​2016 was an interesting year. Over the last twelve months, I've lost months of work through a file corruption incident, I've published a humor novel for cat lovers, and I started my first-ever long-running webcomic.

I all but lost one of my biggest clients, and gained several more. I started a business venture that maxed out both of my credit cards and made me wonder if I'd be able to pay the bills, then got enough client projects to pull me back from the brink.

I started a Patreon channel so I could get closer to my top fans and spend more time on my writing, videos and art, I joined Tumblr and DeviantArt, and I learned a lot about myself through the past year's crazy ups and downs.

In particular, I learned about some areas where I was making serious mistakes, and I discovered some things I can do to make 2017 a much better year than the ones that came before it.

Today, I'd like to share what I learned about myself, what I've resolved to do in 2017, and how I plan to make those resolutions stick and get results.

What I learned about myself:

1. I tend to give away too much of my time.

For a long time, I tried to get to my emails right away, even if I was supposed to be doing something else at that time. As a result, I fell further and further behind schedule, watching my free time get eaten by postponed tasks until I was lucky to get an hour or three at the end of the day.

I said "yes" to every project that came along, even if I didn't really have time for it. I found a way to fit it in, often at the expense of my happiness and well-being.

I assumed that people needed things right away, and would often pile extra things into an already full day.

As it turns out, that's not a very good way to live.

Lately, I've been rearranging my priorities. Unless an email is urgent, it can wait until I'm either through my to-do list, or have a lull between tasks.

If I can't take on a project right away, I tell people "I can do that for you, but it will have to happen later this week". Or, in some cases, I simply say "no".

It's a work in progress, and sometimes I still underestimate how much time something will take, or how much time I have. But I'm making a conscious effort to make myself, my productivity and my joy a higher priority than taking on every little thing as soon as it comes up.

2. I have a history of treating my life like it isn't my own.

Knowing things is a strange business. How many things do we know in our heads, and yet not really act upon?

I knew that my life is my own, I only get one chance on this Earth, and I should live my own life, not someone else's.

But I've often found myself seeking permission to take time for myself, to do the things I want to do, and to arrange my working time the way I want to.

I've apologized for, and been embarrassed by, my weird sleep schedule, instead of just embracing it and saying "these are the hours when I work and am available".

And I've treated the things I love to do like they don't matter, and felt like I was wasting my time by spending time on them, when I was really living in my purpose and giving my gifts to the world.

In 2017, I am setting aside more time to do the fiction writing, art and video-making that I love, and treating them like the valuable contributions that they are, instead of a spare-time thing that doesn't make a difference.

3. I wasn't being honest with myself about what I really want.

My coaching and marketing business is a part of me. There are countless coaches, business owners, and visionaries out there who are meant to change people's lives, and who can make an even bigger difference when they can reach more of the people they want to help.

I have a great contribution to make by connecting these people with the clients who need them... but I also have another contribution to make, and it's one I've been neglecting and devaluing, even though it's central to who I am and what I want to do with my life.

For a long time, I've treated making fiction like it wasn't important. But lately, more and more, I've been paying attention to the impact it has on people's lives.

Stories bring people together. Friendships that might never have existed are kindled because of books, movies, TV series, video games, and comics.

Stories bring people solace. How many times have I seen people comment to their favorite artists that "you helped me get through a really hard time"?

Stories bring people hope, and help them to understand themselves better. How many times have you read the story of a character you identified with, watched them struggle and grow through a challenge you share, and gotten a better understanding of who you are and what you want to do next?

Stories inspire people. I see people making art, fanfiction, music, contests and forums based on the stories they love, and I long to inspire that with my own creations.

I want to create more stories, to connect with my fans, and to have the time to engage them promptly and fully when they reach out to me.

For a long time, I acted like that part of me and my gifts didn't matter. But now, I'm coming to realize my love of stories and sharing them is central to who I am. It's my passion, and I believe it's a huge part of what I was born to bring to this world.

If I reach the end of my life with too many of these stories untold, too many readers unreached, and too many beautiful moments of emotion, learning and growth not expressed through the stories that were meant to carry them, then I'll have wasted an essential part of my life.

So in 2017, I am consciously setting aside more time to express this side of my gifts. To make more art, write more stories, make more videos, and connect with more people in the area of my greatest passion and strengths.

