To Keep Me On Track

In order to keep myself on track with my writing, I need a calendar system and datelines. With this in mind, I have decided to create a regularly schedule blog post for my writings. I will post two days, (that's 2) out of the week that will be story inspired products. Some days it will be a character bio or timeline - which will be labeled as such and considered  Background Story Information pieces. The other day will be about my hassels as a writer and inspirational pieces of despair, agony, hope, laughter, crying the eyes out, and the many various emotional functions in between. However these days are more than likely subject to change in the next few weeks dependant on school and job situations/scheduling. My hope is for every tuesday/friday or tuesday/thursday or even Tues/Saturday as posting days...I really like the idea of a tuesday post, because it's...well...Tuesday (and I love how the word rolls of the tongue...tuesday....yeah). Like I said however, things can change. So for now I leave you with this promise of postage....every tuesday through Wednesday there will be a minimum of two posts, until I have this whole life thing under the ropes. Which means that on some days there may as well be two posts, or no posts. There could be a post on each of the three days, but there will always be two posts within those three days...and I'm asking people out there to help me keep to it. Especially any writing partners out there, ;)

And now just for some good news of sorts, I'm announcing a second fictional series I'm working on. I don't know whether they will be short stories, novellas, or even a full novelization of themselves, but I have an idea of teenaged superheros for a story that will be targeted towards pre-teen/teenagers. I'm not sure what I'm going to call it yet, but it involves a group of three or four teenagers who have discovered they have special powers (whether through accidental lab experiments, radioactive bug bites, or inherited genes) and must attend a special school for gifted youngsters (very x-menish I know, but stick with me). Now this is all pre-planning stages. I'm not actually writing it yet, but I am developing the world in which it takes place and the characters involved within it.

Over the years I've been thinking its time that a new group of heroes take the limelight in the vast universes of superhero-ness...and why not start out with something in regular literature instead of comic books for a change? If anyone has ideas on super powers they would like to see, or even a name for the collection of stories I'll listen to suggestions. :D

Well there we go, the unveiling of a new project and a work schedule...hopefully this can keep things going in my personal quest for publishment (<--is that even a word?) I hope you have enjoyed this small little update and I look forward to divulging more infomration soon :D

Character Bio: Rae'a Alemar

Name: Rae'a Alemar
Race: Terran aka human
Homeworld: Colony world 21589 - Silca

Vocation: Formerly- Esper Communications Officer assigned to the Crescent Moon,
               Currently- Business Associate and Transactor of Reladine Industries

Appearance: height approx. 5'4 weight approx. 115 lbs. has a small thin build with long light red hair and emerald like eyes are her main key features. Narrow jawline, high cheekbones, and a small nose structure make her appear almost fox like. Normally is seen in a grey business suit, but occasionally tends to visit Zek's Den in a black jumpsuit with matching leather vest and a two fully automatic blaster pistols holstered one on each hip. Her shoulder length hair is normally worn up in a ponytail and is rarely seen let down.

Psychic Powers: A Rank Seven Telepath. Has the power to read the minds of others, influence the thoughts of weaker minds (but not control), cause hallucinations, and inflict pain through direct manipulation of the nervous system.

Early Life: Grew up on Silca with her parents till the age of five when they had her tested for psychic abilities. She was then sent to the Esper Academy on Craius, one of the Core Worlds. During her years there, she became one of the best students to come through the academy in generations only being rivaled by another human by the name of James Cevan. The two became rivals quickly and slowly formed a friendship after a freak accident during a training mission nearly killed them both. When Cevan was given command of a ship crew she demanded the newly appointed captain that she be part of his crew.

Shengar: It's unclear what her role was in the events that happened at the small planet Shengar in the Delta Quadrant. All that is known is she followed Captain Cevan and when he deserted she joined him with no clear reasons as to why.

Recent History: After Shengar, she drops of the universal radar like everyone else of the Crescent Moon's crew. For a few years she drifted from planet to planet, taking whatever jobs she could land. During one such mission, Maxwell Reladine offered her a position in his new enterprenuerial debut. She's been with him ever since. Working as a liason in the Lucky Chance located in the Cil system, Rae'a spends most her time making sure clients and employees of Reladine Industries stay true to contracts and are completely honest/up front with business propositions.

