What are you working on right now?

Ditched plans to write a second draft of my epic fantasy, now I'm much happier.

Honestly with the way I feel about Fantasy right now, I'm just not ready for it. Something to pick up in the future if my passion for the epic genre returns...

As of last night I started something called "Rust" a story about a woman and young girl set in post apocalyptic 70s US.

The creative juices have been reset. I'm enjoying sitting down to write again and that can only be a positive thing.

I'm altering three chapters with beta comments, and working on a chapter of Sir Edric. Then I'll be back to writing the third book of the trilogy (when I'm not working on the yet-to-be-started short of Explorations 2: Explore Harder).

Vaz said:

The creative juices have been reset. I'm enjoying sitting down to write again and that can only be a positive thing.

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Glad to hear it, Vaz. This is almost the same thing that's happened to me, my try at epic fantasy stalled at 10k as I wasn't enjoying it, gone back to my preferred near-future sf and have 20k I'm pleased with. Onward and upward!

Cathbad said:

~grumbles 75k words in under 2 weeks... why can't I work that fast? ~grumbles~

Good for you, @j.grey !

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Yeah, but they might just be 75k terrible words that don't work at all. You know what it's like when inspiration hits, it just kind of takes over. I just sit at the computer and the story seems to write itself. It's like reading in slow motion! Does that make any sense?

j.grey said:

Yeah, but they might just be 75k terrible words that don't work at all. You know what it's like when inspiration hits, it just kind of takes over. I just sit at the computer and the story seems to write itself. It's like reading in slow motion! Does that make any sense?

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Makes perfect sense!

thaddeus6th said:

I'm altering three chapters with beta comments, and working on a chapter of Sir Edric. Then I'll be back to writing the third book of the trilogy (when I'm not working on the yet-to-be-started short of Explorations 2: Explore Harder).

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Not to be confused with Explorations 3: Exploring more space stuff

Abs and glutes. Tomorrow is leg @ backs

Oops. Sorry wrong forum I've been on a writing hiatus so nothing has increased apart from my Star Wars Battlefront XP

Vaz said:

As of last night I started something called "Rust" a story about a woman and young girl set in post apocalyptic 70s US.

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So, like Fallout with bell-bottoms?

I am now 70% through my book's second draft. I keep adding and subtracting, just hopefully the right amount at the right time.

If I keep at it everyday, I hope to be through it by the end of the long weekend.

Chopping and changing between works, trying to find the words (and will) to go on, new idea for short story inspired by Raoul Servais's short animated film Harpya.

On a (work) related grammar note, do you put a 's' after an apostrophe when a word ends on a 's'?

After a name (Servais), I believe you do like I did above, but on normal word you don't (help, can't think of a word ending in a 's' that you put an apostrophe on as an example! Not good for an aspiring wordsmith!)

Just the apostrophe.

Robyn Williams' home cost him $3m to build.

I think there can be argument both ways, but i prefer just the apostrophe myself. I'm sure someone better equipped will come in and tell us we are all wrong ...there should be 3 s's's

From: Apostrophes | Punctuation Rules

Rule 1c. Some writers and editors add only an apostrophe to all nouns ending in s. And some add an apostrophe + s to every proper noun, be it Hastings's or Jones's.

One method, common in newspapers and magazines, is to add an apostrophe + s ('s) to common nouns ending in s, but only a stand-alone apostrophe to proper nouns ending in s.

Examples:
the class's hours
Mr. Jones' golf clubs
the canvas's size
Texas' weather

Abandoned the near-future sf and switched back to epic fantasy. I have genre identity issues.

muddling through the early bits of the sequel to Black's Nest. About 5K.

I finished the story! Yay for me. It was a long week though and it came hard. Here's a blog on 'Goodreads' about the horrible things that happened this week. Jack Grey's Blog - Coming soon... - July 30, 2016 03:43 . The book was fun to write, I now have the much harder job of getting it up to standard. Next up, I have a travel book to do about a trip around Europe by motorcycle. After that, definitely back to science-fiction.

Okay, I'm about a week behind my self-imposed deadline, but I am more than half way there.

So, I open my WIP file up a few minutes go... and the file is completely empty! I think, "that has to be wrong!" so I close Word and reopen it. The file's still empty! So now I'm cursing myself out for not making a back-up file! About ready to cry, and being stubborn, I close Word and reopen it one more time.

I open the file and... it's all there. What the heck!? I've never had this happen with Word before, and I've used it since it first came out (though I preferred another program back then)!

Back-up created.

Anyway, I just finished the longest (novelette sized) story. I tend to get excited, when writing Fantasy and Sci-Fi, as I write the story's climax. But writing this one, I felt intimidated. Usually, I have to make sure I don't go too fast (which often results in forgetting to add things). but this climax took me three days to write! I can only hope it came out well.

This is sort of a return to horror for me. In my senior year in high school, I won a short story contest for a macabre tale about bodies buried in a wall. Since then, besides some D&D scenarios, I haven't written much horror. Here's hoping I remembered how!

I've finished the first book of three I've had in mind forever, and writing out the first glimpses of the second one and outlining the third.

I'm also writing a series of short stories around the larger storyline, to help me get my ideas out in the continuing development of it. Three of them are in various stages of doneness, and I've got about sixty others waiting in the pipeline.

Right now I just hope I live long enough to finish all of them.

StuartBurchell said:

On a (work) related grammar note, do you put a 's' after an apostrophe when a word ends on a 's'?

After a name (Servais), I believe you do like I did above, but on normal word you don't (help, can't think of a word ending in a 's' that you put an apostrophe on as an example! Not good for an aspiring wordsmith!)

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Ooh! I think I know that one! You put the apostrophe AFTER the 's' when it ends in 's'. Servant's quarters (only one servant) vs. servants' quarters (plural servants).

On a name like Servais, you'd say "Servais's quarters". I think. Strunk and White would know for sure.

Vaz said:

Ditched plans to write a second draft of my epic fantasy, now I'm much happier.

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That was me 15-18 months ago. Ditched the epic fantasy stuff, opened my eyes to all the other wonderful things out there, and it's been wonderfully liberating. Best thing I did as a writer, in fact.

I may go back to the epic stuff in time, but for now I have so many other stories to tell - I hope you get to go down the same path!