Home Articles posted by Kit Campbell (Page 5)

The Best Laid Plans

Hello, friends. (I reserve the right to be a day late on my post, since yesterday was my birthday.) I’m working on outlining some stories! You see, I had this great plan. I need to write a novella for TDP. I need to make a new class for SkillShare. I shall combine the two. ???? Profit! Anyway, earlier in the year, I did an outlining class for SkillShare, and I thought, oh, I could do an OUTLINING WORKSHOP! It will be helpful so people can see outlining in action AND I will end up with an outline ready to go for a novella for TDP, and then all my responsibilities shall be fulfilled. I am A GENIUS. Except you can’t just jump into outlining. Well, I can’t just jump into outlining. I’ve got to do some general brainstorming first. And I thought it would be best to pick a couple of stories for the brainstorming phase, so I could demonstrate picking the best idea or something. So I started with three (plus one more, because my bigger, mobile one recently read Hidden Worlds and has sequel ideas. And, uh, they’re actually REALLY GOOD sequel ideas.), brainstormed them out, did some story reconnaissance through my inspiration boards/story idea files, etc. So now I have three (four) mostly workable story ideas instead of just one to outline. I understand that in many cases this is the opposite of a problem. Workable story ideas! In plural! But I just started a new job…

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They Should Make Summer Camp for Adults

Friends, I love camp. Not camping, though I do enjoy that as well, but Camp. Little wooden structures or tents out in the woods, with dining halls and activity buildings and lots of nature. And campfires, singing, games. Summer camp. Now, you may be saying, what does this have to do with anything, Kit? I recently finished up a leadership training course (well, the in-person instruction part of it) and a lot of it was, well, like Summer Camp. (Also, I went to scout camp with the bigger, mobile one earlier in the summer, and it was amazing.) My Girl Scout tenure as a child didn’t last terribly long. I did one year of Brownies and three years of Juniors, but when the time came to bridge into Cadettes, I couldn’t find a troop to join. (I was the only one my age in my Junior troop, so the rest of the troop was not ready to bridge). They have a “troop” for girls without troops, where you can work on badges by yourself, but, as you can imagine, there’s not a lot of motivation to finish things up. I don’t even know how many Cadette badges I started. I certainly never submitted the paperwork for a single one of them. The only real perk of this troop-less troop was that it allowed you to be eligible to go to Girl Scout camp. I went for the first time when I was 11, and it was, in a word, amazing.…

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Free Time Doesn’t Help

Hi friends! The small, mobile ones are back in school and have been for the last week. I’m getting so much done! She says sarcastically. (In case you’re wondering about the apron, I did eventually get it done, but I made it way too big somehow so it’s essentially useless. Sigh.) I was so looking forward to school starting. I was going to do so much! Write more, draw more, exercise more. Play video games. Watch TV shows! Have I done those things? Well, I have watched an entire season of Brooklyn 99. But mostly I’ve done…not really sure, to be honest. Some stuff around the house that needed doing. But otherwise… ??? (I would put the shrug emoji there but I don’t know how.) Isn’t it weird, how you look forward to free time? Like, I may not be getting as much done now as I want to, but it’s okay, because next week I’ll get lots done, or next month I’ll get lots done, or whenever, then I’ll be able to be productive. But then the free time comes and it’s so hard to actually focus on what you were planning to do. There’s probably some sort of professional psychology term for that. But I do know that they say that the more stuff you have to do, the more productive you are. That you fill the time you have with the things you have to do. Yet it’s so weird that you can have five hours to…

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Too Many Projects, Not Enough Time

I feel like I say this at least once a year. But I’ve done it again. Except it’s worse this time, because my COVID productivity has been terrible and I’ve spent a lot of time not doing anything productive (mostly playing Among Us, coloring on a phone app, and watching a LOT of YouTube videos–but not useful YouTube videos). So my productivity time has been stifled AND I’m trying to get my too many projects done. Great combination, she says sarcastically. We’ve been super busy this summer, camping and road-tripping and the like, which admittedly is not helping the productivity problem, but now things are somewhat settling down. Which means that it’s time to do random sewing crafts with the small-ish, mobile ones. I think this comes from a vague idea that, before offspring, I liked to sew, and that I should pass the knowledge on and whatnot, but in practice I do all the sewing and generally get grumpy at every one else for being absolutely no help. So then we don’t do any more sewing projects, until I get the whole passing things on idea going again approximately 12 months later. (The past couple of years we made worry pets and small owls that can be heated up in the microwave.) This year we’re going to make reversible cross-back aprons. Well, just me and the littlest one, cuz the rest aren’t interested. Certainly bigger scale than normal, but hopefully not more complicated. However, we went to buy fabric…

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Coffee Shop Exploration

You know what I miss most since we’ve locked down? Coffee shops. Specifically, sitting in coffee shops, sipping my drink, drawing or writing or reading, people watching, and generally absorbing the atmosphere. Before, I used to go at least once a week, and sometimes I would see a coffee shop I’d never been to before and make it a priority to hit it up when I had the chance, or I’d specifically look for one in a town or part of the city I didn’t usually frequent, so I could absorb a new and different atmosphere. One of my favorite things, when I go some place new, is scoping out the coffee shops. Coffee shops are almost liminal places, you know? They’re not quite local to their environment, since they tend to host a mix of locals and people just passing through, and there’s something universal about them, whether you’re at your shop around the corner, three states over, across the country, or even in some foreign locales. Vacations with the whole family can get a little overwhelming over time, so what I used to do, when we went road tripping or whatever, was get up early, before I’d be needed for anything or by anybody, and walk to a nearby coffee shop. What I did there varied—normally I would write, since I logically understand that vacations and writing don’t always mix but that doesn’t seem to always fix the need to write, but sometimes I would draw, or read,…

