#d is because it took 5 updates (20 depending how you count it) to add in all the promised features from what was originally stated as being

[xxxprogamer69xxx]

(ramble in the tags: tl;dr*: i agree and hate that people are toxic about the updates. The reasons i think they're salty because most of the updates after 1.16 have been a bit smaller and a lot of the the features promised to be in one update have been spread through multiple. + plus a bunch of other stuff explaining why i wrote this)

*tldr is slightly different from what i wrote in the tags

I hate the modern state of discussion about the Minecraft updates, I can't even say I am excited about a new block, and people start immediately saying that it sucks, and that Mojang are lazy

Fun

[an0nymousghost]

simblr asks v2

here are my answers! find the questions here.

i wrote soo much ahaha. like however much you think i wrote, i wrote more than that. imo everything i write is gold though

1. are you going to buy the new pack (cottage living) when it comes out? no, it looks really nice but i legit never ever buy packs at launch, especially cause this one is a expansion and it will probably go on sale at some point

2. do you p*rate your dlc or buy it legitimately? buy it legitimately 👌

3. what’s your favorite world? brindleton bay, it gives like seaside cottage vibes. willow creek is good but it’s boring. 

4. if you use a queue, how many posts per day do you set it as? 3 or 4. i used to do like 12 lmaoo what even was wrong with me

5. do you watch sims on youtube? yes, i watch mainly malixa, oshinsims, and msgryphi

6. what are your thoughts on the most recent pack? (dream home decorator) those sectional couches look good! but honestly im kinda annoyed because now it’s even harder to have all the items filled in when i place lots from the gallery. like i’m just saying like a lot of builds will use that pack probably and if i don’t get it then i can’t really use builds/save files 

7. how many packs/kits do you own? lemme count

expansion: all - 10/10 game: 5/10 stuff: 9/18 kits: none xo

24/38 - 63%

8. what’s your origin id? is it the same as your url? 🤗 it’s in my title, it’s celeschul. it doesn’t look that nice in my title but i use celeschul in my package files and i’m guessing people search things like, “celeschul penny hair” or something like that in order to find my cc- so i keep it in there so the search results are easier. i do want to change it though..

but no it’s also not the same! well i mean it’s the username i use for cc. my origin id used to be an0nymousghost but i changed it. i wonder if anyone’s taken that one?

9. is your simblr your sideblog or main blog? main blog ✌️ my old blog @stardze​ is a main blog as well.

my old old simblr was a sideblog but it had like 1 follower and it literally a bot so i don’t think that counts. i have a multifandom sideblog though 

10. do you have a cc finds blog? i wish. i was thinking bout it earlier and that would be sooo neat but sometimes i download stuff that doesn’t have a tumblr post attached to it, and also it’s stressful to keep up with so nah

11. are you wcif friendly? yes sir. in fact i bring the trouble of wcifs onto myself but doing them even when nobody asked.

12. what’s your favorite sized household to play with? (ex. 1 sim, 4 sims) gonna have to think on this one, honestly 1 sim is really fun and stuff goes by so fast. doing stuff with astrid when she was on her own, it was much more efficient. 

for families, i haven’t done that in a while actually. 5, 2 parents and 3 kids is cute tho. why did i write this this is honestly such a hard question

13. if you have c&d, do you play with pets? i feel like i haven’t played with cats and dogs in forever. honestly i just have no paitence. noelle fae was supposed to get a cat (there’s a food bowl + cat bed in her house) but when summer vacation started, the amount of time i spent playing ts4 decreased a lot. (this doesn’t really make sense, i have a lot more time. honestly it just has to do with my recent obsession with a certain anime/manga and some other personal thing)

i did random nightmares in may though and i had pets frequently. g5 didn’t because sofia scarlett lived in an apartment, but g2/3/4 had cici, and g1 had all the cats. but that was back in march so it’s been a while.

14. what lifespan do you use? i really want to do aging off but then i feel like it drags on. but aging legit stresses me out, sometimes i just want to sit down and do some cas stuff but i only have 2 hours in real time and there’s like 4 days left till one of my sims’ birthdays. 

