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Author Topic: The Writing Thread: Orlando Passaggio (aka The Writing Thread 3)  (Read 131415 times)

nicksgal

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Re: The Writing Thread: Orlando Passaggio (aka The Writing Thread 3)
« Reply #525 on: May 05, 2021, 09:10:52 PM »

Ooh, I'm intrigued.  It's good to get it down on paper so it will leave you alone - and so you won't forget it later.

Mum's the word. But it's going to be entertaining (or at least I think it's going to be entertaining).


Yeah, that's probably the most I've ever written while getting ready.  Now that I am documenting my start and stop times on Nano, I realized I had it open for about 45 minutes as I was getting ready.  Usually it's more like 15 minutes while I dry my hair, and I get less than 100 words written.  This morning I wrote 72, which was the start of the next chapter, so at least that's out of the way.

Forty-five minutes is a lot! I should start doing that when I get ready, but then I'm abysmally useless before my coffee. So most of the time my morning thoughts are literal narrations of what I'm doing. And I can't picture anyone in the PBox universe saying thing like "Must brush teeth. Mascara. Why are my contacts so hard to put in? I need a coffee..." lol

At least you got a start to the next chapter though! That's half the battle! How's writing going this evening?

And same, keeping track of start and stop times has been enlightening. Sometimes I'm typing furiously and sometimes I am slower than dirt.

Yesterday, I stopped to look up when knapsacks were in use and ended up in this weird spiral on the history of backpacks, lol. And then at the end of all of that, I decided I just needed a bag of some sort and didn't care, lol.

That's awesome!  I love those nights when I just can't stop writing, even if it means I'm extra tired the next day.  The word sprints really do seem to help!

My word count is back down to 2 words a minute LOL, so at least you're faster than me.

Same! They're awesome and I always feel really accomplished. I'm seeing a lot more word sprints in my future when I start losing focus, haha.

We'll see where it lands today, lol. Still haven't written anything yet.

Glad you get your hubby back for a day... and then more time to yourself tomorrow.  That sounds like a good balance.

He came back into town to take some clients to the baseball game and... I don't know that he'll wake up before I leave for work tomorrow, lol. So... It's basically me updating and preparing to write. Wish me luck!
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~*Dee*~

People think it would be fun to be a bird because you could fly. But they forget the negative side, which is the preening.

From "And Now, Deep Thoughts" by Jack Handey

RokofAges75

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Re: The Writing Thread: Orlando Passaggio (aka The Writing Thread 3)
« Reply #526 on: May 05, 2021, 09:46:35 PM »

Forty-five minutes is a lot! I should start doing that when I get ready, but then I'm abysmally useless before my coffee. So most of the time my morning thoughts are literal narrations of what I'm doing. And I can't picture anyone in the PBox universe saying thing like "Must brush teeth. Mascara. Why are my contacts so hard to put in? I need a coffee..." lol

At least you got a start to the next chapter though! That's half the battle! How's writing going this evening?

LOL!  That is me before my shower and coffee, but those two things wake me up to the point where I can think coherently.  I usually waste too much time playing on my phone in the morning, so I decided if I'm going to be on a device anyway, let's make it the Chromebook and see if I can get some writing done during that time.  It puts me in a better mood when I do.

My writing has been nonexistent so far tonight.  I have been sitting here with the story open for the last hour, but instead of writing, I have:  posted here, nosily listened to my scanner app to see if I could find out why I was hearing so many sirens, watched some YouTube videos, and played my Harry Potter puzzle game.  Now I'm in Nick's montage chapter, which is just as hard to get into as Kevin's was.


Yesterday, I stopped to look up when knapsacks were in use and ended up in this weird spiral on the history of backpacks, lol. And then at the end of all of that, I decided I just needed a bag of some sort and didn't care, lol.

LOL!  Did you learn anything worth sharing about the history of backpacks?

I haven't researched anything too random in a few days, but I looked up jet lag this morning and discovered that for every time zone you fly across, it takes an average of one day to recover from jet lag.  I have the Boys flying from Los Angeles to Tokyo, which is a 16-hour time difference.  I guess they would be flying the other way, west instead of east, but they'd still have to cross quite a few time zones.  It made me appreciate how hard it must be for them to travel all over the world on a tour and always be performance ready.  I've only been overseas once, but I remember the jet lag - that is a whole different level of tired.


He came back into town to take some clients to the baseball game and... I don't know that he'll wake up before I leave for work tomorrow, lol. So... It's basically me updating and preparing to write. Wish me luck!


Aww... well, good luck!
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nicksgal

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Re: The Writing Thread: Orlando Passaggio (aka The Writing Thread 3)
« Reply #527 on: May 05, 2021, 10:35:45 PM »

LOL!  That is me before my shower and coffee, but those two things wake me up to the point where I can think coherently.  I usually waste too much time playing on my phone in the morning, so I decided if I'm going to be on a device anyway, let's make it the Chromebook and see if I can get some writing done during that time.  It puts me in a better mood when I do.

