Might be useful if you decide to use a LJ as your writing area. This script saves the current month of writing in the journal, grabbing only the subject and entry text, and then counts the words. Any tags (html or lj tags) are included in the saved file but not in the wordcount.

I’m using an alternate journal gconnor_writing to store my writing for the next month, to keep it separate from personal entries. I expect the writing may be bad, and will definitely be unedited. You may decide to wait for the finished product rather than reading it in real time. If you want to tune in anyway, you may click to the new journal’s info page and use the plus icon to add it to your friends.

Overview: This is a “character” story according to the MICE categories. This is really Veldan’s “coming of age” story. It takes place over the time from when he is 19 to when he is 25 (or the story might wrap up sooner, I don’t want to fast-forward too much). Basically I will start when he is 19 and seeking his place, and I will wrap up whenever he finds his new comfortable place in the world. He may or may not be done training at the end of the story, but his attraction to Elori will be resolved one way or another.

Here is an update to the previous entry. I chatted with Merlin about the info I wrote (Merlin is Altaia’s creator) and also about Veldan’s history and the motivations of the other two characters…

Musing about Veldan’s mentor/patron and the patron’s daughter

Yesterday, M pulled a muscle in her back while we were getting ready to go to aelfsciene’s party. Not a happy thing. We were able to call the doctor and get a quick prescription called in to Walgreen’s, which I ran and picked up, also getting a picture frame to go with aelfsciene’s housewarming gift. I got a burger for M and got her situated on the couch, then went off to the party anyway. ...

Here’s some info for writers who are not quite sure where the “beginning, middle and end” of their story should be. How To Write Science Fiction And Fantasy is a great book by Orson Scott Card. We had the fortunate opportunity to see Orson Scott Card speak at a convention last year. He is a great guy, and cares a lot about helping amateur writers with advice. He led a workshop session where audience members collaborated to create a new science-fiction world, by asking “Why,” and “To what result/effect”. This was a great way to establish a cause-and-effect chain, and if the cause-and-effect chain is worked out in some detail, it can be an excellent story setting and a springboard for a number of stories. This was quite interesting as well… I will elaborate more on this if there is interest. ...

I am seriously thinking about using Veldan as the subject for my writing. Veldan is a character from Merlin’s game, Altaia, which I play in every other week. Veldan’s History (Written as character narrative) I am a half-orc. My mother was a half-orc. She bore four children by her first husband (not my father). He was a jeweler, and he died 5 years before I was born, during a robbery of his shop. After his death, my mother continue to work as a jeweler, but was not as good at it and her two oldest children also started working to support the family. ...

Ideas for generating characters… I wish I had something that would come up with random character backgrounds, like Central Casting. (Friends- If you have borrowed my copy of Central Casting, please let me know. I think I loaned it to someone in my Altaia game group, but I’m not sure.) Central Casting has a lot of detail, and creates a pretty complete background, but it has drawbacks. 1. it takes a lot of time to generate one character, 2. it is appropriate for medieval/fantasy only, and 3. I have currently mislaid my copy so I can’t use it anyway. ...

OK, I just got a copy of Dragon NaturallySpeaking and I am playing around with it to see how well it recognizes my voice. It seems to be doing a credible job so far. It looks like I can talk into just about any application where I could type, but I have to be in DragonPad in order to correct or select previous text. I think I can type faster than I talk anyway, so it remains to be seen how valuable this program really is. ...