And I’m spent…

But I did it!!!!! Right down to the freakin’ wire, but it’s done. 50,000+ words in 30 short days. About 15,000 of which were written in the past 3 days.

I am very tired now…

NanoWriMo- Day One

As you can see, I’ve gotten a good start on my NaNo project this year. I didn’t even get started until this afternoon but I already have better than my daily goal in the can, so to speak, and some rough outlines of scenes to come. Hopefully this will be a firaly easy goal to kick, especially with the extra time off coming my way this year. Veteran’s Day on the 11th and Thanksgiving later in the month should give me planty of time to rattle something quasi-coherent out. I’m waiting for the inevitable ticklings of my other characters, clamoring for attention, climing I’m ignoring them. Well, technically I am, so that Molly has her time to be in the spotlight. Even if these never get published, it’s all practice and improvement toward the goal of becoming published someday.

Yeah, I tend to be optimistic at the beginning, No doubt something will come along and piss in my cornflakes. But, until then, onward and upward!

Crossposted to Aimless and Wandering
Progress meter found at writertopia.

A decision has been reached.

Since I spent the last hour making this banner, it seems clear which story I’ll be concentrating on for NaNo this year.

NaNoWriMo, ahoy!

What’s that on the horizon?! Yet another month of writing insanity, called National Novel Writing Month!

I ‘won’ last year, by writing 50,000 words in 30 days. That story, my werewolf idea, has gone nowhere since, but that’s probably because I’ve concentrated on the myriad of other stories that harass me at any given moment.

What to write this year? Well, I have a couple of choices. One is expanding on that dream that so captured my attention last month, tying together dreams, alternate universes, the concept of One True Companion for another, and Shakespeare. This might require me to become much more of a Shakespeare scholar in the long run, just for details or, since this is specualtive fiction, I can just make shit up. Probably the latter.

Tentatively titled Downtown Babylon, after a Paul Thorn song, my next choice is another non-supernatural, non-fantasy, non-weirdness story about normal people. Molly (have I picked a last name for her yet? It’ll be an Irish name, to take full advantage of the Irish-owning-a-bar thing) owns a bar in a Navy town in Florida (might as well say Jacksonville or vicinity.) It sits across the street from a church. She and the members of the church have a policy of mostly ignoring one another. Her place is more of a family place and she tends to mother-hen her clientele in her own way, tossing them on their ear when they’re too loud and obnoxious being part of the policy. Therefore her patrons tend to be pretty well-behaved. She is challenged by a young man who works at the church across the street, as to her lifestyle, which is not at all as decadent and sinful as he would like to believe. Typical for her, she pushes right back. Did I mention the on-again, off again musician boyfriend that comes around once in awhile just to shake things up? Or the homeless man she helps out? Or the dog?

Then there’s A Single Self, an idea I’ve had for ages, about a person who is the result of a single birth, in a world where identical twins is the normal way of things. Probably mostly psychological.

And I could always write on New Tricks, the sequel to Old Dogs that I’m writing right now. There’s plenty of material there and the characters won’t shut up, but I may give Valerie and Daniel a rest for the time being, just so I can come back to them fresh and with new ideas.

So, what’re you planning to write for NaNoWriMo 2009?

C’mon, spill.

*Crossposted to Aimless and Wandering, my LiveJournal*

Thank God for writing prompts

In the final throes of my two weeks off, I’ve gotten doodley done on Old Dogs, or anything else. Well, I take that back. I have managed to rewrite/tweak/enhance/fuck with a scene I had already written. It’s something, eh? Granted I was out of town for four days and enjoying my time in North Carolina, so what am I bitching about? Inertia, or the lack thereof. I’m not precisely stuck anymore, but I’m not moving ahead either. As usual, ideas for stories other than the one I’ve committed myself to concentrating on are assaulting me, teasing me with possibilities. Ahh… the possibilities.

So, on the LOL Lit Forum, Larn (bless her!) has posted a prompt. Maybe this will do the trick. Now, to stop rattling here and go rattle some words into The Story. It should be easy enough to find a scene with some tension, right? Or maybe I’ll let Rayne come out to play for a bit. She’s feeling lonely and neglected.

North Carolina was gorgeous and inspirational. Valerie and Daniel have informed me that part of their honeymoon will be spent in a cabin on a mountain just like the one I stayed in. Valerie’s fear of heights will come into play, just as my own did, on those steep and winding roads. At heart, I’m truly a flatlander, no shame in admitting it, right?

And I’ve got to stop having these cool adventure dreams. The premise of my dream a couple of nights ago wasn’t anything spectacular.  Two women that are friends, two men that are friends, neither pair knows the other to begin with. But one of the women is abducted/disappears for whatever reason, and her friend enlists the help of/runs into these two guys/involves them somehow in her search for her friend. Turns out the friend was kidnapped, but as bait, to draw the second woman out so *she* can be taken, by some sort of dark cult/coven of baddies/insert name of your nefarious-type group here. So far, the men are serving mostly as transportation/moral support (there’s more slashes in this post than a Highlander erotic fanfic!). In the dream, I was in the role of the second woman and I remember being truly afraid for my friend. I found a couple of the women that were responsible for her abduction and got really angry, supremely pissed oof, as a matter of fact, and I/she punched one of them. The expression on the face of the ringleader was truly frightening and I remember thinking “Uh oh, I’m in trouble now.” Trouble is, I woke up before ever figuring out what to do. I was aware enough of my dreaming to know I was dreaming, therefore I wasn’t really scared, but still, it was very intense. Wish I could recall more details about the men; I guess that means whenever I get around to using this as book-fodder, I can make them whatever I want!