That's why I've tried to write more in the mornings too. It's basically me reading news and getting lost in whatever curated articles google has decided I'd like or I could write. I'm also in a good mood when I write in the mornings. It puts a little pep in my step.


My writing has been nonexistent so far tonight.  I have been sitting here with the story open for the last hour, but instead of writing, I have:  posted here, nosily listened to my scanner app to see if I could find out why I was hearing so many sirens, watched some YouTube videos, and played my Harry Potter puzzle game.  Now I'm in Nick's montage chapter, which is just as hard to get into as Kevin's was.

Haha! I opened mine forty minutes ago and have a decent start going on where I left off the last chapter. I'm actually trying to write in what I think the order might be once I splice the arcs together, but if I get bored on this one, I'll probably go back to my Frick & Frack goodness/external drama, lol. I figure I have until the end of June to really figure it all out if I get stuck (to align with my goal) or at the very latest August if I really end up on the struggle bus (it took me way too long to figure out how far I had stuff to post until and it's the first week of September here on AC, but I'll make it to October on AO3).

Hope everything is okay with the sirens! And aww, puzzles. I have to do that diamond painting at some point... I feel like you're gonna need a montage. Do you feel ready to pull out your montage playlist again yet or is that a weekend thing? lol If you need a word sprint, you just let me know. I know that tour scenes aren't very fun to write, because getting into a Backstreet mindset for a tour is hard.


LOL!  Did you learn anything worth sharing about the history of backpacks?

I sure did and I'm glad you asked! So something akin to the precursor of modern backpack was initially used by Scandinavian and indigenous arctic peoples who often had to carry their belongings, and as we know, on your back is a handy place to carry things. However, a rucksack didn't appear until closer to 1900 in Europe and 1920ish in the States. JanSport first made their backpack in 1970 (crazy). So I learned that it took people a ridiculously long time to take a well-established concept and actually make it mainstream. Meanwhile, none of this had anything to do with my actual question, which was "how can Brian carry a bunch of stuff that he's not wearing without pulling it out of thin air?" And I do try to make my fantastical novel at least true to its era in terms of inventions and I found nothing that answered my question. I guess warrior classes didn't need to carry things. Ever. Except for their swords and the clothes on their backs. [/sarcasm]


I haven't researched anything too random in a few days, but I looked up jet lag this morning and discovered that for every time zone you fly across, it takes an average of one day to recover from jet lag.  I have the Boys flying from Los Angeles to Tokyo, which is a 16-hour time difference.  I guess they would be flying the other way, west instead of east, but they'd still have to cross quite a few time zones.  It made me appreciate how hard it must be for them to travel all over the world on a tour and always be performance ready.  I've only been overseas once, but I remember the jet lag - that is a whole different level of tired.

Really an entire day for every hour? That's crazy! When we went to Italy/Greece, it wasn't too bad for me. But I also had a headache on the flight there and we were in those sleep pods in first class, so I basically fell asleep at 6:30pm Colorado time and slept until we landed in Germany for our layover. It was awesome and I felt totally fine the next day. When we went to Hawaii for two friends' wedding, I was a mess for days. Waking up at 3am, being exhausted at 5pm. A complete wreck. I got it together in time for their wedding and then the day we got back, I went straight to bed when we got home at like 9am, then slept until 2 or 3, then went to bed at 9pm, lol.

That's definitely got to put a strain on their bodies. I'm specifically thinking of Around the World in 100 hours and they put on concerts every place. That's crazy. Then they released Black & Blue, so it's not like they got a week vacation or anything. This is why the picture of them all sleeping in the one bed exists, lol. I appreciate their hard work.

 
Aww... well, good luck!

Thanks. it's going... I have now posted here instead of writing for the past twenty minutes, lol.
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~*Dee*~

People think it would be fun to be a bird because you could fly. But they forget the negative side, which is the preening.

From "And Now, Deep Thoughts" by Jack Handey

RokofAges75

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Re: The Writing Thread: Orlando Passaggio (aka The Writing Thread 3)
« Reply #528 on: May 06, 2021, 07:06:23 PM »

Haha! I opened mine forty minutes ago and have a decent start going on where I left off the last chapter. I'm actually trying to write in what I think the order might be once I splice the arcs together, but if I get bored on this one, I'll probably go back to my Frick & Frack goodness/external drama, lol. I figure I have until the end of June to really figure it all out if I get stuck (to align with my goal) or at the very latest August if I really end up on the struggle bus (it took me way too long to figure out how far I had stuff to post until and it's the first week of September here on AC, but I'll make it to October on AO3).

Wow, that's awesome to know you're good to go for the summer!  And if you're like me, summer is the most productive time of year.


Hope everything is okay with the sirens! And aww, puzzles. I have to do that diamond painting at some point... I feel like you're gonna need a montage. Do you feel ready to pull out your montage playlist again yet or is that a weekend thing? lol If you need a word sprint, you just let me know. I know that tour scenes aren't very fun to write, because getting into a Backstreet mindset for a tour is hard.

