Day 20 (26 In Base 7) Of Rewriting My Novel.

Day 47 (1:23) of rewriting my novel

I finished Part 3 today! Like all the others, I'm sure it's a hot mess that doesn't quite fit together, but it's a first draft and that makes me proud of it.

I've reached about ~57k words, and that's actually the most I've ever written on a single thing, which I'm also proud of.

Today was literally just filler scenes. Mind-bendingly drivelous filler scenes. Well, they weren't just incoherent babbling from me, Somehow, I have to plan out Part Four tomorrow, but I have a big drive tomorrow, too, so I may take a day away from writing. I dunno, yet. Stay tuned.

Usual suspects: @quillswriting @oldfashionedidiot

If you would like to be added to one of my taglists, please see this post or DM me!

a list of 100+ buildings to put in your fantasy town

academy

adventurer's guild

alchemist

apiary

apothecary

aquarium

armory

art gallery

bakery

bank

barber

barracks

bathhouse

blacksmith

boathouse

book store

bookbinder

botanical garden

brothel

butcher

carpenter

cartographer

casino

castle

cobbler

coffee shop

council chamber

court house

crypt for the noble family

dentist

distillery

docks

dovecot

dyer

embassy

farmer's market

fighting pit

fishmonger

fortune teller

gallows

gatehouse

general store

graveyard

greenhouses

guard post

guildhall

gymnasium

haberdashery

haunted house

hedge maze

herbalist

hospice

hospital

house for sale

inn

jail

jeweller

kindergarten

leatherworker

library

locksmith

mail courier

manor house

market

mayor's house

monastery

morgue

museum

music shop

observatory

orchard

orphanage

outhouse

paper maker

pawnshop

pet shop

potion shop

potter

printmaker

quest board

residence

restricted zone

sawmill

school

scribe

sewer entrance

sheriff's office

shrine

silversmith

spa

speakeasy

spice merchant

sports stadium

stables

street market

tailor

tannery

tavern

tax collector

tea house

temple

textile shop

theatre

thieves guild

thrift store

tinker's workshop

town crier post

town square

townhall

toy store

trinket shop

warehouse

watchtower

water mill

weaver

well

windmill

wishing well

wizard tower

Random but I'm a linguistics nerd from the Southern US here: am I the only one that says /ˈfʌk.ˌal/? With the stress on the "fuck?"

Although, in these sentences, I actually pronounce "fuck all" like it's still two separate words, with the stress on both syllables, like /ˈfʌk#ˈal/.

If you know about vpns do you also know about pirating stuff? Because id need some help😞

"Fuck all" means "nothing."

There are solid piracy guides on reddit, but I'm not really the correct person to answer questions about piracy.

Day 46 (1:22) of rewriting my novel

Yeah I finally wrote the Izi and Taguchif meet with governor Bunthun scene, which I decided was a lot shorter than I originally thought it might be?

Like, I make it very clear that she's pretty much just a power-hungry warlord who's jumping at the chance to assume complete control over Zenée adn start turning it into an enthostate and consolidate power by knocking out Tolftorrijv and the Middle States/Sedroste.

She's also a hard-ball. She demands control over Ir Nouzonif City only to immediately call back and be like "yeah, actually, just reparations and bordering land is fine."

The Usual Suspects: @oldfashionedidiot@quillswriting

If you'd like to be added to my taglist, please respond to this post or DM me.

A free invitation to go off on main? It's hard NOT to pass this up.

I have been dying to talk recently about Tavisam, (M.I. tavisam, W.Z. tebisam, M.O. tawisaham.)

Tavisam is a sport much like American football or rugby, although admittedly less violent. The aim is simple: carry a large ball 120 m (to your opponent's goal.) It is nearly 1,000 years old, but only in the last 100 years has it become standardized.

Modern Tavisam

Modern Tavisam is played on a square field (120 m by 120 m) with fifteen players for each team, meaning each team has 30 players. The rules remain simple: carry the ball to your opponent's goal, which is a net at the other end of the field. The ball starts in the middle. Kicking, passing, rolling, and handing off the ball are all allowed.

While tackling isn't allowed, it's certainly a very physical game. It's completely allowed to take the ball from another player who's holding it. This often results in groups often all pulling on each other for the ball, especially to start the game.

