Enthusiastic Failure » Writing

50K or Bust

Shashi — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:50:17 +0000

It’s NaNoWriMo 2011! (and has been for a week i am slow to blog when i am busy novelling okay)
and seriously
i’m going to edit this one
honest
even though i didn’t edit the last seven
this time
for real

(Actually i think i have finally figured out a writing groove which works for me. So i may very well have something capable of being edited once this is all done. As opposed to all the other rubbish-bits of the past seven years.)

Completely unrelated: i finally got ‘round to reading The Shining, even though i don’t like Stephen King’s writing style, mainly because i do like horror and it’s a Horror Classic and thus must be read eventually.
It actually has a really good plot (much better than Cujo at any rate) but i still don’t like King’s writing style.
Reminds me of the moment in my Lit of Evil class when Collins made sure to tell us he’d heard King reads Elements of Style at least once a year, yet we never read any King stories in Lit of Evil. I strongly suspect it’s because his plots are catchy and his grammar is perfect but his writing is otherwise meh.
Also how the hell did Grady not accidentally… do the same thing Jack accidentally did. /am trying to avoid spoilers/ It seems in the process of hatchet-murdering he’d have forgotten the same thing Jack forgot with similar results.

See more progress on: Self-publish a book

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Reason #4 why ebooks are better than dead-tree books

Shashi — Sun, 29 May 2011 16:04:12 +0000

…one of my shelves just collapsed under its own weight. never heard of a Kindle spontaneously imploding because it had too much stuff on it. No related posts. No related posts.

halfway through first character sheet:

Shashi — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 01:03:32 +0000

…i am apparently writing straight-up religious anarchy.

See more progress on: Self-publish a book

i’m just starting a new book already.

i’m just starting a new book already.

Shashi — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 00:34:39 +0000

i wanted to edit my last one but it would require rewriting at least half of it… at which point it hardly counts as ‘editing’ any more. also i don’t like it that much. if it were a book i was reading i’d probably only read it once and never again. it’s hard to convince myself to put effort into a book i only mildly enjoy.

and my second choice as far as Books I Have Already Written is… okay, pretty good actually, but i want to change the whole theme of the book which, again, pretty much means rewriting more than the good-but-not-great plotline is worth.

soooo. writing a whole book outside of NaNoWriMo. WILL THE LACK OF PRESSURE ALLOW ME TO WRITE SOMETHING WHICH DOES NOT NEED TO BE RE-WRITTEN? OR WILL THE LACK OF DEADLINE MEAN I NEVER FINISH THE DAMN THING?

gah, writing crap which had to be completely rewritten before it was presentable was so much easier in high school, where the longest thing anyone else would ever see was only ten pages. maybe i should switch to short stories.

See more progress on: Self-publish a book

Of Dragons and Dvorak

NaNoWriMo 2010

Shashi — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 21:32:12 +0000

I kind of hate my current WiP. But that may be because i’ve worked on it to the point where i just can’t stand it and need a break.

Said break apparently taking the form of mashing out a whole new novel :P

(remainder cross-posted from my gendertumblr)

…i’m gonna ramble about my NaNoWriMo main character, because NNWM is my current obsession and it starts in just a few days and i am totally unprepared and AAAAHHH.

Soooo, my MC: this is the first time i’m intentionally writing a neutrois main character. It’s pretty easy to write binary characters because, well, everyone’s done it so that’s what i read. I’ve never read anything with a neutrois main character. Or even a neutrois human minor character. So i’m making one my damn self, as opposed to my normal butch-girl or femme-boy main characters.

And i’m having a hell of a time figuring out how i’m going to do this. I haven’t even decided if i want to write in third-person or first-person yet. I’m leaning towards first-person, just because the storyline seems it’ll work better that way, but then i have to find a way to make it clear MC is neutrois without being blatantly obvious about it or going into ‘as you already know, Fellow Character’ exposition.

Ah well. This is what editing is for.

