Thursday, April 29, 2010

My, What a Blustery Day...

Just moments ago I was going through some other Prequel related files I'd forgotten about and compiling them into the New Chapter Tew. then i reformatted it for editing (.9 inch margins all around, 9 point gray font, 1.5 spacing) and saved it on my external hard drive thingie to take it over to the other computer to print.

then i scrolled all the way to the bottom and was reading the point where the story would connect back up to Chapter Two and it's fricking perfect. All the stuff in Tew introduces the main character as well as the three people who care about her and teach her stuff and attempt to make her a little less reckless. chapter two starts up with her being injured, again, but not out of recklessness. we move into Edonith professing his love to her finally, and then on into the real conflict of the story, the truth of her past.

whoo. i'm getting more and more excited. now i have to take a shower, but i might not, since i took one late last night and it is far too windy for a curly hair day. i can just do pigtails with what i've got and spend the next hour playing Lego Star Wars... yes, i think that is what i will do.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

The New Chapter Tew

The New Chapter Tew (man i crack myself up) is the name of the inbetween One and Two and it combines chapters unthought, forgotten, unknown, and stolen. At this point it is roughly the length of two chapters but there are three spots where things need to be written and filled into. plus there's the matter of the whole thing is lacking in transitions between one little story and the next and some stuff might be a little out of order since they were all independant works with no real knowledge of where it was going to go so no knowledge of whats known and what wasnt...

i'm sort of excited. there are three big parts that need to be written and that means i get to WRITE AT WORK which might be one of my favorite past times and i think that even if i was a huge famous writer who didn't have to have a stupid telephone job i might still work at the stupid telephone place just so i could have that very interesting structure of unstructured writing that allows me to be all adhd all over the place and still get a ton of shit done.

So i'm gonna write those three parts up and then i'm going to print the whole what will probably be more like 3 chapters long thing out and then edit it and then we can move onto the old chapter two. but after all that i will, could, might go and work on the Shade and Shadow cuz as i said i want it on AD first and i still have crazy excitement over everyone reading it and did i tell you i was reading the bible about Jacob and Esau because they're opposing twins and i thought it could be relevant AND that my favoritest cousin of all time is their mother and in the story as well (in a way, there's this whole 2 sides of a doorway thing which is all old insidey joke shit from the Bekah and Sara days...)

now i'm going to go down to the lake and go for a walk. then home and i'm going to try to get my butt in gear and list some of the stuff i made for the art fair on Etsy so it's not just sitting around being useless and it's actually on its way to being sold.

Aaaaaand... breathe...

what the hell is with all the run-on sentences?? it must be all the coffee... mmmm... coffee...

Monday, April 26, 2010

Sleeping With the Band

I wouldn't, not the band i'm talking about. it wouldn't work. it'd either be really REALLY gross, or i'd get bitchslapped by one of the girls who do the rest of the sleeping with the band... but what annie said might make it into my Petra/Jamie story where there is a band, and Jamie does sleep with one of them. it cracks me up, the whole story and all the drama. love it.

I went to the coffee place today and spent a few hours not editing. I looked at the point i had reached in Chapter Two of the Prequel and i was unsure of what i needed to keep and what needed to be changed due to the fact that chapter two will most likely be 4 or 5 now. I had made this decision but had jumped over all that stuff that was going to come between and expected to be able to edit it as if all that stuff was already written.

yeah, that is not going to happen like that. So i went through and i typed up all the stuff that's been freehanded randomly of all those things that fill the space between chapter one and chapter two. Chapter Unknown, Chapter Stolen, and Chapter Unthought have all joined the ranks of crap that needs to be edited.

But the whole dilema about what order to put all these things has been solved. I have a semi finalized outline on one of my ever present post-its (and i say semi finalized because two lines are highlighted with a question mark and a swap arrow between them. i just love how wishy washy i can be.)

I don't have all of the parts of these intervening chapters typed up as of yet, so that is my next goal. after that will be to put them together into the correct order and begin to edit them. Then, we move onto Chapter Two. once i get that far all of my placement issues will be solved and i may start to post on authors den from that point on.

