It snowed Sunday. It was cold yesterday. It was a lot colder this morning.
It's supposed to be warmer tomorrow.
I drank some coffee.
I watched an episode of OaT last night in preparation for the upcoming editing marathon. I verified that the first ten pages of the story sound reasonably in-character. I already knew that.
Now I'm drinking some hot tea.
Buehler has been out of town. Bossyboots has been behaving himself. At least, he's been leaving me alone for the most part, including ignoring about 30% of the e-mails I send him.
Moe and Curly haven't been any more annoying than developers normally are. (Turns out that some of Hell's Own Software problems are "by design." Someone in design hates our users.)
I am eating an apple.
At long last, progress is lurching along on the DarkGlass study. Not major progress, but definite signs of life.
Some cheese, too.
Extension 17 showed up stoned for work this morning, but I think I'm the only one who noticed.
I don't have anything to say today, can you tell?
I don't like winter. Or, rather, I don't mind winter, but I don't like that it's already dark when I get off work in the evenings. I always have many things I could or should do, after work, and most of them sound like a lot more fun in the daytime than they do in the reality of a cold, dark evening.
Now I am having baked chicken with teriyaki sauce.
I need a stand for the new printer, one with two shelves so I can hook the old, color printer back up to our PC at home, too. I was going to stop off by the office supply store after work yesterday, but it was cold and gross, so I went home and curled up.
I tell myself I'll do it tonight...but by the time I get off work it will be cold and dark and then I'll pretend I have to hurry home to get my laundry done and the bathroom cleaned but when I get there, I won't do those things. I'll just curl up.
The urge to spend the winter hibernating is a strong one. I think it's the cycle of nature. My father always said it was bone-deep laziness.
Watermelon, now. Delicious, but cold.
I should never have spent all of those lovely, warm, sunny Sundays sitting (so alliterative) home writing, should I? I knew I'd regret it one day. I just didn't think it would be this soon.
Why didn't I pack any chocolate in my lunch?
Finis! (I repeat that to further annoy McSwain, who failed to respond the last time.)
Let us celebrate! Let us, in fact, dance in the streets. I feel a conga coming on!*
I felt the need to rebroadcast this moment of history. Since I'm not writing in a fandom that any of my friends actually give a shit about, the applause for this accomplishment has been sincere but muted. I was expecting dancing boys. I received a smattering of applause, interspersed with sighs of relief and, on the part of the one who has to share living space with me, heartfelt wishes that I'll shut up about it already.**
Now for the good stuff. Deleting everything I hate, anything that annoys me, and any word that looks at me funny. (Once I wrote a character who looked at me funny...I deleted him. I have the pow-ah.)
This is the only part of writing I really enjoy. I aim at removing 10% (but I go to 20%***, if I really start having fun) of the text from my first drafts. I consider that a minimum, although I know others probably remove more.
Three solid months it took to get to this moment. Sheesh.
The deleting editing commenced this weekend. I deleted two crucial scenes and re-wrote them from scratch. Armed with hammer, chisel, scalpel, and a brand-new bottle of Wite-Out, I carved out, one hopes, a clearer emotional pathway and removed an amateurish and painfully pornographic sex scene, replacing it with one more suited to the actual story. I removed some tedious and unnecessary plot bits, contemplated, but have so far retained, some pointless recriminations around past cases, and added an egg.
The egg matters.
I took them off the streets in one scene and put them in a car.
I took them out of a car at another point and put them on foot.
I changed a minor character's name.
I wound up adding another thousand words to the beast.
This is not what editing is about! Where are the wholesale deletions? The gleeful subtractions? The sighs of relief as lines that never worked anyhow disappear from the text? Granted, I deleted a good 10,000 words during the process of completing the first draft, but still.
My delete key yearns to be used.
The only thing I have so far failed to accomplish is characterization. I have no idea who these people are.
They're not the same two that appeared in my first OaT story, that's for certain. Whether or not they resemble the characters who appeared on-screen...well, it seems that it's time to re-watch another episode or two.
In the meantime, I will let the SEN rest for a few days, possibly turning my attention to something plotless and smutty in Sentinel for a bit of light relief. At some point this week, refreshed by my dip into a fandom where characterization is easy and dialogue flows effortlessly, I will re-read the SEN and decide what, if any, major rewriting is left to be done.
Characterization, yes. But it may also be that those two scenes I've been hoping will fly as they are will require to be expanded. We can all hope otherwise, since such expansion will throw off what is currently a precariously balanced emotional structure, resulting in an orgy of re-writing of the last fifty pages.
If that happens, expect a lot of bitterness, bile, and bitching.
______________________
*Ed. - This organization assumes no responsibility for any person who takes this as a literal command instead of a moment of manic delight. Those you who were already picking your spot on the freeway are on your own.
** The more I contemplate this, the more it aggravates me. Granted, I offer only modest congratulations to those writing in fandoms to which I am indifferent, but I am me and I don't expect to be treated the way I treat people!
If I think about it for very long, I may undertake yet another OaT story (I have three ready to go), just to prove I can.****
***Of course, at that quantity, the story develops gaps and you have to write new stuff to go in them, so the word count sometimes doesn't change much, but I don't care. I really like deleting.
______________________
**** Okay, I haven't yet proved that I can. Not until I establish whether the SEN is an OaT story or just a story with similarly named and situated characters. But I do sometimes regret those 37 and 26 pages, respectively, of story that I abandoned in disgust some years back. I've learned a lot about turning a sow's ear into...well, not silk, but maybe a decent nylon imitation, during the SEN process. I might be able to use those on the other two ideas. I also have the outline for another story that I jotted down a few years ago and that still attracts me.
(That's to annoy McSwain.)
Draft, the first, she is complete!
Yes, I mean it. No, I wouldn't kid you. The last page of the SEN has limped into life.
Now, of course, we must assemble The Editor's Toolbox.
Armed with hammer, chisel, scalpel, and a brand-new bottle of Wite-Out, we must commence beating, carving, and deleting the text until what's left of the carcass resembles something like a story.
If that doesn't succeed, well, I posses both lighter fluid and a box of matches.
