A Novel Idea

Hi, Quinn. Adore you.

It's a winding path between hitting the post button and getting back to edits. This path wound it's way past Lynn Flewelling's journal and this very cool post about a writing assignment.

Breaking Quinn down chapter by chapter.

I have a bit over a thousand words to go on my novella. Something that can be done in one sitting, yet I've averaged about two lines a day for the last few days...maybe a week.

Thinking, yet again, that I've gotta get this done, it's finally dawned on me that I left out about that much on the original Quinn tale before I was seduced by the Shomi contest. And I left about that much on the first draft of the Shomi novel before I decided that pushing for that particular publication wasn't the right thing for me.

I have no particular insight or strategy to get me to just grow up and do it. But I figure that realizing this particular mode of self sabotage will bring me that much closer to changing it.

I was meeting a girl.  She was beautiful, Middle Eastern, overly dressed for the warm day, hair demurely covered.  We were on her steps, about to go in when she flinched.  A car rolled up with people who taunted her, called her names.  Three men and a woman...

The details are lost to me from waking, but over the course of the dream, I discovered that she had been raped.  And like so often happens, they didn't blame the man who did it, but labled the victim a slut.  I'm not sure what kept her from being further victimized by an honor killing.

As the dream turned, I caught beautiful glimpses of a story--not actual scenes so much as movie stills, sort of an Islam meets Dune kind of feel.

So those were my dreams.  I'd add only that, in those moments before I was really awake, my thoughts returned to the first....Djinn?  An avenging angel?  Something like that was floating around my thoughts, taking down the criminals who had gotten away with such attacks.

....And I thought I'd put it down here in case I someday have the cultural knowledge to turn them into stories.

::peeks in, looks around..::

::whispering:: I'm up late, drawing a few words of fiction out. Wanted to peek in, just in case anyone still comes 'round here. How yah doin?

I've been struggling with the Shomi project from the beginning. I dumped my first idea, characters and all, replacing it with a dream I had. And I'm still not happy with it. I finally decided last night to stop stressing over it and just read something--no fiction writing at all.

I settled on The Good Guy by Dean Koontz, mainly because I couldn't stand the idea of a story I'd already read and this had been sitting in an unopened box since it had been, all unwanted, delivered six months or so ago.

Donno why Koontz triggered it, but I found myself thinking about the advice newbie writers get. Way beyond "write what you know" there is "write what you love." Well, duh. I don't love Becoming. I'm writing it out of desperation to get a story out there.

The second thing that's come up from the Koontz reading is a desire to get back to my own story. Unfortunately, that desire is for Quinn's Tale, not Becoming.

On the one hand, that seems to be all I need to know and I should stop trying to force this story. On the other hand, writing what I love will either have to eventually come up against the reality of writing for a living...unless I want to give up on that.

Hmphf.

40485 / 50000 words. 81% done!

It's over. I'm broken. Fell short. Did a killer push at the end and wrote an insane amount in the last two days.

Don't want to think about it any more.

Forty-five minutes ago when I realize I would die if I wrote another word of fiction and, woot, I'd gotten this much done, I was a bit more chipper.

I think the caffeine is being to wear off.

Funny thing is, I can't imagine getting up and not writing tomorrow. I have to finish this story and revive it and ship it off to the publisher for hopeful inclusion in the Shomi line....But right now, I can't bare to think about it another second. Might work on Vic's story tomorrow. Might just play ten hours of Halo.

(....about to click post and I see this adult content thingy. Interesting.)

16044 / 50000 words. 32% done!

The meter says it all.  Great progress for the Shomi contest--I'd have never gotten so much done so quickly were it not NaNo season.  But I'm so far behind for NaNo, it'll be near impossible to finish.  I'm still going to try, so I have to stop writing ABOUT it and go write it.

I suck.  I fell short of breaking 4,000.  You get motivation from strange places, though.

You Are Dr. Bunsen Honeydew

You take the title "mad scientist" to the extreme -with very scary things coming out of your lab. And you've invented some pretty cool things, from a banana sharpener to a robot politician. But while you're busy turning gold into cottage cheese, you need to watch out for poor little Beaker! "Oh, that's very naughty, Beaker! Now you eat these paper clips this minute."

The fact that I even snagged this meme makes me want to bust out at least the rest of this chapter, maybe on beyond that.  ::wink::  Thanks, Bookie.

It's NaNo time.  I'm at 3,251.  I should be at  11,669.  I'm a little behind, huh?

I'm having nicotine issues (damned attempt at better health).  On my TV, Ralph Fines is screwing Juliette Lewis because I popped Strange Days in for inspired.  I'm feeling inspired to eat something, cuz chubby as I am, someone needs to put on weight for that girl.  

There yah have it, folks.  Unduly skinny people are the cause of the rise in obesity in America.  

Gonna save the rest of what I might babble here and try to appy it to the novel.

I was tweaking Quinn to get that done with before the November rush (and the Shomi project I'll be focusing on then), when I had a bit of a freak out.  Crisis averted.  Junked the story I was forcing on myself and found something I feels...right.  I'll probably post about it as time passes.

There'll be more Quinn (friends locked) to come.  I'm a wee bit distracted right now, but it's coming.

I thought it would be good to have something here that's open to the public, so I wanted to answer the following question in a new post. Hope you don't mind, O He Who Asked. (Seriously, if you do mind, I won't use you as a writing prompt again!)

Is this take on vampirism all your own or is this in other stories as well? Just curious. :)

It all started with washing dishes. (Hey, I said short story long, didn't I?) I was standing there, trying to stop beating my head against an imaginary wall, getting into the rhythm of just washing and rinsing when I heard that little voice that ISN'T crazy so long as others identify you as an artist: "A banshee howled when I was born."

