#i've got planters all the way up my watch tower

[thecheesywritingcabin]

Regular Routine

So, the last two months have been moving at a rapid pace. The third draft feels like it's about halfway done, but it's still too early to start talking about beta-reading and whatnot.

Since I'm working at the moment, I thought it might be nice to talk about my writing/editing routine. It might be nice in terms of catharsis, as well as gives me a little break from my edit today.

So, let me break down how I survive working on this and my job as a pathology collector. Spoiler alert: this is a very, very long way of saying "take some breaks".

What Is Your Current Writing Routine?

Unless I have time off, I only edit on Sundays. Sometimes I'll get spicy and do some the Saturday evening, but more often than not I'm dicking around playing video games and decompressing from work.

Now, sometimes I'll plan some extra writing time in around work, but that can be a little bit of a nightmare.

How Long Do I Work For?

I don't talk about myself much online, so let me give you some context. I'm in pathology, and my roster is a mess. In fact, Wednesday and Thursday I don't know where I am until 6am that morning, or the previous afternoon if my boss has had time to plan. Monday and Tuesday meanwhile I work two shifts that are both three hours long - this used to be eight hours accumulative, but the evening shift had its hours cut. Friday I work five hours and on alternate Saturdays I work three and a half hours.

So, this sounds manageable, right?

Here's where it gets weird. First of all, the mornings of Monday, Tuesday or Friday I can get redeployed elsewhere, working either longer or farther away. One time, I worked from 8-2pm, then 3-6pm about 30 minutes away from the first location. Early in my career, my boss was so short staffed I wound up working close to 12 hours. Never again.

Wednesday and Thursday meanwhile I've more or less been locked into a 9.5 hour shift because few other staff know how to work that particular room.

In summary, most weeks I work about 36 hours, not including the weekend or redeployment. That translates to 75.5 hours per fortnight, just 30 minutes shy of full time hours here in Australia.

How Do I Manage These Hours and Writing?

For those of you who haven't worked in my industry, there can sometimes be gaps as wide as 2 hours between clients. During this time, it's best to do the store orders, stock counts and any miscellaneous tasks since there are a lot of those.

However, doing all these tasks take up about 15-20 minutes of your day. In fact, it's pretty easy to complete them all in the first hour if no clients show up.

In my company at least, you can be sent to rooms where there is nobody but you on site, and your clients are in the single digits.

You can probably see where I'm going with this.

Once the daily chores are done and there's no clients, I will whip out my journal and set a timer for 10-15 minutes, taking advantage of the excess float time. If I'm doing a big chapter, I might even do a draft on my lunchbreak if it's long enough.

In fact, a good chunk of Draft 1 was written like this.

This Sounds Exhausting

Well, that's because it is. There's no nice way to say it, but there's a reason there were 5-6 years where I posted nothing on Tumblr. Writing on the job takes away time that I might have otherwise used to rest in between clients.

It's all about finding balance. I do it on days I have the energy, but if I had a busy day or things have been going badly I won't touch my pen.

I'm sure most of you have heard a variation of this advice: find the gaps in your day, maybe get up earlier or stay up later if you need to, so you can allocate that time to write. That's basically what I do, but sometimes you need to take a break.

The problem for me while writing Draft 1 of Case of the Crawling Shadow, at least for a while, I would try to cram writing into every spare gap I had. This is a side effect of doing Camp Nanowrimo in 2022, but even going into Draft 2 I tried to keep up that momentum.

I wore myself down until I feel like a nub of a person. I was trying to do 3 chapters worth of editing a week, and suffered for it.

What's Happening Now?

At this point, my goal is to finish the Case of the Crawling Shadow's third draft so we can start sending it to beta readers. It's about 50% done, but going slowly. My body is still a bit grimy from the whirlwind drafting process, and I've been working resting into my editing time.

With any luck, we'll finally be able to start getting the ball rolling this year. I'm pretty excited for it. For now, I am alternating editing this chapter and building a McMansion in Sons of the Forest.

#editing #day in the life #writers of tumblr #ramblings #i am tired #i've got planters all the way up my watch tower #i still haven't gone in any of the caves #cryptologists #case of the crawling shadow #i'm so tired guys

[valoisfulcanellideux]

We've got a few things to unpack…

It's becoming more and more clear that Empires Season 2 is winding down. People are finalising builds (and, in Pix's case with that massive castle, practically speedrunning builds), and I'm beginning to see things that are tying together little threads that have been teased throughout the season.

Now, I've not had time to keep up with everyone's episodes of late, as I've been so busy, so mainly I've been watching Pix and Sausage. And Sausage's episode today had some very interesting stuff in it, so let's unpack and analyse some of it. Any bolding is mine, to denote things to pay attention to.

This will be long, so behind the cut with you!

First up, something seemingly small: the tattoos that both he and Scott have. Scott's are, as to be expected, colourful. Sausage's are a mixture of his 'good self' and his 'bad self' now merged back into one after being split asunder in Season 1:

Sausage: "And yes, I do have tattoos; I've had them for a very long time. The only thing, though: they have changed a little bit. [I] pretty much just had a sunflower tattoo, and I've had that for a very long time, but ever since that merger happened [it] looks like my other self had this… almost like a withering vine kind of tattoo. but it looks pretty cool, though! It's a perfect mixture, actually. Huh, look at that. These are pretty special."

