After months of soul-searching, I have decided that my current project needs to be alternate history, not conventional fantasy. The main city is so heavily based on Elizabethan London that it will take minimal editing to effect the change. The only thing that was holding me back was my previous decision to have non-humans across the ocean plus an alternative religion for my pseudo-Europe. However I came across a post on FM (a belated reply to my thread asking which way the book should go) that has opened up new possibilities.

This site now has a wiki, which I am using for my world-building. I'm trying to avoid major spoilers, since these are public pages - they're more like an online version of the appendices that are so popular in fantasy :)

Didn't get a single writing-related thing done today as I had a particularly busy day at work. One of our team members is leaving at the end of the month, and another is off indefinitely with RSI, so I'm having to take up the slack. Spent the entire day at the keyboard with minimal breaks, so my right arm was aching by the time I left :(

Hence I made myself stay away from the keyboard until bedtime, and then only checked my email. Nothing urgent had turned up, so I put the laptop away again...

This morning I decided that, since my MacBook is out of warranty, I'd have a go at rearranging the physical keys to the Dvorak layout. I found some useful photos on Flickr, but ended up devising my own, easier technique.

I really should be working on my synopsis and chapter this weekend, but I really can't summon the enthusiasm. I feel like I've already edited the chapter so many times, I don't know what else to do with it. Instead I've been hanging in out on Absolute Write all weekend, reading about some of the dreadful scam artists who prey on naive writers. It's like a traffic accident - just ghastly, but you can't quite tear your eyes away. I'm just glad I've been on the inside of the industry (albeit non-fiction) and have a better idea of how it all works.

Six weeks ago I decided to look for an online critique group to complement the feedback I get from CWIL, and settled on a group on FM that looked promising. We exchanged work samples and did a critique swap, but after much deliberation they decided not to invite me to join. It's no biggie - there was rather more dark fantasy & horror in the members' work than I'm entirely comfortable with - but it does mean that now I have to start the whole darned process all over again!

In the absence of any other suitable groups on FM, I've decided to start my own. I want to make the genre remit a bit wider than the usual SF&F-only group, but keep out the darker stuff. Well, I can but try...

My plan to start a critique group has already attracted one person, who is writing not-quite-steampunk historical SF - cool!