Category Archives: Update

May Day

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Wow. A month passed by way faster than I thought it would.

I thought I would be done posting SWW by now. But I’m not. I posted a chapter of it a few days ago though. It shouldn’t be too much longer until I get the next one up…but I’ll bite my lip.

Writing is pretty much at a standstill right now. I should be writing for New Frontiers since it is my current project, and I really like it, and I’m still excited about it. The thing is…the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs are happening right now. New Frontiers involves hockey because I love hockey. I plan my nights around hockey during the regular season, so why would the playoffs be any different? So, my point is, I haven’t been writing because I’ve been watching. I haven’t even began editing the next chapter of New Frontiers.

But that doesn’t mean I won’t post it this month! I just thought about the chapter now, which made me smile, and I want to share it. I’m even going to open the file and take a look at it right now. I’ll get one posted this month. I will.

Here is the link for the latest SWW: 3-VIII

At Long Last

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So I did it. I posted the prologue for my new story, New Frontiers. The site layout is brand new, too. As usual, it’s a visual clue related to the story. I even got the blog layout to match the main site layout!

Unlike all the other stories I’ve ever posted, the new one isn’t named after a song. Well that’s just weird, right? Music has always been the biggest source of inspiration for all the stories I’ve written in the past. I might’ve just gotten to the point now where, for this story, it isn’t. That’s not to say that music isn’t important to my storywriting anymore. It definitely is and it always will be. But this time it isn’t the primary. At long last I can reveal that it involves hockey.

The last story I wrote that involved a sport…might be considered somewhat of a disaster. I mean, that story is SWW. I’ve changed it and it put it off so many times that I’m still not done posting it, and I’m years removed from when I finished it. I think my problem with SWW is that I don’t love what Dusty loves. I never found a way to make soccer important in the story in the way that it should be. That’s not going to happen with hockey in New Frontiers. I devote a huge amount of my time to watching games, and paying attention to what’s happening in the hockey world on a day-to-day basis. If I were to calculate how much of my day revolves around hockey-related things, I’d probably be pretty embarrassed because it’s too much.

I realize that my interests aren’t always reflective (and usually they aren’t) the interests of my readers. That’s fine. Actually, that’s better than fine. New Frontiers involves hockey but it isn’t a hockey story. I don’t think that you have to enjoy hockey or even really know anything about it. Isn’t that something I’ve done with all my stories? It wasn’t necessary to like the kind of music that Tainted Fate played to like the Destiny series. It wasn’t necessary to be big on punk and the year 1979 to root for Jet in ICHL. It’s not necessary to identify with surf culture to identify with Dusty and her friends in SWW. The same goes for New Frontiers. Anything you need to know about the context will be written into the story.

It wouldn’t be a story by me if I didn’t do a ton of research. This time around I’m probably enjoying the research part way more than I should. As a serious hockey fan, most of it is stuff that I would have found anyway even without needed to incorporate it into the story. For every (or almost every, depending on how it goes) chapter, there will be a post on the blog that goes into further detail about the hockey side of it. You don’t have to read the blog posts. They give extra information and explanations about the hockey side of the story, which might interest you (or something to read if you’re bored? Knowledge is power!), but you’re not going to be any worse off for not reading the posts. It’s basically just self indulgence on my part. Why? Because I can, that’s why.

The first of those posts (articles? features?) will be written after I finish writing this post.

Along with the prologue of the new story I also published another chapter of SWW on the site like I said I would. It’s winding down. Soon I will be completely done posting it. About time.

I have mixed feelings about this chapter. On one hand, I’m annoyed at both Dusty and Kyle. They’re both on such different ends of a spectrum here, which keeps them from being able to meet in the middle. I feel like it’s such unnecessary teenage drama. But then I remember that, yeah, it’s supposed to be teenage drama, and maybe it’s just the 22-year-old in me that knows better, which is why I hate them for it. Because on the other hand, I like the place that they’re in because it isn’t convenient. If everything was just convenient and easy, there’d be no point. Hunky-dory does not a story make, right?

The next installment of New Frontiers is probably a month away. Maybe four weeks if I’m lucky. It isn’t because I don’t have anything else written past the prologue. I do, but I want to be way further along in writing the story before I make final decisions about the early chapters. I expect this story to be 20-25 chapters long. I’m trying to motivate myself to be at the halfway mark when May rolls around. While I’m writing, I also hope to be done posting SWW. Only two chapters left! It shouldn’t even be a challenge for me to edit that amount of writing. But somehow it always takes me a whole day. I can never sit still.