I'm still serving clients in the coaching and marketing field, but I'm no longer treating this other side of me as a nonessential spare-time thing.

How am I going to keep these resolutions?

New Year's resolutions are infamous for failing. So how do I plan to keep mine?

Here are 4 strategies I'm going to use, and I encourage you to use them for your own resolutions and goals:

1. Be specific.

Starting next week, I'm going to clearly delineate which hours belong to my coaching and marketing business, and which hours belong to art, writing, videos, and hanging out with my audience.

I'm not just going to "spend more time on my fiction creation". I'm going to get specific about how much time I'm going to spend and when.

2. Put it in my calendar.

Your calendar can eat your life, or it can set you free. It all depends on how you use it.

When you create your to-do list for each day, give each item a specific time slot. This will help you to know how much of your day is already booked, and whether or not you can fit more stuff into it.

It'll also help you to be more efficient. I've often found that tasks expand or contract to fill the time I give to them. If I give myself too much time, I find myself working slowly and letting my mind wander.

So give yourself enough time to do a good job without stressing yourself, but not so much that you'll end up letting a 45-minute task eat an hour and a half.

3. Tell people about my strategies and goals.

Promises you make only to yourself are easy to break. But when you have people who know what you're doing and why, who believe in your dream, and who check in with you on a regular basis, it's harder to break your promises.

4. Go easy on myself.

Maybe there will be days when I overschedule by accident, or something takes longer than planned, or an emergency comes up.

After years of overscheduling, underestimating time requirements, and treating my time like it wasn't my own, I don't expect to get it perfect instantly.

You'll probably also have days when you fall short of your own expectations. Maybe you'll eat too much. Maybe you'll lose your temper after promising not to, or won't go to the gym as often as you planned.

At times like these, you may feel tempted to feel like you've failed, and to think there's no point in trying anymore.

But while your past influences your future, it doesn't determine it.

Every day, every moment, you have a choice.

Each time you look at your schedule and think of adding one too many things, each time you think about eating another donut or skipping another day at the gym, each time you talk with someone who tempts you to slide back into your old habits, you have a choice to make.

No matter how many times you've failed in the past, you have an opportunity to say "that was then; this is now, and now, I choose to do the thing that will move me closer to my goals and dreams".

Making a shift toward your goals is seldom permanent. It isn't a "one incident fixes all" deal. It's a series of choices that you make, one opportunity at a time.

But as you make the right choice over and over again, it gets easier to do it the next time.

Now it's your turn.


What did you learn about yourself in 2016?

What are your New Year's resolutions?

And what steps will you take to make sure those resolutions stick?

I look forward to your comments.

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!
​

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.
​

I FINALLY FRIKKIN' FIGURED IT OUT. *Takes a deep breath, and disengages capslock.*

There was something about me that bothered me for years. Something I had tried to surmount, with only inadequate fragments of success - until this week.

That something was my infuriating inability to record a good-sounding song.

This was especially frustrating when it came to songs like the topic of today's blog post. Decretum is a beautiful instrumental by Yuki Kajiura, for the amazing and heart-wrenching anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

I wanted to give words to Sayaka's poignant journey, so I sat down one day to write down lyrics that captured her desires, hopes and mistakes.

But the first several times I went to record my beautiful lyrics, darned if I could get my voice to cooperate. Notes that had sounded good as they vibrated through my jaw came out flat, dull and grainy when I played them on the computer.

It happened every single time I tried to record a song. And it bothered me for ages.

Why?! Why did my voice sound right when I sang, but not when I recorded it?

Then, one day, the penny finally dropped. I'll pause for a moment to let you enjoy the results (that's why you're here, right?) before elaborating.
​

So, what was this fallen penny of which I speak? There were a few of them, mostly in the form of questions I hadn't thought to ask myself before. Questions like...

​What if I just couldn't sing while listening to music?

What if my reflex not to talk over things and people was causing me to instinctively mute myself?

What if my untrained control over my voice required more concentration than I could give it while half of my focus was on the music?

What if my computer's sound system just plain couldn't handle playing audio and recording it at the same time?

And what if I tried recording the vocals while the music WASN'T playing?

Obviously, the timing of the lyrics could become an issue, but at that point, it was worth a shot.

So I plugged in my headset, activated my sound recorder, and went for it. I sang my heart out. I focused on hitting the right notes, and expressing the emotion of the song, instead of on matching the timing of the instrumentals.