Yeah, all I could get out of the scanner app was that it was a woman in a home who was unconscious, but breathing.  I thought there was a fire or horrible car accident or something from all the sirens I heard, but apparently not.  I live in a fairly small town, so maybe they were just bored and thought they'd all go to the scene and help LOL.

It's an app, Harry Potter Puzzles and Spells.  It's like Candy Crush and those kind of games, which I never played before, but since it's Harry Potter... I'm now addicted LOL.  It's a very well done game.  But speaking of puzzles, I bought one of those damn BSB jigsaw puzzles they offered on the site last year, thinking it would be a fun quarantine project to put it together and turn it into a piece of wall art for my BSB room.  Then it took freaking FOREVER to ship and didn't come until the end of summer, after quarantine, so it's still sitting in my game cabinet untouched.  Whoops.  Maybe this summer.  I'm not a jigsaw puzzle kind of person.  I guess it's also a sign of how well writing has been going for the past year that I haven't gotten bored enough to do a puzzle LOL.

I don't think my montage playlist will help as much with this chapter, although I do enjoy it.  I need to make time to watch the Unbreakable tour this weekend and hope that helps get me into the right mindset.  Maybe we can sprint again this weekend!


I sure did and I'm glad you asked! So something akin to the precursor of modern backpack was initially used by Scandinavian and indigenous arctic peoples who often had to carry their belongings, and as we know, on your back is a handy place to carry things. However, a rucksack didn't appear until closer to 1900 in Europe and 1920ish in the States. JanSport first made their backpack in 1970 (crazy). So I learned that it took people a ridiculously long time to take a well-established concept and actually make it mainstream. Meanwhile, none of this had anything to do with my actual question, which was "how can Brian carry a bunch of stuff that he's not wearing without pulling it out of thin air?" And I do try to make my fantastical novel at least true to its era in terms of inventions and I found nothing that answered my question. I guess warrior classes didn't need to carry things. Ever. Except for their swords and the clothes on their backs. [/sarcasm]

Wow, that's crazy that modern backpacks weren't around until 1970!  I thought of sporrans, which are the little pouches Scottish highlanders wear in front of their kilts, but I dunno if that would be big enough.  Where's Leighanne with a Wylee bag when you need her? LOL


Really an entire day for every hour? That's crazy! When we went to Italy/Greece, it wasn't too bad for me. But I also had a headache on the flight there and we were in those sleep pods in first class, so I basically fell asleep at 6:30pm Colorado time and slept until we landed in Germany for our layover. It was awesome and I felt totally fine the next day. When we went to Hawaii for two friends' wedding, I was a mess for days. Waking up at 3am, being exhausted at 5pm. A complete wreck. I got it together in time for their wedding and then the day we got back, I went straight to bed when we got home at like 9am, then slept until 2 or 3, then went to bed at 9pm, lol.

That's definitely got to put a strain on their bodies. I'm specifically thinking of Around the World in 100 hours and they put on concerts every place. That's crazy. Then they released Black & Blue, so it's not like they got a week vacation or anything. This is why the picture of them all sleeping in the one bed exists, lol. I appreciate their hard work.

Yeah, that sounded longer than I would have expected, too.  When I went to Scotland, I landed there around 8 a.m., which was actually 2 a.m. my time, so that was rough.  I remember taking a nap that day once I got to my room and still going to bed early that night, but I think I was okay by the next day.  Same with coming home.  I think the most tired I have ever been in my life was going back to work the day after coming home from the BSB cruise, especially the first one I went on in 2011.  That was ROUGH!  Not jet lag so much as days of very little sleep LOL.

Kudos to the Boys for their stamina!
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~Julie

"Sometimes writers and sociopaths are hard to tell apart." -J.K. Rowling

nicksgal

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Re: The Writing Thread: Orlando Passaggio (aka The Writing Thread 3)
« Reply #529 on: May 06, 2021, 08:46:21 PM »

Wow, that's awesome to know you're good to go for the summer!  And if you're like me, summer is the most productive time of year.

I have nothing going on besides work still, but I think my new position will be things I can leave at school at the end of the day, so that's good. Who knows what will happen with summer writing. I feel like I used to be more productive in the winter?


Yeah, all I could get out of the scanner app was that it was a woman in a home who was unconscious, but breathing.  I thought there was a fire or horrible car accident or something from all the sirens I heard, but apparently not.  I live in a fairly small town, so maybe they were just bored and thought they'd all go to the scene and help LOL.

I hope that woman is okay and appreciated the slew of emergency services.