So, plenty of things to think about, still no progress being made. Tell me now, you’re tired of hearing me bitch about the same things over and over, aren’t you? It’s okay, you can tell me. I know I am.

Stuck…

In answer to Larn’s challenge on the LOL Literary Forum awhile back, I decided to concentrate on Old Dogs, hoping to finish a first draft-type thingy. My goal was 100,000 words by the end of September. Now, I know it’s still the beginning of September, but I seem to be hovering around 81,000 words. The more I write and read and edit, the more I keep culling little bits and pieces here and there, thereby reducing my word count. I keep getting ideas for Valerie and Daniel, but for the story that will follow Old Dogs, not the current one.

Why the hang-up on the word count? It’s something to obsess over, I suppose, and They (the writing resource websites I tend to haunt) say 85,000-100,000 words is a decent first novel length. Less than that might make a potential reader shy away, thinking they’re not getting enough bang for their buck, while longer makes publishers shy away, afraid that it won’t sell because it’s too long and won’t hold a reader’s attention.  Who knows if trying to adhere to that will help or hurt my ultimate chances of getting published.

In other concerns, NaNoWriMo is coing up and I have two ideas to choose from. One is an idea that has simmered for years, about a woman named Molly who runs a bar near a Florida military base. I have some material already simmering in my brain for this one. Alternately, there is the dream-inspired story that leapt into my head a few weeks ago. A young woman is driven by her dreams, literally, to figure out which world she belongs in, the waking world that has not been overly kind to her or the dream world, where a silver-tongued man named Will beckons to her. The latter has those shades of the supernatural that I’m always drawn to, but I’ve been enjoying writing Old Dogs, which has nothing more fantastical in it than two people falling in love.  It may come down to the flipping of a coin which one I concentrate on.

Tomorrow will bring the rewriting of the dreaded opening scene, which I am told (and rightly so) that it reads like a promotional brochure to Small Town Florida. I shall endeavour to correct that and make it a much more appealing first look into Valerie’s life.

I hope…

I need an intervention ;-)

*A group of people sit in a circle in some cavernous community hall. A forty-something woman stands, tucking auburn hair behind one ear. She clears her throat.*

Hi, I’m Debi, and I’m a writer.

*The groups choruses, voices with varying degrees of sympathy, “Hi, Debi.” She continues.*

I’ve been a writer most of my life. It started with fanfiction, like many of us. *nods all around the group*
Then, I thought, ‘There’s no harm in this, I can write my own, original fiction. *Some grimaces of understanding, more nodding*
So I do write my own stuff. And I like it, I think it’s good. And then another idea comes to me; so I write that. And another.
*Sympathy mixed with horror now suffuses the group. One of them gets up qith quick, nervous movements to get another cup of anemic coffee.*
But I never finish anything. I try, I set goals to have a certain word count by a certain time; sometimes it works. I join groups like NaNoWriMo, *gasps from some in the bunch; one voice says quietly “I hear you.”* but it just adds more stories to the bunch I already have. So I try just writing one, letting the others alone. *She swallows with a nervous giggle.*

Then, last night, just before I woke up, I had a dream. *Wide-eyed stares greet her latest confession. The whole group knows where this is going and they listen in horror, like watching a train wreck.*
I dreamed a new storyline. A really good one, I think. I want to write it, really bad. I think this could really be the one.
*Cries of “No! Don’t listen to the dreams! Just let it go!” echo around the dank meeting hall. She nods.*

I know what you’re all thinking: ‘She can’t handle another story.’ She can’t finish what she has; why the hell does she want to write another one?’ Well, I don’t know. But I woke up this morning with that idea in my head and it won’t leave me alone. So, you know what? I’m going to let it stay. It can play with the rest of my stories, and I’ll think about it and write on it whenever I want to!

*Amid shouts of sympathy and protest, she turns and walks out the door.*

I can do this, I can write this story. And it will be good.
So there, pppbbbttt!!!

 

Crossposted to Aimless and Wandering

Stupid Muse…

The wedding quilt still haunts me. I need to clean up my months-idle sewing room, and, in doing so, perhaps sit down and sew a bit. I just keep finding other things to do. Like play endless rounds of Spider Solitaire and watching crap on TV. Very important to a writer, to allow for idle time to let the mind decompress. Yeah, that’s it! (Damn those chickens)

I have managed to write some in the past few hours, a couple of small scenes during the break-up period for Valerie and Daniel. Stories from further along in their relationship try to butt in, but I am filing them mentally and/or making notes in the tag end of the document, because I know how I am about remembering Really Good Ideas more than five minutes down the road.

