Scribe and Kath

I introduced Kath, as a nameless, genderless character to an audience at Scribeophile.com, and it was very enlightening.  It was something I wrote  that must be connected to this year's Nano, but not only is it written in third person (spencer was a first-person story) but it's in the distant future.  ok, not distant.  only 20 years.  but still, it may just be wishful thinking.

either way, i mostly wanted feedback on the perceptions on Kath's gender.  i included little-to-no details, putting the audience in cold, swimming through other confusing references they wouldn't get if they didn't know.  none of that other stuff mattered.  i just wanted to know what they thought of Kath... whether i was doing it right.  I think I am.  i waded through the useless-on-this-topic, but still thought-provoking comments and came up with what i'd hoped people would see in this character...

This morning i wrote a nano-related snippet.  just a fraction of one on a sheet of printer paper.  and then, this:

I do so love the rare moment when a character is doodled into visual life... even if that life is jutting of scribbles.

I have an idea...

an idea has been forming about how to go about this.  Because i don't live in a place where people read book, books anymore.  i live with technology.  but i think I've figured it out.

i think I'm gonna buy a 1 month subscription to premium scribophile...  i want to get one piece in particular critiqued... and i don't want to have to do the critiquing to get the points to post.  i want people to work for ME. and for $9.00.  yes. i think i will.

i know i said I've hated it in the past, but i know specifically what I'm looking for to be critiqued probably in each case.

so much to do... not enough time...

Edit 10:50 -

I did it.  only they've changed the premium, and you now have to critique to get points.  you didn't have to.  that's okay.  I had 3 already sitting there, so I did a quick critique on something and got this little snippet out there to get looked at.  no one has yet.  hurry it up! I'm impatient.

check out my Scribophile profile here!!

Wandering

I keep going back to the Nano story.  I turn my full attention to that section of the garden, and i wait, hoping something will dawn on me.  I want to know how or if Ecila fits in.  I want to know who or what Kath is.

I could do the obvious thing, the thing that stands out quite well.  But i don't want to...

And as i'm turned that direction, there are all the things that led up to here.  All the first stories, the Ankaverse...

Do we remember that i have been working on this story, in some shape or form, since i was in middle school?  Since i was 13.  More than half of my life has been spent here, has been used to get here.

I need to finish.  I need to start at the beginning and I need to finish.

I become discouraged because The Prophet is a typical storyline.  it is well known.

I become discouraged because there is just so much to do, and it still feels so full of holes.  i don't think it actually is, but unless i stop second guessing myself and get to work, i will never finish.

I want to put The Verse to rest, and i think i  have to do that before i can find out more about Spencer and Kath.  Because yes, they are connected to it, but it lies outside of the confines of the Verse... they are beyond the reach of Milah, who wrote it.

Something else is at work here, the puppeteer, the orchestrator.  He won't let me see what he's doing until i have completed my work with my current green-eyed mistress...

NanoWrimo 2013, A Recap

I did, one day last week, go back into the story and sketched out another 600 words of storyline that had come to me, but I spent the end of November happily not thinking about much relating to Spencer, Kath, Aniste or any of the others inhabiting the world that I had created.

But one thing did come to me.

Ecila.

Ecila is the daughter of Enna and the Foxen.  She is created and born in the short story Letters From the Desert, the sequel to A Study in Shade and Shadow. 

I began the story of Spencer at its end.  He returns from where he's been, eight years older, experienced, jaded, heartbroken.  He is dropped onto a planet he recognizes but cannot immediately place and before he has breathed a dozen breaths of this air he is recognized by someone.  Someone who was not even born before he disappeared, 12 years ago, on this side.

It's Ecila.  And much in the manner of her mother she talks for the entire beginning of the story.  She tells him why she recognizes him (he looks like his mother, Carrie Jo), she explains to him how long he's been gone (the 12 years, and not the 20+ that are evidenced by her own appearance), and also introduces her backstory and situation.  A demigod whose father is the chosen mate of her aunt, not her mother.

She even points out to him that they were both created for evil, she by Svanir, he by Turinax, but that they were broken free of those bonds and are now able to do good instead.  Spencer is skeptical about this, what good he could have done on that other, diseased world.  But Ecila is young and naïve and hopeful.

