I'm Stagnating

in basically everything I do. You could call it procrastination, but it's different than that. It's the feeling that I really don't have anything to work towards and that I won't achieve anything either way. It's stagnating because I can't see the future. I get little bursts of energy that will motivate me through periods of time that last from only an hour to two full weeks but then I stagnate again. Depression and anxiety and other mental and emotional health reasons surely affect it, but I don't think I should put the blame entirely on that. I think I let myself just STOP and it's started to kill some of my creative spirit and some of what makes me me.

I haven't been posting here, but I'm going to try to do that again. Though it will certainly be more tangental and just kinda on and about everything and everyone, even if it's not writing related.

With writing: TQR has been sucking something out of me. I've been working on it for too long and feeling like I'm getting nowhere and every time I sit and look at it I feel like I have to start over. That's not happening, I've decided. I don't want to start over- at least not right now- when I've put so much into it. I'm not giving up on the piece, but I'm giving myself a year, maybe more maybe less. I need to move onto more fertile ground, and I need to move onto something that feels untapped and new and limitless. Scrolling through all my ideas, all my stories, one still feels very fresh and it is nothing like TQR and that's Lamp and Mirror. So, finally, finally, I'm going to sit back and write it and we'll see where it goes.

Rough Estimate:

• Rough Draft (with a month or so for planning): April-August
• Break + Editing (aka drafts 2, 3, 4): September-February (2018)
• Break/Alpha Readers (close friends): March-April
• Second Draft (more like draft 5, really, but it's getting more of an overhaul than the others): May-August
• Break/Beta Readers (close friends+a professional+others): September-November
• Editing (aka drafts 6, 7, 8): December-April (2019)
• Break + Final Draft (including about a month for final touch-ups): May-October

I may be thinking too far ahead, but it gives me some perspective on how long this will really take and I need to let myself take this long with writing it because it's important. If it goes faster, great.

School: I'm stagnating here, too. Even now, as I type this, I should be working on homework. I have three essays, around 200 pages of reading, and notes to take, but I just don't want to. I don't see the reason, the need, to do it. I do understand why it's all important- that's not the problem, but my stagnation is preventing me from really and actually understanding the worth of these things.

Which relates to study abroad: I really want to go. I know that now. I know that I NEED to go because it will change my life. But I'm stagnating. This will change, tomorrow, because it needs to.

Why? Yesterday was not a great day. It wasn't awful but it was not good. I felt uncared-for, even as I went to ends to make sure others felt cared for and about. It's draining to not feel as if you're getting anything back from a relationship. An episode of yesterday: I don't have a roommate (well, I do now, but I don't actually know who they are)

SIDE NOTE: MY GRADES JUST CAME BACK< BUT I DON"T WANT TO LOOK???
Okay I looked, and I'm literally laughing because none of my professors turned in grade reports for midterms (they don't have to) so that's fine. If you're failing they have to let you know, so I'm clearly not failing.

because my roommate from this year is going to be living with another of our friends (which is fine and good because then things work out best for them, it was just low-key shady how they did it behind my back but that's a different story I think) and all my other friends already have roommates. Plus, as I'm studying abroad next year, I'll only be around for one ten-week term, so it's really not much time. (This is why I need to study abroad! Well, one of the reasons.) I managed to get the same suite as two of my friends (both my roommate this year and the other one, that she's rooming with) which I have mixed feelings about. I have, not necessarily in the last two weeks, but definitely this term, felt like a third wheel (they're not dating but like it still stands) when I hang out with them. Living with just them and a stranger feels... scary? But again, only ten weeks. And they were happy- and I thought they were happy for me; but it seems they were only happy for themselves. I mean, I'm happy for them (they were worried about getting two people they didn't know and now they only get one) and I'm happy for me. A few comments, though, made it clear that they weren't really aware of... me as a person as much as me as a piece, I guess. I'm tangental- and they'll look out for each other and I look out for myself.

I'm ranting and it's making me sad. But that was an episode. And surely part of it is colored through how I feel, but when I try to make it clear how I feel- When I say week's in advance that I'm super stressed about rooming next year and don't really know what to do and they get mad at me (another story) then I don't want to tell them these things anymore.

And I don't want to make them seem like bad friends. Really, they're not. I promise you, Internet, that they are really solid, really great friends and we will all stay friends for a long time and, seriously, it's not unhealthy relationships. I've been in those- I know. But right now, I'm in a place where they can't/won't reach (not just these two, but all my friends, really- different stories) and I don't want to reach from alone.

So I need to study abroad, is the bottom line.

Are you still reading this? Thank you, seriously, for sticking along I didn't really know where this was going when I started, just that I needed to let people know what was up.

Reading: This, at least, is picking up. We'll see for how long.