Then, with high hopes, I saved the recording and hit "play"... 

And discovered that, while my voice will probably never be as good as KiyumiArashi's, and my microphone definitely leaves something to be desired, the sound quality was better than anything I'd ever recorded before.

For the first time ever, I could record a lyrical adaptation, and sincerely enjoy the results.

Unfortunately, as predicted, the timing was a bit off... so I decided to try another tactic.

This time, instead of playing the instrumentals on the computer, I played Decretum on my iPod while I recorded the song, and cranked the volume up high enough that I wouldn't reflexively sing softly in order to be able to hear the notes.

Sure enough, it worked - I got the timing right this time, AND the computer recorded the audio properly. Needless to say, I was pretty freaking happy, and I hope you enjoy the fruits of my little revelation.

​When I look from one of my novels to another, one of the things that stands out the most to me is the difference in the writing styles I used.

Some authors have a distinctive style that they stick with from one book to another, but I deliberately varied mine to suit the different genres and tones I was playing with.

Today, I'm going to take a look at the various writing styles I used, and reveal why I chose each one.

My Fugitive and Voice of a Silent Fugitive are both very poetic. I avoided making simple statements like "he struggled to swallow because this throat was dry", in favor of more descriptive phrases like "he swallows, straining against the barrier of his own dry throat".

I also departed from my usual habit of writing in the past tense and third person, and used a first person, present tense narrative style instead.

These two stories are both heavily laced with metaphors, reflecting the filters through which the characters view the world. They both have their own beliefs and mental narratives about the world and their place in it, and everything is shown through that lens.

Why I chose this writing style:

These two books are highly character-centric. While I didn't neglect the premise and plot, the characters are very much the core of these novels, and I wanted to fully immerse the reader in their minds, hearts and worldviews.

I wanted the books to have an eerie, haunting, stream-of-consciousness feel, with a bit of surreality mixed in.

This decision was inspired by a few different things. One was a review of Angel's Egg on THEM Anime Reviews, in which the reviewer commented on the surreal nature of the anime, the sparsity of dialogue, and its highly artsy nature.

It was one of those reviews that made me wonder how the creators pulled it off, while inspiring a feeling of "I want to try that."

Another source of inspiration - or perhaps I should say challenge - was the TV Tropes article on "Stylistic Suck".

The version of the article that I read back then noted that it can be difficult for a writer to create an alternate style that's as good as, or better than, the one they normally use. As a result, whenever they have a character who's a writer or an artist, that character's work is likely to be inferior to the art or writing of the overall story.

I decided to take that as a challenge. I wanted to see if I could write in a way that was a significant departure from my usual style - first person instead of third person, present tense instead of past tense, and far more poetic and metaphorical than my norm - and still make it good.

Did I succeed?

Well... most of my reviewers seem to think so.

On the opposite end of the spectrum from My Fugitive and Voice of a Silent Fugitive, you find Catgirl Roommate.

The writing style in Catgirl Roommate is much more quick and to-the-point than the Silent Fugitive series, except for the moments where it's time for character development to happen, and Sam turns introspective.

This style turned out to be a serious challenge to write, as it required as much poring over the descriptions to make them funny as the first two books did to make them poetic.

I also found, while editing my first draft, that I use the words "flail" and "flounder" a LOT... which should say something about the level of gracefulness that the cats who inspired the novel display. :P

Why I chose this writing style:

When I'm reading or watching something funny, and there's an interminable leadup between the jokes, I can end up getting bored, and thinking I came here to laugh - get on with it, would you?

So in this humor novel, I eschewed long descriptions for the most part,  and I made a point of making as many descriptions as possible funny rather than poetic.

Out of all the novels I've published or am soon to publish, Heroic Lies​ was definitely the most natural to write.

While doing a plot in medias res was a new challenge for me, the writing itself used my default style: a mixture of vivid imagery, funny and sarcastic dialogue, intense feelings, and a style that was more balanced between the quick and comical and the slow and poetic, leaning in one direction or another depending on the scene.

And, of course, it was in the third person and past tense, which is how I usually write.

No particularly in-depth or fancy decision-making went into choosing to write with my own style, but it certainly did make things easier.

You can read excerpts of all 4 books directly on this site, no downloads required.