I was sailing today. Cheerful and chipper and sneaking over to my story file every few minutes to tack some more words onto the latest LESS outline. Even doing a bit of work from time to time.
Then the Mad Doctor harshed my vibe.
We use a phone conferencing system, okay? And everyone has a set of access codes so we can tell who uses the service and we know how much to bill back to various people for the work we're doing for them. (Each of us primarily works on a particular project.)
The Mad Doctor has never adjusted to this concept. He wants one set of codes he can use, no matter who he's talking to or about what.
I don't mind him wanting this so much (I wanted a pony when I was four) but I surely do mind him calling up here and spitting venom at me because he left home this morning without the codes he needed for today's meeting.
His inability to track his daily schedule is his problem, not mine. Anyone with a brain in their head would have printed the e-mail and taken it with them. Or written down the numbers.
Anyone with two brain cells to rub together would have made a list of the numbers they needed by now (there are only four) and stuck them in their wallet. They would have had them available when they needed them.
To this guy.
Unless I kill myself laughing first.
Posted by AnneZook at 10:38 AMWell, more like a virus, really, don't you think? A sort of infection, but there's no shot you can get to cure it.
Quantity is rarely a problem for me. If I could silence that part of my brain that cares about quality, I'd never stop typing. As it is, I rub the Lamp of Quantity and the Genie therein delivers bushels full of words. I pick up a pen to write them down...and two seconds the Quality Monster starts screaming that the first four words are a cliché, the next two are in French and they're supposed to be Italian, the vocabulary is wrong for the narrative character, and that last one is a really stupid line by anyone's standards.
I hate my brain.
(In fact, if it doesn't start being nicer to me, I'm taking it off my Christmas list. I could replace it with my pancreas which, to the best of my knowledge, has never given me any problems at all. )
(I'm a little fuzzy on things like pancreatic location and function, but that's as it should be. If we were meant to know what kinds of icky things our organs do, they wouldn't be stuck where we don't have to look at them.)
(Also, they wouldn't be purple and squishy. Because ick, okay?)
I'm considering drugs. Not illegal ones, mind you, but there must be some balance of legal substances strong enough to quell the QMonster without also silencing the Genie?
Caffeine and nicotine free up the Genie but they also liberate the QMonster. Enough caffeine and I...start actually hearing them talk, so that's not the solution.
There must be some other ine available to me. I've tried cursing, but the QMonster just swears back and it has a meaner vocabulary than I do. I've tried promising that I'll go back and fix it later, but the QMonster knows me better than that.
The only other 'ine' I can thing of at the moment (a moment I should have spent in productive work, I might add) is codeine and I don't have any.
Besides, it makes me dizzy and then I fall down.
I was probably going somewhere sensible with this when I started.
Anyhow. Last night, the QMonster took another little break (to go with the one he must have been on this past weekend), and the SEN grew perilously close to completion. Exactly how close, we won't know until I grit my teeth, sit down, and key those twenty or thirty handwritten pages into the story file, but perilously close. Like, two scenes left to write.
Considering the amount of editing and re-writing I've done already, I find myself wondering how long the editing process is going to take. It may be that I need to lay it aside and ignore it for a while, then come back to it with fresh eyes.
That idea appeals to me because, speaking of dribbles, drabbles, and stories. I wrote another one. Dribble-thing, I mean. DS again.
If all of these grow into stories, I'm going to look amazingly prolific. Not talented, but prolific.(*)
____________________
* In truth, the LESS are shaping up to be much better than the SEN.
First, they have the advantage of being short. Second, instead of basing the dialogue on a story, I'm basing the story on the dialogue. And a ridiculously pointless gimmick. I like to think I'm at my best when I'm ridiculously pointless.
Everyone has a talent. I think that may be mine.
I am informed by a Usually Reliable Source that:
A) It's "drabble"
B) The traditional length is 100 words.* (How can they do that? I can't write a disclaimer in a hundred words.)
C) Considering the quality of my own latest effort, I should cease sneering at the efforts of others.
Okay, no, she didn't say that last one. I thought that up myself, but it's probably true. That's a bad habit of mine, throwing stones out the window of my glass house. Sorry. I get bitter sometimes, that's all.
_______________
*This blog entry is over a hundred words. She must be wrong about the length.
I'm feeling chatty today. This is another good reason not to join the cult of LJ. No one gets it shoved down their throat if I write six posts in a day.
(Side note: No matter what forum I use, someone is always complaining about the quantity of stuff I write. E-mail, this blog, my political blog, on lists (when I used to be on lists), there's always someone sending me whiny e-mails about how much I talk and talk and talk. This is my space to talk as much as I want. No one's making you come here.)
(I don't know why I felt a bit defensive about that for a minute, but I did.)
(I have many things to say. Many of them may be boring and repetitive but they're my things and I'm going to say them.)
(It could be worse, you know. If I stuck all of this in an e-mail and sent it to you, you'd probably feel compelled to respond. This way, you're off the hook.)
(Okay, major defensive thing going on here. Not sure why. Better just move on.)
For those amusement of those who care, and the irritation of those who don't, I'd like to report that I wrote 7,000 words on the S.E.N. this weekend. Looking back, I find myself amazed that I found the time to eat, sleep, and bathe.
Yesterday? Cold but beautifully sunny. A day made for going out and running around.
Me? Sitting at home with pen in hand or at the keyboard, writing until I had a headache from being so sedentary. (Okay, and from living on coffee and nicotine for ten hours. I didn't do that much eating.)
I've given up caring if the fool thing is good or not. I just want it done Out of my brain.
With a tiny bit of luck, and some free time carved out of the evenings this week, I should have a completed first draft very soon.
All of the written out-of-order scenes, the lines of dialogue tacked onto a blank page until the story gets to where they fit, all of the I moved this, now it needs a different transition scenes, they'll all be connected up. This excites me.
I'm a bit OC, as most of you know. That means I have a compulsive drive to do things like connect up unconnected bits of things. All of those story fragments hanging out there have been driving me bonkers.
The prospect of getting them all connected is as exciting as finishing the story. It feels like finishing the story.