Summer: Holds all the potential if I can only get through this school year. Five more weeks! I know I can do it, I did it last year. Flunk day is coming up (which is both a super-stressor and also something I'm really looking forward to). I have Plans for this summer (they're not grand but they exist at least!). I got a raise (almost a whole dollar!) at work. I can do this. I know I can. I just need to stop stagnating.

And if you're still reading this: do you have any advice? How do i get out of this, dare I say, life slump? I'm sure I can google answers (and I probably will) but first-hand would be really great to hear.

That's not a good place to stop but I need to eat.

I'm Writing Again, Kinda + New Plans

I got the urge to write pretty hard not too long ago, and while I'm not ready to set aside time each day yet and dedicate myself to a project, I did give in and start writing again. Sorta.

What I did was I started fleshing out characters for a graphic novel series I want to write. I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but it's called Wonderland, and it's about high schoolers who end up in this other world. Yeah, great description, I know, but I don't want to talk to much about it yet, because it's still near and dear to my heart and it actually plays with one of my favorite fiction tropes, subverting it. But again, I don't want to say exactly what that is because it's kind of a surprise twist and spoiler for the series, if I ever do get it made.

Fleshing out the characters has been a rather nice experience. In fact, while I've had really rough versions of the characters in my head for a while I never even had names written on the page, and now that I've got more than a general direction for their independent stories I'm rather pleased.

I also took time to figure out new plans for when I want to get certain projects, writing things done. For TQR I'm going to be doing a complete rewrite of it from April through August. I decided on the complete rewrite because the words I used for the first draft just aren't salvageable at this point. The overall arc of the story and the characters isn't really changing much if at all, but the language is getting a new look from the base up. Then I'll be sending it to some people to test read in September and October, so I'll take a complete break away from looking at the book during that time. Starting in November I'll be editing the whole thing again and seeing where it goes from there.

In September I'll also take the time to start planning the "companion" to TQR.

For LAM I'm going to begin the rough draft in April, but that's going to be second priority to TQR, so I expect it to take me through the remainder of the year after that. We'll see how quickly it takes me to write it, though.

For now, that's the new plan. I may get back to blogging soon, too. Hang tight, friends.

December Writing Goals & State of Samantha

I'm stealing this from the genius that is Brandon Sanderson. Every year in December he does a post where he lets people know where he's at with his many projects. Since I've talked about several this year I thought I'd bring them up and tell you where I am with each of them, since the state of them has changed throughout the year. I'm also including my goals for the month and what I achieved since last month at the bottom of the post.

The Queen's Ransom

My main project at the moment. I have a 400 days plan, which I'll talk about in the latter half of the post. If I can't manage that I'll stick to the original plan, which involves finishing completely by either May of 2018 or April of 2019. Currently I'm finishing POV editing, which I'm hopeful will be done soon, and then move to continuity editing before sending it off to a few choice Alpha Readers. While that's with readers I'll be taking a crack at the "epic" version I've talked about. I don't know where that will lead, but you'll definitely be kept updated.

Lamp and Mirror

Originally the idea for this story was completely different, but now it has morphed into a victorian-era vampire romance trilogy, which will probably be my next project. I plan to start writing it by June of next year, though the sooner the better. If all goes to plan I'll have the rough draft done in September.

Whole New World

The companion novel to The Queen's Ransom (and title subject to change) will also be a project I begin in the new year. I don't think I'll get to it until the latter half of the year, which means, tentatively, October through December will be the rough draft stage of this book. 

Wheel and Cog

This is the project of my heart and I dearly want to write it, but I don't know when I will. It means to much to mess up and while the big picture doesn't evolve the small details do slowly. I don't think I'll get to it next year but I will get to it eventually, so stay tuned.

Septology Project

On the way back burner for right now. I don't even know if it will be written at this point because the spark has mostly died. Most likely I will take ideas from it for other projects, which I think is the best course of action for this one.

Previously Unmentioned

There are several projects I want to work on in the new year that I've never mentioned on here before, so I thought I'd throw them in.

Train Towns

This is a novella full of a lot of different things that I want to at least start in the new year. I want to keep it short and sweet and I'm hoping it will be good enough to submit to magazines or competitions when it's done. My plan is to start the rough draft in February.

Monsters Under Bed/Monsters in my Head

A poem that has also been circulating in my mind for a bit. I think I will begin this in May, after it's been circulating a bit more. Again, I'm hoping it's good enough, when it'd done, to send off to competitions.

