The Prisoner Would Not Relent, and he Would Not Speak (a ficlet)

Oct9

Content includes unwilling capture, allusions to violence, broken bones, blood, and gore.

In the end, it took three guards to hold him down and two more to force the collar around his neck. He broke seventeen bones, only one of them (a pinkie) his own, knocked one of the guards unconscious, and came within a hair’s-breadth of killing a second – and that with his teeth.

Once the collar was on, however, he seemed strangely docile. He stopped fighting the guards at all, allowing them to put on the manacles and shackles, to take what was left of his clothing, and to lock the chains binding him to a loop in the floor. He spoke, quietly and constantly, from the moment the collar locked around his neck, in a language foreign to most of those in the cell.

“Leave us.” One woman had stayed distant from the act of binding him and thus remained unscathed, although a long splatter of blood decorated her robe. “Count to three hundred,” she aimed this order at the sole uninjured guard, “and then send in the attendants.”

The cell door closed behind the last guard. She took the prisoner’s chin in her hand, heedless of the tangle of beard or the trickle of blood. In a voice that would not carry and yet still filled the entire cell, she spoke back to him in the staccato syllables of his own language.

There was no-one to record the conversation, and neither of them would ever speak of it. But when the bath attendants came in with their basins and their scented soaps, they heard him say six words, the only words anyone had ever heard him say in their language.

“My life is in your hands.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/991739.html. You can comment here or there.

Nano (or other writing!) prep: Track your Words

Oct8

I was going to write up a post of links to word trackers, but this site has lots of the widgets.

Do you track your wordcount? When you’re doing nano, do you use their site exclusively, or do you keep your words somewhere else? A widget tracker? A spreadsheet? What about when you’re not doing nano?

I like tracking things. I like tracking things a lot.

My current monthly wordcount chart looks like:

Trackers1.png
some other charts and tables of mine visible here.

It was modified in part from Svenja Gosen’s awesome sheets, which I seriously recommend you check out.

While that’s where I started, there are a few other sites that look good for spreadsheet templates:

This one actually looks nice, though the page itself is a bit iffy.
Nidonocu’s site is a few years out of date, but their (2009) tracker includes a calculation for words per minute, which is interesting.
The Sprint Shack (follow them on twitter if you like wordsprints!) has a very stripped down words/day whole year tracking spreadsheet
Here’s another whole-year tracker.
Justin McLachlan’s makes good use of conditional formatting, showing you % complete and +/- goal numbers.
This form is so stripped down as to barely be worth the bother, but the tips are kind of interesting.
And this Nano Report Card has some nice journalling stuff, rather similar in concept to Svenja Gosen’s but with a less pretty interface and more journalling. (“Primary Writing Location?” “Morale?”)
This one comes with a big thermometer-like bar showing progress!

There are probably more; I only went through two pages of google results. <.<

Tracking is, I think, very individual. What do you want out of your tracking (if you want it?)

Do you know of other tracking resources – or even other SORTS of tracking resources? Let me know!


Bonus link: this page has some generators and some other interesting stuff as well as spreadsheet links.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/991072.html. You can comment here or there.

Protected: Pain Log

Oct7

This content is password-protected. To view it, please enter the password below.

This entry was posted on October 7, 2015, in Personal and tagged . Enter your password to view comments.

Starting a pain/exercise log

Oct7

Because it seems like the only way I actually write things down is if I blog it, sigh.

If for any reason you happen to want to be in on the “pain” filter, comment here. I don’t expect it will be very exciting. 😉

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/990215.html. You can comment here or there.

Nano (or other writing!) prep: Good name sites

Oct6

So, you’re writing something! Good, good, that’s always a good first step no wait.

So, you’re planning on writing something! (or pantsing, in which case come back to this post in November, or whenever you write it 😉

You probably have characters, and they probably need names.

(I got through two very long chapters of a theoretical serial without naming the characters, once. I’m pretty sure the Finder is just named Finder by now).

