I know the feeling about getting your inspiration going....

Honestly I'd say the reason it probably didn't get noticed is more the general quietude of your account. While my stories don't get the attention the art appears to some of my writing has gotten some comments, and I hope to do more but I would say if you want to, it can't hurt.

One of the problems is, most of my best ideas are solutions for OTHER people's writing problems. The stories I want to write never get written because there's no audience for them, or I can't translate what's in my head to what's on screen.

If someone gives me a world, with most of the details established, I can help them work through damned near any roadblock so long as the communication lines stay open. The back-and-forth has to happen for the creativity to flow. For my own stuff... I dunno. The one story I've been toying with for 5 years now is still just bare concepts; I can't even decide if I should include religions, gods, or magic/special abilities in it. Each one of those, if included, might change the structure of that story world entirely. And asking myself 'do I want to follow that path?'. That story world doesn't even have a world map yet. Just a general idea.

I usually work with a basic world map in my head for cases where I need to know if it's an island or whatever. Though at some point you just need to go with it and see where it leads. You can always redo it if you don't like it. For me, it usually starts around a character and a concept. Once I have those, I can fill them in with other details and it comes together, like my werewolf story. I knew I wanted an urban fantasy setting. I generally go with a female protagonist, so from there I just started answering questions. What her job would be was determined by what would work best with how she gets bitten, and then I started picking out the jobs I needed and see who would fill them.

Maybe it would help if you offered consulting services. I know for me when I get stuck I can eventually figure it out but it all depends on if/when inspiration strikes.

How have you been?

I used to do the 'start with the character' thing way back, but I found when I did that, when the world expanded as I wrote, I ended up making critical mistakes that undermined the entire story. Things like timeframe, travel distance, nations, etc. At one point I had the group of heroes follow one of two winding paths through the mountains, and end up at the foot of a lost hi-tech city. Thing is... if there was a winding road that was still navigable by that time (city abandoned several hundred years), then ANYONE could have taken the second route. There was no reason the city should have been left unknown at all if all it took was a right hand turn instead of a left hand turn. Not to mention the age of the city screwed up the time-plan I had for the rest of the damned world.

I also need to flesh out characters more before even thinking of incorporating them into stories. Most of my characters I have literally no backstory for except for what I make up on the spot as-needed. I can take old characters and reshape them for newer stories, but that means the character they were and the character they become are entirely different things. And I have difficulty making new characters to begin with. Applying them to the story world makes it that much harder.

I've 'consulted' a few times before... while it feels decent to help someone with a story or story ideas, there's no credit given at all in the end. Being a consultant means being a sounding-board that gets discarded once someone falls into the groove after they pass the roadblock.

I'm okay. Drained from work, with so little time of my own, and when I have time, I just end up doing nothing because my brain goes into Park and stays there. Once in a while I'll have a flash of inspiration, but by the time I'm in position to use it, the flash is gone and there's no ideas. Would that I didn't have to work all the time, or I could carry a notebook that no one would try to read from while I'm at work. I might be doing more.

I know how that is... I'm trying to plan a post apocalyptic story featuring the army versus the navy and I'm not exactly sure how to work the logistics of their conflict.... Air/Land vs water.... But yeah, there would have to be a way for them to find it but something to keep it hidden...

Timelines can be a bitch too... I had a plan for a neat tie in to something I was doing later, but I couldn't do it because the story ends BEFORE the thing it would tie into.... So no neat teaser.

Fleshing out characters is something I try to do as I go. When I know the job I need them for I start thinking about how they got to where they are. Why they do what they do and why it would make sense for them to act in such a way. I think I've gotten fairly good at it. I suppose it's not really that helpful though to talk about what goes on with my process.

I suppose there's that too. Still, anything that helps get the juices flowing can be beneficial.

Don't I know how that feels. At work it takes all of my energy to do the job and hold it together. At home I can be creative but it's hard to maintain it. I do what I can, but when you need to learn new skills and keep up the pace... It gets tiring.

It's good to hear from you.

Well, unless you're planning for either the Navy to come ashore or bombard from offshore, or the Army to suddenly have ships, or bombard FROM the shore... that's pretty much the only place they'd be coming into contact with each other. I think that might be the reason there's so much animosity between the branches of the military; they're intensely good at the things they specialize in, but when confronted with something outside their range, it frustrates them. Tanks don't swim unless you're going sci-fi, and ships don't ride the land, unless you're going sci-fi. Then the gear they can use would be omni-environment I suppose. Which defeats the purpose of having a specialized set of branches to a military instead of a general overall military.

I think the worst thing is, getting through part of a story with a moderately well-developed character, then discovering some aspect or item or event you could use for them that'd make them FANTASTIC...and then looking back through the story and realizing there is absolutely no way to use it without causing a massive detail rift in the story, possibly derailing it. LoL

Oh, I have to wear the Customer Service mask at work, and it drains so much out of me. I don't like forcing smiles, or being nice to assholes, or smiling and nodding to idiot bosses who make unrealistic demands. But they pay me stupid amounts of money to do my job, so on the Mask goes. Nothing like hiding what you really feel to drain you of all spirit.

Well, the army will have a near future airship they repair during book 1 and 2, so they'll have aerial capability but their forces are limited. The Navy has their ships but I'm still debating how the conflict will shape up.

I know that's happened to me once or twice... It's not fun. It's such a buzzkill especially when it is a systemic problem.

I know that feeling too. It's just not fun.

Try putting it on SoFurry instead. (or as well) It's supposed to be for written works, you might have better luck there.

http://www.sofurry.com/

I'll take a look at it. Maybe it'll be worth it. Not like I'm doing much else right now.