[Caelum's Scrapbook] Use Your Words.

[Gossamer]

Aaaahhhhhh I wanna leave for the trip NOW!

Shall we sail to Syliras on the next tide?

[Caelum]

I admit I kinda want to. We just have to decide what city she's in. And, oh, how to put everything else on hold. We can bring Elise with us!

[Taylani]

She is cute! You guys going to be back by spring for Taylani's visit to RF?

[Caelum]

Not to worry, Taylani. They're going to Endrykas, we've decided, and will only be gone for the first ten days of Spring. Yay for strider speed.

[Shayna]

Um. I like Cae's new Avatar... Must.. go... write... posts... no must stay here and drool.

[Caelum]

Plot Notes, What? I have reached the point with Caelum that everything he has needs revamped and updated. His CS is only kind of up to date. I have threads I never added, grades I forgot to put in, and don’t even get me started on how his physical description has actually changed and how his post-creation history needs to, I don’t know, become a real thing that I’ve written and, oh, posted. Bottom line, no longer does his CS reflect who he is and where he’s been. It’s more like a fragment of an out of focus picture that was poorly photo-shopped. (You know, like all of the images I do of Caelum. ) It isn’t that the information on there is incorrect insomuch as its bloody esoteric. And his plot notes? For the love of all that is holy, those need updated. It isn’t that his goals have altered so much as they have expanded, but they have expanded exponentially and in hugely impacting ways. Further, even his character diamond has altered. I know. I know. Any of you who actually remember my ages ago scrap about character diamonds and that part when I said that YOU CAN NEVER CHANGE THEM? Well, I lied. Sort of. Here, I’ll quote myself. So what the hell kind of good does this do, right? Easy. In addition to assisting you in developing your character, it works right back into a character's goals and thus their plot and finally their entire story. The constant traits are not supposed to change. They are traits you are to remain true to with your character always, no matter what. (I say that, but I will also now say that they can change but only, only, only the character earns that change through epic plot work.) As these traits will always exist with your character, they enable you to better a) ascertain their goal, b) learn how these traits will both aid and hinder your character toward their goal. In other words: (a)Goal + (b)some of the Roadblocks and grease towards Goal (= Plot = Story) The situational traits do all the things the constant traits do. Use them in the same manner, but what they can do that the constant don't is crucial: they are more inclined to alter and in doing so display the evolution of your character during the course of the story. I bolded the relevant part. Yeah, the part where I left myself an out? That’s it. I don’t know if I can claim epic plot work with Caelum, but I can claim a whole lot of plot work. He’s changed. Not as much as he seems to have, and more than his enemies would credit. But he’s changed, and I need to readjust his diamond. In conclusion, I’m really just slapping this scrap up here to remind myself to continue to ramble about the tangle of Caelum’s goals, traits, and this massive knot of interconnecting plots I’ve managed to score.

[Caelum]

Day 14: It’s raining and there is no creamer for my coffee. My voice mail is filled with messages from one psychotic client who wants to move up the deadline by an entire week. I can feel my coworker staring me down through the walls of my office, attempting to guilt me into buying another one of her child’s frozen pastry fund raiser things and I’m pretty sure my boss just made a “memo” by standing in the middle of the central hall and bellowing about a time change for our Year End meeting. I haven’t had a cigarette in fourteen and a half days. Send help.

[Elysium]

Don't panic. We are sending a care package of chocolate, chewing gum and feminine beauty products. Now, might I dare ask you to talk about your job? What do you do? Are you a literary editor of some sort? What degree did you need to snag that? It's a field I've always wondered about.

[Caelum]

My nine to five (actually eight to five, but who’s counting?) is legal work/project management, actually. I landed this position with a locally owned and run pest control company about four years ago. It’s the sort of company that’s literally been around since the Great Depression, has over twenty offices, but still only got things like voice mail in the last three years. No kidding. That’s south Georgia for you. What I do for them is a combination of legal advice, accounting, and project management. I don’t have a title so much as I have a “department” because it the type of company we are basically means you’re a jill of all trades. If something needs doing and you have the requisite knowledge and skills to do it as well as a little extra time, then it ends up landing on your desk regardless of your job description and actual position. You know? I studied law, fiction, screenwriting, and PR in college with a healthy dose of history and theology for kicks. I ended up with a BA and about half a masters. I was an idiot and an idealist and I won’t even pretend otherwise. Because I bartended my way through school, I ended up in the hospitality business afterwards doing bar management for a riverboat casino, then group management for a hotel, and that spilled into event management and eventually got sick of the hours. No, I take that back. It wasn’t the hours I got sick of so much as it was the lifestyle that comes hand in hand with the hospitality industry. I think I got too old for it. Or maybe I just got too tired. Either way, I quit the industry and signed up for a paralegal course on the side, using my editorial clientele as an income source. I had been freelance copywriting, editing, content drafting, et cetera since I was eighteen and done it as a here and there thing. I went at it full force by calling in a few favors, landed a few ghost writer gigs, published a few things, and finished the paralegal certification to land a job with a big wig bankruptcy lawyer who represented the banks in the middle of the End Times of all Banks in the US of A. Eventually, three of our biggest clients went bankrupt themselves (you read the papers back then, I’m sure) and a fourth got shut down by the FBI. I was laid off, fell back again on freelancing, and eventually landed the job I have now because I wasn’t interested in taking on more jobs editing and writing for others when I could devote the creative energy to my own projects. So, yeah. Now I do both. The nine to five more than the freelancing because I’m working on my own stuff now for which I’ve set my own deadlines, etc. Well, sans the things I do with friends-not-clients on aforementioned writerly meetings. That’s different. No money involved there. So, ah. Yeah. That’s my job history. Anyone need a motion drafted? Heh.

[Caelum]

DAY 16