Laughter Through Tears

We're back in quarantine, more or less, and on Friday we celebrated Rosh Hashana over Zoom. This morning (once the holiday was over) I had to pop out to the shopping center, to pick up lightbulbs. My living room bulb burned out on Friday night, of all times. On my way, I picked up coffee from the bakery, because I was out of instant and my grocery delivery won't arrive until tonight.

There were people out, but many shops are closed and the area wasn't exactly crowded.

Then I came home, did a little reading, made lunch. Did some house chores. In between, managed to write some code for Fairmont and do a bit of outlining. I realized from my struggles with ending TC that my main problem is that I didn't give enough through to the structure of the gameplay early in the design process. I'm trying to do better with Fairmont. This is giving rise to an interesting phenomenon of variable theme and tone, which will affect player experience even more interestingly.

But I'm not ready to expose Fairmont to more eyes, just yet.

The heat has been less intense. That's something. Still, my allergies are acting up, and last night I had a surprise migraine.

I don't have a cold, I just need a lot of tea and lozenges, and...

In other news, I'm redoing the whole outline of "Blue Rose", which is slightly terrifying. Also reading a lot, lately. Also I think it might finally be time to renew my Big Fish Games subscription, because I think I might be out of credits.

I've been maintaining daily writing this month but I am having a hard time breaking past some invisible boundary on my novel. This might be partly because I still feel like I have a lot on my plate otherwise and there are a lot of distractions. Health matters have obviously been taking up a lot of my time and attention. And just generally keeping my head above water on practical matters and maintaining my mood has cost me a lot of energy. I am only starting to return to equilibrium.

I'm listening to Weiland's writing podcasts, specifically the POV-related episode. And I'm debating on my novel's cast and how hard I have to crack down on limiting the different POVs. I like all the core cast and it's hard for me to admit that some of my favorite characters are not as plot-critical and need to be sidelined somewhat. It's especially irritating when it comes to Ruby, because I love her so much and I know that when I describe her to potential readers, most of them will be like, 'omg that sounds great I want to see more of her!'

Ruby and to a lesser extent Talon both have this problem. Granted, they both have big backstory wounds that could provide fuel for a sub-plot, but there's no way I'm fitting that into the structure of the story as it is right now. And basically everyone agrees that fewer POVs is almost always better. In fact, I'm thinking of dropping Griffin's POV entirely, but I won't be making a final decision on that until I reach the parts of the plot where their presence starts to be critical.

Pretty funny, considering I initially plotted this story around the cast, and under the impression that I would be shifting between six different POVs. What's more, I first started outlining it by delineating the six introductory scenes for the whole cast. Or was it five? I think Mercy and Kestrel shared the first one. At least that part has remained relati9vely constant. Man, outlining is wild.

(the fanfic business, however, is booming.)