the nameless monstrosity

which it turns out isnt so monsterous after all. i only thought it was because that was the first time i'd told such a story, or any story at all for that matter. After a few more years of such serious writing i have learned that thats about the right length.

i took it to work yesterday because i wasn't sure how well i would be able to get into Shardik since the last time i tried i was unable to. Well, i didn't take the real thing to work, the current version, rather the printed copy which i printed out to edit. I knew that it would not be exactly what i have as a 'finished' work on file. i more or less wanted to just go through it and make notations for myself of what things i need to change due to progressions in the prequel.

first of all, i made scanty editing marks on these pages back a few years ago when the Monstrosity was my only project. i hope that i did better while reading through it on the computer. not that it matters anyhow because i also found that i must rip it nearly to shreds. oops. i guess i should have written the first story in the first place like a good little author.

and now of course i am terrified of how much more work i have to do. mountains and mountains of work. blarg.

and it's hot. who wants to work when it's hot??

A Momentary Block

I sat at this table in the coffee place and ate my peanut butter cookie and stared off into space for a good half hour today with a block that wouldn't break. I just didn't know what to do with this stewpid chapter Tew. And then it all worked out. There is stuff missing that needs to be written, and whole sections in the typed copy that have been colored red so i know they still need to be edited, and the whole thing is choppy and stupid but its all IN THE RIGHT ORDER!!!

and that means i can move on to the old chapter Two which i believe will now be four. And the old chapters three and four have been completely decimated, pulled apart and tossed to the wolves and now there's just bones and a little fluff of fur caught in a tree branch. gross.

And i've been thinking a lot about the Monstrosity lately and i think it is really pushing me to get the prequel done. because the story i wanted to tell was the monstrosity, and it was the one i told but now i realize i TOLD IT WRONG! and its OUT THERE... being wrong. i don't like it.

I watched the finale of Lost last night with the boyfriend. boy oh boy. I kept saying i didn't want to watch it because i didn't want it to end. Same with the last 15 pages of a really fantastic book. dont wanna read them. I really really liked the way it ended i do believe that the writers DID have the ending in mind when they started. all the stuff that happened in between is pretty inconsequential and they could have easily told the story in two seasons and without a Polar Bear, but that doesn't mean they HAD to. And would we have loved it as much? no. Because in the end it was a really great story about people.

I had lots of crazy dreams last night as a result of watching 4 straight hours of Lost before bed but the one thing that is sticking with me is a line repeated three times in the end. After the protector gives the candidate water to drink from the river.

"Now you're like me"

that's one of those things that is so short, and has so much and so little meaning and i wish that I had been the one to write it...

Been a while

it HAS been a while since i posted. but i haven't been doing anything special. i have been editing the prequel (not last week though, i got sick and totally didnt feel like it) I submitted the coffee maker story to that newsletter but i haven't heard back yet. I have scrolling through Shade and Shadow and working through some errors.

yesterday i worked a little bit on the jamie/petra story at work. i am also now reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and... well i never really was proud to be a white (wo)man but its not getting any better. In Margaret Sartor's memoir Miss American Pie which i just finished, a loan from Auntie Mommy Dearest, she read the book in 1976. when she finished it she put it in her diary: "Finished Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. I think it changed my life but it didn't exactly improve my mood."

yeah, that's about right.

Vacation is Over :(

This morning i finished up the first revision of Shade and Shadow. I had wanted to use it to submit to the main street rag's novella series. Turns out it is too short. I pondered writing the rest of the story, Eillim and Enna's second encounter with their gods, but this occurs after much of the rest of my stories. Their savior ends up being a boy who is as of now a newborn. I think for him to show up and rescue them without the reader having any idea who or what he is would seem almost contrived and confusing. So I won't write it.

or maybe i'll still write it and then just let it sit until it is ready to be used. Because I know all about little baby Spencer and what he is and what he's meant to do. I can write it for me. I like writing.

So next week it will be back to the Prequel. I'll let Shade and Shadow sit for a little while and do the final review and then start putting it up on AD.

gotta go to work today. I'll finish Graham Greene's The Comedians and I'll have to decide what other book to take. What do I feel like reading?? or do I feel like writing??

Long Weekend

got back yesterday from two days in minnesota with the Boyfriend's family. One of his brothers has graduated from college. Wahoo. I now have three more days before i go back to work and I'm pretty excited.

I spent the morning at the coffee place working on editing the Prequel. Things are moving along pretty well and I'm happy. I'm beginning to worry again that this attempt to go back in time and then catch up is not exactly what i want because of the length of pages i have between the two. but i have learned that, while editing, length is a difficult thing to gauge. When you spend an hour and a half working through 3-6 pages of writing those pages seem like they're longer. I'm just going to go ahead with what I have planned and continuously remind myself that i can copy and paste and move things as needed on the Third trip through the story after the next stewing period. Wow. that was a really long sentence.

in other news, there was a flier up on the bulletin board at work for submissions of fiction to a newsletter or something and i think i will be submitting the Coffee Companion story that I did as a writing propmt. I ran a comb through that one yesterday when we got home and patched up quite a bit of confusingness. I went through one more time this morning and I think that it's good to go. I must also remember to update the Authors Den version with the modifications so it doesnt suck so bad :P

off to make wind chimes now.

Actually Feel Productive

because there's a difference in saying you're going to be and knowing you are going to be. i always have a week or two where i promise it before all of a sudden i'm slamming shit out all crazy style. my productivity tends to last quite some time too. I'm sure that i could spread it out evenly so I'm sort of productive at all times, instead of this rollercoaster ride of intermittent laziness. But if I'm not going to ride the rollercoaster, what the hell is the point of being bipolar??

so i've been at the coffee place now for more than an hour working on the infamous Chapter Tew . I got through three pages of corrections. that may sound like not a lot, but its quite a lot. One of the things i love the most when i'm writing is to look at a full page of corrections after i've made them. i love the possiblity of it all.

but do you know what my least favorite thing about writing is? i think you know. it's looking at that page of corrections, so thick you can barely even read what you wrote. There are times when it is simply easier to retype the entire paragraph as i read it off the page, then delete the old one because there are so many cross outs and addition carrots and long long lines of words running down my super thin margins.

I will probably work on the story a little more this afternoon there are some sections of writing i did to add into Tew that can be typed up. i also have some wind chimes to plan out and some to make. i want to get some stuff listed on etsy so i'm going to take pictures for tomorrow. I am now going to take another look at another writer's chapter. i got a message on AD wondering if i'd go through his chapter and look for inconsistancies, those little thigns you don't see yourself and spell check doesn't have a problem with.

i already went through once, but i just want one more look before i send it back to him.