#moose mumbling

[mumblemoose]

So I was watching writing advice videos last night to try to get me motivated, which does sometimes help. And this one guy, Carl Duncan, said in his video something to the effect of "Writing advice won't help you improve. What really helps you to improve is sitting down and doing the work." Which is the kind of thing that does the job for me. So I vowed to write today.

Only a very key part of the next few chapters of my book was supposed to be a character who is learning to like himself being taught carpentry by the father of the girl he likes. Only he lost an arm in an earlier book. So I did a search today to see if that was a feasible thing to do. And it turns out it's not. I found one guy on youtube who had an arm amputated due to cancer who was trying to figure out ways to continue his woodworking hobby - which is not exactly the same but involves the same general skillset - and he could do it, but it mostly took him a very long time to do even the simplest things he'd done before. And ultimately it seemed he rearranged his expectations to depend more on power tools that he could easily operate one handed. Which isn't really an option for my fantasy novel.

So I didn't write. I mean, the guy in my book is a mage, he does magic, and part of the plot was supposed to be him learning a different way of doing magic that was less taxing to help him... so I could maybe fudge it... but I'm not sure I should try. And now I'm not sure what to do with that character for the end of the book.

It was such a perfect trajectory for him.

[mumblemoose]

You haven't uploaded previews of Merida, Odette, and Rapunzel. They're the only one still left so far. Will you ever make paper dolls of Astrid from How to Train Your Dragon as well?

I haven't uploaded previews for Odette and Merida because I need to find more references for both of them. Although I might just say screw it with Odette because I don't have access to most of the sequels to see what other outfits she might wear. I haven't done Rapunzel because somehow her entire base got messed up and needs to be fixed.

I probably will not do Astrid because she has a very different body type than the other ladies and probably wouldn't work with my base template.

[mumblemoose]

Are you almost finished with your paper dolls? What paper dolls will you do next? Will you ever make a paper doll of Raya or Mirabel Madrigal?

No, I am nowhere near done. This project is just way too large for that. But yes, I will probably do both Raya and Mirabel eventually.

[mumblemoose]

8 or 24 from the writing asks!

8. If you had to write an entire story without either action or dialogue, which would you choose and how would it go?

I would 100% go for dialogue only and it would be fine. I'm not a big action person in general with my writing. I'm interested in what makes the characters tick.

24. How much prep work do you put into your stories? What does that look like for you? Do you enjoy this part or do you just want to get on with it?

Technically the answer to this is all over the place. 99% of the time I just have an idea and I write about it until I get distracted with 0 plan or prep-work whatsoever. However, for the actual books I am trying to write I realized very quickly that I needed some kind of roadmap so I made a very bare bones outline. I have done that for each book in the series since. So it really depends on how serious I am about the project in question. On the fanfic side of things, I've never planned a day in my life. At best I have a scene or two in mind that I need to work to, and maybe I actually end up including it.

Questions are here.

[mumblemoose]

I feel like I'm going insane with this Kindle thing. Like, I agree that taking away the ability to download and backup your ebooks is a shitty thing to do. But I keep seeing people say you should switch to Kobo and I just don't understand. I assume the reason is because Kobo uses the epub format that is more or less standard for the ebook industry outside of Kindle so it's more versatile. But at that point, so is every other ereader on the planet, so why Kobo specifically? You guys know they don't let you download your books either, right? I got a free ebook from B&N and I can't get it offline. I basically don't own it because, having only a Kindle, I can only read it on my computer through the Kobo website, or on my phone which is my least favorite way to read a book, and I refuse. So why Kobo? Can someone explain it to me?

[mumblemoose]

How come you so far only redid your Anastasia paper doll? Will you ever redo the rest eventually?

The short answer is yes, I will do the rest.

The long answer is that I have a tendency to work on this project in bursts and then set them aside. When I did Anastasia's, which you'll note is just a sketch and not finalized, I kind of had this thought that I would go through alphabetically and get all the sketches done before doing the final lineart That way if another issue arose, I wouldn't have to redo it. This idea only works if I keep working on it consistently, which I had been for quite a while at that point and thought would continue.

Unfortunately, after Anastasia comes Anna. Anna, being one of the 3d princesses, has so much detail in all of her clothes that I got burned out on it quite quickly. Also her pink cape was giving me the kind of trouble that makes me feel like an idiot, which didn't help. So I haven't worked on it basically since a few days after I posted the Anastasia sketches.

Good news is that I have been feeling the itch to work on it steadily growing, and getting this ask is further motivation, so I'll probably get back to working on it. I will also be giving up on this silly all sketches concept and finalizing Anastasia's drawings and probably adjusting all the other ones that I have finished but are now too long. So there will probably be plenty of updates coming soon.

[mumblemoose]

So I was thinking to myself, there needs to be nightshade but for text. Is that a thing? Does that exist? Point me to it if it does.

But if it doesn't, here's my thought - it's not perfect but it's something - some kind of code that throws junk text in (lorem ipsum or something, I don't care) but like, the entire text is tightly spaced (like .5 or less) and the junk text gets placed as every other line and is colored the same as whatever background it's on. So it looks like normal text to human eyeballs, but to thieving machines it's kind of gibberish that fucks the algorithm.

Not sure I'm explaining that well, and I'm fairly certain it would be either quite difficult to achieve or literally impossible, though. I don't know, I've never coded anything in my life.

I mean, even if you could do that, I suppose it would only work in places where the line spacing was adjustable, otherwise everything would have to look double spaced. And I suspect that's not a thing most public facing spaces (like Tumblr) have.

[mumblemoose]

I'm in that space where I don't really know what I want to do with myself and it's super frustrating. Like, I honestly really want to play Spyro, but all the ps4 games are in a box somewhere in the garage still and I'm not about to open that can of worms. I'm willing to do Sly Cooper instead, but that means figuring out how to set up my ps2 n the stupidly confusing system my dad has or trying to locate the av ports on my wall mounted tv. I swear, I'm not buying console games anymore, it's too much work. PC only from now on.