Hats, Boots, & Chocolate

    I started a new project last week. If you've been following my blog, you might have seen the Landsong  word-counter on the "My Books" page rising over the last nine days or so, and therefore are aware that it shot from "In Planning Stage" to "14K words" in under two days, then further grew to its current 22K+ words over the course of the rest of the week.     I attribute a lot of this sudden progress to the fact that last week was my Spring Break (and as such am eager to find out what happens when this semester ends and all I have to worry about is work and dance and youth camp and so on).     At the same time, though, I attribute a good deal of that progress to momentum.     Once I got going, the law of inertia said I wasn't going to stop for a while--and I didn't. It was only when I got a really solid night's sleep that the torrent of words slowed down, and even still, I didn't start playing Stardew Valley to recharge my batteries...

    The last presentation I attended at LTUE was all about fear. While it was mostly directed towards us writers and the fears that we face, the information was still really, really good, and can be used in any context.     The presentation was called, "Let Your Fears Disappoint You," and was done by an awesome guy named Matthew Bockholt. Here's what I learned--maybe it'll help you in some way!     Mr. Bockholt's first main point was that fear is natural. It is meant to protect us from things we don't understand.     However, fear has an antidote: Experience.     He told us about a time when he was a kid, when he heard a scratching sound on his window in the middle of the night. Terrified it was some kind of monster, he ran to his parents' room and woke his dad to come chase the monster away. When his dad came back with him and opened the window, though, he revealed that the source of the scratching sound was nothing but a twig on a near...

    Hi!     No, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth, I promise. :) I have, however, been taking an English 2010 class this semester, and as a result I've used most of my writing brain cells working on boring, academic papers instead of interesting blog posts and stories. Let's just say that my writing productivity overall has dropped a lot, and it's taken me a while to figure out what to say around here.     This is the first post in a series that I'll refer to as the LTUE Report--or, in other words, a bunch of blog posts about what I learned at LTUE 42 this year. To start, I want to talk about Medieval weapons, because that was probably my favorite presentation of the entire symposium. The presentation itself was called "Medieval Weapons 101", and it was done by C. David Belt (just to make sure I attribute my sources like my English professor would want).     First, I don't have a lot of specific notes in my notebook about what I learned....