Let The Monkey Type!

Ringing in 2012

2012-01-04T22:06:00.001-07:00

With resolutions, of course!

Well, no, not really. Just one:

I resolve to make monthly resolutions for the span of this entire year instead of yearly ones.

Yup.

So, what are my January resolutions then? They are as follows:

Update GS four times this month. That means pages 114, 115, 116, and 117 all need to go up. One for each Saturday of the month.
Plan at least one meal every single day. Namely lunch because you fail at that horribly. Breakfast and dinner seem to go fine, but never lunch. This should ideally include at least one serving of fruit and one serving of vegetables, but that is not a necessity for this particular month.
Begin a workout regime. I don't care what it is you do, but you must successfully do some sort of workout for at least 30 minutes three times every week this month. Since the last week is only three days, one workout during the January portion of that week will be acceptable.
This may be pushing it, but...revise at least four chapters of A Year in Darkness over the course of the month. That means chapters six, seven, eight, and nine must be edited and rewritten as needed by the 31st.

I think that's all for this month. But, while I'm at it, I might as well make a list of all of the things I'd like to achieve this year. Sort of something to pull future monthly resolutions from. No actual promises here, though.

Finish revising A Year in Darkness
Finish writing the first draft of The Devil's Due
Finish the first draft of the script for DEV
Edit the script for DEV
Finish writing Windblown
Write Sinswift
Do that 28 Chibis in 28 Days thing in February again
Write and edit the short story currently titled Damaged
Write and edit the short story in which Jezebel is the main character (no title currently)
Participate in NaNoWriMo 2012
Participate in Script Frenzy 2012
Participate in Camp NaNoWriMo 2012 during at least one of the months it takes place
Get back into the habit of drawing something everyday
Get Godspawn on a regular update schedule
Create a buffer for Godspawn

And that's all I've got for right now. Also on the list by default and therefore requires no number or bullet point is finding a job (or several) that pays the bills. I am currently employed as a content writer, but it doesn't pay nearly enough and hardly gives me enough to even cover my grocery and gas expenses, so at current I'm on the constant lookout for more employment.

I would never forget this

2011-12-10T02:58:00.001-07:00

Not in 2009, not in 2010, and certainly not this year. Now let's all sit back and enjoy some good old fashioned villainy, shall we?

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The hero bursts through the glass roof of the evil lair, upending tables filled with beakers. The beakers crash to the ground, spilling bubbling liquids of evil. The villain, devastated, cries, "Not the carpet!"

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(To his minions) "Take five, everyone. I need to sing a song about being evil."

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"Evil takes no rest! But evil needs a cup of coffee, STAT."

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"Sweet Crucified Cthulhu!" -- as an expletive

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Hero: You are a monster!
Villain: Please, I haven't even released that yet.

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Gentlemen, if you can't hit a moving target at TEN PACES, YOU BECOME THE MOVING TARGET!

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Hero destroys the villain's doomsday device, right hand minion, the Dragon, or tea set
Villain: I was USING THAT!

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Hero: You disgust me.
Villain: I'M not the one who was traipsing around a forest for weeks looking for my secret hideout! Did you even bathe?

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Hero: "Without me, you're nothing!"
Villain: "Without you, I can be EVERYTHING!"

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Villains are civilized now. Because it is scarier to see someone fit so well into society as a psychopath than to see a monster. We figured it out, Hero. And now we’re so ingrained in there that you would take down the world to get us out.

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Hero: "You won't get away with this!"
Villian as the hero is being lowered into a vat of acid: "Seriously?"

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Hero: "I will find you if it's the last thing I do!"
Villian: "You are my secret stalker, aren't you."

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Villian: "I really admire your stamina for chasing me all over the place. I haven't been this fit in years!"

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Villain: "You realize now that I can't let you live. That would be against my code of ethics."

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Hero: "When you pick up a book, I will be there. When you close your eyes, I will be there..."
Villian: "gasps" You really love stalking me, don't you!"

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*Hero bursts into villain's [office/living room/etc], making a lot of noise and knocking over a fancy vase that is sitting on a shelf near the door; vase falls to the ground and breaks*
Villain: "No! You [insert insult], why did you do that? That vase held the ashes of my [mother/uncle/etc]!
*Hero looks mortified and looks down at the broken vase*
*while Hero is distracted, Villain shoots Hero*
*Villain chuckles and walks over to a closet, which contains about a dozen identical vases; Villain picks one at random and puts it on the shelf*
Villain: "Gets 'em every time."

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[note: villain is known as an Evil Overlord]
V: "Hey, don't defeat me. If I'm gone, you'll end up with someone worse. Classic power vacuum."
H: "But you're *evil*!"
V: "It's just a title, really. I don't bother with repression. Too much effort. I don't even turn the peasants into Minions. My Minions are all just failed Heroes. Like you."
H: "Why do you call yourself 'evil' then?"
V: "To continue the reputation of my family. Besides, it's a classic hero trap. No one ever expects a Genre Savvy Evil Overlord. And I need someone to play WarCraft against."

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H: "I challenge you!"
V: "I'm busy! Come back later."

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H1: "There's a timer!"
H2: "We have to stop it!"
V: "No. That timer is for my pie. The one over _there_ is for my secret weapon."
*hero pulls out plug*
V: "How dare you ruin my pie!" *shoots hero*
H1: "You killed him!"
V: "He ruined my pie!"

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"You know how they say that one death is a tragedy, but a million deaths is just a statistic? Well, don't fool yourself for a moment that just because you're one person, your death will be a tragedy. You will merely become part of the statistic."

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H: Go to Hell.
V: That's the plan. Care to join me?

-----

You idiot. I didn't lie. I as good as told you what I was. And you laughed and went on trusting me. Now you dare to call me a monster, when you were to blame for putting your trust in me in the first place.

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You expect me to kill you? After your misguided heroism vouchsafed my success? If not for this force field I could kiss you! (Beat) But yes, I am going to kill you.

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All the work I put into running this kingdom and all I get in return is whining and complaining. It's always 'Ooh, you burned down my house!' and 'Why did you kill my entire family?' This job is rather stressful for me too, you know!

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[in response to 'you're insane']: Yes, but I'm on medication for that. You can be reassured by the knowledge that I am fully competent and therefore won't be making any stupid mistakes like letting you escape.

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Really? That's all you could come up with? I would have figured you'd be a bit more creative than that. But I guess I overestimated your intelligence.

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How I did it? I made everybody believe that I was a bad liar. Then, I had everyone, every last one, in the palm of my hand. Even you.

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I don't really give a damn what you think about me. Do you think I'm doing this for your approval? Are you really that arrogant?

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I believe there’s a reason that you’re an orphan.

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You're a hero, you wouldn't understand.

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You Sir/Madam are one self-righteous little bigot. You claim that you are always doing the right thing helping people, saving the world for puppies, kittens and sunlight. Let me tell you something the world isn't safe, life isn't fair so at the end of the day its me not you giving the world the real lessons. So isn't it a bit hypocritical to be the hero?

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Could I come up with an explanation that would satisfy you? And furthermore, why would I?

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I don't really like the term evil. I prefer...ethically unfettered.

-----

For the last time, I am not a sociopath. I am a highly capable member of society and blaming all my hard work on some sort of psychological instability cheapens all the horrors I have performed to get this far. I am evil because I choose to be and I have worked incredibly hard to be so. I refuse to have my efforts cheapened in an attempt to make my actions fit into your narrow, moralistic worldview.

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H: Please! You don't have to do this!
V: Of course I don't. But I'm going to do it anyway, and that, my boy, is what makes it wonderful.

-----

So instead of killing you, I think I’ll spare you, just this one time. Consider it a second chance, a re-do. A gift, for you. You have one more chance to thwart me, and to save the world. That is, if you can outrun the dogs, of course.

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V: You have a choice. I could call the ninja's like any other villain would or we could maybe....jazz it up a little? I have a cyborg Napoleon in the back if your interested.

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How do you know that? For all you know you could be in a padded room, my minion is the orderly and I'm the kindly doctor.

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H: You're reign of terror ends now!
Minion: My liege! We have a problem!
V: Just a second you. What is it?
Minion: We're out of peanut butter.
V: What?! How, I got some YESTERDAY-
Minion: I have been told the hero's sidekick ate it while escaping the cell.
V: Okay, kill the minion that FAILED to stop him, shoot the sidekick on sight and YOU. *points to hero* I will kill now, and enjoy it all the more because I happen to be freakishly fond of peanut butter.

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You want my autograph? Ah, no, you want to kill me. *sigh* It's so hard to tell the difference between my fans and my foes.

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You shouldn't try to redeem me. You should thank me. Without a man in a black hat to face off against, people like you would still be living in their mother's basement, wishing their life had some purpose.

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Aw, you color coordinated your cape and tights! Your mommy must be so proud.

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When one is in my position, they either conquer the world or learn the piano. And I am rather tone deaf.

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Look at it this way: you could rescue the princess and save the day, but who is to say that she's not going to leave you and run off with the next hero that comes her way?

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In response to "Why are you doing this?":
My therapist said it's not good for me to keep all my anger locked inside.

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V: I have a very strange urge to actually listen to your monologue instead of strangling you. Minion! Get my therapist now!!!

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Come to play? No? Well I have.

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Hero: "You're a mess only I can fix."
Villain: "Save the romance for your lover, because I certainly won't have you."

OR - (for the fo yay version)

Hero: "You're a mess only I can fix."
Villain: "Touches the heart doesn't it, your strong determination."
Or
Villain: "I hope you wife/husband heard that, because my crotch did."
XD

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(Hero is held captive by the Villain)

H: I don't care what you do to me...just leave *character name* alone...

V: "Please, I have you. The last person I'm interested in hunting down right now is that pathetic little friend of yours...but he's/she's still on the list."

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"I would explain how I did this, but humility is one of my many, many virtues."

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"I don't really have *time* for a fight to the death right now. I'm working on a deadline."

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H: Go to Hell.
V: Been there, done that, bought the devil horns
OR
V: I'd tell you to do the same, but I work there on weekends and I'm tired of your boring heroic monologues.

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"You still think that the monster can't get you if you hide under the blanket, don't you?"

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"I'm what the monsters under the bed check under their beds for."

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"This would be so much easier for you if I was posturing like a cartoon supervillain, wouldn't it? I could put on a false moustache and twirl it for you, if that would help..."

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Hmm, I think we'll start off with some light torture and then see how we feel after that.

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Hero: You're insane!
Villain: Hmm...you might have a point there.

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Now that's another thing I dislike about you: the smug assumption that your vision of "good" will triumph over my works of "evil". I haven't put my life and soul - not to mention the lives and souls of all those villagers I had to kill - into this project just to see it fall to your unbelievable EGO.

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Hero: But why are you doing this?
Villain: Actually, it's a very fascinating tale. Would you like to hear it? *claps hands* Minions! Fetch me my armchair!

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Villain - "I'm not a bad guy, I'm a good guy, I hate everyone equally"

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"I don't think I could be good if I tried. Too much guilt."

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"Contrary to popular belief, nothing brings more happiness than discovering that you have just utterly demolished someone's life. Except for a box of jelly doughnuts. Those are simply DIVINE."

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"This is normally the part when I would start my villainous monologuing, but last time I did that I gave the hero enough time to get away and it was really messy trying to clean that one up---hey!" (noticing the hero has gotten away).

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"Oh, that was good."

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H: I trusted you.
V: Yes...that was the point.

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"This isn't about a hero and his villain. This is about two opposing ideals and the men representing them. Unfortunately for your ideals, I have the gun."

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"I am the one performing all these necessities because you are far too weak to even consider them. If a hero is someone like you, then I am entitled to be the villain."

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"Well I find your situation *most* unfortunate."

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Hero: You know, for a villain, you're very self-aware.
Villain: Why, am I supposed to not be?
Hero: Well, most villains aren't.
Villain: Oh, of course, I remember now! When I joined the Super Secret Clubhouse for Villainous Figures, there was a clause in the Villain Contract that specified that I had to wallow in arrogance and short-sightedness. Guess they'll have to revoke my membership now.

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Villain: You think this is about you and me? My dear (boy/girl), how foolish of you. We are merely players in a game that has been played for millennia, and even if you kill me, the chaos and destruction I represent will still flourish. Why don't you ponder that while you watch the world fall apart under my hand.

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Hero: How could you do this to them? Why?
Villain: Oh well, turns out I'm actually quite good at it. And frankly, I'd rather be excellent at being evil than mediocre at being good.

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"I used to be conflicted, then I realised that it made me inefficient. Inefficiency is the true enemy of mankind."

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"If I cared, do you really think I'd be doing this?"

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"Tell me, what sound does a head make when it explodes?"

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"The mistake you've made is thinking that you're the hero of this sorry little tale. You're not the hero, you're just the cannon fodder."

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"Once upon a time there was a little boy who tried to save the world. He died. The end."

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"I'm taking this baby. I think I know who could use this."

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Have you ever thought that we're on two sides of the same point? I am nothing but a more proactive version of you.

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*after the villain kills a character* "Oh, come on, don't tell me you didn't see that coming."

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"People always forget we came first. We're the ancient evil. You . . . you sprang up last week because we finally got powerful enough to shake up the status quo again, and you'll be gone the moment you've driven us back underground. But we'll still be around. We're persistent little buggers. And doesn't persistence always win out in the end?"

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"You wouldn't see things my way no matter how much time I spent trying to open up your eyes. So I thought I'd put them out instead."

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"Would you feel any better if I put my underwear on my head and declared myself invincible before I shot you, in defiance of the laws of Narrative Causality?"

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"Yes, yes, I will cause the seas to turn to boiling blood and death to go out on a pale horse and the stars to fall from the heavens and all of those signs that I'm doing truly terrible things. I've heard it. I stand for change. And whether you want to admit it or not, you stand for tomorrow being basically the same as today. And you can wrap stagnation in as many pretty moral changes as you like, but that's what it's going to be."

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"Kill you? No, I'm going to make you live. Live with the knowledge that she called your name as she died, waiting for you to save her."

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If you have an arch-nemesis you are doing it right, and I've got you, yet i feel like you are doing it wrong...

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I'm that little voice in the back of your mind screaming for you to do the wrong thing... Why don't you listen?

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"I'm not evil, actually. I'm just misunderstood. People think I want to cause pain, but I really only want to cause death!"

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"You look cold. How about I fill you up with some hot lead?"

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The villain looked down at the dead, slaughtered body. ““I hope he wasn’t one of your more powerful and wise agents/heros/wizards/whatever... no wait, yes I do.”

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Hero: "You coward! You won't even face me in a fair fight!"
Villain: "No, that's not called being a coward. It's called being smart. When have you ever seen a villain win in a fair fight?"

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Villain [waking up after being tied to a chair by hero]: I planned for our roles to be reversed.

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"We all have our hobbies. Grandma knits; the hobo sleeping outside the liquor store collects cans. I...Blow stuff up."

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H: Just tell me, why did you do it?
V: Can't you tell? I'm in love with you. I always have been.
H: B-but... you can't be! That doesn't make sense!
V *laughing*: No, but you should have seen your face. *pulls lever*

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H: "You let him/her go!"
V: *Drops person off building/cliff/bridge/tall thing* "You know if you haven't learned not to say that by this point the I don't think you deserve so be the star of the book."

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[In response to "you're insane!"]
I'm insane? You're the one, despite all the warnings of danger, of all the trouble it would cause, came to stop me. That's insane.

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"There are several different kinds of villains. Some believe what they are doing is truly right. Some are evil to compensate for something. And me? I was bored."

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"Seriously, you just bust the door down, what the heck possessed you to do that! I at least had the decency to pick the lock and not force you to buy a whole new door!"

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Hero: I am your worst enemy.
Villain: Don't flatter yourself. I have many enemies, and I'm sure several of them are much worse than you.

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"I could kill you, but your pathetic attempts at fighting me are much more amusing. And that's not a compliment that I bestow lightly."

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"Even (villain's/ evil character's) have people they care about- but unfortunately for you, you're not one of them."

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"I thought about being the good guy, but it required sooooooooooooo much more effort."

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(After killing MC's love interest in front of MC)
"I'm torn between sleeping with you and killing you...Though at this particular moment, with that look on your face, I just want a picture."

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"Chaos, panic, and destruction. My work here is done."

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Whatever does not kill me had better run for its stupid life."

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"What? Did you except me to reveal that I was your father or something? This isn't a fantasy story! Besides, you already have a father."
"Actually I'm adopted."
"Oh....Crap. Look, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to - wait, this is beside the point!"

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"I'm evil! What do you expect from me?"

YEAH THAT'S RIGHT

2011-11-30T23:28:00.000-07:00

24,048 words in one day, just to finish on time.

YEEEEEEAAAAAAH!

Oh my God, why am I even doing this to myself?

2011-11-29T03:50:00.000-07:00

HAHAHAHAHA I only have two days left and I still need to write 30k more words. Fuuuuuck.

You know what makes it worse, though?

I'm actually still trying to win.

Madness. When I wake up tomorrow I'm going to sit my ass down, pay my Cox bill because it's due tomorrow (hah), and then I'm going to write about 3500 words. Then I am going to chill out briefly. And then I am going to return to my computer and write another 3500 words. And then you know what's going to happen? I'm going to do it AGAIN in the flippin' EVENING because I HAVE TO IF I WANT TO WIN.

After that, I probably won't stop to celebrate the fact that I can stop writing for the day. I will probably stay up and write some more because I don't want to chance not having enough time to do it again on Wednesday before midnight hits. Because, let's be honest here, it's 3:45am on Tuesday and I'm still working on Monday's words. =|

Soyeah. That's my life right now. I'm going a little crazy but see if I win after being this far behind it will be AWESOME. SO. FUCKING. AWESOME.

It's totally worth it to throw my life away for the next two days just for how awesome it is going to be. And, as I spent about 3000 cheaterly words tonight working out the rest of the plot (I could not write anymore prose tonight, I just... I couldn't stand making these characters DO and SAY things anymore. Too many hours of it. Hah. Tomorrow will be hell.) I can now safely say that I think The Devil's Due will either be over or close to over by the time I hit 50k on Wednesday. Yeeeeeesssss.

I'm so tired of this story, but I just can't give up on it. Not until I finish this damn first draft. BECAUSE I AM NOT A QUITTER! I AM A MASOCHIST! HAH!

Mm, yes, well. I should stop writing this crazyness and go back to writing in my notebook. I decided I didn't like the computer anymore for some reason so now I'm killing my hand by making incomprehensible scribbles in a notebook.

Yup.

Not feeling the NaNo spirit this year

2011-11-09T04:42:00.000-07:00

And it's depressing. Everything is depressing, actually.

I feel broken.

A response to, "Can fantasy really be literature?"

2011-10-12T14:26:00.002-07:00

I love fantasy, it's satisfying and exciting and reassuring and excellent. But so much fantasy seems to just be completely about the story - the purest genre fiction. In fact, I can't really think of any fantasy series since the big originals, that included deep imagery and motifs, commentary on the truths of existence, and all those things that make literature more than just stories. It's unsatisfying, because while fantasy is good on its own, I can't work out why these sorts of elements don't seem to have much of a place.
(Saying that, I am of course writing fantasy for my nano this year, and I'm having a hard time finding space for these sorts of elements myself. But I suspect that's more a reflection on my writing ability than on fantasy in general!)

From this NaNo topic.
Naturally, I never posted this response. I am a pansy. =P

I think that all depends on your exact definition of literature. Personally, I don't think I view literature in the same way as you do. Literature is everything, even the bubblegum books, to me. So you'd have to be VERY specific about what, in exact detail, you consider literature. Thus far, I've seen broad definitions full of interpretation and nothing of a good, solid definition to work off of.

Without that, there's not much I can tell you except that I've seen language and plot and characters and motifs used to create a point about modern society, our preconceptions, and so on and so forth in every fantasy book I've ever read. Furthermore, there is not a single story that I write that doesn't have some deeper meaning to it. And I write fantasy. It just sort of happens. Fluff is all well and good, depending on your mood at the time, but I just can't write fantasy without a deeper meaning to it. That's just sort of what fantasy has always been for me. There's always something more to it, if only you take the time to really look at what's being said.

With that in mind, a few modern examples of fantasy literature: His Dark Materials, Harry Potter, What the Dickens, The Moorchild, The Black Magician Trilogy...and that's just what I saw when I glanced at my bookshelf.

I don't doubt that there are a few there you've never heard of, but infamy is not a requirement for what constitutes as literature. At least, not in my definition of it.

It could be that your view of what constitutes as literature is influenced by, say, literary fiction, which mainly focuses on the language and is therefore a fantastic jumping off point. But I often see a lot of pomp associated with it, as if it's better than all other forms of writing, which has dimmed my views of it substantially. It probably doesn't help that I never really cared for it in the first place. Oh, sure, reading and analyzing it was fascinating--but writing it? Ugh. So boring. Of all my works in all my life, the ones I wrote for my fiction classes in college, my only literary fiction pieces, have thus far been the only stories I've written without any subtext or deeper meaning in mind at all. The only way to get around it was to trick myself by using characters from fantasy works I'd already concocted and placing them in the real world to see what kind of story would develop. From that, I got two of my favorite short stories--but I'm still not sure what exactly they say between the lines. Something about independence? Growing up? Being true to yourself? I don't know. It was all about language and the grade. It was nothing I was interested in.

With fantasy, the things that might become too heavy handed in literary fiction are just another part of the story. With fantasy, the average person isn't bored and overwhelmed by the complexities I often see in other pieces trying to say something about the world. With fantasy, people can just enjoy the story and escape from reality for a bit. And when they reread it or think about it again the next day or simply get to the end, the message can simply come upon them. It won't be forced on them, it won't be obnoxiously in their face--it's just sitting there politely, waiting for them to notice that it's been there the whole time.

When people find out I'm a writer, they often talk about this. How they HATE having these things in their faces all the time and how it's put them off of reading. They may have just read the wrong kind of books, where everything is right there up front and you just KNOW that's what the whole damn book is about. And I can attest to the fact that, really, it's annoying. I've read books like that. Usually for school. I was told they were good books. I was told every educated person out there enjoyed them.

I was lied to.

Simply put, I think that fantasy is the Average Joe's literature. They don't have to be educated to get it and, personally, I think that's how it should be. No pomp. No circumstance. Just a wholesome meal disguised as something delectably greasy and mouth-watering. Something everyone can enjoy. That's what I think literature SHOULD be. That's what fantasy IS.

Better-worded responses to the same topic that were actually posted because these people aren't pansies like me:

I think the some of the best fantasy literature are the books that aren't setting out to be literature. For example, while symbolism and motifs are often intentional, I think the themes of a book should naturally come out of the story, sometimes without the author even intending them too. I did a Christian-based unit study on The Lord of the Rings in high school, and one of the questions was "How does the flight of the Hobbits resemble that of the Israelites from Egypt?" ....WTF? Tolkien absolutely wasn't just thinking about hobbits when he wrote LOTR, but I don't think he was so intent on communicating a specific message that he would grasp at straws like that.

A lot of fantasy that tries to be literature mostly just ends up being contrived anvilicious crap, so I understand the desire to just write a story and not try to explore something big.

-Dreity

Literature is broad. Literature is hard to define. Just because someone claims that a novel or short story is an undying classic of the written word doesn't mean everyone will agree.

In all honesty, I just judge books by how "good" they are. A Tale of Two Cities was "good." Glen Cook's The Black Company is "good." David Feintuch's The Still was good. Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon was good. Good books transcend genre.

If a book is well written, and has something to say, and grips me, then I consider it good. Then again, those work as decent markers for this thing we call "literature," which poses a problem, because we all hear different things when we read a book. We all have different tastes when it comes to writing style, so one book might grab some readers and leave others feeling bored. All I can do is go by my own gut feeling.

-hookedononyx

This is one of those debates that I normally try to give a wide birth, simply because I don't think it works very well as a debate. There are certain aspects of literature (in the "written works" sense) that are fairly well defined, but as you approach the borders of those definitions, matters quickly deteriorate into intensely subjective territory. That applies to both the quality and genre of a given work. The measuring stick really does tend to be "I know it when I see it" for pretty much every aspect of categorizing written works, and while there is consensus on a number of things, there are almost always dissenters or pretty distinct differences of opinion on certain subjects.
That means that, when things get down to the minutiae of what technically is or isn't one thing or another, the whole system breaks apart, because you can't say that really any work "technically" falls into any of the largely subjective categories we use to sort works.

-Absence

This will make NaNo infinitely easier

2011-10-12T00:55:00.000-07:00

Not having a job, I mean.

