What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Every time I post an update on the Dungeons and Dragons story that Joel and I write, I get positive comments from one of our two readers. Very occasionally, I get a thumbs up on one of my other stories, especially the one based on the video game Fallout 4, as the Fallout tv show generated some interest. After I post a new chapter of my Mass Effect story, I also get an occasional upvote or two. Since you can only give these once per story, I have zero idea how many people are actually reading the story regularly. To really rake in the readers, you need to post new chapters several times a week. I post one every 6-8 months. They are kind of long updates, but still.... Anyway, today, I got a very nice comment from someone who has been binge reading my entire story. It is 200,000 words long, which is like 2 long novels/3 quick paperbacks, so that's quite a bit of reading. I have one story that I read once a year, and it is about the same length. It takes me three days of doing not much besides reading and eating. Anyway, I'm thrilled to have gotten a nice comment (especially about how I write from the different characters' perspectives), since I have spent 11 years writing this story. I feel like I'm getting to parts that were poorly covered in the games, so that's really fun.

While I was editing the chapter I just posted, I was really pleased with the text I wrote using this technique I came up with based on solo roleplaying games. It generated a really dramatic conflict that felt very much like what would happen in a dangerous situation. More combat and situations with conflict is coming, so I'm glad to have such an effective technique to use.

I have finally got to the part of the story planning for my space serial where I will plan out the next chunk of the plot. And I had to accept that I don't know enough of the layout of the ship to do this. So, I've been working on getting it organized. Thank goodness for the AI! I'm having a good time, and we are making progress, but there is still a bunch to do.

Did I tell you guys about the idea that I came up with for writing conflicts in stories when you have no idea what should be happening? (If so, you're going to hear it again.) The way it works is that you list out the characters and the order that they will act in. Then, one at a time, you come up with a very short term plan (Anna tries to pick the lock), how hard the plan is on a scale of 1 to 12 (Anna has done this before and has the right tools. The lock is pretty standard. However, Jacob is watching, and he makes her nervous. Difficulty: 7), and how dangerous the plan is (The lock isn't dangerous, so Danger: 0). Then, I used the rules for a solo roleplaying game to determine if the plan succeeded and what the consequences are. Then, you just do this for each character from top to bottom of the list, over and over, until you get to the point where you know what happens.

For me, the characters were in a small ship trying to find a mysterious signal that is being sent out across the galaxy. They are pretty close to the signal when two patrolling fighters from the evil government that controls that solar system find them. What do they do?!?

Since I had no idea, except that they crash onto the asteroid that is the source of the signal at the end, I used this RPG idea. They do end up running away from the bad guys' fighters, some people get slightly injured (as you would expect), and the ship crashes, but I know exactly who is injured, why, and I can show all of the hiding, trying various techniques to trick the bad guys, temporarily boosts to some system on their ship, and changes in how characters feel about each other. I am so satisfied with this solution!! It wasn't fast, though. It took me several days to do all the planning. On the other hand, it would have taken me at least that long and given me a much worse result if I had tried to force myself to write it with no plan. Also, because of the dice rolling, I had way more unexpected results. That made it much more exciting to work on and will make the story more exciting too.

I decided last night to try hiring a virtual assistant rather than calling repair places myself. A virtual assistant is like a personal assistant you hire as a freelancer. There are websites that handle it, much like ebay does with selling. So, this morning, I got up, set up the job, and posted it. You can ask specific people to look at the job, and I chose one who was in Portugal and had a lot of good reviews. She asked a lot of intelligent questions, then said she would take the job. After some more questions, she disappeared for a while. A few hours later, she had an appointment for us with a repair person. Repair person came, looked at the water heater, and said that it was installed so closely to the ceiling that it is really really hard to work on. He is going to have to cut away the plastic top on it since there is no other way to get at the components. It is going to probably be messy and look ugly after. Anyway, he didn't have the right tools, but he seemed like a nice guy. Virtual assistant said that she'll keep working on the job until the water heater is fixed. We're paying her $20 for the job. There will be a nice tip too.

Most of the day, I was pretty traumatized because of new things and talking with people and not having any idea what was going on. I worked on writing and maybe some other stuff, but really not much. By evening, I finally decided it was time to do something more productive, especially since I had wanted to work on some sewing. So, I went upstairs and finished sewing one pair of underwear from the bag of half sewn things.

Tomorrow, I go back into town for neurofeedback and physical therapy. I'm hoping I can swing by a post office, send out a painting, and find out if I can use Portuguese international stamps to send them in the future. That would be so nice!

I'm ignoring the obviously bad political thing that has happened (for future me - it is Trump). I made progress this morning on our D&D story (yay!) and made some progress on the very nice creepy forest scene that I'm working on. Unfortunately, I need to finish it tomorrow, as I'm going to be busy on Friday with a dentist appointment (although, I might be able to get home by a reasonable time and able to finish up some bits after dinner). I might have to not do any house painting Thursday (and definitely not Friday). We'll see.

