Going to Chicago again. Things with my mom are worse and I can't not be there. I'll post when I can, but I don't know when that will be.
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For those of you who write, you know that point in a story where you just want to scream at it: "Why won't you just do what I tell you??"
Yeah.
There were going to be 75 chapters. Yeah, not so much.
Getting rid of Mary-Louise, finding out about Bodhi, Jensen's mom…I was totes going to be able to cover those in a single chapter each. Ha. Yeah, not so much.
I can't even begin to dissect how many scenes there are that I thought were going to go one way and, somewhere in transition, took a left at Albuquerque when they should've taken a right.
Don't get me wrong. To date, La Muse hasn't led me wrong in these unexpected detours. I think the stories that have resulted have always ended up being stronger and better than my original conceptions. As well, it's a pretty common writerly phenomenon.
That just doesn't make it any less annoying when it happens. And it doesn't make me feel any less like a maidservant trying to get her mistress into a dress that's entirely too small for her, fingers wrapped in the laces, foot planted firmly in her back and heaving for all I'm worth.
I know where I want to go. I know that. But the scenarios that have evolved have done so in a way that makes it impossible to resolve them as quickly as I first thought I'd be able to. Which means I then end up adding things, trying to course correct and bring them back around to where I think they should be (which doesn't always work) and that means I generally hit up at a point where the two ends don't meet and I'm at a loss how to bring them back together.
I just wrote myself off a cliff. I'm at a loss how to bring the ends back together.
And I'll figure it out. I always do. The boys at the brain farm are always working. But having built up so much momentum in the last couple scenes, it does feel a bit like slamming face-first into a screen door and falling on my ass (I speak from sad, pathetic experience, here). And there's always that initial panicky reaction of, Oh crap. Where do I go from here?
Me and the boys on the farm have some musing to do.
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![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) poisontaster |
| 2009-11-21 14:59 |
| And Don't Forget to Breathe |
| Public |
 busy |
| Alexi Murdoch - Breathe |
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I was putting together what new material I have for Appetite and I was really pretty shocked at how little it comes out to be, when assembled. Part of the reason for this is that there are two scenes that I've spent a lot of words on, but it was all writing and rewriting them, trying to find the "right" take for them. So there's verbiage, but most of it is garbage. Or…if not garbage, than discards and it's a real struggle for me to be Zen about this and say that it will come when it comes and accept that with equanimity. There are some stories I can bull my way through. I used to be better at bulling my way through a stubborn story. But now it's a talent that seems to have deserted me and, as usual, I'm not sure how to recover it.
On the other hand, I feel like AKB is going like gangbusters. Which is awesome and I am thankful for that, but, at the same time, it's hard not to feel like my success with AKB and that all my excitement and creativity going toward it is detracting from my other goals. And while a part of me doesn't want it to end, the glimmering of the end on the horizon is also a relief. Of course, it also brings up a certain morbid curiosity about what, exactly, will take its place as the object of my obsession. And, of course, the fear that nothing will.
In my current spate of 'trashy' reading, I'm reading LKH's Skin Trade and I realized a big part of the many, many things that bother me about the Anita Blake books (and their [de]evolution over time) is the distinct lack of femaleness.
( A little more about that. Not specifically spoilery. )
Another thing that I really want to write about, but haven't quite figured out how to talk about it without potentially offending people, is ![[info]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) mini_nanowrimo. On the one hand, I understand that it, like anything writing related, is a tool and what people get out of it and how they use it and what it means to them is entirely individual. I can't dispute that. I can't argue with that.
But, at the same time, I confess to a certain (un-modly, personal) frustration when people either miss a day of writing or miss a day of posting and decide to pack it up and give up on the challenge entirely. I mean…I get the disappointment of not meeting the goals that you've set for yourself. Boy howdy, do I get that! And I do understand the impulse that, if you cannot be perfect, you'd rather be nothing at all.
But I also feel like it's a childish impulse, in its way. The older I get (and the theoretically wiser) the more I think less and care less about perfection and care and think more about perseverance.
The way we do one thing is the way we do everything. In this life, we make mistakes, we fail. We fail in so many ways. Some failure is inevitable. And, generally speaking, we don't have the option of packing it in, taking our ball and going home. Generally, we have to stick it out, strap it on and clean up our messes. And I find a certain grace in that. Much more grace, in some ways, than the people who do manage some level of perfection, because it takes guts to faceplant and then get up again and move on. I feel like we spend so much time trying to self-talk ourselves and everyone else into not making any mistakes, to being perfect and we spend none of that time teaching ourselves or each other how to recover from those inevitable failures. Or that a failure doesn't need to be the end of everything. And that a failure in one part doesn't equal complete catastrophe.
