#srebrna writes

[srebrnafh]

My slow progress through various aspects of drawing is challenging, but I feel like there IS a progress. My hand is much steadier than it used to, and I'm learning a lot about the "storytelling" aspect of drawing - where to put more details, which ones to omit, where put the "fadeout" limit on objects, where to provide as much detail as I can (the center of the scene, which I lightly circled to remind myself ;)), how to show not only shadows, but LIGHT, only with pencil...

Yeah, it is a bit grimy, but that's the result of me being clumsy and forgetting a piece of paper to put under my hand.

Next stage: redrawing the wall decoration, adding more details in the center stage; then inking the contours with my micron pens; then picking the shading method (probably cross-hatching with the thinnest pen).

...this is a piece of location in my novel "For the Price of a Charm", the we-do-not-call-it-a-palace! of Principality of Lobelia :)

#srebrna draws #srebrna writes #drawing #learning to draw #sketch #illustration draft

[fairytale-poll]

ROUND 1C, MATCH 6 OUT OF 8!

Propaganda Under the Cut:

Silver:

[No Propaganda Submitted]

Su-a-Heo:

Whale Star: The Gyeongseong Mermaid is set in Joseon (Korea) during the Japanese occupation. Su-a is very sweet and determined. She becomes mute due to having lye poured down her throat to kill her after accidentally overhearing a conversation between the resistance fighters. She eventually joins them, having witnessed firsthand the impact of the Japanese colonization. Even though she's in over her head at first she proves to be reliable and effective despite not knowing how to write or read at first.

#córki dancingu #the lure #whale star #whale star: the gyeongseong mermaid #srebrna #silver #su-a-heo #the little mermaid #little mermaid #fairytale #hans christian andersen #poll bracket #poll tournament #character poll #polls #round 1 #round 1c #the little merpoll

[cyborgsmanifest]

Theo Ellin Ballew

#Theo Ellin Ballew

[kulinarnenawigacje]

🗺Będzie więcej na blogu o podróżach. Tyle jest pięknych, mało znanych miejsc w Polsce, że zacznę o nich pisać. . Lato spędzam stacjonarne. W sezonie są zawsze wyższe ceny na wyjazdy zagraniczne i wolę pojechać gdzieś dalej- taniej, przed lub po wakacjach. . Tymczasem zachwycam się Dolnym Śląskiem 💙 . Polecicie jakieś cudne mieścinki, które Was zauroczyły? _____ 🗺 There will be more on the blog about travel. There are so many beautiful, little-known places in Poland that I will start to write about them. . I spend summer summer. In the season there are always higher prices for trips abroad and I prefer to go somewhere much cheaper before or after the holidays. . In the meantime, I'm delighted with Lower Silesia 💙 . Can you recommend some lovely little towns that have fascinated you? _____ #polskanaweekend #poland #polskajestpiękna #travellife #travelpoland #dolnoslaskie #lowersilesian #srebrnagora #visitpoland #travel #pomyslnaweekend #travelgirl #travelideas #travelinpoland #podrozepopolsce #weekendwpolsce #pomyslnaweekend (w: Srebrna Góra) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0MLmIfob9d/?igshid=1b4rkb4wxhbg8

#polskanaweekend #poland #polskajestpiękna #travellife #travelpoland #dolnoslaskie #lowersilesian #srebrnagora #visitpoland #travel #pomyslnaweekend #travelgirl #travelideas #travelinpoland #podrozepopolsce #weekendwpolsce

[srebrnafh]

I've had a little bit of meltdown today. A combination of several factors, some external, some internal, left me sitting there, editing volume 5 and having a growing feeling that the quality of the text I'm typing is falling.

The plot is childish, the entire idea is naive and contrived, the characters are behaving like puppets and I will never ever manage to live up to the promise I've ended volume 4 with.

There are a bunch of reasons to that, some being the fucking temperature and sheer overload with people (two crowded events last week), but some being the response I'm getting.