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Productivity! Or Not

Sorry I didn’t post this yesterday! I blame blood loss. (I gave blood, don’t panic.) They say that people who have more to do are more likely to get things done–the idea being that you expand your activities to the time available to you. If you only have one thing to do all day, you will do that one thing at the very last minute, and if you have 16 things to do, you will probably only get 10 done, but you’ll still have done 10 things. Something. I don’t know. I try to fill my days up with lots to do and it does work to some extent, but I find that it tends to be a few smaller things and maybe one bigger thing, and then, recently, the rest of my time has been taken up by Discord trivia. (There is Drama is the trivia world, which is ridiculous, but it goes to show that everything will eventually include drama.) Anyway, the drama is over, for the most part, but now I’m used to the trivia and whenever some starts a game, there I am. (I’m ranked 16th so far today, which is especially bad because I said I was going to stay off Discord this morning. And then didn’t.) Anyway, it’s a bit infuriating, because I’m not really making progress on more than one thing at a time. I had a word picked out for this year–Polish–where I was going to finish things I’d been working on…

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All’s Fair in Love and Vampires

All’s Fair in Love and VampiresKit Campbell Even chocolate started to taste bad after the third bar. Sophia forced herself to swallow the last of it anyway, said, “Right,” and went out into the dark streets. The chill seeped through her coat as she kept to lonely alleyways and forgotten corners. “C’mon,” she murmured. “I didn’t make myself sick for nothing.” “You smell divine,” purred a voice from behind her. “I do so miss being able to taste food—especially chocolate.” Finally. Sophia reached under her coat, then froze as she sensed movement off to her left. “What’s a sweet thing like you doing in a place like this?” said a second voice, then laughed. Ugh, even the undead were crap at pick-up lines. So, for future note, three bars were too many. Sophia tightened her grip on her stake—her only stake. “Back off,” said the first one. “I smelled her first.” “Come on, bro,” said the second. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you to share?” Well, served her right for being unprepared, but she’d be damned if she didn’t go down fighting. Sophia spun, pulling the stake out as she went. She lunged at the first vampire, who hissed and danced out of her reach. She cursed under her breath. She was out of her element—normally she waited until they were on top of her before she struck. But with two— “Not cool, dude,” said the second one. “That’s not playing nice.” His voice sounded closer, but Sophia couldn’t pick…

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Car Repair Interlude

Hi, friends! How are you? I’m screaming internally but am otherwise fine. Let’s break things up by having a car repair story. Ah, cars. So useful, and yet occasionally so frustrating. Especially when it’s a silly problem. Like, on my last car, there were these trim pieces around the wheel wells. And every so often one of the trim pieces would fall off, and I’d have to go get a new one put on. Sometimes I only went a few weeks between having to go get new trim pieces. In the great scheme of problems, not a big one. It’s not like the trim pieces affected how the car drove at all. But the repeatability of the problem and the number of times I had to go in for it eventually drove me mildly insane. Eventually I had all the trim pieces taken off for my own sanity, though it turns out they were either holding the edges of the car body together, or maybe the car body was just put together a little unevenly because they knew it’d be covered up by trim pieces. Who knows! Anyway, so in November, I got a new car. The old one was 10 years old and starting to have weird problems (one of the wheels was slowly dissolving, which was a new one), so I upgraded. And because everything is computers now, it came with a giant touch screen in the middle that controls all the internal things–temperature, music, etc.–as well as…

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Defunct Writing Challenges

You know what’s interesting? The way March seems to be embedded in the online writing community’s consciousness as a month for revision. This is because there was NaNoEdMo (National Novel Editing Month) once upon a time. All versions of EdMo I can find are defunct, with 2019 being the most recent any seem to be active, but even before that, it wasn’t that big. Yet, it has stuck, and it seems like almost every writing community I’ve ever belonged to turns to revision in March. I don’t really have a point, it’s just interesting to me. How pervasive the challenge was for not really ever being that big of a deal. Writing challenges come and go, and even ones that stick around change over time. The NaNoWriMo that exists today is very different from the one I did back in 2003. Adapt or die, I guess. As for me, I never seem to be on revision or editing in March, and I’ve certainly have never been able to finish an entire revision in a month. Man, that’s the dream. It is interesting to me, the way challenges age or don’t. They either get more people every year or dwindle down until they die, or sometimes the people running them don’t feel like doing it any more, or sometimes something bigger or shinier comes along and overshadows them. I still don’t have a point, except perhaps that I like writing challenges–the idea that doing something as a group makes you more…

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Freaky Fast February

Is it just me or is the shortest month of the year feeling REALLY short this year? That’s my excuse for posting today instead of Tuesday. Yes. But also, what, Monday is halfway through the month? What have I accomplished? Where has the time gone? (I am, at least, on top of Valentine’s Day. I pre-ordered heart-shaped pizza for my family.) (I can’t eat pizza unless I want to regret my life, so I pre-ordered something else for myself.) (Don’t tell my family, it’s a surprise.) Seriously, though, I feel like I’ve accomplished nothing all month. Mostly I’ve been focused on what I hope is the final revision of the first book of a high fantasy trilogy I’ve been working on for literally forever, but it’s not really getting anywhere. Which is quite frustrating, because I have the time and energy necessary, but am lacking direction. So maybe that’s why the month feels like it’s getting away from me. Lack of accomplishment. Or maybe it’s just going by really fast. Time is weird, especially lately, amirite? What do you think, friends? How’s time flowing for you this month?

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