Yes, I lost my job. And I'm not sad. It's unfortunate that I don't have a source of income anymore, that much is true, but I really fucking hated my job. I didn't used to, but...time changes everything, I guess. The stress never left me. I was constantly anxious, I started to get headaches, I couldn't focus on anything else, and every night I would stress out whenever I'd glance at the clock and see how much time I had before I had to go to bed, just to wake up and go to that place again.

I'm worried about not being able to get another job, but it's not even comparable to the kind of anxiety that's been gripping me for the past few months. And now...now it feels like I can breathe again. Like I can sleep again. Like I can be myself again.

Regardless of whether or not I get another job by November, NaNo will be way more manageable without that job.

Anyway.

I've finally started unpacking the last of my boxes. Y'know, over a month after moving in. Hah. Yes, I know, I'm good at this. But my desk is mostly clean now and that makes me feel like I can work on shit for a change instead of just sitting in front of my computer wondering what the hell to do with myself.

That said, I'm writing everyday again (not that you knew that I'd stopped, but...yeah, I did). It makes me feel normal again. I've mostly been trying to plot out The Devil's Due, which is a story I've been working on since at least my freshman year of college. I hesitate to call it a novel. It's still only in its beginning to middle stages, but with so many characters and so many different individual tales to tell I'm not sure how long the end product will be. I'm not sure what the end product will be. But in my plotting I have, at the very least, cut out a lot of the unnecessary fat that had been clinging onto the story for some time. It's refreshing and I think the story will be better for it.

In the end, I wonder if it won't be a series of novellas? I'm not sure how many, but, as I said, there are a lot of different stories within the overall story to be told. Despite my cutting out a lot, to have it all as a single work would create a very disjointed piece. Right now I'm just working on the main story--but even that would likely take up to two volumes to tell. And that's leaving aside all the little things. I mean, one of the main characters goes off the deep end, then there's the whole love affair between his father and this other guy which has been going on this whole time, and of course that whole fiasco with the antagonists with engagements and concealing feelings and I don't even know how that'll get resolved...

Also, one of the main characters leaves. She just runs away one day and leaves the rest of the characters to try to pick up the pieces and overthrow King Egan without her. The plan isn't for her to return near the end to help save the day. Nope. She's gone for good. I mean, I certainly intend to add closure at some point. But she stays gone. In the end, the others never see her again.

Sad? Yes. Necessary? I wonder about that often. But then, I also wonder how necessary each one of the five main characters are. I mean, is that many characters really necessary? True, Godspawn has an equal amount of main characters. But they each have their own unique uses and plotlines and backstories. They stand on their own, each one of them. The question I've often asked myself, however, is this: do the TDD characters do that? King and Vera definitely do, but that goes without saying.

So in all this plotting I'm slowly--slowly--injecting more and more individuality and importance into the other three. Sierra is beginning to stand apart, as she should. Rafe is starting to disagree and get annoyed with King at times and have his own ideas. Zandy...eh, she's still sort of just the "token kid." She'll always have a place in the story, though. It really takes until after a lot has happened for her to come into her own. Mainly because her sister, Vera, breaks down. And at that point, King has already shorted out, so to speak. Rafe? I don't know what Rafe is doing at that point. I imagine he doesn't know how to deal with everything and just sort of avoids everyone and tries to shut out the world. Sierra is just...well, she's Sierra. She's starting--rightfully so--to show off her flightiness a bit more in the story. She's not really around as often as she should be. She's the kind of girl that likes to distance herself from her family because, deep down, she's convinced that she's just a burden and only makes things worse for everyone involved. Like Rafe, she sort of shuts out the world when things get really rough more towards the end, except she does it by flooding her senses with a thick coating of happiness and adrenaline. You know, parties, shopping, drinking, hooking up at bars she's too young to go to. She's sort of out of hand.

But all this will give Zandy a chance to step up and, in a way, grow up. At least, that's what I'm hoping to achieve. I mean, this is a girl who's barely out of middle school and her whole life has been looking up to her sister and her cousin who have always been the strong ones. Vera is the fighter, Sierra is the stealth, and Zandy...she's the kid. So my goal is for her to put on her big girl boots and essentially pull the group out of its funk.

It'll be exciting times, I'm sure. But I haven't even gotten that far, yet! Right now, I'm still trying to figure out how exactly the other kids rescue King from being kidnapped. Because he's sort of an idiot and tries to lose a guy tailing him by going through a parking garage as opposed to staying out on the street where there's a crapton of people.

King is a little dim sometimes.

Vienin, why you takin' over the story?! =O

2011-08-12T00:32:00.000-07:00

I'm horrifically behind on my Camp Nano novel...and I'm kinda super chill about it at the moment. Which is surprising. I guess I just feel confident that I'll be able to finish it on time regardless of these first two weeks of utter nonattentiveness.

But despite my low word count, I've already made a discovery--Musette's big brother is vying for a place in the spotlight. And, to make matters worse, he brought friends. A lot of them. I didn't even know he had friends! In fact, I'm pretty sure there's a reason for that. As I recall, the last time he had a friend, she tried to keep Vienin tied to their dreary little town despite his only wish in the whole wide world being to travel...well...the whole wide world. And she chose to restrain his off-her-rocker mother by shifting into a tiger and using her teeth, ultimately leading to the woman's death. And she orchestrated a plot to murder his little sister.

All-in-all, Vienin just tends to bring the worst kind of people into the stories.

...However, that woman he brought in actually has a huge role in this book and will totally make up for all the bad karma she's racked up by the end of it.

Also, without her, there would've just been the dragon and Musette's ANGST serving as the sole sources of conflict in the first book. Sooo...

You know what? I'm actually all right with this. Go on Vienin, take a good chunk of that spotlight right over there and bring all your morally questionable friends with you! Heck, Musette may just get a crush on one of them. Imagine that? Musette having a love interest! Hah! The novelty of it all!

Or not.

I seriously can't imagine Musette ever loving anyone romantically. Or having sex. With anyone. Ever.

It probably has something to do with making her a priestess at one point when she was still a roleplaying character and having that entail a vow of chastity. Either that or I created that situation specifically because I have such a hard time seeing her as a sexual being. Or even a romantic one.

I have the same problem with Cadmus from Godspawn Chronicles (which I will update this week even if I have to fight off a hoard of undead antelopes to do so). Maybe I just have a thing where I subconsciously associate winged characters with angels and therefore think that they should be incapable of having romantic and/or sexual relations.

Although, you know, technically Cadmus is actually an angel.

Well, some people would call him that, anyway. He avoids them like the damn plague, though, so who knows when that'll crop up in the actual comic.

It will, though. Eventually.

And only then will you get to find out anything super important about Cadmus' past and personal/family life. =3

Quick update

2011-08-08T01:08:00.000-07:00

I'm participating in Camp NaNo for August aaaand I'm writing Windblown (second Windwaker book because SUDDENLY MUSETTE GETS TWO BOOKS OMG WHAT IS THIS MANDESS?!).

Also, I only rewrote two chapters last month. Awesome. Buthey, that's two less chapters than I have to do now! Woo!

Aaaand I have a week off later this month. So I'm not TOO stressed about being pretty behind at the moment because, if all else fails, I can just make up for it then. I have been known to become a writing demon when the situation calls for it. ;)

I may also be moving at some point this month. And buying a ton of furniture shortly after that. And decorating.

And then stressing because, oh nooo, I'll be living away from home! Again! D=

Except this time it'll be a five or ten minute drive home so...yeah.

In other news, however, I'm currently stressing anyway because I haven't updated Godspawn in forever and all I have to do is COLOR IT! Augh! Why is it so hard to get myself to do these things?!

Oh well. The page will go up this week. Possibly tomorrow. Tuesday is more likely. And there may be another one on Saturday since I think it'd be super cool if I could update every week in August. Except, y'know, the first week was already a bust. Maybe I'll just try to update the last week of August before it rolls over to September.

And then I have an idea for birthday art for GS. Because GS is going to be three years old on Sept. 10th. Joy!

I'm no Potterhead...

2011-07-15T01:56:00.004-07:00

...and I haven't filled anyone's (Tumblr) dash with a ton of Harry Potter related posts for the past few weeks or made any claims to being broken up about it.

But I sorta have been. Ever since the Potter posts first started turning up, it's been working away at me. And tonight I couldn't help but tear up a little.

It's over. And it was so much more than a mere series of books.

I picked the first one, The Sorcerer's Stone, out of a Scholastic catalogue in seventh grade and I didn't even read it until my mom did and recommended it. I left it to gather dust on the floor next to my ratty old desk chair. And I mean that literally. When it finally caught my eye one evening and I shrugged to myself and picked it up, there was a film of dust across the cover. I brushed it off and settled down, figuring I could take at least five minutes to see what my mom had been raving about.

I didn't move from that spot for hours.

Like I said, I'm no Potterhead. I was always the last to read the books. Always. Every summer--often during our family vacations--the newest book would come out and my mom would rush to the nearest Costco and snatch it up. She'd read it, my little sister would read it, my elder sister would read it--and then I'd finally get the chance.

I didn't mind waiting. I wasn't nearly as obsessed with the books as they were. I still looked forward to them, pining for the newest one, but I knew I'd have it in my hands soon enough. Everyone else...they were pretty fast readers. My little sister especially. ;)

She's a Potterhead. Midnight premiers, book release parties, listening to the audio books every night on her CD player as she drifts to sleep. I know. I've heard it through the vents connecting our rooms. The gentle murmur of dialogue, the familiar English accent of the narrator, the unique voice he gives to each character. And I've heard it all from her more times than I can count. Harry Potter, this. Harry Potter, that.

I watched her grow up with those books. With this series.

It dawns on me tonight that I grew up with them, too. Just in a different way. No, I'm not at the midnight premier. No, I was never the first to read the books or see the movies. I've always been one of the last to know.

But as I sit here pondering the empty hole of expectations and excitement this finale will leave, I realize that I've been influenced by these books. Or rather, the characters themselves.

I don't know when I started to love villains. I think it started with another book series, actually, one that treated dragons as heroes. That's what, perhaps, first influenced the twisting of my thoughts on how heroes and villains are viewed. And I know there have been many other factors, but at the end of it, I have to admit to myself that, no, I never was truly interested in villains until much later, long after I'd lost that series of books to time and the depths of my closet.

Yes, Snape and Draco were the ones that I think really touched me. They fascinated me. Namely Snape, of course, in the earlier books. But the closer to the ending, the more and more I started to really see Draco. It was an odd thing to have gone from so decisively labeling him the "bully" in the earliest books when I was younger to seeing him as the terribly conflicted person that he is.

I didn't want to admit it to myself at the time, but I based a character off of them. I was bored with my heroes in my late teens and I wanted someone outside of myself, a character I could really challenge myself with.

Thus came Dermot Illario Mabyn.

In the years that followed his creation, I got to know Dermot a lot better than I ever thought I would. He's a bully, naturally--but as tends to follow, I've noticed, he gets bullied right back. Few people ever bothered to try to really see what was going on with him, the adults around him when he was growing up included. They dismissed him as a behavior problem. They didn't look at the way his parents treated him, they didn't look at the scorn he'd received from others for being their son, and, more importantly, they failed to see what ignoring him had done.

It was in exploring this character that I realized I did that to people, too. I just disliked them and didn't even bother to examine why they were acting the way they were. I didn't want to get to know them. I hated them, why should I bother? It was then that I started to examine myself, evaluate the way I was treating and thinking of people.

It taught me sympathy. Every time I come across a foe of any kind, I think of Dermot. I think of Snape. I think of Draco.

It reminds me that the person across from me is just that: a person. Just like me.

I began to notice in works of fiction how few heroes seemed to draw this conclusion. It's becoming more common nowadays, I'm happy to say, but at the time I hardly saw it anywhere.

From this thought process, there spawned dozens more characters: A'Marie, Otto, Delphi, Christian, Jezebel, Theron, Vicious and her Godspawn and their nanny, Farouk--all villains in one way or another. And I love each one more than I ever loved the heroic characters I crafted as a younger writer. They're more...they're just more.

Those characters encompass all of my current endeavors and even one I have yet to start. Two of them are webcomics, projects renowned for taking a decent chunk of years to finish. One is a very long tale which may be transformed into a series of novellas. Another my first novel. Two others, the first short stories I've ever been inspired to write outside of school. And the last one--Dermot and Otto's shared tales--is a series of at least five books that I've only just begun to write.

I intend to finish them all. It will take years. It will take many years. And there's more to come after them. I know it. There's always more.

But this? All this? It was because a pair of characters intrigued me to the point where I just had to explore the likes of them myself. It was because of a series of magnificent books that touched lives across the world. It was because of an author who taught me more than she will ever know.

Thank you, Ms. Rowling.

You've changed my life.

You've changed my world.

Camp NaNo Rebel

2011-07-01T00:36:00.000-07:00

Yes. So. Camp NaNoWriMo. It's happening. I'm excited.

And I'm not writing a novel this month.

I'm also supposed to be in bed right now since I have work in the morning, but shut up, I'm talking.

Yes, you heard (read?) me right. I'm NOT writing this month and it is absolutely shocking. Shocking, I say!

Remember how I said I was going to revise A Year in Darkness, my first NaNo novel from '09, in June? Well, you know how it's sort of the first of July right now?

Yeah, I just now finished rewriting chapter three. Herp derp, I'm awesome!

To be perfectly fair, though, I was only halfway through chapter three when I got home from work today. So, you know, I have done some work today. And that means I get to start fresh with a whole new chapter tomorrow!

I'm not sure how I'm going to measure my progress, though. I don't want to add extra work for myself by trying to keep track of every single word that I change or add or take away. Too complicated. That'll only discourage me. So instead I figure I either won't put any words in the counter to verify at the end of the month (and therefore not win officially) OR I'll put in the whole document at the very end just to win--but only if I actually finish the whole second draft. All or nothing.

I'm psyched. I can so do this. 21 chapters in 31 days.

...I can feel a suicide note coming on already.

Can't be bothered to read my last post apparently

2011-05-02T20:13:00.001-07:00

Because I DID mention the job thing in the post before last. And then I went and said it again. And now I'm doing it AGAIN! *horrified gasp*

But anyway. I am exhausted at the moment. I thought you should know.

*cough* So May is apparently Short Story Month! Which means that I should write short stories this month. Clearly.

Although actually I feel like Short Story Month is just a celebration of sorts for short stories that've already been written and spreading the joy of reading them and such--but who cares!

I could probably start tonight even! Maybe. Plausibly. Okay, not really.

I won Script Frenzy with much joy and not nearly as much celebration since I'm not an outwardly expressive person most of the time. And, no, the main character is not in a coma. Yet. She will be soon, though. At 260 pages, I'm really hoping this whole thing comes to a close soon, if only so I can finally get to editing it and then on to drawing it. Sadly, I've done the worst thing I could possible do--I did the math. If D.E.V. comes out to 300 pages and I somehow manage to finish a single page per week (on top of doing GS pages), it will take me roughly six years to get through it.

We are not going to discuss how many years it will take to finish Godspawn. I haven't even written far enough ahead to make any calculations on the matter, but when I do, I won't. Because holy crap.

So that has me somewhat stressed and eager to start. But, I mean, it IS a webcomic, after all. So... taking a long time is sort of part of the deal. Godspawn has already eaten nearly three years of my life. And it's still just beginning. Hmmm.

HMMMMM.

Yeah. Anyway. I'll be starting back up on the whole editing A Year in Darkness thing again this weekend. I've decided it's easier just to give myself a weekly quota of pages that I need to mark up. Thirty pages per week ought to get me finished up and ready to dive into rewrites by the end of the month, if not before. So that'll be fun.

As for the short stories? Well, I have three ideas in mind. One morbid, one bittersweet, and one with a genuinely happy ending. The happy ending one is, thus far, the only one I have an entire plot written out for, so I guess I'll be doing that one first. The morbid one would probably be next on the list since I find the topic it covers a touch more interesting than either of the others. It'd be first up if not for the lack of a plot line.

The bittersweet one might not actually be written at all, probably in part because it's just fiction fiction. Not genre fiction, which is what I'm used to writing. So I'll divulge to y'all what my idea is.

Basically, the main character, a man, wakes up to find that he's been injured in a car crash. He is informed that his wife didn't make it, but that his infant son is doing fine. Which he isn't quite sure what to say to since he recalls no wife nor a child. He doesn't even recall his parents, his siblings, or anything else about his life leading up to that car crash. Yes folks, it's amnesia. And he's told he may never get his memories back.

So there's THAT. But he has this infant to take care of, which is quite distressing, despite the help of who he is told are his loved ones. One of his concerns is presented by one of said loved ones reminiscing about his wife and it dawns on the MC that, when his son gets older, he'll have nothing to tell him about his mother. Nothing at all. So, as a way to cope, he starts trying to learn as much about her as he can. Stories from relatives are a good start, but not very satisfying in the end.

As he's going through her belongings, however, he begins to come across things she's written. From random musings on the back of cook books to grocery lists written over newspaper clippings in thick black marker, he begins to get a real sense for who she was and finds himself falling in love with her all over again.

D'awww.

I'm not sure where that one came from, to be honest. I think it originated from my obsession with the idea of unexpectedly throwing a baby at a man and running away laughing maniacally, leaving him to take care of it all by his lonesome.

In fiction, of course.

And now that I've spoiled it for y'all, I really want to write it. So I guess it will get written, after all. Oh well, at least now you'll know it ends with a "d'awww."

The "d'awww" will be in the actual story.

Yup.

Almost Over...

2011-04-30T22:00:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I haven't posted here in over a month. Did I mention I got a job back in February? Because I did. It is also now full time. I've only been working there a grand total of two and a half months and I already think I need a vacation.

It's not that I dislike working there, I'm just a little sad that I no longer have breaks to look forward to. I can't say "oh, I'll work on this project over summer break" or anything like that anymore. It's either make time for it or it won't happen. And I'm looking at my time as realistically as I can (since I'm a heinous procrastinator and all) and it's rather frustrating when I realize that I can't even read a book without likely getting behind schedule.

I'd so love to read a book right now. A book that's not mine. I haven't done that in a while...

Shocking as it may sound, I've come up with several story ideas--SHORT story ideas. *COLLECTIVE GASP*

Yes, yes, I know. Very unusual for me. Usually my ideas are too involved to be confined in a ten to fifteen page story, but there you have it.

I feel like I should write them out before I lose the drive to write them, but thus far I've been preoccupied with Script Frenzy (which ends tonight, I realize--and yet, instead of writing those last eleven comic pages I need, I am here, doing this...*cough*). And I'm not about to finish DEV tonight. It'll take quite a few pages more to finish off the story. Even then, I've come up with some new ideas that I want to go back and add at the beginning. A theme here and there that just doesn't work in this last stretch of the script unless there's a setup for it at the very start and throughout the middle. But I suppose I can save that for another time. Maybe. Or I could just do it asap and hope that doesn't interfere with my other project for May too much.

That other project would, of course, be to finish marking up A Year in Darkness. June will be dedicated entirely to rewriting it and getting it to the second draft stage. Why? Because June 30th is when the CreateSpace code from winning NaNo expires and I'd really like to use it this year. I think it'd be nice to be able to forcibly throw my novel at Kendra and run away laughing maniacally rather than to have to hand her $30+ worth of Kinko's best recycled paper bound together in one of my random and plentiful binders.

Because admit it, chucking books at your friends is awesome. Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

Anyway, I've finally taken the time to update that little counter thingy for DEV, which shows that I am about 83% through the script. Whether it will actually END at 300 pages, however, remains to be seen. I'm thinking it'll be pretty close. Depends on how quickly I try to move through the next several pages. A lot of things are going to happen in the script before Frenzy ends at midnight. Eleven pages. The main character could very well be in a coma by then.

But that's not going to happen if I continue to sit here talking about it. Or typing about it. Or whatever.

So then, I guess I'll be off to win Script Frenzy. See you in May. ;)

Gearing Up for Screnzy

2011-03-26T00:03:00.000-07:00

Ah, Script Frenzy. I fell a bit short last year at only 60ish pages--but not this year! I will make it to 100 and it will be awesome!

As for NaNoEdMo? Ummm...I'm sort of failing horribly. Not just failing. Oh no. I've only done about six or seven hours TOTAL over the entire month.

I am a very slow revisionist. D=

Hopefully I'll do better next year. This year I got kind of thrown for a loop when I sort of unexpectedly got a job in late February. And then it became full time. I've been trying to balance my responsibilities since then while not totally running myself into the ground, especially with that whole sleeping thing I need to do.

Thus far, I've determined that there will probably always be two constants in my daily life: working on Godspawn and writing. Writing, however, will also entail revising to some extent, so I'm trying to remind myself that I only really need three hours after work each day: one for Godspawn, one for writing, and one for revising. In theory it sure sounds good, doesn't it? But, as if I didn't carve out my days into individual hours enough already, at work we have to keep track of what we're working on and for how long. So counting down to the end of the day is really easy--but so is counting down until bedtime.

It's been an adjustment. I've sort of slacked off lately. But I'm still working on Devil's Due and Godspawn is coming along slowly. The problem is getting myself to do these things consistently every single day of the week. I seem to have trouble dealing with the fact that, yes, this is going to take three hours. Somehow three hours becomes a big deal for some reason. I don't know, it's weird.

I've also been taking an online pet sitting course, the last lesson of which was just posted this afternoon. SO! I'm hoping that being over, combined with the fact that I will no longer feel horribly guilty and unsatisfied as I see the NaNoEdMo twitter updates and realize how very far behind I am will make April much easier to handle than March. True, Script Frenzy is next month. But that will take over the writing time I currently use for The Devil's Due (temporarily, of course), so it won't actually ADD all that much in the way of extra work.

I also already know what I'm going to be working on and have the plot finished and everything. Which is a bonus.

Well, actually, I'll be working on two things: D.E.V. (or The Harrowing Tales of Devin Teller; I do rather like that title) and Godspawn Chronicles. D.E.V. actually is worked out all the way to the end in detail. Godspawn, on the other hand...eh...not quite so much detail there. I have a rough idea of where I'm taking the story and I know the overall ending, it's just a matter of filling in the chapters with more intricate details and the like.

Anyway, my plan is much the same as last year's--write five comic pages for each project every night. Last year, my plan was to do ten for D.E.V. every day, but even though I didn't make it to my goal of 300 comic pages, I did make it roughly half way. The script is currently at 160 comic pages and it's nearing the end, so I'm happy to say it will be finished this year. Thus, I figured I'd do some more work on the Godspawn script alongside it.

I am getting a bit close in-comic to where I last left off writing the script. Kiiiinda makes me nervous. ^^;

300+ Ways to Say "Said"

2011-03-25T23:51:00.000-07:00

Right! So, if I haven't said it here before, during NaNo '10 (or was it actually '09?) I stayed up one night until about 5am. Doing what, you ask? Not writing of course! HAH! No. I got sick of having to look up a new website every time I started writing with a list of different ways to say "said." Some of them slowed my computer down. A LOT. And some of them had repeated words or weren't alphabetized or anything.

This displeased me.

So I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning making my own list! Using the vast resource known as the internet, I tracked down over 300 synonyms for "said."

And now it's dawned on me to share this list with the world. Because someone on Tumblr asked me for it!

The list now lives as a tab at the top of my blog. No matter where I go now, as long as I have the internet, I will have this list.

You have no idea how happy that makes me. :,D

"A Year in Darkness" Cover

2011-03-02T23:08:00.000-07:00

(("A Year in Darkness" = "One Night's Day" = NaNo '09 Novel))
SO ANYWAY. My little sister, Haleigh, has this assignment for one of her classes that I do not remember the name of. It might be 2D Design because that sounds about right. Aaand the assignment was basically to take a book and create a new cover for it.

She decided to do mine. :,D

Despite not being published, her teacher said it was okay since my NaNo '09 novel is actually...y'know...a novel and not just some short snippet of fiction her friend wrote or somesuch.

Needless to say, this gives me great joy. <3

Haleigh gave me some feedback on the whole title situation whilst we were discussing her plans to do this since I was still bouncing around between a few variations of this one. Her vote is for this one. Obviously. And since I have a beautiful cover to go with it, I think I'll be sticking with "A Year in Darkness." It will now be less of a pain trying to talk about it. Have you ever tried talking about a book with an ever-changing title? It doesn't work so well.

Failing miserably...but loving it!

2011-02-10T22:25:00.000-07:00

I'm most likely not going to make it to my goal of 50k new words for The Devil's Due by the 15th. BUT! This is the longest I've ever consistently written for TDD. I may only be writing roughly 1000 words a day for it, but I'm actually writing it. And I'm continuing to write it. Every day. Which is more than I can say for any of my previous attempts. So, all in all, I'm quite pleased. For the first time in a long time I think that TDD will see its end.

