An Inspiration Passes

Been feeling meloncholy the last two days.  Tears choking my throat, it's been a long time since i puked tears and i could now...

It's surprising.  I mean in the way that i wouldn't have expected puking tears from this, i wouldn't have expected to react to this particular death in such a heavy hearted, choking way.  maybe it's because i would have never expected this death.  maybe it's because we had unfinished business, he and i, only he never knew it.

He is the reason Third Bed exists in the way it does.  Before he walked past me that night, i had only bare-bones on a post-it.  Then he passed, on his supervisory rounds and all the pieces fell into place.  i knew the story i wanted to tell, i knew the characters and i knew their love.

and i never got the courage to show him what i made from that little bit of nothing that he did for me... I never got to thank him, and in the end i never really got to know him...

For Chuck:

" She was a sexual creature; she’d known that from early on and her life had progressed along a line she felt was true. Still, she had been astonished by her own primal reaction toward him that first time she’d seen him. No, ‘saw’ was not the right word; reaction to the sight of him hadn’t been what lit her up and made her take such immediate notice of him. She had breathed in the scent of him and known that she was lost.

She remembered the opulent, glittering ball, where they’d been introduced. She could hardly recall the face of the diplomat who’d purchased her services for a journey to the city by the sea. She had been out of her own element, beyond the lines of her comfort zone among the high-class wives who would have snubbed her in her own city. But her borders had never before broken from a little strain. She let herself be consumed by a persona she would normally only wear for a night. She’d lived it and breathed it for weeks without pause.

She had noticed him first while in conversation with one wife or another; he was nearby, speaking with her diplomat escort. Though they shared a brief glance, they were not introduced. Not out of rudeness, but due to no available opportunity before he was off to meet another guest. He passed quite close behind her as he moved away, putting a gentle hand to her elbow to warn her to not turn about suddenly. The touch was only one of a thousand jostles and embraces in the night. It meant little, but the air he’d stirred up around her was a different story. She was struck by the scent of him that lingered after he’d gone.

She followed him with her eyes as he crossed the room, unable to tear her attention away as the smell filled her, finding a home in her belly and roaring to be noticed. It was a roar she recognized from her long life of promiscuity, but she had never known it to be so astoundingly strong; so deafening, so undeniably true. She learned later it was no special soap or cologne, only the smell of his skin and hair and breath. It was him.

Eventually, he asked her to dance. She accepted him and they shared two dances that night. She didn’t know how she’d managed the steps, how she’d remembered to smile and laugh and seem pleasant while engulfed by his irresistible odor. She hadn’t even been sure if he understood how he was affecting her. But then when he left her for good that first night he’d whispered five words in her ear that both terrified and thrilled her.

“I know who you are.” "

Things, Things, Things

Let's see.  To start, it's the 14th day of Nanowrimo and I've only thought of it once or twice and never with regret.

I've been working hard on The Prophet.  I got to another stopping point and i'm dying to dive back in but i know it's not time yet.

I tried to also force myself to find a third story in between Shade and Shadow and Letters, but i think it doesn't have to be there.  i think the uncumbersomeness of the whole thing is better than weighing them down with what would just be something that is expressed i think well in Letters.

i printed out a copy of it for my grandparents.  extra large print so grandpa doesn't have trouble reading it.  he mentioned he might feel up to start reading his books again, after his long bout of eye pain, and i figure i can give him something a little shorter to read too.

i should probably send it to my dad too. i can't remember if he read the first one now... he must have.

anyhow.  I've also figured out some mroe little nitpicky things within the Guide/Prophet connections and i've also been thinking a little bit about how to maybe work a bit of Daniel's pre-prophet years among the stories on the space ship.

She is the sword, he is the crown.  i must remember this.

Yellow Notebook

I'm reaching the end of the yellow notebook that contains the rewrite of The Prophet.  it's gonna be one of those good transitions... moving into the next notebook just as the third and final section begins.

Of course, having filled a five subject and being on the verge of cracking open another notebook, at least two sections of a three subject... well, that makes me worry about the other stories.  they are not nearly that long...

does it matter?

i don't know.

I'm not doing nano this year.  or rather, i think i'm gonna do national novel finish what you have month.  nanofiwyoha.  heehee...

so maybe i'll keep blogging.  perhaps my goal can be to finish rewriting.  it's not the same thing but it's still setting a goal.

goals are good.

Don't Forget to Title Your Post

I feel like i start my blogs with the same sentence sometimes.  here's one of those times.

i don't know what the fuck i was worried about.  i'm just being stupid.  i've got this under control.

I forget how i'm working at this, slow and steady.  i forget that i've fixed things, i've figured things out already.

And i etched out another little specificity that irked me by its absence.  I feel that i have finally found the whole of the insane rationalization of my "bad guy"

Because so much of what happens hinges so much on a series of events that happened long before my characters were born.  But i have to keep it neat and clean and short, yet still show what's up with the bad guy and the character who is basically me.  She's in all 5 stories, even after she's dead.  She does pretty much my job... twists events to fit her fancy.

that's not true.  that's treating her worse than she deserves.  she gets a bad rap.  no one really appreciates her.  poor dear.

Anyway.  i'm working on the first two at the same time right now.  editing 1 at home and rewriting 2 at work.

And I'm still waiting to hear about Third.  Coffee Companion took a long time to come back but i feel like this is mayblonger.  maybe cuz they're giving prizes in this one?  maybe cuz i totally rocked it and i'm getting one?

that'd be awesome.

My Mistress, Calliope

I must have a muse.  Because i come here and i vent about... whatever.  I think i found something new and i don't know what to do with it.  i come here and wonder over the new thing that i don't understand but get nowhere.

and then, in the morning, it's all there.

I looked up the muses and picked one.  Now, this is the greeks we're talking about, they don't have scifi/fiction muses, so i went with epic poetry.  i feel that's the most fitting of what i do.

Calliope it is.  to Calliope i say my prayers.

Crazy Person

My other day's rambly post has forced me to continue to think.  today the baby stood by the door all afternoon, saying "bye!" so i decided it was a good idea to go out for a walk.  my mp3 player died so i did most of it in silence, which also enabled me to focus more on story stuff rather than music stuff.