To start the game, the ball is placed in the center of the field, and both teams must line up 12 m away from the ball. Once the horn (some fields still use a pistol blank) sounds, both teams race for possession of the ball.

If the ball goes out of bounds, the ball is replaced in the center, like the start of the game.

The goals at either end are 5 m tall and 15 m wide, placed due in the center.

The game can either end in a tie, win, or loss. The game ends after 120 minutes.

A foul is called at the referee's discretion. A foul is defined to be any act which could cause unnecessary harm to another player, including kicking, tackling, hitting, head-butting, or anything else which could injure another player.

Teams are allowed 2 substitutions every 30 minutes.

Historic Tavisam Games

University of Obizoe Tavisam Team vs. U. of Ir Nouzonif Tavisam Team

Summer of 855.

Outcome: Obizoe 12 - 2 Ir Nouzonif

Notes: The first recorded game of Tavisam played between two college teams, and also the first game in the East vs. West rivalry between Ir Nouzonif and Obizoe. It's said multiple fights broke out in the spectators' stands at the neutral site, played alongside the Great Inland Lake.

U. of Ir Nouzonif vs. Ir Nouzonif State U.

Autumn of 855

Outcome: UIN 5 - 3 INSU

Notes: The first game in the Ir Nouzonif rivalry: UIN vs. INSU. After losing the first 3 goals in 15 minutes, UIN pioneered the rotating defense on the fly. INSU didn't score another goal.

U. Obizoe vs. U. Tolftorrijv

Autumn of 855

Outcome: Obizoe 15 - 1 Tolftorrijv

Notes: Obizoe dominated Tolftorrijv in their first ever, true away game. Hearing about the rotating defense at UIN, they took it one step further and perfected it. The rotating defense would go unmatched for fifty years.

Odapir U. vs. UIN

Winter of 901

Outcome: Odapir 7 - 7 UIN

Notes: Many history writers say the sport stagnated until this game, when UIN agreed to play a historic Tavisam game with OU at a neutral site in Atepsi. UIN scored the first 4 goals, hunkering down with the rotating defense. Shockingly, OU deployed their weapon: the arrow attack. Without going into too much detail, they managed to draw the defense in on itself, and then take the defense away from the goal. Odapir scored the next 5. The game ended with a mob trampling the field once time ran out and the scoreboard read 7-7. This was also the beginning of the rivalry between OU and UIN.

Ir Nouzonif Admirals vs. Tolftorrijv Palms

Spring of 905

Outcome: INA 1 - 0 TT

Notes: The only goal in this game was scored with 5 minutes remaining on the clock in Tolftorrijv. This was also the first professional game, and INA figured out how to defend against the arrow attack.

I hope this is interesting!

Good morning everybody!! <3

I need some writing rambles. SO! This is an open call/tag to EVERYONE that sees this!

I want to know what writing you've been working on. Something you're dying to talk about, an OC you adore, a snippet you're proud of having written. ANYTHING!! I want to hear all of it!

You can post something and tag me, just comment, or even DM me! I don't care how you want to tell me, I just want to hear it all!!!

midnight mspaint drawings

*gong sfx*

tried doing comic accurate virska from memory

roxyy

sprites from memory

ok well this is just getting stupid

and minecraft ones

Hey! I'm David Peterson, and a few years ago, I wrote a book called Create Your Own Secret Language. It's a book that introduces middle grade readers to codes, ciphers, and elementary language creation. The age range is like 10-14, but skews a little bit older, as the work gets pretty complicated pretty quick. I think 12-13 is the best age range.

Anyway, I decided to look at the Amazon page for it a bit ago, and it's rated fairly well (4.5 at the moment), but there are some 1 star reviews, and I'm always curious about those. Usually they're way off, or thought the book was going to be something different (e.g. "This book doesn't teach you a thing about computer coding!"), but every so often there's some truth in there. (Oh, one not 1 star but lower rated review said they gave it to their 2nd grader, but they found it too complicated. I appreciate a review like that, because I am not at all surprised—I think it is too complicated for a 2nd grader—and I think a review like that is much more effective than a simple 10+ age range on the book.) The first 1 star rating I came to, though, was this:

Now calling a completely mild description of a teenage girl who has a crush on another girl controversial is something I take exception to, but I don't want to pile on this person. Instead I wanted to share how this section came to be in the book.