In time. =)

50k in 15 Days

2011-02-02T01:56:00.000-07:00

SO. I think I'm off to a good start here. 4303 words today. Well, about 2200 yesterday and 2100 today, since it's technically the 2nd now. 750 Words yelled at me when the clock rolled over to midnight. It interrupted me right in the middle of a word. xD

But anyway, I checked my time for both and realized that I spent around an hour and a half on both of them. Which I sort of expected since this is real story writing and not just rambling and/or worldbuilding, which is what I usually use 750 Words for. It saddened me to see my time suffer so much, but meh. The point is, Devil's Due is getting written. I didn't get the rest of the plot written out before I started, but I do have a decent amount of it figured out. At 3334 words a day, though, I realize that won't last long.

It should be exciting. And a little bit panicky and crappy, too. xD I apparently don't have the patience to write myself out of stupid, pointless scene fluff. This became obvious when I got to that point and just said "fuck it" and forced the scene to move on regardless of what the characters wanted to do. I have no patience for Rafe and his rascally ways! HE MUST DO AS I COMMAND! >O

*cough* Soyeah. Funtimes.

Aw Crapdamnit D=

2011-01-27T23:52:00.000-07:00

Sooo for the past fortnight or so I've been using 750 Words to do my 1000 words per day. Which has been fun since I have earned pointless badges for it. Yaaay, badges!

But that's not what this post is about.

For the past few days, I've been working on the plot for The Devil's Due. 'Cause, y'know, I'm going to do that crazy thing next month where I try to write 50k words in 15 days. Funtimes. Anyway, thing is I don't actually know where I put the original plot. I remember the most important points and thought I was all fine and dandy--until tonight.

I got to a point in my brainstorming where I realized it was time to go back to see what Egan (main antagonist) was up to. And whilst I was working out why his daughter was going to be sent to head up his evil (or whatever) organization, I started rambling on about why he would allow this since she doesn't know that Egan actually wants the protagonist, her big brother, dead and instead wishes to convince him to come home. And stop him from doing what she considers crazy, reckless, irresponsible and horribly evil things. But she finds out about that later. So, back to my rambling. See...I kinda realized I sort of have no idea why Egan orchestrated the attack on the wedding at the beginning that launches the whole story into motion in the first place.

That's kind of important. I mean, I know what his overall goal is, I guess, because I recall writing that out in great length. I have no idea where that writing went--but it did exist! The point of it was to kill King and his wife and her family and-

Wait a minute...

Ooooh, now I remember! It's all so obvious! Woohoo, I'm remembering stuff!

Now to write it down before I forget again. This time in a place where it won't get lost.

However, I still have no idea how any of what I've just recalled relates to Egan's overall evil plot. Goddamnit.

Yaaaay, I'm doing stuff!

2011-01-17T01:09:00.000-07:00

"Stuff" being updating GS, writing 2000 words today, and editing a good few scenes of my '09 NaNovel. I'm trying to follow the method given in this here...place...but I didn't have that for the first 100 or so pages. SO! I'll probably have to reread all of that before I start to actually rewrite anything and determine which scenes are actually worthy of remaining in the novel and which scenes I totally wasted my time marking up. So far, I've gone through four scenes and roughly 30 pages. Three scenes stayed, one got thrown out. And I feel like maybe possibly the last scene I went through that involved Tabitha and Christian walking to the clinic might a little bit have to be removed. But I haven't reread it yet so I'm not sure.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I believe it should stay but that I should completely rewrite it. Which makes me happy because I like that scene. But maybe I'm just grabbing at straws here. I dunno. Point being, it's halfway through January and only now am I restarting work on revising this poor neglected little novel. This is sad. But also not because in December, as you may recall, I didn't work on it AT ALL.

So...yeah...I'm doing significantly better at the moment. It's only been a day, but it's already a vast improvement on the entire month of December and half of this month. Woo! Progress!

Oh, right, almost forgot. I was able to write 2000 words today because of 750 Words. It's a site entirely dedicated to enabling and encouraging folks to write everyday. Specifically, to write 750 words every day. But my goal is 1000! Because that badge over there in that column thingy says that's my goal and up until today it's sorta been a lie! And that's not a good thing!

*cough* Anyway, it's really neat. You just write whatever and the site counts it for you and lets you know when you hit 750 words and then you can look at your stats and such. Like, how many words per minute you type, how many breaks you took (that are longer than 3 minutes), and there's even a built in analyzer thingy that tells you what you were feeling or concerned about and what-have-you based on what you wrote.

Apparently I was very upset. And thinking about success. And being an introvert. Or something. I dunno, but it's very entertaining and you get points for it that do absolutely nothing but...y'know...they're POINTS, man! POINTS! Oh, and also badges. Who doesn't love badges, right? Right!

Soyeah. 750 Words. It's awesome. Check it out.

Happy 2011!

2011-01-05T00:53:00.002-07:00

I should probably do my resolutions, being as it is the fifth already and all. So...uuummm...

Continue doing GS. This one will be easy! I mean, y'know, except for when doing the next page is akin to bashing my head through a wall...
Start a goddamn pet sitting business already you fucking loser! By May 1st. That is your deadline. DO IT.
Edit "A Year Spent in Darkness" so Kendra can finally read it and, as a reward, you can use your CreateSpace code thingy to get a free proof copy of the edited draft. Yaaaay!
Finish writing, or at least make a huge dent in, The Devil's Due this February by taking on the challenge to write 50k words in the first twoish weeks of the month (so Feb. 1st-15th).
Do that "28 Chibis in 28 Days" thing again this year in February. 'Cause it was fun.
Edit Windstruck for NaNoEdMo in March.
Participate in Script Frenzy in April by writing five comic pages per day for both D.E.V. (to finish it) and Godspawn (to get a decent amount of the script written ahead of time). Except win this year.
Write the sequel to Windstruck in July for JulNoWriMo.
Edit the sequel in September.
Write Sinswift (the third in the series) for NaNoWriMo in November.
Write and edit at least two short stories this year so your DA isn't composed entirely of shitty first drafts. It's such a low, manageable number you can't not do it!
Write 1000 words every day. Failing that, do 500. Or 20. Or 1. Just write every day, all right?

I'm sure there are many more resolutions I could make, but these are the ones I feel I could probably maybe possibly stick with a little.

...I got fingerless gloves for Christmas. =D

Otto Is Named After a Fish D=

2010-12-15T00:06:00.000-07:00

Otto from Windwaker Chronicles. Yup. That Otto.

Y'see, some years ago, I was really into fishkeeping and all that. I occasionally still dabble in it depending on my mood. Like today. Sort of. Well, not really, but let's roll with that anyway. I was at PetSmart getting Mocha some food and such after running a bunch of errands and I recalled that my reward for reaching 75k was that I could get another betta. So I did! Yaaay! But whilst I was in the fish section I couldn't help but look at aaaall the tanks there and I saw a name that looked familiar: otocinclus.

Otto's name is Ottocinkleus.

At this point, it dawned on me that I once had an otto--that's the nickname for the otocinclus fish in the fishkeeping community--and, being as I wasn't feeling particularly creative at the time, I named the little guy Otto. And he was adorable. But I somehow completely forgot about this for years and years and years. Until today, of course.

Point being, Otto is totally named after a fish. Queue facepalm.

Suddenly Concerned

2010-12-04T17:12:00.000-07:00

There's rape in everything I write. No. No, no, no, I'm so not kidding. Even "The Devil's Due" has some form of rape in it because of King's mom marrying his douche (step-)dad and having to sleep with him to produce an heir. Okay, I guess that one's a bit of a stretch. BUT STILL.

Oh yeah, there's going to be rape in Windwaker. I'm not going to say who it happens to or when or why, but it's actually hugely important to the plot because...well...what does sex generally lead to? Yes. That's right. Spawn.

I mean, babies. But calling them that is boring. Let's call our children spawn from now on. It's lots more fun. =D

Anyway, trust me, it's super important so it's not coming out anytime soon. As for "A Year (Spent) in Darkness" (NaNo '09; once called "One Night's Day")...I don't think I need to explain where the rape comes into that story.

Point being, I am officially a horrible person.

Oh and also! Godspawn and D.E.V. are not exempt from this rule. Much like TDD it's not actually in the current story, but it's still there.

So. Yeah.

*cough* Anyway, this also concerns me on a different level. Y'know, aside from apparently being highly disturbed and needing therapy. Uuuuum...I think my writing style is more YA than anything. It's not overly complicated, it's more simple, more loose, more fun. OHBUTWAIT! I still have all the eye-bleeding, innocence-pilfering adult themes. I was not concerned about this until it was mentioned by someone else with a similar problem in the NaNo forums. They were concerned. So now I'm concerned.

I guess it's not really a problem if I'm writing for myself, but, much as I enjoy that, getting published would still be quite a fine thing and I fully intend to at least try. Thus, I am now worried that no one will ever want to publish me never ever ever and/or that, if I self publish (much more likely), my books will be received poorly because OMG I'M DOIN' IT WRONG!!!11!!!!11

So, I've been trying to comfort myself with the knowledge that other people do this as well and thusly went to list off all of the books on my shelves that have a similar writing style but with adult themes...

Yeah, turns out I only read YA. I have a few adult novels that I picked up at bookstores because they looked really interesting--but I've never gotten past the first few pages. Their writing styles are just SO. DAMN. BORING.

I am now convinced there is a market out there somewhere for adults who like to read YA-styled books with adult themes. If not, then I'm even more of a freak than previously established.

Victory!

2010-12-01T00:48:00.001-07:00

Hit 75k twenty minutes before midnight. Woo! Feels good, I gotta say. =D Oddly enough, though, just 56 words after I reach 75k...my novel may have ended.

I continued on into chapter 27, of course, just a little bit because I don't want to come back tomorrow and see "Chapter Twenty-Seven" and NOTHING ELSE. I hate that. But the very last line, the very last paragraph of chapter 26...it was just so perfect as an ending. Mazeira has finally become Musette and she's left Mt. Helvundi where the whole story up until now takes place. This is the first time she's ever left home before, even after she goes to live with Otto on the mountain. Before this moment, she's never once strayed this far from the mountain. And this is something that she's dreamed of her whole life, leaving the little town to travel the world. Her brother does it and he was always filling her head with the idea that she'd be able to join his troupe and travel around with him and...and...

It's just so perfect!

It wraps up this whole part of Musette's story while, at the same time, all these new things have been introduced and are still unexplained and setting you up for the sequel. This is both exhilarating and very frustrating. I didn't plan the series around Musette getting two books. At first, I thought she would due to a number of things in her original biography (Windstruck is essentially an enormously altered expansion of the history I gave her when she was a roleplaying character), but I didn't think that'd work in the context of the whole series. And, quite frankly, now that I've finally had a chance to sit down and write out the entire plot to the end, I'm not so sure there's a full book's worth of plot between this point and the end.

I think my solution is just going to be dubbing the entirety of chapter 1 to chapter 26 as "Part One." Chapter 27 onward obviously being "Part Two." I mean, it does seem appropriate, what with the massive change of scene and the fact that Otto is going to leave Musette fairly soon. In fact, outside of him getting Musette's brother, Vienin, to deliver two very important packages for him (and he'll likely be disguised for that because otherwise Vienin would recognize him and that'd just complicate matters), I think that's the last time you ever see Otto. I mean, you hear about him secondhand later on, but otherwise that's IT. He's going to be GONE. And that scene with Vienin might not even be written out, depending on how things go and if I think I can pull it off without tipping the reader off that the guy is Otto right away. Actually, now that I think about it, yeah, no, it won't. Vienin's just going to show up in the appropriate city almost two years later and relate via the narrative how he got the packages. There might be a teensy bit of scene making it sorta flashbacky, but that's it. That's all Otto gets.

I'm worried that this whole Part One, Part Two thing is going to inspire me not to continue writing throughout December, especially with GS to work on (I'm starting another challenge tomorrow: sketch or color a GS page every single day in December--except for Christmas ;D) and last year's novel to finish revising. I'm really tempted to put it off until later, BUT if I do then I'm afraid I won't touch it until next NaNo.

I'm really not sure I'm up for doing 2500/day until Windstruck is complete. I might just do 1500/day or something and make that my norm. The trouble there, however, is that that'll mean working on the novel for longer and doing it alongside my two other tasks this month: GS buffering and NaNo '09 editing. Also, Christmas shopping.

I just don't want to get overwhelmed and end up dropping everything out of frustration. Fact is, I do have the time to do all of these things each and every day, I just psych myself out and end up procrastinating until the day's over and I have nothing done. What I'd really love is to get myself in the habit of doing these things alongside one another every day. Perhaps that shall be my lofty aim for this month? =)

Either way, it's December and I'm now officially allowed to start making kringlor. I discovered the joys of dipping kringlor cookies in hot chocolate last year. Mmm...

Wasting Time (and Accents)

2010-11-26T17:16:00.001-07:00

There's nothing better than using your unfinished novel to make a Wordle instead of writing it. =D

More importantly, though, I'm doing better on the whole writing scene at the moment. I'm still behind--even more behind than I should be since I got lazy yesterday--but I'm on track to hit my goal of 75k by Tuesday night. I just need to remember that I need to finish BEFORE midnight if I want the NaNo site to record my wonderful wonderfulness. And, unfortunately for me, I'm not doing a lot of word padding this year, so I have a ton of contractions and Maziera/Musette's community tends to say things like "gonna" and "gotta," so there's that, too. They make up for it by putting "right" everywhere. "Right fine," for instance. They also have a habit of adding "and all that" at the end of sentences. This isn't for word padding purposes, this is actually just the way I've decided they all talk. They also occasionally replace "who" with "what" (E.g., "The man who killed my pop" becomes "The man what killed my pop.") and they use "ain't" instead of "isn't" and things of that ilk. Why? Because realistically they'd have an accent of some kind. Problem is, I don't know WHAT accent. Even if I did, I wouldn't know how to describe it without writing it into their dialogue, which is generally a bad idea. Written accents are hard to decipher most of the time and the reader has to really wrack their brains to figure out what the hell the characters are saying. I've seen this done in webcomics before and most of the time I can figure out what the character is saying, but there's often a line of dialogue that I just CANNOT for the life of me work out. The author's comments and/or other readers' comments make this easily solvable since, if I can't understand it, it's very likely that someone else can't either and they've already asked what character X is saying and gotten an answer. That, or the author has provided a translation. Frankly, I don't see this as much of a nuisance in webcomics for this reason, but in prose it's another story. I was discouraged from doing it in school, told it was seen as rather old fashioned, and I can see my old teachers' point. The solution is either to name, in the narrative, what real world accent the character has at one point (which the reader will no doubt forget all about; I know I have!) or to use certain phrases or mannerisms in the character's dialogue to try to get across that, hey, this character speaks differently than you, the reader, do.

Considering that my POV character is Mazeira who has the accent, I can't justify outright stating that her brother or her mom or her neighbors are speaking differently. Because they're not. Not by her standards anyway. It was hard enough trying to get across the fact that they all have pointed ears and fangs without making it sound like a totally random observation. I mean, how often do YOU think "man, I have round ears and short canines." Yeah. Never. Otto was my only saving grace there since he's human and therefore has very round ears and oddly short fangs by Mazeira's perspective. He also has a different way of speaking. As in...uh...normal. But there's no real mention of an accent, even for him. I'll have to go back and add that at some point, but it might be pointless since it's clear by his dialogue that he very obviously does not share whatever the heck kind of accent Mazeira has.

Truth be told, I just hear Mazeira with an American accent. xD Regardless of what I do, pretty much all my characters are just going to come out sounding American in my head. Not even any kind of interesting American accent, either, just the very neutral Midwest or whatever you want to call it accent. There was a discussion about this in the NaNo forums that I found quite interesting because, being an American, I have NO idea what I sound like to people in other countries. But apparently I have the "neutral" American accent and supposedly news casters are encouraged to speak that accent since it's so easy to understand all across the U.S, regardless of the accent prevalent in the area they're broadcasting in. Soyeah, my accent is boring. =P Dermot and Otto have this accent, even in the context of the story. Mallorians are very plain speakers (despite some of the floweryness of their words spoken by the upper class) in my head, whereas Lyritovans and Tadhg's people I imagine are somewhat more interesting. Mazeira's accent I imagine as being somewhat "country," which is why I make her talk the way she does, with plenty of "ain't"s and such things. In fact, I think "ain't" is enough to push the point that her accent is what it is. Not that I don't still picture her with the same boring accent I have, but still! Whenever she says "ain't," a somewhat country-ish accent pops into my head. I'm not sure how to describe it, but I keep thinking of Minnesota or Montana or Tennessee or someplace like that. And since I haven't mentioned Tadhg's accent yet, his accent sounds like there's a ball of cotton at the back of his throat. I don't know what accent that is in the real world, but since Mazeira (by then Musette) will still be my POV character throughout most of the series, I don't really have to care since she's going to notice this. And then it'll be ignored for the rest of the series. Such is the fate for any accent any character has. Poor, sad little accents. They're so unloved. xD

I'm not sure I said anything truly constructive or useful in this entry. I...sorta walked away from it in the midst of writing it. Got myself a roll. 'Twas tasty! But then I came back and had no idea what was going on. D= That's another one for the ever growing list of things to avoid doing when you're in the middle of writing.

AUGH WHY?!?!

2010-11-23T03:42:00.001-07:00

So, I hit 50k on Saturday (earlySundaymorningwhatever) and now...

I've written about 700 words since.

WHAT IS THIS MADNESS?!

Bear in mind, it's 3:30am at the moment and I may--MAY--be somewhat clinically insane at the moment. A little. It happens sometimes in the wee hours of morning...time...ness! Everything's better when you end it with ness!

I have resolved that I will get a fish if I make it to 75k words by the 30th. Yup. It's a weak attempt at motivation but it's something. I have a feeling this is why I never end up writing anything outside of NaNo. There's just...a really big nothing. A whole lot of really big nothings actually. Consequently, this happened last year, too. I mean, yes, I finished the novel within the next month, but still, my productivity hit a major dip once I reached that ever beautiful, ever exulted 50k.

I refuse to allow myself to do this. Which is why I wrote 700 words tonight. That's not a big dent, no, but it ain't nothing either. So yay for that! At this rate, I'll have to write 3500 words for the next five days. Or, perhaps more logically, 3031 words for the rest of the month.

Meh, not that bad. I already do 2500 a day, what's 500 more? After all, my method for motivation--as suggested by some mysterious and wise person on the NaNo forums--is to set my goal for ever X number of words. X, for me, being 500. 'Cause that's how I roll. Also, if I did 100, it would be depressing because then I'd look at my little note paper and see 25 goals I need to reach instead of the very manageable and attractive 5 I currently have to deal with. So doing 700 actually allowed me cross out one of my goals! Yaaay!

It's actually amazing for motivation. I recommend it to everyone. The only time it doesn't work is when you hit 50k and become a lump. So try to avoid that.

The becoming a lump part, not the hitting 50k part.

It's Time for a Rant

2010-11-16T20:58:00.001-07:00

Yes, that's right, I'm pissed again. But this time it applies to writing WAY more than my last NaNo forum-induced rant.

I don't understand why so many people out there complain about statements like "my character refuses to do X!" Okay, yes, I suppose I kind of do. But...every time these people post, it sounds for all the world like they actually believe that the people making those statements think their characters are actual people. And, to make it even worse, the tone and word choice of the vast majority of the posts complaining about this imply that the authors of said posts think themselves all high and fucking mighty for treating their characters as the tools to the storytelling process that they are.

Now, what does that say about these people? I mean, the one piece of advice that I see popping up ALL over these forums is "use whichever method works best for you."

So what the fuck is this shit?! What? So someone has a different way of looking at their characters and that automatically makes you better than them? I'm sorry, that ain't gonna fly. That just makes you a motherfucking douche.

I apologize for all the cussing. I haven't had much time to cool down. It's just...I've seen a lot of this kind of attitude going around and the hypocrisy is just...UGH!

I sometimes visit threads where people vent about all the unsupportive people in their lives, the people who think that writing and/or NaNo is stupid and all that. There's no one like that in my life, thank God. My family and friends are all wonderful people and they'd never do anything like that. But the comments that these people make are things that I'd honestly expect to see in one of those venting threads. If this shit is coming from anywhere it should never be from fellow writers. Especially in a forum where the idea that you work whichever way is best for you is so prevalent. It practically defines the forums, for me, and I just can't believe that anyone would DARE tell another writer that any method that works for them and makes them happy is the wrong way to write.

Yes, I realize that these same people claim that that's not what they're doing. But if they wanted to be believed, then they damn well better edit their posts for tone and implications a hell of a lot better than they do already!

Anyway, the thread that set me off had this whole long original post about how characters are ultimately tools and that we control them. This is true, I agree. But then they said that the people who say things like "my character refuses to X," well, they don't understand this. The poster tried to argue that anyone who did not do things the way he described was not who he was talking about, but that's certainly not what the rest of his post implied. Especially since I'm certain he's never once seen the finished work of any of the people he's talking about, nor has he seen their writing process. But I digress. He talked about how saying things like that was a crutch and how what these comments actually meant were that the person writing the character failed to give them the proper motivation beforehand to logically perform the action dictated in the plotline. I sat there reading that and honestly thought "well, DUH!" Those comments? Yeah, that's EXACTLY what they mean. Not everyone consciously realizes it, I suppose, but everyone I've ever seen using such a comment says it to blow off steam and poke a bit of fun at themselves. This guy says that it prevents them from going in and fixing it. I don't know what people he's been talking to, but everyone I've ever seen using comments like that has either asked for help in how to remedy the situation, or they sat their butts down and powered through it. They didn't just blame their characters and bitch! They fixed the problem! They found a way! Why the hell do these people think that using a simple, amusing way of saying that you're having problems with giving your character the proper motivation mean that the folks saying them don't fully intend to fix the problem?! I mean, seriously, how the hell else would they even continue the story?! Fixing it is kind of the only logical solution to the problem. I mean, I'm sure there are people out there who just make their character perform the action necessary to the plot, despite not having the proper logical motivation for it--but in my experience, those aren't the people blowing off steam about "character X not doing Y."

All-in-all, the feeling I get from the vast majority of these folks is that we should stop looking at our characters as living breathing people and start looking at them as tools. You know what? That is a perfectly valid way to do things. A character can be a mere tool to the story, but they can still be deep and interesting and three-dimensional. However, for a lot of people it's quite difficult to wrap their minds around thinking of a character as a tool while at the same time making them fully developed. Me, for instance. I tried doing this in school and it resulted in a lot of stories I had no passion for. They were stories that happened to have characters and that just...it doesn't work for me. I don't enjoy working with those "tool" characters. The method simply doesn't appeal to me and I don't feel that I do my best work when using it. So I don't think of characters as simple tools. Yes, they are, I get that. But I can't sit here and think of them that way as I'm writing them. Because I don't even write the kind of stories that are simply created for the sake of the story itself. I write stories about characters. It works for me and it let's me put my whole heart into the craft and so that's how I intend to continue doing it. And, yes, I will say things like "Damnit Dermot, stop haunting me and wait your turn!" and "The hell?! King's dad just turned gay and fell in love with the incubus!" Does that mean that I believe that these characters are anything more than figments of my imagination? Of course not. But I think of them more as a part of me rather than mere tools. Because that's how I work. Loving my characters in no way hinders me! This person who posted the topic that, like I said earlier, set me off, he claims that loving characters too much will cause you to not want to put them through anything but sunshine and roses. Honestly, I don't know where this comes from. In my experience, the more loved a character is by its creator, the more pain that character ends up going through. Not everyone is as sadistic as I am, but I know for a fact that I'm not the only one out there like me. You see, for me, the more I favor a character, the more I want to hurt them. Yes, that sounds sick, but these are figments of my imagination so no worries. Thing is, back when I was creating characters solely for the purpose of moving a story along during school, I just...didn't really care. I didn't give a damn what any of them were going through. The important thing was the story. They just happened to be there and I'd sigh and say to myself "well, I guess I ought to come up with a conflict or something." I feel entirely uninspired to put "tool" characters through anything difficult. Why? Because I don't feel for them. I don't care what they'd do in this situation or that. And you know what my solution was for this whole thing? You know what I did to make myself feel for them? I took characters from other projects that I already cared about and reworked them to suit literary fiction. And I'm actually proud of the few stories I did that for. The characters, in the end, weren't exactly the same. But I knew them. I felt for them. And I wanted to see how they would grow and blossom if I twisted them this way or forced them into that situation. It made me happy and I feel those stories were some of the best that I ever did for school.

