Stephanie O'Brien
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Undertale Fan Comic: Just Cause, Page 6

28/12/2016

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Welp, it's a day later than planned, and terribly late at night, but here it is: the sixth page of Just Cause.


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​I think my favorite panel is the one where Papyrus gives Sans a noogie. It really illustrates how playful and carefree Papyrus is (when he's not stressing about his lack of friends), unaware that he's died in timelines past and will probably die again, while Sans quietly crumbles beneath the burden of that knowledge.


To get exclusive access to WIPs and advance viewing of completed chapters, please consider supporting me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/StephanieOBrien
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Catgirl Roommate is complete! Here are two important things I learned while writing this book:

20/12/2016

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This is an exciting week for me. My latest novel, Catgirl Roommate, is finally complete!

If you enjoy funny stories about cats (or humans with the ears, tail and mind of cats), and you want to laugh, roll your eyes, and say "I know, right? My cat does that too!", I highly recommend that you get yourself a copy!
​

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Creating this novel was an interesting challenge, with some big bumps along the road. Today, I want to share two success tips I got while writing Catgirl Roommate, as well as how to use those tips in your own life.

1. You DO have enough time - when you manage it right.

When you're running two businesses like I am, it can be a challenge to find time for everything.

Clients must be served, marketing must be done, paperwork has to be filed, follow-ups have to be done, and somewhere in the midst of all that, you've got to actually create the content you're selling.

And sleep. I suppose I ought to sleep at some point. That one sometimes gets neglected.

But that time management challenge is one that you CAN meet, if you keep two things in mind:

1. You have time for the things you set aside time for.

If your child broke their arm today, would you be able to find time to go to the doctor?

I'm sure you would. Suddenly, everything that seemed impossible to put off before would become a second priority, and you'd find time to get your child's arm fixed.

So I invite you to ask yourself: what is it that you long to do, that you want to make more of a priority?

What other activities are you prioritizing over it, that you can cancel, postpone, or spend less time on in order to make room for the thing you love but 'have no time for'?

And what little bits of time could you slip that activity into, that you previously weren't using to their fullest extent?

For example, I got through a lot of Catgirl Roommate's final rounds of editing by reading it while I flossed and brushed my teeth. Those two activities don't take much brainwork (though they do make typing hard), so I was able to multitask during them.

2. Your time belongs to you, and no one else.

It's true that people can purchase segments of your time. But you get to choose how much time you sell, and how much you give away.

I've often created obligations for myself where none needed to exist, and assumed that people needed things much more quickly than they did.

As a result, I gave away far too much of my valuable time, stressed myself out, and made it hard to accomplish the things I wanted to acheive.

When your day is booked, your day is booked. You aren't obligated to add extra activities to an already full plate.

If someone asks you to do something and you say "yes", then they ask you for more, you have the option to tell them that the lower-priority activity will need to be postponed.

Your time belongs to you. Process demands on it accordingly.

2. If you hit a setback, don't freak out.

Once upon a time, a laptop bag designer had a thought.

"What if I create a laptop bag that has a compartment for the computer, and I make it so it can unzip itself all the way and spit the laptop onto the ground? Yeah, that's a geat idea! There's no WAY this could possibly go wrong!"

You probably guessed it - it went wrong. One day, while I was working as a sighted guide, my computer bag unzipped itself and dumped my laptop on the floor, causing a brief power outage inside the machine.

For some reason, my text editor took that as its cue to convert every single character in the entire document into a hashtag.

And because I'd failed to back it up for an excessive amount of time, I went from being three quarters of the way through the second round of editing, to being back to the first draft.

I was pretty upset, but one of my friends made a good point: the loss of the first two rounds of editing could be a good thing. Maybe the finished product would be even better because of the extra attention.

I wasn't sure if he was right, though I certainly hoped he was.

So I set to work on re-editing the novel, and sure enough: I caught things that I'd missed the first two times, improved several key scenes, added an extra layer of depth to one of the characters, and created a better book than I would have if the first two rounds of editing had stuck.

So if you hit a setback in your life or business, ask yourself: "What is the opportunity in this? Can I do it again, better than the first time? Did I learn something valuable?

