WorldEmber 2021

Jarissa Progress Report

Jarissa Progress so far

14371 words 143.71% completed!

I taught myself to read at 4 years of age because I was impatient. I decided the available books were not the story I wanted to read, and wrote a story, at 5.

It was pretty awful.

I mean, I was five, that's not going to be a coherent plot anyhow! But still. It was awful. I was astounded to realize that good stories don't just burst off the page because I apply a crayon. I went back to reading for a while, but sometimes I was looking at what made one book a good read while another was merely a way to pass the time.

Here we are, twoscore and change years later, and I think I am starting to really grasp how a plot is different from a narrative which is not the same thing as a roughly chronological sequence of scenes?

Building worlds certainly makes for a better story!

My native language is American English, with several regional contributions as I moved around a lot in my early years. I can communicate tolerably well in a couple of other languages, if the other converser is patient and of good cheer. I'm familiar with several specialized vocabularies in the greater category "Nerd" and I know the responsibility for being understood is mine.

(I also sometimes have trouble understanding spoken words because I'm missing a bit of the hearing register in the middle. Maybe that's why I use the "Maximum Verbosity" setting in written communication! Sorry.)