Maybe I can pretend it is finishing the story?
In the arena of other thoughts, same topic, I think that after you've written 65,000 words, you should have a better grasp on your plot than I seem to possess. I'm still in the dark about what's happening or going to happen, to a large extent.
For instance, if you asked me, is there going to be any sex? I'd have to say, I don't know yet.
Is anyone going to die? I'm not sure. Maybe.
Are there any funny bits? One line, so far and it's a smile, not a giggle. The likelihood of more seems remote.
How about UST? I sent it an invitation, but it didn't RSVP. I'm hoping it decides to show up, though.
Is there any particular reason someone would want to read this story? It will make their own stuff look better by comparison.
What I should be writing are those...whaddyacallums...those little half-scene sized things that people write when they have an idea, or half an idea, for a scene, but they don't feel like writing a story around it.
Could be "dribbles" although I suspect it's "drabbles." I'm not sure where the name comes from, but it's suitable. It sounds pointless and banal and with few exceptions, the "drabbles" I've read have been right at home in that territory. (Of course, those exceptions do exist. There are people who seem to be able to do anything. This makes me bitter.)
I think "dribbles" suits them better, though. A little dribble of story...not long enough to be challenging for the reader or the writer. If it's any good, you're frustrated that the writer/possessor of such a good idea didn't like it enough to build it a proper story to live in. If it isn't, you wonder if you can sue to get that three minutes of your life back.
Around 500 words, right? That's...a page, maybe two pages of text. Heck, anyone could write that.
....pause....
Okay, I wrote a DS one. That was easy.*
....pause....
Okay, I wrote another one, twice as long. SEN this time. *
That isn't real writing. There was no pain, no anguish, no sweating, no cursing, and no bitter recriminations.
Where's the fun in that?
I think, when it comes time to work on the L.E.S.S., I'll pick a slightly longer length. Maybe 3,000 words. That's long enough to require a little development. Scene structure, characterization, all of those things. Not long enough to get myself into any trouble.
*For those who always ask, no, you can't read them.
Today, I am announcing to the world that the S.E.N. climbed to over 64,000 words this weekend and I'm beginning to suspect it will never end.
Should I be happy that it's finally moving, and not be so obsessed by the fact that I'm not crazy about the stuff I'm writing?
Quality or quantity...it's always such a difficult choice.
Posted by AnneZook at 12:11 PM | Comments (2)It's certainly good to be free of blogger. I wanted to log in to my site just now...and MT let me log right in. Blogger always made me beg.
So...what's new in Urban Adventures these days?
Well, not much. I was worried that Blanket-Head Guy was sick or something, I hadn't seen him in days, but he was there this morning, outside Starbucks. $1 I'm still a touch worried about BaGiMan, though. I haven't seen him in a week. But I've added a new face to the crowd. Meet the MoonMan. He's standing on a street corner with a sign, "Sick of Bush, Moving to the Moon." He explained to me that he's moving to the moon so he can be President for a while. I gave him a dollar toward his moving expenses.
Whatever, okay? I don't give as much to charity as I should. At least this way, 100% of my donation goes directly to the needy. (From their literature, the Food Bank, to whom I just sent a check, spend 85% of the donations on the needy. I'm hoping that's true.)
Oddly enough, I've noticed that they seem less comfortable getting money from someone they've come to recognize than they are panhandling total strangers.
In theory, Buehler is taking the day off. That means he only spent a couple of hours in the office and he only has three conference calls this afternoon. I told him...you need some boundaries, so it's easier to tell when you're working and when you're not.
I'm celebrating a Boss-Free Day by working twice as hard.
Bossyboots and I are, at least temporarily, getting along better. We're both making an effort. (It it a sign of prejudice that when I learned he's a Libertarian, swing-dancing, red-neck, I started cutting him the sort of slash* slack you should cut the mentally deranged?)
The Tweeneybopper has been making her usual full-voiced phone calls, fighting with her family. Yesterday it was, if my overhearing isn't at fault, about a gas leak she has in her car. I'm struggling with asking her, when I really do not want to hear the whole story, and worrying that because she's 20 and not too bright, she's driving around in a car that actually, you know, is leaking gas in some way.
Not much else on the work front. Sassy and the Mad Doctor are driving Buehler nuts this week, but at least that means they're leaving me alone. Since I discovered yesterday that I'd dropped a Major Ball on one of my projects, I needed the time to start picking up the pieces. Fortunately, today I discovered that said droppage was less to do with something I should actually have done than it was in keeping track of what other people were doing. Which probably doesn't make much sense to you but it means that the droppage was only about 10% as bad as I thought it was yesterday.
At the moment, I'm drinking my breakfast (no, not bourbon, it's a fat-free yogurt smoothie with far more calories in it than it should have) and wondering how come I always seem to wind up being hungry for breakfast at 12:30.
Could have something to do with those venti lattes and thick slices of pumpkin bread I get from Starbucks every morning, I guess.
* Slash + Bossyboots = Yuck
The Tickle of Interest
A story idea wafts into your head. You dabble with it, purely as a mental exercise. It's a wisp of a notion...not much more.
The Rush of Enthusiasm
It could work, though. It could actually work, if you wanted to put the effort in. Because this, and this, and this could happen and maybe that could happen and it could even be interesting.
The Writer's Cramp of Inspiration
It does work! Lookit this! It's all coming together and all the pieces are fitting! Writing's such an amazing thing....
The Curse of Creation
Quick...get it all down on paper before it disappears. No time to work or bathe or do laundry or clean house and I eat too much anyhow.
Write! Write!
The Dawning of Doubt
I'm not sure about that bit. Or that bit. Maybe...but I don't know.
Oh, well. Press on....
The Flicker of Hope
Those bits aren't that bad. Let's delete that one and re-write this one and flag that other one to worry about later. That one's nothing to write home about, but I'll leave it in, for now. It could be salvageable.
The Heaping of Contempt
That bit is just garbage, and that other one isn't much better. Flag those to be re-written or deleted. And that page and that page and that page. And that section.
The Determination
I'll beat this thing into shape, if I have to.