Now, I'm off to paint the ledge above the bed (and the walls behind and one one end of it).

As I was working with Claude.ai to fill in some of the missing backstory for the space serial, I realized that could really use a spot in the story background website to put in the plans of groups, which made me realize that I need to have a spot for factions. So, I got that started today. Yay! I'm really happy that I can work with the AI on this. I am the kind of person who comes up with ideas when discussing things, so it is way easier to come up with an answer if I type out my question. It is especially nice that I don't need to have everything in the question in order. I can put things in as I think of them, and the AI can make sense of it.

In other news, I have added chickpeas to my morning soup. In part, this is because it is much harder to get split peas here than it was in Russia. So, if I use half chickpeas and half split peas in the recipe, Joel has to spend less time hauling the peas from Lisbon. Previously when I ate them, I had terrible gas. However, I've taken a lot of digestive enzymes since then (in an effort to solve that problem). The other reason this change is nice is that it diversifies what I am eating. Since I eat the same thing every single day, it is important to make sure those same things contain a lot of different kinds of food. Happily, I've also been able to eat the mallow (which is basically a weed) that grows in the yard. I couldn't eat nettle, which is disappointing, but there is a lot of mallow around here, and supposedly it has anti-inflammatory properties, which is always helpful with my delicate digestive system.

I set aside Sunday as "clean-up day", and so today I focused on getting a bunch of database things done so I could take them off my to do list. These were all things for my story background database. Things like adding in a field about problems the character may be ignoring in their life, what they are looking for in friends, and how they make decisions. For the story, it was more like things the characters mistakenly assume and plot twists (this one is because I am really likely to just have the story continue in a logical way with the characters making no assumptions and everyone just moving forward as best they can, because they have no idea what is going on (because that is what I do)). I am so glad to have done this. I also put more questions in with other questions to help spark ideas, like putting "what secret could come back to haunt the character" in with the question about what secrets they have in general. I discovered this morning that I have pretty much zero information about the point of view character for the next scene in my space serial story, so I really need to start answering questions about him for the database.

While I'm still more tired than previously (walking is tiring me out, which is really unusual), I managed to _finally_ make some progress on my home improvement project. I made some mortar and patched the holes, cracks, and missing chunks in some of our walls. I'm going to need to mix up a bit more for one spot of the upstairs wall, where a bunch of stone/concrete/whatever our house is made of was broken off a corner. I rebuilt part of it, but I didn't want to do it all at once. So, that will be done tomorrow.

I've made good progress with the podcast, so I feel good about getting that out on time. Also, Joel and I have finished another chapter in our story, so I'll post that soon too. We are _really_ happy with where it is going. I also have finally made some progress on my serial space story. Yay!

It looks like I'll have to wait a couple of weeks for the wall repairs to "cure" before I can paint them, so I'm going to work on making the shelves for the ledge behind our bed during this time. I think there is a fairly limited amount of work with the circular saw, so I can assemble the parts that are put together with just dowels and glue inside if it is raining. Oh, I am so looking forward to getting this stuff done! It will be great to be able to have places to put stuff away.

I cut back on magnesium so that I can take 0.53g during the day and then again at night. (I realized that I was weighing one with the capsule and one without, which make it all the more ridiculous.) I think, though, that the lower dosage today has made me moody. Hopefully, I'll perk up tomorrow.

The fires in the north of Portugal are pretty bad, so the air quality is not all that. I think that is making my fussiness worse.

In good news, I found a file yesterday that had all the work I had done for the setting that I will use for my serial story. It was from about 20 years ago, so I remembered little of the details. Happily, I've been able to fill in a lot of the missing bits, which I am so happy about. Hopefully, I'll get a big chunk more of it done tomorrow.

I also worked more on one of my new paintings. It is of a guy standing in a field with a tree, looking out at the horizon. I felt, however, like the guy didn't really work in the field. But! If I put in an opening in the stone wall along the foreground side of the field and a path that the guy has walked on to the point where he is standing, a path that leads toward the edge of the image, I think it will all work. I don't really have the sense that "this pulls your eye", but I can guess that the various lines in the painting will move around in an interesting way when the path is there. So, we'll see.

I've had such a great time working on what I want to think about as I write this long serial story. How do you keep a super long story going? In soap operas, they have characters come and go, so it isn't like one character has to have the most dramatic life ever, constantly full of so much excitement that it can forever keep an audiences attention. I think you probably also need to have seeded the story with some interesting background for the characters. You might want to have some ongoing themes to tie all these different elements together. Plot twists? Probably those too. I'm trying to get a good foundation for the story. It has been really fun to think about.