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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

The Writing Button

I have decided that my writting button lives in or near my uterus. when it was full of baby it was switched off and i had no urge to write a thing. not even a journal of being all full of baby. that would just been a journal of how crappy i felt and how much i wanted to not be pregnant anymore...

but now i'm all freaking over the place. I started to write the Sequel at work. which is hilarious that it's called the sequel. it's been in my head since i finished the first draft of the monstrocity in 2007! that's right four years ago. there's three stories now between them so sequel is a stupid name for it but i can't call it anythign else or i won't know what the hell i'm talking about.

but the sequel has become the culmination of all the stories. the end, i suppose. all the loose ends are tied up and golly gee, i can't remember what happened in the spaceship story. i knew that i was headed toward writing this in the last couple weeks and that's the reason i wanted to reread the connector... to get reaquainted with some of those loose ends and the overall story i'm trying to tell.

but now i recall that i have some stuff in the spaceship story as well. so i have to find and read that. most of that is typed up (i freaking need to buy Dragon for myself, now that i'm seeing how many things i havent finished typing and how little time i have to do so!!) but i can't find the printout anywhere.

and i know i have a print out. i have to. i'm pretty sure its in a maroon binder because i remember having the disucssion with myself about how i already had a maroon binder that had nothing on the cover, but no, it's alright because the other one is a skinny binder and i'll totally be able to tell the difference just by the size. i remember that conversation!

but i can't find it.

why is it i can never find anything?

Nanowrimo 2011: Day 4

What the heck is going on here? Not only have I been writing crazy fast (surpassing my 2272 personal daily word goal the first three days) but i've also had time to browse through the Nano forums which i've always wanted to be part of, but never have. And this is all happening while i have two jobs plus small baby child to deal with.

Its like the days got longer or something.

anyway. the things i'm finding in the forums! There's this: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/restlesslyrandom my profile page for Smashwords where i can get PAID for things i write and post if people buy them. And do i really want to be paid? no, i just want people to read my shit. Maybe it's because of Little Women... Jo's success that's got me all fired up to get things done and out there. cuz they need to be. the first thing i really wanna publish is A Study of Shade and Shadow. i just love that one so much.

Also, there's this which makes me weepy with delight: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php Software that you can use to sort and resort and fix long documents. Something i've been wishing existed because the prequel and the monstrocity are basicly a disaster. i would love to just put all the pages i have printed and scribbled and reordered onto a very large bonfire and laugh. Laugy a crazy lady laugh as i watch it all burn.

(Thank you Blogger for autosaving my posts! i almost lost this one!)

The story is running along nicely, i think. a character i didn't know existed when the book started showed up at a party i didn't intend for her to be in. I'm wondering if there's more to her than i originally thought. it would explain her restless and intrusive spirit. she really tripped me up today, which is why i wrote less than i intended. i'll get over it though. because i'm almost to the important discussion between Vincent and Charleston that i've been plotting for weeks. this is where the story starts to take shape. everything up until now has been setting the scene. i'm ready to move forward!!

Meandering Thoughts

The other night I was laying in bed waiting to fall asleep and thinking about the great Stories because they are never far from thought, no matter where i am. I was thinking about how much yet needs to be done and going over and over the things i want to change not only in the prequel, my main focus right now, but on EVERYTHING. I thought to myself, 'maybe i should just scrap the whole thing. yeah, that sounds good.'

i then fell promptly and completely asleep.

that, of course, was a psychotic half asleep decision and i of course am not going to scrap the whole thing. but i could. oh i could. instead I have been attempting to become more organized. I added tags to my posts, though i haven't gotten through all of the old ones yet. I want to be able to find easily all the posts for each story. I am also going to sort through the piles of first and second drafts and filled notebooks and label and put in envelopes and box up what i don't exactly need, but cant exactly throw away. Of course i have to clean the craft room first. damn my lazyness...

You know what I learned in a meeting at work?? Apparently there was a study done that showed that the color purple is the color that is least offensive to people receiving critiques. Green is the second least offensive. Purple is more expensive to produce, and my work doesn't care about us THAT much, so all of the supervisors, leads, and captioning coaches (me!) got a green pen to do such critiques with.