Maybe I should change the POV? Or the setting? Highlight that bit and that bit and that bit. They can be fixed. All it takes is a bit of work. Right?
The Derision
Wotta load o'crap. There are some decent bits, but most of it was wrong from the beginning. It was a dumb idea, made worse by sloppy execution.
Highlight all the words, sentences, paragraphs, and scenes that don't work.
What's left? The title?
Hack.
The Onset of Desperation
I wrote fifty pages and I got two decent lines?
Maybe if I change the POV back? Or have it narrated by the turtle? Maybe it should be set in ancient Crete?
Maybe it's the names of the OCs that are wrong? Maybe they should be alliterative? But alliterative with what? The four seasons? No, too obscure. The names of my favorite authors? No, that's just dumb. How about body parts? Freddie Fingers. Neddy Nose. Peter....no, no...that's not it.
Maybe if I buy a new pen to write with? Or maybe if I sit in a different chair? Or print on light-blue paper? Or only write when I'm wearing fuzzy bedroom slippers?
Duck and Weave
Time to write. Here I am. Pen. Paper. Light. Chair.
Why does my chair have that squeak when I sit like this? It doesn't do it when I sit like this, though. I wonder if I have any WD40?
40...40...409. I should clean the bathroom. The shower's okay, but the sink is disgraceful. As are the counters.
Counters...counters...counting. I should take that bag full of change to the bank, before it gets too heavy to carry. I wonder how much is in it? Could be forty dollars, I'll bet.
Bet...bet...Blackhawk. I wonder if we should go up to the mountains over Thanksgiving? It could be a fun thing to do with the day. I wonder how busy it will be?
Be...be...bee. Why is there always one bee flying around our balcony, no matter what time of year it is?
No, no, I'm supposed to be writing. What I need to do is re-watch some episodes. I need a TV-VCR player here in my bedroom, so I can watch the episodes whenever I need to. I have space for it...sort of. I mean, I'd find space for it. Not sure where.
Where...wear...underwear. I'm wearing entirely the wrong kind of underwear. You can't write wearing cotton, everyone knows that. Silk tap pants, that's the key.
Don't own any. Maybe I need to go shopping?
I could buy some earplugs, too.
When did the man upstairs open a bowling alley in his living room?
I can't believe I've been sitting here for two hours and I haven't written a word.
Mockery
Have you ever thought of bird-watching? Nice, healthy, outdoor hobby. If you fall out of a tree and break your arm, no one would expect you to do any writing.
Not that you could call this writing. It's more like an exorcism. Casting out the foul demons of delusion. I mean, how can the fantasy persist, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, that you ever had an original or interesting thought in your life?
(Also, have you actually met these characters? Because this story doesn't read like you have any idea who they are.)
The Assignment of Blame
It's the airport's fault. Why do they route jets to fly over my apartment? I can't hear myself think!
And those kids outside my window, what's up with all that noise they've been making for the past forty-two hours? I can't write smut with the sounds of six-year olds giggling in my ears! Shouldn't they be in schools or reformatories or something?
Do those stupid birds have to make so much racket? I was just about to figure out how to fix that scene and they drove the idea completely out of my head with all that cawing and hooting and quacking. Why can't they breed quieter birds?
How dare my roommate say 'hello' to me at just that moment! I'm sure I was about to have a brilliant thought! I could feel it happening! And now it's gone! Gone! It's her fault.
Why do I hear my mother's voice in my brain, telling me that a pile of clean laundry is the only appropriate way to end a weekend? I have enough clean socks to last until Wednesday, Mom. Get away from me! Someone make her shut up...the characters might be trying to talk to me.
Why did the man upstairs open a bowling alley in his living room?
Sneering
Hack.
Resignation
Oh, well. Might as well write that last bit. I certainly need the practice.
The End
Never again.
Never, never, never again.
I didn't know my new cell phone had a "vibrate" option on the ringer. Heh. Heh-heh.
There are possibilities there...but I'm sure some other fandom hack has already run the idea into the ground. I'm beginning to think the idea doesn't exist that some frenzied fans haven't beaten to death with the stick of illiterate idiocy.
Ahem. Sorry.
But I may start carrying my cellphone in my pocket more frequently.
All the more especially since today's office phone access is...sporadic. On for five seconds, off for five seconds, etc. It's driving Bernie 'round the bend. (Short trip.)
So...the weekend...what did I do?
Saturday...shopping! I bought a new pair of gray pants and two sweaters. And some pens and highlighters for use at the office (I'm particular about my pens, I never use the kind they buy at offices). And a ream of paper for home. And some potpourri.
And two presents for my boss, one for now and one for Christmas.
And three Dove bars, all of which I've already eaten. And a bag of potato chips, most of which I've already eaten. And some cheese and crackers, about half o which I've already eaten. And a sack of pumpkin seeds, 98% of which I've already eaten. And some low-fat yogurt, none of which I've eaten.
At this moment, I'd imagine my credit card and my hips are both glad I'm back at work. I brought the yogurt to eat for breakfast.
Yesterday I spent the same way I spend most Sunday. Sunk in gloom over the most recent edit of the S.E.N.
A few weeks ago, I reported with glee that I'd found a way to eliminate a huge chunk of planned text from the story. Having evaluated it calmly and rationally, I determined it would add nothing to the story and would serve no useful purpose whatsoever. Also, it saved me the pain and aggravation of writing another 20 pages of text, always a plus in my eyes.
It's probably a coincidence that since that time, the S.E.N. has been limping along like an orphaned puppy with the mange.
Or, not. Yesterday I gave up and added 75% of the deleted ideas back. As it turned out, the story did rather need that stuff. The second I rearranged the text to accommodate the proposed scenes and action, most of the structural problems with the blasted thing just seemed to melt away.
I hate a pushy story.
Also, now that I've discovered most people who are serious about writing actually slog through their prose word-by-word, struggling to create the effect they first visualized, I'm really going off writing.
At one point yesterday, when I was demonstrating to the S.E.N. my entire and total indifference to the question of whether or not it gets finished, I went back through my old files for some previously discarded piece o'debris that I might be able to resurrect.
