Writing in the dark

My FFXIV Character Aralina Arai'li

As most of you know I’m a pretty avid gamer. My ultimate game being the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV.

Aralina

In this game, there are free companies, or what most people call guilds in other games. It’s a group of players who band together to help each other out in game. Our FC is large and one of the top FCs on our server. We also have several social media outlets to stay in contact with each other. Many of them I am in charge of as an officer of our FC. One of these outlets is Discord. A voice and text chat app. You can talk with your friends while running content in game for quicker easier communication or just sit and BS.

What does this have to do with writing? Wait just a moment, I’m getting there.

So I’m working on my edits late one night in an empty house. One of my writing quirks is I like to watch paranormal shows and spooky movies while I write. I’m making progress, chugging along through the WIP and all of a sudden I hear a loud and boisterous “Ahoy, Aralina!”

Aralina and Siegfried

My Chihuahua and I jumped clear out of the chair.

I realize that somehow Discord had connected of its own accord and my friend Siegfried had popped into the channel I was unwittingly sitting in to check in on me. Flustered, I closed the chat without a reply. This prompted Sieg to message me to see if I was ok (because he is a super sweet dude!) and I then had to explain how he had scared the pee out of me and my little dog too…

So kids, lesson learned. Always ensure discord is disconnected when writing horror in a dark empty house while watching paranormal shows.

Clawing my way back

I’ve been quiet far too long. I had given up. I didn’t feel I could or should write, I didn’t think I was much of an artist, and my overall faith in my own worth was at an all-time low.

That has changed. My family is building me back up. They push me to be better, not for their sake, but for my own well being. They push me to write, drag me out of the house and insist on spending time with me. They are extremely vocal about my capabilities as a writer, to a point where I am clawing my way back to the keyboard each day to tackle, “just one more chapter…”

I want to do this for myself. I want to succeed and show myself how wrong I am about myself. I guess you could say I am starting my new year's resolution a month early. My goals are to finish my edits for Wild Fire, outline and write the sequel, finish writing Mommas Here, and of course more blogging!

I have many things to write about these days, from the armored combat league our family is obsessed with, to my attempts at streaming and gaming, and then there is the writing and the writing stream I've been working on. I’m getting excited just typing this!

Yep, it’s time to change my way of thinking. This isn’t work. This is fun. I’m a lucky girl to have such supportive family to remind me of what a gift I have!

I hope you will bear with me as I excavate this talent, and share with me in the rediscovery of my love of writing!

Creating Happy

It's been a rough start to a new year. It seems like whatever can go wrong... will go wrong. Not going to lie, it's taken nearly all the steam I had built up just to keep my lil' noggin above the water and keep from drowning.

As usual, I turn to creativity to rejuvenate that steam. I don't know why making art of any form seems to pull me from the gloom I settle into. It starts with doodles on paper, then progresses to photoshop paintings, and if I'm lucky I pick up enough momentum to write.

This week I have opened up Wild Fire for the absolute final edit. Everyone will be happy and I can go on to work on my other works without complaint that I should finish WF first. I'm chugging right along on the edits, though, and after such a long absence from this story, I'm actually enjoying the read through.

I've started to stream my art from time to time. It's not much right now because I haven't been consistent, but I hope to make a real go at it. It pushes me out of the shy shell and forces me to socialize a bit. Keep an eye out for my next stream!

I'm also contemplating opening up art commissions... Something I've never done and am nearly terrified of doing. I still carry plenty of self-doubts that I'm good enough to attempt that venture. I did, however, learn to make twitch emotes today, and gifted a streamer I was watching the first one I ever made. He was cracking me up while playing FFXIV and his cat wanted in his way. He kept yelling "CAT! No cat not now!"

So I did what I do when something amuses me, and doodled it. Then since I was studying how to make emotes, I turned it into one.

The streamer thought it was so cute and thanked me on stream! Yay!

I'll take all the happy I can get right now, even if it is giving away free emotes to strangers. What can I say, making other people happy, makes me happy!