*screams in background*

Tomorrow is the anniversary of a decision I made to help writers think differently about what they’re writing, to give them one more perspective in a vast sea of other advice- and perspective-givers, but you’ve shown that it wasn’t a waste of time. You’ve stuck with me, and let me share with you what I know; you’ve let me encourage you, and you’ve let me in on a very special part of yourself: your stories and your dreams. Thank you! To celebrate the milestone, here’s your annual round up of what we’ve accomplished this year.

Two-Year Blogaversary masterpost Three-Year Blogaversary masterpost

We added post series on Creature Companions, Dialogue, Relationships, Space Building, and we’ve picked up the Magic Building series again to talk about practitioner tropes. Night of Asking and the Night of Musing events continued strong, and you all indulged me with the Title Stories meme. The gmail for one-on-one consultations still doles out advice to those in need of longer conversations; the NaNo Chatzy room returned; and you tolerated my 4th State of the Blog(ger) Address. Take a look down this year’s memory lane:

Process:

Getting Back In the Swing of Things

Ways To Narrow Down Ideas

What To Do When Ideas Are Lacking

Fleshing Out Ideas

How To Choose Ideas That Last

Is My Plot Too Full?

Plotting: Modifying The 10-Point Plot Model For Multiple-Narrator POVs

Plotting: Staggering Side Plot Climaxes

Plotting: When Side Characters’ Stories Are More Intriguing

Retooling A Character To Really Be Something

Character Arcs: Jerks & Nice Characters

Character Arcs: Static VS. Dynamic

Worldbuilding Without Burning Out

Creating Immersive Worlds

Texture Building & Building Up An Undeveloped World

Planning For Happy or Bittersweet Endings

Secondhand Embarrassment

Write What You Want To Read And Why It May Or May Not Work

Thinking Yourself Out Of Corners

Staying Motivated During Redrafting

Handling Rejection

Craft:

Things I Want To See More Of: (part one) (part two)

Things I Want To See Less Of: (part one) (part two)

Expanding Plots & Connecting Points

Characterization Without Cramming

Describing Familiar Places

Scare Your Readers

Writing Third Person Omniscient

First Person Narration VS. Third Person Limited

Forming Narrative Voice Outside Of Dialogue

Multiple-Narrator POV With Limited Numbers Of Narrators

Telling Stories Over Decades

Naming Consistent With World

Naming: Desert Desert & The Dark Mountain

Determining Time Period

Translation Convention

Retelling The Classics

Showing A Character’s Age In First Person POV

Villains Hiding In Plain Sight

Writing Characters From A Group Not Your Own

Writing Queerplatonic Relationships

From Fanfiction To Original Fiction

National Novel Planning Month:

Returning to the second half of a novel

Notes to make during re-reads

Setting up a back-up idea

Listen to your sounding-boards

NaNo prep for short stories and essays

Prepping from scratch on short notice

National Novel Writing Month:

Week One: Never Too Early to Start

Week Two: Never Too Late to Start

Week Three: You’ve Been Part of Something Huge

Week Four: My Hope For You

Week Five: Meeting More Than Wordcount Goals

Grammar & Publishing:

Pros and Cons of Pseudonyms

The Proper Use of En- and Em-dashes

The Proper Punctuation Of Dialogue

Querying An Illustrated Story Aimed 8-12

Topical Discussions:

Places to Learn Culture

Separating Mythical Creatures With Similar Traits

Differentiating Types of Magic In Various Races

What Position Do Centaur Sleep In?

Non-Harry Potter Wands

Life On a Water World

Blending Magic & Technology

Contraception in Fantasy

Cultural Ideas Of Record Keeping & History

Time Travel

Religion Or Philosophy?

Combining Disparate Ideas: Western & Fantasy

Drug Use In the Middle Ages

Kingdoms Grown From Scratch

Why Was Harry Potter So Popular?

Centaur, Dryads, and Merfolk

Creating Alien Species

An Exercise In Developing Demigods

Book Recommendations:

The Horse and His Boy

The Paper Magician

The Hangman’s Daughter

Pear’s Personal Favorites

Encouragement:

I don’t feel like I have enough experience

Similar but not the same (x)

Trust in your ability to grow

How to celebrate working out a sticky bit

For all you non-NaNo-ers out there

Building confidence

I used to be good…what now?

Is it wrong to write as much for validation as for pleasure?

My yearbook photo was a picture of some random baby off of Google I photoshopped my 17 year-old self’s head onto. It made it in.

Slipped a video titled “hot busty lesbian porn” into the personal folders of everyone in my computer class, which after they all crowded around to see what it was, turned out to be the video for Never Gonna Give You Up (it was 2007, so not yet a worn out joke). Thanks to them (like idiots) deciding to swarm a computer with sound, the computer lab filled up with cheesy ‘80s pop and the sound of me laughing so hard I ended up on the floor clutching my stomach.

Figured out that the school board internet filters blocked based on words and URLs, so I bypassed them simply by pinging their IP addresses, giving me free reign to Youtube and wherever else I felt like going to. I abused this power, and the fact I luckily had one of the computers with built-in speakers, to blast copious amounts of death metal all class.

Formed an air band called Minotaur Lizards whose career peak was “playing” a montage of classic rock songs during a school presentation.

Acted out the mock trial that made up the final for our senior year Law class as head prosecutor, wearing no shirt, no socks, a Dead Kennedys t-shirt, and shorts. Somehow got 10/10 for “appropriateness of dress” by being so utterly wrong that the teacher considered me to have looped back around.

Made sure that the yearbook contained the words “Harry Potter erotica”, and nobody realized until it had already gone to print.

Did accounting for some of the pot dealers in my year and ended up taking a good cash bonus home after my suggested “baked sale” hit it big.

Managed to get out of gym class the last two years on the promise to teachers that if I kept a friend, who was in a wheelchair and one of the above-mentioned dealers, occupied and out of trouble, I could skimp on doing class for non-test days and eke out a 75%.

Turned in so many bullshit essays and “I was bored on this vocabulary test so I write it all in haiku” results that teachers would be disappointed if I turned in ‘normal effort’ work.

Found out someone I really disliked hated my laugh, and dialed up how totally hilarious I found Cool Runnings so much that my laughter got him into a hissy fit that ended with his suspension.

Figured out the school’s weak exits where one could slip through without being noticed, and began selling this information to people once our school cut its truancy officer for budget reasons.

Managed to send through enough filthily-worded Valentine’s Day candygrams with the help of a friend on the inside that there were no candygrams the next year.

Did most of my work for my last year on a single piece of paper I’d just fold up and stick back in my pocket out of general laziness and my lack of need for notes. Math teacher kept poking fun at it, which led to an escalating war of attrition that ended when I handed in a test written on a corn tortilla.