Heh, the auto-transcription is like a bad Japanese to English translation.
I are a spaz.
Month: March 2008
Yesterday: Wrote in the morning. Didn’t write in the evening. Blame Rebecca.
Today: Will fit in at least two twenty minute sprints. Hopefully that’ll be enough to finish the short.
Tomorrow: Edit the short and get it ready for show and tell.
The weekend: Not so much with the writing. See the next post down for the why.
Today: I made a little progress on the short story this morning. I’m going to force myself to work on it for at least 15 minutes before I pick up the book tonight, too. It’s a short short, practically flash-fic sized, so there’s really no good excuse for why it’s taking me this long.
Tomorrow: Write at least 20 minutes early in the morning.
This is what kept me from writing all weekend. My tax prep service, the owner of which also owns a used book store, had a shelf offering free paperbacks, and I picked my copy up there when we got our taxes done. I’d heard of the Hitchcock movie, natch, but I don’t recall ever having seen it, and this isn’t my usual genre, so I was a little trepidatious as to how much I’d enjoy it. But I’ve been in “read everything” mode lately–partly for writerly self-improvement, although, more practically, also because we can’t afford new books right now. So I finally cracked it open and gave it a chance.
It’s not a fast-paced book. It definitely takes its time, and that’s not a bad thing in this case. I was put off at first–as I tend to be–by the lengthy descriptions of both characters and setting, until I realized that they served the purpose of characterizing the narrator via her perceptions as much as it characterized anything being described. The descriptiveness also serves to help subtly build a haunting, foreboding atmosphere, without laying it on too thick. Really, so far (I’m not finished with it yet) it’s more a character-driven book focused on relationships than it is a thriller. Nothing bad has actually happened to anybody, at least not physically. The sense of dread I’m getting so far is in anticipating the emotional damage that the narrator is likely to suffer. And yet, this is a page-turner. All weekend, I only put it down to eat, pee, do the laundry, and then finally to have Easter dinner with the family, and it was always set down grudgingly.
I think this book holds some great lessons on how to create mood, build tension and suspense, and how to build a character-driven story via relationships. It’s also a good example, I think, of an unreliable narrator, one who is often too naive to fully understand what’s going on. I highly recommend it be added to your reading list.
Yesterday: I managed to dictate some of the Ceredwyn story on the drive home, but that’s all.
Today: Nothing so far, unless you count posting a pep talk at our_eloquence that I really need to heed myself. I’ll try to dictate some more of the story on the way home. I have crafts-for-pay to work on tonight, and I need to get to bed at a decent hour, so that’s probably the best I can hope for.
Tomorrow: Finish the damn story.
This weekend: I outlined a revised back story and streamlined the book outline a little. I also started a short story about Ceredwyn.
Today: Upload what I’ve written so far and spend at least 15 minutes on the short story.
Tomorrow: Finish/polish the story and find some betas to run it by (*eyeballs flist*).
I’ve accomplished jack this week as far as actually putting words down on paper goes. I have excuses, natch: it’s been an exceptionally hectic week, and I’ve been using most of my free time to reorganize my “web presence,” because the ever-expanding blog network I had built up just wasn’t working for me. It made me feel overwhelmed and tired, and when I tried to work on the novel, I would actually feel guilty about not blogging. Talk about bass-ackwards. Now, with everything streamlined and only one income blog to worry about, it will hopefully stop distracting me.
I’m going to try my very best this weekend to write a short story set in the Hero Factor ‘verse, and then narrate it to you lovely folks via voice post once it’s done. Barring that, I might just pull up some old Spuffy drabbles to phone in, because I really need to practice and get comfortable with reading my own work out loud.
Hi! I moved! For why, you ask? Plenty of reasons! Well, three. But three is plenty. And those reasons are:
1. I’m pretty sure everybody who cares even the tiniest smidgen about my writing is already on LJ, so I might as well make it easier for them.
2. I want the ability to voice post, so I can practice reading my own writing aloud in the run up to eventually podcasting my novel.
3. I want to be able to archive rough drafts here behind locked posts.
So here I am. I’m slowly but surely working on importing the old blog‘s posts over here, but otherwise it’ll be business as usual, with my treadmill journal and occasional excerpts and short stories. So phone the kids and wake the neighbors! This is where my writing will be headquartered from now on.
At least until I change my mind again.