I found two HL stories, two ideas for DS stories, some truly ghastly stuff for XF, and two essentially completed, although badly flawed OaT stories.
And one outline for an OaT story that still rather appeals to me. I always wanted to write something with a lot of mood and atmosphere.
Someone has to be a hack. Otherwise, there'd be no one for the rest of you to feel superior to.
Posted by AnneZook at 11:20 AM | Comments (1)I forgot to goof off today!
That's what happens when you develop a work ethic, I guess.
I took yesterday off. I shopped and ate.
I'm not discussing the S.E.N. because I still fear that a perception on your part will develop where you will decide that my whining and complaining means I'm working on it really, really hard and that the final result is going to be worth the aggravation of having listened to me. Not true.
I'm adoping a new strategy...hoping that if I quit mentioning it, everyone will forget I was writing it. I've certainly managed to forget about it. I haven't written or pretended to write at all this week and I'm okay with that.
CoffeeTalk is moving! http://annezo.net
Posted by AnneZook at 03:35 PMIf you have any interest in HP stories, you should read LynnZo's little story on her LJ.
I don't read much HP and I don't read Harry/Draco when I do, but I found it charming.
Posted by AnneZook at 10:06 AMNow that I may (or may not) have the S.E.N. almost under control, I'm contemplating what I'm going to do next. (It's amazing the things I'll do to avoid writing, isn't it?)
I may go back to political blogging. It was easier and more rewarding than writing fiction. Someone else wrote the stories. All I had to do was stand on the sidelines and complain. Whining is something I can do.
On the other hand...when you're writing fiction and something ghastly happens, you can just use the delete key and undo it. There are advantages to that kind of world. ("Major advantages," she mumbles, glancing at the headlines describing the 12,000 soldiers currently invading Fallujah.)
Yes...I might write some more fiction. Maybe a series of hommages to some of my favorite writers?
(I should note at this point that my favorite writers aren't Hemmingway, Joyce, and wossname, that Grapes of Wrath guy, can't remember his name at the moment.)
Or, you know, not. Because copying someone else isn't usually successful. (Except for everything I copied from Mallory, which is pretty much everything I have to offer, but she's exceptional in so many ways)
Perhaps it's time I started developing an Authorial Voice? There are people whose writing is unmistakable...people I'd know in a different fandom under a new pseudonym pretending to be from a different country. I might like to be that recognizable.
It's not a matter of quality. There are some authors who write very well indeed but whose personal styles still aren't instantly recognizable. (And, of course, there are authors whose writing is instantly recognizable because it sucks in the same way in any genre, under any name, but we're not considering them today.)
Or I could turn my attention to a new form.
I have an idea for a series of Literary* and Erudite Short Stories that might be interesting to dabble with. No more novel(la)-length stories, no. And no PWPs. I've written a million of them and I don't think there's much of interest left in that format. But Literary and Erudite Short Stories, maybe those would work for me. A bit of substance contained in a lot fewer pages so the pain is over quicker...I might enjoy that.
A series of L.E.S.S., that could be challenging. I'd need to come up with some structural rules and stuff. (None of that just sitting down to write, without a plan. It's a hobby...it's supposed to be painful, right?)
As far as that goes, I have possible story ideas for three or four already. Just vague ideas, nothing concrete you understand, but enough to start my brain working on the concept.
Who knows? L.E.S.S. might catch on. I could be a trend-setter! The next thing you know, everyone is writing L.E.S.S., and crediting me with the idea.
(There are many authors in fandom who should write L.E.S.S. and I'd be delighted to be cited as the inspiration, should they decide to do so.)
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* It's torch's fault. She wrote Wodehouse and I've had a burning desire to write something in that style ever since. Or maybe Jerome K. Jerome.
Posted by AnneZook at 07:47 AMBossyboots showed up an hour later, claiming that his defensive and guilty response to my e-mail this morning wasn't actually directed at me.
I am, like, the champion of passive-aggressive behavior and I know a cover-up when I hear one. Lord knows I've juggled those balls a few times in my life.... I'm thinking he needs to be a more creative liar if he wants to continue to compete in the office sweepstakes.
I let him get away with it, though. It's just a job. All I want is for other people to do their part of the tasks so my job isn't harder than it has to be. Whatever they need mentally to get themselves to the point where this happens is okay by me.
(Also, coming back in five minutes after that and blaming it all on someone who wasn't here at the time? So unconvincing.)
DiamondGirl sent out an e-mail to everyone in the suite a few minutes ago, complaining, rather mildly I thought, about the odor of dead lunches past wafting from the company refrigerator. Lacking her charm and good manners, I just got up, marched over there, and opened the refrigerator door.
Then I threw away everything that tried to hide when the light came on.
I have no patience with shilly-shallying today.
Mostly, though, I'm working pretty steadily today. Honest I am, in spite of the spate of blog entries.
Posted by AnneZook at 01:27 PMHeh. Bossyboots and I just had a face-off and he blinked first. I can be tough when pushed. I'm even learning, at this late date in my life, to address things face-to-face before situations deteriorate beyond repair.
Let no one tell you that old people can't learn new tricks. (I won, so I'm entitled to a bit of gloating.)
I'm going to keep beating that fool over the head until he decides that it's easier to document what he does the way he's supposed to than it is to take the abuse I dish out when he doesn't. As long as he's working with 15 clients and I'm working with 150, he has to do things my way.
We had a conference call last Friday where Bossyboots spoke up and volunteered to take on an additional handful of clients. Even then I was thinking, "You can't keep up with the dozen you have, so how is knowing you're ignoring nine more of them supposed to lighten my workload?" but I didn't say it.
The Stooges are in trouble. They're pushing their luck, insisting they have to build custom solutions for problems off-the-shelf software already exists to solve; missing deadlines, etc. My personal suspicion is that they just don't have the time or the expertise to do most of the work they commit to. Only one of them, Moe, seems really to be a certified programming genius. The others seem very capable, but in narrower areas.