15. if you own a lot of packs, how many of them have you actually played through? just so everyone is aware this question was made for me

i feel like eps require a specific save made for testing them out, but the only save i’ve ever made for an ep is noelle fae’s get famous save. 

that is literally a lie - i made a save for island living with one of my 100bc kids, maisie acapella. i did actually post it on tumblr BUT then i deleted all the posts BUT i reblogged them on my alt account BUT i privated my alt account so i honestly forgot about it

i have never played through discover university or watched anyone do it on youtube, i’ve read gerbits’ story about it so i think i’m pretty qualified. i’ve always wanted to do one with periwinkle acapella but i never got around to it

another ep i know nothing about is get to work

i tried doing a eco life playthrough but i hadn’t watched any videos and i was like..what is going on. so i quit lolx d ;;;;; i mentioned it but the whimsy stories legacy was the first time i had played with the eco lifestyle features so technically i think i know what im doing

i got outdoor retreat literally on monday of this week so i haven’t played through it yet. 

jungle adventure i still don’t know what’s going on. i remember last year before i bought the pack i was brainstorming, and wanted to do a ja playthrough with luna and cedar, who are a couple who i did a random legacy with and it was all queued to post when i deleted everything (if you’re wondering why, it’s because my queue was literally 200+ posts). except this time i didn’t save them to my sideblog so i lost them. 

i still havent had a restaurant in dine out 

also never did the vet thing from cats and dogs

i have no idea what that rock climbing thing is from snowy escape but i did most of the other stuff because rn g5

city living i did through psc stage 5 and also it was the first pack i bought anyways

the rest of them are either stuff packs or i ended up playing them through casual gameplay (seasons, parenthood)

16. what do you do as you play sims? (ex. listen to music) i listen to music most of the time, or listen to commentary youtube videos because i am an alpha chad. i also used to talk with my friends on voice call but i don’t do that anymore 🥲

17. which sims challenges have you tried? random legacy, whimsy stories, perfect sim challenge, 100 baby, legacy (just the plain get-to-10-gens one), random nightmares, berry zodiac, astrology legacy, apocalypse

i feel like im forgetting some.. honestly most of the stuff i did before simblr was either 100 baby (i love that challenge) or random saves that lasted for 2 seconds. 

18. do you like the new(ish) hair swatches? nah. 

i do appreciate that most cc hairs have a true (ish) black, thank god! and the fact that the hair update is what inspired me to update and fix a bunch of hairs with different issues is pretty nice. but will i use them? no. 

plus it takes up like 5 gb? depending on how many packs you have.

19. post the latest screenshot you took 📸

i live in cas

20. what is the cc/ingame hair that looks the most like your own? i think that dream home decorator side part hair looks a lot like my hair. honestly i havent see much like my hair but that one is kinda-? close

21. who is your favorite sim of yours and what is their story? noelle and alari fae i think! 

link to post

noelle is blonde and has blue-grey eyes. she wears purple contacts pretty often though (because she wants to 😌)

alari has light brown hair that is kinda curly, and she’s got pretty vibrant blue eyes. 

they’re sisters, alari is 3 years older than noelle. noelle was 19 and alari was 22 when they got spotted

they worked as models when they were young adults. their jobs involved dyeing their hair blue/pink, and they would model like clothes and stuff. anyways, they were pretty successful. like not ultra famous but they had enough money to not work for the rest of their lives. 

their modeling group was made of 4 girls, the others were named paisley autumn and they were green and red, respectively. some things are: 

paisley and alari started dating during this 

autumn was a single mother to a little girl named destiny

noelle dated many people during this but never ended up finding the one <3

when their contract ended after like 6 years, paisley and alari went to go live together and noelle decided to get into acting. so thats when get famous playthrough started!

there’s more but basically they’re like oc’s with sims on the side. xoxo

22. if you use cc, are there any cc creators that you have like ALL of their items? this is such a good question! i hoard hair very heavily (my folder is 11gb) i so i have like 97% from most of the popular hair creators. 

i think i had legitimately EVERYTHING from simstrouble though, i went through multiple times to check and i also have all of her retired stuff. 

i have everything from ridgeport i think-? because of the fact that she uploaded all her stuff in one big zip. 

i think that’s it.. for a long time i also had everything by clumsyalienn, but then i ended up deleting it and only keeping my faves. 

and looking at my collection, maybe ah00b? i might be missing a couple but i at least have like 99%.

