July 28, 2010
July 26, 2010
Untitled
1.
I have really really killed The Molting.
Until I make like a necromancer (which I, sadly, have eliminated from The Eternity Project YET AGAIN) and bring it back to life.
2.
I desperately want to revise Hurricane Forever, but luckily (unluckily?) for me, I don’t actually have access to a copy. This should depress me more, BUT I think I have found my blogging mojo over on my other blog.
This is a good thing as I’ve been trying to get going on that for about forever now.
3.
I ought to take pictures of the fabulous Miss Metta.
I’m thinking Saturday is a good day. Then my goal for August can be to stitch all the way down to the bottom so I can make sure that I have enough fabric. Amongst other things.
July 24, 2010
Untitled
1.
I have had an epiphany.
Why the hell am I messing about with The Molting? It’s a ‘practice’ short story, I get that, but it’s not really what I want to write.
2.
Doesn’t mean that I should start revising Hurricane Forever right away, but it does mean I’ll probably spend all of August contemplating the worldbuilding I need to do for HF and my magnum opus.
3.
I have slain the first of the Oni.
Miss Metta’s progress is astonishing indeed.
July 14, 2010
Untitled
1.
I have no idea how I’m going to make my deadline for Thursday. Brian_Ohio is probably going to come and kick my ass.
I am revising from the beginning again. It is both better and not better.
I did also make plans for Nadia to snatch my manuscript out of my hands come August 16th post-revisions, however, so I better get cracking. She is the Queen of Evil and she is awesomely fearsome.
On the other hand, I now have necromancers in the other world I am building. That’s maybe the only bright spot in Week #6 for me.
2.
Re: necromancers
I guess I am getting my other goal for July done too. Except that now I have to fix Hurricane Forever too.
3.
Celtic Leaves is stitching up beautifully! J
June 25, 2010
Untitled
1.
I suspect plotting is not as good for my writing as I’d like it to be.
I’m working on The Molting – I may change this to The Revolting Story just because – and I’ve realised that the one thing that’s utterly absent from my Hurricane Forever draft is what people are thinking.
I have what they say, what they do. I don’t have the whys, and I don’t have the ‘how they get theres.’
2.
It worries me. Oh I’ve always had scenes that were just dialogue and nothing else.
But I’m pretty sure that the Hurricane Forever draft is nearly 50k of dialogue and nothing else.
3.
Nadia was telling me about book journals the other day.
The idea is that you write a few lines about what you’re working on each day. Ideas you have for the next few scenes. Key things that you are currently working on in the novel. Stuff like that .
I wasn’t going to do one for The Molting. I planned to trial this with my next novel – not being keen to try this again so soon after the recent failure of January-in-February with journaling. But I felt the urge, and so, why not? If I don’t keep up, that’s okay too. It’s more important that I keep up with my story, after all.
If the only time I journal is today, well, at least I discovered that The Molting is sooperman’s story more than it is sooperwoman’s.
June 22, 2010
Untitled
1.
Kaz’s Summer Camp Week #3:
I finished my draft zero of Hurricane Forever – not the real title FYI – yesterday.
It is an awful draft. I’m so desperate to fix it that I sent it to two kind souls – Maili and Liz – who can store a copy so I can temporarily delete it off my hard drive. If they decide to peek, it’ll probably make their eyes bleed.
Hmm… Not sure if it’s a good idea to let people have blackmail material. But it is done.
Today, I started the short story, The Molting, that I was planning to write next month. I’m now hoping to finish it by 2nd of July, as there’ll be wedding madness (thankfully not mine) from 3rd-11th of June, entailing flights and gowns and stuff.
2.
Extract:
“You are very difficult, you know.”
“Coming from you? Who hired me to manage you so other people would find you easier to deal with?”
His mouth dropped open. “What did you just say?”
3.
I already had a draft of the first section – so I’m now just revising what I had as I go along. That’s about 1300 words of revisions, and I’m about ready to take the leap into new material.
I only have new material because I had an epiphany this morning. But I’m pretty sure it can carry me through to the end in one draft, so that’s okay.
4.
I talked to Elise Matthesen, who has kindly given me permission to use some of her beautiful work in The Molting.
I had an epiphany about it. It entails tossing out all the worldbuilding I did for it, but that’s okay.
I suspect it’s not quite fantasy any more though. Or SF, which might be an issue as I was going to use to ‘audition’ OWW.
June 21, 2010
Untitled
1.
And it is done.
I would roll over and go to bed, but I’m not tired.
I didn’t expect to finish quite this quickly though.
But then, I wrote the last sentence and realised that the rest of the planned chapter would be superfluous.
2.
I may actually unpack today.
To prevent myself from attacking Hurricane Forever with a red pen. That would serve no purpose here.
June 20, 2010
Untitled
1.
I hate my novel and I don’t care who knows it.
2.
I have begun procrastinating.
Tomorrow, I expect to finish unpacking.
And by the end of the week, I expect to finish my cousin’s wedding sampler. WAAAAAAAAY ahead of schedule.
3.
It does not help that I am about to be felled by the cold from hell.
I suspect that trying to prevent it from happening with an orange a day and lots of liquids has only put off the Inevitable.