( Some more thoughts on the matter. (The opinions within are those of poisontaster, and do not represent the comm as a whole or in part.) )
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I was putting together what new material I have for Appetite and I was really pretty shocked at how little it comes out to be, when assembled. Part of the reason for this is that there are two scenes that I've spent a lot of words on, but it was all writing and rewriting them, trying to find the "right" take for them. So there's verbiage, but most of it is garbage. Or…if not garbage, than discards and it's a real struggle for me to be Zen about this and say that it will come when it comes and accept that with equanimity. There are some stories I can bull my way through. I used to be better at bulling my way through a stubborn story. But now it's a talent that seems to have deserted me and, as usual, I'm not sure how to recover it.
On the other hand, I feel like AKB is going like gangbusters. Which is awesome and I am thankful for that, but, at the same time, it's hard not to feel like my success with AKB and that all my excitement and creativity going toward it is detracting from my other goals. And while a part of me doesn't want it to end, the glimmering of the end on the horizon is also a relief. Of course, it also brings up a certain morbid curiosity about what, exactly, will take its place as the object of my obsession. And, of course, the fear that nothing will.
In my current spate of 'trashy' reading, I'm reading LKH's Skin Trade and I realized a big part of the many, many things that bother me about the Anita Blake books (and their [de]evolution over time) is the distinct lack of femaleness.
( A little more about that. Not specifically spoilery. )
Another thing that I really want to write about, but haven't quite figured out how to talk about it without potentially offending people, is ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif) mini_nanowrimo. On the one hand, I understand that it, like anything writing related, is a tool and what people get out of it and how they use it and what it means to them is entirely individual. I can't dispute that. I can't argue with that.
But, at the same time, I confess to a certain (un-modly, personal) frustration when people either miss a day of writing or miss a day of posting and decide to pack it up and give up on the challenge entirely. I mean…I get the disappointment of not meeting the goals that you've set for yourself. Boy howdy, do I get that! And I do understand the impulse that, if you cannot be perfect, you'd rather be nothing at all.
But I also feel like it's a childish impulse, in its way. The older I get (and the theoretically wiser) the more I think less and care less about perfection and care and think more about perseverance.
The way we do one thing is the way we do everything. In this life, we make mistakes, we fail. We fail in so many ways. Some failure is inevitable. And, generally speaking, we don't have the option of packing it in, taking our ball and going home. Generally, we have to stick it out, strap it on and clean up our messes. And I find a certain grace in that. Much more grace, in some ways, than the people who do manage some level of perfection, because it takes guts to faceplant and then get up again and move on. I feel like we spend so much time trying to self-talk ourselves and everyone else into not making any mistakes, to being perfect and we spend none of that time teaching ourselves or each other how to recover from those inevitable failures. Or that a failure doesn't need to be the end of everything. And that a failure in one part doesn't equal complete catastrophe.
( Some more thoughts on the matter. (The opinions within are those of poisontaster, and do not represent the comm as a whole or in part.) )
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| poisontaster |
| 2009-11-18 09:40 |
| Trusting My Soul to the Ice Cream Assassin |
| Public |
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Back in Frederick. It's a strange day when that feels like a relief. Things are not good with my mom, but I also don't really want to talk about it, especially on this LJ, which has a different focus than my personal LJ. However: I would like to thank all of you for your support, prayers and kind wishes.
While mooching around the hospital, I managed to finish two books: a re-read of Stephen King's Misery, which is one of my absolute favorite books and Charlaine Harris's new book, Grave Secret. I also managed to hit my mini_nanowrimo word count every day--mostly out of sheer stubbornness, I admit, not to mention the long hours of nothing much to do. Of course, now that I'm trying to think about it, I hardly remember what I was working on.
I know I'm about a thousand words into the next piece of AKB, but I'm unsure about how I feel about it. I was about 5 or 6 hundred words in when I realized/I thought/I decided I was using the wrong POV character. And I'm still a little undecided about whether I can make it work with the POV I started in or whether I'm going to have to scrap it all and start over. It's one of those scenes where I wish I could convincingly have it both ways and cram both POVs into a single, unbroken scene.
I worked some on Appetite, thankfully. If things in the real world go the way they seem like they're going to, I'm going to need to get even MORE serious about putting myself out there. I still feel so ambivalent about it all, though. I feel like I've lost some essential spark of knowing these characters. They feel like caricatures of themselves and I don't know how to get around that to the honest place.
