Well, well, well... Look who made it to day 2!
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| My very own library card. A big deal for me, because I haven't had one since I was a kid. |
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| This is a crappy photo, but you get the point... |
Technology meets paperbacks--♡ it's a beautiful thing. For my books, I selected "A Perfect Blood" by Kim Harrison and "Black Widow" by Jennifer Estep. I'm looking forward to reading both of them (even though things have been crazy lately and I really don't have the time). They are part of a series, and I think I'll be reading them in the wrong order, but we'll see how it goes...
I'm happy to report that the library trip cheered me up. Also, after a lot of hemming and hawing on my part--- I'm actually getting somewhere with my "series bible". If you don't know what that is, I've added a Youtube video below that kind of explains it.
Kami Garcia is one of the two amazing authors responsible for the "Beautiful Creatures" novels. (I didn't know who she was when I first stumbled across this video, but I looked her up and was subsequently impressed. (I really enjoyed the movie, but I've never read the book). So, going by the movie alone, you know this lady had a lot of stuff to keep up with. Especially due to the fact that she was working with another person, (Margaret Stohl), who would probably need to reference this info when Ms. Garcia was not around.
To do it, she created the massive series bible she shows us in her video. I would love to have something like this, but I change my mind so much (and I change my story facts so much, mine needs to be on PC so I can update without clearing out a rainforest every time I need to print).
Unfortunately, how a person goes about cataloging all of their story facts is completely up to them. This is where I started to have problems.
Below is a photo of my Trigram Trilogy project in Scrivener. It doesn't look that big at first glance, but take my word for it: it's freakin' huge.
In order to cross reference things and link them together, I had to start my series bible in the same folder as my actual stories... Not a good idea if you don't like the idea of keeping all your eggs in one basket, but useful if you don't like 'the million tabs open at one time' writing method. ; )
As you can see, I keep track of my Warlock 101 tweets (kinda) and any spells that Thierry has used in the books. Right now, I'm just copying and pasting this information straight from the stories and filing it away to be referenced later when I need it.
Some things I refer to a lot, like spells, descriptions of places and character stats. I haven't worked out a good way to keep track of a timeline yet, but maybe that will be easier to do when I'm editing.
Other things, I have no idea how to approach yet. This whole series bible thing is a huge undertaking. I've put myself in a weird position because I published Book 1 (Feud) and then decided there should be an 'origin novel' before it... (Trigram) aka Book 0...
So now, it's become a lot more stressful than it ever needed to be. I have to make sure all my information in Feud is not negated or made moot by telling Thierry's origin story. The last thing I want this finished thing to be is sloppy. I have a lot of craziness planned for future Thierry adventures and I'm trying like hell not to write myself into a corner. (If there was a 'write yourself into a corner competition', I'd win every freakin' time).
*Eye roll x 100*
I wish I was one of those people who are super smart about their writing and plan everything out beforehand, but I'm not. I write by the seat of my pants and it's really inconvenient. The only way I can get things right is through trial and error and that makes for a lot of wasted time.
One thing I've done in the last few days that was extremely helpful was making a page in my project that tells me how places look and where said places are located. There is a place in Exxus, (the sequel to Feud), that defies the laws of physics, called The Den. It's kind of like a hub for Witches, or a place they use to gather and pray to the Witch Goddess Hecate.
The Den was extremely difficult to describe when I wrote it the first time, (and I have a feeling it will pop up again in the future). Needless to say, I'm glad I'll have notes on it so I won't have to try and remember what I said the first time. When I think about re-writing the description part of that scene again for a future story, it makes my stomach hurt and my palms get sweaty.😶
This series bible has given me anxiety too. It's fucking annoying. How could one of my favorite things in the world stress me out? Furthermore, how could I let it?
I'm not about to let perfectionism ruin Thierry for me. It can have my artwork and my needle punch (wink), but not my writing. In fact, I've written some of my best work once I decided I was okay with writing trash. lol.
Anyway, lemme get off here. Pheona found a gremlin and I gotta go help her. That little bugger is giving her a run for her money.
Thanks for reading!
♡
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