And on the topic of Shade and Shadow -

i know i said i was letting it stew, but it is such a simple and short story that i don't think it really needs it. the fact that i wrote it with a format, a grid on which i placed all my pieces just as i wanted them from the beginning, there isn't any story missing. I don't have to figure out motives or work out the inaccuracies that grew as the story developed.

it took me 2 days at work to go through and edit the whole thing by hand. (and that isn't even cheating on my promise to work on the prequel with more focus, since i can't work on the prequel at work). i think over the next few days when i'm sitting around between things to do i will start putting them into the computer copy.

i am really crazy excited about this story and i want everyone in the whole world to read it. and i most definitely want it up on AD before i start posting the prequel. So i will be working on more than one thing at once. so what's new??

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Hello, Prequel. I have missed you...

went to the coffee shop today and had my Au Lait and listened to some nice classical music and worked on editing chapter two of the prequel. I only got about halfway through because i did a lot of deleting and rewriting now that i sort of know that this isn't actually chapter two anymore. i could take some things out that we'll already know. Plus i had a bunch of my vauge post-its saying 'be more interesting' or 'change this to match such-and-such'. whatever. it was good. i got stuff done.

Plus i got a new book off the book exchange shelf. i left behind my second copy of Tale of Two Cities and Vol 1 of the Glass Books of the Dream Eaters and took Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. yum.

I have also been thinking a big about the Nameless Monstrocity and I think that soon i won't be able to call it that anymore. I already have 2 pages of notes i've put down of things to remove, or change now that i have the prequel backer. the monstrocity is getting smaller even as the prequel grows. pefecto.

Now i'm going to start watching Lost over from the beginning as i work on my friend's dvd cases. wee!

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Breathing

i'm sighing in relief as things are coming to an end. The craft fair was yesterday. it was unimpressive. i sold one print, which doesn't even equal the money i paid to prepare, but you know what that means? i just have everything done for a real fair somewhere else, don't i?? so i am going to start looking for fairs and that makes me excited.

I also finished up A Study of Shade and Shadow's first draft two days ago. I first assumed i could do it in less than 5 chapters which was my original goal, but i actually went over by just a little bit, sticking on a short epilogue that is not exactly an epilogue.

my plan now is to let it sit, because it needs that stewing time. I don't think it will need long because it is only 5 chapters and there is really nothing missing from the story aside from some names i haven't invented yet, and some descriptions of places that could use a little more umph. After it has been revised I am intended to put it up on Authors Den in 5 installments (the fifth chapter is short-ish so the epilogue will be tacked on there).

When that happens I believe I am going to take down the chapter eleven excerpt with Enna and Eillim from the Spaceship Story. The events of Shade and Shadow occur much before even the Prequel and i believe i am going to start to present my world from the beginning. Even though Enna and Eillim are new (though old) characters and not directly related to the main story line i can use it as a starting point to start revealing everything else i've done, in a sensible chronological order.

About Shade and Shadow, specifically, it was great fun to write. It was interesting because it was not the way I usually do things. Starting with the title changed my entire approach to the story. It became structured, 5 chapters, the first 2 introductory, the middle 2 half and half views from the perspective of each girl (and i made sure to start chapter 3 with Enna and chapter 4 with Eillim). There are aspects of repetition between the girls' stories, though i tried to make each journey as individual as possible.

My thoughts concerning the title itself were what created the gods the girls travel with. A Shade can be seen as a thin, ghostly thing (or whispy and invisible) and a Shadow, as a dark, vicious thing of only anger and violence... But both Shade and Shadow are dark places that light doesn't go. I wanted Svanir and The Foxen to be different, but the same.

And the development of the religions surrounding the gods!? oh, gee was that a ton of fun to fabricate!! I started with the gods, sure, but i allowed the civilization i placed in each locale to create the religion. I caused a great cataclysmic natural event that changed the course of life's development and let them adapt their relgion around it. They did me proud. The Foxen makes me laugh, though I feel like i need to add something of a character trait to Svanir. That is one of those flavors that will come out in the stew, though.