And i'm a crazy person, because i figured it out.  only i didn't.  only i just made more work for myself.  and i'm not even sure that it's actually an improvement.  it could very well be simply an idea that creates even more chaos.

but even still i printed something out that i've always sort of used as a reference material but never intended to be  part of the story itself.  i'm gonna take it to work with me and see what's in it; if it's anything worth anything...

crazy person.

Distressed and Rambling

It's not even the lack of time that i use as my excuse.  It's my doubtfullness.

I worry that, in the end, the conflict of the second story, The Prophet, is weak.  And without that story, there is nothing else.  The first one's only there to set it up.  The third one is only there to set up the fifth but cannot exist without the second...

I guess it's what i've been tryign to work on, since i am rewriting it all over again.  The other four grew out of what it was supposed to be, not what it was.  i fear my foundation is shaky...that there are plot holes i can't seem to fill.

Maybe, though, i can blame the time.  because when do i really have any time to sit down and thnk about it?

i have beautifully terrifying outlines and post-it notes everwhere.  i need a sabbatical.  but captioning assistants don't get those.

and i know that's why i've been so focused on Eillim and Enna lately in their little stories.  because they entwine with but are not dependant upon the main, treacherous bodies.  Chapter Eleven of the The Pilot revolve around them but with a little editing i could pull it right out and the twins could exist free entirely of the insanity of the Ankaverse.

...and now that i've said that, i wonder... could i pull it out in such a way as to still leave it in (god, i hate myself) the same span of time, from their point of view...

i just don't like the gap of information between Shade and Shadow and Letters, some of which exists in Chapter Eleven.  i'd like to put them Smashwords.  still waiting to hear back from glimmer train on whether or not i continue with the process for Third Bed...

in other news, i watched The Avengers again tonight.  i still think that it is better than the sum of it's parts.  i loved it more than i loved Ironman and I. Love. Ironman.  i have a very meh feeling about all the rest of them (you know, except for that hot thing.  i am still a girl)... i always expect Captian America to yell "Flame on!"  one guy really shouldn't be two superheroes...

but when they all come together and they each have their own seperate personality and joss whedon is fabulous... yeah.  i love the avengers.

The Things I Love While Visiting With the In-laws

wedding party and first birthday party this weekend back in the husband's hometown.  all his brothers and sister were there, and that makes a lot of us.

Some of my favorite things about going back to that overpopulated, psychotic, loud family:

The door to the laundry room, and subsequently the downstairs bathroom, should be a pocket door.  They’ve said so many times.  It’s a squeeze to get between the door and the dryer and it is strictly a one way street.

There’s always someone moving about, even in the dark of night.  Dad’s getting ready for work at three.  Someone fell asleep on the couch and is up at six to trade places with the early riser with the toddler.  We’ve all heard the infant going about his business throughout the night. In the same respect during the day there’s always someone napping (the moms) or still sleeping (the brothers).

The Christmas houses are always on the tops of the cupboard, no matter the time of the year, and they have their own switch of the roughly three dozen in the kitchen alone.

Ugly afghans everywhere.  I made one of them, not even the coolest one.

Update 10/18:

Holidays.  The chocolate pie.  thanksgiving and christmas.  there is always a battle in the kitchen on HOW to make it.  often, it doesn't turn out.  Every year.  twice a year.  for seven years now and probably before i showed up, i'm sure.

Vacation's Over

I never did finish my week of babyless posts.  that's okay.  nothing special happened, really.  i cleaned the house and got the Guide all put together the way it's supposed to.  now to finish it.

Today i finished Sense and Sensibility and i had nothing to read afterwards (or i didn't wanna go back to Uncle Tom's Cabin) so i pulled out a sheet of paper and wrote down one of those things that's been rattling around in my head lately.  it relates to the Pilot.  and it sort of opens up a new avenue for me to go down to make that a better story.  it needs to be better.

it's just a short conversation between Nesris and her owner/brother/prince Nasinair.  I only  mentioned it once and only in retrospect the fact that even though Nesris was a slave Nasinair treated  her well, almost as a confidant.  i think going back and revealing more of her life as how it used to be will add to the story...  give Nesris and Dartia a little bit more time in the beginning...  And i also have a new idea about why and how she escapes.  the first one was clunky.  this one is better.

So i'm gonna dig out that binder and take it to work tomorrow.

now i have to go do my at home job.  a file from hell. i just want to finish it but i don't want to work on it.

TBSC: Day 8

Today's the last full day.  i haven't been doing anything special.  Downton Abbey up the wazoo.  i got to work today and i'm reading Sense and Sensibility and i sat down and was somewhat disappointed; elinor and marianne... pfft.  i want Mary and Matthew.

The house is nearly clean.  my fingers hurt from the flower wrapping, but my are they pretty.

TBSC: Day Four

Yesterday and today started out the same way.  i got up, i went for a walk, i spent some time at the coffee shop writing.  The first day i forgot my external hard drive so what had been intended as time to work on the Guide got to be time spent on Letters instead.

Yesterday i did random things around the house, worked, and wrapped flower stems as i got hookecd on Downtown Abbey.  Today i went back to my dad's house for a visit and to get pictures of me as a kid for our slideshow.  i texted my aunt to see if she'd be around and she asked me when i'd be heading home.  It was almost thrilling to respond with a cavalier, "idk. whenever."

TBSC, Day Two

i didn't go to the coffee place like i expected to.  i didn't feel like working on my stuff after being all frazzled from the real job... because a four hour shift is a hell of a long shift.

so instead i came home and worked on stuff.  i finished the baby's scrapbook for the party.  i did some bathroom stuff.  i went for a drive.

we can't put me on speaker phone because when she hears my voice she cries.  but i've been engrossed in making a scrapbook about her all day so it wasn't like she was really gone.

but i still leave the light on low in the living room.

To be Single and Childless, Day One

it was perfectly ridiculous to find myself so aimless and out of sorts this morning when there was no baby and no husband.  it's not like i see them before i go to work anyway.  we have just changed the daughter's schedule so that it's the same every day, not different the days i don't leave for the real job.

and then, of course, the day took forever.  I've been working on reading Uncle Tom's Cabin and i really like it, but it's moving slow.  yesterday i had an irresistable urge to read Pride and Prejudice.  I decided to just run across to the book store and get a new copy since my old version is a tiny paperback that at one point set out to see what it was like to be two paperbacks.  i could use a shiny new copy.

