Hurrying Before A Holiday + Poem & Photo Prompt

So this week I kept working on that editing software, which is still a daunting prospect, but it’s getting a little easier. Thankfully though, yesterday and today, I managed to get some writing done too!

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Writing!

After making last week’s post, I thought I would try to get my first video out before the end of this week, and before my holiday. But I also wanted to make sure that I didn’t neglect my writing, or my blog. Sometimes when you have a lot of fun things to do, it’s easy to be indecisive about how to spend the day. I wanted to collect more scam examples, but I also wanted to record my audio, and I also wanted to write more of my current story, and some of my new idea.

Choosing between all of those things took up so much time that I could’ve actually spent just doing the stuff!

I set aside a few days specifically to focus on the writing, which seemed to work for me, because I managed to get about 2400 words done between yesterday and this morning.

I’m currently still at chapter 4 of my current story, which is a more casual chapter compared to number 3, which had a lot going on. The plot needed a little calm, resting point, before it builds up to some more exciting stuff later on. That can be a good thing, as sometimes I feel kind of bad when I’m writing drama, or conflict. It can be a bit painful to see characters that I like being mean to each other, even though it’s me that wrote it that way!

But at the same time, I’m quite eager to get back to the plot driving bits. The turning point scenes, or the character growth and development. I think those are the things that really grab me as a writer, and I will be glad to get up to chapter 5, to start building up some bigger plot points.

I don’t want to rush this part though, because I feel like if I speed through it, just wanting to get to the fun bits, the reader would be able to tell. I think it’s important for me to put just as much passion into the small moments, as it is in the exciting ones, and just hope for the best that it doesn’t turn out to be boring to read!

So that’s where I’m up to with my current book. I’m at 22444 words now, and although I can’t tell exactly, I think that I’m probably about a week or two away from the end of chapter 4. Then I’ll be back into the unknown area of beginning a new chapter! How exciting. (and terrifying!)

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Videos/Voice Recording!

Since I only spent a few days on the writing this week, the rest of my time was taken up with the YouTube channel planning. I was trying to get my first ever video out before my birthday and wedding anniversary, which is in about a week, because I’m going on a little mini holiday for a few days.

Unfortunately, that is definitely not going to happen.

I started to get a tiny bit more comfortable with the editing program, so I made the mistake of thinking, ‘Great, I’m almost finished! Nothing else will go wrong!’

But something definitely did go wrong. I think I cursed myself!

Well since I had organised the scam messages for the video and started to put them all together into the software, the only thing that was left was to record the audio. I’ve heard that people are not keen on those robotic text-to-speech things, (and someone said they cost money) so I thought I would do the voiceover myself.

That seemed like a great (and free) idea, so I set up my new microphone to the computer, shut off all of the noisy appliances like the Xbox and the dehumidifier, to try and make the room as silent as possible. I recorded the lines, and listened to them back.

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Teething Problems!

Oh. My. Goodness. There was so much wrong. Somehow, there was still a buzzing noise despite my best attempts at a silent room, but worse than that, my voice was just awful. It was as stiff as a robot, and I’m sure I sounded like I had a cold!

It was very embarrassing to have to listen to my own voice recordings over and over again, but I had to if I wanted to make it any better. I tried to make it a lot less formal so that I didn’t sound so stiff and nervous, but there was only a tiny improvement.

I was a bit disheartened, but I kept trying again for a couple of days. I managed to change the script to something I was slightly happier with, but then there was another problem.

So my wisdom teeth started to come in about 6 months ago. Because of the virus, face to face appointments for doctors and dentists have been as rare as getting struck by lightning. I phoned up because of the pain, concerned that the teeth weren’t coming in properly, and they gave me some antibiotics, which helped for a few weeks. But it came back again, and I was given more pills. This repeated twice more, and then they got better for a while, so I just stopped calling because I was terrified of speaking to them on the phone (the signal is bad where I live). Every so often since, the swollen gums and teeth pain would flare up a bit, but only for a few days. Which is exactly what happened on the next day that I tried to record!

I couldn’t believe the timing when I woke up on Wednesday, and realised that my gum had swollen up, and I couldn’t close my mouth without biting it. That made me sound even worse while talking, since I have to keep my teeth apart all the time till the swelling goes down. I tried to talk normally, but I ended up wincing in pain every time I bit my gums anyway, so that was no better!

I was really disappointed, but at least I got to use that time to organise all of the footage, and even get some new emails to use as examples. In fact, president Joe Biden emailed me, but got very angry when I wouldn’t send him a fee. I’m not sure why Joe Biden of all people would need any of my money, but still…

Still, hopefully by the time I’ve enjoyed my holiday, my teeth will be back to normal and I’ll finally be able to get more practise at the voice recording!

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Acrostic Poem!

Whenever you’ve got lots of plans,

It’s always the time for things to go awry.

Soon as I sat down to work,

Doubts began to fill my stomach,

Or was that a side effect from the toothache?

Maybe a mixture of both.

The inability to work is frustrating,

Especially when you’re raring to go.

Even my red raw gums won’t stop me,

There must be something else I can do,

Hurrying along before my holidays!

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Photo Prompt!

So this week I took a walk down to the beach by my village, which is usually lovely, but I was shocked to find it absolutely covered in debris from the latest storm. It’s not really related to today’s post, but I think it’s kind of interesting to look at, and to wonder if there could be a more mystical reason for it getting there…

I put a few comparison photos in so you can see how much got washed up onto the road! It was a really crazy storm…

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Well, that’s what I got up to this week. Apart from the videos and writing, I kept up my bad movie watching resolution, and I’ll start ranking the things I watch at the end of each month. In fact, right after I post this, I’m off to watch Plan 9 From Outer Space! Thanks for reading!