I dried my hands, wrote it down, and forgot about it. It had nothing to do with the story I was working on. And bit by bit over time, a character evolved around that. He was going to be just a bit character in someone else's story, but since I semi-permanently had writer's block, I found myself trying to flesh out different characters to make that story go. Quinn seemed to have a story of his own to tell.

Next thing I knew, I was searching the net for pre-Stoker vamp lore and coming up with very little. It just so happened that I had two unread copies of John Michael Greer's Monsters floating around the homestead. To date (and this is years in the making) I still haven't read the whole section on vampires, but it was the opening that mattered. He writes about all the stuff that we know about vampires, and then explains that that's almost all crap.

"Nearly the only point common to modern vampire imagery and traditional vampire lore alike is the idea that garlic and sunlight are effective vampire repellents."

He describes more authentic vampires, and I'll read it eventually, but I'd gotten what I needed. So the rest is my going "Well then, what IS there?"

 :-)

I am working on fiction, btw.  I figure if you're on my main journal, you see a lot of babble (or ignore a lot of babble) about other stuff, and if you're not there, you seem me show up, post a couple of chapters, and vanish again.

I'm working, I swear. 

Meanwhile, anyone still interested in Quinn chaps?

Comp's still on the fritz so I can't open the file, *but* I think I'll be able to borrow someone else's tomorrow. I'll get more Quinn up soon as I can. (You know, friends' locked and shit.)

Feel free to rip it apart. I'm going to have to do a real edit on it eventually.

Also, as a title, Banshee's Wind blows. Ba-dum-dump. I had to call it something other than Quinn's tale, and there comes a point where the title makes sense...and yet continues to suck. So if you're good with titles, lend me your talent.

First and foremost--I'm taking a wee vacation from work. Had a minor breakdown the other day...It wasn't exactly *about* work, I think. I think it was a lot of factors coming together, mixed with a brain off balance (worse than usual) with nicotine withdrawal. Work was only an issues, IMO, because...well, basically, I'm underpaid to give to people, the majority of whom don't actually want it or want it, but want it to be something that it's not.

Hmmm, how to explain?

It's not (and feel free to hold onto your own view of things) past/present/future. It's what-was/what-is/what-should-(or what's likely)-to-be. The Tarot can look at all these things--in it's way, which is more about how the reader works than anything, I suppose--but there's a limit. And where there are not limits, sometimes there should be...

Of course, I get to this part of my explanation and realize I don't want to explain any more. Of course, having come this far, I feel like I need to make sense of how this--which is sort of a dream job--ends up being so stressful. I'll leave it for the main journal.

What belongs in the writing journal? Oh. Yeah. Anne Bishop.

Just finished Sebastian. I really enjoyed it. Wasn't sure I would since it had mixed reviews, and those reviews are what's been on my mind as far as my writing dilemma's concerned.

See, I have just a handful of scenes left for Quinn's first version to be done. And I haven't written more than a handful of lines since NaNo ended. Now, I'm queen of introspection. I'm well aware that my fear of failure is eclipsed only by my fear of success. That's a hard thing to explain...until now.

Anne Bishop wrote a glorious trilogy+ (the public begged, she added a stand alone set in the same world a few centuries earlier...kept begging, added an anthology type thing....begged even more and, rumor has it, she's adding another book). It's not for everyone. Some don't like the dark themes of the Black Jewel series. But otherwise, it's a cross-over hit: great fantasy, romance lovers dig, I've heard and read it appreciated by those who would generally not appreciate either.


Then came the Tir Alainn Trilogy. Nice books. Very interesting dark fantasy take on the Burning Times (witch hunts). And totally unappreciated by the masses. If someone else had written them, they would have been well appreciated, but they were writen by the woman who created The Blood--who wrote the Black Jewels story, which may not have changed the face of fantasy for the world, but definitely painted on the landscape for those of us who'd been drawn in.

With Sebastian, she went back to some of what was loved in Black Jewels, making it different enough in character and concept to not be a rip off of her earlier work. It's good, damn it. But it doesn't quite compare and review after customer review makes it clear that nothing ever can.

How much does that have to suck?

Now, I'm not that big on hubris. I don't put Quinn's tale in league with Black Jewels. But that fear that, if it's well received, I've got nowhere to go but to hell from there.

Back to check my notes, thought I'd say hi! I've got about 600 words to make my goal for the day then crashing so I can get up at butt o'clock for work.

Yay being mostly on target. Best of luck to all you other NaNoers!

I had oral surgery this morning. I'm feeling--well, I'm finally fully conscious. My lower jaw is rejoining my face. Sort of feel weird as the pain is kicking in and I'm trying to not use anything strong than Ibu.

So why am I here? Nano start soon and I've got a crap load of outlining to do before the start. Most of my notes on Quinn are buried here in eyes only posts. Figured I'd give a howdy before starting.

My head's all swollen. How are you?! :-D

NaNo is coming, and I've decided to get a head start with my group by, you know, having an idea of what the hell I'm doing, before starting to write. Only I've got this little problem. Usually, I can't keep my head on one story. Now that I'm trying to think of others, I can think only of Quinn's Tale (a neat trick if I can reproduce it later, but not working for me right now).

I'd almost decided to work on a fantasy adventure that's been tugging at my brain if only because I haven't written classic fantasy in ages. And I'm considering making a novel out of the challenge story that ended up reading like an opening chapter. Since everyone once in a while, one of you lovelies says, "Why don't your write about...?" I figured this was a good chance to take that input.

Anything goes, but keep in mind that I don't do humor and whatever the topic, it'll end up spec fiction by the time I'm done. So do any of you have any inspiration for me?