January 28, 2018

So like I said, I kind of have an idea how to deal with Fools Me Twice in my second draft — so the next few scenes are going to feel like they come out of nowhere. When I do my second go at this story (once I finish this first fire dumpster draft), I want to take the story back to Jason’s return. So, yeah, basically — if you’ve watched any Franco and Liz scene (ugh, why would you?) just…ignore it.

Bittersweet is officially moved to Wednesdays. Thanks for understanding! I hope we’ll get back to two chapters a week soon, but it might end up staying this way for a while. I don’t want to go months without posting anything new (and lord, the crap I put out in Workshop really doesn’t count) so it’s better to give myself a decent buffer.

I’ll keep y’all posted as to how my student teaching semester is going. I’m trying to do a ton of pre-planning and unit designs before I officially take over so that I’m not overwhelmed and I can give myself more time to write.

Business aside, Fool Me Twice, Part Seven is now updated.

January 26, 2018

Welp, I half expected this, but I’m glad we at least got through January before I had to make any changes.

I just finished my second week of student teaching and the amount of time I got to spend at home was…wow. Sad. I’m out the door at 6:30 every morning, I teach until about 2:30, I have a about an hour before either my second job starts or class, and most nights I’m home around 7 just so I can eat dinner and go to bed at 9:30. One night, I don’t even get home until almost 9 because of graduate seminar.

I haven’t had a ton of time for writing — I expect that to change as I settle in a bit more. I also won’t be working my other job three days a week, so that’s an extra night. But right now, I only have about ten chapters between what I’ve posted and what I’ve finished writing. I don’t feel great about a five week buffer — I feel lots better about a ten week buffer.

So…while I hate having to do this, I’m going to be scaling Bittersweet back to one chapter a week for a few weeks just to give me some more time to get my schedule straightened out and finish the last few chapters.

You’ll still get Workshop Sundays — and I might toss in a Micro Fiction one night if I can make that happen on Tuesdays. I’ll let you know for sure once I start having that night off.

Thanks for understanding guys 🙂 I’ll go back to twice a week as soon as possible! Let me know if I should be posting on Mondays or Wednesdays. I’m leaning towards Wednesdays to make the posting a bit even with Workshop Sundays. What do you guys think?

January 21, 2018

First, I’ve updated the Workshop with Fool Me Twice, Part Six. I wrote it in 28 minutes. Fool Me Twice has also moved to its own page and is also on the in progress page.  I think I’m starting to pinpoint some of the issues I’m having. I’m going to keep writing my planned scenes until the resolution of the primary storyline, but I think I need to move the story back a  bit — in the sense that I need to make it a rewrite of Jason returns story, which I sort of figured.

I need more of a build up and to incorporate more from Jason. It’ll be easier to get inside Jason’s head if I take him back to when he first came home. If that makes sense. I still want to write the resolution of what I’m setting up here because you guys are invested and I still need to play with the chronology and emotions of the scene.

In other CG news, I have renewed the domain dearisobel.org for another year and transferred the registration from GoDaddy to Dreamhost. This only affects you in the sense that CG might be unavailable for a little bit at some point this week. It shouldn’t be – but if it goes down, it will only be temporary. This will just make my life easier when it comes to renewing my registration every year.

I want to update my graphics — this layout has been up for two years and I like it. I’m just ready for a change. I had hoped that Jason and Elizabeth would have shared more scenes by now — I was trying to make a layout from their one scene back in October or November, but it wasn’t coming out just right. I also have to update the Bittersweet graphics for AJ’s character and Sean Kanan.

I just ordered new Liason DVDs from Stacey at CurlyQGrl. I’ve been ordering collections from her since I was fifteen, haha — my first Liz and Lucky VHS tapes arrived in 1999. I started to order again in 2013 to update to DVDs. I now have Liz and Lucky August 1, 1997 – November 1998, Jason and Elizabeth, August 1998-April 2001, August 2002-November 2006, and Patrick and Robin November 2005-April 2006, and then November 2007-February 2008. I cannot recommend her edits enough. They’re decently priced and she even shipped international to me in London in 2014!

My new edits will take me from November 2006 through March 2008. I intend to do another round of ordering in a month or so that will get me the May-July 2002, and then 11-15, which goes from March 2008 through Steve leaving in October 2012. At that point, my Liason collection will be complete. These DVDs have been ridiculously useful in helping me write from different time periods and I wanted the 2006-08 DVDs to better write some of the things I have planned.

Anyway, she has a ton of GH edits going back to the 1980s, so check out her site.

January 17, 2018

So I forgot to post an update for the main blog that Chapter Twelve was added to Bittersweet, but it all worked out somehow because I messed up setting the category for the chapter, so it got posted to the main blog and got emailed to the subscribers. Ha.

I am soooo tired from getting up at 5 AM, leaving for student teaching 6:30, going to my second job and not getting home until 7 PM. This semester is gonna suck hard.

See y’all this weekend!

January 16, 2018

I posted a survey yesterday trying to see what people are looking for from the next season of Damaged. I know like a hundred percent of my audience is on the Liason/Victor storyline train, so I wanted to see what else about the story you guys like. So if you have a minute, fill out the survey and help me figure out what to write.

January 15, 2018

Thanks for all the great responses to the last two chapters. I’m glad that everyone is as happy as I am to have this story back. I’m still working on finishing the last few chapters — with any luck, I’ll be able to finish it up this week and we’ll be on schedule to keep posting two chapters a week.

Bittersweet, Chapter Eleven

January 14, 2018

All right, I set the timer for 90 minutes to be sure I would get what I wanted done. I finished in about 65 minutes. I’m not completely sold on this — I think the Jason dialogue isn’t quite right. I haven’t hit the right note for 2018 Jason yet. But there’s some good stuff in here, I think.

Fool Me Twice – Part Five

January 12, 2018

So I just finished my first full week of what my life is going to look like for the next fifteen weeks — sort of. I had five full days of work, some lesson planning, two nights at my second job, two nights of classes, and I attempted to wash and dry my hair twice.

I am exhausted. Ha.

So I’m going to shuffle the schedule here at CG a little bit. Full fledged one hour Workshop is going to be on Sundays. I’m off that day, I’ll have the energy, and I feel like Fool Me Twice doesn’t work that well as a micro fiction. The one time I tried 30 minutes, I still went over and I wasn’t wild about the finished product. So in order to really give that story space, I need to do it in an hour.

So we’re switching to Workshop Sundays. I might still do micro fictions on Friday if I’m feeling it, but they won’t be scheduled.

Bittersweet is staying on Mondays and Wednesdays. I said a few days ago that I had worked out the kinks in the story and it’s coming along nicely. I got to about Chapter 25 today of about 32 overall that are planned, and it’s really writing itself. I liked the other material, but it was starting to feel forced. When I finish posting Bittersweet, I’ll definitely come back and give  you guys the scoop for what I changed and post all the material I ended up cutting. I ended up doing something I think was a lot more interesting and gave me some great options for the sequel.

I’ll see y’all on Sunday for the full workshop new schedule!