Here are the links:

​My Fugitive 
Voice of a Silent Fugitive 
​Heroic Lies
​Catgirl Roommate

​Enjoy!

Whether they're trying to market themselves as educational, to support a viewpoint the writer holds, to enrich their audience, or simply to try to sound deep, many stories attempt to teach their audience a lesson, or to have a "moral of the story".

Some stories succeed brilliantly.

​But all too often, the narrative gets warped around the lesson to the point where it becomes unrelatable or unrealistic, or the lesson is so obvious that it makes people say "I already know that", which prevents the reader from giving it any further thought.

The movie Inside Out didn't do that. In fact, I'd say it's one of the best educational stories I've ever seen, mostly because it tricked me.

Here's what Inside Out did right, and how storytellers everywhere can use its secrets to improve their own writing:

In the early parts of Inside Out, the story convincingly portrayed Sadness as disruptive and incompetent.

She turned could-have-been-OK moments into tear-stained ordeals, went limp at times when she needed to take action, and generally seemed to make things harder for everyone around her.

She didn't seem to improve any situation she laid her hands on, and even though I already knew that all emotions are important messengers that should be paid attention to, I found myself getting annoyed with her, and wishing she'd stop messing things up.

Pay attention; this part is important.

The story didn't initially make it obvious that it was teaching a lesson.

In fact, it deliberately tried to make its audience have the reaction it would later encourage them not to have.

If the story had started out by saying "Paying attention to ALL of your emotions is important", I probably would have nodded and said "yup, got it", and never learned anything about myself from watching the movie.

But because it portrayed Sadness' seeming uselessness so convincingly, and in such a relatable way, it got a reaction. And the fact that I HAD that reaction at all told me that I had some beliefs that weren't quite aligned with what I knew about emotions.

It was a real eye-opener for me, both about myself, and about how to convey knowledge through storytelling.

I began to look closer at the way Inside Out was structured, and I made a list of the things that made the moral of the story so convincing and the lesson so profound.

​1. If you want to encourage your audience not to do something, have a character do it, with realistic results.

The consequences should flow naturally from the character's behavior, their environment, and the people around them.

Having the universe randomly and inexplicably dump on them for their misdeeds is sloppy and unrealistic, and won't help your audience to understand the real-world effects of the mistake you're pointing out. So keep it plausible and natural.

2. Don't make it immediately obvious that the character is making a mistake.

If your audience can guess the lesson right away, they'll probably think "I already know that", and start tuning out.

But if they can identify with the character's mindset or behavior, or at least think it's OK, it will be all the more jarring and eye-opening when you reveal the results of their choice.

3. Make the lesson a natural part of the story.

If the characters' behavior seems out of character, or you have to bend over backward and warp your plot to create the scenario that's used to teach the lesson, it will hurt the quality of both the lesson you're teaching and the story as a whole.

For best results, the lesson should be part of the natural flow of the story, not a distracting detour or a plot tumor.

4. Make it relatable.

The best lessons are the ones that match, or at least closely resemble, a scenario in which the audience could realistically find themselves.

If the moral of the story is something that could theoretically apply to the audience's lives, but the way in which the characters apply or experience it would NEVER happen in real life, it won't have as much impact.

5. Teach something that hasn't already been taught, or teach it in a new way.

​Unless your target audience is 5-year-olds, it's best to avoid having a moral that's so obvious that it makes people say, "come on, every decently-raised kid over the age of 6 knows that".

That said, if you can teach it in a new way, or give more in-depth, specific and useful insights than most stories give, even a basic and generic lesson can become deep and useful.

For example, most people know that bullying is wrong - not that that stops some people from doing it anyway. Therefore, having that as the moral of a story is a great way to be generic.

But if you portray your characters using effective and little-known methods to deter the bullies, and/or use the portrayal of the bully characters to give insights into WHY kids bully each other, then your readers might learn something that they didn't know before.

This is a great way to make an old lesson new, to add depth to your story, and to enlighten your readers at the same time.

6. Don't shoehorn a lesson in just for the sake of looking deep.

Maybe there isn't a moral to your story. Maybe it's just for fun. And that's fine.

​In my personal opinion, it's better to have a story with no lesson than to cram a lesson into the story just for the sake of having one.

​What mistakes have you seen storytellers make while trying to educate their audiences?

