I tried. Believe me, I tried to like this book. I was already almost half way through it, and then…
poof.
It didn’t hold my interest anymore. I tried to pick it up after I finally got a light for my bed, but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to know about the witch and her husband, the Strange and what it wanted. I eventually didn’t care about the lone-wolf (literally) hunter, either.
That’s too bad.
It seems my muses don’t like me sick.
I have been feeling out of sorts for the past month, sleeping a lot, even falling asleep at work. My writing has suffered. I can’t focus.
Today has been the worst so far. Dizzy, joint pain, earache, waking up at 3 a.m…called into work this morning which is the first time in years. Hopefully I will get some amoxicillin and then go on with my life.
But why so tired? Why so out of breath when I do the simplest things? Why so dizzy? Do I have to pass out in order for anyone to do anything?
Sorry. Will write about writing next time, I promise.
I have two things I’m working on. I’m not sure if I like either one, because they both take place in the past.
My coworker’s husband passed away. My coworker’s in her early 40’s. He died of a sudden illness. It was a shock.
I was fine talking about it, but I realized how eerie it was compared to my experience. As I told this to my counselor she said, “You should write a memoir.”
I had it in mind these past few years, even with a title: Torn Asunder. It’s been seven years now, and to think about revisiting that moment in time as if it was yesterday…
So I decided to do it. It’s in Scrivener, and I may end up doing it as a Kindle book because it’s not going to be long enough for a real book. Or I’ll do it as “Book one in a trilogy”, with the other two being about dealing with an autistic child and borderline personality disorder/video game addiction. I haven’t published it anywhere.
The other thing I decided to do was write out the Leopard Knight – Mal and Knight’s story. That is published here.
I’m still playing games more than writing. Doing these two things is like work to me, because I’m an “organic” writer. I want to see how the story goes and later ends up. I don’t know the end usually when I start a story. However, in these cases, I know the end, and details in the middle, and how it all began. It’s like I’m regurgitating a story I already have memorized.
However, nobody else knows the story like I do.
Review:
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
I finally broke down and decided to use my Netflix account for myself. Being a deep-seated lover of comic books and the super hero genre, I figured I’d watch a couple of super hero stories. I started with this.
I’m trying so hard not to binge watch this. I’m only on Volume 1, episode 4. Even though it’s more like Russel Stover’s than Godiva, it’s still like chocolate and I know I’ll get sick and overwhelmed if I see the entire thing at once. I have found that I like Netflix over DVD’s. I’m not sure if I’ll go out and buy this on DVD – it’s good, but not like RED, which was awesome and I had to have the DVD.
I finally figured out how to export my posts from WordPress into Word. It’s not pretty, it’s certainly not clean, but the words are there, and that’s the important part. Downloaded them by year.
I noticed that I started 800 Words as my junk drawer for writing. Now I write for the two people who read it. I know they like when I use their characters, and I only hope I do them justice. (I suppose I do, otherwise they wouldn’t keep playing with me, I guess.) But I opened up the second or third entry into 800 Words and read it.
And I was amazed. No way; seriously, I wrote this shit? There must be more nuggets in there somewhere.
The writing that is play seems to be a lot of fun. I’m using Take Ten for Writers, which gives me ten minutes a day to write – the same amount of time that What’s-Her-Name from Writing Down the Bones wants me to write, minimally, per day. That’s about a page in my composition book.
Hell, I can do that.
800 Words is just over a page and a half. I can usually squeeze that out, too, though it takes me an hour. Not because I type slow, but because I’m often keeping the end in mind and letting myself meander to get there. Depending, of course, on whether I need to pad to hit my word count.
Stuff I’m working on:
Mal and Knight’s story over in Tumblr, starting from the beginning. This one’s going to be a novel, though I would love a graphic novel if I could find an artist around here. Craig’s List gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Daily writing in my composition book, the notebook at work, the notebook downstairs at the kitchen table, the notebook in the bathroom – you laugh. Oh, shit, I need one in bed. Taking care of that tonight!
Coming up with ideas for RP in Champions.
Coming up with storylines for the characters I’m keeping and want to write more about. Firefighter? This means you. Cybermancer? You got fans because you’re hot so they want to know more about you.
And on it goes.
Reading:
Dead Iron by Davon (something-or-other). Still following my (alleged) misogynistic tendencies of not reading a fantasy book by a female author because they can’t write male heroes worth a damn, I have found out that some males cannot write female heroines worth a damn, either. Not sure yet about this guy because his heroine hasn’t been on-screen long enough for me to make a decision. If the main male protagonist and this girl get together, I’m going to throw the book across the room in disgust.
Amazing what an extension cord can do for your life.
My bed is on the opposite side of the room where the electric plug is. The light I have in the room doesn’t light up near my bed. So you would put a light near the bed, right?
Except there’s no plug. Well, now, with an extension cord, there is! Let there be light to read by!
So now I don’t have to rely on Kindle to read the books I have. And boy, do I have a ton.
For fiction this time around, I am reading Infinity, by Sherilyn Kenyon. It’s kind of like my book, but my main character’s gay. And my book is told from a first person, not third person limited. My character also is the victim, not the bully. Okay, so it’s not like my book.
For writing, I am reading a book about shame, about how it’s different from guilt. I am changing the end of my book, because guilt and remorse are things that Grim does not feel toward the end of the book. He’s changed – from the bullied to the bully. And bullies don’t feel shame, guilt, or remorse about what they do to people.
Whether that unhappy ending sells is another story. I have an agent I’m going to send a query letter to. At the moment, I’m polishing up the query and plan on sending it out as soon as it’s critiqued. Which hopefully will be next month.