Timeline: The HyperGate Wars

Event: The HyperGate Wars

When: 5000 BCT (Before Current Time)

What: A series of 10 Wars spanning 500 years  involving various races or factions trying to control the HyperGates within the Galaxy, during a time when government were trying to connect the galaxy completely through them.

Starting in 5000 BCT, the first HyperGate War was a small skirmish really, not much of what the later wars would entail. A small group of freighter pilots on a small world launched a suicide mission on the single HyperGate within the small system of Uta. The First Worlds Republic was putting heavy taxes on the goods coming in and out of the Uta system and the people had enough of the tyranny the government was displaying. Within two days the freighter crews had completely captured the HyperGate and connecting control tower, but could not shut the Gate off from the network. Three days later the Republic ships entered the system and took back the Gate, squashing the hopes of the people within the system. However defeated they might have been, their cause ignited a fervor across the galaxy.

Fifty years passed before events within the Galaxy before the Second HyperGate War occured. a group of small planets in the Cratis Systems banded together their small militaries and took out the Republic ships guarding the HyperGate there. For thirty years they lasted holding off the system, attacking any ships coming through the Hypergate. However due to limited recources within the system, the planets began to fight amongst themselves for control. During the chaos of the small inter-planetary wars, the Republic swept in and took control of the Gate and the Worlds.

After the events of the Cratis systems, various small factions built up and tried to accomplish what they did. While none of them were large enough to qualify as a war, the accumilation of these skirmishes (around 100) caused historians to link the next 47 years as the Third Hyperspace War.

The next HyperGate War was not a war over the HyperGates in general, but trading routes and access points being discussed at the time provoked the Senarri race retreating form the First Worlds Republic, in which they took control of over 1/3 of the Space Navy and retreated to their corner of the Galaxy. Over the next 15 years the Senarri pushed out from their controlled worlds, defeating the Republic one battle after the next. However the Senarri were betrayed by one of their leaders and the Republic was able to defeat them in one final blow. Over the next five hundred years the Senarri had to work their way back up to join the rest of the galaxy in the governing body, even then considered like second class citizens.

The Fifth Hypergate War involved a planet secretly building their own HyperGate, linking it to the system network without the Republic knowing. Once they established this connection, they blew up the previous Hypergate, effectively cutting off the rest of the galaxy from them. The Republic was content to leave the system out in the voids of space until pirate ships from the same system started using their Gate to attack travelling freighter ships. Hijacking one such pirate ship, a crew of Republic commandoes entered the lost system and returned it back to the Republic, giving the access codes for the new Gate as well.

Not much is known of the Sixth, Seventh, and Eigth HyperGate Wars. Little was recorded about them other than that they occurred, each trying to accomplish what happened within the fifth war. None actually succeded in building a new hypergate but one system, the Nellis system, did destroy it's hypergate. No ships to this date have been sent to help return the world to the galaxy, the worlds status is unknown.

The Ninth HyperGate War was a secret war, a political war. Over twenty years soldiers, crews, and high ranking officers from a select number of races and worlds secretly formed a new government within the old Republic, calling themselves the Confederate Worlds Alliance. Through use of the military and governmental funds, the secret CWA was able to build hidden inactive HyperGates , waiting for the day to be connected to the network of worlds. At the end of the political turn over, the CWA announced itself and broke away from the Republic stating that the tyranny of the previous government needed to end. Not wanting to start a war, the Republic spent years trying to bring back the CWA worlds. While trying to attempt this, they were losing many worlds and peoples to the CWA.

After another ten years of trying, the Republic had enough and fired the first shots against civilian ships trying to flee to the CWA. With a new low brought to the Republic, the CWA initiated all the hidden HyperGates and attacked the Republic. The Tenth and final Hypergate War was a civil war amongst the galaxy, lasting over 50 years. The CWA had the upper hand because of their secret hypergates, in which the FWR tried to create new ones, but just couldn't do so in time. Eventually the Republic lost and the rest of the galaxy was brought under the CWA's rule.

After this, the CWA reconnected all the old and new hypergates together and turning them into a free intergalactic travelway, unlike the Republic which saw the HyperGates as a vast money making tool.