It's an app, Harry Potter Puzzles and Spells.  It's like Candy Crush and those kind of games, which I never played before, but since it's Harry Potter... I'm now addicted LOL.  It's a very well done game.  But speaking of puzzles, I bought one of those damn BSB jigsaw puzzles they offered on the site last year, thinking it would be a fun quarantine project to put it together and turn it into a piece of wall art for my BSB room.  Then it took freaking FOREVER to ship and didn't come until the end of summer, after quarantine, so it's still sitting in my game cabinet untouched.  Whoops.  Maybe this summer.  I'm not a jigsaw puzzle kind of person.  I guess it's also a sign of how well writing has been going for the past year that I haven't gotten bored enough to do a puzzle LOL.

I've been really good about staying off apps here recently, but there was a stupid one where you just collected cats and I loved it. Then they changed the game play and I'm over it.

I'm glad your writing has gone well and you have not resorted to puzzles, lol. Although I love puzzles, but haven't done one in a while. Hopefully you can do your BSB puzzle some day!


I don't think my montage playlist will help as much with this chapter, although I do enjoy it.  I need to make time to watch the Unbreakable tour this weekend and hope that helps get me into the right mindset.  Maybe we can sprint again this weekend!

Live stream the Unbreakable Tour, then word sprint. I've got zero plans because I do nothing. (I lied, I'm planning on writing, but have zero plans to leave the house, lol.)


Wow, that's crazy that modern backpacks weren't around until 1970!  I thought of sporrans, which are the little pouches Scottish highlanders wear in front of their kilts, but I dunno if that would be big enough.  Where's Leighanne with a Wylee bag when you need her? LOL

I know, right?! I thought of those too, but yes, it's too small. It didn't need to hold a lot, but more than a little if that makes any sense. Well, she's not in PBox because I don't like writing about the wives; Brian would carry and treasure one of those ugly bags though, lol!


Yeah, that sounded longer than I would have expected, too.  When I went to Scotland, I landed there around 8 a.m., which was actually 2 a.m. my time, so that was rough.  I remember taking a nap that day once I got to my room and still going to bed early that night, but I think I was okay by the next day.  Same with coming home.  I think the most tired I have ever been in my life was going back to work the day after coming home from the BSB cruise, especially the first one I went on in 2011.  That was ROUGH!  Not jet lag so much as days of very little sleep LOL.

Kudos to the Boys for their stamina!

I think whether you're able to sleep comfortably on the plane makes a huge difference. I guess coming back from Italy was super rough. We had a layover in Chicago that felt like it would never end, lol. So by the time we got home at like 8pm, I just crashed and then I was fine the next day. I think the worst one for me wasn't even international. We took a red eye on Spirit Airlines to Fort Lauderdale and ended up checking into the hotel early and napping for half the morning, lol. After that, I vowed against taking overnight flights unless they're 7+ hours

You gotta sleep, even when things are exciting, lol. Your body hates you if you don't! Especially if you have to go to work. I would have just called in sick/extended my vacation.
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~*Dee*~

People think it would be fun to be a bird because you could fly. But they forget the negative side, which is the preening.

From "And Now, Deep Thoughts" by Jack Handey

nicksgal

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Re: The Writing Thread: Orlando Passaggio (aka The Writing Thread 3)
« Reply #530 on: May 06, 2021, 09:18:52 PM »

Ugh, I'm stuck. Someone help me come up with a funny thing for Nick to do. Just shout out random ideas without thinking too hard about if it works for PBox or not; if I like it, I can make it work. I'm drawing a complete blank right now.
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~*Dee*~

People think it would be fun to be a bird because you could fly. But they forget the negative side, which is the preening.

From "And Now, Deep Thoughts" by Jack Handey

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Re: The Writing Thread: Orlando Passaggio (aka The Writing Thread 3)
« Reply #531 on: May 06, 2021, 09:46:31 PM »

Start randomly juggling
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~*Dee*~

People think it would be fun to be a bird because you could fly. But they forget the negative side, which is the preening.

From "And Now, Deep Thoughts" by Jack Handey

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Re: The Writing Thread: Orlando Passaggio (aka The Writing Thread 3)
« Reply #533 on: May 07, 2021, 05:54:17 PM »

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Re: The Writing Thread: Orlando Passaggio (aka The Writing Thread 3)
« Reply #534 on: May 08, 2021, 12:24:59 PM »

I have nothing going on besides work still, but I think my new position will be things I can leave at school at the end of the day, so that's good. Who knows what will happen with summer writing. I feel like I used to be more productive in the winter?

Do you have to work in the summer with your new position?  That sucks.  Summer is my most productive writing season only because of the time I have off, plus the lack of stress that comes with not working.  Winter is second most productive because there's just not as much to do when the weather sucks - plus, winter break.


Live stream the Unbreakable Tour, then word sprint. I've got zero plans because I do nothing. (I lied, I'm planning on writing, but have zero plans to leave the house, lol.)

I was hoping to watch it last night, but I had to run a bunch of errands after school to get stuff ready for Mother's Day, and by the time I got home, I was so tired, all I did was eat dinner, watch some TV, and go to bed.  Luckily I did a little writing in the morning because I did not even get on the computer last night.