There's nothing that gives me a bigger book boner than a brand new, shiny trade paperback.  some people want the hardcovers, let 'em have it.  i love my trades.

So today i read P&P and this time around i'm picking up even more.  Mr Bennett cracks me the fuck up. i love that dude. 

I'm looking forward to tomorrow when i will have to go into work for a short time to make up hours, but then i'll be in the coffee shop working on putting The Guide in the correct order.  can't wait.

Desert Letters

I reached one of those classic stopping points in my rewrite of The Prophet.  one of those spots where i'm not really sure how i want to connect this part to the next.  and the thing that i thought about next was finishing the second Eillim and Enna story that i'm calling Letters from the Desert...

It's so much harder to write Enna than Eillim because i am not Enna myself.  Both the stories i feel tend to lean more toward Eillim's view.  but also, she is the more tortured one and she feels like she has to hold things together...

hey, that sounds like me.

Now i'm going to go watch  We Were the Mulvaneys because i happened to catch it on LMN and recorded it (and even within the first few minutes i'm seeing a deep cheese factor).  and i'm going to type up all the stuff i wrote today while i do it.

Nano 2012??

She is standing with  her back to the street, ignoring but not entirely immune to the out-of-date sounds of city life.  No honking horns, no whoosh of the hover vehicles.  Only horses hooves and creaky wooden axels and wheels on cobblestones.

She is staring up at the brick face of a industrial building puffing black smoke into the clear, bright sky.  she knows her companion, her mandated protoge is impatiently waiting behind her.  She uses all of her reserves to keep from turning around and snapping at him.

"He was here," she says, only partially to the one who stands behind her. "Twenty years ago, six weeks from now."

"How do you know?" he asks her.

She points toward the marking high up near the top of the building wall that has been faded by the weather in the past two decades.  Without her he wouldn't have seen it.  But she's been searching for these marks and others like them for 15 years.  She knows how to find them, where they'll be, what they'll say.

"Come on," she says and stalks off, drawing glances from people on the street.  Her appearance fits in just fine, but her attitude is off.  She's frustrated and forgetful.  "We missed him.  Let's get back to Present."

Beauty Is a Whore

I like money better.*

it's been about books more often lately than writing.  today, a little of both.

I am nearly done with the Sherlock adventure.  There's less than a quarter of the book left... i actually knew the answer to the one i read today.  The Adventure of the Six Napoleons.  as soon as Lestrade said that two had been broken.  i was like "something's inside them!"  win.

I started The Hours, the third book of the Meryl Streepathon (*which is where this quote comes from).  This is the second, for sure, and possibly third book that also mentions her within the book.  i will be keeping count of that too.  i find it interesting that she is so very knit into the very fiber of the world.  because Meryl Streep is fabulous.  denying this would be like blasphemy.

I am unable to go with the husband and the baby to the family trip intended on taking with them.  But this leaves me 10 days free of... everything, it seems.  Sure, i have two jobs still but those eight to ten hours of being at home after, five of those days totally free of the real job.  i felt i had to make a to-do list to make sure i had something to do every day and i wouldn't go mad, so used to being busy i am...

but i filled it up beyond what i can probably do.  I miss so much the things i got to do when the husband and i were alone.

On all of my off days i will be spending a few hours at the coffee shop with my laptop and my headphones, a glass of iced coffee and probably a peanut butter cookie.  and i will take the chopped up hunks of The Guide and i will put it back together the way it belongs.  that's four days, maybe five.  how much can i get done?  half of it, at least, i hope.  how many cigarettes will i smoke (because come on, i'll be alone for a week.  yeah, i'm gonna buy a pack of cigarettes) a lot, i forsee.

I should be working

but everything seems to be against me a little bit.  the audio sucks, the program's not working, i'm cranky, i don't care.

the baby climbed up on one of the tables today.  that made me laugh.

today i made a plan... how i want to go about converting my crazy, crazy binder back into sensible digital form.

Color coding with the new post-it flags i got.  i used up my last package of these and when i went to get more they were on CLEARANCE. so i bought two packs.  blue is revisions, green is write new, yellow is transitions and pink is new stuff that's written and typed already... probably stored on Scrivener.

This is my outline. i sometimes feel like crying when i look at it.  and that's only the front half of it...

There's all kinds of these kajabers... pages torn apart and put together in a new order.  color coded highlighting that i hardly know the meaning of... arrows... so many arrows.
Also, this picture is upside down.

I think this is a true compulsive personality tick.  every post-it i have ever written in regards to this story (since it's been in this binder... which is years, but not all of them) is stuck to the back cover once i've done the thing the post-it told me to do.

Well, that was fun.  the color coding was fun today and it'll be helpful for the almightly plan.  the plan to use the multiple-sections-combined-into-one-document function.  now it's all in the order it's supposed to be in and all i have to do is chop up the digital copy and put it back in the right order.  transitioning and polishing as i go.

and when will i have time for that?  oh, on the week i was supposed to go on vacation that i've been looking forward to for like a year.  stupid real job.  stupid pto and full-time and hours requirement bullshit.  no vacay for me.

Coulda Warned Me...

Someone could've told me how addicted i was going to become to Sherlock Holmes.  seriously.  now, not only is there the stories every day, but there's a tv show that i could watch over and over again... and a second show coming out in the fall that i seriously can't wait for.

Working on the The Guide and The Prophet at the same time.  moved some stuff around.

I want a Kindle, but only if you can edit documents on it... then i can modify my digital work at work.  because there's not much left to do besides work on the computer with it, but i don't have the time.

It's Summer

You can tell because my patio looks like a jungle.  what parking lot?  i've got a jungle outside my apartment, bitches.

And also because all the epiphanies are blooming.  smack dab in the middle of my walk jamming out to... gosh i don't even remember... was it Jimmy Eat World?  i know i started out the walk with Supertramp.  a good way to start out a walk.

Bam, it hits me.  one of those obnoxious "road under construction" signs is pulled aside and i'm finally allowed to travel down new road.  it hadn't been a full-on writer's block.  just a writer's construction sign...

I've been reading and between writing stories lately.  that's been nice but i think we're on our way back.  To The Guide once again.

i need to get paid to do this so i can focus on doing this.

