The AH Coffee Shop and Reading Room 09

I now have three works in process and I feel like that's one more than I want. I feel like I do best when I have two. that way if one isn't inspiring me at the moment , I can switch over. But I feel like three is one too many. i don't want to have to decide which of the other two is the one I want to address...

This minor dilemma is in force because after years of reading it but never writing it I all of a sudden put 5000 words into a science fiction story. No sex in it yet, but there will be. It's really more space opera than anything else, or at least it will be. Right now it is more of an alien invasion story, a bit of an Independence Day feel to it. But the plan is to have a mission launched to reach the invaders supposed point of origin. Whether it will be their real point of origin I haven't figured out yet. But I'm having fun trying to figure out how to give it some unique features in what seems to be an overcrowded genre...
 
Putzing around with a story I had written a few lines of almost a year ago. It could be read as a stand-alone stroker or a follow-up piece to a previous story.

I'm stuck on formatting while having barely written much. A character will be sending voice messages to someone--do I write it as if it's normal speech in paragraphs? Do I single it out as its own lines for impact? Italics or not?
Voice messages are spoken words, so they are perfectly fine to be written as dialogue. I'd probably make each one a separate paragraph.
 
It's cloudy right now but I'm expecting to see some sunshine later today. It was down right cool this morning at 62 degrees. It'll be cool enough to get out and do some weeding today if my back holds up.

For now, I've got a fresh pot of coffee going and the teapot is ready for the tea drinkers among us. There are pastries on the counter and I'm impatiently waiting for the Arkansas Black apples to ripen so I can make an apple crisp.

I'll be over in the corner working on the aftermath of a hot steamy scene, hoping to get a few more words written today. Ignore any sounds emanating from my table and drop by to chat.
 
It's cloudy right now but I'm expecting to see some sunshine later today. It was down right cool this morning at 62 degrees. It'll be cool enough to get out and do some weeding today if my back holds up.

For now, I've got a fresh pot of coffee going and the teapot is ready for the tea drinkers among us. There are pastries on the counter and I'm impatiently waiting for the Arkansas Black apples to ripen so I can make an apple crisp.

I'll be over in the corner working on the aftermath of a hot steamy scene, hoping to get a few more words written today. Ignore any sounds emanating from my table and drop by to chat.
62F would be about our normal morning temperature. I haven't seen it that low in a while, but they say it could happen in the next week.

I have to figure out what my protagonist thinks and feels when waking up the morning after his first conversation with Geisha Shizu.
 
Weird stuff .....

I've never been able to 'type'. Mashing keys is as close as I ever came, but at least I could sort of keep up with what the words were supposed to be.

Lately, I haven't been able to even do that. Fingers wander across the keyboard and I have to go back and edit almost every character group into a word. Pretty much a 100% error rate. I lose track of whatever word I wanted to put down and sometimes my finger will hover over a key trying to figure out which letter it is.
 
The beds for fall crops are ready to plant. I'll wait to do the planting until tomorrow when the temperatures are supposed to be cooler. Right now the plants look pretty happy in their nursery pots.
 
Weird stuff .....

I've never been able to 'type'. Mashing keys is as close as I ever came, but at least I could sort of keep up with what the words were supposed to be.

Lately, I haven't been able to even do that. Fingers wander across the keyboard and I have to go back and edit almost every character group into a word. Pretty much a 100% error rate. I lose track of whatever word I wanted to put down and sometimes my finger will hover over a key trying to figure out which letter it is.
Sorry to hear that - it must be irritating, especially when you lose the thread of what you were going to type.

I often mix up letters that sound similar, such as b and p, but I'll generally spot it quickly because I know how to spell! It doesn't stop my fingers from playing tricks, the little fucks.

If you're having increased difficulty in typing accurately, it might be due to any number of mental or physical changes. To be frank it might be an age related problem that is worth having checked out..... or find a speech-to-type app.
 
The beds for fall crops are ready to plant. I'll wait to do the planting until tomorrow when the temperatures are supposed to be cooler. Right now the plants look pretty happy in their nursery pots.
Oh, good point. A neighbour gave me some turnip plants in pots I need to plant out.
 