June 18, 2010
Untitled
1.
At this point, I feel like Hurricane Forever will never ever ever ever end.
God help me.
2.
I hate the weather.
And I’ve never suffered jet lag quite this spectacular.
I’ve slept days for two days in a row now. And when I say days? I mean days. Days as in 12 hour stretches of daylight, as we experience them practically on the Equator.
June 16, 2010
Untitled
June 15, 2010
Untitled
1.
This is my first post at Posterous.
If this works, it should show up at Blogger too.
2.
My update for Kaz’s Summer Camp, Week #2:
I edited about 6k in from a previous draft and wrote about 3700 words too. I'm a lot closer to the end then I thought I was. Tonight's the big move. Eek.
3.
Yes, I am leaving Life in the Cold and the Wet behind.
4.
A snippet in honor of above:
She sat up, reached over, and hit him. Hard.
“What do you want?” he growled into the pillow.
“Sex. Conversation. The naked man next to me transforming back into my doting husband. Just to name a few things.”
1.
This is my first post at Posterous.
If this works, it should show up at Blogger too.
2.
My update for Kaz’s Summer Camp, Week #2:
I edited about 6k in from a previous draft and wrote about 3700 words too. I'm a lot closer to the end then I thought I was. Tonight's the big move. Eek.
3.
Yes, I am leaving Life in the Cold and the Wet behind.
4.
A snippet in honor of above:
She sat up, reached over, and hit him. Hard.
“What do you want?” he growled into the pillow.
“Sex. Conversation. The naked man next to me transforming back into my doting husband. Just to name a few things.”
June 13, 2010
Terrible weather.
A perfect day for leave taking.
Is it wrong that it was easy? It feels like it shouldn't have been.
2.
I hate packing. I would say that I'm never going to move again, but that would definitely be a lie.
3.
I am on track to finish Hurricane Forever by the end of the month. I'm progressing faster -- plotwise -- than I thought I would.
June 12, 2010
I thought I should post an update, though there is little to say.
2.
Indeed, I have had little to write, only about a thousand words since Tuesday.
3.
At some point I will need to go back and edit a chunk of words I wrote in WriteWay a few months back, and slot it in.
In fact, I think I'll just do it now, and then go to bed.
It'll bump up my word count by about 11k, but I'm slotting it in primarily for continuity's sake. It fits in chronologically, and I am not yet sure that if any of it will make it into the final version.
ETA: Actually, a lot less than that. About 6k. Some of the scenes, I already rewrote in.
June 08, 2010
First update for Kaz's Summer Camp.
2.
From Hurricane Forever:
The older man’s face flushed, in renewed anger. “I won’t be your pawn.”3.
“You already are, and if you do not act, you will only remain a pawn.”
I'm just past the 100 page milestone -- I don't write in manuscript format, but 14pt Corbel spaced 1.15.
Somehow this is more monumental than the 35k I'm nearing.
June 04, 2010
Still slow going.
2.
Thinking about what I do know about my sooper woman.
And realising that I made her weak.
She is strong because she fights for her beliefs, and her belief is absolute.
3.
Haven't started anything for June yet.
But I want to finish at least an entire row on Mother Maya first.
4.
Incidentally, I'm giving away a copy of Tabitha Suzuma's Forbidden on my other blog.
June 02, 2010
I'm doing Summer Camp with Karen Mahoney.
My goals are:
At some point, I need to start my Sooper Sekrit Projekt with Nadia Lee. We are sacrificing blood, sweat and time, in order to achieve World Domination. Stay tuned.You can sign up until June 8th.
June:
Finish Hurricane Forever. About another 20-30k.
July:
Ignore Hurricane Forever.Pretty sure this will be the most difficult one, but this is the most important goal for July. If I don't complete the others, I guess I'll have had my first real writing vacation in I-don't-know-when.Write a short story, maybe 10k.
Fiddle with my would-be magnum opus.
August:
Write a synopsis for something. I don't care what, so long it's not Hurricane Forever or my would-be magnum opus. I just want to have something for my underbrain to chew over whilst I revise Hurricane Forever.
2.
I'm at 31k, or so.
A little stuck, but we'll get there.
May 29, 2010
May 28, 2010
I hate getting ahead of myself, I really do.
Now I have to go back and stitch things back up together.
I can't believe I forgot such a major plotline. Bah.
2.
This will probably jinx me but I have not forgotten to refer to myself as Emily rather than anything else for awhile.
3.
I hate writing action scenes.
I really really do.
I told @redrobinreader I'd attempt some fancy paper art with sharp objects and paper silk. I may make a model and people cut-outs and see where that takes me. But anyway, I've skipped the rest of the action scenes, and will write the pivotal scene so I can continue on.
That should take me past 30k!
May 25, 2010
I really should write up the Quilts 1700-2010 exhibition I went to at the Victoria & Albert.
2.
I've never felt this defeated.
Not even with my novels, not even the ones that I have consigned to a place so deep, that they may never see the light of day.
I can't even bring myself to think about it any more.
3.
Writing was never an escape for me, not the way it seems to have been for so many of my fellow writers.
It was just something I did. I wanted to be a writer, enough to earn the discipline.
Now it feels like all I have left, and I don't even know how I got here.