The Traveler and Sherlock Holmes

Let's start with Sherlock.  I recently watched the final episode of House and in the retrospective i learned that he was based a lot on Holmes.  I realized that i know so little about Sherlock that i never saw any of the links.  not even something so small as House and Holmes having the same house number.  I felt incomplete and lacking.

This past weekend the husband and i watched the first Sherlock Holmes movie and then last night we watched the new one.  we'd seen the first one before, i liked it better the second time around.  The husband was asking me questions about Holmes and, again, i knew not enough!

I don't know exactly how long ago it was that i bought a book of Holmes stories but i decided finally to take it to work and read them already.  I'm bad with short stories, as i've said before, so i'm just gonna read them one per day until i'm done.  there's 22 stories in the book so there's 30 some that i have to find elsewhere.  but maybe i'll be done with the whole thing after i finish this book... we'll have to see.

And unlike the morons on Goodreads who judge Dracula by the merits of Twilight i will not be judging Sherlock by the merits of Robert Downy Jr. (or Gregory House for that matter...)

in related events, i have yet to find my next book in my Meryl Streepathon... it's mostly becuase i keep forgetting to put the list of books in my wallet so i have it with me when i go book shopping.  I did see a Michael Cunningham book when i went to the book store today but i didn't know if it was the right one.  (though i did get Little Women and Werewolves.  i loved Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and was iffy on Sense and Sensibility and Seamonsters... but i figured why not?  i love werewolves.  I also got another F. Scott Fitzgerald book, which is ridiculous.  i didn't like The Great Gatsby and i'm still only a quarter of the way through This Side of Paradise which is just a sliver of a book... ah well...)

And on to The Traveler.  oh, there's this whole big story about this book, how i bought it and why, what i was expecting from it and what i got instead... But it's just crazy.  and the fact that the author, John Twelve Hawks, is a pseudonym and he has NEVER REVEALED HIS TRUE IDENTITY.  he lives off the grid.  he speaks to his editor through email and on a satellite phone with a voice modifier.  What the hell!?  it almost makes me think that this story he's telling, about living off the grid and all the stuff that's going on under the radar of the drones and the citizens (that's us) is ACTUALLY HAPPENING!  i want to google about travelers and harlequins but i'm afraid that the brethren are actually watching and there's computer viruses loaded into those websites to keep us away...

The Meryl Streep-athon

I don't know if it can really be called an "-athon" but that's what i'm calling it.  i made the list of all of her movies that came from books.  here's the list:

Kramer vs. Kramer - Avery Corman
The French Lieutenant's Wife - John Fowles
Sophie's Choice - William Styron
Out of Africa - Isak Dinesen
Ironweed - William Kennedy
Evil Angels - John Bryson
Postcards From the Edge - Carrie Fischer
One True Thing -Anna Quindlen
The Orchid Thief - Susan Orlean
The Hours - Michael Cunningham (ha! that's my cousin, sort of)
The Manchurian Candidate - Richard Condon

That list does not include Julie and Julia and The Bridges of Madison County (both of which i've read but not seen) and The Devil Wears Prada, which i've both read and seen.  Sophie's Choice i've seen but not read.

So, now i have to track down all those books.  i don't know which one to do first... but i should probably start carrying the list around with me so when i go to the book store i can find the books.  i couldn't remember all those authors' names if it was my life depending upon it.

In other news, Smashwords!!  The Third Bed is almost completely reformatted to be uploaded.  wait, scratch that.  it's completely converted and ready to go, except for the cover photo.  i'm hoping my cousin (not the sort of cousin from above, the other one) will do me a cover page, and that will be awesome.

I like that i started with something simple like The Third Bed because i just had to do the formatting and i also managed to learn some stuff about my new Word program that i didn't know before.  because everything got changed and moved and i couldn't find jack shit.  But since it's a short story and there was no italics or chapter breaks or font changes or anything crazy like that to deal with it was a quick conversion.  Shade and Shadow is five chapter with breaks within the chapters.  all that shift-shimmer shit is gonna drive me crazy.

but i have a background with which to start and not pull all my hair out... at least not immediately.

So I Lied

I did manage to both work and do some writing over this long, long week off.  I typed up the rest of the bits that i'd written for The Guide.

I also read through The Third Bed.  I so very much want to get that up on smashwords and considering that i only changed maybe a dozen words on this read through i think it's ready.  I just have to format it and that's where i lose focus.  there's so many steps!

maybe i need to go to the coffee place and sit down and do it.

and then i can do it to Shade and Shadow, cuz that's the other one i want to put up there.

but now i have to work some more.  and i have to go back to the real job tomorrow so i have to figure out what i'm going to work on or what i'm going to read...

Making His Move

I tell him, at the hotel the night before the wedding, that he could've gone to play with the boys.  i don't mind working in our room with the TV on in the background alone.

"Yeah, but I didn't want to take a shot, i could have said 'no' but i want to go to bed soon," he tells me as he crosses to the window.

"We're old.  We're one of those old married couples," I sigh.

"Yeah.  A kid does that," he agrees.  A pause, "Aw, look at that old married couple sitting on the bench."

"Really?"

"Yeah, come see."

And i do.

"He's making his move," he tells me.

A Short Stretch of Freedom

Because the husband's grandfather died plus the wedding we were going to this weekend i have taken the entire week off work.  10 days total.  i'm on day 3 and already i feel it's going too fast.

i'm not doing much story work, though i have all this time.  I don't have the vacation from the real job to cover all the hours i'm missing, so i have to make it up with the at home job.  but, as always, i am not angry about this.

I did actually spend some time working on the Pilot the other day.  more like scribbling in margins and whatnot.  i really am still very disappointed by the awfulness of the story.  every time i would open my locker at work and see the binder it's in i would tell it so.  So Disappointed!

ah well.

the title of my last post: Letters From the Desert, i realized later that's probably gonna be the title of the Shade/shadow sequel.  i'm a little worried about it... not only is it coming out of me slowly but the story itself is moving slowly.  with the first one moving so fast i thought i'd want the second one to match.  but they're both older now... much older.  so maybe it's the right thing to go slow.

Letters From The Desert

The baby happens to be Asleep when i get home from work today.  so Friends is on the TV (the episodes in and around barbados... i love Paul Rudd) there are a bunch of veggies boiling to be pureed and i have a moment to Talk About Things.

I finished Julie and Julia and that day i went to the bookstore to get something new.  i went specifically for a new Sarah Addison Allen book.  i got The Girl Who Chased the Moon and finished it quickly.  didn't like it as much as the others.  sad face.