Not from beta readers, my alpha and beta readers are OK and give me the kind of feedback I need. That's why I want to have a quality product ready for them.

From the publishers. And I know. First world problems, and also, everyone has a sucky time trying to break in. I'm an unpublished debut, I can't expect much.

But what I would like to get is even a straight "no".

What is hitting me this June is that a year ago I was at an event, and had a chance to pitch the story to a publisher. And the conversation ended with "Here's my card, send me the text, I'll have a look". And I get it. I get it. They are busy people. But, seriously, I would have been grateful for a plain "no". Just show that you've had a look.

They apparently did not. And here I was, hoping that at least I will get AN ANSWER. It didn't have to be positive. At least I would have known there is nothing to be waiting for.

So yeah, among other shit happening, I'm now quite down, because it's been a year since I've send the text, so full of fucking hope, so happy that someone listened.

And it's affecting the way I look at my work, because I have a growing feeling that nobody will ever pick it up. So why bother. Why edit, why post it to betas.

(so I'm taking some time off from editing it, because if I start hating it, I will never finish)

#personal #original writing #srebrna writes #just general crap happening #and publishers being publishers #I'm not sure I have the spoons to try selfpub #And in Poland selfpub is seen as a dead end for a story #Nobody will ever pick it up if I go for selfpublished ebook #So #Kind of sucks #But then what doesn't

[srebrnafh]

Prep for my book crowdfunding :) these will become fridge magnets - hand painted with colours linked to the location where part of the action happens.

#srebrna writes #crowdfunding ideas

[srebrnafh]

Finished editing volume 5.

It grew.

By over 100%. Almost 150% actually.

Next challenges:

Take time off, maybe do some drawing

Maybe write some short stories

Wait until May to start editing vol 6

Possibly pick up 1-2 FF WIPs that have been patiently waiting for my attention.

Anyway. It took me a year to fix the mess I made writing it. Volume 6 will hopefully take a bit shorter, but I'm not betting on it. Hopefully, there will be more cutting...

#writing #original writing #original novel #for the price of a charm #za cenę uroku #srebrnawrites #srebrna writes

[srebrnafh]

I just managed to write like, an actual short story, and will submit it to a publisher today. I am surprised I managed to keep it to the limit (20k characters, which makes it ~3k words in Polish).

Since nobody wants my novel, well, tough luck. Maybe someone will want a story :)

#writing #original writing #srebrna writes

[srebrnafh]

This is what my novel work will look like for the next 3 weeks. Taking my time off from editing the existing text, so I'm working on the missing scenes and writing out logical chains of events to make sure all is coming together.

I need around 25-30k words more in pure new scenes, and I want to write them before I'm scheduled to get back to my project files.

#writing #novel writing #original writing #srebrna writes

[srebrnafh]

The girl is sitting on a bus stop bench when he approaches. She doesn't look up - or rather, she glances, but never meets his eyes.

Ah.

"May I sit?"

She nods, still watching the ground intently.

He hates silence, but the battery in his phone is nearly dead, so he can't listen to the music. And everything around them is deadly silent.

"Do you... do you know when the bus could be coming?"

She cocks her head to one side.

"Anytime in the next fifteen minutes, I suppose. They are always a little late, or a little early."

"Ah. So you... you know... I mean..."

"I've been on this bus stop often enough, yes."

"Ah."

It's not a place people visit that late - not if they can avoid it. After all, the old cemetery is not exactly the height of entertainment for anyone in town.

"Your... Your folks down here?"

She licks her lips - nervously?

"My grandma," she says finally. "And... well, others."

He nods, slowly.

"My parents. And my brother," he explains. "They preferred this spot to the new one by the church. Something about the atmosphere of the place. What do they care for atmosphere though? And I... Sorry, I'm rambling."

She shakes her head. Soft curls are slow to drop back in place. She is shivering - a bit. Even though it's such a warm evening.

