The picture you see above (without the redactions) has been my desktop image for the last year.
I’ve tried a few different motivational tricks to get me through NaNo– to keep me inspired by my own progress, even when it feels like I’m going nowhere. This little color-coded tracker system is by far one of my favorites.
I acknowledge that this post is a couple days late, and I apologize. There are two main reasons. The first is that this post was a big descriptive undertaking, and I wanted to do it justice. The second is that I was having internet problems that prevented me from working on it on the nights I needed to be.
My sincerest apologies, but without further ado, here is my post:
Y’all are probably getting really tired of seeing this thing by now.
No promises that I’ll completely shut up about Casters’ Court soon, as it’s still at the forefront of my work pile, but I should be tuning it down a bit in the near future. But before I do so, I want to explain my logo– especially who’s who!
I managed to fit the entire Court in the logo, which I was proud of. Finding/making silhouettes to represent each of their personalities was considerably harder than I imagined when I set out. It’s not perfect– I’m not an artist– but it captures the feel I was going for. Describing the choices I made in depicting them will give a clearer idea of the characters themselves, so let’s dive in!
There’s a new segment joining the blog.
Do you ever have an interaction, or see an object, or hear a sentence out-of-context, then let your brain run wild with possibilities? What if something were slightly off about it? What if the obvious reasonable explanation really isn’t the explanation at all?
What if?
Writers think like this all the time, but for comparison, instead of “what if this object were a different color?” we go straight to “WHAT IF IT EXPLODED AND THE SHARDS GOT ABDUCTED BY AN ALIEN RACE THAT ACTUALLY WASN’T SUPERIOR TO HUMANITY, BECAUSE THAT’S SO OVERDONE, AND THE SHARDS INTEGRATED INTO THE ALIENS AND GAVE THEIR PLANET THE LONG LOST THING THEY NEEDED?
Yeah, that’s how writer brain works.
Isn’t that superhero story you keep promising updates about supposed to be a serial?
Why a serial, of all things?
Are serials really a thing anymore?
Do you actually have any updates on that superhero serial you keep talking about?
All great hypothetical questions from the Hypothetical Reader in My Mind. Let’s answer them!
This post is about what I want to be when I grow up.*
*Disclaimer: Over the past year, that ultimate goal has changed by the week, if not by the day or even hour. It has bounced back and forth. The pros and cons lists have circled around and around in my head until they ran themselves ragged. I’ve stared at the wall more than once with the ultimate thought, “well, that’s it. I’m not sure I can make it in anything I want to do with science, and a career in creative writing, for me, is laughable. I have no future.”
Those were the dark times, and hopefully, I’m past a lot of that now.
Calley Jones, Author 