But i also happened to find The Devil Wears Prada which i saw and loved as a movie, there's too many awesome actors in it to not love it...  i also got this book that i forget the name of but it's a mystery set in the 1300?  and the cover was awesome?  and also the title?  i don't know, we'll see how i like it.

But i laughed when i noticed that in a close time to one another i was reading two books in which Meryl Streep stared in the movies.  So now i decided to read all her other movie books.  not in a crazy Julie Powell way.  i don't have the energy for being totally crazy right now.  but i'll look them up.  i'll see what she's been in as movies.  maybe i've already read the books.  was she in Bridges of Madison County? was that her. 

I've actually read that one.

on purpose.

and no one told me to.

I have also been inching along in the Shade and Shadow Sequel.  not named yet.  definitely not coming together with the same ease as the original, but it has that sort of same back and forth motion...

and as long as i've been pondering over its iminent arrival i've known i wanted it to be lots of letters from the desert.  from eillim to enna...

it's turning.

and the foxen is back.  and i can't express how that makes me feel.  swoony... swoony's a good word.  i love the foxen the way all mortals women do.

maybe i do have the energy to be "totally crazy" all the time.

Enna And Eillim Return

the desert burned her a strange shade of pale.  it was her mother's influence that now made her stand out among the darkly tanned desert folk.  even here, in this other land of hers, she did not fit in.  and that's how he got to her.

Bemused Disappointment

It takes a lot to get through my days at my real job.  yes, getting through is the entire point of the job that pays for my health insurance.  When it comes to my from-home job, i sometimes have frustrations, but for the most part it's almost blissful.  if only i could pay for insurance then i'd quit and there would be no need for clarification; it would simply be my job.

To get through a day of work i employ many tatics.  i edit stories.  i write stories.  i read stories.  Good books can be both a blessing and a curse when it comes to soldiering through a day.  they can be so good that my day flies by; before i know it it's lunchtime and a moment later i get to go home.  but they can also be so good that i can't stand to be torn from them for the 2 minute or less mis-dials, voicemails, and hang ups.  and don't even get me started on the 40 minute gab-fests.

today was one of those latter days.  Reading Julie and Julia my day ended up being at least 17 hours long. (then i come home to find out some disheartening news regarding my crafting, but that's a story for a different blog...which i never update anyway...)  but i can't wait to see the movie now, which i've always wanted to.  Hello?  Meryl Streep?  Stanley Tucci?  hell yeah.

I also have finally printed out The Pilot and i finished reading through it this morning early in the day (while i was still expecting to read Jack The Ripper and not exactly looking forward to it.  i was hoping for some fantasy speculative shadowing of the renowned serial killer, but instead it's all about a doctor buying and selling whores and then looking at other whores once they've been sliced up. yawn).  I am not at all impressed with that first draft of The Pilot now that i've gone through it.  there is almost nothing awesome about it, and for the most part i do tend to be at least a little awesome.

it does get a bit better following the point where i'd paused to write The Medium and then came back with full knowledge of where it should go.

i tried to write a list of things to change/add/modify but really all it says is "It Needs More Overall"

very insightful, wouldn't you say?

Up Next

The Pilot.

since i've never even printed it out and i don't have a binder.  this means i've done nothing at all to it.  i've been talking about it, now and then, but never gotten to it.

it's time to get to it.

Reading and Writing

I've actually gotten a lot done since my last post.  i have read several books.  another Joyce Carol Oates, the newest Gunslinger related novel, and just today Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen, a new favorite.  books full of magic and non-obnoxious romance.  she has three others (four, including the other one i've already read, Garden Spells) and i need them all.  tomorrow i got back to Jack The Ripper which is interesting and disgusting.

Also, i have done a thorough rerecompileagain of The Guide.  A new outline, a bunch of newish and revised stuff for the beginning section.  it was while i was rewriting the The Prophet that I realized that i needed the beginning of The Guide to be better; needed more information.  as it stood it seemed too much like i was just expecting people to know things.

I took The Medium to work today but it turns out there's really not a lot to do there, which is why i stopped working on it in the first place.  of course, i did stop like mid-sentence.  don't know what that's all about.  way to go, past Sara.  how am i supposed to finish a sentence i started months and months ago?

There's only so much i can do at work.  i need some serious time to sit down and type up what i have (or maybe i should use Dragon.  i wonder if it will work on my new laptop Sullivan better than it did on my old laptop Elenore... i wonder if i know where i put the install disc...) and also to edit things and shuffle the digital of what i've already shuffled in the hard copy.

Who has spare time in a jar?  i've got money, i'll pay for it.

Moving On

Yesterday i took The Guide binder to work.  i realized very soon that there wasn't much i could do because of the "You Are Here" post-it note.  this post-it reminded me that on wednesdays, long ago, i used to go to the coffee place and have an iced coffee and work on editing.  the "You Are Here" post-it (which also has the N,S,E,W cross on it as well... just in case i needed to know) made it sorta impossible for me to do any work on anything leading up to that point.

but i did spend some time on the outline, fleshing out for fleshing out later.  like making sure to eat breakfast on thanksgiving so your tummy doesn't shrink and you have plenty of room for my mother-in-law's sweet potatoes and beef loaded stuffing...mmm... stuffing...

what?

I also recalled while i was working yesterday that i had put all the edited chapters, which i was editing one by one, back into a document.  apparently i named this document "rerecompiledagain" because once before i had compiled it when i realized all the chapters were in the wrong order.  my overredundancy make me giggle.

so i just finished rerecompilingagain more because there were more things i hadn't added to that compilation and then i printed it out.  and i put all the old stuff in one of my handy white envelopes where all my old words live.  now i just have to find my 3 hole punch.  i used to know where it was before a baby lived in this house, but i just can't remember where i put it to keep it safe from those tiny little fingers.

Caterwauling

the story has gone caterwauling, bouncing off the walls of an empty room and i sit in the middle of the floor thinking to myself, "I don't feel like chasing you anymore."

that's the signal. it's time to move on. i really like the way i'm doing it now. working a little here, a little there, till something draws me away. it doesn't get forced.

but what do i want to work on next? The Pilot is the logical choice, it's the only one that hasn't been looked at yet. but i would also like to get both Shade and Shadow and Third Bed on Smashwords. and there's always the two past years of unfinished Nano stories. I'd love to see more of Darbin and Dax, but then again, i want to know what Vincent does with his books...

decisions, decisions.