Much as I like the boys, and I do, 150 clients have my direct phone number, not theirs. That means these problems have to get fixed or Buehler and the Mad Doctor will have to formulate what response they want me to give to people to explain why what they want isn't materializing. I'm not ducking or dodging the clients and I'm pretty sure no one wants me telling them, "Yeah, I know I work here, but no one tells me anything and I have no idea if they intend to fix the problem or not."
I'm sick of it. I have two major projects to cover, this one with Hell's Own Software and the other one, Darkglass. Darkglass moves by fits and starts, then languishes, depending on how much time Hell's Own Software is sucking up. The split should be 20% Darkglass to 80% Hell's Own Software, but it's more like 1%/99%.
Okay...1% to 54%, if you factor in the amount of time I spend goofing off.
annezo.net <-- Coming soon, prepare to change your bookmarks! (I'd hate to lose any of the six of you reading this.) (And, for those of you who care about such things, I'm having it professionally designed, so you won't be reduced to downloading my graphics, fixing them, and then sending them back to me with instructions to upload the new version and stop looking like such a goober.)
Posted by AnneZook at 01:03 PMIn spite of a small amount of mockery via private e-mail, I'm still taking yesterday's post seriously. It may sound trivial to those of you more accustomed to writing stories not full of faulty scenes and failures of characterization, but it was a Major Revelation to me.
I have a lot of M.R. when I'm writing and I like to share them with you as they occur to me. (You're meant to read them and be grateful you're not me.)
I made two people read the opening scenes of the S.E.N. this weekend. They claimed an inability to see what I was worried about*, which is what led directly to the M.R. The fact that I may one day soon be enabled to cease whining about this monster is attributable directly to their kindness.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, as the case may be, for my writing, I bought a couple of new books this weekend. Yes, books on writing, but less "how-to" books than just essays by writers. As it turns out (did everyone but me know this?) this painful struggle to construct a story word-by-word is not a sign that I'm a hopeless incompetent who should take up breeding tulips or painting garden gnomes as a hobby. It's the way most professionals write, in fact.
Which is, now that I contemplate it, a rather depressing piece of knowledge. Yes, I do understand that if writing were easy, everyone would do it, but I didn't realize that that axiom meant that writing is actually, you know, hard.
Really, really hard.
Really, really, really hard. Having an eight-to-five job is a picnic by comparison.
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* removed on account of rudeness
The problem, and yes, I know this is supposed to be short because it's by way of a footnote thing but it's my blog so shutup is in the romance. Or, I should say, in the lack of a consistent romantic storyline. That part of the story just never came together (so to speak).
It's been a long, long time since I tried to write. Four or five years. Unfortunately, the brain cells that died between then and now seem to have been the ones related to writing a love story.
Posted by AnneZook at 09:13 AMSo, I'm struggling through today's edit of the SEN, changing a word here and there and improving it, but not to the mind-blowing extent that I'd fantasized about and I'm frustrated because I can't figure out what's wrong with the darned thing or how to fix it.
When, suddenly (suddenly!) a novel idea occurs to me.
Maybe there's nothing, you know, really major-league wrong with it?
The SEN is far from being the World's Best Story, but maybe, considering the elements I had to work with, it's about as good as could be expected and I should stop bashing myself and just write the freaking ending?
Maybe that next scene refuses to be written because it's not the right scene for this story?
It's a shaky theory at the moment. It's a new sort of concept for me to wrap my brain around, but maybe I should run with it for a few days and see what happens?
In the meantime, of course, I'm missing yet another gorgeous, sunny day. They only arrive on Sundays any more. Just to taunt me.
Posted by AnneZook at 02:49 PMNothing special today. It's my birthday, an occasion I have, so far, celebrated by eating no-fat yogurt for breakfast and a turkey sandwich for lunch. My boss paid for lunch, to celebrate the day. That's something.
I am not writing on the S.E.N. at the moment, although I hope to make some progress this weekend. I just don't care any more.
My bitter disappointment over Tuesday's elections is finding outlet in a remarkably rude essay about how everyone in the country except me is a complete and total idiot. I don't know why I'm writing it. Without the political blog, I no longer have a place to post stuff like that, but considering how much bile I'm spewing so far, I think it may be all to the good if this one remains unpublicized.
Mostly, though, I'm eating chocolate.
Posted by AnneZook at 01:55 PMI was very, very, very angry most of the day yesterday. Fortunately I'm the sort of person who finds it difficult to stay upset about things. I'm calmer today.
Moving on with my life. Forgetting about it.
Ommmmm....
I'm not forgetting the threat to make my characters pay for being so hard to get along with though. At this point, I have the choice between writing a gen story and beating the characters over the head with a baseball bat.
Further bulletins on the subject as warranted. But only as warranted. I think I'll shut up about it for a while. As I feared, this constant discussion of how much work the S.E.N. is, is raising expectations that the result is going to be considerably better than it is. (If it was going well, I wouldn't have the brain left to talk about it...I'd be immersed in the actual writing. General rule of thumb, the more I talk about a story during the process, the less satisfying the results are.)
And yet...my brain is all over the idea of writing. It's really a pity I can't interest myself in an easier fandom, that's all.
Buehler's supposed to be in today. Can't say I'm looking forward to it. I do enjoy having the office to myself. It's so much more peaceful than when he's here. And, in spite of how I talk, I get a lot more work done when he's not here.
I had a 6:30 netmeeting this morning, but I shouldn't be taking that as an excuse not to work for the rest of the day. I'm going to go do some work now.
Posted by AnneZook at 09:16 AMI am, in fact, in a bad mood.
It's not legal to round up all the dipshits who voted for Bush because they like how he talks in words of one-syllable and doesn't ask them to think about anything complicated, so characters will have to suffer.
Posted by AnneZook at 08:15 AM | Comments (0)Yesterday's final word count was -80. I have a goal of a measly 333 words a day and by day 2, I'm farther behind than I would have been if I hadn't written at all. That's pretty typical of me.
I'm having yet more epiphanies as I fight this monster toward completion.
#1 - I only think I like to write. In reality, I like planning a story (all of that color-coding with paper and pens and tidy outlines) and I like having written. The stuff that comes between those two bits...not so much.