When i pulled the green pen out to go do some coaching yesterday i noticed that there are none of my favoite opaque white bics in my bag. Those are my writing pens. I have editing pens and doodling pens in my bag, but no writing pens. And i've wondered why I haven't felt like writing at work lately. So yesterday i did write at work.

the monstroscity has been big on my mind for a long time and the one main part that has always bothered me, even when i had considered the thing "finished", was the reunion between Anka and Edonith. My first vision of that had been filled with an angry mood. I felt like they should come back together in a fight. that's how the first and second drafts came out, but even then i didn't like it.

in my editing i had noted to myself that it wasn't quite right. that i needed it to be more 'magical' was the word i used. So i re did it. and i liked it, but it wasn't yet right.

i have realized since writing the prequel that my problem was in the fact that i didn't truly understand why they had seperated. now i know and i can bring them back together in the exact way i wanted. Neither of them has given an inch in the feelings they had when they parted, but they had missed each other completely while they were seperated.

and writing my new perfect vision of this one scene has anchored me once again to the fact that i can't just scrap the whole thing. that would be absurd. i only wish i had a printer on my head and a button on my belly. i could push the button and out would come the whole story, complete and perfect, because editing sucks!!

and finally, speaking of editing, i finished chapter 6. i made sense of the crazy tri color highlighting fiasco and wrote a post it about how i need to rewrite that section. rewrites are not what the coffee shop is for so that will come later when i go through after i'm done editing and start to tackle those big spots of red text i have highlighted throughout all the chapters.

see what i mean? so much to do.

The Full View

This post is specifically for any new readers coming from Author's Den. I will be posting a link back here from the last chapter of Shade and Shadow, but in a way I would really like to put a lot of this stuff down too. Rehash it for myself because it always clears out cobwebs, new epiphany sprouts in the idea garden and the like...


Shall we go chronologically? since that is the way we like it best AND it starts with Shade and Shadow which is where new readers are coming from and future me will be promising information!!


A Study of Shade and Shadow


Enna and Eillim are old characters and not so much characters as Alter Egos. If my mother had won my name would have been Millie, and my aunt always wanted to be Anne. One night names were written backwards and suddenly we were different people that we masqueraded as on a writing site where i'm sure everyone who knew us, knew it WAS us, but it was just so fun.

E&E faded into the background for a long time, until i watched Gray Gardens and also probably saw Practical Magic in the same span of time. I am a fan of sci-fi, and that is what i write so i turned these practical real world crazy women based loosely on my aunt and myself with thick influence from all the ladies in the movies mentioned above into witches. I wrote E&E into a story which you will read about later - The Spaceship Story - and they were fabulous. i loved them so much that i edited that one first draft chapter over and over until it was top quality while the rest of it hasn't even been typed up into my cpu yet.

My aunt texted. She said that she had run across the phrase "Analysis of Shade and Shadow" and thought it should be a title for a story i could write since i am notoriously unable to title a damn thing. It instantly inspired me to write a short story... i knew exactly what about. Starting with a title, which i modified so it wouldn't seem so scientific, (btw i love bloggers autosave as i just accidentally closed my window!!) i ended up creating a very specific plot layout, with an entire EFFECT in mind. It was really interesting to build something that way, when i usually just let it flow and see where it takes me.

there's all sorts of fun little anecdotes about the story i could tell you but i just don't have the space, but you can probably find them spread throughout other posts, if you care to read on. But i really did like creating a religon and faith based mostly on cataclysmic events in the land the people lived on.

The Prequel

"Named" as such because i am writing it second, after the Nameless Monstroscity, which comes next. I am currently working through revisions on this story that tells the story of Anka and Loki in their early life, their meeting and Anka's struggles to leave her old scary life behind. it explores all of her early relationships and introduces my oldest favoritest characters to each other. I had originally included much of this story in the Monstroscity but it became exactly what i called it. It got too heavy and i decided to go back in time and tell it in 2 parts instead.