Mix CDs and Crushing Novels

Because sometimes writing about other things helps too.

Today I finished The Lovely Bones and the thing on the cover was right. don't read it unless you are going to read it all. I haven't written anything to be proud of in days because i've just wanted to read instead. And now i don't want to see the movie. not for a while at least. at least until the little book shaped hole in my heart is all healed up. words, they kill me.

I'm so sick of my music. i went searching through the crazy collections of my CD holders in my car and came up with one i have named Uber Mix, Mixy Mixiness.

I remember this CD. and it is always nearby. Anyone who has ever ridden with me and allowed me to control the music, any one who has been given a mix CD i made knows how they are. a little chaotic, but with a flow that can make an entire drive disappear. This may very well be the first one.

I know i made it for my 9 hour trip to Bemidji MN to see the boy who gave me a name which means She Who Misbehaves in the language he was studying. But i don't remember him about the CD, because it was later that year that i played this CD out delivering pizzas. that summer that i met the husband.

And i don't listen to it often anymore. and between listens i lose track completely of what's on it until i put it in. because no matter if i can't remember what's on it, the name, Uber Mix, Mixy Mixiness, tells me that it is a good cd. and I listen... and skip... and smile, and listen and smile and skip and listen:

Michelle Branch - Breathe
Jason Mraz - Sleep All Day
Rainer Maria - The Imparatives
Sugarcult - Bouncing Off the Walls Again
Saves The Day - Through With Being Cool
The Get Up Kids - Mass Pike
Further Seems Forever - Just Until Sundown
Shawn Mullins - This Time/Last Time
Something Corporate - Punk Rock Princess
Something Corporate - Ruthless
Gavin Degraw - I Don't Wanna Be
Shawn Mullins - Baby Blue
Kyle Fischer - If Your Way Should Need Finding Back
Counting Crows - Long December
Foo Fighters - Times Like These (acoustic)
Finch - What It Is To Burn (acoustic)
Julianna Theory - If I Told You This Was Killing Me
Incubus - Megalomaniac
Rufio - Dipshit
Rainer Maria - Ears Ring
Dashboard Confessional - Vindicated

And I'm amazed at what this list of songs tells me about me from what? eight years ago? seriously?

There are the standard favorites, the shawn mullins (this time/last time is broken... it plays the first several seconds then goes back and plays it again... for like four minutes. it's the reason why i always skip that song no matter what cd i'm listening to) and there's Something Corporate... Ruthless being a song i was just readdicted to only last week.

There's the stuff that comes from other people, or things on the radio at the time i made them that i liked. megalomaniac, gavin degraw, and vindicated. there's me hanging on to the old stuff from hartford (and were honestly the most frequently skipped tracks), saves the day, the get up kids, sugarcult, and there's the bands that i found by threading out from them, rufio, rainer maria, finch.

I never realized that Just Until Sundown was a waltz... or maybe i did realize but have forgotten. but that's probably why i still love it so deep down in my soul. i love me a rock song written to a waltz beat.

A Pile O Books

After I finished We Were the Mulvaneys i really didn't have much to read. there's another Joyce Carol Oates book that is an anthology for writers; full of short stories that are on her reading list at Princeton - Telling Stories. But i'm no good with short stories. When i settle down to read i intend to read for hours. i want a book that will eat me up and that i can devour in return. i don't like to start over every few minutes. I have actually managed to read some of the stories told on breaks and things at work since i've been writing so much while actually in my cube.

Anyhow, i went on Amazon and ordered The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, Dexter in the Dark, and another of Joyce's books that i chose at random, The Gravediggers Daughter: A Novel (PS).

But that really didn't help me with the problem that i have no books to read until they arrive. so yesterday, after getting to a good stopping point in my writing rather early in the day i ran over to Half Price Books and scoured the clearance section. I got Water For Elephants and The Lovely Bones both of which i've wanted to read because i want to see the movies. My cousin told me to see Water For Elephants, but i recently found out that Stanley Tucci is in The Lovely Bones and boy do i ever love him. I also managed to find a tall paperback version of Wicked which is awesome because i have the mass market paperback of that one but the rest of the series is the tall one. now they're all the same!

So, for the next, what? maybe three weeks i'm set on things to read. and i'm so excited to read them all that i don't even know where to start. except that i started with The Lovely Bones for no particular reason. and laundry day is coming up and that's 20 and then 40 minutes of uninterrupted reading. Though really, i should finish Anna Karenina already...

Astounding

Today i wrote a record breaking 16 pages. That is most likely because i have come to the point labeled in my outline as "The Plot Thickens" and when a plot gets thicker there's more to say and the storytelling is even more fun. And i feel i am spreading information more evenly around the story. that's one of the problems i think i had the first time around; wanting to tell everything RIGHT NOW! but i don't have to do that. and i've found a balanced way to proceed.

In other news i have finally finished Joyce Carol Oates' We Were the Mulvaneys and i loved it. i'd been inching along the last end bit for days and i finally stopped writing, after 16 crazy pages, and finished my damn book. And i got to the end and read the last words which were, of course, the cadence, the chorus of the book "...when we were the Mulvaneys." and my heart did a nauseous left-handed jump and i felt the tears in my throat.

i need another JoyceCO book. like now.

Distractions and Puke

I got distracted from the post i wanted to write last night by Facebook insanity and horrifying a non-mother with stories of puke and poo that mothers laugh in the face of. Ha Ha.

I've been averaging about 10 pages a day on the third rewrite of the monstroscity (TWM, i guess). that's good considering how many dumb ass old people are using the phones these days. learn to dial a phone already, i'm sick of saying "your call cannot be completed as dialed..." and listening to those tones. we-ooh we-ooh we-ooh.

and the story itself is cracking me up. I brought in Loki's brothers who were not mentioned in it the first time around and were basically only in the prequel. but they're so important as family and Anka's need to protect them that why not bring them in? they're hilarious. i love them so much.

