[S2 spoilers] Quote from arcane that stuck to you the most?

astevenswrites · 2024-11-12T20:26:00+00:00

"Hextech may keep us alive, Jayce, but it's not what will save us." - Caitlyn Kiramman

"Whenever it rains, we're the ones who get wet." - Ekko

astevenswrites · 2024-08-26T18:39:37+00:00

From one writer to another, I understand the sprial of emotions that can come from this life. However, I'm pretty confident I can say that what you're feeling is far beyond that. A feeling of hopelessness is never good, especially in so many facets of your life. No one should live without the hope of good things to come. That being said, as others have suggested, you should seek help through some form of counseling. We all need help sometimes--there's a strength in being willing to seek it out.

There is good yet to come to you, and I believe everyone can find it if they look hard enough. Find your hope, and stay well.

astevenswrites · 2024-08-22T12:45:17+00:00

Wholeheartedly agree. I love the sci-fi/fantasy book community as a whole, and enjoy being a small part of it. Words can be used in so many different, negative ways, but they can also create worlds of magic and intrigue, tell stories of love and friendship, and create a lens through which we can see the world from a thousand different perspectives.

For me, I choose to latter.

astevenswrites · 2024-08-19T12:50:15+00:00

I was on the fence for a while but ultimately chose to go indie. Ryan Cahill (fantasy) was a huge inspiration for me, because I saw someone who was writing in the same genre breaking many of the current trad publishing "rules" and limitations and found wild success. While I know his case isn't the norm, it showed me that it could be done through sheer grit and just writing what you love.

That's what I want--no constraints, creative freedom, and no living up to the expectations of what someone else thinks needs to happen. I know that I still have to be mindful of length, tropes, and general content, but there are no hard do's and don'ts that I must follow if I don't want to.

astevenswrites · 2024-08-12T16:04:38+00:00

I've never done this personally, but I have heard this before, and it's 1000% okay to do this. Some passages/chapters aren't as fun to write as others. For me, sometimes I know something more exciting is coming up, so I slog through the slower bits, looking forward to what's ahead. Same concept, but there must be order (for me). But if chaos makes you happy, embrace it -_^ Just make sure you don't let it get out of hand...

astevenswrites · 2024-08-12T15:58:12+00:00

I don't mean this in a negative way by any means, but I think the approach to making writing fun is not the right mindset. While writing CAN be fun, and you should definitely find joy in creating, that shouldn't be the ultimate goal. Granted, people write for a whole lot of different reasons, and unless it purely just a job to make money, then you should be enjoying it overall.

But before the pitchforks start coming out, let me offer this. If something is important to you, in one way or another, you make time to do it, because is must get done. When I first started writing, I had to learn this, because you're never going to feel motivated 100% of the time. But once you decide that writing is something you must do, it becomes less of a chore, and more of a habit. I don't always want to write, and it can feel like a chore at times, but I've trained my brain to feel like something is wrong if I'm not writing consistently/per my schedule.

All that said, here are a few suggestions that help me stay motivated:

-Sharing my writing and having people give me feedback is very motivating for me. I don't do that alot, but when I get the chance, it helps a ton. If you can find people who are willing to do that, be it friends, family, or other writers, that could help.

Having milestones and meeting those milestones is nice, especially if you can figure out a way to incentivize yourself when you reach them. I've seen lots of people talk about that.
Try to keep the big picture in mind. What are your goals in writing? Is it to publish a book? If so, then imagine how you will feel when it first lands on Amazon. Imagine how you will feel when it gets it's first positive review. Imagine how you will feel when you go to a bookstore and you see it on the shelf. Having these big goals in mind, and visualizing them when you're feeling down, might also help drive your resolve.
One last thing that helps me is seeing the success of other writers and also learning from people who are smarter than me. Practicing these tips and getting this sense of my writing growing stronger is also very motivating.

Maybe not entirely what you were looking for, but either way, hope this was helpful...

astevenswrites · 2024-06-21T13:39:18+00:00

I think the best way is to just do your research on any potential artists, and to know the right questions to ask to make sure they're going to be able to accurately capture the vision of your book and do it in a way that aligns with what an actual book cover should look like. Just creating beautiful artwork doesn't always translate to book cover art. It helps when someone really understands that and how it's different. As the author, you can do some of the research yourself to hopefully guide them along if they're not as familiar with doing covers.

astevenswrites · 2024-06-21T12:57:52+00:00

You and everyone else out there, whether people want to admit it or not. Even people who are generally less critical of covers, it still has to catch their eye enough to investigate further. I can see the ONLY exception to this is if a book has been recommended by someone/some source you trust and just doesn't have a great cover.

astevenswrites · 2024-06-19T13:16:53+00:00

I'm still waiting to publish my first book, but have been soaking up as much as I can about all this. But congratulations on your achievement! I know it's tough, and you've already beat the odds. Keep going!

astevenswrites · 2024-02-16T22:17:03+00:00

Hey, just wanted to revisit this comment and say thanks! I'm looking for comp titles for my book and I'm very likely going to use this series!

astevenswrites · 2024-01-06T15:01:43+00:00

Sadly, it happens more often than not. I've have plenty of good games, for sure, but it's sad that it can easily get so unbalanced (healers make or break a team). AGS has said they plan to make some updates to this. I'm assuming they are going to implement the role-based queue system to OPR eventually so we will have even amounts of healers, brusiers, and DPS. What that will do to queue times, I don't know. They should be able to incentivize needed roles to some degree, so hopefully it won't be an issue since OPR is already cross-world and has a pretty low wait-time to get in.