Turnips were my most-successful fall crop. The greens weren't great because of aphids, and my wife won't eat turnips. Aside from that...
I don't bother growing brassicas because of white cabbage butterfly. I don't like using insecticide on stuff i'm going to eat and don't have patience to pick the caterpillars off my hand. Plus they make the house smell like a retirement home ;)
 
Sometimes I suspect that the only reason my roommate grows turnips is encase everything else fails then she still had something that grew.

It makes the chickens happy though.
 
I bred the chickens for roosters so we could slaughter and eat them once. Everyone kept coming up with reasons why we couldn't slaughter them yet. 🤦‍♀️It's like I'm the only one that grew up with a farmers mentality or something.

The eggs are pretty good though.
 
I now have three works in process and I feel like that's one more than I want. I feel like I do best when I have two. that way if one isn't inspiring me at the moment , I can switch over. But I feel like three is one too many. i don't want to have to decide which of the other two is the one I want to address...

This minor dilemma is in force because after years of reading it but never writing it I all of a sudden put 5000 words into a science fiction story. No sex in it yet, but there will be. It's really more space opera than anything else, or at least it will be. Right now it is more of an alien invasion story, a bit of an Independence Day feel to it. But the plan is to have a mission launched to reach the invaders supposed point of origin. Whether it will be their real point of origin I haven't figured out yet. But I'm having fun trying to figure out how to give it some unique features in what seems to be an overcrowded genre...
I don't know how you do even two....I guarantee I would end up putting a character from story A into story B...or something from story A's plot, into story B...and worse...I would then completely leave it out of the story where it belongs, because I'll remember writing it...

No... it's one WIP at a time for me...I just cannot do more than that.
 
I don't know how you do even two....I guarantee I would end up putting a character from story A into story B...or something from story A's plot, into story B...and worse...I would then completely leave it out of the story where it belongs, because I'll remember writing it...

No... it's one WIP at a time for me...I just cannot do more than that.
I keep it straight cause, story A is about mermen, story B is about orcs, and story C is about therianthropes.
 
I am managing to getting back to working on a mood piece I had started for my alt. I'm not sure if it's easier or harder to swap between works when I am trying to write in different styles for the two works. And a mood piece in house alone during a storm as her is a very different story than the farcical piece I am writing for the Crime and Punishment event as me. They draw on the two opposite extremes of my palette.

Although (almost) all humans in my stories @NuclearFairy
 
Today turns out to be the six month anniversary of publishing my first story here. My first piece of non-fiction I wrote in half a century. Saying it like that makes me feel old. But this week turns out to be a crossroads of events for me current life, past, present, and future.

Tomorrow is the first day of school for my last year as a college professor. In many ways, I am ready to be done, bt academia has defined much of the last half of my life. I will miss the students. A lot. At least most of them.

Thursday is the 45th anniversary of first moving in with my SO. As life and career demanded, we lived a hundred and some miles apart for a little over a year shortly after,, but we got married and have been together continuously for over forty two years now.

I don't know how long my need to write will continue. The ratings of my current story notwithstanding, I think my writing has improved and hopefully will continue to do so.

But discovering this forum and this community means as much to me at this point as the writing. I have felt very welcomed, although I am undoubtedly too susceptible to red capes being waved in my face. And a handful of you have made me feel particularly welcomed. I look forward to your likes (of all flavors) and your PMs. Thank you. You mean a lot to me.
 
But discovering this forum and this community means as much to me at this point as the writing. I have felt very welcomed, although I am undoubtedly too susceptible to red capes being waved in my face. And a handful of you have made me feel particularly welcomed. I look forward to your likes (of all flavors) and your PMs. Thank you. You mean a lot to me.

I know, right? I've always thought of writing as a fundamentally lonely pastime. I had no idea I wanted to have a community for it. And then I started publishing here, and shortly after I found this forum, and here I've been ever since. So peculiar.
 
The AH Coffee Shop and Reading Room has something for everyone. Yes, writing is lonely and comes in spurts and drabs. I've written 110K in three months and about that same amount over two years, so I'm not a prolific writer.

There's a pot of coffee brewing and the teapot is hot and ready. There are donuts and muffins on the counter.

I'll be over in the corner working on my story. Stop by and chat if you're bored. I'll probably enjoy the interruption ...
 
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