"It's better to hear someone," she says suddenly. "I mean, rather than sit here and wait. It's so... away."

"It is. That's why I'm here so late, went to clean up the graves somewhat. The anniversary was yesterday, but I couldn't get our of the office early enough..." he trails off, but she nods again.

"I'd rather be near people," she whispers. "It is so weird being out here. I can't... I always hated coming here. When I was a kid."

"Family grave then?"

She nods with a grimace.

"A big one," she gestures. Her hands are so slight they might as well be translucent. "A lot of marble to clean."

"One of these huge statement ones?"

"Our family is so rich we can waste a slab of marble for a grave," she mumbles. "Yes, that kind of thing."

"They told you to help?"

"Not really. Even told me to never try to come here by myself, actually. But then, I never would, unless I had to. When I came... I had to stop believing she was still alive."

"Ah, I see..."

She sighs, heavily, so heavily for such a thin pair of shoulders.

"I... when I was small, I always though she just got lost. I believed it for months and months. Until they took me here and made me read the inscription," she whispered. "They made me finally believe Nana was gone, and not just... forgot where the house was."

"That's a cruel thing to do to a child, but then, if you kept hoping, it might have turned into a delusion... Maybe they were afraid you'd start..."

He bites his lip. What is he doing, playing a psychoanalyst with a girl who apparently can't cope with grief too well? How old is she, twenty? Twenty one? Not that much younger than him, probably, but seems to be as frail as an alabaster-cut flower decorating some of the biggest, most decorative gravestones.

"Having visions? Yeah, that's what the doctors said. Told them to prove to me that Nana was dead and that I'd be "cured" of the delusion... In the end they managed to just stop me staring everyone in the face. They said I made people uncomfortable in the streets. But I was just looking for Nana. Just in case..." she trails off and wipes her cheek. "I never stopped looking for her. Just... just in case."

A car whips by them. The girl curls in on herself.

"And now you don't look at anyone? At all?"

She shrugs, the tip of her worn shoe digging into the dirt.

"I know it doesn't make sense, now," she says finally. Her throat must be so tight, she's so quiet.

"You know she's dead, now."

She nods, slowly.

Swallows.

"But, you know, I hoped, even if they didn't understand that with Nana, that they would be looking for me," she says, her voice like dry leaves moving with the wind. "Because it seems... I feel I'm lost and can't remember how to get home anymore, you see. But they never come here. They just never do."

#original writing #oneshot #short story #srebrna writes

[srebrnafh]

Making first round of edits on volume 5 of the novel. Dreading volume 6. I managed to build up expectations of people, and they will be Expecting Stuff. The finale I've written is... Crowning Moment of Awesome if I manage to write it well, and I build up to it in the right way. Or a complete flop without any background in the story, and a disjointed mess, to boot.

But I'm approaching it with "one thing at a time" for now. V5 has a few punches in it, and I want to make sure they are delivered with the needed precision and weight behind them - not too convoluted so that people have to think too much in order to see them, but not to obvious, so that they don't see them coming. But also, they should be feeling Shit Is Going To Happen, so I need to hint at it...

Basically. I desperately need to get this right. Draft 2 time.

#writing #original writing #original novel #srebrna writes

[srebrnafh]

My brain is a commitee

I know, the picture below doesn't make much sense in relation to the title. Not even without, it's just pretty stripes.

What it is, is the outcome of the ADHD part of my brain doing its job and OCD part doing its job.

The way I write is fucking chaotic. Basically, writing comes to me like a lot of tasks do, picking the tastiest pieces first and leaving the "meh" parts not done. This is the ADHD Srebrna slapping her keyboard to make pretty words and smash some scenes together to cover the pictures in my brain, or to nail down that fucking good piece of dialogue I totally need in my text.

This creates, let's say, ISLANDS of text. There is a bit of a beginning, some in the middle, maybe a grand finale, but not much of a path between them. A robust, determined alpha reader might get across, ignoring the missing passageways and lack of roadsigns. But it's not yet a novel, not yet a full road from start to finish.