So basically? I just don't understand why so many of these people are so dead set against others using some amusing way of talking that makes the characters feel more real to them. I honestly think it's a good exercise for those it works for. It brings them some entertainment for a moment and relieves some of the pressure that gets all pent up from trying to fix the situation. And sometimes it just makes you feel so much more like your characters are real living and breathing people. All the while, you know full well that they're not, no--but it's a nice way to really get yourself to see them that way, as you have to make readers see them, so you can develop them as fully as you possibly can and make them that much more fascinating to read about.

Whatever method brings out your full potential is the right one for you. Let no one say otherwise and grant them the same courtesy.

Week Two Doubts

2010-11-12T03:07:00.001-07:00

Thus far, I've done fairly well with respects to not second guessing my novel and/or stressing because I have a feeling something is totally crap.

Well, now I've officially gotten to that point.

It dawned on me today (or last night or something, I don't remember exactly) that Windstruck is unique from all the other books in the series for one very important reason--most of the crap in it has NOTHING to do with the overall plot of the series. Which is to say, the fact that there's even an antagonist at all isn't introduced until the last third of the book, which doesn't really leave much time for build up now does it? This has been troubling me for a while, but only today/yesterday did I think of a solution.

Otto, the hermit and Mazeira/Musette's mentor, spends all his time scribbling away in his books. It's often the sorcerous equivalent of what I do when trying to work out a story, so most of the time it's just crap about this potion or that spell and how to make the chemistry work just right to achieve the desired effect. Creating new spells/potions/whatevers is sort of Otto's thing. BUT he also writes journals. Letters, actually, to an old *ahem* "friend" of his. He's hiding from her, so of course he never sends them in any way, but he does sit there and aim his frustrated rants at her. So, I figured I'd add some of these entries into the book as very short chapters. Except I'm lazy tonight, so I didn't fix the chapter numbering and just tossed the entries in at the beginning of certain chapters. The very first letter, as of this moment, is actually the last thing Otto ever writes. That said, it'll probably change once I actually get to the end. I figure I'll keep the version I have for now, but rewrite it when I'm actually at that point in the story. Y'know, linearly. 'Cause I think I kind of fail at writing non-linearly.

Either way, now that I've gone through and added some of these entries (like...three so far, I think; they're only there to make the reader aware that there's more going on here than they would otherwise have thought so I don't need a ton of them, just enough to tantalize) I'm having doubts about them. I still think it's a good idea, in theory, I just wonder if I haven't taken on too much and am setting myself up for a lot of frustration when it comes to rewrites. I'm sort of having that problem with last year's NaNo novel in that I feel like there are a lot of points that need to be carried throughout the story and they're all good and everything--but I'm not sure which ones I should focus on and which ones I should drop. Or if I should drop any. Or if certain ones even need to be carried on. But if I don't then a certain part that, for certain characters with very little screen time, is hugely important to some character's development would need to be taken out or rewritten somehow. And a lot of these things are areas where I just...am not sure how to proceed. I have no idea how to rewrite them because to change that one aspect would alter the entire tone of the scene and if I altered a certain point to something that fits in with the largest point made by the novel, then that point will come across as too heavy-handed. 'Least, that's how I feel.

So, I'm being faced with that and personally I blame it all on the fact that it's Week Two. I mean, I know this is only a first draft, so I'm not going to fix it right now or anything, but I'm having a hard time not dwelling on it.

Also, I'm doing that "only one creative task per day" thing again. I colored the newest GS page on Wednesday, but didn't manage to do any writing. I wrote today (and made up for yesterday, to boot) but didn't get around to sketching the next GS page. It's a little frustrating. D=

So Colorful!

2010-11-10T02:39:00.000-07:00

Yup. That's my NaNo calendar. Ain't it pretty?! =D

I'm sooo far behind on GS right now it's not even funny. Why do I keep thinking that I can update GS and do NaNo at the same time? It's almost 3am and I still have to color the very, very, VERY late next page. Ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff-

More Villainy!

2010-11-05T01:22:00.001-07:00

I have a quote collection from last year's Adopt a Villain Catchphrase thread, I couldn't resist making another for this year. ;D

"Without me around to spice things up your life would be pointless. You've a lot to thank me for, [hero]."

"I'm getting bored. Why is it taking your friends so long to find us? Here, have your cell phone back and tell them where we are."

"Just remember, for a hero to win the day, you need someone to win the day from...."

"It's like Christmas, but with knives!"

[Hero: "Why are you doing this?"]
"Does it matter? If I had some tragic story explaining my terrible deeds, some childhood trauma that I could blame, would you see my actions as any less terrible? There is no need to concern yourself with the why behind what I do, only the what. Because no matter how thoroughly you understand the why, the what remains the same: I'm going to kill you.

"I'm not a Bond villain, Hero. I'm not going to leave you in a diabolically complex death machine of my own design and wait for you to die, or leave you to my laughably incompetent henchman while I leave the room and assume their success. I'm just going to point this gun at your face and pull the trigger."

(in response to "What's wrong with you?!?") "If you want specifics you'll have to ask my therapist, but rest assured that I'm getting treatment for it."

"You know, I became a villian because you became a hero. I knew I couldn't keep up with you, not physically, and you never even aknowledged my existance. I couldn't befriend you, I couldn't team up with you, I couldn't even follow you around like a pathetic, simpering dog. So I figured... If I couldn't walk along side you, then I could at least meet you from the other direction. So I became a villian. I taught myself to do terrible, terrible things, and whenever it got too difficult, I told myself it was you who drove me to do it. I can't remember when my love, my worship of you turned to hatred and disgust. I'm not even sure now if it really IS hatred and disgust, because even though I feel physically sick everytime I hear your name or have to look upon your face, I still desperately, hopelessly want you to notice me, to see the things I have done and know I did them all for you."

"When you killed him, that's not all you destroyed. You destroyed my livelihood. You destroyed my feelings of security. You destroyed the only person who understood me. You destroyed the only person in the world that I connected with. You destroyed the only person that I will ever love. But that's not all. You destroyed my sanity, my humanity. And I didn't have much of that to begin with."

"Whatever does not kill me had better run for its stupid life."

"I'm not so good with advice. May I offer a sarcastic comment?"

"When someone annoys you, it takes fourty-two muscles to frown, but it only takes four to extend your arm and whack them upside the head."

"Drive like you stole it!"

"Just when I think you've said the stupidest thing ever you just keep on talking."

"Sarcasm. It's easier than actually having to deal with stupid people."

"Reality continues to ruin my life."

"The world's as ugly as sin, and almost as delightful"

"When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion."

Civilian/etc: Stop! Stop! I've never hurt anyone! Have mercy!
V: I'm afraid I cannot comply with that request. Perhaps you have hurt no one yet, but you will. One day you will slip and someone will be hurt. Maybe it's just a bruise, maybe you exterminate a village, but some human will suffer because i was weak and did not end your life now. It is an unfortunate fate that you have been saddled with, and I do pity you for what I must now do. But it must be done. I will kill you, magic trash, and spare what humans may be forced to suffer you in the future.

"Just close your eyes and start counting to ten... I like to keep track of those who even make it to seven."

*Holding the dead body of an ally of the hero hero by the neck.*
"I broke her. Do you still want her back, or should I buy you a new one?"

*Villain, standing next to the dead body of the hero's ally.*
"Something tells me that wasn't part of your plan."

"Kill everyone except the women. They can't lament if they're dead."

"Its been so amusing seeing you struggle so hard against me. Thwarting so many plans and schemes. But the one that you could not stop was the only one that mattered. You've only gotten as far as you have because I wanted you to see first hand, the end of all you love and care about, before I burn the eyes from your head, leaving the imprint of your failures seared into your brain."

*Villian pushes a button or flips a switch.*
Hero: What did you just do? Tell me!
Villian: Uh-uh. Spoilers.

"Villainy is like asparagus. How do you know you don't like it if you haven't tried it? Do you know what it's like to be evil? Have you ever relished in the thought of all the misery and destruction you've caused? Well, have you? ... No? Then you don't get to judge."

(To captured civilian/damsel in distress)
Villain:You're about to play an important part, you know. Whatever happens, your hero won't come in time to stop me from torturing you, which means that no matter how this plays out - whether he beats me or not - he has to live with the fact that you have suffered and possibly died because of his error. You might just be the catalyst that drives him into the dark. You can take pride in that thought.
Damsel: [Hero] would never do such a thing!
Villain: It won't be the first time that love has turned someone to evil.

How did I ever get stuck with such a predictable, unimaginative archnemesis? It almost takes the fun out of beating you. Almost.

*bang* "Tell me who sent you!" *silence* "Oh right, it's ask questions then shoot, not shoot then ask questions. Oh well, lets see what he has in his pockets."

"I will punch you in the face... with a knife."

"I don't like you either, but you don't see me seeking you out to kill you. Then again, I don't have to because you JUST KEEP COMING BACK!"

"Oh boo hoo, it's not like I don't have any problems too you know. The difference between you an me is that I let go of the past and you cling on to it like a fat kid clings to his ice cream."

"I don't suppose that 'King' that sent you told you anything about the atrocities he's committed?"

"Let me ask you, how many people did you kill on your quest to defeat me? Mightn't they have had families and lives that they needed to go home to?"

"You say that you hate me? In another life we could have been friends. We could have laughed together, cried together, fought together and ruled the world together. So don't say you hate me. Hate is a strong world."

*after witnessing a horrible event/execution*
Villain: *grin* Oh, sorry. My face slipped. I meant to frown. *frown*

Villain: How rude. I think I'll kill you for that.

Villain: If wishes were fishes, you'd still be a corpse. *bang*

H: "What you're doing is wrong. It's sick and twisted and evil."
V: "And who ever said that what you are doing is right?"

Villain (to hero/torture victim): What? Does that hurt? Would you like me to kiss it, and make it better?
--Extra creep factor if the villain *actually* kisses the wound, or if it's internal, kisses the hero on the lips. *shudders*

“Can you be quiet? And if you can’t, can I cut your tongue off?”

"I can be found in the dreams that you wish to forget."

"Revenge is a dish best served cold. Murder on the other hand, goes well with takeout and a warm bottle of beer."

A good line for a standoff between a villian and the hero when there are innocents screaming in the background is:
"Ah, the music of mayhem. Do you want to dance?"

"I prefer to think of myself as an Impressionist artist. I take my bat to their head and leave an impression!"

"Evil? No, not really. I'm a realist. Come to think of it, that is so much scarier. What does it say about the world we live in?"

"Oh, sarcasm! That's funny!"

"It's a pity I don't have a moustache to twirl. I left it in my other jacket."

I know you’ve been told, “Don’t go into the light…” But please, go directly into the light. No. Seriously. Walk directly into it… no, don’t look at me, just run straight at the bright light and… no! Stop! Go back! You were almost there! Ugh. I hate immortals.

Here a once-human monster/vampire/whatever shoots down some poor hero's attempt to talk him/her/it into feeling remorse for his/her/it's actions:
Villain: "What you aren't understanding is that I have hardly changed at all. All the spite, the greed, the cruelty, the love of carnage and torture and destruction...I already had all that. We all have it. I didn't lose my humanity, I lost my inhibitions. I didn't forget that I was human, I remembered that I was an animal."

(hero): "Why are you doing this?"
(Villain): "Why does anyone do anything? Because it's fun!"

Hero: (evil alliance proposed, about to be tortured, etc) "Fuck you."
Villain: *Twisted smile* "Oh, you will eventually, but let's talk business for now."

If you would just stop fighting and let me kill you then you wouldn't ever have to think about how sad you are that (Insert name(s) here) is/are dead.

I can't kill you! You're to much fun!

"I'll kill you right in the face!"

"Here's a toast to the great fallen hero, who out-fought my mighty army, sneaked his way into my secure fortress, and then challenged me to my face in my own throne room without wearing a bulletproof vest...you idiot."

"Look, I'm pretty sure I can't be more clear about how this works. You ramble on about justice for a while and then I stab you to death. You're not allowed to ask for time-outs!"

"Honey, I'm home!"

And so it begins!

2010-11-02T05:09:00.000-07:00

NaNoWriMo 2010 is upon us! I technically didn't write the first day, though. This upsets me a little because now the little calendar widget from the website is going to show day one as red and the whole stats thing for this year will say I didn't do anything today (yesterday). But oh well. I had to finally color last Wednesday's GS update so I used NaNo to motivate me. As in, I wasn't allowed to do NaNo until that GS page got finished. Which happened around midnight. I really underestimated the sheer amount of time that page would take. I think I started working on it around 7:30pm. So it took me about four and a half hours just to shade and color the damn thing. Cripes! That's an hour to an hour and a half longer than average. Yes, I did actually figure it out. Over the course of several days working on several different pages. A four panel page will generally take me three to three and a half hours to sketch and ink entirely and roughly the same amount of time to shade and color. So yeah.

Either way, I did get started after that, though there was some procrastination involved for a time. I got distracted by the fact that I have no idea what kind of bird Mazeira/Musette likes to turn into so I spent quite a bit of time looking that up. I still have no idea. I'm leaning toward a perilanner, which is a cross between a peregrine falcon and a lanner falcon. In the end, I'm not sure how much it really matters, but meh.

Soyeah. 2,660 words today. Which for me counts as day one because I'm still going to write tomorrow. Hopefully before midnight. =P

Fantasy, yes. Medieval? Uuuuhhh....

2010-10-25T22:50:00.000-07:00

I'm no longer sure "medieval" is the proper word for my settings. I'm just not all that keen on worlds in which my characters are limited by the typical medieval, erm...limitations. So I start out with a medievalish setting in mind, but in the end there's always plumbing, very modern health care, electricity in the cities, and trains available for long distance travel, if you can afford the exorbitant prices, of course.

The only thing I'm missing is mass production, phones, and TV. And, to be perfectly honest, there are mass produced books that allow people to basically instant message one another, which, if tweaked correctly, can be used almost exactly like phones. The same people that make them also create children's picture books--with moving pictures!

I have no idea what the hell my settings are classified as anymore. xD

I am a slugabed

2010-10-24T01:04:00.000-07:00

That is all. =3

A Year In Darkness

2010-10-23T02:03:00.000-07:00

That title came to me while I was in the shower. Epic things happen when I'm in the shower. Seriously.

Wow, that sounded really wrong.

Moving on!

For some unfathomable reason I was pondering what a sequel to my NaNo '09 novel would be like. And somehow I came upon the decision that, should such a crazy thing ever come to be, in it Tabitha will have written a book about her time spent underground. The name of this book would be "A Year in Darkness." Then I thought, hah, that's better than the title of the novel she stars in!

That's roughly about the time that it hit me that "A Year in Darkness" (or something very, very similar) should be OND's new title. It's better than Insolutus and it's definitely better than One Night's Day. It sounded very familiar, though, so I Googled it. While there are a lot of things about years and darkness, the title itself doesn't seem to be attached to anything. So yay!

I feel very much like something out there is called "A Year Spent in Darkness," though. I can't find it, but I swear to God there is SOMETHING OUT THERE involving that phrase. It's one of the variations I'm considering. There are only three to choose from and so far I'm still not sure which I like better.

One Year in Darkness
A Year in Darkness
A Year Spent in Darkness

I'm not the biggest fan of the first one, but I really like the other two. But there's still that inkling that something somewhere out there exists and it uses that last phrase. I feel it in my bones.

Or I'm wrong. Y'know, whatever.

Anyway, in other good news, I was looking up what the hell the Snowflake Method was because people kept bringing it up on the NaNo forums and it was driving me crazy--aaaand now I know the plot of Windstruck! =3 It came to me--not in the shower where epic things usually happen, but bear with me here--whilst reading about the guy's experiences with how best to formulate a plot. It was the whole "three disasters and an ending" theory and I nodded along thinking "I've got the first disaster and the third disaster and the ending, so that's good." And then he talked about how, in his opinion, those disasters should pan out. In short, the part that gave me the idea was when he mentioned how, while he thought it was all good and fine for the first disaster to be induced by other means, he found that it worked well when the second two were induced by the main character trying to "fix" things and screwing things up even worse.

And it dawned on me. I knew exactly what Mazeira/Musette could do that would just make things even more screwed up than they already were! I was already pondering at the time how she might be responsible for the third disaster that sets the end into motion, but this is PERFECT.

Basically, it breaks down to Mazeira/Musette being given her wind control powers or whatever and there's some drama about that because of some miscommunication wherein she became convinced Otto was going to give her the old shapeshifting powers back instead of this whole thing. SO after some arguing she decides to pretend to go along with it and learn a little about how to control her new powers, but secretly she plots and she waits until she has an opportunity to be in Otto's house alone. Then, like an idiot, she tries to get her shapeshifting powers back with his potions or something. Anyway, things happen, she starts a forest fire that may or may not threaten her town and she freaks out and eventually puts it out--BUT that's not the second disaster. Oh no, I'm still determined to throw a dragon in there because one comes up in the third book and it'd be super spiffy if it were the same one and the antagonist's cronies got a hold of it and it's only through this that all three MCs make the connection at that point and sorta kinda start to realize what's going on. ANYWAY. There's this type of vine sorta thing that's native to the area and it's everywhere growing all over the trees and stuff. Turns out, when it's burned it smells just like female (or male?) dragon pheromones. And there just so happens to be a dragon of the opposite gender looking for a mate within sniffing distance who otherwise would've passed over the area with nary a thought.

OOPS.

Needless to say, disaster strikes, Mazeira/Musette needs to stop it (probably with the help of her still unnamed brother and Otto) and after all of this Otto gets super frustrated and decides to send her away to some temple place where she can continue to be taught how to harness her new power--but where Otto will no longer have to deal with her. Which leads into her trying to fix things once again, which ends up distracting Otto at a crucial moment, which causes the antagonist to suddenly know his location, which then leads to Musette's hometown being doomed.

I also finally realized why, despite having known that the antagonist's cronies were coming far in advance, Otto stays where he is and, in the end, is forced to kill himself to keep his powers from being manipulated for the antagonist's purposes (it's all very long winded and complicated, but I've already worked it all out so yay). Why, you ask? Because, despite the fact that Otto is a douchefuck, he still realizes that those cronies are going to come and tear Musette's hometown apart. And he may HATE those shifters, but he doesn't hate Musette (though he'll be loathe to admit it out loud), and he just can't sit back and let the baddies destroy the place. So he stays to defend it.

Yeah, it doesn't work. =( Fear my downer ending!

It's okay, though, the last book will end happy. =D

Damn the internet and its crafty distractions!

2010-10-20T00:21:00.000-07:00

So...yeah...I have to do another update of Godspawn during NaNoWriMo now. This distresses me. D= I guess two extra updates for the whole month aren't that bad, but still. Who knows if I'll be able to keep up with them. I mean, the forums alone are throwing me way off track already and November isn't even here yet! Ugh!

Hohum.

I accomplished nothing today. Except I was still tired when I finally decided to get up, so that should help a little with going to bed at a reasonable time tonight. Aside from that whole thing where I pushed back sketching out GS's next page until now. Sooo...who knows when I'm going to end up going to bed. Not 6am, that's for sure.

I still don't know exactly what's going to happen in the middle of my novel. Maybe I'll throw a dragon in there. Dragons make everything better.

Speaking of falling behind, I haven't green-penned anymore pages of last year's novel AND I'm still not entirely sure what my Halloween costume is going to be. I was thinking a pirate of sorts. It might involve that dress I never wear because it's too short to wear without tights and it's usually too hot to wear tights. In fact, most of my neato clothing can only be worn when it's cold out because it's always to frikkin' hot here. That's what I get for living in a desert, I suppose. Either way, I still need to actually put it on and see what can be done with it and what needs work and so on and so forth. I should also probably, I dunno, make cookies or eyeball cupcakes or something to bring to the party I'm going to. Not now, obviously, but I should be thinking about it I suppose.

I probably shouldn't ramble on about anything for too long. That GS page isn't going to sketch itself, after all. =P But that would be awesome. Hmm, maybe if I throw a dragon at it....

I wrote the biggest rant today

2010-10-19T17:11:00.000-07:00

Seriously, it's long and it's mostly just rambling about the Windwaker Chronicles and how I'm either racist or a lazy writer in relation to it. That said, fuck this shit, everyone is fucking white. The non-lazy way would mean completely changing crucial elements to the plot just so it doesn't come across as racist. The world is too sensitive for me to write a non-whitewashed world without making the whole thing about racial issues. Which I guess some of it could be, but the real point of it all is how nothing excuses a person from subjecting another person or group to prejudice. It doesn't matter if you had a crappy childhood or if you suffered from racism. In the end, we are adults and we are smart enough to recognize wrongdoings and prevent ourselves from committing these wrongdoings. There are explanations aplenty for why people act the way they do, but an explanation is not the same as an excuse. There are no excuses. We are all accountable.

I've chosen not to post the rant itself as that right there is the gist of it. It goes into a lot of detail about what would happen if I made certain characters not white and why one character I refuse to make any ethnicity except for white because that would undermine the whole point behind the idea that anyone and everyone can subject another to prejudice, regardless of the situation of either party. Essentially, a lot of very important parts in the story suddenly become racist if one of the characters' ethnicities is changed. Everything is racist if you look at it in a certain light. That said, I am incredibly frustrated by all this. WHY is everything racist anyway? Some people look at the world that way. I get it. But, see, here's the thing--I don't. And why is it wrong that I don't? Isn't that what we should strive for? Not being blind to racism, of course, but just not seeing it around every corner and thereby allowing it to perpetuate. I mean, if you look at the world that way, of course everything's going to seem racist! The world's only as bright a place as you make it out to be. If you want to see it as so dark and foreboding, go right ahead. But realize that's not the be-all, end-all truth of the matter. The world isn't all gumdrops and sunshine, but it's also not some horrendously horrible place either.

But then, I suppose that's a very "white" thing to say.

And yes, this is still bothering me. I felt at peace for a time, at least towards that specific person, but the whole racist thing just gets to me. Kinda the same way that people complaining about how awful human beings are and how we should all die gets to me. Seriously, it's as if these people don't see any good in the world at all. Which is absurd, I know they must. Surely there are things that make them happy. Surely there are moments when they don't look around and all they see is destruction and hate. Is it really so hard to admit that the world is a beautiful place? There are awful things about it, yes, but if you focus on those things, that's all you're going to see.

Ugh, this has turned into another rant. I'm going to continue to be angry about this off and on for the next few days, I can tell. Oh well. I guess for now I'll just watch this and hope happiness follows.

=)

My, how cleansing!

2010-10-19T05:40:00.001-07:00

Another post so soon? Well, yes, I'm weird like that. Plus, something has dawned on me and I can't wait until I wake up this morn-er, afternoon to write about it. That said, note that it's almost 6am, my time. My sleep schedule is now thoroughly screwed.

I always make an effort to, hard as it may be, NOT totally vilify someone I disagree with when writing about them. Key word being "totally." ;) I've discovered that this has an interesting effect. For one thing, it stops me from continuing to think about the person in such an inhuman matter. It helps me to realize that we're all people, including this person, and we all think differently. And that's okay. Obviously this has a lot to do with my last entry. And by "a lot" I mean "everything." I read through that last post and it made me feel...well...cleansed! Writing out my emotions always makes me feel better, of course, but I realized something interesting about the person I was talking about.

She kind of reminds me of myself.

Just...I don't really know how to put it. I see a lot of myself in her. This makes me feel so much better about, I dunno, everything. It's eerie how much we share in common with those we disagree with, but it's a good practice to always try to find a bit of yourself in your opposition. It humanizes the person behind the argument and it helps you to see what you could become if you allowed yourself to make the same choices that person has made. You can learn from the mistakes you see in them and strive to keep yourself the person you ought to be.

That said, I feel somewhat haughty for saying that. If it comes across sounding that way to anyone else, I apologize. But, you have to admit, it's decent advice. The kind of thing that I often only write about but don't often enough practice in my day-to-day life. I'll try to learn from this. I'll try to see people wherever I go and not enemies.

No, no, it's fine. I'm white, I deserve this.

2010-10-19T05:00:00.002-07:00

I came across an...interesting...thread in the NaNo forums. If anyone out there has been in the "NaNoWriMo Ate My Soul" forum recently, I think, considering the title I've given this here post, you know which one I'm talking about.

This entry isn't actually about the original topic, though, the one about how the villain of one author's NaNo novel this year happens to be the only black character in the story. Personally, yeah, I think he/she should at least add another black character to go on the side of good because if you become aware of unfortunate implications in your writing you should generally do your best to correct them lest they detract from the actual story. But...no...this is about the person who posted about "reverse" racism.