So hopefully tonight!  I have to watch it when it's dark so I can turn off all the lights and sit close to the TV and pretend I'm there LOL.


I think whether you're able to sleep comfortably on the plane makes a huge difference. I guess coming back from Italy was super rough. We had a layover in Chicago that felt like it would never end, lol. So by the time we got home at like 8pm, I just crashed and then I was fine the next day. I think the worst one for me wasn't even international. We took a red eye on Spirit Airlines to Fort Lauderdale and ended up checking into the hotel early and napping for half the morning, lol. After that, I vowed against taking overnight flights unless they're 7+ hours

You gotta sleep, even when things are exciting, lol. Your body hates you if you don't! Especially if you have to go to work. I would have just called in sick/extended my vacation.

Ugh, that does sound terrible!  I have a hard time sleeping on planes.  I will doze, but I never really fall asleep long enough to make a difference.

The trade-off for teachers having summers off and holiday breaks is that it's so hard to take off other time during the school year.  I only got two personal days per year at that time, so I had to take a dock day just to be able to go on those cruises, and the thought of calling in sick after taking three days off just filled me with so much guilt, I couldn't do it.  Not to mention I hate writing sub plans, especially when I already haven't been there in three days and have no idea how much of what I planned the class actually got through or what kind of mess I'm coming back to.  So I just sucked it up and dragged myself to school.
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Re: The Writing Thread: Orlando Passaggio (aka The Writing Thread 3)
« Reply #535 on: May 08, 2021, 02:29:13 PM »

Do you have to work in the summer with your new position?  That sucks.  Summer is my most productive writing season only because of the time I have off, plus the lack of stress that comes with not working.  Winter is second most productive because there's just not as much to do when the weather sucks - plus, winter break.

Our school is year-round, so I always have to work during the summer, unfortunately. But I've almost experienced a whole year of writing now, so that's fun.


I was hoping to watch it last night, but I had to run a bunch of errands after school to get stuff ready for Mother's Day, and by the time I got home, I was so tired, all I did was eat dinner, watch some TV, and go to bed.  Luckily I did a little writing in the morning because I did not even get on the computer last night.

So hopefully tonight!  I have to watch it when it's dark so I can turn off all the lights and sit close to the TV and pretend I'm there LOL.

Glad you got your word count in for the day and feel prepared for Mother's Day! That was me on Thursday. I tried so hard, got like 100 words in and gave up for the evening.

I believe in you! And yes, get your surround sound on and immerse yourself!


Ugh, that does sound terrible!  I have a hard time sleeping on planes.  I will doze, but I never really fall asleep long enough to make a difference.

I'm not much of a plane sleeper, but the hubs will sleep the whole time if he can fall asleep before take off. If not, then he's tired and grumpy.


The trade-off for teachers having summers off and holiday breaks is that it's so hard to take off other time during the school year.  I only got two personal days per year at that time, so I had to take a dock day just to be able to go on those cruises, and the thought of calling in sick after taking three days off just filled me with so much guilt, I couldn't do it.  Not to mention I hate writing sub plans, especially when I already haven't been there in three days and have no idea how much of what I planned the class actually got through or what kind of mess I'm coming back to.  So I just sucked it up and dragged myself to school.

I feel you. I also don't like taking a bunch of time off at the same time for that reason, the guilt and the sub plans. It's lessened over time, but it's still there a bit. I say I would have called in sick, but I probably wouldn't have unless I physically couldn't move my body from the bed, lol. Possibly planned ahead of time for that recovery day though, even if I didn't get paid.
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~*Dee*~

People think it would be fun to be a bird because you could fly. But they forget the negative side, which is the preening.

From "And Now, Deep Thoughts" by Jack Handey

nicksgal

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Re: The Writing Thread: Orlando Passaggio (aka The Writing Thread 3)
« Reply #536 on: May 08, 2021, 02:44:09 PM »

How's everyone's writing going today?

Yesterday, I wrote a little more than Thursday (thank goodness), though I'm still stuck at that "give me something mundanely funny for Nick to do" part, so I am still taking ideas. Though hilarious, juggling was not quite what I had in mind. So if anyone still has ideas for that, I will take them.

A group of my friends started having movie watch nights virtually and the movie chooser for last night picked Thor: Ragnarok. At one point he said that "Hela doesn't do much, just shouts and shoots spears." And they were not at all interested in the many things I could have said about why polearms are both extremely useful and common weapons in warfare. Alas. My chance to impart my knowledge from research in a place it made sense and no engaged audience to share it with, lol. They did however want more information on why I claimed the movie was "sure fast and loose with its Norse mythology" and at the time, I couldn't remember enough details about the exact myth to back up my opinion other than that it was "not correct." I'm the no fun police apparently. This morning I wrote a dissertation about it and got told I "just need to watch [the movie] again," but I'll think the same thing every time.