Do you have any tips for smoothly and effectively including lessons in your stories?

​I look forward to your comments.

A few days ago, my brain and I had a conversation about art.

Me: "YAAY! My new graphics tablet arrived! I can finally draw all the pictures I had in my head, without relying on my wimpy scanner or having to painstakingly scratch them out with a clumsy mouse or touchpad! So, brain, what do you think we should draw first?"

Brain: "How about some Undertale fan art? I don't think you've sufficiently convinced your inner circle that you're obsessed with Undertale yet, but a good piece of fan art should do the trick."

Me: "Like a post-Pacifist Ending fluff comic?"

Brain: "Yes. Something far more elaborately shaded and extravagantly detailed than the joke even remotely requires."

Me: "...That is an excellent plan."

And so, the comic below was born. Obviously, stop scrolling down right now if you fear Undertale spoilers. ;)

Sans was a challenge to draw - especially in the bottom panel, where he's supposed to look happy and friendly, but it's really hard to make that effect when his battle eye is glowing. :/

There was also the fact that the light in that panel was hitting him from two different directions - the ceiling light and the fire - which initially threw off my shading.

Papyrus, on the other hand, needed relatively little tinkering to turn out just right. The drawing style I used makes it difficult to keep things from looking like plastic, but his battle body looks kind of plastic-y to begin with, so that was just fine.

I'm pretty happy with all the little nerdy touches I put in the last panel. The Delta Rune angel, Papyrus' overly tall sink, the spaghetti and socks on the Christmas tree, the Christmas-colored sprinkles on Sans' pet rock... and, of course, the Annoying Dog, stealing Papyrus' stuff yet again while Papyrus follows in his mentor's footsteps by setting the kitchen on fire.

Speaking of fire, note to self: draw the stuff behind the fire first, THEN draw the fire. Thank goodness for Photoshop's Erase tool.

My next art project will probably be some concept art for the cover of Catgirl Roommate, now that I've had some practice with the graphics tablet and indulged in a fit of extravagant nerdiness.

Brain: "Psst, Stephanie... if you're almost done writing this blog post, you know what you should do?"

Me: "NOT obsess over the tiny details of this picture, tweaking every little thing that isn't close enough to being perfect?"

Brain: "Obsess over the tiny details of this picture, tweaking every little thing that isn't close enough to being perfect."

Me: "Brain, no."

Brain: "Brain, yes. Sans' head in the second panel might be too tall."

Me: "I'm not going back to edit it."

Brain: "And also, he's using the wrong hand. Sans is left-handed."

Me: "AAAAUUUUUUGH." *edits*

​

A few weeks ago, I got the worst surprise I've ever gotten in the history of my writing career.

There's nothing like finding out that a split-second power loss corrupted the file with your latest work in progress, costing you the last 6 months of work, to get you back in the habit of backing up your files.

But today, I have good news: while digging through some buried folders that I don't usually look at, I found a file I'd forgot I'd made, with the most beautiful name any file has ever had:

It was kind of like the feeling you get when you reach into a coat pocket, expecting to find lint and gum wrappers, and instead discover 100 dollars, the secret to life, the universe and everything, and the cure for hiccups.

Granted, I lost most of the two rounds of editing that I'd done on the book. But at least I won't have to rewrite half of the first draft, while wondering if I still have all the scenes that I added the first time.

The release of the finished product may have been delayed, but I still have all the character development that Sam went through in my mind as I fleshed him out through the editing process, and the small adjustments that I'll remember to include as I re-do the editing.

It isn't perfect, but I'm much happier about this than I was a few days ago.

To celebrate this big relief, I have a present for you: a complimentary glimpse into Catgirl Roommate.

To get your free except of my upcoming humor novel for cat lovers, just click the button below and download it.
​

Thank you for your patience as I recover my lost work, and I look forward to sharing the completed version of Catgirl Roommate​ with you.

There was a time when I backed up my files religiously. Every day, after writing, I would email myself a copy of my novel.

Thankfully, this habit remained unnecessary for years. My files remained intact and undamaged, and, over time, complacency began to take hold.

You can probably tell where this is going.

Between never needing my backup files, and an over-six-month bout with insomnia that caused my care-o-meter to dip to an unprecedented low, I slipped out of the habit of backing things up.