23. what’s one pack you think is underrated? dine out, it’s laggy af yes but it’s such a nice thing for my sims to do. 

24. what are your favorite sims stories/legacies? melons by gerbits always and forever

this question was inspired by this ask anyways so 

25. if you could change one small thing about ts4, what would it be? most of my suggestions are pretty complex but literally just - when you add tray files, they appear at the top. my life would be so much easier

this took me literal hours to answer

[klkettle]

On editing or “It’s how organised you are that scares me.”

Let’s talk about the process of editing… 

  Some people love it. Some people loathe it. 

I’ll certainly not profess to be an expert, but after two decades of committed creative writing and subsequent editing, I think I can finally say, with confidence, I have found my flow !

I thought I’d share some tips on what works for me, some are of my own making, some I learned from being a Project Manager by trade (organising work and simplifying it is my other passion), and some I picked up along the way. Where I can, I will cite references or people from whom I have learned.

1) Plan your objectives

Depending where you are in your writing journey you will have different goals. Let’s say you’ve just finished your first (few) draft(s), well I would suggest your main goal is to find out what the real story is that you are telling. Two quotes I always remember,

“Let your first draft be S***" 

The esteemable Hemmingway* (I’d add, even if you think it isn’t, assume it is and make it better.)

"The first draft is you telling yourself the story." 

Terry Pratchett.

Let’s say you’re past the first (few) draft(s) and you know what story you are telling, your goal may be to find out what story your characters want to tell, or to make sure you’re not repeating yourself, or that the pace is perfect for the genre in which you are writing. 

Whatever it may be, if you plan you goals for your draft you will keep on track, neither get blinded by the confidence demon nor the ego angel.

So… when I edit I have a plan, I have  goals, I work out where my edit is in the journey and (critically)  how long it will take me to deliver to my plan. It helps me stay on track when life and emotions and exhaustion get in the way.

How?

Well this is where I get super nerdy. At one point I used Microsoft project plan, but these days I generally set myself a word/chapter target based on a personally set deadline, and how much/day edit I think it will take to reach that goal. For example

In my recent Micro Edit (more on that later) I 

set myself a 6 chapter a day annotation target

set a 2 week manuscript ‘update’ target (because I have found I get more analytical if i step away from my machine and add notes in later)

This means I aim to do a full edit ( not redraft, that’s different) in a month.

with 61 chapters I aimed to be finished annotating in 10 days

with 14 day window to work through my notes on my MS.

And yes, by some miracle…I’m on target despite a full time job, and a day off. Making a plan meant I could make time, track progress and stay on track. I worked out it took me 1 hour to annotate. Meaning I needed 6 hours annotation time a day. So once I knew how long it would take I knuckled down. I got up early, did 2 chapters before work, one during my work day (commute, lunch, tea-breaks) and 3 in the evening. I no longer use MPP or Gantt Charts for my book work - but I do have a fab schedule in my bullet diary. Easy? No. Worth it? Hell yes. 

Key: The colours are the number of chapters I did a day, as you can see my efficiency improved near the end, whether due to the pace of the book/length of chapters, or because I became a bit like a #boss… I’ll let you decide when you read the book. I originally planned to do this by Word Count (as per the right bar, but found I was working through faster if I focussed on it chapter by chapter - left bar).

Now, admittedly, I’m behind on the 'update’ part of the plan which is where my third quote comes in - one I use daily at work,

“No battle plan survives contact with the enemy,”

said by the incredibly named  Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

This means that when you throw reality at a plan, no plan will remain the same. I have adapted. I have given myself a week 'slip’ to handle the fact that life got in the way, and I have put extra time into catching up to make the difference.

