Well, here's hoping for a more diverse crop this year than just tomatoes. And I know how that is about time off. It feels like you've only just settled in to relax and spend time with family before you realize you have to go home (or they do)! I just got back from a short vacation - going back to work "tomorrow" (really later today, by the time I actually write this post) - and the amount of time I spend at work vs. the amount of time I spend with family and friends is beginning to feel truly depressing.

Since the last time I posted, I bought the house! Actually, I spent the majority of today finally taking the time to do all kinds of things I should've done ages ago, like finish updating my address, paying my first mortgage payment, etc. So I guess I'm a real homeowner now. It's a small townhouse, which suits me just fine - that made it more affordable and it's about as much as I could ever dream of cleaning. (As it is, I'm falling behind in that regard!)

By the way, my niece and nephew are still adorable and I still have stories if you care to hear them. My niece just turned 3 and at her birthday party, she still doesn't seem to fully understand how these presents work, because when she was told who the presents were from, she seemed to think that's who the presents were for, and would bring it over to them for them to unwrap!

My nephew also seemed to forget that his sister's birthday is for her, not for him, so I ended up taking him into the basement so he could make some LEGO creations. My brother showed him a picture of a complicated design he'd made in a computer program, and my nephew, after seeing it once, actually started to figure out how to build it (or at least try, since he didn't have the right pieces), even saying "We need to make a hexagon" (yes, he used the word without prompting) and the like! He's 6! [/proud Auntie]

Thankfully, now with the house bought and my big (but short) trip out of the way, life will settle down a bit. ...Okay, that's a joke, it never does, but maybe I'lll at least learn how to manage it better. I'm trying to get back into writing regularly. The realization that I'll probably never have the hours and hours I used to have to just write for the sheer pleasure of it that I did when I was young has hit me hard recently, so I've decided to counter it with at least making better use of the occasional hour here and there I have to write.

I can certainly agree that Rya's niece and nephew are both cute and intelligent. While we're on the subject, I have a story there too.

When they come to visit, the 3-year-old likes a little children's book called Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See?, which teaches kids colors and animals.

At some point she started adding the sounds the animals make. When she gets to the sheep, she says "Baa ram ewe" (from the movie Babe). I take credit for that.

Meanwhile, we're bracing for yet another winter storm. At this rate, spring might come by May.

Kids are so cute!

NarniaWeb was having issues last night and this morning so it's nice it's up again. Huge thanks to our 'benevolent dictator', Tirian, for his diligent work in keeping the forum running (and fixing it when it's not!).

Happy Spring, everyone, although the temp is hovering around freezing here, with flurries yesterday and rain today (with some ice pellets mixed in), so feeling-like-spring has yet to arrive.

One of our sons is getting married on May 4, and it would be nice for all the travelers if it didn't snow. Early May here is usually coolish, and I, for one, am so glad they did not choose July to have their wedding celebration!

A belated congratulations on the wedding, jo!! I've seen you discussing it elsewhere and it sounds like it was lovely. I hope your son and his new bride are having a lovely time together! Are they still on their honeymoon?

Spring has definitely sprung around here, and I for one am loving it. For whatever reason, green grass typically means new creativity for me, and this year is no exception. I was struggling with having too many ideas at once, but I finally settled on one story in particular, one I actually haven't touched in the better part of... wow, four years, really?? Time flies. For an idea of how long I've been working on this one: the story spans four years, the character being 15 at the beginning and 19 by the end. When I first started, I was older than the character at the beginning of the story, but younger than she would be at the end. Yeah... it's been a while.

Things are starting to pick up at work, which is kind of a mixed blessing. It's nice to have a regular flow of work again (as opposed to some of the winter months when there were days I'd have very little to do), but the way we've been getting shuffled around has been a bit more chaotic than previous years. Definitely keeping me on my toes.

Dang, I keep forgetting to come here for months at a time. So, hi everyone.

Rya, that's so exciting about your new home. Congratulations! How's that story you mentioned coming?

I actually just published my first novel. It's called "Seven Years Awesome Luck" and is about a boy who turns into a cat, then turns into a boy again seven years later and hates it. It was fun to write and turned out way longer than expected, and the whole editing/proofreading/publishing process took longer than anticipated. By the time I finished writing it, I just wanted to get it out there and finished, so I was like, "Ugh, why do I have to keep reading it over and over just to make sure it's *ready*?" LOL. Necessary but tedious is the editing process for me. But anyway, it feels good to actually see it through to completion.

Is there an RPs going on?

*new girl asks while peeking around the forums.*

Hello, Arwen! Nice to meet you...er, myself. Welcome to the forum!

Because the Town has been so quiet of late, there are only two writing events going on: one is Apartment 51, where individuals write their own stories, and then chat about them with each other, or the Mansion, which is an RP that is about 3/4 of the way done with its current story. If you take a read through it and are interested in joining, drop me a PM, and we will work on getting your character in. Otherwise, the next RP will start about mid-December. You can PM me by hitting the little box with the pawn and "PM" on it, located under my information on the right. If you have general questions, too, I can probably help you out!

There are a lot of authors and storytellers hanging around, though! Most of us are rather Entish (in that we're slow moving and take a long time to think).

Speaking of...Conga-rats, Shawna!

I do understand ent-ish I am that way too with school going on. I will read through it and message you. And tis nice to meet you too...or me...

Thanks, Lady Arwen.

Congrats, Shawna!

Welcome, Arwen. Glad to meet another writer and look forward to reading about your characters.

Thanks stargazer

How do I get an avatar that fits and a signature? im not that tech savvy.