Trine has been turning up in the mental hopper at unexpected moments. I think that realizing what kind of tack I was going to take with this story really broke some things loose, though, to be fair, it's more in the prewriting stages than in the actual writing. But I have what looks like the beginning and that's not nothing.
I really need to get onboard with my Yuletide story. I couldn't manage to read my entire flist from the point I went AWOL to now, but even reading the purgated "do or die" version of it, it seems like the mods did a superlative job of matching this year. ...I wish I felt the same. And now I'm trying to think about how to talk about this without giving too much away, but let's leave it at this: the fandom is great. The mods did (and do) a great job. I just don't do well when people give me a "Oh, write anything!" prompt with no greater direction. In the world of fandom, I'm a niche, midlist writer and I feel like what interests me, in terms of storytelling, is not going to be what interests the average reader. So there's that. I also need to reaquaint myself with the source material quick, fast and in a hurry.
Here's an interesting question: at what point do you give up on a book you're reading? I've had Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in my "currently-reading" queue for months now, but the truth is that, despite my deep love of zombies, I'm not finding it funny or entertaining enough to hold my interest. So should I give up on it entirely and acknowledge that I'm probably never going to care enough to sludge through it, or should I persist, in the idea that I've started it and now I should press on through to the end? What do you do? If you start a book, do you feel obligated to finish it or do you discard it easily the minute it ceases to keep your interest?
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Back in Frederick. It's a strange day when that feels like a relief. Things are not good with my mom, but I also don't really want to talk about it, especially on this LJ, which has a different focus than my personal LJ. However: I would like to thank all of you for your support, prayers and kind wishes.
While mooching around the hospital, I managed to finish two books: a re-read of Stephen King's Misery, which is one of my absolute favorite books and Charlaine Harris's new book, Grave Secret. I also managed to hit my mini_nanowrimo word count every day--mostly out of sheer stubbornness, I admit, not to mention the long hours of nothing much to do. Of course, now that I'm trying to think about it, I hardly remember what I was working on.
I know I'm about a thousand words into the next piece of AKB, but I'm unsure about how I feel about it. I was about 5 or 6 hundred words in when I realized/I thought/I decided I was using the wrong POV character. And I'm still a little undecided about whether I can make it work with the POV I started in or whether I'm going to have to scrap it all and start over. It's one of those scenes where I wish I could convincingly have it both ways and cram both POVs into a single, unbroken scene.
I worked some on Appetite, thankfully. If things in the real world go the way they seem like they're going to, I'm going to need to get even MORE serious about putting myself out there. I still feel so ambivalent about it all, though. I feel like I've lost some essential spark of knowing these characters. They feel like caricatures of themselves and I don't know how to get around that to the honest place.
Trine has been turning up in the mental hopper at unexpected moments. I think that realizing what kind of tack I was going to take with this story really broke some things loose, though, to be fair, it's more in the prewriting stages than in the actual writing. But I have what looks like the beginning and that's not nothing.
I really need to get onboard with my Yuletide story. I couldn't manage to read my entire flist from the point I went AWOL to now, but even reading the purgated "do or die" version of it, it seems like the mods did a superlative job of matching this year. ...I wish I felt the same. And now I'm trying to think about how to talk about this without giving too much away, but let's leave it at this: the fandom is great. The mods did (and do) a great job. I just don't do well when people give me a "Oh, write anything!" prompt with no greater direction. In the world of fandom, I'm a niche, midlist writer and I feel like what interests me, in terms of storytelling, is not going to be what interests the average reader. So there's that. I also need to reaquaint myself with the source material quick, fast and in a hurry.
Here's an interesting question: at what point do you give up on a book you're reading? I've had Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in my "currently-reading" queue for months now, but the truth is that, despite my deep love of zombies, I'm not finding it funny or entertaining enough to hold my interest. So should I give up on it entirely and acknowledge that I'm probably never going to care enough to sludge through it, or should I persist, in the idea that I've started it and now I should press on through to the end? What do you do? If you start a book, do you feel obligated to finish it or do you discard it easily the minute it ceases to keep your interest?
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BIRTHDAY!
*twirls around*
And on top of it, I totally woke up with it's my party and I'll cry if I want to stuck in my head. *pets stupid brain*
...
Anyway. Now that the crazy insanity of the big picspam of doom is past [though not really, because there's a chance I might be making icons out of the images now. WHY CAN'T I QUIT, YOU, STUPID PRETTY IMAGES?], let's talk about television:
( How I Met Your Mother )
( Glee )
( Bones )
( Ugly Betty )
( Being Erica )
( Legend of the Seeker )
( V )
...
Yay, birthday!
:)
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amused
birthday!