Kenn Ghannon: Blog

...from my point of view.

Yesterday was the first day in about three weeks where I didn't write a single word. I had intended to - but my 'honey, do' list had become a bit long and my wife (rightfully) gets a bit perturbed when she has to ask me to do something multiple times.

It came at a good time, though. I'd literally pasted our hero into a corner in Chapter 23 and I had to step back and figure out how I'm going to get him out - he has to be in the open for the next part of the story and getting him there had me perplexed. I think I've solved it so I'll probably write a bit in there this afternoon. It's also become uncommonly long, so I'm probably going to have to split it into two chapters - with, I think, another two or three chapters after it. It should be enough to get this finished posting by the end of January or early February.

Crowd-source editing seems to be working okay; I'm getting some feedback from readers who are catching many (most? all?) of my myriad mistakes. I seem to have a problem with homonyms and 'lay' vs. 'lie' which has me heading back to the internet to re-read the rules...

Anyway, for those of you following 'Runesward', there will be no posts this weekend. Chapter 4 is queued up and awaiting approval and I'll post chapter 5 on Monday.

Thank you for your time and understanding,
KG

For whatever reason - native wishy-washiness or ADHD - I go hot and cold when writing. One of my New Year Resolutions is to stay dedicated to it; to force myself to write. It's what I've been doing for the past few weeks and I mostly finished Runesward thanks to it.

To that end, I'm going to try to list out my plans - subject to change - for the rest of this year in terms of story productivity I hope to achieve.

After part 1 of Runesward, I hope to complete 'Fairly CAPable', the follow-up to 'Pretty CAPable'. Once I complete 'Fairly CAPable', I'm going to go back and re-visit 'Ring of Command'. I still have my notes about future plot points (which included a sequel I'm not sure I still care enough about to write) and I think it's only fair I finish that off. Once I get there, I'll likely head to part 2 of Runesward, which I was planning to make a trilogy but I won't promise it. There's also the normal, inherent caveats about real life taking precedence and a few other commitments which have to come first (I try to be a man of my word).

As I said, I've been forcing myself to write the past three weeks, even when I didn't want to. It's generated a lot of trash - but much/most of it actually cleaned up pretty nicely and fit the Runesward story well. I did have a few problems with plot points - but the 'trash' actually took me in a new direction in some ways and cleaned up inconsistencies with the plot in others.

As some of you have been kind enough to point out, it's been quite some time since I've posted anything new here. I assure you, it isn't because I haven't been writing. I've been writing a ton. It's more or less because I haven't really finished anything. I have so many stories started but not finished, I sometimes have to go through my story vault to re-read what I've written just to remember what the story was about.

I'm fickle - or my muse is fickle...or maybe one or both of us suffer from Adult ADHD (I've often thought of how much I could accomplish if I just could find someone to prescribe me some Adder-all {sp?}). Sometimes I sit down to write one story and feel so bored with it, I write something else (or read SOL...or play a game...or watch television...you get the idea).

For the past month, I've been finishing the initial book/part/whatever of a story I started at least three years ago (I know, because that is how old the oldest file in the folder containing the story is from March of 2015). I still have not completed this initial book/part/whatever - but I'm close. I've actually been pushing myself to finish it for the past three weeks because I wanted to 'gift' it to all of you on January 1 of the New Year. Unfortunately for the story, my in-laws made their annual visit (again, unfortunately for the story but not for me; I genuinely like my in-laws and wish we didn't live so far from them) and I've been side-tracked a lot so it isn't complete...but I decided, against my better judgement, to post it anyway because it's so close and I've got the final couple of chapters to this part finished in my head.

So, I hope you like Runesward, part 1. Currently, I have twenty-one chapters finished and most of chapter twenty-two. I think I have two more Chapters to go but it could stretch to three, depending.

Oh...and I don't have an editor for this so I'm going to try 'crowd sourcing' it; this means if you read it and catch an error, email it to me and I'll try to be diligent about correcting it. I will even, if you wish, add your name to the tail end of the chapter you've corrected (first come, first served - so the first one to point out an error get their name in!) - just tell me how you'd like to be known.

Finally, I don't have a posting schedule for this. I was thinking about putting it out daily - but I can't commit to it. Sometimes, real life bites me in the butt and I just don't have time to do something as simple as uploading a chapter. Sorry.

I've received a number of e-mails asking whether I am still writing. I think some of these questions come because I've been helping Robberhands edit his 'The Black Rabbit' story (and if you're not already reading the story, you really should; it's a fascinating read and well worth the price of admission). I think some think that editing is taking up all of my time - au contraire; Robberhand's story needs very little in the way of editing. As a matter of fact, there are times I think I'm doing nothing but mucking up his perfectly good prose.

The truth is that I *AM* still writing (you've heard it here first!). I'm working on Calix's next gig (except that, as it reads now, it's boring and I really need to jazz it up), I'm working on a little story I've been writing (off and on) for near seven years now - 'Through the Mirror Darkley', and I've got a new one that has been popping through my head for years that I'm trying to actually get down on paper.

The problem is my muse (more or less). She is in desperate need of massive doses of Ritalin - or maybe Adderall. Every time I start one story, she interrupts me with another great story premise. It got so bad that I was up to fifty-four stories in my 'Active' bin - none of which had more than four chapters (except for the Calix story and the Darkley story). So, a few weeks ago, I cut and pasted ALL of my stories (except those two) into my 'Inactive' bin. Then, I started going through the inactive bin to clean it up. It turns out that I had four stories of perhaps three chapters each which all revolved around a near identical character - and the premise I'd written for each one was pretty darned good. So, I combined those into the story I'm actively writing right now that is tentatively called 'Runesward'. It's a little sword and sorcery thing I'm putting together that I have great hope for; I'm really kind of enjoying writing this (so far).

I think part of Runesward's appeal is that editing Robberhand's epic tale has put me in the mood for it. Perhaps another is that I've been watching the 'Mythica' movies (with a little 'Andromeda' thrown in - though how SF equates to Fantasy has me at a loss).

Anyway, the 'TL;DR' version (which I am far, far too late getting to) is that I am writing and I hope to put out another story this year - I'm just not sure which story will win.

I wonder how many of us are sitting here on the 'Home' page of SOL constantly hitting 'refresh' on our browser waiting for the next installment of Jay Cantrell's new work? Jay only promises installments 'early in the week' and 'late in the week' but trends towards Monday and Friday releases. I tend to spend an inordinate amount of time on Mondays and Fridays hitting the 'refresh' button (every five minutes or so) to see if he's uploaded it. Of course, on weeks when he chooses to upload on Tuesday/Saturday it's going to make for a long day...

If you haven't read one of Jay's excellent stories WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? There are truly great, epic stories on SOL and, trust me, his are some of the best.