horribly neglected writing blog together. Maybe. I don’t know. My “branding” is all messed up right now. Also I haven’t written much lately. Anyway, one of the things I tried to do on the writing blog every now and then was talk about books I’d read lately and what I learned about writing from them. So that’s what this post is. 1,338 words.

June, 2016

  • NBI 2016 – Thoughts On Blogging. 2016-06-02 11:17 PM.
    • Advice
    • Community
    • Writing

    The first rule of blogging is not to blog about blogging. However, June is the Newbie Blogger Initiative here in the game blogging community, so this is the month where we throw out all the rules, talk about the craft of blogging, and try to recruit and encourage new bloggers. I technically started blogging in 1998, when I put some random notes up on my first ever web site, unless you count some Quake match updates I posted on the clan’s page in 1997. I didn’t really start blogging with any regularity though until about 2002 or 2003. The point is that I’ve been at this hobby for a while now, so I have at least a little sense of the landscape. 1,099 words.

November, 2016

  • Starting Ashes of Ariandel DLC. 2016-11-01 1:11 AM.
    • Single-Player
    • Writing

    Over the weekend I tapered off of Civ 6 to push through to the end of my umpteenth Dark Souls 3 playthrough so I would finally have a character ready for the Ashes of Ariandel DLC. It took a total of about 18 hours to go through all the bosses and all the areas (over the course of a couple weeks, not two days :). I had to make a new character because, if you didn’t know, you can’t transfer DS2 or DS3 characters from one PC to another. That’s really annoying, From Software. All those high-level characters I have on my old PC are now worthless unless I want to play the DLC on that old PC, which I don’t, because old PC is old. The aptly-named Snowfield 368 words.
  • An Election Day Tale. 2016-11-09 12:04 AM.
    • Politics
    • Stories
    • Writing

    This is a long tale of my voting experience this morning. I tried to keep it entirely non-partisan and focus on what I saw, heard, and felt, but if you don’t want to risk it, feel free to skip. (But in return, you have to read every other one of my posts for the rest of time! Just kidding.) I wrote this fairly quickly by my standards, and normally I would spend about four years editing something this long, but I wanted to post it before the results started coming in. 5,364 words.

December, 2016

  • NaNoWriMo 2016 Post-Mortem. 2016-12-01 2:50 AM.
    • Advice
    • Writing

    I like to write up a post-mortem about my writing projects after I’m done with them, so here are my thoughts on my NaNoWriMo 2016 draft. For reference, it’s an untitled historical fiction set in Belgium at the beginning of World War I. It’s about, you know, people, who like, do stuff. The hook might still need some work. I validated my (exactly, as it turned out) 50,000 words about 8 PM on November 30th. 1,571 words.
  • Xarth and The Post-NaNo Blues. 2016-12-02 4:32 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Writing

    Last night I welcomed on old friend back into my life: The post-NaNoWriMo blues. I’ve written about this before. Here’s me from December 2011: “The act of creation is so thrilling and stimulating and awesome that when it’s over, there’s nothing left inside but a black empty void of nothingness. For me, it generally manifests as a fervent desire to stare at the walls and feel useless all day.” I remember writing much more colorful language about it, though. Ah, here it is, from 2012: 511 words.

May, 2017

  • Grimdark. 2017-05-17 3:00 PM.
    • Media
    • Writing

    Grimdark TMNT from [1d4chan][1]. Artist unknown. A tweet caught my attention Friday and I thought about responding, but it was a topic that would fill a lot more than a couple tweets and I was looking for something to write about anyway. i'm never going to understand why people keep writing grimdark shit all the time. the world is miserable enough as it is. don't add to it. 995 words.

August, 2017

  • August Writing Update. 2017-08-26 11:20 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    My last post was some time ago, so I thought I would update everyone on my writing progress. Um. Well. You see. It hasn’t been great. I did participate in NaNoWriMo 2016, and I did win, so that was something. I wrote 50,000 words on a historical fiction novel set in Belgium during World War I. I’ve never written historical fiction before so it was a big stretch. I felt completely unqualified, but I pressed on and tried to stick with what I knew and avoid obsessing about the little details that I was sure I was getting wrong. 291 words.

