Today is that start of my new writing year, which means the launch of a new monthly project. From December to November I will be posting every month on the 2nd as I have for the past few years :)
This year I’ll be posting visual prompts (photos that I’ve taken) along with my written responses to them. But I’m also inviting whoever else wants to join in! No length requirements or limits, I’m leaving this year super open and low-pressure to help me deal with a bout of burnout and a bunch of other obligations.
If you find yourself inspired and want to join in use the tag #wch20 and I’ll share them :D
I’ll be sharing the first prompt this evening (along with my response which will be short as I’m pretty out of it today!) and will be responding to any other posts over the next couple of days. Hope everyone’s having a good start to December!
Hey there :) Who studies aurora's? I've been researching but I can't tell if it's part of astro- stuff or of meteorology, can you help? If not, thank you anyway :)
An aurora is a result of high-speed particles from the Sun hitting Earth’s magnetic filed. Those particles are channeled by the magnetic field to the north or south pole, where the particles smash into the atmosphere, splashing energy all around.
I used to watch the auroras dance when I lived in Alaska.
Any planet with an atmosphere and a magnetic field will experience auroras. The more power the magnetic field, the stronger the particle wind coming from it’s sun, and the thicker the atmosphere, the larger and brighter the aurora will be.
Auroras are one of those things that resists being put into a specific category. They involve the Sun, particles, the Earth’s magnetic field, and the atmosphere. Because of this, a lot of people study auroras - NASA, university geophysical departments, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
So, yeah, it’s spacey stuff, it’s physicsy stuff, and it’s meteorologicaly stuff. Becasue aurora are so cool everyone wants to study them
I was tagged by the lovely @kitwillan, thanks hon! <3
Tagging (feel free to ignore) @wchwriter @ava-burton-writing @fdicenzo and @possibledreamswriting to answer the same questions
1. What are your favorite genres and/or styles to write in? I’m definitely a fantasy/soft scifi kinda gal. That’s not to say I won’t experiment with other genres, but SFF is my home--I was raised with it and always return to it. I like not feeling constrained by whether my writing is “realistic”.
Style-wise... I’m unflatteringly verbose and, like most pretentious assholes, I enjoy my prose. I’m a character-centric sort of writer, so I (try to) write in first or close third PoV and focus on my characters rather than the action.
2. What was the last writing project you finished and felt successful with? I am... unspeakably terrible about abandoning projects halfway in. The last finished thing I have is this short prose poem thing, and before that I semi-recently wrote a McHanzo drabble for a friend that I felt was okay.
I’ve never actually finished a long WIP. I’ve written a few that have hit six digit word counts, but... never made it all the way to “the end”.
3. If you have a WIP how do you feel it’s going? What stage are you in? My main WIP, Eosophobia, is early in its first draft right now. My first draft stage also includes outlining and worldbuilding at the same time, so there’s... a lot of things going on and I don’t know that it’s actually going well, but I’m enjoying the process!
4. What is your favorite place to write? In bed.
5. Do you prefer to write long hand or type? Or some other method? I prefer typing by far, but I write long hand when I’m stuck and need to push through the plot--my brain works faster than I can write by hand, so it forces me to cut the prose crap and just get the basics on the page.
6. Do you remember your first character? If so can we meet them? YOU DON’T WANT TO. FIRST CHARACTER WHO?
Meet Laurence. Laurence, bless his fucking soul, was a quiet, street-smart, hard-hitting asshole with “cotton-candy blue” hair. Tall, lanky, pale. Yup. He was what I called a “Skocio” (I don’t remember why that was the term), meaning that he was one of the rare souls who couldn’t be judged by the fates and was condemned to be reborn again and again, hunted by both archangels and reapers for his power to jump between the three dimensions of “earth”, heaven, and hell. Laurence ends up joining forces with Parker, a reaper trying to take over hell, and at that point the story devolved into a guilty-pleasure angsty romance and that was that.
7. Where do you get your inspiration? Most of it’s from video games. Eosophobia was inspired by Fallout: New Vegas. Alight in Ashes? Witcher 3. Even God is Entertained? Amnesia: Dark Descent. The Rotted Rose? Sea of Thieves. Infra.Red? Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. I love the atmosphere these games convey--the aesthetics, the soundtracks, the colors, the stories.
It’s not surprising, though, considering that my writing background is in Legend of Zelda fanfiction.