You're all lazy. You're the television generation, used to being spoon-fed your stories bit by bit. You want me to do all the work for you, right? Well, I have news for you. That's about to stop. From now on, I'm putting my notes and outlines on my web page and inviting y'all to imagine for yourselves what the story would have been like.
#2 - Inspiration is a gift for which I was insufficiently grateful when I possessed it. Writing without it is...painful.
This isn't writing at all. It's a shoddy construction project. All nails and tape and glue and wedging things in corners to keep the structure stable while you beat the support posts with a sledgehammer to get them into place. You hope that once you get the decorating touches* in place, some passerby will be fooled into thinking they like it, but you don't hold your breath.
I don't know whether to wish that other people do successfully write like this, so I don't have to suspect that I'm trying to turn a fiasco into flowers, or to hope that no one else has to suffer like this.
(* Sensory details like color, sound, smell, texture. Physical setting for those scenes that currently exist only as bits of dialogue or indigestible lumps of exposition. UST which has, so far, entirely eluded my grasp.)
#3 - If I ever wrote an unmixed metaphor, I might fall over in a dead faint.
#4 - Writing about writing is more satisfying than writing. I can sit here and babble on for three pages about nothing at all and enjoy myself thoroughly, or I can sit down with the story file and shoehorn a hundred words of limp prose into it and get nothing but aggravation.
#5 - I need a new hobby. This one was only fun when it was easy.
#6 I don't even think I like to write.
Posted by AnneZook at 08:13 AM | Comments (0)Does it taste weird because it's lowfat cottage cheese, or because it was sitting in a bag next to your desk for the last five hours, instead of in the refrigerator? Is that odd flavor that's almost yoghurtish a sign of nutrients at work, or parasitical bugs that are going to lodge in your intestines and make your life a misery for the next twenty years*?
Today's dietary indulges so far include - 1 scrambled egg, 4 oz lo-fat cottage cheese. I'm not exactly back on the diet...but I'm sort of back on the diet. Much as I love those memories of years filled with high-caloric, non-nutritious junk food, the truth is it just doesn't agree with me any more. I feel better when I don't replace vegetables and lean meat with Cheetos and ice-cream bars.
Writing challenges abound during November. It seems that those reluctant or unable to commit to NaNoWriMo's (really**) very reasonable 1700 words a day are promising at least 100 words*** added to stories currently in progress.
I think that's pretty cool. Everyone should commit to some kind of goal in November, from the grandiose to the modest. Make a concrete commitment and work to keep it. It's the practice...the writing every day...the getting into the habit, that's what it's all about.
Me? My commitment is to write 10,000 words in November. Somewhere in between the two mentioned above. That's because I estimate it's going to take 10,000 words to finish the S.E.N. That's 333 words a day.
The Weinermobile! is next door. I must remember to bring a camera to work tomorrow.
* Or did I just overdo the salt?
** Really, it's very reasonable. I write blog entries longer than that. Frequently. I've probably written more than that today. (Your mistake is that you continue to be obsessed with quality.****) But I can't participate this year. I have the S.E.N. to beat my head against. That's enough for any one person.
*** Seems hardly worth opening the file for that, but that's the opinion of someone who finds it easy to add words but hard to add words worth keeping*****.
**** I must admit, I'm somewhat embittered by constantly reading about people who are polishing up their efforts to create actual stories out of them. I can't do that with mine.
***** For instance, my one, completed NaNoWriMo project was about 57,000 words. Of which the first 30,000 words would have to be replaced completely, in order to make a decent story.
Posted by AnneZook at 02:41 PMTo make mock of various things, beginning with hypocrisy. My mother, who lives in the ghastly bible-belt territory of Missouri, actually told me that in their area, most of the kids trick-or-treated on Saturday evening instead of actually on Halloween.
Why? Because the Godly objected to them dressing up in costumes and celebrating a 'pagan' holiday on the week's holy day. This, you understand, encapsulates religion for so many people. There are things it's okay to do Monday through Saturday that aren't okay on Sunday. What the hell kind of morality is that?
Also, it was okay to celebrate a pagan holiday, as long as you didn't celebrate it on Sunday. You can dress up as a witch or warlock or skeleton or mummy or druid or fairy, but not on a Sunday. It's okay on Saturday, but blasphemy on Sunday. What the hell kind of rationale is that?
And they're okay with celebrating a pagan holiday, complete with pagan symbolism (although I'm of two minds about the Druids being pagan), if it's dressed up as someone's birthday, but if you can't pull that veneer of respectability over it, then you're out of luck.
It's all about the appearance of propriety. It's not what you're doing that matters...it's how it looks.
The bible-belt is like that all over. I remember when I was young and living there, the bars stayed open until 3:00 in the morning, six days a week. So you could drink yourself stupid from midnight Saturday for three hours into Sunday, but once you woke up on Sunday morning, you couldn't buy a drop of booze anywhere in the state until sometime Monday morning. You could drink on Sunday, as long as you started on Saturday.
Also, there are things it's okay to do in the dark that you can't do in the light of day but I don't know what they are and I might have made that part up, anyhow, just because I'm feeling contemptuous at the moment.
Blue laws, they're called. Ostensibly about legislating morality, they're really about enforcing a christian-church-based routine on a society. When I was young, they forced most merchants to be closed on Sundays, too. I guess they assumed if you couldn't shop, you'd go to church and be holy. (I was usually sleeping off a hangover and I wouldn't have gone to church even if I'd been awake.)
In many areas of that part of the country, these laws are still in force. Even though I came from there, I sometimes forget how backward parts of this country can be and I know there are places in the southern states that make Kansas and Missouri lo0k like blue-ribbon winners in the Progressive stakes.
It's the 21st century and these people haven't come to grips with the 20th century yet. Take Kansas, on a map of this country. Color in every state where the majority of the territory lays on a line south and/or due east. Aside from pockets of sanity, that part of the country scares me sometimes.
Whoops.
Okay...this started out to be light-hearted mockery of the kind of hypocrisy that allows a six year-0ld to dress up as a kitten on a Saturday, but not on a Sunday. I'm not sure what happened, but I'm sorry for the digression.
