WTB Better LJ Search
At ketsugami's suggestion, before I dive into any new project I'm going to pull together an idea file. This is harder than you might imagine, as many of my ideas exist in a) conversations with him, b) files scattered about my Google Drive, c) notes scribbled in the margins of notebooks, or d) mentioned on various social media.
The last is the hardest. I know that somewhere in the eleven years I've had LJ I've written down my ideas for a novel set in the world I wrote in as a teenager. It involved taking the whole section of the world that was basically a Japanese diaspora and relating it to people from Japanese history who disappeared at the end of the Tokugawa era. It had wikipedia links and everything.
And now I can't find it. The actual LJ search functionality is... basically useless. Maybe it's helpful if you're trying to find users who write about X, but to try to search your own posts for something? Apparently that's just too hard.
So I've spent the past day basically going through all my LJ posts between 2007-2009. I have a dim recollection I wrote it when I was still working at Carnegie. Still haven't found it...
And yes, I do have tags for "writing" and "story ideas." Unfortunately I'm not very good about using them, and it's not filed under either of those.
Anyway. I do think ultimately I will decide my next project is the one I'm currently calling "Yfre," after the name of one of the main characters. It combines many disparate story ideas, and I've already written a couple of experimental scenes. It needs a lot of fleshing out, still, however.
The other possibility is that I will try to finish Viktory Empire, the half-novel with which I won NaNoWriMo 2009. Viktory Empire has another teenaged female protagonist, though, and I may be done with those for the time being.
The last is the hardest. I know that somewhere in the eleven years I've had LJ I've written down my ideas for a novel set in the world I wrote in as a teenager. It involved taking the whole section of the world that was basically a Japanese diaspora and relating it to people from Japanese history who disappeared at the end of the Tokugawa era. It had wikipedia links and everything.
And now I can't find it. The actual LJ search functionality is... basically useless. Maybe it's helpful if you're trying to find users who write about X, but to try to search your own posts for something? Apparently that's just too hard.
So I've spent the past day basically going through all my LJ posts between 2007-2009. I have a dim recollection I wrote it when I was still working at Carnegie. Still haven't found it...
And yes, I do have tags for "writing" and "story ideas." Unfortunately I'm not very good about using them, and it's not filed under either of those.
Anyway. I do think ultimately I will decide my next project is the one I'm currently calling "Yfre," after the name of one of the main characters. It combines many disparate story ideas, and I've already written a couple of experimental scenes. It needs a lot of fleshing out, still, however.
The other possibility is that I will try to finish Viktory Empire, the half-novel with which I won NaNoWriMo 2009. Viktory Empire has another teenaged female protagonist, though, and I may be done with those for the time being.