In the meantime…

Main Character Info:

Name: Alex. Maybe. Alex is the best name i’ve come up for so far, but it was a name i was seriously considering taking for myself once, and i’m trying to make as few commonalities between the MC and myself so i don’t end up with a Mary Sue character. I like Phoenix, too, but it doesn’t seem a name the MC would willingly use. Maybe Jackie or Erin.

Occupation: Undecided. Zir twin’s a professor but Alex zirself has… um… issues with authority. Enough so i doubt zie would even manage to get a college degree, much less become a teacher. I’m leaning towards taxi driver.

Age: Two hundred twenty-one. Did i not yet mention this is a vampire story? (No. No sparklevamps. NO. Think less Stephanie Meyer, more Sergei Lukyanenko.)

Personality: The sort of person to try to overthrow the government with nothing but a ragtag team of werewolves and technomages.

See more progress on: Self-publish a book

So many scripts, so little time…

Shashi — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 22:24:10 +0000

Screnzy starts in a week and i have yet to decide what i’m actually writing :P

I have a novel from a few NaNos ago which i think would be better as a film or graphic novel.

And there’s the webcomic, for which i’ll have to do more scripts anyway – but a hundred pages? In one month? That’s probably going to end up as more than a year’s worth of comics. Seems a bit overkill.

I have an idea for an American Frost graphic novel, too, which i might post for sale or as a donor gift someday, but i want to spend some more time working on AF canon before i write it. So if i do anything AF, it’ll be the year+ of comic scripts.

Or i might do something entirely new and different, in which case i have no idea what i’m doing yet. Probably break out Tarot for Writers and my Russian tarot deck and just see what happens.

…eh. I think i’m leaning towards the massive amount of AF scripts. If i get bored of it i can always switch to the AF book.

See more progress on: Successfully complete Script Frenzy

The Real Reason I Hate Editing

Shashi — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:33:53 +0000

I’ve done up to Week 5 in Pace and Kyeli’s 52 Weeks to Awesome course. Week 5 being ‘Introduction to Introspection’ – basically getting inside your own head and figuring out why your subconscious is messing with you.

So i’ve spent most of the week tinkering around with things i’m having trouble with – like my deep hatred of editing. Can’t exactly finish a novel without editing it, and it’s the thing i’ve gotten stuck on every time.

Discovery? I really like my stories.

‘Duh’ moment, and seemingly has nothing to do with my dislike of editing stories. Except i don’t like the first draft so much. I like the idea, i liked writing it, and now i just want the whole editing process to be done with so i can have my nice shiny story already.

Apparently the i just want the whole editing process to be done with bit is the only bit to have been bubbling up to a level of consciousness at which i actually notice it. Taken out of context, it’s very easy to mistake ‘i just want this to be done’ with ‘i just don’t want to do this any more.’

I wonder if editing will be any easier if i just start constantly reminding myself my ‘hatred’ of editing is really impatience…

random other stuff

The anti-global-warming argument: What if we’re creating a better world for nothing? (and the older, actually-a-post-instead-of-just-a-comic What I’d Say if I Was Wrong About Climate Change) And, for those who genuinely enjoy yelling at the radio, Breakpoint News had their own bit of AGW this week.
Why Piracy Works flowchart – i’m not one to condone piracy just because the legal version is mildly annoying, but yeah. Pirates = strip out everything unnecessary in order to shrink file size; MPAA = cram as much ‘we need to increase profits and decrease piracy as much as possible’ crap in as they can fit on the DVD.

Shashi 7, Real Life 0

I Blame NaNoWriMo

Shashi — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 18:25:50 +0000

I submitted the first chapter of Angels Unaware to Critique Circle for feedback.

Crits thus far can be summed up as ‘Cut this, cut this, this is okay but not really necessary, cut this, and… okay, you just. um. have a tendency to overwrite in general.’

I imagine overwriting is a common problem amongst NaNoers. ‘Dammit i’ve been writing for three hours, i haven’t slept in two days, and i’ve still got fifty words to hit today’s word count… fine! Make the President’s speech longer!’

