The writing plans.

So, I've been in DisneyWorld, but now I'm back and ready to write.

Here's what's on the agenda for my fiction in the coming days:

1. Letter writing exercise with my good friend Emy. One of her characters and one of my characters are taking turns writing letters back and forth to each other, following a list of ten prompt topics I found on a LiveJournal writing community. I'll write the first from my character, then Emy will respond to it with hers, and move on to the next topic; I'll then reply to the second topic, then move on to the third, et cetera, until we've completed all ten. I'd love to do this with others, too.

2. Fifty Originals prompts from LiveJournal. The community seems pretty much dead, so I'm not bothering to join it, but I am going to use the prompt table. Fifty prompts, fifty works of original fiction that must be at least 500 words each. The prompts I chose are the "other" table, and although I could do some pretty painfully obvious things with some of these words (one of the topics is "silver," for example), I'm allowing myself only one "So Obvious It Hurts" chance out of fifty prompts.
We'll see where that takes me.

Off to bed for now, so I can get up and start on some of this tomorrow.

All About Ellandere

No one reading this knows anything about the world in which my characters exist, huh?

(Well, maybe a few of you do.)

Anyway, today's entry will be focusing mainly on the world of Ellandere and its primary religion.

Ellandere (pronounced ell AN dear) is compromised of one large body of land, known as Ellandere Major, and clusters of islands otherwise in the bodies of water which cover the rest of the planet. Ellandere is a part of the Vy planetary system. Other inhabitated planets within this system include Autia, Nestra, and Taak, to name a few. There are a total of twenty-one planets in the system, fifteen of which are inhabited at least to some degree.

Ellandere's single body of land is ruled by four governors presiding over four sections divided roughly by the four cardinal directions. The islands are generally tribal in nature, and operate outside of the rest of Ellanderean society. The main inhabitants of Ellandere are known as Ellandereans, but really are humans just like those on Earth. The animals which live there are also roughly the same as Earth animals; really, Ellandere is very Earth-like in these regards. The planet is also highly inhabited by Foresters, something like a "furry" or anthropomorphic human-animal. Finally, Taakins from the nearby planet Taak have also begun to settle, particularly in large cities, and it is not uncommon to find an Autian here and there, as well.

To restate more simply, humans make up roughly 55% of Ellandere's population; Foresters, roughly 40%; and the remaining five percent are "other," mostly Taakins.

Each cardinal direction governance has a capital city; the Northern capital is Poil, the Southern capital is Rinde, the Eastern capital is Stratica, and the Western capital is San Chinza.

Ellandere's primary religion is known as the Ellanderean Pantheon, and this religion is a major part of the lives of most all Ellandereans. (There are a few who follow more Earthly religions, but this is quite uncommon.) As religious legend goes, the planet was created by eighty-four deities eleven hundred years ago. Forty-two of those deities ruled over realms of light, and forty-two over realms of darkness. These deities, however, wanted to feel closer to the creatures who were to populate their planet, and so they devised a way in which mortals and deities could be connected; they each chose a mortal Prophet to represent them.

Mortals, however, are just that--mortal. When the first of these Prophets died, that Prophet's patron deity died as well, and the gods and goddesses realized their mistake: their connection was so strong that when the Prophets died, their deities would also have to die. Although the Pantheon could not change what they had previously deemed to be, they did make an amendment to the rule; they agreed that each Prophet could name a follow-up Prophet before they died, in order to ensure the deity's further existance.

This worked well... for the most part. But accidents occur, people die before they think they will, and over time, the group of eighty-four deities has dwindled to a mere eight, with the light and dark powers still in balance. The Pantheon is still as prominent as ever in Ellandere, but has changed drastically throughout the centuries.

The list of deities still remaining is as follows:

Light deities-
Aikienna, goddess of the sun
Celen, goddess of stars
Pace, god of dawn
Conlaed, god of fire

Dark deities-
Albitesh, god of the moon
Agate, god of nature
Variety, goddess of dusk
Moana, goddess of water

Each deity's Prophet is known except the moon god's; no one is quite sure who his Prophet is, although he is still alive, and therefore must have one, somewhere.

I feel that's enough explanation for one day... thanks for reading!