At each stage I check

If I am on plan, not only to time, but also against my goals.

Has the objective of my edit changed yes/no ?

If so, is that okay? Am I getting out of the plan what I expected yes/no (in Project Management speak we call this 'Benefits Realisation’)?

If not, have I the right goals or should I change them? More about goal setting and definition/assessment perhaps in a later post - if you’re interested put it in the comments below.

2) Get off the machine

I'd say this is the biggest lesson I have learned. In the 21st Century it is so hard to step away from the machines that occupy our space. As I write this there are 3 in my vicinity: my laptop, phone and TV. Focus and concentration is critical, especially for a creative mind. Printing is an expensive business but worth it. I print my manuscript:

hardcopy

A5 size

10pt bottom margin,

double spaced,

single sided.

On each page I have a key around the edge. I then go through each page hard copy with a lamy pen, a selection of highlighters, and coloured pencils. It allows me to see things in my writing I had never seen before. 

 3) Macro Edit - Foolscap/Book-Map/Story Grid

I love a good spreadsheet. Seriously, it’s an addiction. My book has over 5 XLS docs alone. But I did a great 4 day ‘macro’ edit in my notebook. Macro because I am interested in the arching themes, plot, characters, pace and style. 

My last Macro edit I focused on the ‘global story’ or ‘foolscap’ method from Shaun Coyne purely because I left my computer cable behind. 

It was eyeopening, and helped me fix a persistent problem with my story by using the External and Internal value measures, and McKee, to work out (after my first draft I have to add) what are the values at stake and do they change enough and effectively in each act. 

4) Micro Edit

For me a micro edit isn’t the same as a line edit. A line edit is part of a micro edit. A micro edit is about each page. It is about checking word by word, line by line, to make sure you are reading your work and applying a critical mind to every sentence. 

I check on whatever my editor has pointed out is lacking. And generally I focus on

Gesture (is there enough, not just face, body, character through gesture and body language)

Line (grammar, structure, spelling, structure, voice, style)

Action (is there ‘something happening’ on every page, plot moving forward and in the direction necessary, not just talking wallpaper!)

Dialogue (is it realistic, showing character, motive, conflict and action)

Motivation (is the motive, real or misguided, clear for each character)

Senses (see below)

Place (is it clear where we are, and which direction the reader should be ‘looking’)

World (is the world and the way it works clear, and how am I showing it, how is info passed into the plot)

(see the letters on the grid above as a key)

I note alongside with checks and any comments or thoughts, against each letter on each page. The letters act as a prompt to remind myself to analyse, and I use colours on the page to show where I am using each. Along the bottom I list the senses:

See

Hear

Touch

Taste

Smell

Again I note if I have used them, what words chosen, are they the right words, do they also convey character, action, place etc. Am I missing the senses altogether, or perhaps one critical one, or even, am I over using.

5) Don’t tell yourself it’s the last edit

It won’t be, not until it’s on a shelf, or in someone’s hand. Even then, you won’t think it’s done. Creative works are never finished, they are always abandoned. Prepare and expect and anticipate the joy of editing, sharpen your pencils! 

“Let me not think of my work only as a stepping stone to something else, and if it is, let me become fascinated by the shape of the stone.”

Ze Frank

All of this is what led my work colleague to say, “It’s just how organised you are that scares me.” And my father to add, “I didn’t realise how much work went into a book!”

And on that note, I have work to do, and a plan milestone to meet. Clearly I am procrastinating by writing this blog. Stop distracting me…. shoo. 

 EDIT - 2 years later

6) The leave it alone and write something else edit

After going through the above process at least twice more I eventually couldn't edit anymore. I put my MS in a drawer for over a year and wrote something else.

When I came back to the MS - having been longlisted (and eventually becoming a finalist) for the SCBWI Undiscovered Voices 2018 - needing to edit it I applied the same process as above, but this time the book seemed completely new.

It seemed like the 'S***y first draft' and editing was the easiest thing in the world!

 *Hemmingway quote is apocryphal: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/09/20/draft