DECEMBER GOALS

I'll be continuing my rewrite/POV editing this month and my plan is to also get through the continuity. However, I recently came up with a rather ambitious 400 days schedule. This means I want to finish the book and have it out there for submissions before 400 days have passed. You're wondering why 400. Well, in 400 days (less now) I'll be having my last day of work at where I work since I'll then be leaving for studying abroad and can't keep the job overseas and don't have any plans to immediately return after studying abroad. If I can have a novel up on it's own feet in that time I think it would be brilliant. Here are the next big hurdles according to my 400 days plan:

• December 15th -- finish POV editing
• January 14th -- finish continuity editing
• March 15th -- finish with Alpha Readers

New Goals

Is it any surprise that I'm changing around my writing goals? Good because it shouldn't be. Since finishing the rough draft of TQR I realized exactly how much more work it requires and how much time I actually have to work on it. I don't have that much time to work on it at all. So for now, every other project outside of TQR is being put on indefinite hold.

For the remainder of this month and then October I'm going to be writing "around" the story. By this I mean it's sort of stuff that I could have done in a prewriting phase, but it's also something I couldn't have tackled until I had the whole story on paper.  In November and December I plan to rewrite the rough draft which means by the end of the year I should be much much happier with the edition of this story that I have.

Some long term goals:
Jan2017/Feb-- Edit Rough Draft
Mar/Apr/May-- send off to alpha readers
Jun/Jul/Aug-- Write Second Draft

I'm hoping it doesn't take me this long, but even if it does I plan to start on my next project (which will either be Wheel and Cog or Lamp and Mirror).

Do you remember Lamp & Mirror?

I talked a little about this story (LaM) several weeks ago. It was intended to be a stress reliever story that I slowly serialized here for everyone to read and enjoy. Well, I learned pretty quickly that the plot I had for the story was very thin and not good reading and it was hard to write so I scrapped it pretty quickly. I didn't have any plans to continue it in any regard.

But last night an old idea I had rose to the front of my mind as I fell asleep. And I realized I actually really wanted to tell this little gem still, even though I haven't thought about it in a few years. My problem with this story? I didn't have the characters for it. I knew the roles for the main characters, but I didn't actually have people willing to fill it.

And then I realized= LaM was missing plot, old idea was missing characters... would it work? So I played with the idea in my head all night and GUYS IT WORKS SO WELL. So, so well. Everything fit like a puzzle and the story blossomed from a short story/novella to a full fledged trilogy and I added two new characters that didn't even exist in my head before and it's awesome.

I normally don't give out descriptions for things before I've at least begun writing them, but I'm so excited right now I just need to share at least part of this story, so I'm going to share how all the characters connect.

Alexander (Alecks) Lamp is adopted by the Mirror family after his own parents, who have been faithful servants and guardians for the Mirrors for nearly a century, are killed unexpectedly. The Mirror's raise Alecks alongside their son, Edward (Eddie) Mirror, who is only a year younger than Alecks. One night, when the boys are nine and ten respectively, vampires (a monster everyone is aware of and is afraid of- think Dracula meets Vampire Diaries for an idea of this version of vampires) break into the house and kill nearly everyone. Alecks keeps Eddie safe during the attack, even though he takes brutal injuries himself, and they are the only two left alive in the house when Eddie's oldest sister finally arrives to save them. From that point on, Alecks promises to be Eddie's guardian and protect him from every threat.
The two are inseparable until the night, when crossing a bridge, Alecks tries to keep a drunk Eddie from walking along the edge to prove his bravery. Out of nowhere thugs arrive, completely human thugs whose only real threat is a knife. Alecks is able to take care of them easily, but not before Eddie is pushed into the river below, his body never found... by humans.
Sebastian Locke is handsome, wealthy, and arrogant- he's also a violent and ruthless vampire who finds Eddie and turns him into a vampire after keeping him in a stasis state for three years.
Meanwhile, Alecks has been miserable since that night when he seemed to lose all purpose in life. He's taken a few jobs here and there and is employed as a small-time bodyguard meant to keep vampires out of a bar when he finds a homeless girl with no memories of who she is except her name, Caragh Bronwing. He takes her to his home, forsaking his job. Charmed by her, he agrees to help her find out where she came from.
But Alecks and Caragh's journey quickly intersects with that of the city's most violent vampire and its youngest.

The trilogy is planned to take place in London, I'm thinking a version of Victorian England, but that might change (certainly not modern, and not too far in the past). I plan to start writing this after I've made some headway with Wheel and Cog, and I'm so excited.

One thing about the romance- a large part of the plot for the book is actually built around romance (but I'm not saying who's with who!) and it is going to be integral to all four of the main characters during the course of the series. While it's not necessarily the driving part of the books, this series is more of a romance than the other two projects I've been working on lately. Side note: there are no love triangles.

this blog has two (maybe three) parts

When I created this blog I created a personal space for myself. I have another blog, which I love dearly and have no plans of quitting (ever), but, while there was always a pocket of space there for my own thoughts and writings, it has always been dedicated to books and I want to keep it that way. Fernweh (which is German for "Wanderlust" or "farsickness") is something I created to really let myself just be myself.