8. Do you outline a story before writing it, or does it all live in your head until the first draft gets put down? Ahhh... both? I sort of skip around and loosely draft the scenes that come to me, and when I’ve exhausted those I have to go back and start outlining so that I can stitch them together into a cohesive story.
9. Where do you go/what do you do when your feeling stuck? I usually just stop what I’m writing when I get stuck and start working on another writing project--that’s why I like having a lot of projects at once. If it’s not a story-problem but a “words won’t work” problem, I step away--read a book, play a game, cry in the shower... whatever I’m in the mood for. Beyond my daily quota of ~450 words, I don’t force myself to write if I can’t, and even those 500 words are allowed to be entirely nonsensical.
10. What got you started writing/doing art? (Because I always love origin stories) I started writing because I was a huge bookworm when I was younger, and I naturally wanted to have one of my own!
It’s the second of March and I am full of soup and ready for bed. But duty calls. It’s time for this month’s prompt.
For anyone unfamiliar with this tradition, every month on the second I post a visual prompt that any and all are welcome to respond to. I also share my own short writing in response to the image. If you want to participate feel free to tag any posts with #wch20 or tag me directly.
MY RESPONSE
(under the cut)
The water tugs at her hand as it trails over the side of the boat. As she drifts between islands, letting the familiar currents and tides do most of the work, she keeps a keen eye out for other craft.
Her mother’s old cast net lies at her feet, still damp and glistening in the mid-afternoon sun. The fish she’d caught lie in her belly. A warm temptation, to pull up on one of the passing beaches and to doze under a tree, washes over her. She flicks salty water into her face. Sits upright. Slowly scans what can be seen of the horizon.
An old white house peers out through the cap of trees on its island. The old captain lives there, and she visits once a week to make sure there’s enough food and to do any repairs. Today is not that day.
Splashing by the bow draws her eye. A flash of fin. A writhing tentacle, too big for comfort. Stories of creatures lurking in the channels between the larger islands had scared her as a child, and even now her skin crawls.
She decides to use the engine for the final stretch home.
Rounding the final headland she approaches her own jetty with relief. An unfamiliar boat comes into sight as she’s tying up, and she pauses to watch until it’s passed. A final knot of tension relaxes as they disappear behind an outcropping on rocks.
It takes a moment to call up the protective spells over the jetty, and the effort leaves her dizzy. But the spells keep them safe, so they’re worth it.
wchwriter replied to your post “Does anyone know of any software or websites or anything that you can...”
GIMP is a great (free) downloadable program for image editing - that is, if you wanna draw it yourself. Cartographers guild has a heap of tutorials for using GIMP, for varied skill levels. Aside from that, I've seen people use something called Inkarnate (I think) but I'm unfamiliar with that one. My understanding is that it involves less actual drawing. Hope that helps! :D
Thank you! I can’t believe I never thought of GIMP before! But I just found a totally awesome tutorial that will work great!
@wchwriter replied to this worldbuilding post with:
:D You’ve mentioned this in passing before, but I’m glad to have the full explanation. I hadn’t realised that the shadow/light creatures were the same as the muses, but it totally makes sense! And I love that Etri believes in the muses! Does Sol?
That makes me so happy that it makes sense! There are a lot more types of elementals in Concordia’s history than Montglace’s, but yeah, they do overlap some! Concordia has 9 Muses and each of them was a different species/kind of elemental. The Muse of glasswork was a light elemental, but not a type that Montglace has a lot of dealings with. (Basically she was one of the people elementals, not the easily-controlled creature ones.) The Muse of illustration is a little more complicated to explain because that one is very old and existed before the light and shadow places/worlds split into two. Montglace sees him as a minor deity of shadow, but he’s so much more than what they think he is. (Well, I mean, in terms of them not really knowing what he is. He’s only a deity because that’s what they call him. He’s just a incredibly ancient elemental.) Notice that I said “was” about the first Muse and “is” about the second. Chiaroscuro is still kicking and becomes relevant later in these books. ;) This is probably clear as mud, so if you want me to explain more, let me know!
As for Sol, I don’t think he’s sure if he believes in them or not. He listens to Etri because he knows Etri’s smart and knows things, and Sol has seen elementals (not to the extent that Etri has, but at least from a distance), but I think since he’s never seen the Muses, he isn’t sure if he believes. With a little more proof of their existence, I’m positive he’d jump on board with Etri. Then again, Sol’s convinced that he can talk to Adair’s cat, so who knows what’s going on inside his head at any given moment lol.