The GAP

       In my last blog, I mentioned how Wil Wheaton talked about the Cult of Done Manifest on his G+ account about a week or so ago. In the main portion of that post, he had displayed a picture from Ira Glass and how it was his way of expressing to young and/or new writers about this strange little portion of the creative process that we all call, "The Gap." The picture itself is really creative and a great tool to use. Definitely something that I am currently holding onto and waiting to place it up in my soon to be new writing area. I recommend that you all take up the practice of also doing such things and pin up the Cult of Done Manifesto and this picture in your respective writing areas. Put them both up in all your writing areas, heck put them up on your bathroom wall so you can also have something to read while you're visiting the porcelain throne.

I dont think there can be anything said truer than this image. So thanks to Ira Glass and his words of wisdom. I have struggled with the gap and continue to struggle with it always. A never ending war it shall be, but one I will conquer with resilience and vigor....hopefully. Either that or I'll give up and go live in a van down by the river, the former is much more preferable however.

Getting it Done, Manifesto style.

       Throughout a writing process, everyone has tendencies to procrastinate and drop what we've been writing on. I'm one of the best shining examples of this phenomena. Strange as it seems, it happens. Throughout my life I've always been trying to find things to keep me on task, to keep me motivated but nothing seems to do the trick. I'd get a writing partner and then just ignore said person. I'd set up due dates and just push them back or completely erase them from the calendar. It happens more often than I'd like it to, which saddens my soul everytime it does happen.

       During one of my usual peruses around the internet (I was currently using Google+), I found some tidbits of information from celeb actor, Wil Wheaton. He posted a pic and link to something a friend of his passed along and mentioned this thing called the "Cult of Done Manifesto." I was curious. I had never heard of this manifesto and I decided to look it up. I found out that  it's been passed around the internet a bunch to the point where I didn't really care to look up who created it in the first place. Call me a lazy researcher (I only did one google search with about a billion results all with the same thing, just posted on different sites). I didn't really care who said/created this thing, I'm just glad it was made. I saw somewhere on a site from the creators saying that it was written in twenty minutes because that was all the time they had to do it in. Which I think is a great idea. The whole thing is a  list of rules/guidlines entitled the "Cult of Done Manifesto." It's a really good list of things for all persons who are in the creative process so it's not necesarrily JUST for writers. Most people have probably seen this by now, but I just want to repost the list up here for those who haven't and as a reminder to those of us who have. I think we all need to print out a copy of these rules at seventy two sized font, and post them in the areas that we write the most (I could think of a few great places for me to put mine). So here's the manifesto, with no further adieu.

Cult of Done Manifesto

1. There are three states of being. Not Knowing, Action, and Completeion

2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.

3. There is no editing stage

4. Pretending you know what you are doing is almost the same as knowing what you're doing, so just accept that you know what you are doing even if you don't and do it.

5. Banish procrastination. If you take more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.

6. The point of being done is not to finish, but to get other things done.

7. Once you're done, you can throw it away.

8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.

9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.

10. Failure counts as being done. So make mistakes.

11. Destruction is a variant of done.

12. If you have an Idea and post it on the internet, that is the ghost of done.

13. Done is the engine of more.

I personally think there should be a few more rules/guidelines added to the list, but I think in adding a few ideas of my own would result in a new idea, or rather a similar idea but with different meanings behind it. Hopefully tomorrow I'm going to be posting up a list of my own that has to do with things specifically geared towards keeping up with a schedule, but also of thoughts to help guide the creative process. Not sure what it will all entail, so I guess my friends you'll have to stay tuned and find out. I'll be posting both this and my own list on a page (mine will obviously come later, but the manifesto will be up tonight).

For now keep on writing, especially if it's not perfect.

~N.y. Kamp

Welcome

Welcome to "The Writing Pit," a place that I hope all aspiring writers and maybe even fans, can visit and see what I'm doing with my own writing career. I'll be posting up on here tidbits of my stuff, as well as my own thoughts on what it means to be a writer, things I find on the internet that are interesting/inspiring for writers, as well as my own personal works of fiction. I really hope people can enjoy this blog as it helps me focus on what it means to be a full time fiction writer and maybe one day I'll actually post something that will inspire others to continue on with their writing.