And right now what i'm basically doing is that reminder stuff. going over the things you may have forgotten since reading the first and catching you up on what's happened in the interim. it's one of the things i hate the most becuase i tend to read a series of books back to back; i don't need ot be reminded. so it must be done, but i'm doing it as non-obnoxiously and un-repetatively as possible.

maybe today, maybe the start of next week i'll get into the plot of the monstroscity. i'm not hurrying though. remember? i'm trying to do it perfect the first time around... third time. whatever.

Moving Side to Side

Because, as i've said, the story is over and there is no forward. there is only side to side within the confines of what's been written.

the third rewrite of the monstroscity is moving slowly. the prologue took forever... even though it's only like four pages long. In the past two days i've done a bit more and more quickly at that. I'm trying to do it perfectly first time around. there's already lots of edits and notes in the sides. there's post it's all over the timeline so i remember to put things in that i dream up that is fantastic.

and once again, i'm wishing there was a machine i could hook up to my brain and it would read it all out of my head and i wouldn't have to do all the work of writing it down.

and since i've already written this thing twice before it becomes even more true. But there's also something new and exciting about it. because i know everything. because there is only side to side. because i know more motives. because i know the end that they are moving towards.

I Create My Own Hilarity

I'm constantly doing things within my stories that are purely for my own amusement. like how when someone in the Connector says they've been 'nowhere special' it means that they were in the potty. but i never say that "out loud" in the story. it's a secret... well, not anymore i suppose.

Speaking of the connecter i've brought it home and put it back on the desk shelf with the rest of them. For the past few days i've opened up the binder and been like meh... and instead have been thinking about the monstroscity. so i whipped it out and cut it into pieces and saved some of it and wrote a new outline and bought a new notebook and here's where my own hilarity comes in:

i always write on the front of them what they are so, you know, i know what they are... and on the front of the new one i wrote:

The third rewrite of the Nameless Monstroscity that now has a name. and how fitting that it's a yellow notebook because the first attempt was yellow too.

haha.

Other things that make me laugh. The new outline is titled "Events of Goings On" and one of the headers is a reference to Futurama and i giggled over it as i wrote it:

War Were Declared.

now i'm gonna go work on my string timeline cuz i bought one of those folding display boards that you use in school for projects

Every Woman With a Six Month Old Cuts Her Hair

but i wonder, does every woman with a six month old and two jobs besides have this much energy and ambition for the writing (or other such crafty, personal pursuits)? maybe even more so than before there was the thought of a six or any other month old to factor into things...?

i wanna build a string timeline. Vincent built one in A Novel Idea (nano from 2011) but he did his out of some sort of desperation to change a story that was horrible and turned down by publishers over and over into something that they may like. i'm not so desperate to have publishers like my work, but the only timeline i have is skewed and wrong because it was done back in '07 when characters like Nesris, Solomon, Vietta and Dartia never existed. where do they fit in? things were happening all at once in some points and i'd love to see the visual that goes with that.

plus a string timeline could include political and bigger changes, not just the character events. not only will it be fun to make, but it's also less permanent. i make a mistake? i unclip and retie and boom, timeline's fixed. my old one is covered in scribbles and i can hardly read it.

everything i write is covered in scribbles and i can hardly read it.

makes me think of this: http://skylarkarts.com/2010/11/26/jane-austen%E2%80%99s-novels-were-written-by-a-man/

there's one article with the actual images of her work but i'm too lazy to find it right now and i'm supposed to be working... i looked at them and they're messy and crazy, but i find myself not sure how much i believe about what someone else had to do. because where are the second drafts?

Pinterest

how i love thee.

i read something, somewhere about as a writer using pinterest as a place to garner interest in stories. most of their suggestions for doing so were stupid, so i didn't. and then i saw this image of a woman wearing sparkly leggings and boots and big clunky socks or leg warmers. i knew they were Jo's legs (though much skinnier!) so i started a pinterest board with images from stories. All the images say what i see and in what story they appear, and i'm sticking to my chosen names. have i put them all down in one place yet?


The Guide
The Prophet
The Medium
The Pilot
The Child


I'm not positive of the order because the medium and the pilot are pretty interchangeable. but whatever, it doesn't matter yet. they're pretty there where they are.


anyway, here's the pinterest board which also includes Petra from an unrelated (though subtly connected but you'll never notice it) story that i call Running Parallel and mention from time to time. http://pinterest.com/vodkavases/stories/

also, there's a button over there on the right side so you can follow me if you like. i'll probably follow you back.

and how about the makeover? pretty cool, right. i was thinking about it all day at work and it's the first thing i did when i got home.

On and On

i don't know what the hell i was so worried about. i've already rewritten the first chapter and started on the second of the connector using the rearranged old stuff. not much of what was originally written actually made it into the rewrite, just the essence. and i really love it.

i'm so close to finishing typing up the original. i'm not even going to use what i wrote originally for the ending, but instead use the rewrites i already have done that i created at the beginning of this editing process. less typing i have to do. and when i do typing for both of my jobs the less typing i have to do the better.

which is why i bought dragon, which i never use cuz my computer runs a little too slowly. oh well, it wasn't expensive and i'm sure one day i'll have a better computer.

Terrified

I know why i'm working on the connector right now. it's because in writing the sequel i returned to the story of jo and sol where i've been yearning towards for quite some time. returing to them in their end made me want to revisit their beginnings finally, so i did. and it's been a great experience, even though yesterdays cut and reorder still has me a little freaked out.

i also really wanna go back to the spaceship becasue of the sequel which brought those characters into play again too.

the thing is i do not want to go anywhere near the prequel or the monstroscity. the prequel becuase i spent so much time trying to fix it that i just feel worn out and i need to give it a damn rest. but the monstroscity because i don't know what it even looks like anymore. it's been so long and so much has changed in my head about what needs to happen there that i don't even know where to start.

really, what did i get myself into? how old and decrepit will i be when i finish this?

Got It

Did i just have to blog about it twice? Did i dream it up? i don't know but today i knew how to make jo and sol meet.

and today i cut up the first three chapters of the connector (The Medium??) and put them back in the correct order. it was a nano story after all, and when I'm beginning one of those i'm not really sure what's going on yet. so now it's rearranged and places made for the first meeting and the changing of some conversations - it's all ready to go.

and as i was editing today i was changing it over to present tense. and i like it.

