Family Story bit.....

"You don't pay attention to your own past?"
"Our stories are almost all oral; they change as we do, or at least the ones we emphasize do. It's not all that important, Kate. The world is, we are. That's enough for me."
Kate eyed me askance. "I can't tell if that's zen or if you're just lazy."

A nice fun bit from today. 20K into the story and dealing with various implications of Darnell having to inform people he's known that he isn't human. Or, in other words, the Superman/Lois Lane moment of truth: if someone lied to you ever since you knew them (no matter how short that time) could you trust them again? It's a fun concept to explore.

Ah, fun!

Working on the Family Story (it has a different title, but that was mostly to give it a title). Edited and fixed chapters 1-2 (3 was left pretty much as is), trashed the start of chapter 4 and now working on it. I'm not sure how long this story will end up being -- most of the major cast has been introduced or mentioned (or inferred, in one case). I've never working on a story from a non-human pov before in depth, so it's going to be fun when his morals and that of the humans he gets to know clash.

Interestingly for one of my writing projects, I am 10K into the second treatment and no one has been killed yet.

Fun Editing

So. I am working on a novella, mostly to take my mind off of my NaNoWriMo idea. The first scene came into my head. I wrote it, paused to write three pages of notes to find out what I was writing, continued. Ironically, the continued part flowed better with people so I am probably scrapping/moving the first scene util later and altering the plot as a result. On the plus side, later chapters will likely remain as written (chapter 3 needs almost no editing, plot-wise), but the start becomes pedestrian and the reader doesn't start in the middle of things quite as insanely as originally happened.

All of which means that this project is suffering the same result of all other things I've worked on this year. Get to point X, stop, redo from start. It's not necessarily a bad thing (I think it's better overall) but from a "So, what did I finish this year?" pov it's pretty annoying. I think I've reached a point where I need to plot out an idea a lot before I start writing it, more for an idea of who/what the characters are than with regards to the plot itself. Along with what characters are necessary and what their function is in and of themselves, not just for purposes of plot/story. I think I'll re-tackle Exorcism after nano with a better handle on the secondary characters.

Shall see how it all goes. Now back to rewriting chapter one of the Family story...

Ending this blog

I don't think I can combine the posts from this blog into my regular one, so just ending this blog. I don't post enough to either to justify having two. All nano, attempts as humour etc. posts will just be part of the normal blog.

Why I don't write epic fantasy: thoughts

For lack of anything useful to post (unless one wants many versions of some short stories :p), some genre thoughts. I don't mind reading epic fantasy -- up to a point. Series that go on forever bug me as a reader, so I thought about why and the answer proved quite simple: they're about world building.

World-building isn't bad (I've done it often enough myself) but if one is doing a series focused on one character or the typical Small Band, how many novels do you really need to tell their story? Not to show off your world or research of languages, but to tell the actual story. In most cases, I would lay down money that you actually don't need more than, say, a trilogy. There are exceptions -- always those -- but what end is it serving?

To me, the world is the framework. And it is important: you can't have a house without one. The materials matter. But after you build it, whatever is put inside, bought, decorates it and so forth is what is important. It's one reason I like writing modern fantasy: the framework is often there already, so I can focus more on the story proper.

storms

"Danny may not make hurricane strength: forecasters"

His parents will be very sad.That is all I have to say about that.

On dreams

I don't normally recall dreams, and those I do seldom make all that much sense. Last night's was just fun since I "woke" in an alternate version of my apartment and other places I've lived (as well as a kitchen I've never had*. I had a shower in the dream, figuring that would wake me up, and -- when that failed, and things got even stranger** -- logging on to a 4" compute in a sewing room. Which ran DOS 5.0. I still managed to contact people, one of ehich said: "Go outside" before the computer stopped working.

Which was the neat part: I'd been all "this is a dream, I can access the net and modern programs even if it is on DOS" all the while knowing I shouldn't be able to. Which led to the dream 'realizing' that and locking me out. Eventually I went outside to run into someone who had apparently made fun of me when I was six, and I now knew what he looked like so I could ask for an apology. Without, you know, getting his name or any idea what he did.