She said it didn't exist. And at first I thought "well, of course it doesn't, racism is racism!" That's, um...that's not what she meant. At all. She linked to a blog entry in which racism was defined as being a mixture of prejudice and power. In other words, racism was impossible to apply to white people because that is the race that holds the most power, in the U.S. at least.

I read some of her other posts in that thread. Before she made that post, I was fine. I respected her. When she made that one, though...

Let me just say that, y'know, I understand that as a white woman I can never hope to understand what it's like to be black. My world is seen through different eyes than hers. But that doesn't immediately make my worldview wrong and hers correct. It doesn't make mine right and hers wrong, either. Let's face facts here, the world can only be conceived through your own set of eyes. You will never see what someone else sees. You can try, at the very least, though and...I guess I can't honestly say I ever have. I rather wonder if she ever has either.

Tonight I looked down at my skin and, for the first time, I felt truly ashamed. And I felt horrible because of this person's comment about racism and, at the same time, I felt even more ashamed because I was wondering if it was okay for me to feel bad about feeling bad.

She made a post--her last post in the thread--about how crazy it made her to see all these white people comforting this other white person and saying how "oh, no, it's not racist" and so on and so forth. I agree, it's a bit perturbing because, regardless of how the author meant it, it still comes out with unintended implications. But I already went over that. The point is, I saw how upset she was and how much it distressed her and it just amazed me. It's as if she doesn't realize that we're all people and we all feel just like her when, say, someone is being prejudiced against us based on our own race.

I know, I know, we're all only human. We don't always take into consideration the feelings of others. I know I forget a lot of times. It's just that, by the time I'd gotten that far in the thread, I was already in tears. This whole thing is something I've been aware of, but the way she just stated so bluntly that racism against my entire ethnicity doesn't exist...? It really got to me.

It helped a little that I came across the statement in that thread that I mentioned before. Y'know, about how a white person, such as myself, will never understand what it's like to be black. Or a "person of color," which I think is an utterly absurd classification since we're all varying shades of brown. No one in the human race is especially colorful. Point being, no, I don't know what it's like to be black. I never will. I can never hope to understand.

But you know what? The woman who said this...she will never understand what it's like to be white and to be told that, if anyone ever insults you based on the color of your skin, it's not racism. It can't be. Because you're white. So you just have to sit there and take it and God help you if you try to defend yourself.

No. She'll never understand what that feels like.

((Edit: I've decided to clarify something since I just know that someone out there is going to read this and take it mean that I'm saying white people suffer from racism on the same level as black people--or people of any other ethnicity, for that matter. Okay, NO. My problem, when I wrote this, was the fact that people out there excuse themselves from being racist. This is not possible. If you are prejudiced against a person because of the color of their skin, you are racist. No ifs, ands, or buts. THAT was the point of this rant. There's no way I will ever experience what the person who said this has experienced. As a black woman, she has it harder than I, a white woman, do. I get that and recognize this as a negative aspect of our society. Any racism that I experience will never compare to the racism she has and will experience in her life. This is a very depressing truth. Even so, this does not keep me from being hurt by racist comments against my ethnicity. That's absurd logic and is and of itself racist. Much like, say, a rapist going to jail and getting raped by another inmate. Oh yes, there's some satisfaction in that--y'know, so long as you don't know the guy. Facing facts, NO ONE deserves to be raped. Not even the rapists. It's not as if a person who is perceived as a villain has a personality consisting of nothing but villainy. This is actually a stereotype writers are often warned about. You should never make your villain nothing but evil. People just aren't like that. They may have mental problems causing them not to be capable of empathy, but that doesn't mean they don't have a favorite color or a beloved pet and it doesn't mean they don't dream at night nor does it mean that they believe what they're doing to be wrong. Point being, we're all people. End of story. We are taught this as writers and we are taught this, hopefully, as human beings. Thus, my point still stands. Racism is racism no matter who it comes from and no matter who it victimizes.))

I have no idea what this entry is about

2010-10-12T23:38:00.000-07:00

I remember wanting to post here about...something. But I don't really remember what.

Meh, either way, I've discovered an ending for Windstruck. Well, more so than I had before. It involves suicide.

I write such lovely stories. =)

Speaking of lovely stories, I've marked up 100 pages of last year's NaNo novel. I'm a third of the way there! Woo! Also, I've realized that there are more scenes to be uncomfortable about than just that one rape scene. Today I came across two attempted rape scenes. I guess I...sorta forgot about those. ^^; They kind of meld together into one bigger scene, though, so really--well, it's just a whole lot of awful. Not the writing, for the most part, actually. Although obviously a lot of it is pretty "ew." Some parts just weren't that clear, but I fixed that with my handy green pen--yeah, I use a green pen instead of a red one. It's a much more soothing color and makes me think more "correction" than "OMGWRONG" like red does. What was I saying? Oh, right. The part of that scene(s) that was awful was, well, the attempted rape part. I felt incredibly unsettled reading about Tabitha having to go through all of this. And at Christian's hand, no less! Regardless of what unspeakable things he does, I can't stop loving him.

Consequently, I discovered this in the very next scene. I also discovered that whilst writing it, I must've really just wanted to write dialogue at the time. Screw description! So, even though I realize I probably shouldn't at this stage, those few pages took a while because I kept adding tags at the end of dialogue, a few lines of description here and there, and an inner thought or two. But, y'know, whatever works! Anyway, as I was reading it I became completely engrossed in the conversation, probably because I'm such a sucker for worldbuilding and this is the scene in which Christian explains to Tabitha a great deal about how things work underground. Apparently both myself and Tabitha found Christian incredibly interesting to listen to because we both sorta forgot how he attempted to rape her--twice--not five pages ago.

WHAT the fuck.

Problem is, I have no idea how to fit this conversation in otherwise. If Tabitha's not speaking to Christian, he's not just going to randomly explain what things are like down here. Because Tabitha hasn't asked. Because she's angry at him.

But Christian is one tricky, fucked-up bastard. He lures her into a conversation. Seriously! I don't remember writing this! Tabitha just can't help herself. He says something particularly interesting and she tries to resist but then she just can't help but ask "why?" And then he responds in a wholly uninformative fashion so she has to rephrase her question and then...well...lather, rinse, repeat. And somehow, in someway, while doing this--Christian makes her like him.

I'll say it again: Christian is one tricky, fucked-up bastard.

Or, at least, that's how I hope it comes across. I actually didn't realize what he'd done until I'd put the book away for a few hours. Regardless, it was still incredibly odd that Tabitha seemed to totally forget about the attempted rape thing, so in my "green-penning" I added a few lines about it. I'm not sure if I entirely like what I penned in, but I'll see what I can do when I get to rewrites. Basically I decided to let her lose her grip on her anger since she's so fascinated and appalled by what she's being told and comparing it to what she's seen and realizing it's all true. But as I was reading through, I knew that at some point I would have to come back to it, because, seriously, how can she possibly forget the attempted rape thing? The conversation, to be fair, starts out being about that. The whole thing is about rape, really, but the person they're talking about changes. Christian mentions that it "happens to everyone." Tabitha realizes this includes him, they discuss this a little, she wants to know why he takes it and why he lets it happen to others and that leads him to having to--with some frustration--explain how things are down there. In his own, special way of course. It's all surprisingly quite in character, too. Although I must say, I never realized that Tabitha was such a curious person. On the other hand, that'd probably help to explain why she gets herself into this mess in the first place. But, moving on.

I think the essence of this post is going to end up being that I really like Christian. I was busy trying to make it more logical for Tabitha to be having this conversation while trying to find a way to bring her back to her hatred since I knew it would come up again in the next scene--and he provided an answer. Right at the end of the conversation as they get to the clinic where the next scene takes place, right when she needs to remember how much she hates him, he says it. He contemplates, out loud, who will end up raping her if he dies from the stab wound she gave him.

Oh, Christian, I love you. <3

I admit, I may end up scrapping the whole scene and starting from scratch when it comes time for rewrites to create something that's a little more plausible, but that? That just made my day.

Why am I so bad at this?!

2010-10-10T16:49:00.003-07:00

Seriously! I'm so bad at pronouncing my character's names right! First Tadhg, then Saoirse, now Dermot! And Dermot isn't even that difficult to say!

Though actually I'm keeping the original pronunciations I used for Tadhg and Dermot. Saoirse STILL comes out sounding like "say-or-see" in my head, but ultimately her name is pronounced "SEER-shuh."

Saoirse is Dermot's aunt, by the bye. Just so we're clear. And just so we're even clearer, these are all characters from the Windwaker Chronicles who appear in the second and third books.

Anyway, Tadhg is the first one I realized I was pronouncing totally wrong. Albeit, in this case I actually saw the pronunciation on the baby name site and made the decision that it must be incorrect because that pronunciation simply did not fit that name.

...yeah.

Either way, Tadhg's name is actually pronounced "Tieg" or "Taigue," like the beginning of "tiger." Well, I hate that. But it's the right way to say it and there's nothing wrong with that in and of itself. So, I decided that Tadhg's little colony is chalk full of little boy satyrs named Tadhg and he HATES it. To set himself apart, he makes people pronounce his name "TAH-dig." That's the best way I can possibly spell it out. The "i" is actually pretty--how do I put this--soft when I say it? But that's the jist of how he says it. Anyway, I've grown rather attached to it and just can't imagine saying his name any other way.

Saoirse isn't a main character so when I finally discovered how you're actually supposed to pronounce her name, I didn't have that much trouble making the switch. Although I still think that "say-or-see" sounds very pretty. =3

Well, onto what inspired this journal in the first place: Dermot. Der-MOT. There's an actor with this same name and, whilst watching TV this afternoon, an announcer in some preview for this movie he's in that'll be playing tonight said it out loud and caught me a little off guard. If his name hadn't been on the screen, I wouldn't have even noticed: it's pronounced DER-mit.

This is horrible and I hate it. Dermot's name is not and never will be pronounced that way. He WILL explicitly explain this in book three when he first appears and one of the other two main characters accidentally calls him "Dermont."

"Dermot! DER-MOT! This is not difficult!"
"Okay, okay, gods....Dermont."
"Shove it, 'Taig!' "

I clearly need to stop using Irish names for my characters. I will obviously never be capable of pronouncing them correctly. xD

Mazeira, Musette, and Other Such Things

2010-10-08T21:23:00.004-07:00

Funtimes are to be had today. I started marking up OND a few nights ago and made it to page 37. Meaning that, yes, I've finally started the revision process. A year after writing it. BUT ANYWAY, if I did the math right, so long as I mark up 40 pages per day for the next week, I should have the whole book scribbled on and ready for the next phase of revision by next Friday. Woo!

I have no idea what the next phase is. D=

But whatever, I'm sure I'll figure it out. I think it might entail some writing on of notecards and rearranging of events and flashbacks and such. Then after that I can start actually rewriting everything and making it pretty. This, I'm sure, will get interrupted by NaNo. Knowing that, I'm hoping I can get the second draft done in time for Christmas so I can give it to Kendra to read and stuff. Speaking of Kendra, if you're out there reading this, no, I haven't read the chapters you gave/sent to me, yet. I'm sorry, I'll get to it eventually, I swear! I'm such a bad friend. Dx

Nah, you know you love me. 8D

Anyway, I'm reworking the chapters because the first 50k words of OND consist of only five chapters whilst the other nearly 50k have ten. This is odd and must be fixed. It'll also make it easier for me to break it down and edit it la-oh my God I've said this exact same thing before somewhere in this blog. No, no, I swear I have. I think it was, like, last year or early this year or something. Weird. Well, regardless, I've so far only gotten through the original chapter one and broken it down into two chapters. The first one needs to be completely rewritten. I'll probably change the whole scene and just...do so many things differently. Add a few more hints that the world is slightly off without fully revealing why just yet. I feel like that'd make for a fascinating start to the novel

In other news, I've been doing some more world building for Windstruck, the main character of which is Musette. And Mazeira. Sort of. They're the same person, really. The name Mazeira actually came about because I was going through all my old school papers from high school a few months ago (who keeps that crap past the last day of school anyway? I can't believe I actually had stuff from middle school still sitting around!). I originally thought that I'd created Musette, who was originally an RP character, sometime during my freshman year of college, but as it turns out I actually created her during my senior or junior year of high school. I stumbled upon her original profile in a decomposing binder from my closet and discovered that, before she was ever Musette, I was thinking about calling her Mazeira. I'm really fond of the name and thought it'd add a little something to her story if she sheds the name given to her by the family that ostracizes her when she needs them the most and takes a new name. Musette, after all, is a bit too close to the style of names used in Dermot's country, which I think works out rather well since Otto could be the one to give her a new name and he's from Malloria himself. I've also realized that certain aspects of Musette's outfit are reminiscent of Dermot's, which is traditional Mallorian dress. I'm still set on her final outfit being what it's always been, though I realize such things aren't so important now that her story is being put into book form. But still, that's just how I picture her. I have no idea how she manages to get into this outfit by the end of the book, however, but I have a sneaking suspicion that she'll ultimately end up in her priestess uniform and won't end up with a fresh set of clothing until she meets Tadhg in the next book, whose wife will likely take Otto's old Mallorian robes from her satchel or whatever (I don't yet know why she will have these, I just know that she will) and make a new outfit for her out of whatever usable material there is. The robes are probably pretty moth bitten after all these years, so there wouldn't be too much left of it. Or maybe Otto is the one that does this and then I still don't know how a girl with wings in place of arms would be able to get the clothes on without help. And by the end of the book even the temple she was sent to has been burned to the ground so she no longer has anyone around to help her. It's actually rather sad that she ends up so utterly alone at the end of the first book. Makes me glad Tadhg and Dermot come around later to keep her company, perverted and ornery--respectively--though they may be.

Y'know, part of me can't help but feel that I could be spending my time thinking about more important things than how Musette gets dressed. =P

Windstruck Synopsis

2010-10-08T00:29:00.003-07:00

There is but one law in Lyritova that is obeyed and revered above all others: be a shifter or be a smear on the ground before day's end. It is one of the few laws country bumpkins like Mazeira and her townsfolk take seriously. Her little town has seen an unusually large number of these kind of law breakers in the past few decades, coinciding rather curiously with the arrival of an old hermit who, rumor has it, isn't a shapeshifter at all. How he's remained in Lyritova this long without being torn to shreds by the shifters all around him is a mystery the town's children have whispered about around the campfire for years. It's become almost a rite of passage to climb up the mountain to the old hermit's cottage on the eve of one's thirteenth birthday and play some sort of nasty trick on him.

Mazeira is twelve going on thirteen and, with all the buffed up stories of her friends and siblings ringing in her ears, she makes her way up the mountain, determined to come back with a better story than any of those sissy fakers. She'll make sure her name will live on in schoolyard infamy as the greatest trickster her town has ever known.

What she doesn't know is just how many of the law breakers of years past climbed up that mountain on the eve of their thirteenth birthdays thinking the exact same thing.

SOYEAH! I was in a thread on the NaNo forums where everyone was posting their synopses and got inspired to write one for Windstruck, which is the first book of The Windwaker Chronicles. I still don't have that much hammered out, plot-wise. But hey, I'm farther along now than I was with One Night's Day around this time last year! I've pretty much just got characters and some very faint, foggy idea of what's going to happen. So, I figured, why not just start typing and see what magicalness I can come up with? The above is the result. I rather like the feel of it and think I'm ever so slightly less lost now. Huzzah!

Apricots

2010-10-05T03:48:00.002-07:00

"Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power."
— Oscar Wilde

So, when you think about it...my NaNo '09 novel is really about power.

Oh my God, it totally is!

Rr rr rr rr...

2010-09-23T03:00:00.001-07:00

I have no idea what that was. But it sounds funny in my head. =D

I've started writing everyday again, but this time instead of prose I've been working on the next chapter of GS. It's gonna be a long one! I'm trying to think of what to write for page 122 as I type this. I didn't get a chance to write anything yesterday 'cause it got to be so late and it's looking like that's going to happen again. I want to write at least one comic page before I give in and go to bed, though. Problem is, I just don't know who I want to follow. The fight scene has already started and there are three pairs to follow: Vain vs. Harper, Cadmus vs. Vex, and Vain vs. Dargan. Farouk will take part in a little bit as well, but I feel like I need to explore Vain and Dargan for at least one or two more pages before moving on. Probably only one since, y'know, fight scenes need to move on rather quickly. Or maybe I should go straight to the scene where Farouk realizes he has something rather...important...to Vex's well-being. Which of course means also jumping back to explore what Vex and Cadmus have gotten up to. Which means introducing Orcus, who I've talked about a couple times here. As it turns out, though, the lovable demon dog won't actually be in the comic until sometime next year. I thought he'd be introduced sometime this year, but heck, the fight won't even start until the first or second week of January! Like I said, it's gonna be a long chapter. It'll take up the rest of the year and probably a good part of next year.

There are a few things I want to accomplish with this next chapter, though. Dargan and Vain have, by far, the most interesting relationship amongst the three pairings. Things won't really get into full swing until their next encounter, but the set-up for that needs to happen during THIS encounter, so they need to get enough screen time now to allow for their development later on. But where to put it...?

Hm, I'm still conflicted. I can't really think of any good choreography between the two of them at the moment, which is sort of necessary for a fight scene. Uuuummm...I dunno. I guess I'll stick with them for a couple of pages and see where they take me before Farouk, Vex, and Cadmus steal the spotlight. I think Vice and Harper will, unfortunately, get the least amount of screen time in this fight. They've only got two pages so far, which I can only really justify as giving some brief glimpses of Vice's character and Harper's reception of his overall weirdness and to show that they're fighting like everyone else. I clearly need to work more on them as enemies. I think to resolve this I'll definitely need to return to them for a couple pages before things get all switched up and go horribly, terribly wrong. Hopefully I can think of some good dialogue for the two of them that's not utterly pointless. Especially since Harper hasn't had all that much time to develop. I mean, you can definitely tell what kind of person she is from her very first appearance in this last chapter, but maybe I can start exploring the why a bit? It seems almost too soon for that, though. She certainly can't reveal anything too huge, but then, she really doesn't have all that much to keep hidden away. I guess...I wonder if she has a problem with revealing this particular factoid about herself? I can't imagine she'd be ashamed of it since she's so vocal about what it caused her to feel. On the other hand, maybe she views this as a sign of weakness and while she may reveal such things to, say, her teammates, she probably wouldn't want to go telling Vice about it. On the other hand, due to the nature of this thing, maybe it'd be quite the opposite. Maybe she would like Vice to know. Or maybe she's smart enough not to give him fodder.

Don't you love my vagueness? :3

New stuff?

2010-09-09T20:36:00.004-07:00

It's been a while. Like, a loooong while. But I'm still alive. My room's done, more or less. I just need to hang the rest of my pictures and put the remaining frames that don't match the rest somewhere in my closet. And maybe get some new shelves and hang my fan from the Ren Fair on the wall. Which has taken me weeks to get around to for some reason. =/ But such is life.

I finally printed out OND's rough draft, though I haven't started revising it yet. I've been brainstorming ideas for a new title as well. I rather like the sound of "Howl," but that conjures up thoughts of werewolves in my mind so I'm thinking that'd be a poor choice. I'm also considering "In Absentia" and "Insolitus." Apparently Latin is my backup. xD I've never used it to name a book/story before, so it's new to me. I'm leaning towards "Insolitus" due to it meaning something unusual or strange, which I feel very much describes the world Tabitha enters in her search for her family. I think it fits the best out of the three. "Howl," of course, relates to her and Christian being Wolves, but otherwise has little else going for it. "In Absentia" is on the list because the vast majority of the plot takes place when Tabitha is absent from the rest of the world. Albeit, I think I'd favor this a lot more if the story revolved around the family and friends she leaves behind and what happens to them, but I think it still works pretty well. Soooo...that's my reasoning, I guess.

DEV remains unfinished. I'm not too distressed about that, though, since it's a pretty casual sort of project. My desktop icon for it is a palm tree. =) Speaking of webcomics, GS is coming along all right. I've fallen a bit behind on updates lately, which shouldn't be surprising, but compared to the rest of my track record I think I've been doing much better overall. I still haven't written past chapter five, however, and that does distress me. If I update enough this weekend (I need two pages to go up before starting on next Wednesday's), chapter four will be complete next Saturday. I've written up to page 99 I believe. That should be going up the last Saturday in October, which means GS' 100 page milestone will hit on Nov. 6. Funtimes. Also, GS is turning two tomorrow. Kinda sad that only now is it going to reach 100 pages, but meh. I knew things would be slow from the very beginning. It's a webcomic after all, that's the nature of the beast, as they say. I think I'll do a little writing tonight since I've become very unstuck idea-wise since last I worked on the script. This is not to say I don't have a plotline to work off of, it's just one of those things. Y'know, how to get this plot point to connect to that one in a way that's not awkward or too fast or too slow and using the domino effect, so to speak, so that one event leads to another which leads to another which leads to another and so on and so forth. So yeah, I have ideas for how to move things along a bit and to do a bit of character development for Vice, who thus far seems far too nice. All this "evil" he's done is just hearsay unless we can actually see it. Same goes for Vicious. I'm trying to fit in a scene where Farouk--first off--finds out exactly what her hobbies entail (I have the perfect setting for this and the conversation works great, too; it'll get rid of Farouk just long enough for the kids to get into the trouble they need to get into but not so long that he won't be left behind when things move elsewhere). Secondly, I want him to witness it first hand. I have no idea when this'll happen exactly, but I do know what happens and in what sort of setting it takes place. It's just a matter of taking Farouk there, but of course he needs an excuse to be alone--and starting with the end of chapter five, actually, I'm going to build on the perfect excuse for him to be away from the Godspawn. I call her Adelaide. >;D She doesn't get nearly as much screen time as she deserves anyway. It's hard to fit all the pieces of the story together in a comic, I've discovered. Adelaide and Dardanus need more attention so I can further develop their personalities and motives. They're rather important later on. But I'm confident I can manage somehow. =3

In other news, I'm getting antsy about NaNoWriMo '10. I know, I know, it's not even October yet. I haven't even hammered out the details for the plot yet either. But that's what you do in October. Thus the reason I'm antsy now. In September. Because it's not October yet and I have to focus on other things gosh darnit! It's annoying, but at least it gives me some time to really mull things over. I do better when I ramble via writing, though (thus this blog!) but regardless, I'm not all that focused on Musette's story. I'm more interested in Dermot's. Or at least his country, which I've finally named Malloria. It was once ruled by King Malor, for whom the country was obviously named, and he was famous for his 100 or 500 or some other really high number of concubines. I haven't settled on a number yet. Maybe 300. In reality, it wasn't an even number, but everyone just rounded it out so that it was. Anyway, Malor is this--okay, bear with me here, this is actually important to Musette's story--he's this amazingly powerful sorcerer. And there's some difference between sorcerers and wizards and witches/warlocks and magicians. I don't know what those differences are just yet. So far I just know that magicians are entertainers who may or may not be magic-users. It's just a job. Some of them use tricks and some of them are one of the other three in that list right there who use their magic to entertain. I'm leaning towards the idea of witches/warlocks being normal people that have studied and thereby learned magic. I'm not sure how that'd work out, though. Maybe that means they have to rely more heavily on things like potions and such. Wizards, though, I have no idea. Sorcerers have to be born with magic or else the entire nation of Malloria wouldn't work out the way I need it to. ANYWAY. Malor is amazingly powerful and either creates or takes over a nation. I figure he more or less creates one by just being really awesome and magical and starting to gather his many concubines. His powers attracted other magic users who wanted to learn from him. Why everyone else came along is beyond me. I dunno, maybe they came later for security reasons since most of them would have to be peasants and such who saw a man in power who suddenly had a bunch of nobles (I can't imagine that the majority of these magic users would be able to get the proper education on magic without also having a lot of money; most magic users ARE nobles in this world, if not at least middle class) and flocked to this place to provide the manual labor needed for a city or country or whatever to start. I don't have all the details worked out just yet. Point is, those concubines that Malor gathered started having children and a funny thing happened with those children. Turns out, they were some of the most powerful sorcerers the world had ever seen. So then OF COURSE more nobles came around and started marrying off their children to Malor's kids, despite the fact that Malor had come out of nowhere so no one knew whether he was of any kind of nobility or not and that none of his concubines were women from good families either. Consequently, Dermot Mabyn is descended from a poor farm girl, Annalith Mabyn, who's parents were forced to sell her to some guy (Malor, who was still unknown at the time) in order to continue feeding their other children (she was the eldest, so y'know; and it really paid off in the end because she lived in the lap of luxury for the rest of her life, her children were amazingly powerful sorcerers, and she was able to continue supporting her family from afar). And Dermot's friend, what's-his-face Russo, is descended from an infamous pirate, Captain Maybelle Russo. Malor wanted her for his collection, but she refused and sent one of her plentiful daughters to him instead (Cheskine Russo). Everyone has a story like this. It's true that everyone also has nobility in their ancestry due to the nobles that swooped in and married into these families, but the ruling class of Malloria aren't reminded of that too often. They're brought up to remember that their ancestors came from common folk. It's part of their culture because Malloria has no army, just the upper nobility which is chalk full of sorcerers. So they're the ones that are called to defend the people in times of need, thus the occasional need to remind them where they themselves came from.