NaNoWriMo 2010

Writing Cards

Shashi — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 05:14:31 +0000

At some point during NaNoWriMo i heard of Tarot for Writers, which uses tarot cards to brainstorm character personalities and plot outlines. I’ve been lusting after it ever since and finally gave in and downloaded the Kindle version last night and have been drawing cards for my novel characters (especially the borderline random and unrealistic minor ones).

It’s far more oriented towards writers who are just starting their novels than those who have already written one and are trying to edit, but it’s still proving useful. At the very least it’s prodding me to be a bit more creative – most other tarot spreads, if they touch on personality or backstory at all, do so in the sense of how it all affects a bigger problem. The Tarot for Writers spreads don’t have the whole ‘real live person with a backstory you can’t change on a whim’ limitation.

It has awesome plot-outlining bits, too. I’m going to go nuts with this next November… i’m already having trouble resisting the urge to play around with the various plot spreads. Maybe by the time i’m done pulling cards to work on a whole small cult worth of character design the novelty will have worn off a bit.

random other stuff

I somehow suspect i’m going to end up with a copy of Out of the Box & On the Page before i’m done editing. Right now i need more editing advice than idea-generating advice, though.
The ‘post-literate’ Cat and Girl strip makes me giggle – though i admit to being on the pro-spelling side. And the comments below have devolved into pro- vs anti-spelling debate of most wondrous form, including at least one impromptu mini-poem.

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2010: Year of the Writer

Shashi — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 13:08:04 +0000

Non-art-geeks may not already know about this, but every year around this time the major colour companies declare a ‘colour of the year’ (ie, Pantone has declared 2010 to be a Turquoise year.)

Of course, experts can’t even discuss straight data without arguments cropping up over interpretation of said data. Experts announcing a colour naturally ends with all the colour nerds playing with entirely different colours.

Can the leading color authorities really forecast a color trend anyway? I mean, if you’re the most influential voice in a field and you forecast something… You’re not really forecasting, you’re telling people what they want. We don’t think people want to be told what they want. We want you to tell us what you want.
Announcing a single color to represent the entire year is a lot like announcing a single song to represent the entire year. Yes, there will be a clear top grossing or breakout song of 2010, but that song can’t really speak for every person. Nor can a single color. BUT, every person can speak for their own color of 2010… and that’s what we want you to do.
- COLOURlovers

So COLOURlovers (…and actually probably a few other colour-sites, too, though COLOURlovers is the only one i visit often…) set up a choose-it-yourself Colour of the Year page. Right now the most popular is Hope for Tomorrow Orange – my year, however, is shaping up to be more As a Kid Yellow.

I love it. Yellow’s not my favourite colour, but it matches my plans for the upcoming year so perfectly. Blue is too mellow, pink is too gentle, hot pinks and reds are just all wrong. Yellow is ‘i have the energy to edit this novel’. Yellow is ‘i can do anything and what i don’t know how to do, i can learn’. Yellow is flying-wild enthusiasm and excitement. Yellow is so totally my 2010.

And the person who originally named this particular shade on COLOURlovers called it ‘As a Kid’. It really doesn’t get any more perfect than that.

random other stuff…

What No One Will Tell You About the New Year – makes the quite accurate point of ‘the shift from December 31st to January 1st is no different than June 17th to the 18th’ (better known as ‘you’re the same person now as you were in 2009 and just pretending something magical will happen at midnight won’t make it so.’) Not to discourage New Year’s resolutions… just pointing out they won’t necessarily turn out better than resolutions any other time of the year. Though there is some mental boost to starting something precisely on calendar dates, as anyone who has stayed up all Halloween night to start novelling exactly at midnight on the first of November can attest…
On the subject of resolutions, designing and working towards a perfect average day is possibly one of the best. Also a semi-sneaky way of working any resolution you want to stick to regularly into a broader goal.
Gretchen Rubin is doing a Year of Happiness challenge, with a different focus every month. (She’s also written a book on happiness, which comes out… erm, today.)