The book is essentially divided into four parts. The first three parts deal with different ciphers or codes that become more complicated, while the last part describes elementary language creation. The first three sections are each built around a message that the reader can decode, but with language creation, the possibilities are too numerous and too complicated, so there isn't an example to decode, or anything. It would've been too difficult.

For what the messages to decode are about, though, I could do, potentially, anything, so at first I thought to tie them into a world of anthropomorphic animals (an ongoing series of battles between cats and mice), with messages that are being intercepted and decoded. My editor rejected that. Then I redid it so that each section had an individual story that had to do with some famous work of literature. My editor rejected that as well. He explained that it needed to be something that was relevant to kids of the target age range. I was kind of at a loss, for a bit, but then I thought of a story of kids sending secret messages about their uncle who eats too many onions. I shared that, my editor loved it, and I was like, all right. I can do this.

The tough part for me in coming up with mini-stories to plan these coded messages around was coming up with a reason for them to be secret. That's the whole point of a code/cipher: A message you want to be sure no one else but the intended recipient can read in case the message is intercepted. With the first one, two kids are poking gentle fun at a family member, so they want to be sure no one else can read what they're writing. For the last one, a boy is confessing to a diary, because he feels bad that he allowed his cat to escape, but no one knows he did it (he does find the cat again). For the other, I was trying to think of plausible message-sending scenarios for a preteen/teen, and I thought of how we used to write notes in, honestly, 4th and 5th grade, but I aged it up a bit, and decided to have a story about a girl writing a note to her friend because she has a crush on another girl, and wants her friend's opinion/help.

Here's where the point of sharing this comes in. As I had originally written it, the girl's note to her friend was not just telling her friend about her crush, it was also a coming out note, and she was concerned what her parents would react poorly.

Anyway, I sent that off with the rest of my draft, and I got a bunch of comments back on the whole draft (as expected), but my editor also commented on that story, in particular. Specifically, he noted that not every LGBTQ+ story has to be a coming out story, the part about potential friction between her and her parents because of it was a little heavy for the book, and, in general, not every coming out story has to be traumatic.

That was all he said, but I immediately recognized the, in hindsight, obvious truth of all three points, and I was completely embarrassed. I changed it immediately, so that the story beats are that it's a crush, she's not sure if it'll be reciprocated, and she's also very busy with school and band and feels like this will be adding even more busy-ness to her daily life as a student/teen. Then I apologized for making such a blunder. My editor was very good about it—after all, that's what drafts and editors are for—and that was a relief, but I'm still embarrassed that I didn't think of it first.

But, of course, this is not my lived experience, not being a member of the LGBTQ+ community. This is the very reason why you have sensitivity readers—to provide a vantage point you're blind to. In this case, I was very fortunate to have an editor who was thinking ahead, and I'm very grateful that he was there to catch it. That editor, by the way, is Justin Krasner.

One reason I wanted to share this, though, is that while it always is a bit of a difficult thing to speak up, because there might be a negative reaction, sometimes there is no pushback at all. Indeed, sometimes the one being called out is grateful, because we all have blindspots due to our own lived experiences. You can't live every life. For that reason, your own experience will end up being valuable to someone at some point in time for no other reason than that you lived it and they didn't. And, by the by, this is also true for the present, because the lives we've lived cause us to see what's going on right before our eyes in different lights.

Anyway, this is a story that wouldn't have come out otherwise, so I wanted to be sure to let everyone know that Justin Krasner ensured that my book was a better book. An editor's job is often silent and thankless, so on Thanksgiving, I wanted to say thank you, Justin. <3

remember everyone if you google [subject] wiki and the top result is from fandom, literally scroll down like, at all. if an independent wiki exists it will almost be the second result, and it will almost always be better than the fandom wiki. a shocking number of people seem to be unaware of this technique

Literally how I'll be with Meiste Part One when I'm done with the first draft and I'm not excited for it lmfao.

I went into the second chapter of SaS just to edit it, but basically rewrote everything except for the very beginning LMAO.