Then this morning, I got sucked into watching Forrest Gump, lol. I'm utterly useless so far this weekend. But, it looks like it's about to rain and I'm waiting on our washer, so I may have this yet! Hope everyone else is getting less distracted by old movies. :)
« Last Edit: May 08, 2021, 09:52:23 PM by nicksgal »
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~*Dee*~

People think it would be fun to be a bird because you could fly. But they forget the negative side, which is the preening.

From "And Now, Deep Thoughts" by Jack Handey

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Re: The Writing Thread: Orlando Passaggio (aka The Writing Thread 3)
« Reply #537 on: May 08, 2021, 09:35:01 PM »

Our school is year-round, so I always have to work during the summer, unfortunately. But I've almost experienced a whole year of writing now, so that's fun.

Gotcha!  I would actually be okay with the year-round school schedule where you still get July off and two-week breaks every quarter.  That's awesome that you've been writing consistently for almost a whole year.  I was just thinking this time last year is also when I got going on my burst of pandemic productivity with Heroic Measures and Road to Bethlehem.  It's been a prolific writing year!


Glad you got your word count in for the day and feel prepared for Mother's Day! That was me on Thursday. I tried so hard, got like 100 words in and gave up for the evening.

Well, I ended up watching Titanic instead LOL.  I've been wanting to watch Titanic for weeks (probably from all that listening to the soundtrack as my writing music), and this evening felt like a good time to do it.  I may still go put on Unbreakable before the night is over, especially if I can't get any more written, but we'll see.  I wrote like half a paragraph this morning, so I'm hoping to at least finish that before I get off the computer.


Yesterday, I wrote a little more than Thursday (thank goodness), though I'm still stuck at that "give me something mundanely funny for Nick to do" part, so I am still taking ideas. Though hilarious, juggling was not quite what I had in mind. So if anyone still has ideas for that, I will take them.

Hm... pick his nose?  Make pancakes?  Pick his nose and then make pancakes without washing his hands?  I'm not sure what you're going for... just trying to think of Nickish things to do LOL.


Alas. My chance to impart my knowledge from research in a place it made sense and no engaged audience to share it with, lol. They did however want more information on why I claimed the movie was "sure fast and loose with its Norse mythology" and at the time, I couldn't remember enough details about the exact myth to back up my opinion other than that it was "not correct." I'm the no fun police apparently. This morning I wrote a dissertation about it and got told " just need to watch [the movie] again," but I'll think the same thing every time.

LOL!  I love how fanfic research gives us so much knowledge to share.  That kind of thing bugs me, too.


Hope everyone else is getting less distracted by old movies. :)

Hahaha, I replied to your first post before I saw this one... but yeah... definitely did get distracted by an old movie as well.  Forrest Gump is another great one!  Long live the 90s!
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Re: The Writing Thread: Orlando Passaggio (aka The Writing Thread 3)
« Reply #538 on: May 08, 2021, 10:38:28 PM »

Gotcha!  I would actually be okay with the year-round school schedule where you still get July off and two-week breaks every quarter.  That's awesome that you've been writing consistently for almost a whole year.  I was just thinking this time last year is also when I got going on my burst of pandemic productivity with Heroic Measures and Road to Bethlehem.  It's been a prolific writing year!

I wish we got all of July off. I keep suggesting it, lol. It's about a week or so. I haven't taken a vacation since last March and I was only gone a day. I may use some of that in July. Live a little... And by that, I mean absolutely hang out at home an extra week, relax, write, and do chores/run errands, lol.

Yup! November would be the start of my almost every day writing, but October is really when I started writing again, so I'm looking forward to it. The fact that I'll have most likely finished a novel by then is exciting too. :) That's the fastest I've ever written something except back in my middle school/early high school days.

I'm excited that you finished up two stories in the past year and are now writing a third! That's great consistency!


Well, I ended up watching Titanic instead LOL.  I've been wanting to watch Titanic for weeks (probably from all that listening to the soundtrack as my writing music), and this evening felt like a good time to do it.  I may still go put on Unbreakable before the night is over, especially if I can't get any more written, but we'll see.  I wrote like half a paragraph this morning, so I'm hoping to at least finish that before I get off the computer.

I think a Titanic night is well deserved! I'm glad you finally got to watch it; I know you wanted to when Tracy was finishing up If I Knew Then. As long as the streak's even a little bit alive, I'd say do what you want with your evening. :) Whether that's writing or Unbreakable or Titanic again.


Hm... pick his nose?  Make pancakes?  Pick his nose and then make pancakes without washing his hands?  I'm not sure what you're going for... just trying to think of Nickish things to do LOL.

LOL! Those are more along the lines of what I was trying to come up with, yes. He needs to wash his hands. This is why he's always sick. It just needs to be something that's enough for a little scene that would be funny to AJ and the audience... And I've drawn a blank. I finished the rest of that chapter, but yeah, I give up on that.


LOL!  I love how fanfic research gives us so much knowledge to share.  That kind of thing bugs me, too.