Sorta Stressed

oh man. i can't find it. i don't know how to introduce sol and jo before their introduction.

i know i'm pushing to hard. i know i just need to dream on it. it'll come to me. one morning i'll wake up and i'll know. like the morning i knew the names Kalen and Dartia for the Spaceship story. Or the tree situation for the Monstroscity. or how Svanir's name in Shade and Shadow came to me as if it were fated to always be that name. as if i wasn't writing the story at all, only transcribing it from the whispers of some unseen muse. it isn't my story at all, i just have to wait on it to come.

but i don't wanna. i'm impatient.

maybe i should work on something else for a while.

in other news i just finished my reread of The Host by Stephenie Meyer. Where i hate the Twilight catastrophe, i do love this story. cuz it's about aliens. and it's got some interesting viewpoints. and there's no creepy abusive vampires. there's a few whiney piney girlie parts but not so overwhelming as Bella. and there's only a couple exchanges of "I need to protect you" "no, i need to protect you" "No, I need to protect you!" no one needs to protect anyone, just get on with the story already.

but no. it's a good book. which is why i read it again.

what to read now?

Potential Titles??

I've been thinking about the titles. Could i name them something as simple as two words? The prequel, which is all about Anka's early life and her learning her job and then losing it... The Guide.

The second one is more about Daniel and he leads Anka to her fate. She entrusts her fate to him as Milah told him to. The Monstroscity would become The Prophet.

Of the other three i have no inkling yet.

in other news i've been thinking that i need to introduce Sol to Jo earlier than their first meeting. i think they need to dislike each other before they even get assigned to that first mission. But what? because he's military and she's not. how do i introduce them on a university campus? is sol even on a university campus?

pondering, pondering

The Question of the Day

How hard would it be to rewrite everything in present tense, rather than past?

It's something I started to ponder, not for the first time, today at work. I was writing between calls, not exactly new material just revisions that are too large to fit between lines on the already printed out pages. Then on breaks i was reading; Because It Is Bitter; and Because It Is My Heart which is written in present tense.

Coming back to my own work from something i'm reading often had this affect on me. i write in that tense, almost even in that style.

But as i was writing, seeing that i was doing it wrong and trying to get it back into my natural past-tense state i saw that i liked it better in present.

but there's so much to do. hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of words. Third Bed and Shade and Shadow would be left alone but the five, the prequel through the sequel, would they be improved in a different tense?

i did one page of revisions in the connector, bringing it into the present. the page where Jo thinks she's finally got everything under control. it seems so much more urgent, like she was, so much more excited, like she was. maybe this is a good idea, but where will i find the time?

that's another question of the day.

The Kids Have Grown Up

I finished the sequel two days ago, the day after my last post. i had honestly thought i had maybe two more days of work, but it was winding down quickly. And even though i came home early from work before i could hit the end i still sat down here at home and wrote the final scene. The End, just as i'd promised.

And i'm stunned at how completely shut out of the story i am now. It used to be i'd spend the time waiting for sleep, or waiting for a red light, or washing my hair in the shower to break things down and work them over. If ever i was idle my mind was not. it was off in those other worlds working up a sweat. I did not expect to be completely locked out once it was finished. i can't even open the door.

I shouldn't really be surprised. This happened with both Shade and Shadow and the Third Bed. I can go back and clarify my ideas, fix my grammar and spelling, move a paragraph around. But i cannot change anything. I cannot change what Svanir or the Foxen do to the girls. I could not for all the money the world give proper names to the him and her who love each other so. i'm locked out. those things are now beyond any control i ever had.

I suppose it's good for that, at least. my prediction that i could edit once i had it anchored seems to be true. It's just so strange to be unable to visit those places anymore. Last time i said it had taken up four years of my life, but that's not quite right. I came up with the main characters of the first two stories in middle school. Over half of my life has been spent writing their adventures and lurking in their strange and wonderful universe. I've known most of them since their own childhoods and those i met as adults are no less real.

At times over the years i've wondered which character in that story i am. I know that i'm a little bit of everything. Anka's my tomboyishness, Carrie/Jo has my curly hair. Loki is my reasonablness and Sol that grumpy brooding part. Both Nesris and Anka posess my fear of parenthood and Carrie/Jo is my love of it. it wasn't until i wrote some lines near the end that i realized who i'd been this whole time. I'm Milah. Though she only really appears in the Monstroscity (with a cameo in the prequel and Daniel talks with a imaginative version of her in the spaceship story) her actions are felt throughout the whole epic.

she set these events in motion in order to reach the conclusion.

i set these events in motion. and now it seems my children have grown up.

Other Worlds Than These

lately i've been coming home in a fog, reentering this world of ours from the far off reaches of imagination. other worlds, so many of them i don't even remember their names most of the time...

i'm so close to the end. i'm in the winding down phase. i'm in the part that i would usually say to myself 'okay, you can just write a quick sketch and figure it out later' because i'm just so anxious to move onto the next story.

But there is no next story this time. This is the end. This is what five seperate and enormous piles of paper and four years of my life has been heading towards. i didn't know it at the beginning, at least maybe not consiously. Back then i couldn't seem to find the right way to edit anything because it all seemed so drifty. Now it's anchored, front and back. I can begin again.

so in these last few chapters i'm not slacking. i'm not saying i'll write it later because i want to see it. i want to pay attention. same way that i always log out of my station at work to read the last two pages of my books uninterrupted. i want to really see the ending.

And when i'm finished, rather than my usual salutation to no one but myself i will not write "The Endish" becuase there's no -ish about it. This is the end.

i don't worry. there's another beginning out there. in fact in a round about way, it's begun. but it can hold. and stew. and wait. i don't feel it yet. but it's got its room, its door, its potential. it's planted.

Finished Something Kinda

Today i wrote the last five empty pages in the first notebook of the sequel. I think i wrote the first ten pages about a year or more ago. As always, i enjoy the way the size and shape of the notebooks i write in defines the story itself. Turning points always come right around the yellow divider pages and the close of a notebook is always the close of one moment and the moving on to the next.

I love where it's going and i can't believe how many bits and pieces i created long ago and have been able to hold onto. And i'm learning things about the past too. That's good. it'll help me when i go back. i really think that finishing all of them before going back to the beginning and starting again will help. or i could be kidding myself. This will likely be a huge pile of nonsense in one corner of my hoarded home when i die and the cats eat me...

things to do

i wrote a whole fricking post about what i'm working on and my thoughts. and then the website froze and it had never auto saved.

now i'm cranky.