The first part of this blog is for my thoughts and emotions and meltdowns and good times and bad times and strange times and all those other times when I just need to talk or write down what happened. I've already posted things like this. Yes, sometimes I'll be a downer on here, but that's because it's where I put things that I need to say and have no one to say them to. If I don't say them, or express them, things get worse. And I want to be honest on here, I don't want to just show the good times I want to show the bad times. But I realize there have been a lot of bad times lately so I hope soon there will be good times to talk about as well.

The second part of this blog is for my writing. On my other blog I talk about writing whenever something big happens in my writing but I feel like it's become distracting on that blog and I wanted a place where I could dedicate most of the posts to writing and how my stories are going. So this is going to be that place. More in a few paragraphs.

The "maybe third" part of this blog is for my adventures. I've always wanted to go on a bunch of adventures around the world and just enjoy myself and all the cultures I happen to cross and explore. Well, I don't really have the finances for those sorts of adventures (yet) but whenever I do something I determine to be an adventure I'll be posting about it here. This sort of goes with the first part, but it's also a bit separate. Someday I hope all three parts will intersect into something beautiful.

My Writing

I wanted to set down some goals for my writing. In general I've got pretty lofty dreams. But, hey, shoot for the moon, right? I'd rather be among the stars anyways.

First of all, I want to publish a novel. Hell, I want to publish a bunch of novels and I want them to be wildly successful. I don't expect this to be an overnight, debut book sort of journey, but I want to continue writing for the rest of my life and I want to someday see my name at the top of the New York Times Bestselling List so that I can print it out and frame it on my wall and look at it and smile.

Second of all, I want to write a movie script. And a TV script. Actually, several TV scripts. As for the movie script, though, there are two stories in my head that I really want to make real. Not only do I want to write the scripts but I want to direct the movies. And someday I want to be a successful director/screenwriter and have my movie nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. And I want my movie to win it. I don't know what that movie will be, but I want it to happen.

Third of all, I want to write a graphic novel/comic series. I have two ideas but I can't draw for the life of me. So I hope to meet someone who can and who shares my passion for a few ideas I have. This isn't my main goal at the moment, but I plan on making it happen sooner or later. I love the ideas I have for the series' and graphic novels are the best form.

Fourth of all, I want my books to gain a fandom following and I want to see people's art and fanfic and love for the series and I want it to change people's lives the way reading and books have changed my life. I want my books to make people feel like they have hope. I want aspiring writers to look at my work and say it made them want to write and I want to influence the next generation of writers to create even greater things.

Those are my goals. I don't want them to sound like I think a lot of myself (trust me, I actually think very lowly of myself) and that I'm just a prodigy or something. I know I'm not I just want to put the goals out there because they are my dreams and God help me there is nothing that can keep me away from reaching these dreams except myself. If I work hard enough for long enough and never give up I can get these things done. And hey, if you're reading this post you can totally help keep me honest and remind me that I have lofty dreams so I better kick my own ass and get to getting things done!

As for what I'm writing at the moment, I have three projects. I might create a tab for these works at some point but ehhhh I kinda want this to be a one page blog for reasons.

My main project (and the one I talked about the other week when I said I was at the halfway point) is The Queen's Ransom (TQR) and is a novella (I think- it may just end up being a really, really short novel, we'll see) about a girl named Jocelyn who is cursed and by partaking in the Queen's Ransom, a quest, she may be able to cure herself. It's more complicated than this, but I don't want to reveal too much at the moment because it's in a fluid state where huge plot points are still changing.

My side project, and the next novel I'll be writing, is a series that is near and dear to my heart. I had the idea for this series back in junior year of high school (currently a college sophomore) and it has stuck with me ever since in such stark colors that I can't help but write it. It's a steampunk trilogy (for now...) called The Wheel and Cog Chronicles. The first book, of which I've been doing a lot of prewriting, is Wheel and Cog (WaC). Haha, no description to share yet because, well, it's a hard one to describe and once I start drafting it and actually getting it on paper it might be easier to explain but we'll see.

The third project, which is a stress reliever more than anything else is called Lamp and Mirror (LaM). It's going to be a series of short stories or episodes that I plan on posting on this blog when I've got quite a few written. I have no plans to publish this in any traditional way whatsoever I want it to be a free resource online for people to enjoy (hopefully) so the plan is to write the stories, edit the stories, publish them here for feedback and for your enjoyment, edit them a little more and then put them on kindle for free (perhaps all bound up together just to make it easier). We'll see but hopefully I'll be done with this little project around Christmastime. No description for this one yet, either, since I'm still in the plotting stage.

Well, that's me for now.