October, 2017

  • NaNoWriMo Prep. 2017-10-31 2:30 PM.
    • Writing

    This is a post about my NaNoWriMo process, so feel free to skip it. I’m writing it mostly for myself to remind me what it is, so that I’ll be ready for November 1. Typically I prepare a Scrivener project with 30 documents named “11-01” through “11-30,” each with a 1,667 word target goal. Each day, I open up the document with the appropriate date and start writing. I try not to read much of what I’ve written the previous days, other than maybe the last paragraph if I need to continue with a scene I didn’t finish. 1,008 words.

January, 2018

  • Free Book Weekend. 2018-01-12 3:30 PM.
    • Administration
    • Writing

    We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog post for a blatant, unabashed, self-promotional advertisement that has no purpose other than to shower me with cold, hard cash that I will not share with you.* I have had a book on Amazon called Lute of the Sparrow under my writing name Everett Renshaw for about seven years now. This weekend (starting January 13), I am making it available for free. Please go forth, download it, read it, and post a review. Preferably a good review. 124 words.

March, 2018

  • A Very Morose Writing Update. 2018-03-19 2:14 PM.
    • Writing
    • Process
    • everettrenshaw.com

    # Monday, March 19, 2018 I promised myself that I would write about writing twice a month. The last writing post I published was January 17, over two months ago. Brace yourself for a shocking revelation. My writing is not going well. This could explain why I haven’t been rushing to tell you about it twice a month. I am writing this post in Visual Studio Code, because perhaps it will inspire me. I love VSCode. I am writing in Markdown format, and watching the little preview window on the right-hand side update as I type. It’s very satisfying. 1,277 words.
  • Why Self-Publishing Might Be A Mistake. 2018-03-28 6:09 PM.
    • Writing
    • Process
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Recently I saw a tweet from someone contemplating self-publishing some of their writing. They didn’t sound confident about it. It prompted me to write this post. I’ve thought about this for years, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it was a mistake to self-publish Lute of the Sparrow on Amazon. It was an informative experience, true. But the only thing I really gained from it was the first-hand knowledge and experience of formatting a book for e-publishing. At the time I thought that would be worth something, but in retrospect, it’s not. The process has probably changed entirely since 2011 anyway. 1,515 words.

May, 2018

  • The Tragic End Of A Bird Nest. 2018-05-22 5:06 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    A couple of “flycatcher” birds returned this year to nest outside my back door. (I don’t know their exact species but I think they might be Eastern phoebes.) I watched in fascination as four little baby birds grew up in the nest this Spring. I took tons of pictures of them. I setup a streaming webcam so I could watch and listen to them from my computer room. (The parents would chirp and scold me if I stood at the door to watch.) I even figured out how to stream an image from my DLSR camera fitted with a telephoto lens. 1,639 words.

June, 2018

  • On Blogging More. 2018-06-18 2:30 PM.
    • Blog
    • Musings
    • Writing

    This is an amalgamation of an old draft from March 2017 that I never got around to publishing, probably because I never found a picture for it, and some new thoughts because the subject came up again this past week. My keyboard, stylistically distorted purely for artistic effect, not at all to mask the dust and dirt that showed up because of the side lighting angle. 2,366 words.

July, 2018

  • Flipping The Tables For Blaugust. 2018-07-29 1:39 PM.
    • Blog
    • Writing

    I’ve belatedly decided to officially participate in the Blaugust extravaganza. I wasn’t going to because frankly I didn’t think I’d be able to write 31 posts in August. (I still don’t think I will.) But late this past week I stumbled upon some information that I completely missed the first time: You don’t actually have to write 31 posts to participate. I figure that even in my crippled state I should be able to manage five or ten posts. 272 words.