"And, more importantly, have I backed up all my files, so I won't feel like an idiot if my computer crashes today?"

Have you encountered these challenges in your life?

Have you had trouble finding time for the things you love?

Have you encountered setbacks and wanted to turn them into benefits?

And have you grabbed your copy of Catgirl Roommate yet?

I look forward to your comments!
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How to Write Concise and Compelling Place Descriptions In Books

13/12/2016

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​One area that often trips writers up is describing the places and scenery around their characters.

Some stories paint a sparse, vague picture that doesn't draw the readers in, while others plunge into story-stopping walls of intricate detail.

So how do you describe the place your characters occupy in a way that paints a vivid picture and awakens your readers’ emotions, without bogging down the story with too much description?

Today, Mica Scotti Kole will give you 5 useful tips for describing the settings in your books. Click the button below to check them out:


Click here to read the article
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What to do With a Neglected Character Arc and a Deadline

6/12/2016

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Have you ever had one of those times when you realized that somebody's character arc had been neglected, so you had to write and edit an extra scene (or possibly more) when the deadline for your Amazon presale was 13 days away?

​Yeah... me too.

There's one scene in Catgirl Rommate in which the main character, Sam, has to have a difficult conversation with a person who had given him a lot of trouble.

​He navigated the conversation in a joking, casual way that was designed to scare the other person off... but while the tactic was effective, something about it left a bad taste in my mouth.

Sure, it was funny - at least to me. And the character on the receiving end of the encounter deserved it.

But to treat it as casually as I did in the first and second drafts ignored a rule I don't like to set aside: remember that people act like jerks for a reason.

Not always a good enough reason to justify their behavior, and sometimes said behavior is toxic enough that it wouldn't be healthy or wise to keep them in your life... but to reduce this unpleasant character to merely the butt of a joke seemed dangerously dismissive of the probability that he's like that because he's in pain.

So here I am, with a looming deadline, and an additional arc of character exploration that I don't have the time or a strong desire to write into my book.

What's a girl to do?

Well... not every character wants to explore their own backstory. Some, such as this one, would rather bury their pain beneath a brittle, faux-tough facade, and keep on pushing others around in order to pretend to themselves that they're strong.

If I ever wrote a sequel to Catgirl Roommate, this character's backstory and future development would probably be major driving elements in the plot - but that's a low priority among a plethora of other projects I want to complete.

(Besides, I'd need SO many more weird cat habits and incidents to fuel a second CR book, and I've nearly mined my own cats' hoard of shenanigans bare.)

For now, I wanted to at least acknowledge the fact that the encounter wasn't something to be taken lightly, nor were the emotional consequences to the jerk in question. He may not have been a major character, but he wasn't a prop to be used for a joke and then thrown away, either.

So at a ludicrously late hour of night/early hour of the morning - and no, I'm not going to admit which one - when I had too much ill-timed energy to go to sleep, I added a scene that explored the character's possible struggles, but left the onus on him to decide whether he's willing to try to do better and stay relevant to the plot, or to simply allow himself to be removed from the protagonist's life.

Chances are, he'll take the latter. He's too proud and too fragile to admit that he was wrong. But even if this minor character's development is never fully explored, I'm glad that I at least gave it the gravity it deserved.

Who knows... maybe the first two rounds of editing on Catgirl Roommate getting accidentally deleted was a good thing.

Between this newly added scene, and the better explanation I gave for Mr. Michi being able to afford to house Sam and his feline companion, I think this book is going to turn out better than it would have if I hadn' t had to redo the edits.

I'll let you be the judge of that - you can start on December 18th, when the final draft is released into the wild.

In the meantime, if you want to get your copy for a third of the normal price, you only have 13 days left! So if you're interested in Catgirl Roommate, please take a minute to pre-order it on Amazon for just 99 cents.
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Pre-order your copy on Amazon
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    Author

    Stephanie is the author of My Fugitive, Voice of a Silent Fugitive, Heroic Lies, and Catgirl Roommate, as well as the artist behind the Undertale webcomic Just Cause.

    This blog often updates with new stories and artwork, so please keep checking in!

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