I'm going back to the prequel now. I will most likely head to the coffee place on this upcoming weekend and work through chapter two revisions and perhaps start sorting out pieces of the Unknown chapter into their proper locations. I also get to clean the house this weekend, since i've been neglecting it... And the Lost Dvd cases i'm making will get their start... i love my long weekends.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Yesterday's Dilema

has been solved. i didn't get any input from anyone but my boyfriend and i talked it out. we decided it would be best to just send each girl with her own god. and that's what i was going to do, until i sat down just now and started writing enna's half of chapter three and it wasn't Svanir that appeared before her, but the Foxen (or the Foksen, i may change the spelling cuz i like the way the second one looks). i was surprised, but then again not.

i think this is the way i've wanted it from the beginning, just didn't realize it. i have a vision of Enna being grabbed by the god that is with her, and Eillim getting no assistance from hers and that would put the whispy and invisible god with Eillim out of plain old logistics. Whispy and invisible gods would not be able to grab their followers. (BTW i will not once use whispy or invisible to describe Svanir in the story, but i had a ton of fun writing it three times in two sentences yesterday. One of my biggest reading peeves is words repeated too many times in one paragraph, on one page, in one chapter... i will probably be using whispy and invisible until this story is done here in the blog, because it amuses me.)

i have a new dilema today, whether to go back and forth between the girls more than once or tell enna's whole story, then eillim's. i think the dramatic points would be more dramatic if you don't know the truth of where they are, but it will be easier for me to write them bit by bit with flashes back and forth, so i can give it a try that way and then use the wonders of highlight and drag to fix it up once it's typed.

i'm glad i'm not a writer before computers; though also sad that i exist after them. conundrum.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Wahoo, Chapter Two!!

It took most of the day of half writing and half watching tv while i waited on the frantic-writing cramp to fade and coming up with the next paragraph.

i had to stop at one point to draw two pictures. wanna see them? they're of the bad guys. not really bad guys. The Foxen is the god in Eillim's religion and Svanir is the god of Enna's. I couldn't see them right in my head to describe them so i needed to actually see them.




now, the foxen is missing a hand, and svanir is a little more dowdy than whispy and invisible, but a whispy and invisible thing is pretty easy to describe. they're whispy and invisible. it's mostly the tail of her's that i'm concerned with. Also, he's bigger than her. he's totally huge.

ALSO. i love matt's wacom tablet: http://www.wacom.com/index2.php which allowed me to draw these babies up in my sketchy crazy way, but still erase the crap i screw up, totally unavalable when i'm scratching shit out on paper with my black pen.

i love drawing in black bic pen...

tomorrow, if i feel like writing, i will be heading into chapter 3. Enna and Eillim will be heading into the actual fight to save themselves and each other. it's gonna be fun.

**UPDATE** 4/12 9:02ish pm

i just went out to get some stuff for the craft fair this weekend (!!!) and i was planning ahead to chapter three, which will be the first one with the mirroring each character's view that i talked about in the beginning.

i want to send their gods with the girls into their trials, etc, but i'm suddenly wondering if i shouldn't send eillim's god with enna and vice versa. They are both afraid/discomforted by the opposing god on a very basic, intuitive basis, but since they are sisters they also accept that other diety as truth...

i'm wondering if it'd be more interesting to have them traveling with the opposite god instead... anyone who reads this give me an opinion, for serious...

The Study Continues...

Yesterday i wrote the first chapter of a Shade and Shadow yesterday at work. i was so into it that when i finished (17 pages, about 3,000 words) i left work cuz i didn't want to be there anymore and have to read a book about some story that i didn't write myself.

