The Ten Minute Story is a commission experiment I've decided to try. The idea is to see if I can write a quick glimpse of someone's character, write it well enough to satisfy both me and that someone, and to see if that someone would be okay paying for such a story.

Of course it'd be ridiculous to actually try and take writing commissions at this point in time. I'm not in a position for that, and frankly, I'm not yet experienced enough to warrant that. But this is an idea I've been tossing around. What if I set up a little booth at a convention somewhere, taking quick commissions for people's characters? And what if I could brighten their day by writing something they were happy with?

This happens with artists frequently at conventions. Pay however much, come back a little later in the con, get the hand-tailored art of your character. I like the idea of doing something like that with writing. And the only way to see if it's viable is to go ahead and try!

So far I've done about 6 of them, and the process gets a little bit better with every ounce of feedback I get. Plus it's a fun, albeit challenging, writing exercise. The project likely won't go anywhere, but I thought I'd try and see what happens.

Also, expect some more activity from me in the coming... whenever. :p

My story submission was accepted for the RMFC 2014 conbook! :D I had a few doubts about the story, but thanks to some help bouncing ideas off of some good friends the story came out fairly well, I'd say. I'm pretty proud of it :) I'll get around to uploading it a bit later, once I format it properly to make it look nice in FA's text display situation.

Now my project is to finish up "Living the Dream," a project I started freaking last year. And after that, the sky's the limit! Y'know... if I stick to it :p

One might think that RMFC is my biggest (only?) call to action. Last thing I did on FA (kinda the only thing I've ever done on FA, actually) was talk about RMFC. And here we are, one year later. Time for more RMFC.

As it turns out, doing things is hard. Like all grand plans, my plans to write over the summer have fizzled to a very late start. So much so that I stand here, three days to deadline, with nary a word on a page. Not even a single one. Well, okay, there's a few disjointed sentences. No, really. A couple sentences that I thought might be good. Now I just have to build a story around them.

Anyway. I fully intend to submit something to this year's RMFC conbook. It's one of my only claims to fame, being featured in that little thing, and I have every intention of having a submission accepted again. But waiting until crunch time does NOT lend itself to quality submission. Especially when you take into consideration the theme of this year. I've been having such a difficult time getting started on it because writing an engaging story featuring a mountaineering theme, well, it's gonna be a bit of a challenge, I think. Maybe not a very large one, not once I get down to it. Which is all it takes, I suppose. Just buckle down, get started, and let the rest go from there.

There is NO point to this journal entry. Just felt like saying that I'm hopping back to the game. I got some work to do, and I'm awfully late getting to it - but by God, I'mma get it done.

EDIT: Oh, I guess they extended the deadline another week. Maybe that means that all of the other artists are having the same problem I am. Sill, more time to make sure I get out something that I'm proud of :)

So, I've already written this journal entry. I promise I have. It's just that FA went down a few hours ago, which was really quite unfortunate, because I was just in the middle of (re)uploading all of my things that ended up being deleted about a week ago. Anyway. I don't feel like retyping the entire journal entry, so let's give you the abridged version.

Originally I was going to RMFC. Then I wasn't. Then I was. Then I wasn't. But now I am again - and this time it's locked in stone. We're driving up late, so we're gonna miss a lot of Friday, but that's okay. In the last post there was a lot of clever (I thought) work with fractions detailing the exact amount of convention we're gonna miss. It didn't end up being very much, and probably nobody would actually enjoy it except for me, so this time around I've chosen to eschew the fractions. Moving on.

The serial. It comes in seven installments, and I had intended for them all to be finished two days ago. I have finished five sevenths of them (AHA! Fractions). Turns out that keeping to a regular update schedule is difficult, even with only 1K words. Except that to me it seems to take a while to write 1K words - especially words that I'm comfortable with posting online. Maybe that makes me a slow writer. Ah well.

Anyway. As I was saying. I promise I had written those installments and posted them throughout the past few weeks. But you can't tell that, because all of my things ended up being reposted today. So, it WAS a serial work, and it actually did update on a regular schedule... you know, when I decided to adhere to it.

Anyway. The first version of this post was so much cooler. But now I must be off - I still have a number of things to reupload. x.x

If this was an actual serial work, this is the part where I would apologize to my readers, give an insufficient excuse, and promise that the update would be coming tomorrow.

These things are forthwith.

Thankfully, there's not any readers that require apologizing to, and since this is just a dry run at this sort of thing, I excuse myself from slipping up this once.

I left myself ample time in the evening to write part 3. I did not expect a social event (see? Already a lame excuse) to whisk me away - and I only just got back, and now I must sleep.

Part 3 is half way written, and the rest is up in my noggin. It won't take long to finish up, and I'll have it posted early tomorrow afternoon or so.

A lot has happened in the past month (life, as usual. We've all been there [in fact we still are there now]), and I haven't had time at all to begin my next writing project.

It's all very unfortunate because I really was quite excited to get started on it. I intended to write a series of short stories, to be published thrice a week, as a sort of beta test of an idea I've been throwing around. There's plenty of webcomics around, and I follow many of them. I don't see why you shouldn't be able to have that sort of format with literature.

Small snipets of a story, most of them one-offs, but with an overarching, slow-reaching story that follows through all of them. Of course, these would have to be quite short, each one self contained, and worth reading.

It's an interesting idea, to say the least.

Anyway, consider this project a field test. After just one page I've already discovered that 1K words is far too much, either for holding a consistent attention span, or for consistently writing. But nonetheless, here's piece one of my hopefully seven-installments of story.

Also, it occurs to me that I desperately need to get a (somewhat) interesting thumbnail for my stories. It's on my to-do list.

Quite some time ago I finally got the gumption to make this page, but for the most part it sat around collecting dust. That is, until the RMFC staff accepted my written submission to this year's conbook. I'm proud of that little story, and I'm glad it made it in - but what really caught my eye was their offer to link a webpage next to my story.

Hooray exposure - even tiny little amounts. Except that now I have to sweep off all the cobwebs, and get to uploading a few more of my things. Still, it's nice to have had a little fire lit under my hide.