That part comes from OCD Srebrna. She's the one that sits down on her butt and does the less than glamorous work of putting the islands in the row, kicking some out, marking missing ones, planning pathways and logical links between the events, smoothing out character arcs. Tearing at her hair, gnashing her teeth and cursing ADHD Srebrna for not making any fucking notes of what she meant by a particular remark in THAT ONE SCENE.

(spoiler, she didn't mean anything, it just sounded nice...)

OCD Srebrna removes all the accidental circular references, risky new threads and plots, accidental name changes or double character introductions. Then she marks it all up in Scrivener and makes careful plans which scene she plans for how many words, adds titles, dates of events etc. And she's the one who prepares the space for working, for either her to just ADD THE MISSING CONTENT, or for ADHD Srebrna to get hyperfixated on the task again and catch the planned (lightly) scenes and run happily to write them.

This below is the result of her pains. Green sections mean text done as well as I could, usually after 2-3 reviews. The brighter the green, the better I feel about certain area.

Pink is "written full but rough". Yellow is "written but needs checking of facts". Red or white is "scene missing here". Orange is "needs expanding" and brown is "needs a rehaul". Blue is "to be cut up"; usually results of sprint writing, marathon writing or falling asleep at my keyboard.

So, yeah, you can see now how I manage, by tight marking rules and Excel skills, to keep control over where I am in the text, what's ahead of me and what kind of a promise I can make to my beta readers...

(my aim when creating this was to get something close to the old defragmentation functionality from Windows 98 :))

#writing #my writing #srebrna writes #writing stats #writing tracking

[srebrnafh]

Finished editing another bit...

...and it's all friggin GROWING.

Even with a lot of removal of side plot points that did not match the main line anymore, I had to add in a bunch of content and work in cause-and-effect cycles that would work and make what Irene is doing at least a SEMI logical course of action.

Now I can hope for act 2 to behave in more reasonable manner, and not swell that much, but I'm not holding my breath. Maybe I'll have to make different divisions in the final book, but for now... I am predicting a 450k book and I'm not happy with myself, at all.

#original novel #original writing #srebrna writes #editing woes

[srebrnafh]

I'm in the process of messing my MC up SO HARD.

Details under the cut just in case anyone who wishes to read it at some point spoiler-free, still can...

OK, so Irene, my MC, has a history of being subjected to some very unpleasant magic. Her last workplace (an innocent city office) turned out to be a more-or-less a magical sweatshop, where their boss was controlling the entire team magically, siphoning off their energies to support the crumbling city infrastructure and in general messing with their everyday lives, up to and including controlling their hormonal balance, cutting them off from social life and completely blocking any need for human contact, keeping them in the constant state of touch starvation... In general, making sure nobody notices how they slowly are getting vampired-on by the city.

She got freed by a freaky accident (more or less getting hit by magical shrapnel as she shielded someone else from being attacked).

She proceeded to get another job, a love interest and many interesting but less magic-laden adventures. However. Said love interest is 1. rich; 2. powerful (locally) and 3. very magically powerful. And in the duration of their relationship, he comes into his own magical power, which is...

...drumroll...

A Commanding Voice. Which he doesn't control at the beginning, which flares up, or down, in kind of random fashion, causing all sorts of trouble. Including at least once Ordering Irene to do something. Which she despises, see above for previous workplace experience (which he knows about). He grovels, gets a blocking artifact that will keep his powers under control (effectively cutting off his magic, if temporarily), she forgives him after a while.

At some point, she finds herself back home, part of memories gone, but VERY distinctly remembering that her SO magicked her up to go back home and never come back to his home country, because reasons. She spends a year like this, dealing with life shit, including her ex-employer and a variety of different issues with family & friends.