I have trouble jumping into the next chapter all at once, i usually let everything i wrote the day before gel until the next day. occasionally there are long chapters, or short ones, but i notice that the ends of those chapters where i write them at the beginning of a new day are generally pretty thin as i hurry to get to the next chapter...

its just like the ends of most of my first drafts. I always get wishy washy at the end knowing that so much is still up in the air as far as the story goes. Things change while i write so the ending isn't always what it seems until i go through in revisions and notice all of those little bits that i didn't see before...

anyway, i'm on to chapter two today, i hope. i generally have trouble writing on non work days simply because the environment is different, and there's a tv and internets to distract me. My notebook has been sitting open to the first page of chapter 2 waiting for the inspiration of the first line...


Sunday, April 11, 2010

A Study...

i've decided to start work on the study of shade and shadow. It bothered me all day yesterday. not bothered exactly, but i could feel it growing.

It will be my longest short story. I think it will take about 4 chapters, maybe 5. I know that i will need one chapter for what character setup i need to do for Enna and Eillim, the planet they're living on and a little about their family life, since that was never much mentioned in chapter eleven. they are going to be young enough that their parents are still around so i have to figure out things about them as well.

i want to do the next chapters in half and half (and what i'm figuring are going to be kind of confusing) views of the two sisters. I am not sure if this trial they are going to have to go through is going to take me 2 or 3 chapters to get through, but i already know the how and the why. Now i just have to come up with some evil creatures and their fun trials and tests that will put the girls up against themselves and each other.

I know how it ends, that was the second little image i had of the story, but i'm not sure if i need a final chapter after it to grow them up a little further toward what we know of them as their later 'ageless' selves in the spaceship story. that all depends on what i see at the end when i get there.

look at me, with a plan, and an outline too!! i don't yet have a deadline (That's a concept i don't grasp well and have trouble enforcing on myself) but i do have a title.

weird...

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Because my aunt sucks...

... i now have a story forming in my head. she has offered another title with no story to go with it and i wrote it on a card and stuck it on the outside of a door in my brain. behind the door the story is forming, but already there is a single image, a single exchange that has been the seed of my epiphany garden.

the title alone told me that it would be a story about enna and eillim, my very favorite characters. especially since i revamped them into sci-fi witches. Shade and Shadow Analysis was what she offered me and i saw those crazy twins standing there and i just knew. I have since changed the slightly scientific sounding title to The Study of Shade and Shadow, which is still totally the same thing. (i love poetic license)

my first images of a story are always my favorite part of writing. And i still remember what they all were, for all of my stories. Sometimes they don't even make it into the words, but i still know where it all came from and can see bits of it in every chapter that follows.

for this one, for this odd story's title came first i see Enna and Eillim as kids, maybe in their early teens. They are sitting on a big blanket where all kinds of... stuff has been laid out. They're casting a spell, but they are dubious and regarding all of the yet unknown tools hesitantly.

Eillim looks at her sister and says "are you sure about this?"

Enna shrugs one shoulder, "...Um, i don't know." and then she picks up a bowl and dumps whatever is in it into another bowl.

its interesting to me in so many ways. Enna and Eillim, as i have them written, are very very different when it comes to their magics. at one point in the chapter eleven excerpt of the spaceship story Eillim reacts strongly, negatively, to a charm her sister has made. The fact that, as children, they started out working their magic together is something that i would very much like to investigate to learn more about them.

Also, if I were to have written this on my own, based on what i know of them in the future, i would have reversed their dialog. I would have had enna asking if it was safe and eillim being nonchalant about the whole thing. but since it came to me the way it did i know that whatever does happen after this affects the way they react to each other. That too i would love to investigate.

and the best part or worst part is that the book i was reading yesterday and will finish today is called Garden Spells. A witchy woman book between sisters which is both inspiring and fun. The door on which i have taped the words "A study of shade and shadow" is rattling in its frame, just begging me to open it up and take a walk. I'm having trouble resisting

...and that book? also on loan from my aunt. it's all her fault... sara's gotta learn to focus.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Welcome Home Elenore!!