Don't even get me started on how much I hated Gods of Egypt, lol. Here are my thoughts on Thor: Ragnarok versus Radnarok the myth, in case anyone was curious:

Quote
Okay, now that I've slept, I'm ready to discuss Norse mythology with y'all. Admittedly, I don't know a lot on the details of Norse mythology; you wanna talk Ancient Egyptian mythology (or Greek), we could be here for days! So I did have to refresh myself on the details, but it did immediately strike me as "fast and loose," as I said. Of course I know that mythologies change over time, they're basically continuity stew, but there's one major reason for this that I will discuss in this essay, lol.

So we can obviously ignore that all our main characters would be dead, because if Marvel's Thor dies, well... then there's no more Marvel's Thor (or at least, Chris Hemsworth as Marvel's Thor...). And I am willing to accept suspension of disbelief for this aspect. The fight on the rainbow bridge is right, Loki getting/"teaming with" the fire devourer is right (though there should be several of them, not one, and we can call it a technical loophole on whether he's allied with them here), the giant wolf is right (though again, there's at least two of them).

Now my big issue here is the same one with most mythologies' portrayals in modern (or at least, non-contemporary to their time) media: Hela. Hel as a place is more ancient than Hel (not Hela) as a goddess -- similar to most mythologies' portrayals of death/the afterlife, though I'm not sure where Scandinavia falls on the scale of "creeped out by death" (like the Greeks were very creeped out by it; Egypt less so, but then again, most of the surviving artifacts we have are funerary in nature, so... who can say for sure).

Death is a natural part of life (albeit unknown and scary), but none of the ancient underworlds were all bad. They definitely had their horrifying parts (ask me to tell you some time about "he who dances in blood" from Ancient Egypt), but on a whole, they were pretty neutral. Everybody dies, they need a place to go, enter the underworld and someone to manage its day-to-day operations. But to a modern audience, "Lord of the Dead" automatically sounds horrifying because we mostly moved on from polytheistic religions, so it's very easy to make the leap from "Lord of the Dead" to "fire and brimstone Satan" (it's the same reason Hades gets a bad rap, when he's arguably the least problematic of the Greek gods; though again, death freaked the Greeks out, so he's also the least talked about in surviving texts).

And these "Satan analogues" make an easy, but cheap, villain for a modern audience. Realistically, all these Lords/Ladies of the Dead and psychopomps were neutral beings who happened to be underworld gods and goddesses that were just doing their job. Some of them have scarier aspects (and definitely don't make them mad because you're in for endless torment; luckily their hot buttons are often few), but on a whole, I'd call them pretty decent. And as I said, demonizing them for an easy analogue is cheap. Especially when there are plenty more problematic beings in mythology and even among the pantheons themselves.

Realistically, Thor's good versus evil thing is snakes (which is fairly common among mythologies, actually), ergo, the villain should have been a giant snake (and it was in the actual myth, for Thor specifically at least). This has been my diatribe on Ragnarok (the myth), I will now take questions if there are any. I am still also happy to discuss why a polearm (such as Hela's spears) is actually a great and accurate weapon for combat. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

But then again, y'all knew this type of thing was something I could discuss for a very long time, lol (though, as I mentioned, my off-hand knowledge of Norse mythology is much weaker).


Hahaha, I replied to your first post before I saw this one... but yeah... definitely did get distracted by an old movie as well.  Forrest Gump is another great one!  Long live the 90s!

Long live the 90's! I am not much better this evening; our dinner came and while we were eating, I ended up getting sucked into the 30 for 30 on the 1983 Draft, which is fine... except I've already seen it at least twice, lol.

I did get almost 700 words down this afternoon after spending an hour making myself an outline! :o I kept thinking how you would be so proud. :-* (Although, this is around the same point in the novel where I ended up making a chapter-by-chapter outline for PBox too, and we all know how well that went as far as amount of detail, lol. Oh "Kevin's power to heal is awesome, also there's plants" you remain infamous.) I ultimately decided I probably do need to take the time to write one of the arcs fully before going back and forth to the other one because it has more clear events that need to happen. I want to make sure I give them all adequate chapter time based on what the story needs, rather than having to rush through them for the other arc, which has less events, so it feels more flexible in the number of chapters it could take up (even though they're ideally both about equal length arcs). My only real goal this weekend is to write bout 1,000 more words, because then I'll be a week ahead on my word count goal. :)

All this said, I have eleven chapters to go, plus that mundanely funny Nick scene I can't come up with, but that chapter is done otherwise, so I'm calling it done. That one was on the four days per chapter schedule, so I guess we'll see how quickly it goes sticking with one arc versus going between them. I wonder if I'll feel like writing the other one when I get to the parts I marked as cliffhangers. Not quite sure how I feel having an outline yet, lol.