August, 2018

  • New Writing Process Didn’t Work – Blaugust 5. 2018-08-05 11:44 AM.
    • Blog
    • Musings
    • Writing

    This photo of boats is completely relevant to this post! I think I’ve collected enough observational data now to abandon my new writing process. At first it was new and invigorating, but after a week it’s kind of irritating and not any better or faster. For posterity, here’s what I did: I turned on the webcam and recorded myself talking for about 7 or 8 minutes. I played back the video with VLC and set the playback speed slightly slower, and transcribed what I said into a Scrivener document. Then I copied the transcription into another Scrivener document and edited it into a blog post. I read the final post out loud several times to complete the editing process. Then I copied it into WordPress, added a picture, and published it almost immediately. 507 words.
  • Stormsong Valley and On Accident – Blaugust 25. 2018-08-25 1:45 PM.
    • MMORPG
    • Writing

    Moonshade Highlands, I mean, Stormsong Valley The Azshara short was the weakest of the three Warbringer videos, as self-contained short films go. (Sylvanas being the strongest.) My reaction before watching it: Who is Azshara? And after watching it: Who is Azshara? As far as I could tell, it had no connection with the game of World of Warcraft that I’ve been playing the past week. 494 words.
  • Blaugust Performance Self-Review – Blaugust 31. 2018-08-31 2:00 PM.
    • Blog
    • Musings
    • Writing

    Back in July I filled a directory with 70 photographs for potential use in Blaugust posts. Last chance to use them! This is Chingoteague. I’m not sure if this is sunrise or sunset but let’s just say it’s sunset to fit the theme of the post. 2,723 words.

October, 2018

  • Winter Arrived Today. 2018-10-22 1:51 PM.
    • Writing
    • NaNoWriMo
    • everettrenshaw.com

    I woke this morning to an almost literally freezing cold house, which means that we can no longer pretend that the cold months of the year won’t happen. By “we” I mean “me,” because there are some people who actually like the transition from summer to fall. I personally spend most days between November and March in three or four layers of clothes, moving slowly, barely staving off uncontrollable shivering fits, unable to concentrate, hiding in the darkness that consumes most of each day. 582 words.

November, 2018

  • NaNoWriMo 2018, Day 4 Vlog. 2018-11-05 1:45 PM.
    • Writing
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Considerably more talking than writing on day 4. Morning update: Irish accents, daylight savings, second Mythica movie, nervous about iOS Scrivener, feeling mute when I’m not able to type on a keyboard, struggling to differentiate character voices in dialog. Evening update: the story so far, NaNoWriMo community and me. 49 words.

December, 2018

  • NaNoWriMo 2018, Day 30 Vlog. 2018-12-01 2:37 PM.
    • Writing
    • NaNoWriMo
    • everettrenshaw.com

    Last vlog for NaNoWriMo 2018, unless I record one more epilogue a bit later to show how I reorganized my Scrivener project. Validating 50,247 words. Lack of editing. Thoughts on what to do next. Reflecting on the month. There are in fact 31 vlog videos, which you can find in this NaNoWriMo 2018 Playlist on YouTube. All the ups and downs of writing for 30 days. 66 words.

August, 2019

  • Blog Post Formatting. 2019-08-07 7:16 PM.
    • Musings
    • Writing

    Lurking over in the Blaugust Discord today, I noticed a conversation about the details of precise formatting in blog posts. Someone was having some trouble trying to get the WordPress editor to format their post exactly the way they wanted it to be seen. It inspired me to throw out a bit of unsolicited blogging advice related to this topic. First of all, I think we can all agree that the newest WordPress editor is terrible. Okay, well I don’t like it. I routinely have difficulties with it, that basically boil down to “it’s just weird and you just have to learn how it’s weird and work around it.” My biggest problem is that it routinely deletes an entire paragraph whenever I try to delete the last sentence in a paragraph. 811 words.