This one is interesting to write because i already have an end point in sight. I have to keep in mind main plot points from the second story so that key things link up, and I also have to keep track of all the things i have decided to change in the future to fit better. Interesting and frustrating. and daunting. I love this story very much because i love meeting younger versions of my characters, as i have just reexperienced with E&E.

The Nameless Monstrocity

which is little by little getting smaller and better. Though i haven't worked much on it except to write countless post-its with ideas of changes and additions and removals.

This story introduces Daniel Mccaffrey who is my show stealer. every time i introduce him into a story he takes it over as his own. i believe he is the reason the monstroscity got so large and i found it so difficult to include Anka's back story. I was too busy with the forward story. The forward story of what actually happened in Anka's past and also setting the stage for Daniel's future. Like Shade and Shadow i think it deals a lot with religion and god and in a lot of ways it is how i view higher powers. I didn't plan it that way when i was writing it, but when i finished it i saw that there WAS something i was actually saying - rather than just making up a story.

The Spaceship Story

cuz it spends much of it's time on space ships. i'm a star trek freak. i love firefly and the bbc show red dwarf and there's a little bit of each of them in my characters - as well as influence from a million other places in other ways. This i started as a short story with the intention of only introducing the crew of the Orbiter so that i could use them later with something i wanted to do with Daniel as he searches for his sister - which is his main goal throughout even the first story.

But then i actually introduced everyone to daniel and suddenly there was more story. Daniel stole the show and I did, in time, realize that this was a good breaking point between the ending of the Monstroscity and the beginning of The Sequel. though he doesnt really need it - egomaniac that he is - it develops his character further and makes him more mature for those later events.

I got stuck halfway through this one - totally didn't know what to do. So i started The Connector for Nanowrimo and the ending for this story developed at the same time. The 'foe' of the two stories are the same and writing the connecter enabled me to figure out how to finish the Spaceship story.

The Connector

Chronologically this one actually begins sometime during the prequel - and it is sort of a stand alone story - taking place in a different part of my universe, under a different government and everything. It involves the story of Carrie Mccaffrey, Daniel's sister, who disappeared when she was 16. she is now going by her middle name - Jo - and has been a captive of the same individuals who appear in the spaceship story as i just mentioned.

In a way i had an end point in this story in mind as well. I had already had little epiphany images of Daniel and Jo's first reunion, as well as some of the things that would happen as he went through his search... but other than that i had no idea what was going to happen. Thought it was a Nanowrimo story i nearly stopped halfway through when i saw where my antagonist was going and i didn't want to finish it. i liked all my characters too much to want to do the things to them that i was about to. It was sort of the hardest story to write, but in the same way Turinax, my bad guy, may be my favorite bad guy of all time. Though that's a tough call. I really love Jubal Early.

The Sequel

i have been planning out this one since i finished the 3rd draft but as you can tell, the sequel is no longer the second story. I can't call it anything else until i name it for real because then i won't know what i'm talking about. This story takes place about 4 years after the monstroscity, perhaps about a year after the spaceship story. It brings Anka and Daniel together for his search for Carrie and this is really the last story i have a solid plan for.

With carrie comes Spencer and i think he may have been what i was working towards all along, which would be coincidental if i could only tell you the story!! for a long time i thought it was Ronan, Anka's son, but i don't think so anymore. Stuff like that happens sometimes. I once wrote a whole piece where Anka dies at the end... it turned out it wasn't anka's scene - i just hadn't met the right character yet...

Artemis & Buddy

Buddy the coffee maker from Coffee Companion es-245 and Artemis from a yet unnamed and unposted story exist in the same post apocalyptic world, though i don't have everything worked out yet about what i want to do with it. I believe i want to write a bunch of disconnected short stories that in the end introduces spencer into the world that he'll save... or not... we'll see

The Spencer Story

All i know is i think i want to tell it in first person - whereas everything else is in 3rd. I've got little idea nuggets but gosh i've got so much to do i should just stop thinking about it.

I should also stop typing cuz this post is crazy long and no one is ever gonna read it anyhow. but if you have gone through my entire epic layout and are still interested - holy crap. also, look around some more, and for god's sake encourage me. I think i'm a bit bogged down!!!

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??