I sat down and figured out how many hours I write a week.
12.
You know how many hours I game?
About 60.
Gaming is mindless. Writing can be work. Sometimes it’s fun. Sometimes, when I sit here thinking, “What character wants to talk today?”, I have a total mind-blank. I have about 30 characters that I can pick from. Thirty distinct, separate characters with great backstory, but no wants. That’s what drives a character. As George Carlin says about sinning, “You gotta wanna.”
A few of the characters I have do have wants. But not 30 of them.
I will have to cut down my gaming and get into the writing a little more. If I can balance it, then I think I can be productive. And that’s my resolution: to be productive.
So begins the new year. It begins with a new journal, a new daily journal (which I’m still trying to think of what to do with it), and new resolutions.
Other than the typical “Lose weight, be more healthy, get on a budget, etc.” bullshit which fails by February, I plan on writing more. To be productive. To try and use my creativity for more than just a few select fans, but to put it out there.
First thing is, I’m going to write 800 words a day. This includes diaries (in my journal, it’s 3 pages or 1 hour), my blog, and here.
I plan on blogging in 800 Words at least twice a week.
I plan on blogging here once a week.
Every day I will write something somewhere. Hither and yon, a writer’s notebook, a journal, a diary – it doesn’t matter where, it has to be writing. If I don’t do it at work, I’ll have to do it at home. No news/tv/gaming until writing is done.
And finally…NO MORE NOTEBOOKS.
Pens, however, are another story…
Since finishing NaNo, I haven’t been writing much. Firstly, I lost my diary in this abyss that is my house. For three days I didn’t write anything.
Second, I was writing on 800 Words, but realized that I now have way too many characters to write about (over 30). They all want their stories told, so they’re all being skimmed. I don’t like that. I need to concentrate on one or two.
I end up not playing them well online, either. Firefighter, one of the more recent ones, is a character I want to explore more. He has a past, has past lovers, is older than the teens, is a little skeeved by magic. He considers himself a mutant but he’s more Science than a mutant, since the chemicals he found himself exposed to were what woke up his mutation.
Other characters exist, from Knight and Grim to new ones like Breathe and Heavy Metal. It’s just that…I can’t seem to sit down and write a long piece. I want to write a novel. It gives me a purpose. But I’m not even coming up with short pieces, never mind long ones.
The conscience wants to, but the mind is tired. I can’t come up with things. I need to either read more than writing books, watch more TV than the news. But whenever I do watch TV (fiction), I consider it a waste of time because I’m not actually doing anything. Yet, in Bird by Bird (or one of those books), the author says that when you do that, you are refilling the well. Plowing through the George R. R. Martin books is a bad idea at the moment, because I’m stuck reading that one book, that one author – who’s really good, but not a master. I want to read other books, but I notice I start them and I don’t finish them. The only one I finished recently is Daywalker, and it was horrible. I tried to read Called (note: both book covers look very much the same) but I couldn’t get past the fourth chapter. I wanted to. But it didn’t hold my interest.
Speaking of which, I have my friend, who is not my beta reader, plowing through the first 30 pages or so of Grimaulkin. It might be that many pages; I gave her a handful and told her to read it. Unfortunately, I’ve lost my beta reader due to depression. My friend read the first page as I was in the kitchen, and she said, “Gee. Nothing like starting in the middle.” That’s how books start these days. She likes old fashioned books like some others of her generation, but the people who are buying books – maybe not physical books, but things to read on their Kindle – are younger than me and her. They want to get right in the thick of things.
Because of that, I have to write short. I have to write in front of a green screen, like Gone Girl. The big reason I stopped reading that story is because I was getting really sick of the vitriol of the husband. Chapter after chapter, he talked about how evil his wife was. And chapter after chapter, the wife steps in and talks about how good she is. Both of them are yuppies that are full of themselves, and once their jobs are gone, are lost little piranhas, eating each other alive. In Gone Girl, there is hardly any description.
Is this what people want in their fiction? Why do I have to go by how the New Yorker people write their fiction, especially if I don’t like it myself?
This is a series of books that have exercises in them for writers. I will admit, at first, I was skeptical, but some of the exercises I think I’ll be able to use. I know this book I will be able to use.
A couple of the exercises I like are “The Collage” and “The Wedding Cake”. I tried those and enjoyed them immensely. I did have a writing notebook that I kept beside me where ever I had a table, but when NaNo started, I had just one notebook and kept that with me. In that notebook I would have the summary of what I did the day before, so that if I had a chance to sit down and write in it, I could. I plan on keeping that as my writing journal.
Anyway, back to the book. Most of the articles are by teachers, or by people who have published books that I’ve never heard of. I suppose it’s more for literary fiction than the kind of genre I read and write in (urban fantasy). Regardless, pick up this book, and you will find that these exercises will help you with characterization and give you great ideas. They might be junk, but at least they’re good ideas.
After a huge jump on 11/11 (which I had off), I was able to catch up and I have now surpassed the par. I’m at 44K words.
If I really wanted to, I suppose I could finish off the book now. Part of me wants to do it. Part of me wants to do what I usually do when my characters are 39 and some change in the game: just play alerts to get to 40, because then that’s the end.
But part of me wants to savor this like fine chocolate, wants to write this stuff right, even if it’s a first draft. I right now am going to have about 2K words in a bar, 2K words for the climax, and 2K words for the aftermath. That’s what I’m thinking and planning.
But as you all know, nothing goes as planned. I still have a whole weekend to write. But I have a feeling I’ll be finished with this before that weekend arrives. And then I will have earned my t-shirt!