He then goes to meet Scott, and it turns out that their tattoos almost match when put together, forming the shape of a heart:

Also of note: when Sausage and Scott go to Tumble Town for their 'beach relaxation' they find a cod statue in the river. And we all know already that the Mezalean King came back briefly to build something in Tumble Town.

Next, the new castle in Sanctuary. It's a blend of several things:

Sausage: "This is a pretty special castle. If you really notice, it's really not like a traditional castle, and now that I'm whole again, it has technically a mixture of both my selves. A little bit of the bad side in the base [points to deepslate foundations] going up to the good side on the top [pointing at wood and colour and foliage]… the base is a little reminiscent of a previous Kingdom, if you noticed. Also mixing in the styles here of Sanctuary with this wood bit; nice brick roofs here on the side towers. And then the top bit; I took some inspiration from our sun god right here: Bdoubleo100. Almost like a little Oriental flair there to the top."

It's also called The Castle of Memories.

I'm going to skip ahead a bit here, as there was something else he mentioned when examining the build:

Sausage: "Of course, we've got window pop-outs everywhere, overgrown going all the way to the top […] We've got the lovely planters over here with live coral and a nice overgrown feel around the side."

Note that he says "overgrown going all the way to the top" and not "overgrowth". And live coral? Hello, Ocean Empire?

So, we now have Mezalea, the Cod Empire, Mythland, the Ocean Empire, and - possibly - House Blossom (the Overgrown) in Season 2.

Now back to the initial reveal of the castle:

Sausage: "And, as we come on down, I think it's a really cool mix of everything we've done here so far. Also including some bits of what we haven't seen yet…"

Hello? Sir, HELLO? Copper? And aged copper, at that? In addition, it's something that "we haven't seen yet"?

I first watched this episode on my phone, and freaked out when I saw the copper. Watching it again on my monitor, I can now see that the copper is a wheel, much like the one in Bdub's base on Hermitcraft. But, since I doubt that anything more will come from the crossover on the Hermit's side of things I'm not sure whether the shape of the copper has significance, or if it's only the copper itself that has meaning.

Which leads us to Pix. The man is frantically completing an incredible castle ruin at the Ancient Capital, and - if you've been watching his streams - you'll know what the Ancient Capital actually was in its past. If you haven't been watching, you can read my transcription of the important sections here.

Warning for spoilers ahead, as Pix hasn't revealed this yet in his episodes…

… … … …

SPOILERS - LAST CHANCE TO STOP READING!

… … … …

OK, so the Ancient Capital was built by some of the different empires' survivors of the great Grimlands blast that ended Season 1, coming together to create a new "capital of commerce and technology" (to quote Pix). Parts of the castle are being built in Grimlands style, and Pix had begun another part that he says will probably be built in Crystal Cliffs style.

Remember when he said [paraphrased, as I don't have the exact quote to hand right now] "As to how ancient Pixandrian technology found its way here… trust the Lore Man,"? In that transcribed stream he also confirmed that Pixandrian migrants brought the technology for their copper aging facility to the Ancient Capital, which is why it's more advanced than the one he had in Season 1.

So we now also have Grimlands, Crystal Cliffs, and Pixandria in Season 2. Gilded Helianthia is also a given, with the Ancient Capital statue and paintings, and all the references to Santa Pearla. The Lost Empire is also kind of referenced, in the form of Gaia, Sausage's mount for Season 2, as well as in Lizzie's origin story.

ETA: Reblog tags have reminded me that we also have the Undergrove, which has been referenced back to in Shelby's videos.

Pix himself is now a ghost, having withered away when wearing the crown (more mentions of withering, hailing back to Pearl's death in S1, the flowers in front of Pearl's painting that hides the route down to the Kings' Crypt in the Ancient Capital having also turned into wither roses, and - of course - Sausage's "bad side" withering tattoos).

Pix's own words about being a ghost:

Pix: "Maybe the archaeologist of the Ancient Capital and the creator/curator of the museum was… a piece of the past himself all along. Either way, I still have a lot to do."

Like... maybe - as the server's unofficial DM - saving the world or 'ending the game', as he was unable to do in Season 1? Because there's still the matter of the king who has been pursuing Sausage, and who - at the end of his latest episode - has finally found where Sausage has been hiding...

The only Season 1 empire that we're now missing a reference to is Rivendell. And I'm wondering if that's where the Fae come in.

People… Season 2 is being tied together beautifully with Season 1, and I'm fucking HERE FOR IT.

(Also, as a side-note on a personal level: I spent this morning frantically scribbling notes for how the eventual ending of my story These Stones Remember will take place. Those notes really ramp up the time-crossing between archaologist!Pix and CopperKing!Paix, and I am going slightly crazy (/pos) at the thought that my favourite content creators appear to be blending past and future in a similar way that I am!)

#empires smp #empires s2 #empires s1 #empiresblr #pixlriffs #mythical sausage #scott smajor #empires pixlriffs #empires sausage #empires scott