Thicker Glasses

Note: First fiction post, yay! This is a short piece written in an attempt to practice a closely limited third-person point of view, as well as stream-of-consciousness. I don't think the stream-of-consciousness worked well at all, but the point of view was definitely a fun experiment for me.
Although the characters aren't named, I'll tell you; the "he" is an eleven-year-old Sylvyrr, and the "she" is his temporary caretaker at the time, Melley.

For those who don't know, Sylvyrr is my main squeeze. I write about him... a lot. A whole lot. Get used to him. Remember that name. <3



'Thicker Glasses'


He follows his mother’s best friend to the doctor, dragged along for one of many appointments; head down and eyes squinted, he tries to forget following her away from his mother’s grave the same way three months before. He kicks the back of her ankle accidentally and does not apologize. He knows she will ignore it, because he knows ignoring him is the best method she has for dealing with him.

“Better hurry. We’ll be late.” He feels her hand at his back and wonders if she really cares or not. She probably wants to go back home, wax the floor, bake a strudel and pretend life isn’t getting worse every day. She’s always like that now, like enough sweets can stop him crying at night or get rid of his thick useless glasses or give her more money or bring back his mother. His mother had been perfect. This woman, her friend, can never compare to that.

He stumbles over something and hates whatever it is, and hates her hand tightening on his shoulder. He holds his own hands to his face and peers at them. They are fuzzy brown blobs of flesh to him, and blend so seamlessly with the dull backdrop of the illegible world beyond them that he’s not even sure they are his hands at all anymore. He’s done this often in the past three months. Things keep getting duller--

“We’re here,” she says with a soft voice, softer than usual. She better not have been watching him staring at his hands. He blushes to think she has. He nods once and sits in the waiting room chair she points out to him, not because he wants to, but because he has no better option than waiting for more nurses to shine more lights and put more drops in his eyes. And the doctor always says the same thing--“thicker glasses.” He knows that’s going to stop working someday.

Once, the doctor said “surgery,” and he remembers seeing blurry needles and then nothing for a while; when he opened his eyes again afterward, nothing was different. His mother’s friend had yelled at the doctor then. Now she is talking quietly to the nurse with the deep voice who usually does the preliminary work before the doctor comes in to say “thicker glasses.”

“He’s a little stubborn, you know,” mother’s friend says. “He’s not got the best attitude.”

Deep voice tries to whisper but isn’t capable of it. “I don’t blame him. Poor kid.”

He doesn’t like being “poor kid,” but has been anyway, ever since he got sick, since before he got his mother sick too. Before she died and his vision started dying. They want him to use a cane now, says deep voice. He doesn’t want to, because they want him to. Still, he wants to stop being “poor kid.” He doesn’t answer her. He really doesn’t ever know what to say anymore. He doesn’t want to have to think about the doctor who is coming in the room pretending to be happy. He doesn’t want to have to sit there feeling like everyone is staring at him and he can’t stare back. He wants to be left alone, but he wants to be loved deeply and fully again, like he was a few months ago.

Since he doesn’t know what he wants or how to want it, he simply sits and listens. “Thicker glasses,” says the doctor. “Once more.”

Simply, an introduction.

Hi, world, and welcome to Word Stains. I'm your host, Joelle; that's my middle name and I much prefer it to my first or any nicknames. You can call me whatever you want, really--this blog isn't here for me to complain about titles!

It's here, actually, because I love to write. Writing is my hobby, my passion, and my life, and I hope to share it with interested parties through this blog. First and foremost, then, Word Stains is a place for me to leave a lasting mark on the Internet through the posting of my original fiction. Feedback in the form of advice, constructive criticism, and showers of praise is greatly appreciated and always invited. Don't flame me, but feel free to point out what may not be working in my writing, so long as you do so in a polite way.

Secondly, you can expect to see posts from me dealing with aspects of writing and fiction-related topics which interest me and have to do with my work. In other words, say I'm developing a character and need to figure out whether or not something in that character's life is plausible; I could post about that. Topics which I deal with fairly often include literary versus genre fiction, young adult fiction, and representations of disability in fiction--although a great many other subjects are bound to come up over time, as well.

Finally, I'll likely be posting up some academic papers here, after updating and editing their content a bit. The subject matter of these posts can and will vary greatly.

I hope you, my readers, will enjoy and appreciate my little corner of the Internet here. Please, feel free to have a look around Word Stains, and leave comments if you so desire.