SUDDENLY a person from her SO's country appears, asking her for help, since apparently said SO, who is, by the way, the ruler of said country, has been kidnapped. And replaced with an usurper who magicked himself into the position of power and is wrecking the country. Magicked himself a glamour of being the actual prince, so people think it's their own darling prince, just a little bit mad.

She arrives, she helps them to depose the usurper (they do a big reveal with taking the glamour off...) and find the real prince, she stays long enough for him to wake up from magical coma, even though she nearly can't stand the very idea of being there (but there are Other Reasons). And he wakes up.

With half a huge chunk of his memories missing, including that time when he hurt her with his magic for the first time. He just doesn't know what happened, he can tell very clearly what happened up to a certain day, but nothing more.

Also, he has lost his magic.

She is conflicted. Obviously, he is technically the same man who had hurt her. But he is also mentally innocent of this, since he can't remember what happened. But also she can barely stand being in the same room. But also, she loves him, and she knows it's fucked up. Also, she now sees him magic-less and so... Kind of even less powerful than her... but also still a prince... but also he knows he fucked up, because he said he guessed but doesn't know HOW... etc etc. So, she is working out what she should do with this whole shit.

He is behaving very carefully, trying to approach her SOMEHOW with apology - but acknowledged this is crap because he, in his own words, is apologising for something, but he doesn't know what, "in a classic male style". She is having deep issues with this all, but also, kind of teetering on the brink of maybe perhaps forgiving him conditionally, but also, can't really, but also, he is the only one she loves, but also, he fucked up, but... You see she's kind of torn.

And now, for the crowning moment of fucked up shit.

That is ALSO not the real prince.

(it's his distant cousin, magically souped up to be as close to him as possible, but doesn't have full data, so he is simulating amnesia to avoid being found out too quickly)

((and Irene doesn't know this, so she is, like, millimeters from forgiving him and declaring STUFF))

So yeah, I'm so messing with her right now.

And that's the hard, ugly hard part - to write her honestly and emotionally and invested in this, even though I know she's heading towards a steep slide down into crap.

#original writing #original novel #messing with my MC #srebrna writes #emotional turmoil

[srebrnafh]

Well, finished my big redo of Volume 3. It gained 50% in volume from "raw version 1" (moving it to Draft 1 in my mind). Will undergo cutting down when I go through it the second time, but for now, all I know is that it is DONE, as in, ALL WRITEN.

Now, off to MS Word for the judgement of the basic...

...quality. Dammit...! OK, I have an entire evening. Or night. Or something. Welp. Better start checking stuff.

Also, hit 47675 on my nanowrimo counter, so 50k comes tomorrow. Which means I may make it to 75k this year. Less than the 100k I managed the last two times, but still, a respectable outcome. Probably less damaging to the brain :P

#original writing #original novel #srebrna writes #nanowrimo

[srebrnafh]

2 years of writing my novel :)

2 years ago, on the morning of my 41st birthday, I woke up with an Idea For a Story. It wasn't the first Idea I've had, but the previous ones kind of fizzled out for various reasons.

With this one, I took care. Until I had a clear vision of what it was supposed to be, I only told one person (my husband) and in very general terms. Then I started writing. I co-opted a friend to be my first sounding board and brainstorm support for a variety of things. She helped me to solidify some characters, read first raw pieces. I shaped some narratives with her help, including being more audacious about certain characters than I would have done myself. Then I asked more people in, building a kind of an alpha reader group. Etc etc.

Now it's been 2 years, I'm 43 ;) and my novel is as good as written. To the total of 1235000 words. 5 volumes, ranging from 197 to 303 thousand words. (in Polish, so add 20-25% to that count to get English numbers, should it ever be translated)

I'm on my first round of editions right now, working on volume 2. Adding needed scenes, pruning dialogue and repetitions. Working on my style, on grammar and on keeping things a bit tighter than in the first draft.

Soon, I'll have to write a formal summary and start sending the first volume to the publishers. Wish me luck :)

#srebrna writes #novel #original novel #original writing