My muse is notoriously lazy and not very helpful. No pretty women or (better yet) scantily-clad men to incite my imagination. Oh no. My muse has to be different. Picture a tiny gargoyle or demon with ragged wings about the size of a guinea pig. What follows is a typical encounter.

“What was that idea I had about the stuff found in the closet? It was really cool and had all sorts of possibilities.”

“Huh?”

“I just asked you a question.”

“About what?”

“The idea you tortured me with while I was dozing off last night?”

“Oh, I dunno. *yawn* Can’t you see I’m trying to sleep?”

I think he’s a reject from monster-under-the-bed school or something.

At any rate, I have managed a few scenes that take place in the current story, not further down the line. Don’t know if I’ll make the 100,000 word goal by the tenuous deadline we set on the LOL Lit Forum, but I’m trying. Not really hard, but some effort has been made.

Okay, I’m going back to work…*sigh*

Oh yeah, someone harrass me about finishing my application to UF. It may take me several hours to find the link to my saved application, or they may have deleted it by now. At any rate, someone poke once in awhile. If my work won’t pay for work-related schooling (online tech school) then they will pay for a work-unrelated English degree. I sure as hell can’t afford it.

 

Crossposted to Aimless and Wandering

Thing I do when I should be writing

It’s quiet in the house, I’m sitting in front of the computer, (one of) my story/stories is open in Word and what am I doing? Making book covers. Big Huge Labs has a bunch of generators, for movie poaters, magazine covers, all that you can upload your own pics to and play away. Like I need something to waste more of my tie.

But it’s fun. And I get to try out ideas for what I think the cover should look like. Like this one:

It’s Valerie and Daniel’s story, set in north central Florida.( Old Dogs is a working title, especially since I just found out there’s a movie coming out with John Travolta and Robin WIlliams by the same name.) There are swamps and stuff here, and they live on a lake. While the text could be classified as a contemporary romance, I don’t want it to look like one, with grappling couples and impossibly lush scenery behind them that has nothing to do with their real locale. The landscape is enough for me. If not this, then it will be something just as simple, a picture of a dirt road, or a pasture.

Okay, enough for now. Back to writing.

Or something.

So, what books have you NOT read?

This article on the NPR blog ‘Monkey See’ got me started thinking. And you know how dangerous that can be. I started thinking about the Great Books I have read, all those I purchased with the intent to read, and those I tried and couldn’t finish.

Great Books I have read:

To Kill a Mockingbird, The Good Earth, Pride and Prejudice, The Yearling, Cross Creek, The Sojourner (all three by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings), The Catcher in the Rye (I still hate Holden Caulfield to this day), most of Lewis Carroll, William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, A Confederacy of Dunces (Ignatius J. Reilly still irritates the shit out of me to this day), Gone With The Wind, The Lord of the Rings trilogy (yes, before the movies came out…) and others that I can’t quite remember. Some I had to read for school, some were foist upon me, some I read because I was curious and Felt I Should. The Good Earth was one of these. Pearl Buck wrote one of the saddest, most hopeless stories ever.

The list of books I’ve bought and not read (and may never get to them) might be a bit ambitious. NPR’s blog calls this The Shelf of Constant Repraoch. I like it. On my shelf I’ve got most of Faulkner, bought because he was a Southern writer. Maybe it’s a regional loyalty/pride/misguided idiocy that prompted me to buy them; I have yet to crack the cover(s). I have a couple James Joyce books. They’re innocently thin, enticing with their, ‘I’m not too thick; you could read me in no time’ profile. Still untouched. Same thing with The Three Musketeers, though, in my own defense I must say that it is a fairly recent purchase and that I did read a page to make sure that slogging through flowery turns of phrase wouldn’t bog me down.

Then, there are the Failures. Attempts to read, to improve one’s mind, to gain insight into an anticipated performance or simply because one Feels One Should, my Shelf of Shame is varied and long. Among the volumes is Les Miserables. Good God Almighty, was Victor Hugo ever in unholy love with words. I read 150 pages, trying to read it before seeing a performance of Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s play. Yes, you snobs, I know it’s not the same, ‘there’s no comparison’. That would be correct. The play was actually comprehensible. 150 pages into the tome was the first ten minutes of the play.  Javert had just started his OCD search for Jean Valjean. Fantine hadn’t even become a glimmer on the horizon. I enjoyed the play. The book put me to sleep.

I’ve tried to read Moby Dick. I swear I have. I couldn’t handle the long drawn out descriptions of whale hunting any more than anyone else that has tried to read Melville. Same author, different book. Billy Budd. Same result. As wonderful a story as Schindler’s List was, especially with it being true, I couldn’t keep reading it. It didn’t engage me. Same with Wicked. I just gave up on that a week or so back. I didn’t like any of the characters; they were all annoying in some way. I got most of the way through Pamela before her idiotic innocence drove me away. Boccacio’s Decameron I might give another go at some point; I keep the copy on my shelf.

Just in case.