* The kitchen was all stainless steel appliances, counter tops etc and was "serial killer clean"
** My father as 50 lb overweight, coming in to fix the linen closet and casually noting a bees nest in it along with the a solid arm (and voice) of someone named Myra.

Here is a map of it, too:

Some older poetry

Been busy, so here is some older poetry (from 2004):

The universe is a balloon.

The universe is a balloon.
If we are lucky, it is a balloon animal.
Everything runs down. Entropy runs rampant.
The heat-death of the universe the final hot flash.
Watch the balloon. Breath, and it blows.
Let go, to fly where it may.
Created, it is already dying.
Set free, it may come back to Him, in worship.
And awe. And fear.
Who would create something that is dying
from the moment of its making?
Or does it have no worth, if it does not end,
is not let go to burn out and up and bright?
Perhaps. But analogy only takes us so far.

The universe was made by God, masturbating.
A lonely child in a bathroom scrawled with Enochian graffiti.
Each day a second, ripples of sperm falling into water.
The death and rebirth of the universe nothing
but a toilet flushing, water returning.
Over and over.
God never knew what He'd done.

And life? Spreading entropy far and wide,
energy burning up, trying to hold the death back
but no one can give and never take
and never hope for reward. And so
it is that life in the universe is nothing
more than a way to bring about the end.
Seven days creating? Ah! how long, then, to destroy?


The Suicide Boy

      For Goth Poetry Nite

They told us he came back
as a ghost, long after
Our class had gone out
to be devoured by the cruel world.

They hear him in the bathroom, sobbing:
saying no one loves him, no one
understood.

And he doesn't believe in God
or souls, and sobs insults
at people who offer experiential evidence
and show him a mirror.

Sometimes, Carrie style, a light bulb breaks
as he tries in vain to put his make up on,
hands floating through the too real world.

nanowrimo 2009

There were plans this year for it. I have forgotten what they were. (One of them turned into an abortive novel in several drafts.) What it shall be now is thanks to a prompt on a writing forum I'm a member of: YA fantasy dealing with separation & divorce. Which led me to think about Thomas The Rhymer, his missing seven years from the world and what that would do to his wife and kids left behind -- along with the fae child he fathers in his 3 nights in Elfland.

I don't know much about it yet -- I have no clue who the antagonist shall be (I'm half-certain there won't be one per se), but I have the cosmology done and 5 characters named in 2 days.

Janet & Thomas were easy, sine I lifted them from the poem. The demon girl Roh came about in the shower this morning and Pam, an older daughter of Janet's, popped into my head yesterday. Roh is odd, not a female name and simple, basic. Like demons in a lot of ways: she is one thing, a single note of a song. Pam can be short for Pamela and struck me as a very sensible name, which will be at odds with what she has done.

For the two male MCs, I knew one has to be Irish-ish (the fae) and be able to have a nickname. Thomas's son, no nickname and preferably English. Beyond that I went for the low end of the alphabet, random letters to start the names and emerged with Declan and Harris. Both work, so shall work on setting and plot at some point too...

music meme

The challenge: Put your MP3 player thingy on shuffle, and write down the first line of the first twenty songs. Post the poem that results.

And the result:

After the guns are silent
Where do we go from here;
When you're sad and when you're lonely?

I like a man who wears a lab coat when he works.
There are kids, lots of kids, who put the law inside a circle
Lost boys and golden girls.

Oh helen, you're a felon
All my books lay on the table

Angelina's got more kids:
He was just one more name in the story.

I'm hiding in the corner:
Sane men don't go mad all on their own -- oh no no.
What is evil? What is love?
We're the things that go bump in the night that you can't see.

If I could be a superhero
I sing the praise of honored wars of glory and of kings
Cultivate your hunger before you idealize.

Find me
I'm a man without a soul...Honey, yeah
If you're gonna get your heart broke, you better do it just right.