Names with Meaning
Behind The Name is the most accurate, comprehensive name site I’ve found.
Think Baby Names is also pretty good.
20,000 Names has nice lists: “Dark” Names. “Weather” Names. And so on.
Want to name a character appropriately for a historical American era?
the Social Security Database goes back to 1879 with the top names for each year.
Via [personal profile] anke: “In case anyone wants to name someone from Germany, www.beliebte-vornamen.de has lists of the most popular baby names from 1890 to the present. just pick the birth year and see“
And here’s a huge resource on historically accurate names: The SCA’s name articles
A Name-suggester site (“I like this name.” “Try these names.”) via [personal profile] meridian_rose

If you can still get your hands on a phone book, that’s a great way to pick out surnames.

Or check out Wikipedia’s lists of most common surnames by location.

Names with no Meaning
Fourteen Minutes has a lovely random-name-sound generator
Springhole has several name generators
Seventh Sanctum is like the granddaddy of name generators
Chaotic Shiny has quite a few name generators, too.
This one’s new to me (Mithril & Mages) but makes some fun names.
Serendipity Generators via [personal profile] meridian_rose

A list of Naming resources via [personal profile] meridian_rose

Baby Name Wizard, via [personal profile] inventrix and Cal’s long and useful discussion on Behind the Name and Baby name Wizard.

There! Now that all your male characters are no longer named Jack (or maybe that’s just my problem), you’re ready to go.

Well, I mean, your characters are ready to go…

…well, at least they have names.

Know any more great sites? Let me know!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/990164.html. You can comment here or there.

Appppppples (did I mention apples?)

Oct5

X posted from Google+

It’s Apple Season!

so far, we’ve made “crock pot cider” (cook quartered apples until squishy, strain) and “boiled cider” (also known as apple cider syrup: boil down cider until the consistency of maple syrup). We’ve also cooked apple cake, apple coffee cake, and apple pie, apple risotto and apple-butternut soup.

Next on the list are apple sauce, apple chutney, and apple butter, as well as apple cookies, apple-and-sausage savory pies, and apple kale soup. 

Anyone have a favorite apple recipe, esp. one that cans or freezes well?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/989509.html. You can comment here or there.

An Aunt Family Repost: Heirlooms and Old Lace

Oct5

Heirlooms and Old Lace

When Evangaline’s Aunt died, it fell to her to clean out the old house where her Aunt had lived and, before her Aunt Asta, her Aunt’s Aunt Ruan and so on. Family history went back four mour generations, but Evangaline felt as if, if she tracked it far enough, there would be an unbroken line of Aunts all the way into pre-history. As a childless Aunt herself – as the childless Aunt in her generation – she accepted that the house would now become hers, but not that she needed to keep the piles of accumulated auntieness that filled it….

The story that began it all has been touched up and reposted on Patreon, free for anyone to read!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/989251.html. You can comment here or there.

A Meme and a Writing Game – ask my characters things!

Oct4

Okay! I stole this from [personal profile] balsamandash, whose post is here; they stole it from [personal profile] thebonesofferalletters, whose post is here. And because October goes up to 31, I have 31 characters. The characters are from 15 different settings (Counting Fae Apoc, Addergoole, & Doomsday as separate…) so there’s a good chance your favorite setting is on here.

Here’s the game. I have a set of characters numbered from 1 to 31. You may ask them any questions you’d like, and you can keep the conversation going. You can ask them ICly or just as yourself. They will respond with an honest* answer and as people ask questions, I will update the post with who correlates to what number.

* they might lie!

You can:
ask multiple questions to one character.
ask questions of as many characters as you’d like.
ask the same question to different characters.
ask more questions of characters that have already been revealed.
ask additional/clarification/tangential questions in response to answers.
jump in on another answer/conversation if the subject sounds interesting to you and/or your character.
use original or fannish characters to ask/comment
leave your own character for people to ask questions to if you want, be it as a list form or as a singular character who you would like to play with.

1. Tess – The Planners
2. Rin – Reiassan/Rin & Girey
3.
4. Aoife – Vas’ World
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13: Basimontin –Space Accountant
14. Aquilina – Doomsday Academy
15.
16. Reynard – Fae Apoc
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29. Evangaline – The Aunt Family
30. Edora – Things Unspoken
31.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/989105.html. You can comment here or there.