And then, one day, it happened. My laptop bag unzipped itself and spat out my laptop while the file with Catgirl Roommate was open, causing my laptop to lose power for a split second.

For some reason, OpenOffice took this as its cue to turn the entire file into hashtags. Every. Single. Word.

One moment, I was less than sixty pages away from being done the final round of editing.

The next, I had half of a first draft, a fully edited excerpt consisting of the book's first scene, a bunch of scenes that were outlined but not fully written yet, and six months of work lost.

Note to self: resume backing things up. >_<

Now, I'm working my way through the five stages of file corruption.

Denial

"Oh, come on, it can't be THAT easy to lose 6 months of work! Surely there has to be a backup somewhere!"

(And surely Weebly didn't just delete the above sentence simply because I deleted an element lower in the blog post. Wait... it did. *Rewrites*)

Come on, text processors; get your act together!

Anger
​
"Are you serious?! Who the heck designs a laptop bag whose laptop compartment unzips all the way down to the bottom of the case? That's just ASKING for an accident! There's no WAY the benefits of this design outweigh the obvious problems! What were they thinking?!

"And why didn't I check my laptop bag more frequently to make sure this horrible design flaw didn't have its obvious outcome? Why didn't I sew that part of the zipper shut? And why didn't I back up my file for six months? What was I thinking?!"

Bargaining

"There HAS to be a way to fix this. Finding a fix is MUCH better than doing the last six months of work all over again.

"Sure, most of the forums I checked say there is no fix, but three of them mentioned possible solutions... none of which worked... and one of which might have actually caused one of the other fixes not to work...

"...But the people on Facebook say that transplanting my hard drive into another computer might work!

"...I hope my hard drive is compatible with one of my family's other computers.

"This has to work!"

(Note: I haven't tried it yet, but I'm planning to give it a shot tomorrow.)

Depression

"I really don't want to do this work all over again. If I have to do that, I'm going to be so sick of Catgirl Roommate by the end of it, my work will probably suck. I might have to take a break from working on it, and do some other projects for a while to get some variety.

"I was so ready to be finished writing this. I looked forward to sharing it with everyone. My family was looking forward to reading it. How could this have happened? I mean, I know how, but HOW?!"

Acceptance

Nope. This one actually hasn't happened yet. I'm still stuck in "bargaining", with brief dips into a state of dismay that, if I'm honest, doesn't really count as depression.

Yes, it's saddening to think of all that work being lost, including scenes I was proud of. And no, I really don't want to re-tread all that ground again.

One first draft and two rounds of editing is enough. TWO first drafts, and FOUR rounds of editing, is enough to pose a real danger of making me totally sick of my own book.

But hopefully that won't happen. And if worst comes to worst, I can take a break, work on other stuff, and then come back to Catgirl Roommate.

OK, I guess there is a LITTLE bit of acceptance, waiting to happen if need be. But hopefully it won't be necessary.

Now, to find out how to transplant that hard drive...

Some stories shove their lessons down your throat, often with so much force that you're so busy choking down the moral of the story that you can't even care about the story itself.

Others simply portray a scenario, and let the lesson teach itself.

A few years ago, I re-watched one of childhood favorites, Once Upon a Forest. The rating on Rotten Tomatoes notwithstanding, I remembered it being good, except for the over-the-top swamp birds.

But as a child, I hadn't fully recognized the emphasis it placed on humanity's impact on animals and the environment.

Looking back, I attribute that largely to the fact that, instead of getting on a soapbox and explicitly lecturing its audience, it simply displayed the experiences that its cast endured as a result of humanity's mistakes.

The characters were likable, and they didn't take a backseat to the lesson that was being taught. The mood of each scene was convincingly set - I never felt like it was simply a vehicle for the writers to grind an ax.

To me, that commitment to maintaining the quality of the story, rather than allowing the tale to be drowned by its own moral like a baby bird in a swamp, was the difference between an enjoyable movie and a lecture with delusions of being a story.

Would I still enjoy Once Upon a Forest, if I watched it today? It's been a while, so it's hard to say, but I like to think I would.

Either way, I consider it a good example of a teaching story that kept its priorities in the right place, and a reminder to me to do the same whenever I want to communicate something through my writing.

Have you ever watched or read a story that you felt was trying too hard to teach its audience a lesson?

What do you think it could have done differently to keep being a good story, while still making its point?

I look forward to reading your comments.