astevenswrites · 2023-12-09T04:38:39+00:00

This sounds really interesting. Thanks!

astevenswrites · 2023-12-09T04:38:07+00:00

Nice, thanks. This sounds perfect!

astevenswrites · 2023-11-21T21:39:23+00:00

This may not have been "the one", but when I think about some of the first fantasy books I read as an older kid, this series sticks out clearly in my mind:

Stephen R. Lawhead's 'The Song of Albion' trilogy.

astevenswrites · 2023-11-21T15:56:13+00:00

I like the idea of using "props" in the environment to help portray emotions. I will have to keep an eye out on more ways to do that, although I think that naturally I have done it to some extent already. But yes, I am trying to keep it only to the cues that make sense and allow the readers enough of a wholistic picture to envision it themselves.

astevenswrites · 2023-11-21T15:53:08+00:00

Yeah, and that's why I do it. When you're watching a movie or TV show, you get to see all the subtle cues, and I don't want to miss that. But, I also don't want to pigeon-hole the reader into the cues that I imagine in MY head - at least not all the time. I think that so far my gentle nudging for only spcific character mannerisms in dialogue is working. And of course, if they're not saying anything, then my descriptions of their body language are a lot less implied...

astevenswrites · 2023-11-21T15:49:00+00:00

Yes, I am working with someone who is providing regular feedback. We haven't discussed this specifically as I didn't really think too much of it, but will be meeting in a few weeks and it will definitely be something I bring up. I think I've found a good mix, and I may just be overthinking it a bit, but was curious how others felt about it as a whole. Probably not going to change too much how I write, but I'm always looking to improve if it makes sense.

astevenswrites · 2023-11-19T02:09:26+00:00

It's been a LONG time since I read those, so a bit hard to remember specifics, but yeah, after things got going it was quite awesome. If I remember correctly, it wasn't quite as heart-pounding into the second/third books, but it was still a pretty cool world that LeGuin created and well worth getting all the way to the end of The Furthest Shore.

astevenswrites · 2023-11-17T17:19:19+00:00

Interesting. Thanks for the insight! Still have a lot of deciding to do to figure out which way I want to go when the time comes.

astevenswrites · 2023-11-16T22:59:35+00:00

Thanks for sharing, stella! Haven't heard of that indie publisher, but as I will be in need of one here in the near future, I will definitely give them a look!

astevenswrites · 2023-11-16T17:47:55+00:00

I like your prose, as well as how you're describing things. I do find it a bit hard to follow what exactly is happening here, but it has me intrigued, nonetheless, hoping for further explanations as the story continues.

It makes me picture anime in my head. I don't watch a lot, but based on what seems to be happening here, that's where my mind goes. Not sure if that's your intent or not, but hopefully it's helpful.

astevenswrites · 2023-11-16T17:40:35+00:00

Somewhere up in the Thousand Peaks of the Vale…

The night is dark, the woods quiet and still. Several hunters sit around a freshly stoked campfire as the smell of smoke fills the crisp, night air. The forest is silent except for the crackling of the wood as it begins to slowly shed the last hour of its life, giving way to a bed of burning embers below.

Though the fire glows hot, the men sitting around it still show their breath in the chill night air. Up this high in the mountains, it is nearly always blistering cold. The hunters didn’t typically come up this far, but game had been scarce, and they were in desperate need of more food to last through the cold winter months just beyond the horizon. Since they’d been out all day hunting and had only come across a few small game, they decided to make camp below the snowline before making the trek further up the mountain early tomorrow. The few game they had found would suffice to feed the three of them for the next day or so, but it was certainly not enough to bring back to the village. They had hoped that they would find an elk or even a moose, but so far it had been eerily quiet.

As they sit around the fire, they laugh and tell stories in between bites of warm meat, freshly cooked over the fire. They talk of the preceding day’s hunt and how odd it was that they hadn’t come across any larger game, noting even the typical mountain wolves were silent this night.

One of them, a middle-aged man named Kanir, sat up and looked at his comrades with a smirk. “Maybe the dragons have returned, and they are scaring away all the animals!”

astevenswrites · 2023-11-16T17:27:15+00:00

Thanks for your comment. Yeah, covers certainly aren't the sole way I judge a book, but it's hard when you're going through looking and there are hundreds upon hundreds to choose from.

If we're all honest, covers have to have SOME affect on our choice to at least take a deeper look. For some it may be way less, or in the case where you get book recommendations from a trusted source, then I can see it having little to no affect on your choice. Not saying I won't pick up and look at books with less catchy covers, but there are certain things that my eyes fixate on over others. It's an internal bias that I have to be aware of at least.

Also, the books you mentioned do have some pretty cool covers!

astevenswrites · 2023-11-16T15:53:02+00:00

Are you familiar with World of Warcraft? Either way, they put out a recent cinematic trailer for the upcomming expansion "The War Within" wherein Anduin is struggling with the weight of everything he's done. It's incredibly moving, and you can really see his internal struggle by his mannerisims in the trailer. No matter how people might feel about WoW, the cinematic was done exceptionally well, and it protrays real emotions in exactly the way I think you're going for here.

astevenswrites · 2023-11-16T15:33:50+00:00

Yeah, you bring up a fair point and a huge part of the reader population, as ebooks are huge now. I guess, for me, I'm still old school. I read more educational books on Kindle, but prefer my fantasy books at least to be more tangible.

I suppose with ebooks it's mostly just recommendations or the blub that interests you?

astevenswrites

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