But now I've forgotten what I was going to say. Actually, I think that's all I wanted to talk about. Yeah, just Malor. I think I totally forgot to state outright that the current ruling class of Malloria is descended from all of his concubines, but that was probably pretty easy to deduce after a certain point. Oh well. There's other stuff about Malor that's not quite right, however. No one knows where he came from or who he was before. He just appeared seemingly out of the blue one day. He was also rumored to be immortal when he still ruled the country. After a war broke out between Malloria and the as of yet unnamed neighboring country, Malor fled and Malloria was nearly obliterated. It's an incredibly tiny country now, only about 130 sq ft, not counting their territories in other countries that are only theirs so long as they keep providing sorcerous help to their hosts. Anyway, point is, Malor is gone. Some people say he was killed, but others aren't so sure. Sorcerers live longer than normal people. The oldest a sorcerer has ever gotten has been around 300 years. But not Malor. He never seemed to get any older, yet he ruled for nearly 1000 years before vanishing. His children never lived this long. They only seemed to inherit some semblance of his great power. But despite all the breeding they did with non magic users, their children's abilities never seemed to dwindle. After several generations they could breed with each other, too, but that didn't increase the powers of the next generation as many expected. Dermot Mabyn is just as powerful as Annelith's first child was nearly 1000 years ago. I haven't yet decided if Malor actually produced the first sorcerers of the world or not. That could be the difference between wizards and sorcerers, I suppose. Essentially the same in that they can rival one anothers' powers (witches/warlocks just aren't up to snuff no matter how hard they may try), they both live longer as a result of their magic, and both are born with magic in their blood--but for wizards it dwindles whereas with sorcerers it remains static throughout countless generations. On the other hand, I could create another difference between the two and just have it so that Malor was the one that created this particular breed of sorcerer. I dunno, I'll think about it.

Well, that was some fun rambling. It's a little more relevant to Dermot's story than to Musette's, but Musette's comes first. And she's got Otto. I can pretty much confirm that he's from Malloria. Not originally, but he was certainly Mallorian at some point in his past. So it's important to understand before I start working on Musette's tale how exactly the whole magic system works. A big part of it is that Musette loses her shapeshifting powers. Creatures like her are born with their magical abilities, much like fairies and nymphs and the like, but they're always a certain kind of magic. Nature-related for nymphs, different breeds of fairies have different focuses for their powers, and of course shapeshifters have shapeshifting. There's no way to alter this. But Otto is the one that takes away Musette's shapeshifting originally and, after discovering her still alive so long after being trapped between two forms, decides to take her in and use her as a guinea pig. As a result, she's now a wind sorceress (or wind wizard? but if I keep to the definition of sorcery I mentioned above, she would actually be a sorceress since her shapeshifting powers themselves were transformed into wind manipulative powers and shapeshifting doesn't weaken or strengthen with each generation; so, yeah, by that logic she's definitely a wind sorceress; oh! perhaps THAT'S the difference with Mallorian sorcerers! maybe they aren't born with magic that leans towards one type or another, and that could be a trait of other sorcerers; so they're like a hybrid of wizards and sorcerers--which would have been tried before, but wouldn't have worked out; only Malor was ever able to create such sorcerers; IF I decide to go with that explanation anyway).

All right, rambling's done. I have a page to color. =P

Started gutting my closet today

2010-07-14T05:06:00.001-07:00

And during this gutting I discovered boxes full of old fiction class critiques for my stories, even going as far back as "The Greine Chandelier," my very first story written for a college class. I don't know why I kept these critiques for so long. Perhaps some delusional idea that one day I'd go back and read them and somehow breath life back into a story I only forced out in the first place for the pure sake of earning a grade? I'm not saying writing those stories wasn't a good learning experience. On the contrary, I think having to write them was one of the most valuable experiences I had as a growing writer. But going through these old papers did remind me of one thing: I have more love for characters that move the story than for stories that happen to have characters as a means to an end. Most of my school stories fall into the second category and part of me has always wondered if they were better because of it, because the focus was more on the story itself than on the characters. Actually, I don't think any of them came out that way. Or at least not most of them. But if I feel less attached to a story, will my readers feel it also? I think it seems likely. Similar to how when you know there's a deeper history to some mythological beast in your fantasy novel, you will subconsciously instill that into the writing and thereby help to assure the reader that such a history exists and makes that creature seem that much more realistic even if you never go into any great detail about it. So I've often been worried that my characters were too strong and that not enough of their story was being told or given enough importance. Especially with regards to The Windwaker Chronicles, which focuses on three characters I originally created for roleplaying purposes. Two of them will have what were once their biographies told and, for a time, I fretted about their bios not translating well into novel format. Until, that is, I recently decided that their bios could use some shifting anyway, keeping the basic story and character the same, but altering things so that they made sense. Which I feel was a smart move and thus I'll remind myself to do so again in the future when I think a character's story has already been set in stone.

That said, I think I can now safely say that the stories in which I am actually in love with the characters are better than those that just happen to have some characters that might be mildly interesting. Just so long as I remind myself that good characters need an equally good story in which to thrive. Otherwise, what's the point?

The Last Airbender

2010-07-02T20:19:00.001-07:00

((Taken from my DeviantArt journal. I feel it belongs here, too, as it relates to writing a great deal. In other news, I'm moving back to Phoenix and have successfully completed the harrowing journey that was sorting through all the crap in my room. We have also painted the bathroom teal and are in the process of installing new fixtures in there, which it desperately needs. But more on all that later.))

This is the first and probably the last time I will ever do a review journal like this. I usually don't feel inspired to add to the countless others. But this time?

Oh God.

My sister and I saw it this morning. I feared for it the moment I heard "Shamy" was doing it (her and I made an executive decision to call him that from now on xD), so I didn't expect much good to come from it.

But the WRITING! Okay, so the acting wasn't that great and they pronounced things wrong supposedly just for shits and giggles. But the writing was just godawful! There were a few--VERY few--decently written scenes that I feel were quite effective in getting the pertinent information across while still telling a compelling story. But for the most part Shamy just seemed to be trying to condense without any regards for half-decent story telling. He also can't seem to do humor very well. He tried, but ultimately it was just embarrassing to watch. Listening to that awkward, jarring dialogue and the seemingly nonexistent transitions, I couldn't help but feel like Shamy was really out of his element here. I appreciate his effort to break away from his usual work, but I don't think this was the best place for him to begin doing that. At the very least, he should've spent a LOT more time on the writing. Had it been better, I think I could've forgiven the poor acting. It wasn't, after all, incredibly horrible, just not as well done as it could've been.

The overall story was told in a very drab, boring manner. I found myself annoyed each time Katara's narration started up again. The first thing I learned when I got to college to study creative writing was "show, don't tell" and it has permanently seared itself into the back of my skull. I found myself chanting the phrase in my mind frequently throughout the movie. Needless to say, I was very distressed by this particular use of narration. VERY distressed. The way she came in and explained everything made the movie seem fragmented. I don't think Shamy realized that, with a few well-placed lines of dialogue, he could've actually fit pretty much all the information he stuffed into those narration sequences into the movie, which might've, at the very least, improved the flow a little.

I dunno, everything else just pales in comparison to how horribly it was written. I realize the tone was supposed to be more serious and all but...man...it was just awful. I considered walking out a few times, to be perfectly honest. I still love the series but, let's face it, Shamy made a piss poor movie. Maybe it's because I write comic strips on the side and participated in Script Frenzy this year. I was exposed to a lot of talk about scripts and adaptations of various sorts, so I guess it bugs me when I know someone like Shamy, who has abundant resources, just disregards all the solid advice out there and makes a crappy movie like this. Especially when he's trying and failing at condensing an entire season of Avatar into a single movie and using elements like narration as a crutch. This was frequently and thoroughly discussed in the Screnzy forums! With all his power, connections, and everything else, I just can't believe that he could allow himself to write this script so poorly. He's a professional, he shouldn't be writing a screenplay worthy of a SyFi B-movie! I write a webcomic, I know all about condensing story into as little dialogue as possible. Am I a master at it? Hardly, I'm only just learning how to manage it with varying degrees of success. Even so, I could've done better than Shamy. And, all things considered, that's really saying something.

2010-05-22T11:33:00.001-07:00

It does not matter how slow you go so long as you do not stop
-Wisdom of Confucius

Another one for my quote box. Which I don't have with me since I'm up here in Phoenix at the moment. Alas. =P

End of Script Frenzy

2010-05-01T03:06:00.002-07:00

Well, I didn't make it to 100 pages. Nor did I make it to 300 comic pages. But I did make it to 68 pages and 150 comic pages (though it was 63 and 142 when the clock hit midnight; I choose not to count that since I haven't gone to bed yet, which means it still counts in my mind as being written on April 30th ;D ). I've also reached the beginning of the climax where ***** leaves to go ****** ****** and ***** has to face these big ****** who are actually her ******* and *********. Which is followed by *****'s return to ******* ******, where he'll have to face ***** again and ***** will have to go off and ***** so she can ****** ***** ****** *** *******.

Okay, I'll stop. =P

I haven't updated GS for some ungodly reason. I do have the lineart all ready and everything, I'm just not sure I'm going to update this week, if only so I can finish the page prematurely and get ahead. My cap is going to be owing eight pages. So if I don't update this week, I'll be up to seven owed pages.

Don't ask me why I haven't gotten this done. I really don't know. I've been distracted a lot by life lately, but I'm still dedicated to getting to page 109 by the end of the year. I really want to update twice per week in 2011, so it's essential that I start getting ahead right now. Then I can stay ahead, thus building a buffer of some kind, and also be used to doing two or more pages a week before I actually start promising that many.

I've also made a decision about Devil's Due. I will try to finish it this month--May, that is--and if I don't by the end of the month, it'll be dropped. Why? Well, Parallel Dementia, a webcomic I read (rather, used to read) came to a premature end recently. The creator made this decision because his heart wasn't in it anymore and it was holding him back, stifling him in a sense. This, I realized, is what Devil's Due has begun to do to me. This is why I put away all of my old story ideas from before college. I no longer have any passion for them and writing them out would just be a chore. I don't want this to happen with Devil's Due. I want to finish it, if only in the form of some crappy first draft. Because it's not just that I'm letting go of a story, I also feel like I'm abandoning the characters, all of whom I have come to love. But Devil's Due has been a chore to write and the fact that I can't seem to finish it has been keeping me from editing One Night's Day (still trying to come up with a new title for that). If I don't finish it before November, I would want to replace the first one or two books of the Windwake Chronicles with it for NaNoWriMo. So then it'd be pushing that aside and, quite frankly, I think I need to pump those stories out as soon as I can manage. I don't want to lose my passion for them, too, and just...never finish. So, I'll give this story one last shot before putting it on the shelf with all of my other old story ideas. And, God willing, it may actually go on a physical shelf. Having won NaNo last year, I have a code that I can use to get a free copy of a manuscript printed as a book. It expires this summer in June or July, so finishing in May would be perfect. I'm a sucker for nostalgia. Even raw and unedited, I would very much like to own a copy of The Devil's Due. =)

As for other things, the pet sitting thing has been put on hold. You see, there's a problem: if I open a business in Tucson, I will have to stay in Tucson for at least another year, maybe more. But...do I really want to? Being on my own probably gives me more chances to grow as an adult, but at the same time I don't find myself very happy in Tucson. It's lonely and my days are filled with a whole lot of nothing. Days will just pass and I can't look back on them and say "I did this on that day and this on that other day." There's just...nothing. Getting a job would help with the nothing, of course, but I don't think it would solve the whole lonely problem. Yes, Kendra is down there and we live together. This oddly doesn't do much. It's not that I don't enjoy her company, it's just that there isn't enough of it. She can't help that. She works! Like I should be doing! Point is, despite having her around, I still end up feeling very alone whenever I'm down there.

I enjoy many aspects of Tucson and living on my own, but when I come to Phoenix I find myself so much happier. Things happen up here because there are a lot of people up here that I actually know. They have plans, do things, take me along with them when they do things. Like, I got a call the other day. It was Haleigh, who was out with mom at the time. They decided they wanted to go to Macayos and asked if I wanted to come. Which I did. And then there's dinner. Not every night, but some nights, we actually eat together. This has become a novelty for me.

I really don't know what to do. Do I leave Tucson to be happier in Phoenix and give up living on my own? Or do I stay in Tucson where I find myself depressed and alone a great deal of the time but grow more as an adult as a result of being on my own?

Methinks it will boil down to this: I'll waffle back and forth on the matter until July rolls around and, due to me not having a job, I'll end up moving back to Phoenix.

I don't want to say I'm moving back to Phoenix for sure, but I see that as a very likely possibility. Hopefully, I will use the advice and resources I was given at my appointment with this job search help place or whatnot this week and attempt to find a job in either city. Best case scenario, I will find a job at last. Worst case, I don't, move back to Phoenix, and start a pet sitting business here. I'm not all that distressed about moving away from Kendra. We aren't the kind of friends that drift apart when separated. Besides, I knew she wouldn't always be around. She doesn't want to stay in Arizona her whole life, she wants to go out and experience other places. She still wants to come back here and such, but more for settling down in the distant future than anything else. At least, that's my impression. Who knows what'll happen. Me? I like to stay put. Sure, it'd be interesting to live somewhere else and at times it's almost frightening to think that I could spend nearly my entire life in one city. But at the same time I find it very appealing, especially when that city is where almost everyone I care about lives. I have often thought that it'd make life a lot easier if our apartment was in Phoenix. That way, I wouldn't have to drive so long back and forth and Mocha wouldn't be afraid of the big drive between Phoenix and Tucson. She hates riding in the car with me now because that's the only time I tend to take her with me (I've been trying to change this with weekly trips to Himmel Park where we have to take our recycling and visiting campus and such).

If I left Tucson, I would definitely miss the park. I would miss having my own kitchen and fridge and pantry. I would miss the local coyote pack. I would miss the weather. It tends to be a bit cooler in Tucson. Plus, we seem to get more rain and storms down there. And I'd miss all the mountains. There are mountains around Phoenix, too, of course, but they don't tend to be as pretty as the ones in Tucson. I would also miss Tucson's goofy charm.

There are pros and cons for both cities, of course. I've been weighing them, trying to decide. As I've been doing this, though, I do take into consideration the fact that I've been living in this apartment for two years. That's two years that I've lived away from home and that's not counting the other three years during which I lived in the dorms. I have had some time to try to do this whole adult-living-on-my-own thing. I can't help but feel that I've hit a wall that I can't seem to break through and I wonder if maybe I need to take a few steps back before I can properly tackle it. I also consider the fact that I've been spending more and more time in Phoenix during visits. What was supposed to be a weekend trip has turned into a week long stay. I had to go out and buy Mocha more food and treats because I didn't pack enough to stay this long. And this is not the first time this has happened. I find myself remaining in Phoenix for longer than planned more and more often. So, yes, I am leaning towards moving back home. I haven't made any final decisions yet--and indeed, I think I should hold off on that for a couple more months until I'm absolutely sure--but yeah.

Phew! That was a mouthful, wasn't it? Or a...hand...full? Since I'm typing?
Heck, I dunno. I think I've been going on for an hour or something. Which makes it 3am. Awesome. =P

And then I got a haircut!

2010-04-24T00:49:00.001-07:00

I did. 'Tis wonderful. =D

I've also eaten a bit more leftover Easter candy than I should've and played Mario with Haleigh and Riss for a while. And took Mocha for a walk before that.

((I'm in Phoenix now, can you tell? Having to move back up here might not be a bad thing. Not that I ever thought it would be in the first place, but still.))

Also, I'm way behind on my Screnzy project, which is sad but...meh. I'll live. I do still hope to at least make it to 100 pages by next Friday, though, 'cause then I'll at least have technically won. Honestly, I'm not even sure D.E.V. (pondering a new title) will make it to 300 comic pages. But then, I thought that might be the case. If I'll have done anything this month, it'll have been at least getting a good chunk of the script out of the way. I'm a little stuck right now with what to do. I feel like I need to go back to Summerhill (the heroes of the tale are currently visiting the prince's castle in Briary) and see what Sir Garrick and Ryker are doing. Or at least what Kasha and her kids are up to. I don't really know what to do with that, though. At least, I'm not really sure how to do anything that will tie it into the rest of the story. I'm thinking that by now the two gents are rather desperate since they probably know where the heroes have gone by now (Garrick has informants, I guess?). Sooo...they'll need some sort of insurance policy that nothing terrible happens to either of them. Ryker, as it turns out, isn't really that bad of a guy. The situation has just sort of turned on him, that's all. Originally, he was just going to be an ass. But now he's pretty okay. Well, he IS Jedreck's older brother so I suppose it works. Sir Garrick is the real mastermind (there's a realer real mastermind actually, but I shall say nothing of that). I think they need to kidnap one of the children. Peliah. Peliah should be kidnapped and maybe Kasha should send word to the heroes if Sir Garrick or Ryker drops a hint that they're in Briary. Or something.

I'm not sure what kind of predicament that'll put the heroes in, though. It might separate Jedreck and Delphi, especially considering what's just happened to her. Mm, this may not make much sense to anyone else, but time passes much faster in this comic than it has thus far in Godspawn (it's still only the second day Farouk has been in Pergama; even where I'm at in the script, it's only three weeks later...or several days afterward, depending on which chapter I feel like working on).

Speaking of Godspawn, I think I might change the update schedule again. To: Updates!

Seriously. It wouldn't be a lie! I'd update once a week. Maybe more, maybe less. And I'd still aim for Saturday. So long as I keep track of what page I should be on each week, I'll know how far behind I am. Besides, my goal is only to update 52 times this year, not to actually update according to the schedule. The schedule is just what would make it easiest.

Anyway, I need to get up at 9am tomorrow, which I haven't been doing for some time now, so I need to stop rambling and go read or, I dunno, write a few comic pages for D.E.V. Funtimes.

Feeling Defective

2010-04-22T03:30:00.001-07:00

For whatever reason, I just haven't been able to concentrate on anything lately. I've stopped exercising, started oversleeping, keep forgetting everything, can't keep up with Screnzy, can't keep up with GS, I haven't done anything more with the whole pet sitting thing, and I just feel...broken.

It's a feeling I've had before. It's the feeling of being a failure and yet for some reason being unable to claw my way out of that hole. There's nothing fathomable keeping me there. The days just pass and I can't make myself change. Perhaps I'm not motivated enough. Perhaps what comes with failure just isn't enough to give me that push. Or perhaps I just never really learned to give a damn.

I've been feeling ugly again, too. And alone. There's just not enough of anything really. I don't feel happy enough or confident enough--and it feels like there's no one to talk to. Except I live with my best friend so you'd think that'd solve that problem, but it really doesn't do anything at all. Nothing seems to. And then when I go visit my parents' it feels like I can just forget everything for some reason. Not that there's anything to forget. I don't do anything with my days. They just pass me by and then I stay awake at night wondering what happened.

So I don't know. I highly doubt having a job would fix everything. It would just get me out of the house and earning some money. But sometimes I wonder if I should even bother with my own business down here in Tucson and that maybe I should just move back to Phoenix and try to start doing pet sitting there. That's a big part of why I'm so stressed, I know. Because I've only got a few months to get it all set up and to actually start and if I don't that means that I move back to Phoenix. I pack up all my stuff and my dog and, I dunno, rearrange my room up there? What if I never leave again? What if I'm stuck there for the rest of my life because I can't myself to do anything? It's sort of a big deal. But then, so is starting your own business and pouring all your money into it.

I feel like I can't handle this on my own. I've never done well on my own. I just sit there and waste time and never accomplish anything. At the same time, I can't fathom a way for anyone to help me. And the more and more I think about this the more I think that there's something wrong with me, that I'm some botched excuse for a human being. I mean, every mistake I make, even the tiniest ones, haunt me, sometimes for days. I can't seem to think the same way other people do. I feel like they're leaving me behind while I stare blankly at their dust trail. There are some things that are pretty damn obvious to everyone else, but I just don't understand without being explicitly told. I can't even talk right. I screw up a sentence several times over because I didn't take the time to wrap my mind entirely around how to phrase what I'm going to say. Which is why "winging it" never works for me. Unless I think about it sufficiently beforehand, I'm just going to falter and have no idea what to do.

And here I am, still awake at 3:30am, rambling pointlessly to the internet instead of, say, sleeping. Or even writing or drawing or reading. God knows, it's been taking me forever to get through Inkheart and not because I don't enjoy the story or the writing style. I just...don't read anymore. Despite the fact that I do nothing with my days, I don't feel compelled to pick up a book and read. I just vegetate, pretty much, and imagine what could be, but will never be since I'm apparently to fucked up in the head to do anything ever.

But I suppose my time is better spent doing this than spending hours awake in my bed thinking about it all and letting all the pent-up emotions keep me from getting any rest.

First day of Script Frenzy!

2010-04-02T03:59:00.001-07:00

I got onto page five (Word pages, not comic pages) and wrote 1,599 words. I've also discovered that while I wrote out a HUGE amount of info in my chapter-by-chapter plot summaries, it thankfully doesn't take nearly as many comic pages to work through it all. Which is as it should be. It's only comic page ten and the premise of the story is already set, although Delphi hasn't started to really hear Dev (the narrator) just yet. Ryker has already been introduced which means that his brother isn't far behind.

Oh, and I've found an antagonist. Well, okay, there were already two antagonists--three if you count the duke--but it's not really entirely their fault that what happened...happened. There's a chessmaster, in other words, though I don't know if I'll keep her around until the bitter end. I think so, as she could help fill a lot of otherwise still hollow events in the distance. The entire plot has not been written. I've gotten up to the point where Delphi seeks out her only living sister who is less than happy to see her.

I think that a good, slightly more solid goal for each day than 3.34 Word pages is 10 comic pages. If ten comic pages got me to the top of the fifth Word page when the very first one just says "bird's eye view of Summerhill" with two measly lines of dialogue, then I figure it's a pretty decent daily goal for Screnzy. It also means that I will, more or less, write up to 300 comic pages this month. I don't know for sure if that'll end the comic or if it'll end long before that, but that's a damn good chunk of script right there. Kinda makes me want to do it for Godspawn, if only so I won't have to worry about having an unfinished script for the chapter I'm currently drawing. That's actually not the case right now as chapter three has a finished script. It's the upcoming chapter four I'm worried about--although I shouldn't be since that one's either coming to a close or at least moving on to Event B. I usually break chapters up by certain events--both in comics and in prose--as I find that easiest. GS chapter one was Farouk's meeting with Vicious. Chapter two was the encounter with Dargan. Chapter three is the exception in that there are actually three or four smaller events. Small events are usually stuck in with larger events naturally because, well, the story wouldn't make any sense without them. E.g., Dardanus and Adelaide introducing Farouk to Pergama and the temple in chapter one, Farouk meeting the kids in chapter two, Vice and Cadmus crossing paths in chapter two. In chapter three it's: Vice and Vain's discussion, Adelaide's appearance (which feels like it needs to be more important than I think it actually is; curses!), the stuff in the next couple pages, and then the stuff in the last few pages of that chapter. Chapter four revolves entirely around the heroes. Dargan's subplot is introduced as well, but that's one of those smaller events that exists in orbit around the bigger one.

I've gotten completely off track. What was I talking about? Event B? Yes, that was it.

While I do usually break up chapters by significant plot happenings, sometimes the chapter gets extended and includes Event B, which by all rights should have its own chapter. But it doesn't. I can't think of a particularly good reason for Event B to not have its own chapter in this case, though, so...yeah...I think chapter four is a scant few pages away from being wrapped up.

Chapter five is mostly action and is going to take a crapton more time to draw than it will be to write. =P

This can't be healthy...

2010-03-17T18:27:00.002-07:00

Sour gummi worms for dinner! Well...I dunno. Maybe. These past few days I've been unable to eat regularly. I think it's the stress of getting serious about starting a pet sitting business. My stomach growls or I feel empty and I can't for the life of me fathom why, so I seek out what food I can find that doesn't require a lot of energy to make. This, of course, often results in junk food. Thus the gummi worms, which may or may not end up being my dinner.

