Back in August Kim (aka Daeaye) over at The Wyvern's Tail posted about a writing competition she was hosting. As part of her blog Kim writes diary entries from the point-of-view of her character Atherya Sunleaf and the idea was for your story to include an encounter or sorts with Atherya and that it would be incorporated into a diary entry. There were a few restrictions such as it needed to take place in Northrend etc.
I wasn't particuarly good at English Literature or Language at school, Science was my thing and still is! But I was fairly good at the creative writing aspects. Since completing my GCSE's in 2006 this here blog is the closest I have come to creatively writing. The challenge of writing a short story really appealed to me and I read some of the diary entries which made me realise the leveling progression of every chararcter in WoW is a story - kinda obvious I know but I'd never thought of it that way.
I'd made my decision - I was going to enter. I spent a week or so umming and ahing over the story plot. My druid, Tertami, had recently arrived in the Borean Tundra so I was playing her looking for inspiration. On evening I stumbled upon a Hordie killing various animals - mammoths, caribour etc. and I was a bit cheeky and followed along behind him skinning the corpses therefore not getting covered in Animal Blood. Fortunately said Hordie didn't appear to be a skinner himself, well he didnt /spit on me atleast! Anyway this little encounter is what inspired my short story though I tweeked it a little and left out that Tertami was herself a skinner.
When I got around to writing the story I found that once I had a plot in mind writing it was fairly easy and it just seemed to flow. Which surprised me, I'd expected it to be harder but I guess I was happy with the plot etc. One thing that I hadn't anticipated was getting so hooked up on describing the scenery. I love the Borean Tundra as a zone and I think I may have got a little over-absorbed into this!
I had two possible endings in mind but was unable to settle on one so left it open-ended. My inital idea was for Atherya to team-up with Tertami and for them to go and kick some poacher ass. Then I thought how likely is that to realisticaly happen - an Ally and Horde teaming up to battle some poachers? Which made me think about simply ending the story with Tertami flying off into the distance in search of poachers and Atherya continuing along looting the carcasses. I think the first, original ending is my favourite - possible because it's the most thought-out of the two.
Having submitted my entry I was really chuffed that I'd managed to write a short story based on a brief encounter I'd had in-game. When I got to work on Monday morning I noticed I had acouple of tweets congratulating me and I was really over the moon to find I'd won *big smiles*. I checked out the competition winners post and later got an email form Kim detailing what I'd won; a Gusting Grimoire, a watercolour painting of my character and some advertising on her blog. I still need to sort out the advertising and decide what 'mog I want my hunter in.
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| I named my Grimoire Daeaye :) |
Sadly winning the competition was the best thing about my Monday and it went down hill drastically afterwards. It was my last day at work before I supposedly start my secondment next Monday but some serious cock-ups with regard to my salary, contract etc. mean I still have no definate information to go by. When I finsihed work I rang my Mum to rant at her that they'd cocked up again to find she was having a worse day! She was at one of her best friend (Jackie)'s house as her husband had had a massive heart attack. As I spoke to my Mum and then my sister they were still working on him (CPR etc.) but they'd been going for some time and called it as I was just hanging up. It also happened to be my parents wedding anniversary so they won't be forgetting that any time soon!
The silver lining was when I finally got home and was able to redeem my Grimoire...
So sad to hear about your moms friends husband :/
ReplyDeleteMondays are bad, they should be illegal..
Seconded.
DeleteMondays are odd - I find they either go really well or terribly!
DeleteOh my gosh that's so awful to hear. I appreciate the write-up about the competition, that was very nice to read, but what an awful shame that the rest of the day went so badly, especially with your mother's best friend's husband. That's so awful. Heart attacks are vicious things and I'm concerned my dad will have one before too long, too =/ I hope you all cope okay, and that his family can get by.
ReplyDeleteRedeeming the Grimoire really did make my day that bit better!
DeleteIt was quite a shock, I hadn't expected to ring my Mum and find out where she was or what was going on. From what I gather her friends holding up pretty well, she's on auto-pilot sorting the funeral etc.
Weirdly it's hit my Dad the most. He's had a fair few friends die in recent years and when he hit 60 (he's now 63) he was convinced the end was in sight. Yeah, heart attacks are nasty things. Most of my Dads friends have died from them, and generally they've been competely out-of-the-blue.
I guess one of the things in my situation is my parents are quite old - most of my friends parents are 40's & 50's not early 60's like mine. So they do have a fair few friends die etc. It's just a fact of life.