And then... Ecila disappears.  In the 28,000 words I wrote, she doesn't come up again.

But why?

I mean, I introduce these two characters together.  They open the story up together and lead us into Spencer's sadness and Ecila's hope.  She can't mean nothing to this story, but in all of November I never knew what her part in the tale was.

I still don't.

But I think that may be the problem as to why I couldn't finish, I couldn't find the rest of the words to put down for Nano.  Half of the story has to be hers.  And I think it's obvious by the way Spencer's story was progressing as well.  He is there for eight years, but only the first and the last have any real meaning.  For the six years in the middle he is simply living as a Junker with the other boys on the Elsinore complex, falling in love with Kath, losing his dreams, grasping at his fading memories of home, wondering why it is that he was there.

Not a lot of story.  Just stasis.  So... what has Ecila been doing?  how does she fit in and fill in?

That's what needs to be considered from here on out, to finish this story...

Coud Atlas

I know I must have written some post on this topic before, but it could also just be something I've talked to friends about...  I couldn't find it, either way.  maybe I will later.

The first time I saw the preview for Cloud Atlas I got worried.  It looked weird and time travely and I thought it was a bit like my Nano story that I thought I could maybe do last year.  which I have not done.  I don't have anything done on it further than one post with a few lines in it, which you can see here.

I quit Nano this year.  And it's been great.  I pulled the garden up too roughly and now I have only small seedlings of ideas left that need some time to grow.

And it allowed me yesterday to sit down on the floor in the living room, work on sewing some cloth diapers, and finally watch Cloud Atlas.

When I first looked it up, following that first preview I read the Wiki description of what turned out (of coruse) to actually be a book.  Six stories, each protagonist being observed by the protagonist in the next story to follow.  I loved the idea.  I had to read it.

It actually ended up sitting on a shelf for a long time before I was ready to read it.  I was finishing it about halfway through the movie's theater run and it was getting badish reviews.  And people I knew hadn't understood it. One friend mentioned that each story you get to see for a minute or four, and then it jumps to the next.  I couldn't understand that, how very confusing!  why not follow the path of the original story?

I don't know, it's at 66% on the Rotten Tomatoes.  is that good or bad?  the reviews on the page seem to be in favor...

So when I watched it last night, of course I went into it with the knowledge I had from having read the book.  I could identify the characters and their basic story quickly and easily as it jumped from one to another, though I could completely understand why someone else would not.  It took me a little while to realize that this pattern of storytelling is the only way to do it.  You cannot spend three hours telling one story after the other, causing the audience to go through the circle of intro, middle, climax, conclusion six times and expect them to pay attention.

But you have to go into it willing and able to keep track of six storylines at once.

I loved the movie.  I got all weepy at the end.  I never stopped being right there in it.  I loved the book, but the movie satisfied that visual craving I have...probably from watching so many movies.  It drew connections I had not seen, and makes me want to read it all over again.  And watch the movie three more times.

The movie is a great companion to the book.  The same way I feel about Fight Club and Pride and Prejudice.

And hell.  Tom Hanks.  Susan Sarandon and Halle Berry.  Fucking Hugo Weaving.

Edit 11/24 -

And I forgot this part.  When phrases, or excerpts or quotes strike me when I'm reading a book I write them down in my Books Read Notebook.  I also enter them on Goodreads.com, and you can see them pop up at random over in the right toolbar.  My quote from Cloud Atlas was perfectly envisioned in the movie.  I was half hoping I'd see it, but also not expecting it too strongly.  not everyone can be moved by the one thing I was moved by.

But it was there, and it was beautiful.

"Dreamt I stood in a china shop so crowded from floor to far-off ceiling with shelves of porcelain antiques, etc. that moving a muscle would cause several to fall and smash to bits. Exactly what happened but instead of a crashing noise, an august chord rang out, half cello, half celeste, D major (?), held for four beats. My wrist knocked a Ming vase affair off its pedestal-E flat. Whole string section, glorious, transcendent, angels wept. Deliberately now, smashed a figurine of an ox for the next note, then a milkmaid, then Saturday's Child-orgy of shrapnel filled the air, divine harmonies my head.”