There's a lot that goes into starting a business. You have to get licensed and insured and maybe even bonded, though that's really not necessary for a sole proprietor. Then there's the DBA to file (Doing Business As) if you're not using your name as part of the business' name. And if you're not then you have to open a separate bank account specifically for the business. There are contracts and legal forms to purchase and customize, a work radius to think about (I was thinking five miles), how long a single session should last (which is only really important if there's another session following it to get to), rates, holiday surcharges, which holidays to use that surcharge for, how many pets included in the base price, what to charge for every pet after that, a separate phone line/number, website setup and hosting, domain names, number of visits I'm willing to do per day, what each visit will include...

Needless to say, it's exhausting. And what if I start the business here but can't get any clients before my lease is up? Then I'll have to get ANOTHER business license and file ANOTHER DBA for Phoenix. And both of those together are looking like they're gonna cost around $200 or more. Then there's the insurance which is between $100 to $200. Those legal forms I need I've seen going for between $50 and $150. Web hosting is around $100 per year with domain names being roughly $10. If I hire someone to setup the website for me, that's another $100 at the very least (I do have someone in mind for this, so I actually know her prices) plus extra if I ask that person to create a logo for me as well since I have no ideas. And of course there needs to be some money put into advertising.

Listing that all out is discouraging me even more. But I do have money in my savings. And no one is hiring. I've pretty much given up on getting a job anywhere. Not that I was incredibly dedicated in the first place, I suppose, but still. I'd probably be pretty good at pet sitting, too.

It's the whole taking risks and spending large amounts of money thing that's really getting to me. There are very few arguments against why I should go ahead and do this. I can actually do a lot of free advertising (well, more or less) by going around to vet clinics and giving them business cards or posting fliers around the area or even just advertising on Craigslist regularly. Plus, I have very wonderful parents who I can move in with again if I end up failing miserably. So I'd be out a good amount of the money in my savings account, but I could always start again up in Phoenix for considerably less than it would take to set everything up in the first place AND I wouldn't have to pay for rent or internet/cable. Most of my food would be provided, too. Not that my parents don't pay for those things now, but up in Phoenix none of us would have to worry about that. So losing some of the money in my savings wouldn't be as bad since I don't depend on it to feed me and keep a roof over my head. Besides, what else would I enjoy doing even half as well? All in all, it seems to make more sense to just go for it.

Hm, I thought typing that all out would help relieve some of my stress. It really didn't. Today just hasn't been a good day overall. The water was out for most of the day for starters. And I only got five hours of sleep because when I went to go back to sleep for a couple more hours this morning, Mocha threw up a couple times and that more or less woke me up. Her retractable leash has been on the fritz, probably because she dragged it across the sand yesterday at the park when she decided not to heed my orders to "stay," which made her walks today less than pleasant. I feel emotionally and physically drained, frazzled, and more than a little grouchy.

As for the writing front--it goes not well. I haven't been able to push myself into writing anymore of TDD despite the fact that I was supposed to have finished the first draft by the 1st so I could start revising OND for two months. But no matter, I guess. I've decided to do Script Frenzy in April. I don't really do scripts, of course, but I do write the dialogue for Godspawn in a script format. I won't be doing GS, though. I'm writing out the plot for D.E.V. this month in preparation. Hopefully I'll be able to get through most, if not all, of the script via Script Frenzy. After that, May will be dedicated to finishing TDD. If that doesn't happen, well, tough. June is for revising OND. Possibly July, too. Once that's done, I'll work on getting through what's left of TDD.

...Yeah, still totally stressing over the pet sitting thing.

Consequently, this counts for my 1000 words a day challenge! Yay for me! But I actually have to write a little more to meet the criteria. It makes me sad that I haven't been doing it regularly--and yet I still keep that badge up, despite the fact that that's totally cheating. But if I'm not doing it through prose writing, I shall do it through blog posts!

Well...shit

2010-02-24T22:16:00.002-07:00

Sooo in the future there will be a character in Godspawn. A nonhuman character. A not even remotely human character.

Orcus! <3

He's essentially a really big demon dog that kills things for Vex. And loves Farouk. 'Cause Farouk needs to catch a break every now and then, so the huge hellhound thing begs for love and treats from him. :3

Anyway, I recently tried to draw him. That's when I realized something rather important--I can't draw dogs. >_o

So...yeah...this will be interesting. Luckily, at the rate GS is currently updating, Orcus won't be introduced until the end of the year or the beginning of next. And I really think I'm just going to make a dedicated effort to updating GS once per week this year (in other words, 52 updates total; I'm already behind by two, but I'm determined to make them up at some point), so I doubt that deadline is going to abruptly move any closer.

Still, it would've been nice to just be able to hammer out his design now. But whatever. I can work on that whilst I learn to draw dogs. The one thing that's really giving me trouble is the paws. I tried a tutorial on it and...well...I can draw something at one particular angle that LOOKS pretty paw-like now. I couldn't even begin to follow what the heck was going on with the other angles, despite the step-by-step instructions. ^^;

Aaaand...that's all I got tonight. =D

(Hey! This post has nothing to do with writing! D< )

Maybe It's Over

2010-02-20T23:31:00.002-07:00

With Gaia, I mean. I currently have 3mil+ in gold on the site, not counting the prize pot for the contest I'm about to go about judging, and I've recently realized that maybe I shouldn't bother hosting art contests anymore. I just don't have the drive for all the bumping and affiliating and everything. So then I wondered what I should spend all my gold on. Items from my wishlist? That idea no longer really appeals to me. Nor does getting avatar art. The things that kept me on Gaia for so long are wavering a bit. My interest in them is fading.

It may just be a passing feeling. It's happened before. But each time it happens it goes on for longer than the time before. So maybe it's finally happening for me and I'm beginning to wander away from Gaia.

I don't want all that gold to go to waste, though. I'm hesitant to give my items away because you never know and, quite frankly, I hold onto these things for a long time. I'll keep coming back to Gaia in those moments where there's an actual plot to keep me there and for events and everything, perhaps for lack of anything better to do. So I may not want to lose everything I've worked so hard for or dismantle my collection of mules. Methinks I'll dedicate some time to finding various artists and making commissions for my online persona/avatar person thingy and characters. I think I'll be far less picky about prices since I'll be doing it more to get rid of my money than to expand my collection.

I do love when others draw me stuff, no doubt about that. It's just a matter of finding the right venue to go about getting that art. Art contests have become more trouble than they're worth, sadly. Art request threads require similar kinds of effort, so I doubt I'd be very successful at keeping one afloat. I think...I think I'll get some art of the good guys from GS to start with. At the very least, it'll force me to make reference images for them. And I need to make a proper reference for my internet avatar person. Which is pretty much a cartoonified me with fox ears and a tail. And purple eyes on occasion 'cause making hazel eyes is kind of a hassle sometimes. Plus, y'know, purple eyes. How is that not awesome?

Anyway, let's see, updates on writing--nope, I really don't have anything to report. DD hasn't gotten much love from me this past week, nor has the next chapter of GS. I'm working on character designs for DEV, though, so I guess that's something. Not something that really involves writing, no, but something nonetheless.

Curses!

2010-02-15T22:49:00.001-07:00

I just realized today that I can't draw paws. I also can't draw animals in general, but at least I can sort of make them look enough like the animal I'm aiming for. Paws are just a complete disaster for me. I noticed this when I recalled that Orcus from Godspawn doesn't yet have a solid design, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Of course, I know nothing of canine anatomy. I guess it's a good thing that Orcus won't be popping up in the comic until chapter five, 'cause that leaves me most of the year to study doggy anatomy and the various interpretations of hell hounds. I dunno, he's like something between a domestic dog, a jackal, and a lion in my head. With horns of some kind. It's going to be an adventure figuring him out, I'll just say that.

The Devil's Due is coming along very slowly but very surely. I reread one of the older chapters again to see what exactly I felt I was missing in my writing nowadays. Because recently some things have felt a little off. Am I falling into my old habits again? I recall reading once that a writer must constantly be on guard and be routinely corrected or else they'll just keep making the same mistakes over and over again. Perhaps I let that get into my head too much, because I wonder if I'm not doing enough descriptions or enough scene or using too little or too much inner reflection. I used to do a lot of inner reflection in the earlier chapters. A LOT. It's no wonder that the first five chapters add up to about 25k words. >_o After rereading that chapter (chapter five, I think?), I went on to write chapter nine in a very similar fashion. There was very little scene and a lot of inner reflection. By Vera, no less! (ch. 5 also follows her POV)

I'm not sure if I like that. But as I was doubting myself I had to remind myself that, this being the first draft, I can make as many mistakes as I want to. The point is to get it done. So I just went on and wrote some scene for it and left it as is. I also occasionally get worried about how long it'll end up being. Which is ridiculous! I have to keep telling myself that this will not be the finished product, that I can cut out as much as I want during the editing process, that I'm still on the fence about whether or not I ever want to try getting this one published a shot, and, finally, that I can split it up into two or three pieces. *sigh* I really exhaust myself with all this frivolous fretting sometimes.

In other news, I've been thinking a lot lately about what I'm going to do after I'm done with TDD's first draft. Aside from edit OND, of course. I was thinking that maybe I'll take a break from writing prose for a while and work on the Godspawn Chronicles a bit more. I don't think it's a good idea to completely abandon my prose work, of course. I'd still be doing editing for OND (and later TDD), but I'd really like to put more work into writing as much for GS as I can. I really hate starting new chapters when I haven't even finished writing them out yet. It doesn't leave much room for rereading and editing, which is rather important for GS since the draft I have when I start drawing the chapter is IT. Tweaking can still be done, but major changes like adding or subtracting or replacing or completely rewriting pages really messes with me. I've tried it before when I realized at the last minute that I needed to do things differently. I thought I could do it quickly, but it turns out I can't.

So, basically, I'd like to spend the summer doing my daily words for GS. I think I might also work on the script or whatever you want to call it for another webcomic that I conceived around the same time as GS. I don't dare try to update two comics at once. I think that's too much for me right now. What I'd really like to do is just work out the entire plot and then write it all before drawing any of it. I'll consider looking for another artist to do it after that, but I'm not really committed to that idea. I'll probably just end up drawing it myself in my chibitoon whatchamacallit style. I dunno, I just think that style fits the comic rather well. I'd love to get that done by the end of the summer so I can start drawing it and putting everything together, but even then I won't be putting the comics up anywhere. I think I'll just draw them for a while and build up as large a buffer as possible before looking into putting them online. Maybe for a year or so. Yeah, a long time. It probably won't be colored, but I suppose I could afford to do that since I won't be putting them up anywhere for a good long while. It really depends. If it doesn't end up colored, I'll be doing colored title pages for each chapter and there will at least be shading. If it does, I probably won't bother with title pages.

I can at least talk about what the premise for the story is, though. The comic is called D.E.V. and I came up with it one day in that exceedingly boring class where Godspawn was also born. My professor mentioned something about one of the characters in the book we were reading being...well, I'll be honest, I don't recall what he said. Let's just pretend it was "bastard." The guy was being a bastard because he promised this ex-slave that he would free her children if she could pay for them. Well, he took it back and decided not to sell her children to her. Then my professor said he was being a bastard and, for whatever reason, I thought it'd be rather humorous if, all of the sudden, the character said: "Wait, actually, I'm being a bastard. Here, you can take your kids." Thus followed a series of fantasies in which a typical fairy tale was being told by a narrator and, at random, one of the characters reacted in turn to his commentary to the likes of "she's doing this because she's a bitch" and the character suddenly stopping and going "hey, I'm being a bitch, this ain't right, I'll just go fix it." And thereby confusing both the narrator and the character. It gets to the point where the character can actually hear the narrator talking instead of merely reacting as if his commentary had entered her thoughts and changed her actions. As I've recently realized, if the narrator was shedding a negative light on this now main character, she was likely supposed to be the bad guy in the fairy tale he was telling. So now everything's messed up and that kinda pisses off the narrator. He later gets the nickname D.E.V., an acronym for disembodied voice. Anyway, things that were supposed to happen because the main character was originally the bad guy come about, the narrator interferes by getting another character to save her, and then the story gets messed up even more. Thus follows a long, winding series of events all because the narrator couldn't let the now main character die for cruelties she never actually ended up committing.

Sooo there you have it. I can't really imagine how it could be told in any other media, aside from film/TV show, but I don't have the kind of dedication required to animate or direct anything like that. xD So a comic it shall be! In keeping with the fairy tale theme, the setting is, of course, medievalish and magical. There are also many influences from various tales and literature such as "the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker" (I don't even know what that's from, to be perfectly honest), Beowulf, Gawain and the Green Knight, etc. I find the whole thing greatly silly, so I think it'll be a lot of fun to write.

And now I have most effectively rambled on long enough. :)

10%

2010-02-10T02:44:00.001-07:00

Well, this isn't going all that well is it? On the bright side, since I've started I've posted two more chapters on DA and the story is actually, y'know, getting written. I dunno, I guess I just need to work up to the point where I can do 50k in a month again. Or rather, where I can write everyday again. I am working on it, but for some reason I always find myself thinking about it in the wee hours of the morning when I need to be sleeping so I can get my schedule back on track. I've even let my workout routine slip these past few days.

No use moaning about it, though. Try again tomorrow. Always try again tomorrow. :)

4%!

2010-02-02T03:11:00.001-07:00

Finally moving things along. Albeit, I changed my deadline again. So I'm doing FebNoWriMo since I couldn't manage to achieve my goal in January. That means 1786 words per day instead of 1667, which isn't all that much considering that my plan was and still is to write 2000 words per day. Anyway, I posted chapter six on DA earlier tonight. And now I'm debating what to do about OND. My original plan was to start editing it on the first of March. But now I'm behind on Devil's Due sooo...I dunno. I mean, there's a chance that DD will end within the next 50k words, but I highly doubt it. On the other hand, it's not like I really wanted this all to be some huge set in stone schedule anyway. There are no deadlines that HAVE to be met at this point. Just...writing. That's all. No big deal. It's pretty zen. xD But still, part of me will always want to have a plan. My mom says I get that from my dad, but I'm not as big on plans as he is I guess.

I suppose I could try to start editing OND in March regardless of what state DD is in at the time. I could just edit little by little and continue DD. Or would that be too much? I mean, my concentration is already split between Godspawn and Devil's Due. Quite frankly, with GS updating only once a week, I think it's safe to assume that I will always have to split my concentration between GS and whatever else I'm working on. Maybe doing a webcomic, writing a book, and editing another book will be too much. But I won't really know until I try, will I?

Hm, I suppose if I want to put a priority level on things I'd have to say that, since DD isn't finished yet, it gets to sit above editing OND. So if it comes down to it, I think I'll just write DD until its end and then move onto editing OND. Or just giving DD priority over editing OND each day. Doing more writing than editing until the writing is done. Or something.

Meh, whatever. So long as DD gets finished and OND gets edited before NaNo '10, I'll be happy. =)

Still 2%! Woo!

2010-01-31T01:40:00.001-07:00

Curses! Why can't I do this?

Bah, well, it's 1:30am. No time to do anything about it now, I suppose. Just gotta go to bed and try again tomorrow.

SO! For tomorrow:
1. Ten minute workout for that "6 Changes" thing.
2. Shower. My hair is gross. D:
3. Get the last page of GS ch. 2 up, uncolored for now.
4. 2000 words or more for Devil's Due.
5. Order that power locks module for my car.

I will have to resist the urge to color the GS page and play Sims 3. My legacy's second generation are all young adults. One is going to be a rock star, his twin is going to be a surgeon, and their sister is going to be something that involves maxing out the guitar and charisma skills. At some point, of course, their parents either have to die or somebody's gotta move out.

Also, I never did a "big" picture for January. Alas...I'm really not all that broken up about it. Try again next month! Start on Monday! Not tomorrow. I have stuff to do tomorrow. I've already covered that.

Ever noticed that the word "already" can be either two or three syllables depending on how you say it? Fascinating! :o

2%! Woo!

2010-01-19T01:46:00.002-07:00

I finally decided to update my counter thingy. Yeah, I haven't gotten very far. ^^; I've been in a kind of depressing funk as of late. Or rather, depression induced funk. Or what have you. I dunno.

On that note, I've decided to change my time limit for this "JanNoWriMo" thing. Instead of doing January, I altered it to go from Jan. 14th to Feb. 14th. Which is actually 31 days, but someone at some point told me I should finish on Valentine's day. My chart in Excel still only goes up to Feb. 13th, though. I started writing on the 14th and only got out 559 words. I then didn't touch Devil's Due until tonight at which point I've decided to suck it up and just do it. 2000 words per day is what I need. Better than the 2500 I needed to do each day for NaNo. I'm still going to call it JanNoWriMo, if only because...well...what else am I going to call it?

Anyway, I've just written a completely useless scene. It made me a little frustrated BUT that's what the first draft is for isn't it? So oh well, I'll just live with it for now. I've also discovered that writing five different characters at once is hard. At least one of them always gets shoved into the background and forgotten during any given scene. Once again, frustrating but something that first drafts are there for.

In other news, I need to color the current GS page tomorrow. As in, no excuses. I find that I often just don't bother to color a page that's already up, but damnit I don't want to add anymore uncolored pages to my to-do list! So it's getting colored. Tomorrow. Tough for me if I don't feel like it. I need to get up, write 2000 words, color the page, and start sketching Saturday's update. Also, laundry. I've run out of shirts to wear. =P

Depressed, Lonely, and yet...

2010-01-09T22:42:00.001-07:00

I still don't want to go to a potluck at 10pm. Even if there is a trampoline involved. There are some social interactions that I just find incredibly exhausting. Dealing with college-aged boys is one of those. Also, going to dinner at someone else's house where I usually don't like the food since I'm too picky to enjoy...well...anything, I guess. And everyone getting their drink on.

Right now, I'm just unhappy that I'm not still up in Phoenix. I'm unhappy that I can't seem to get into The Devil's Due. I'm unhappy that I can't find the motivation to so much as touch Godspawn Chronicles with a ten foot pole. I'm unhappy because nothing seems to make me happy anymore.

I think I really don't want to go to the potluck and be social because, while I usually make attempts to be social, ever since I got back from my parents' I've been depressed. I feel lonely but at the same time I don't want to be near people. I want to be alone and frustrated and not have to do anything like work on my webcomic or TDD. But I'm afraid if I start getting into that funk, I'll never come out of it again. Not that it's much of a stretch from where I already am. In fact, I'm pretty much already there. The only difference between where I am now and being entirely there is that I still have the stress of knowing I have stuff to do but not doing it. I get stressed when I think about just doing writing prompts for a month or going on hiatus for a little while. Or sending out job applications. I'm already convinced that no one wants me. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just not meant to get a job down here. Maybe I'm supposed to have to move back in with my parents. I dunno.

So far...

2010-01-03T18:24:00.001-07:00

I haven't really gotten anything done. =P Haven't started chapter six of TDD yet. It's a process, I realize. After thinking only about Tabitha and Christian for so long it's hard to start thinking about King and Vera, especially when it's been such a while since I last focused on them.

I don't know what to do about Vera's name. Veire was just as much her name first as it was mine since I made my Gaian account the same time I started crafting the character that would ultimately lead to TDD. I'm just not super excited about sharing a name that's become so attached to me as my nickname Becca with one of my characters. I think I might do something like have her name be Veirah, but her friends all call her Veire or Vee, much in the same name that most in the younger generation refer to me as Becca whereas I always introduce myself and am referred to by those older than me as Rebekkah.

King is also going to change a little. His outfit is just...no. I don't even recall why I was so obsessed with every minute detail of what each character was wearing or exactly how their hair was styled. Points for description, I guess. It's the Gaian influence that I really disapprove of, though. It's been a while, so I've been able to mentally move further and further away from the Gaia fanfic TDD was in its very first incarnation. I wasn't willing to move very far away from it even when I went through and rewrote it to be an original story. So the first five chapters are going to remain as they are until I get around to editing, which will no doubt be jarring in more ways than one. I feel that my writing style has changed since I last worked on it. I'm not going to be doing the same POV I was doing. Instead of having a clear and definite focus on only one character every chapter without straying AT ALL, I'm going to write it like I wrote OND. Third person omniscient, in other words. It's what I'm used to and often prefer to read and write. While TDD was like that in a more unconventional sense I just...really didn't like writing that way. I thought it was the only way I could tell the story because there were certain thoughts from certain characters in certain situations that would give too much away. I -think- I know how to write around that, though. But who knows, maybe OND is rife with instances where readers will find it jarring when the focus turns to another character. I believe I did it properly in at least most cases, but then, I haven't been away from it very long now have I? I'll find out whether or not that's true once I go back to revise it.

In my defense, at the time I was (re)writing those first five chapters, I was taking my second fiction workshop class and that's where I found out that I was apparently writing third person wrong. I have no older writing to really work off of aside from some snippets I have stored away on my external hard drive, but I have a feeling that the lesson she gave me on that only served to thoroughly confuse me. Suffice it to say, it was NOT third person omniscient she was talking about. But she somehow gave me the impression that most pieces were written in this form of third person and that a lot of people did it wrong. So I just...thought I was doing it wrong. And tried to change it. And then I realized some time later that, no, writing like that wasn't what I was aiming for. I preferred third person omniscient POV. So TDD was influenced heavily by that semester and I've decided I don't like the way the first five chapters are written anymore. In some chapters, it works. But now I won't have to focus on trying to give every mainish character their own chapter, as was my original intention, without sacrificing plot or development. Now the less main-ish characters will just have to suck it, 'cause Veirah and King are going to be at the center of most everything. I find this appropriate since, y'know, they're the main main characters. And King is the main main main character. xD

Anyway, I'm going to pretty much ignore the old descriptions I gave the characters. Everyone stays pretty much the same but Veirah's trademark orange suit...thing...is going to ultimately turn into a gym outfit of some kind that does nothing for her figure. Personally, I wouldn't want to fight in sweats, but my sweats kind of suck in that they're either too long in the legs so I'd trip over them or they're too high on the top and I keep having to pull them up since they continually fall down and result in some weirdness at the crotch which I find incredibly annoying. Which is why I sleep in my sweats. Luckily, Veirah doesn't have the same problems as I do. I might just get rid of the outfit entirely, of course. I no longer focus much attention on outfits the way I used to when everyone was telling me how descriptive I needed to be in school. I then became overly descriptive. It's like getting a tan: first I have to get sunburned, then when that heals it'll be tan.

Well, whatever. I guess that's my post for today. Perhaps.

Maybe not.

I got my oil changed today! For the first time in a year. Yeah. =P No one tells you how to maintain your car, just that it needs maintenance. They also never tell you how frequently. Then again, I'm oblivious to a lot of things that are common sense for most people.

I don't know how, but that statement somehow led me into a long ramble about my early teens and being bullied without realizing it and my issues with Selective Mutism and a very old fight that I shouldn't still be bitter about. Alas, I am. I'll have to work on that. Anyway, I didn't feel like posting all of that or keeping it around in any form that would just keep the angsty, somewhat angry feelings nearby. I often delete that stuff. It's like deleting the angst and the anger. All gone! =D

Pretty much what I was going to attempt to get at was the fact that I don't think I'll ever be completely rid of the effects of Selective Mutism. Interactive life things are never going to be easy for me, which is frustrating. It took some prodding from my parents and myself to work up the nerve to actually go to Jiffy Lube and get the oil change done. I had to take my little sister with me, which is what often happens. Life is so much easier to deal with when you've got someone standing next to you.

Then we went to Macayos and it was delicious. Such was my day. 8)

2010!!!

2010-01-01T01:01:00.003-07:00

((Copied directly from my DA journal because I'm lazy))
Happy New Years all! So, 2009 was funtimes. Lessee, I graduated from college, got a dog, initiated and went on a mini vacation without my parents for the first time, became an aunt for the third time in my life, and wrote the first draft of a novel. So, overall, a good year!

Except for the part where I'm unemployed. :/ On that note, on to my 2010 resolutions!

1. Get a job damnit!
2. Apply for at least seven jobs per week until I get hired.
3. Keep up with Godspawn’s update schedule. Seriously, it’s once a week, it shouldn’t be that hard.
4. Write every day. Preferably 1,500 words or more.
5. Finish the first draft of The Devil’s Due.
6. Edit One Night’s Day (also, think of a better title).
7. Edit The Devil’s Due.
8. Work out at least three times every week.
9. Take at least one class of some sort at the community college.
10. Make a new friend and/or go on a date.
11. Write the first draft of Windstruck.
12. Write the first draft of Windtricks.
13. Do at least one “big” picture every month.
14. Post in my blog at least four times a week. Every day is even better.
15. Attempt six WriMo challenges this year, counting November. Successfully complete at least three (January, May, and November for example).