Edited to Add (because I didn't want to make a new post):

Oh! I also found this compilation of twitter/tumblr jokes for writers today: https://www.buzzfeed.com/alliehayes/writer-jokes-for-writers-who-write-sometimes?origin=web-hf

I laughed so hard at the first one with Charlie and the string board because that's totally me. Also reacting to my own writing and the ones about character reactions to things I write and describing settings.
« Last Edit: May 08, 2021, 10:55:48 PM by nicksgal »
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Re: The Writing Thread: Orlando Passaggio (aka The Writing Thread 3)
« Reply #539 on: May 08, 2021, 11:52:28 PM »

I wish we got all of July off. I keep suggesting it, lol. It's about a week or so. I haven't taken a vacation since last March and I was only gone a day. I may use some of that in July. Live a little... And by that, I mean absolutely hang out at home an extra week, relax, write, and do chores/run errands, lol.

LOL That is exactly why I never/rarely take an actual vacation during winter or spring break, because then I wouldn't have time to relax and write at home and catch up on life before I have to go back to work.  But it would be nice to have more breaks during the year to travel when it's not scorching hot and peak tourist time.


Yup! November would be the start of my almost every day writing, but October is really when I started writing again, so I'm looking forward to it. The fact that I'll have most likely finished a novel by then is exciting too. :) That's the fastest I've ever written something except back in my middle school/early high school days.

I'm excited that you finished up two stories in the past year and are now writing a third! That's great consistency!

That's awesome!  What a good feeling that will be when you finish it.


I think a Titanic night is well deserved! I'm glad you finally got to watch it; I know you wanted to when Tracy was finishing up If I Knew Then. As long as the streak's even a little bit alive, I'd say do what you want with your evening. :) Whether that's writing or Unbreakable or Titanic again.

Yeah, it's been a long time coming LOL.  The writing streak is still alive, and I think once I get past this chapter (or even into this chapter), I will get back on track with my word count.  I knew this would happen when I hit this point in the story; it's why I wish I could make a video montage instead and move on LOL.  It was nice to just take a break and watch a movie.


LOL! Those are more along the lines of what I was trying to come up with, yes. He needs to wash his hands. This is why he's always sick. It just needs to be something that's enough for a little scene that would be funny to AJ and the audience... And I've drawn a blank. I finished the rest of that chapter, but yeah, I give up on that.

On one of his Twitch live videos last weekend, he changed Saoirse's diaper, threw the dirty diaper away, and went right back to cutting strawberries for breakfast WITHOUT WASHING HIS HANDS!  No wonder both his kids had stomach bugs last week!  That's probably how they got it LOL.  I thought maybe the pandemic had taught him to be more hygienic, but apparently not.  The whole chat was like, "Nick!  Wash your hands!"  He's gross LOL.


I did get almost 700 words down this afternoon after spending an hour making myself an outline! :o I kept thinking how you would be so proud. :-* (Although, this is around the same point in the novel where I ended up making a chapter-by-chapter outline for PBox too, and we all know how well that went as far as amount of detail, lol. Oh "Kevin's power to heal is awesome, also there's plants" you remain infamous.) I ultimately decided I probably do need to take the time to write one of the arcs fully before going back and forth to the other one because it has more clear events that need to happen. I want to make sure I give them all adequate chapter time based on what the story needs, rather than having to rush through them for the other arc, which has less events, so it feels more flexible in the number of chapters it could take up (even though they're ideally both about equal length arcs). My only real goal this weekend is to write bout 1,000 more words, because then I'll be a week ahead on my word count goal. :)

All this said, I have eleven chapters to go, plus that mundanely funny Nick scene I can't come up with, but that chapter is done otherwise, so I'm calling it done. That one was on the four days per chapter schedule, so I guess we'll see how quickly it goes sticking with one arc versus going between them. I wonder if I'll feel like writing the other one when I get to the parts I marked as cliffhangers. Not quite sure how I feel having an outline yet, lol.

Wow, good for you with the outline!  And for being ahead of your word count goal!

I don't do a novel without an outline these days, but there are definitely some stories where I rely on my outline more than others.  They come in most handy when there's a lot to keep track of (characters, events, dates, whatever) or when it's a story I don't work on frequently and need to refresh my memory when I come back to it months or years later.


Oh! I also found this compilation of twitter/tumblr jokes for writers today: https://www.buzzfeed.com/alliehayes/writer-jokes-for-writers-who-write-sometimes?origin=web-hf

I laughed so hard at the first one with Charlie and the string board because that's totally me. Also reacting to my own writing and the ones about character reactions to things I write and describing settings.

OMG, the first one is SO you with the PBox series LOL.

#7 was me this morning - spending more time revising the chapter I was about to post than writing the chapter I'm actually on.

All the ones about daydreaming/brainstorming vs. actually writing... so true! It always seems so much better in my head LOL.

I think #17 is all of us LOL.  Our poor characters... and it's even worse because they're real people.  Sorry, Boys.

Normalize writing things that make your friends go "jesus christ, dude”  <- Hahaha, yes!
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