Here are all the links for today:
New Frontiers: Prologue
Sitting, Waiting, Wishing: 3-VII

Bloggity Blog Blog

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I just spent a bit of time fixing the blogs. When I began the afterglare blog in 2009, it was just a simple tumblr blog (tumblog?). I really liked, and still like, the way that tumblr handles different media. But there are still limitations. I’m going to be writing a lot more stuff on the blog (honestly, it’s probably more than you ever imagined) once I begin posting the new story and I don’t want limitations! So everything that was/is on the tumblr blog is posted here now. And everything that has yet to be posted will be crossposted as well.

The blog: afterglare.com/blog

Tumblr blog: blog.afterglare.com

If you want to read my rambling, it doesn’t really matter where you go. The content is the same. I know people like tumblr and it’s easy to “follow” on there. Go for it if you haven’t already! I won’t be able to follow you back since that blog is a sub of my main personal tumblr. Well, actually, I guess I will be able to follow you back…just not from the afterglare blog. Feel free to ask questions, too. I love hearing from you guys.

As posted on the current home page, I am preparing to have a new layout, story, and chapter of SWW up by the end of the month. There are only a few more chapters of SWW left to post, which makes me happy that I’ll finally be done with it. It’s still giving me problems when I try to edit because, like I said before, I feel so far removed from it. But damn it, I am going to finish posting it.

Right now one of my issues with the new story is that I still don’t have a title for it. This story is a pretty big project for me. I am committed to it but it is going to take time. Don’t be surprised if a month passes between the time that I post the prologue/first chapter and the next one. But how can I even begin posting when I don’t have a title?

I definitely have more than one chapter written but ideally I’d like to be almost halfway through writing the story once I start posting. I think I’ve gotten selfish with this story. I really like who the characters are. I’m sticking to my guns with the whole writing for myself thing and I hope it doesn’t get in the way of how much you like the story. At the end of the day, regardless of the specific lives of characters, like the things I’ve written in the past, it’s a story about two people.

Is this really happening?

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Here’s the new chapter: 3-VI

Wait, what? Didn’t I just post a chapter five days ago?

I have no idea how this happened. I was tweaking a few things, then I got caught up in it and decided to go all out and have it posted by the end of the night. Since I finished SWW so long ago I don’t really remember how I felt or what I was thinking when I wrote these last few chapters. But this one is one of my favorite chapters in the story and I feel like that means I probably worked pretty hard on it.

Editing this reminded me how (in my opinion, anyway) I got pretty comfortable with transitions between dialogue and description and back. That’s something I’ve been working on with the new writing I’ve been doing since January. I wouldn’t say that the way my chapters were coming together was bad but it wasn’t until two weeks ago that I finished a chapter and could look it over and say the flow was seamless. Since then I feel like I’m getting back on track.

If you’re reading, thank you.

3-V

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Teenagers. Teenagers teenagers teenagers.

That’s what I remind myself when I’m looking at Sitting, Waiting, Wishing. What I’m currently working on right now involves characters that are in their early 20s, so shifting back to 17 to edit SWW has been a bit challenging. I stare at the dialogue and say things to myself like, “would she really say that?” and “is that how he would word it?” Because what Dusty and Kyle and Evan say…I don’t think they would say that if they were older. But they’re not. They’re teenagers. They are a certain way.

Now with all that said, I am writing this post to tell you that I updated SWW! You can read the new chapter by clicking on the link at the bottom of this post. I got to experience the pains of editing a chapter again. The way I edit is to read the chapter from top to bottom, then bottom to top at least four times. So 8 times in total at the very least. I can’t remember when it was that I learned reading your writing from bottom to top is the best way to edit, but I’ve done it probably since I was 16. The logic behind it is that the story doesn’t make sense when you read it from bottom to top, so it’s much easier to pinpoint mistakes.

I also got to see the form to upload a chapter to my own site for the first time in a few years. It was only vaguely familiar. And to think that four years ago I used to see it every few weeks. Nothing but nostalgia. It definitely brought me back.

I decided not to touch the layout for now. The footer has the wrong copyright year (2009!) but I’m just going to leave it until I start posting my new story. The layouts on the site have always had visual clues or nods to whatever the current story I was posting. If I changed it now, I’d just give it away. Also, I know that right now pointing your browser to afterglare.com redirects to this blog page and not the main site. I think I’m going to leave it that way until the new story, too.

The next chapter of SWW is one of my favorites of the whole story. It’s also lengthier than the chapter I just posted. I hope to do it justice once it is edited. I’m only half a week late from when I expected to post this chapter, so if I say I’m going to try and get the next chapter out in the next two weeks, maybe I’ll post it in three weeks? ;]

Here’s the new chapter: 3-V