Thank you Ryadian for your help.

Welcome to the forum, Arwen, and welcome to Ditto Town! To answer your question, if you're looking for an image that fits the requirements, we actually have a couple of threads on the forum for those who like to make avatars and signature images, which generally fit our image requirements. Here's one for avatars specifically for Narnia, and here's one for any non-Narnian graphics. I know some search engines can search for images of a specific pixel size, though I only use Google and Google seems to have lost that feature (either that or I can't find it anymore).

If you're looking for information about how to add an image to your profile, there's a guide here. You'l have to scroll down to the "How to upload images to your profile" section. And if you have any more questions, feel free to PM me or another mod and we'll help you out.

(That reminds me, I really should update my avatar sometime. )

Conga Rats, Shawna!! Your premise sounds amazing - either transformation would've been interesting on its own, but doing both? Now I really want to see how this turns out! I'm glad all your hard work has paid off. I can only imagine what the editing process is like. I have a hard enough time getting myself to sit down and just finish a complete draft!

Speaking of which, I'll admit I'm not working on that particular story anymore. That is to say, I'm not actively working on it at the moment - I haven't abandoned it entirely. I've been having a hard time staying focused and motivated enough to write at all, so I've been letting myself jump from story to story as it grabs my interest. Probably bad for getting any particular story done, but at least I'm writing. I've taken to leaving the house for at least an hour, ideally two, a week, and spending my time away focusing entirely on writing. That, at least, has been very helpful.

*Sighs contentedly and basks in the glories of autumn* I love fall (have I ever mentioned this before? ). October is my favorite month of the year, and I'm so looking forward to it beginning tomorrow!

Thanks, Stargazer and Rya!

Staying focused is definitely a big part of the challenge. It's very much still something I'm working on. One day, I was able to stay super-focused and got 10k words done that day. So I know it's possible. It's so incredibly easy to get distracted, though, and it's harder to stay focused when I'm not totally sure what I'm doing for each scene. (On that day, I had the next several scenes planned out, so 'what am I doing with this?' wasn't an issue.) I've been keeping a daily word count ledger for the past few years, and the number of days where the word count is zero makes me really ashamed of myself. Like, months at a time. It's inexcusable.

I write pretty clean drafts, though, so I do very light editing. I did the much deeper editing (to the point of re-writing the whole thing) for several years there with other projects (and there's still a book I wrote several years ago that I want to completely rewrite), but I'm at the point where I can mostly figure out that something isn't working as I write it and make immediate corrections rather than having to go back and fix it (or overhaul it) later. Practice makes perfect and all.

Still very much figuring out what my process should be, and I really need to figure out how to make books the length I want them to be. My target for this last one was 100k and it ended up over 160k. I'm very bad at anything to do with estimating numbers, but this is one area where I really need to figure it out. I want to do a sci-fi trilogy next, but I'm sort of taking a break and writing some fanfic.

And you know, one of these days, I still want to write a series using the VF (not as the main character). Funny how characters or plot ideas can stick with us for years or decades before we finally get around to using them in an actual book. I've got another series I'm working on where the first book is finished (not published yet), but which I had worked on and re-worked and completely re-wrote for maybe 15 years before I finally got it in a form I liked, because I liked the core of what I had, and it just took that long for my abilities to live up to the story's potential.

I love fall, too. It's not feeling very autumny yet for me, but it's turning that way.

Well, it took me long enough to come back.

Having clean drafts must be a huge help. My rough drafts tend to be of the "scrap the entire thing and start over" variety, so getting a lot of writing done can help me organize my ideas better for next time... but I rarely get to keep the actual writing. Or maybe I just judge myself too harshly in my first drafts. That is a distinct possibility. But I do think that if I let myself go too long without writing, I just end up in a rut of self-doubts and lose all interest in my own writing. That's probably the most dangerous thing.

I think I know what you mean. Most of my stories are variations on ideas I've been working on since my earliest writing days. I even have an idea for a Phoenix Archer reboot that I keep coming back to (a reboot that, admittedly, bears almost no resemblance to the original ). You saying that you've been working on the series for about 15 years is both encouraging and frightening. I've got a few stories that I've been working on for well over a decade with apparently no progress, and I trick myself into thinking that I should be done with them already. Ignoring that most successful authors had to work on their projects for years before they were ready.

Things are starting to quiet down now that Christmas is over and work is getting less busy. (Normally our winter lull would've started in November, but mitigating circumstances kept us busy until pretty much just this week.) I'm hoping that things quieting down will mean that I'll actually, y'know, get things done, be they chores or writing projects. I've lived in my new house for almost a year and I still have boxes that aren't unpacked. But I guess I'll have to see how well that works out.

Rya, how many novels have you finished at least the first draft of? (Fanfic counts.) I actually started with screenplays, and I wrote at least three of those and two TV show scripts, so I got a lot of my practice in that way. Then I wrote a lot of short fanfic. Even then, the first original novel I finished, I did a lot of editing on it and it still isn't very good (I want to do a total rewrite one of these days). You really do have to do a lot of practice before you can get to the point of putting out something you're happy with.

When I say I worked on it 15 years, obviously that wasn't the only thing I was doing (including other writing). But even still, things take me way, way longer to write than they really should. I'm constantly trying to figure out how to improve my productivity. I think one of the big thing that makes it hard is that while there are many books telling people how to write, everyone is different, so what any individual person's process needs to be is something that person has to trial-and-error their way through themselves, and it's pretty much never an easy or quick process. (IMO, anyway.)