Feeling...

Amazing.

   In contrast to my last quite personal post, I'm feeling bloody excellent at the moment. As you may have already read, I decided to take a big risk and push aside the story I've been working on since September to make way for something new. I just wasn't feeling it with that story - the world had no history, my characters had little depth, and I just wasn't looking forward to any of it. If I had gone about it a different way, it could easily have become a good book, but I made big mistakes right from the start, because I hadn't followed my own bloody posts. But I began work on something new this very weekend, and I have to say, I am very excited about it. My world has a good history, my main character has a solid lineage, and the plot is original.

   An original plot is not something I usually struggle with, and I pride myself on that. It seems, however, that the planning process can go wrong. The Creative Writing Tips series I've been working on  feature my best advice and how I plan my own works - unfortunately while all this planning applied to my trilogy, I did not apply it to my last book, which, I think, is why it failed before it had properly begun. This time, however, I actually read my own posts and found it a whole lot easier to formulate my plan, and, after just a few days, I have the book's plan more or less solid. In time, of course, it will change. My trilogy saw that happen many times. I'd write out the entire plan, neatly and clearly, and within a month, new things would be scribbled between lines, with arrows and whatnot all over it. After a while, the notes would get too much and I'd have to rewrite my plan, and again, within a few months of that, it would be covered in new notes again. And I love that, the story changes while I write it, with new ideas that fit in perfectly and often doesn't require me to go back and add or change anything, and I expect - no, I know - that it will happen again this time.

   But this isn't the only reason I'm feeling so positive. I've got new ideas for Peaches and Pebbles products again, and while I don't actually believe they will do amazingly well, I am actually still very excited about actually making them. If they don't work out then I'll keep them for myself, or use them for scrap. It won't be the end of the world. So I'm very excited about having physical projects to work on, as well as my book. Those are two areas that are extremely important to me, and to be feeling so positive about them both at the same time is truly rare. I also have a few personal projects I'm working on - I've got about five t-shirts to screen print for myself, but I'm waiting for the t-shirts to get in before I start. The t-shirts themselves are amazing, too, but I needed a smaller size, so I'm actually waiting on replacements. I'm also working on the Ohgma Infinium - a book within the game, Skyrim. It belongs to a Daedric Prince - I suppose you could say the Daedric Lords are somewhat akin to the Devil, because they contrast to the Aedra, who are purer Gods. It belongs to Hermaeus Mora, the Daedric Prince of Knowledge, and in the game, once acquired, if you read it you gain a huge number of skill-ups which help to progress not just your level but your skills as well. I got lucky, though, because after reading it, it is destroyed, but my game bugged and I got to keep it, so I've been able to use my copy as a full model rather than relying on pictures from the Web. So I'm also excited about that. The tough part is knowing what to put in it.

   Also, I had an amazing weekend with Seeg. I was thinking to myself a few weeks ago that my idea of a great weekend is either playing Skyrim all day long, or watching Skyrim all day long. Either suits me fine, and this weekend I just watched Seeg play Skyrim all day long on Saturday, and spent Friday and Sunday working obsessively over my new book's plan.

   There are a few other things that have made me happy lately but I don't quite remember them - I've been spoilt, I suppose! But I have to say, I'm really quite happy at the moment, and with any luck, I'll be able to start actually writing the book in the next couple of days! Whether it's a single book or a two-parter, I don't know yet - it depends entirely on how long it gets, and how many ideas I end up adding to it.

   What has everyone else been up to? Anyone else particularly happy? Is there a reason for it, or are you just generally happy?