I got my computer back this past monday and she has returned to her place on the floor under the coffee table. I have also jumped directly back into working on the prequel and over the past two days I have edited the first chapter. Wahoo!!

now, still i worry about the organization to come, but i have a good feeling about having the anka falling off of a cliff episode as the first chapter. i found this bit when i was revising and pulled it out into another word document and suddenly it all felt right. The few paragraphs had simply been sharing too much information, too quicky and would more easily fit elsewhere.

Where it goes, i'm not sure, or even if i keep it intact or stick it back in at all. But pulling it out did keep the chapter focused on the action. The explanations can come later.

right now i am working on typing up what i call Chapter Unknown. i wrote it after i had revised much of the first draft, with no real sense of exactly where it would go. I figured somewhere around chapters 2 or 3 or 4, or perhaps split up into chunks and slide into the right places.

So i'm giong to watch CSI and type and then i have to go to work, where i am reading another Ariana Franklin mystery. I love Dr. Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar...

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Writing Prompt #7

I got a request to make a custom scarf wrap for a woman who wanted to give it to her husband for his birthday. It was short notice but I was all like "Wahoo!! Custom Order". On the third day of knitting my arms hurt and this was a little facebook exchange with my aunt:

Sara: doesnt wanna knit anymore!!! *whine*
Anne: not even with "amazing" automatically striping yarn?!?!?! i'm sure your hands are toast, though.
Sara: don't speak to me of yarn! the bane of this weekend. i have to be done knitting today cuz tomorrow i gotta make a wind chime. so i need to only have to do the border and the buttons....
Anne: "the border and the buttons" you speak in short story and book titles, you, who has trouble naming her writing! your next prompt should be to write something entitled "the border and the buttons."

So, this writing prompt is a story, about the thneed called The Border and The Buttons. It stars the woman who purchased it, the husband who will be recieving it and children who were so very excited and requested status updates daily when they were told about it.

I know nothing about the family beyond those facts, not even how many kids there are or if they are boys or girls. The characters I wrote were created soley due to the fact that it cracked me up that the real kids were so excited to have a real live thneed (i know i would have loved one when i was a kid. i loved the lorax). I could see them finding uses for the Thneed when dad wasn't around and mom borrowing it when she could get away with it.

here is the authors den link where the full story appears: http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewshortstory.asp?id=47493

and here is an excerpt.

When the Thneed arrived for him, straight out of one of my childhood’s favorite books it seemed as if it should have been in his closet all along. Mom whispered the secret of Daddy’s birthday present to my sister and me a week before. We thought she must be lying. She found an actual Thneed? “A fine something that all people need?” Mama promised that it was Truffula free and that made me happy. I wanted to be in no way responsible for the devastation of yet another Truffula forest.

I believe my father was first impressed by the color, his favorite; red. Always there was some hint of red on him, in the stripe of his dress shirt with the stuck-out collar, a red tie under a green vest, or simply the flash of crimson when the cuffs of his pants rose to reveal his socks. His new Thneed warmed from a shiny bright red into a deeper, warm maroon and back again along the length of fuzzy looking fabric.

He did not understand what it was at first, and I too was skeptical upon first sight. My little sister was only 3 at the time and more interested in the cake waiting in the kitchen. Mom was excited, she was the only one who’d seen it, touched it, and wrapped it in pretty paper for Dad. I watched the length of two-toned red unroll and caught the glint of a silver button, of a red one, a maroon one, a black one. Eventually we would all have a favorite of the 16 or so buttons, but I was only beginning to see the possibility hinted at by these mismatched discs.

Friday, April 2, 2010

holy freaking epiphany!

today i had two gigantic epiphanies regarding the prequel and the nameless monstrocity. one right after the other.

they were so big they nearly hurt when they popped out of my brain. i wrote them both down on a post it and then stuck that post it... somewhere... i can't find it now but it doesnt matter. just the action of writing it down has placed it into my brain and the story has adapted around these new bits already.

they were actually nothing groundbreaking, there was also a fair amount of 'oh, duh' mixed in with them where i should have seen that nice little strand that needed to be tied to this other little strand that's been hanging loose for some time.

it may have been the 'oh, duh' that hurt worse than the size of the ephiphanies, but whatever.