I should be working. Failing that, I could be writing. But sitting here blogging...that's just wrong. Maybe I'm bitter because I just thought, "I'm kind of hungry, it's time for breakfast" and then realized it's 1:15. I'm running out of day and I've barely started doing any work yet.
annezo.net <-- coming soon
Posted by AnneZook at 01:17 PMOf all the things slash really should or shouldn't be, it shouldn't be dull.
It's my own fault, this story didn't want to be slash and I'm forcing it because...well, because that's what I write. Slash. I don't know how to write anything else.
Maybe that should be my next challenge to myself? To write a gen story?
Nah. I don't even read gen. What would be the point? (Ed. - Well, you could change this to a gen story and save yourself a lot of pain.) (Me - That would be an admission of defeat.) (Ed. - You're already defeated. Don't be pigheaded about admitting it.) (Me - Don't you have somewhere else to be right about now?)
Anyhow.
I'm regretting giving up the political blog. It seemed like a sensible thing to do two months ago. It was taking up far too much time and I wanted to do some writing. Today, with a crucial election 24 hours away, I'm biting my nails and resisting the urge to talk-talk-talk about all of those things I spent two years learning about.
On the other hand, I have 54,000 words of fictional crap to show for the last two months, instead of about 100,000 words of soci-eco-political babbling. That seems like a fair trade-off, considering that no one has had to read the 54k and about 10,000 people (or maybe 60,000, I never really did get the hang of that stats program) would have read my political blog and gone away convinced that one doesn't necessarily gain wisdom with age.
A thought has been percolating in my brain for a while about that. Reading the story, I mean. When I mentioned in passing that I was writing a new story, someone I know asked me to be sure and let her know when it was done, and to send her the story even if I didn't finish it.
That's been bothering me ever since, you know? I mean, this is someone whose opinion actually matters to me. So, if I abandon the story as a piece of crap that I don't want even total strangers to read, why on earth should I actually send it to her, someone whose opinion I care about?
I have to think she just wasn't thinking about what she was saying. Or maybe she thought it would be good but I'd just get bored of writing it or something. That's probably it, yeah. I just misunderstood.
So...less about me, more about the rest of the world.
Bernie, DiamondGirl, and the Tweenybopper have a new coworker. Poor girl walked in this morning at 8:15, not understanding that there would be no one here but me and that I wasn't told she was coming. She seems very nice. We'll have to wait and see what personality disorders she reveals as we come to know her.
I (yeah, we're already back to me) went shopping Saturday and bought a new sweater which turned out to be unfortunately similar to another one I bought two weeks ago and forgot about. I really do need to clean out my closet and get rid of the things I never wear. Again. I swear, that closet is some kind of trans-dimensional rift. No matter how many bags of stuff I yank out of it and put in the dumpster, it stays full.
Anyhow. I bought three sweaters and a pair of gray pants. And three books. And $40 worth of junk food at the grocery store. And some white-out. And a phone stand to use to hold the box with all my post-it notes and index cards and flags on my table. And...something else, I think, but I forgot. I shop the way some people drink...until I hit oblivion.
It's possible to report, after exhaustive testing (I ate one of each) that the Dove chocolate-chocolate ice cream bar is far superior to the Hagen-Daaz chocolate-chocolate ice cream bar. Naturally, since the Dove is $2.69 each and the H-D is $5.49 for three. The Dove has 20% more calories and, in my estimation, 75% better flavor. Seems like a fair trade-off to me.
Also, after binging for 24 hours, I found myself sick to death of junk food. For dinner last night I turned, with gratitude, to the piece of grilled salmon and cupful of watermelon I had waiting for me in the refrigerator. Being sick of junk food didn't stop me from eating cheesecake for dessert, but I ate it out of a sense of obligation...because I'd spent money on it. I'd much rather have had some nice, steamed broccoli, I promise.
Last night it snowed, so I got to wear a couple of new sweaters today. (I bought them to layer...another advantage of completing The Diet. I haven't been able to wear layered clothes for years. Not without looking like Humpty-Dumpty, I mean.) It's unfortunate that I caught of glimpse of myself in profile in one of the mirrors that litter this building's first floor, though. I had not realized that my hips are, or at least look, smaller than my chest. Possibly someone, even though Post-Diet, who wears a D-cup should avoid layering lots of material across the old anatomies unless she aspires to look like someone in danger of falling forward from the sheer tonnage of boob she's toting around. It seems a bit unfair that I lost weight in every part of my body but those two glands, okay? Surely some of that has to be a layer of fat. I worked hard at that stupid diet. I was entitled to lose a cup size.
I also wore my new jacket. At least, I carried my new jacket. I left it in the car when I was scraping my windows this morning and when I parked and ran into Starbucks, because I didn't want it to get all wet. It's my new jacket.
And, since I'm talking about me anyhow, the S.E.N. I didn't do much writing this weekend. A couple of scenes here and there. A few deletions. Fixing some typos. Inserting a few missing quotation marks. Removing some excess quotation marks. More editing type of stuff than writing.
I also did some Story Planning stuff. Writing out new outlines. Making new index cards for new scenes I'd written or am planning. Removing index cards for scenes I've deleted. More stalling type stuff than writing.
The thing is, you see, I'm At That Point. The next thing that has to be written is the Dreaded Sex Scene. The story isn't exactly dripping with UST, so I can get away with something rather close to fade-to-black, which is good, so now all I have to do is learn to write fade-to-black.
In the meantime, since this is the Written Out Of Order story anyhow, maybe I'll just skip that and move ahead to write the next couple of scenes. I have some fairly comprehensive notes on them already. I know just what ought to happen. (Well, I should by now. It's the end of the story, after all.)
You know, maybe I should go back to political blogging. I mean, yeah, the death and destruction you write about are real, but on the upside, no one expects a sex scene and you can write one paragraph to a story, then move on to a new topic.
(Blogger is running like molasses this morning...but in some ways, so is our network, so I can't decide whether to blame them or us. I'm glad I'm getting a new blogsite, though. Look for annezo.net to appear some day soon.)
Posted by AnneZook at 10:01 AM