March, 2020

  • Blapril and Mental Headspace. 2020-03-30 3:20 PM.
    • Musings
    • Writing

    First, just a quick note to say I feel like I’m “recovered” from whatever it was I had. I still have a minor cough now and then, but that’s something I’ve had for years anyway. Secondly, I’ve been so distracted lately that I’m only just now realizing that Blapril is not just coming soon, but already here and started. So go do that if you haven’t signed up yet. It’s a great event. 588 words.

August, 2020

  • Despondence Over Divisions In Writing. 2020-08-02 2:38 PM.
    • Musings
    • Writing

    Yesterday’s Promptapalooza topic, spearheaded by Dragonray, asked which popular media we didn’t like. The first thing that sprang to my mind was a very touchy subject. I know it’s hard to imagine now, but in the not-too-distant past, there was a time when Harry Potter was universally loved. I, however, never particularly liked it. The movies were okay, but I didn’t even make it more than a chapter or two into the first book. (Less controversially, and more currently, I’d have to go with any Marvel or superhero-related property.) 338 words.
  • Isaias and Old Books. 2020-08-04 1:15 PM.
    • Musings
    • Writing

    As I’m typing this morning, the remnants of the eye of tropical storm Isaias, which I neither know how to spell nor say, is passing about a hundred miles to the east. Yesterday and last night in particular, it dumped a massive amount of rain on my house, and this morning I woke up early to the sound of some of that rain dripping inside my house. I live in a house built in the 1950s, so it’s old and quirky. It needs new shingles, and there are a couple of spots on the roof that need repairs, but that’s an expensive proposition and I can’t afford it right now. I thought I had plugged all the leaks I was aware of, but apparently there’s a new one. Nothing is damaged beyond repair, but it’s annoying and a constant source of stress in my life. 399 words.
  • Catching Up On Prompts. 2020-08-09 7:27 PM.
    • Musings
    • Writing

    I’ve been having a lot of back pain over the last several days, so sitting down to write in the mornings, when I feel the most like writing blog posts, has been a massive chore. I’m trying to push through it to get this post done on Sunday so I don’t fall another day behind. I don’t think of myself as a chronic pain sufferer but over the last several years it’s becoming clear that my freedom of will is increasingly limited by the day-to-day status of my back, and I haven’t quite adjusted to it yet. 767 words.

July, 2021

  • Blogging Pep Talk. 2021-07-21 9:09 AM.
    • Writing

    Blaugust 2021 is coming soon! It’s fun! Do it! If you want. I’m not your mom. 779 words.
  • Old Post Prompts. 2021-07-22 1:01 PM.
    • Writing

    Here’s a list of some old posts that I’m going to mine for topic ideas this Blaugust, which may or may not turn into a fruitful strategy. 223 words.

August, 2021

  • Writing For Clarity. 2021-08-11 8:53 AM.
    • Writing

    Magi mentioned a topic in the Blaugust discord: “How do you personally get your opinions or thoughts across in a post?” 567 words.
  • Blogging Motivation: What's That?. 2021-08-23 11:48 AM.
    • Writing

    I think we’re supposed to be writing about how we bloggers stay motivated when blogging, but I think a much more relatable topic for the masses is how we definitely, positively don’t stay motivated. 670 words.
  • Blaugust 2021 Lessons Learned. 2021-08-31 10:05 AM.
    • Writing

    Well kids, what did we learn this month? 509 words.

January, 2022

  • A New Reading Process. 2022-01-07 9:57 AM.
    • Writing

    Around the start of every new year, there’s a collective burst of enthusiasm around humanity for trying new things. I, for example, am trying to devise a new reading strategy. 1,133 words.

July, 2022

  • Blaugust 2022. 2022-07-18 6:20 PM.
    • Blog
    • Writing

    Blaugust is back for another year. I don’t really need to explain it, just go do the thing. 276 words.
  • Blaugust Plan 2022. 2022-07-31 9:58 AM.
    • Writing

    My Blaugust is going to be an experiment. 623 words.

August, 2022

August, 2024