You know what's kind of sad, though? I think I'm starting off the new year with a cold. Alas!

Stupid Not Nocturnal People!

2009-12-30T04:51:00.001-07:00

I just finished my novel at 97,635 words! In 54 days! WOO!!!

However, I did so at roughly 4:30am so...I have no one to celebrate with. This leads me to believe that more people should be nocturnal like me. Then everything would be happier and we could have cake and it would be delicious. Mmmyes...

The Things I Don't Think About

2009-12-29T14:33:00.001-07:00

My, that sounds like an interesting title for an interesting blog post. Or something else entirely. Either way, I came across some blogging tips today and it gave me pause. Why DO I have this blog? I really don't know. At first it was just about my life in case any family members wanted to know and then I thought, hey, this might as well be a writing blog, but at the same time that doesn't really fit.

I'm essentially just keeping an online journal that anyone can read, I suppose. Just like my real journals, there's no real theme or true direction that all the posts follow. I keep lists of random things, complain when I get down and just need to write it out, and then make strange little posts like this. Better than my real journals. I read through those and randomly find grocery lists, recipes for apple pie, and dozens upon dozens of math problems that must've meant something to me at one point but no longer hold any meaning whatsoever.

I think the difference between this blog and others is that I don't really care about getting a following. There are all these tips out there on how to get traffic and they all remind me of the advice that I sometimes get from my grandparents. It's good advice, whatever it is, but it's all based on the assumption that I'm doing something to make money and/or gain attention like some other members of my family. My grandma once told me that my uncle had sold a domain name to some big company and, when I told her I had a website, she did the "hm" thing. Meaning, of course, that she thought I was doing it wrong since this was eons ago and my website was called Harmony's Journal. She told me I needed to choose a name that people would want. By this I was mildly baffled. Only mildly because I realize she had no grasp of the concept of me having that website for fun and not gain, so I couldn't really blame her for the advice she gave me.

There's no doubt that I like attention, I won't lie. Everyone likes being paid attention to sometimes. When I do eventually get published (because I will, I'm determined), yes, I want people to take notice. Yet, at the same time, it's kind of odd. I'm really used to being ignored. I was once told that I have no sense of presence, so people are less inclined to notice me. I'm not entirely sure how that translates onto the internet, but I figure there are just so many people here saying so much that, unless you make a dedicated effort, no one is going to pay any attention to you. So I'm used to standing up and shouting out into the bustling crowd of people and simply not being heard at all. And I like it that way. I can say anything I damn well please and no one will bat an eye in my direction.

It's quite startling when someone acknowledges my existence. Some time ago, I put a cameo in my webcomic and neglected to tell the character's owner out of bashfulness. There's a man that runs a comic cameo tracking website who is part of the forum community attached to that person's webcomic and somehow one of his cameo tracking ninja folk found out and told him about the cameo. He then told the character's owner in the forum, which I found quite startling. Not because someone else had finally done the thing I'd been trying to work up the nerve to do myself, but because it meant that someone out there had to have actually seen my comic. Not just seen it, in fact, but read through it.

I'm gradually getting used to the idea, especially after the Secret Santa event in that same forum. My gift indicated without a doubt that the person who pulled my name had read through the brief archives of the Godspawn Chronicles. It's beginning to feel rather flattering, despite my misgivings about my own work. I try to stifle that feeling and tell myself that it's really not that big of a deal. After all, no one else seems to follow it. And I don't blame them, the update schedule is horrendous. I've decided I can no longer make promises about when the next update will come. Except for recently when I said there would be an update this Saturday after not updating these past two weeks. And, God willing, I will. But that's part of the official schedule, so I figure that doesn't count.

I've gotten way off track haven't I? And this isn't exactly the "little" post I called it way up there is it? Mm, oh well. Point is, I just found it interesting that I don't care to follow all of those little tips because I don't truly seem to want any readers. At the same time, though, it'd be nice, but for that to happen I'd have to somehow separate my writing life from my normal life. Which is simply impossible. So to hell with it! Everything that happens in my life influences my writing. It may stop me from writing or encourage me to write more or give me inspiration for something new I've never tried before. And this blog is writing, too. I called it Let The Monkey Type! for a reason, after all, so I don't know why I've ever had any misgivings about what I write here. Who cares? Years ago, a teacher told his class to write, write, write, whatever it was. Let the monkey type, he told us, and that's just what I'll do.

((That'd be a great note to stop on, but I feel the need to edit this and mention that there is actually a blog I follow wherein the author talks both about her life and her writing and has a number of readers. So it's not as if not separating life and writing will make a blog "unsuccessful." There's also the fact that I never actually advertise the existence of this blog, so of course I'm not going to have any readers, whether I want them or not. I'm sure part of me does, but the other part of me is terrified about posting something for others to see, especially when I either don't know those others at all or if they're family which is...strange considering the original reason for this blog. Hm. In any case, I should really link to this blog in my forum signatures. Not that I post all that much in said forums, but y'know.))

Lookie here!

2009-12-27T02:17:00.001-07:00

5 / 30 chapters. 17% done!

I found neatness! Neatness that I can modify to count chapters instead of words!

Mind you, I have only recently started paying attention to where I'm breaking up chapters in One Night's Day. When I finished NaNo, I believe I had just ended chapter five or six. Now I forget what chapter I'm on. All I know is that somewhere back in the beginning there's a couple 20 page chapters and closer to the end they become 2-10 pages long. I plan on fixing that as soon as I'm finished so that I can revise in chapters (e.g., this chapter should be moved here or this part of this chapter should be moved to the next/previous chapter or, even better, it's finally time to just sit back and pretty up the writing and I can measure my progress via how many chapters I've made pretty).

So this meter is actually for The Devil's Due. I think I left it off at chapter five. Maybe. I'll have to check on that. >_>

Either way, I just wanted to have it for the future and I find blog posts are an easy way to do that. Bookmarks are not. I bookmark too many things and then I forget about them and then I scroll through them all looking for something that I DO remember only to be frustrated by all the random crap I bookmarked that's making that something difficult to find.

So...yeah...

Well that's just sad

2009-12-27T00:04:00.001-07:00

I started writing around 4 or 5pm today, got to 1000 words--and then got stuck. Not because I don't know what's going to happen next, but because the situation I've put Christian in apparently has sexual undertones. Or something. He's chained to a bench and another man is doing his creepy slow, calm, and silent thing while holding a crowbar. This Vulture is...very different from other violent people my main characters have come across. His like...like...a villain. As in really flippin' scary. I wrote monsters in the beginning of this story and they haunted me when I took the dog for her midnight walks or when I walked out into the darkened front room in the middle of the night to get a drink. But this guy is a real villain. I'd say it's a shame he appeared so late into the story, but facing facts, he just wouldn't be as good as he is right now if he'd made any earlier appearances. I kept the Vultures largely unseen and only vaguely referenced up until now, but I have yet to know if that actually works. I'll leave that for future revisions to decide.

What's sad, though, is what happens when I come upon a situation like this. Not all scenes with sex or previously unseen sexual undertones (I did NOT plan on any being in this scene) cause this kind of writing block. What it really depends on, you see, is the time of the month. For I am a woman and I have a cycle. During every other time of the month, I'm perfectly fine with these kinds of things. PMS, menstruation, and that brief period of time when I can consider myself totally and completely normal? Psh, whatever, I keep writing. But not when I'm ovulating.

THAT'S the sad part. Yes, that's right, I get stuck when I try to write anything even remotely sexual whilst ovulating. Why is this you ask? Because to ovulate is to be in heat. So every sex scene causes my mind to wander off in incredibly distracting directions. Yeah, I pretty much couldn't finish writing because I got distracted by fantasies of the Vulture having his way with Christian. Now I must attempt to get through those last 500 words of the day without my mind splashing around in the gutter. Bad mind! Bad! It's filthy in there!

Taking a break

2009-12-26T00:42:00.002-07:00

Truly. But only for Christmas and Christmas Eve. Tomorrow (or later today depending on how you look at it) I'm getting back on that horse. I'm at a really depressing part in the novel and it's not the sort of way I wanted to be spending my holiday. Could I have written something else? Certainly. But did I think of that in time? Of course not. Well, that, and I was dozing off on Christmas Eve so writing wasn't going to happen. I didn't want to depress myself with what Tabitha and Christian are going through nor did I want to go ahead and write it while tired just to end up waking myself up more, thus becoming unable to fall asleep afterward.

Anyway, Christmas this year was nice. We had waffles that to me tasted like french toast, as has become the tradition in recent years, opened our Santa gifts downstairs, and then I got to go on a scavenger hunt of sorts in order to find my present from my big sister Emily who pulled my name in our Secret Santa drawing. The best thing about the whole day? Our parents got a brand new 40" flatscreen TV, which we hooked up to the Wii, and we got the new Super Mario Bros. game among a plethora of other wonderful and in some cases pricey gifts--yet we of the younger generation all ended up becoming completely engrossed in swatting a balloon-ball thing through the air at each other in the kitchen. The simple toys are always the best. xD

Excited!

2009-12-22T03:45:00.001-07:00

So tonight (this morning) I realized that I really don't have to catch up on that day's worth of writing I still have yet to make up for. Why? Because tonight I wrote the end of the second-to-last story arc. Tabitha and Christian have just arrived back in their sector where Clayton is waiting to discipline them for the naughtiness they committed up on the surface (using the internet?! le gasp!). This event and the acts they committed while up top lead directly into, you guessed it, the final story arc!

All right, I admit, you never know how long it'll take you to get through something, much less how many words that part of the story requires. But honestly? I can't see the final arc taking much more than 10k. Heck, I don't even think it'll take that many words! I have a feeling it'll be between 5k and 10k.

Well, we shall see, we shall see. Either way, I can't wait to be able to say that I've finished (the first draft of) my first novel. :3

Happy Again

2009-12-14T02:15:00.001-07:00

Pause for eyeroll due to my mood swings. Kendra thinks I'm pregnant. xD

Anyway, I was behind by about 600 words, but I effectively caught up tonight before it became a problem and started growing. I also have the next page of GS all ready to be scanned and colored for its late Monday night update, did a little Christmas related GS chibi, and sketched/inked my Secret Santa pic for the Milk in the Pantry Santaness. I was worried at first because the style of the comic is so unique. The designs of the characters can't...really be translated into other styles. It's hard to explain without giving away who's name I got. Point is, it came out looking totally adorable and I'm quite proud of it. Now all I have to do is get it scanned and colored. Gonna be shading it since I need to bite the bullet and just start doing that again, within my own comic and on extraneous pics like the Secret Santa thing. Plus, it's a gift! I want it to look its best, y'know?

Soyeah, happiness over here.

Tabitha went insane again tonight. Sometimes I really hate writing the voices in her head and sometimes I really love it. Tonight was kinda in between the two extremes. The voices didn't get too much love, just a paragraph or so worth of homicidal thoughts and other such things. Poor Tabitha.

But! This marks the end of the filler stuff that I felt needed to be added where I wrote "times passes" in the big ol' plot outline I have in OneNote. There are two major events after that: Christian and Tabitha visit the surface for a few hours and do significant stuff, then there's pretty much one little thing, and then the Vultures come into major play. One in particular who interrupts Clayton's attempts to be an ass, as usual. That event marks the downward spiral leading to the end of the novel.

I'm super fantastically excited. x3 I've never written anything this long before and, yeah, okay, a lot of it is crap. But editing will fix that. Overall, I think the story is pretty solid and quite fascinating. Plus, I didn't think I'd be able to finish this thing until the beginning of March. Now I'm crossing my fingers for the very plausible hope that I can finish by the end of December. Or at least within the first few days of January. It really depends on how much time they take to get through the last two arcs. The little buffer event in between the two will take maybe two pages before leading them directly into the beginning of the final arc. I have no idea how long that'll take.

As I sit here thinking about it, though, I realize that I might be able to finish by Christmas. Oh, I'm not going to try to rush it so that I do. No, certainly not. I want to take as much time as I need for the ending. But it's quite possible. Now that'd be a great Christmas present. ^_^

Depressed Again

2009-12-12T23:18:00.001-07:00

I didn't update GS today because the page isn't finished and it's kinda hard to do that here at my parents' house. I did finally get an entry for the GS art contest over on Gaia, though, which was nice. And yet, at the same time, it was just a painful reminder of how very much I fail at life. Also, I applied to a total of four openings at two different Petcos and three job listings on craigslist which will probably turn out to be scams or entirely uninterested.

I haven't started my Secret Santa piece yet, but I do have until the 23rd to send it in, so I guess that's not horrible. Speaking of Secret Santas, that's what we're doing in my family this year because no one has any money. We finally got around to organizing it and picking names. I looked at my person's list. They're...probably getting a gift card. Their significant other did their list, so unless they announce something about what else they want, they're getting one or two gift cards. Probably two $25 ones, as our limit is $50 and the point of the thing is to a) try to save people money and b) get your person something relatively big. We can still get anyone else presents if we want to and obviously we still need to get presents for those not participating in the Secret Santa, but the main focus of our efforts is supposed to be on that one person. So yeah.

We were talking about this earlier, after I'd brought it up to my older sister since I figured it'd be this weekend or it wasn't happening, and we discussed how it would be done. We decided to do it as individuals as opposed to couples since my little sister and I are not part of a couple. Except for the fact--and our older sister mentioned this--that Haleigh actually IS in a couple. Just not a couple that is married and therefore part of the family, though the concept of including Cody in this was clearly a possibility since he and Haleigh have been dating for almost a year (one year exactly on...January 2nd, I think she told me?).

So I was briefly reminded of the fact that I am a "single people."

It's not so much being alone that depresses me as just...not feeling like I'm successfully living the adult life that I wanted to live. I've long ago decided that once I hit 30 if there are no prospects AT ALL on the male companionship front I'm just going to have kids on my own. I suppose that has the added benefit of having no one to tell me they don't want to name a son Kyran James. I adore that name. And now that we've got a Keegan Klandrud, ain't no one gonna convince me that Kyran Klandrud would be a bad idea! Both names sound fine, anyway, so meh. It's just the whole aversion to using a name starting with the same letter as the last name thing. But that's already been done in my family now, so I no longer have any doubts about giving that name to a son. I might consider Kairan Jean or Keiran Jean for a girl, though, if I find myself lacking in the boy department. I find the male version much more attractive, however.

I dunno. I guess it's the combination of not having a job by now when I was so sure I would and then the fact that I've never even been in a relationship before. Plus, not counting Kendra, everyone else around me seems to be in semi-serious or at least long term relationships. I feel like I'm falling behind. First I was the fattest of my siblings (and arguably the least attractive, though I wouldn't label myself as ugly) and now I'm the only one who seems to be perpetually alone. There are other things, like feeling like I have no friends or having trouble just living normal, everyday life. But some of my siblings have these problems, too, so it doesn't make me feel as out of place amongst them. Another thing adding to it all is that, for my profile on the NaNo website and again just recently for a NaNo spin off where the goal is to do six NaNos in 2010 I was faced with listing my hobbies. Of course it's optional in both cases, but I went to do it and, though I didn't really think much on it the first time around, the second time I just sat there looking at what I had, feeling incredibly empty: writing (duh), reading, webcomics, and procrastinating.

I'm an incredibly bland person, aren't I? I swear, there used to be more. It always felt like there was more. But nothing really occupies my time. I'm not even reading anything right now. I write every night (or at least every other night), keep up with the webcomics I follow, and once a week I update my own webcomic. You have any idea how much time that takes up out of each day? Not very much. Which I guess will be a good thing for when I get a job, but...it feels like there should be more to my life than that. Many family members asked me what I'd been up to lately when I saw them today at Keegan's baptism. I had nothing to say besides "erm, well, I made cookies earlier this week."

Is that really all my life has been up to this point? If that's the case it's no wonder I constantly create fictional worlds inside my head all the time. Why not live vicariously through my characters since I apparently can't lead a life worth living on my own?

I'll probably feel silly for writing this tomorrow morning, mind you, but it's been coming and going quite a bit over the last few weeks so I'm sure it'll be back again soon enough.

Wait, what?

2009-12-10T01:10:00.001-07:00

Well, that 3000 words per day thing worked out better than I had hoped. When I went to input my word count into Excel tonight, I realized that I was less than 500 words away from catching up to my daily word goal. So I just kept going and voila! All caught up!

Mind you, I have no idea how I managed that. It was supposed to take me three days of 3000 words.

I guess that just goes to show that if you ignore all the numbers and just keep writing a little ways past your goal each day...something...something, something. I don't really know where I was going with that. I'm tired. And now I'm behind on this week's GS page and the Secret Santa thing I'm doing this year. Curses.

Success!

2009-12-09T03:39:00.002-07:00

Well, not total success. I haven't caught up to where I should be just yet, but I did write 3000 words tonight and plan to do so for the next two days, which should put me at roughly 70k come Thursday. Or, more accurately, when I wake up on Friday. I really need to make a habit out of writing earlier in the evening. Regardless, I should be at 69k at that point, so if I can keep this up for the next few nights, I'll be all caught up.

I've also realized that this is pretty much a writing blog as opposed to a blog about my life in general as it was originally intended to be. Not really sure when that happened, but the name does rather suit the theme so, y'know, whatever works. I'm not particularly fond of limiting myself in such ways, but I seem to do it subconsciously, so hopefully admitting to this fact doesn't have any negative effects.

Now that I've said that, of course, I'm sure it will. I hate it when I jinx myself.

Oh noes!

2009-12-06T16:52:00.001-07:00

I'm falling behind in my word count goal. I didn't write on Thursday, wrote reeeaaally late at night on Friday (technically it was Saturday morning at that point), and didn't write last night. I did catch up a little on Friday from not writing on Thursday, but not entirely. I've got 1500 words to do today and at some point I'll need to make up those missing 2334 words. Not necessarily today or tomorrow or whatnot, but I really hate having to spread it all out and adding it into my daily word count goal. I did that for NaNo on someone's suggestion. Yeah, it kinda sucked.

Not that just up and churning out a crapton of words in a single day or two doesn't also kinda suck, but it seems to be my way. That's how I did things in school and got B's on all my papers. I can only imagine the grades I would've gotten if I'd actually written them all ahead of time and had a chance to edit them. Except for those mini papers for that one Classics course I took. But they were barely three pages and a lot more straight forward than most college essays, so they didn't really count.

Stories are the tough thing. With essays it's just doing the research to support your point, writing up a proper outline, and then basically filling in the blanks. Stories are...different.

Which is not to say I didn't totally do the same exact thing for them when I was in school. xD It's always funny afterwards, but at the time it was pretty stressful. I'd get down to the day before I had to have 21 or so copies ready to hand out the next day and I'd spend all of my classes that day scribbling madly in my binder, praying that I'd reach the required amount of pages in time and that it wouldn't be utter crap. Luckily, I mull plots over in my head quite a bit before even writing those down, so I always had some sort of guide to reign in those insane scribbles.

I still got B's. I'm still baffled by it, but I always got B's on all of my stories. Mind you, those first drafts were nothing like my current novel's first draft. I was all too aware that the first draft was going to be what my classmates and instructor was going to see the next day so it was more refined and polished than a normal "shitty first draft" as they say. What was always rather discouraging about getting B's, though, was the fact that my revisions for the end of the semester never seemed to do any better. They were always different, but at the same level as the original draft.

Yup. Different but the same. That totally makes sense. xD I sometimes wonder if that's all I'm capable of, if I never really learned how to properly revise a workshopped story. I believe I can revise a story by myself before anyone else has a chance to comment on it. I've done it with the first few chapters of Devil's Due several times and each time the story does stay the same, essentially, but I feel like the telling of it has improved somewhat. So I think I can do that, it's just a matter of taking the critique I get from others and using it effectively, not somehow managing to follow the advice I get that I think will be helpful and yet at the same time churn out something that's not being told any better from one draft to the next.

I realize that grades probably don't mean too much with stories, but rather the feedback I get from one draft to the next. But that doesn't change much either. Well, didn't. I'm not in school anymore so no more stories being graded. :P I just have never felt that my short stories ever actually improved. Maybe Miss Indecision (which is a terrible title, by the way) and The Roommate did a little. Maybe.

On the other hand, that could just be my insecurities talking. Either way, I seem to have gotten completely off topic. Rambling isn't the best thing to do when the dog is waiting for her evening park walk and her dinner. Which she'll probably snub, as usual. My roommate spoils her by putting Parmesan cheese in with her kibble. I'm the mom, though, so spoiling isn't allowed to come from my end.

Not on a regular basis, at least.

NaNoWriMo OVER!

2009-12-01T14:49:00.001-07:00

Which saddens me. Pretty soon, the forums will start to empty and the community will disintegrate until next year when the madness starts again. My novel's not finished, though, so I intend to continue on with it, starting with my goal to reach 100k by midnight on New Year's Eve. It's going pretty well so far, but I only just started on Saturday, so y'know. Hopefully I can keep it up since I only have to do 1500 words per day to reach that goal. After that, I guess I'll just keep going with doing 50k in 34 days until I finish. I have no idea when that'll be. March? Maybe?

Well, either way, it's time to start putting together my Christmas wish list and go out shopping for everyone else and decorate the tree, which we put up last night, and hang the stockings and bake cookies and do gingerbread houses with the family and all the while try to keep writing my novel. And working on GS. I think I'm eventually going to have to face the fact that, yeah, I used to be able to do two updates a week, but I can't anymore. Back then, I often just did three or four panels per page. Pages are starting to get more involved now, though, with more panels to depict more complicated scenes and...yeah. Methinks updating just once a week for now is the best option. The story will be told at a much slower pace, but such is life. At least it'll be told and it's good practice for working on something for an extended period of time. As in, years. Albeit, I'm hoping to forge through the overall outline within the next month or two to get to the end. Then I want to try to get through as much of the actual writing as possible so hopefully sometime relatively soonish I'll be more or less finished with the script. Editing will come as I go through it and read over it, but for the most part it should be, at the very least, hammered out in detail. That'll probably take me a good few months, though, and will be done on the side while my novel is getting written.

Once I finish the first draft of my novel, I'm hoping to go back to The Devil's Due and work on that as much as possible. I have no idea how much I'm going to be able to work on it whenever that time comes since, God willing, I'll have a job by then, but I'd really like to just focus on writing the first draft of that for a couple weeks. Shouldn't be too hard. But the next part would involve me trying to edit my novel at the same time since I'm not too keen on the idea of just stopping all work on TDD. I'd prefer to get the first draft out of the way by next November so I can work on Musette's first (and maybe second, if I find the time) story for NaNo 2010. If all else fails, though, I'll finish TDD for it instead. Obviously, I'm going to take a break from editing my current novel for the duration of next NaNo so I can focus entirely on cranking out another first draft, whatever it ends up being, but I doubt I'll be done editing it at that point. I want to be beyond the second draft (i.e., the readable draft), of course, and I don't think it'll take me all year to make that. Sooo...I'll be wanting to get it critiqued at that point and therefore be working on making draft three. Then I'll have to get THAT critiqued when I'm done with it and make a fourth draft. Maybe I'll be happy enough with it by that point. I'd like to hope so, but I guess you never really know when you have to sit back and just stop until you get to that point. I won't fool myself into believing any work of fiction is ever truly finished, but it'd be nice to--if I still feel the novel is worthy of publishing--send it out for agents to look at. I want to self publish TDD before that, though, as I see it more as my first novel than my NaNo novel. After it gets a good rehaul. There are some drastic changes that I'm already planning out for the second draft.

I'm trying to comfort myself by reminding myself that I have the rest of my life to do all of this, which worked before since...well...I do. But I made the mistake of looking at acceptable word counts for new authors (80k-120k) and read that anything higher will just plain not be looked at, which has made me worried for no good fathomable reason. My novel is going to be long, yes, but the editing process is going to take a lot of crap out of it. Plus, I'm not even done with the first draft yet! I shouldn't be worried about length until, like, 2011!

I'm silly sometimes. =P

More Goals

2009-11-29T01:23:00.003-07:00

First goal was 50k. Well, I got there. My new goal is to get to 100k by midnight on New Year's Eve. After that, it'll be 150k by midnight on...some other day! And then, finally, 200k. This all, of course, depends on where the story takes me. 200k total is just an estimate. For all I know, I might finish the story long before that! In which case I won't go for 200k 'cause...well...that'd be silly. The point is to get the novel finished now, not to get as many words as possible. I even made a bar graph to calculate where I should be each day and where I actually get each day in Excel. They have one on the NaNo website and it was great motivation, so I've decided to keep my own until the first draft is finished.

Then I'll have to edit. Oh boy. D=