It's Friday again. Well, just into Friday, we're talking minutes and half hours. I haven't blogged for days. Partly because I've been busy and partly because I just couldn't think of anything. This post would have appeared before midnight had I not spent two hours catching up on the latest episodes of Carnivale and Six Feet Under (series 4) , both of which I'm watching on Virgin Media's TV Choice service. We're up to episode 10 on each now. I do love a good drama.
I'm having problems with the Summer Of Fantasy thing. I don't read fantasy, I don't write fantasy (not writing much of anything at the moment) so why I signed up for it, I don't know. I'm in yet another of my all too frequent writing crises. My Dad actually suggested that if I find it so hard, why don't I stop, try something else? That's a toughie. I've always written, since I was small. It used to be a lot easier. Then I began to take it seriously and now it's hard. It's a confidence thing, a perfectionist thing, a pressure thing.
It doesn't help that I can't plan a novel. I find it far easier to simply start writing and things will happen as I type. Characters appear, the story untangles and somewhere by the end I know what it's all about. That wouldn't be a problem, except that from there I ought to take all the elements and edit the hell out of them before rewriting the whole thing. That's not something I've managed so far.
So I know where I'm failing as a writer: discipline, plotting and editing. That's a start. And a little self-assurance would be good too. Maybe what I really need is just to throw all the instructions out of the window and just write. After all, I've written four and a half novels during NaNoWriMo, it's the rest of the year I struggle with.
Friday, 12 June 2009
Sunday, 7 June 2009
Things Your Brain Can't Process
It's the season of birthdays here at the hovel, I have three in just over three weeks. dd2 was 8 a week or so back, dd3 will be 6 this week and ds has his 14th birthday a fortnight today. And something occurred to me. Dd2 was born on a monday, so was dd3. So why are their birthdays this year on Thursday and Tuesday? Surely they should still both be on the same day of the week? I puzzled over this all afternoon. I still don't get it. Dh said that when dd3 is 8, her birthday with be on a Thursday too. I'm still no wiser.
Some things just do not make sense to me.
I'm rather tired today, last night dh went out with his sister and her partner, dd1 went over to babysit for my gaggle of nieces. They didn't get home until 3am. Dirty stop-outs! Ds and I spent a happy evening drawing maps on the back of wallpaper and watching 'Signs' I didn't know it was about aliens because I'd missed the beginning. The suspense was really getting to me. Still, ds is an avid alien fan and we enjoyed the film. So much so that he watched it at his father's place today. He informed me that it's about the miracle of things coming together as much as aliens.
That's me told then.
Some things just do not make sense to me.
I'm rather tired today, last night dh went out with his sister and her partner, dd1 went over to babysit for my gaggle of nieces. They didn't get home until 3am. Dirty stop-outs! Ds and I spent a happy evening drawing maps on the back of wallpaper and watching 'Signs' I didn't know it was about aliens because I'd missed the beginning. The suspense was really getting to me. Still, ds is an avid alien fan and we enjoyed the film. So much so that he watched it at his father's place today. He informed me that it's about the miracle of things coming together as much as aliens.
That's me told then.
Saturday, 6 June 2009
The Morons Of Flannoria
For days I've been wavering between the several different ideas I have for The Summer Of Fantasy. Surreal fantasy based on an island far removed from the normal laws of physics? 'Proper' fantasy with dwarf characters and a real world? But today I had a splendid idea. It's off the wall, wacky and so strange that it may just work. And it will be a blast writing it.
For 2007 NaNoWriMo I had already begun a novel but it wasn't setting me alight. It was tedious and self-important, no fun at all. With November almost half over and my wordcount sitting at 12k I did something radical, risky and worrying: I started over. With just 17 days to write 50k I was worried that I'd really done it and that 2007 was going to turn into another 2005 where I crashed and burned with very little to show for it. Instead I started a novel called 'The Haunting Of The Orc And Dragon'. It started with no plot and I threw everything I had into it. Wacky characters, jokes, a lot of banter. I crossed the finish line grinning. I hadn't written a novel in 30 days, I'd done it in 17. I felt fabulous.
It may have been written very speedily but HOTOAD (as it appears in my documents list) is probably my favourite work. I can reread it even now and find myself laughing (and correcting mistakes, it has never been properly edited). Bel, Figgis and Theresa are three creations that refuse to play nicely, I know that if I attempted to create another three for a light-hearted fantasy romp, the originals would take over. So why bother? In HOTOAD Figgis ran a gaming club, he and his friends would happily spend hours in the lands of fantasy, and the novel he wrote as part of the plot is exactly the sort of thing that I ought to be writing. So what if I steal his Lands Of Flannoria, use the alter egos that Bel, Figgis and Theresa may have have concocted for the gaming club, and start from there. The characters I love in a new setting.
Why the hell not *grin*
For 2007 NaNoWriMo I had already begun a novel but it wasn't setting me alight. It was tedious and self-important, no fun at all. With November almost half over and my wordcount sitting at 12k I did something radical, risky and worrying: I started over. With just 17 days to write 50k I was worried that I'd really done it and that 2007 was going to turn into another 2005 where I crashed and burned with very little to show for it. Instead I started a novel called 'The Haunting Of The Orc And Dragon'. It started with no plot and I threw everything I had into it. Wacky characters, jokes, a lot of banter. I crossed the finish line grinning. I hadn't written a novel in 30 days, I'd done it in 17. I felt fabulous.
It may have been written very speedily but HOTOAD (as it appears in my documents list) is probably my favourite work. I can reread it even now and find myself laughing (and correcting mistakes, it has never been properly edited). Bel, Figgis and Theresa are three creations that refuse to play nicely, I know that if I attempted to create another three for a light-hearted fantasy romp, the originals would take over. So why bother? In HOTOAD Figgis ran a gaming club, he and his friends would happily spend hours in the lands of fantasy, and the novel he wrote as part of the plot is exactly the sort of thing that I ought to be writing. So what if I steal his Lands Of Flannoria, use the alter egos that Bel, Figgis and Theresa may have have concocted for the gaming club, and start from there. The characters I love in a new setting.
Why the hell not *grin*
Friday, 5 June 2009
Persisting It Down
What happened to the nice weather? With the sunburn barely faded we seem to be back in the land of precipitation (oh how I love that word, it means 'stuff falling from the sky', I know they mean wet stuff, but it always conjures up images of random objects dropping to earth. There's a fast show sketch there somewhere).
And I have a summer cold. (yeah yeah, lets get the swine flu jokes out of the way - best one I heard was this: First we had Mad Cow Disease, then bird flu and now swine flu... oh my god, it's farmageddon! )
It's all my fault, I take full responisiblity for this meterological change. Why? How? Simple: I stocked up on suncream. So yeah, blame me.
And I have a summer cold. (yeah yeah, lets get the swine flu jokes out of the way - best one I heard was this: First we had Mad Cow Disease, then bird flu and now swine flu... oh my god, it's farmageddon! )
It's all my fault, I take full responisiblity for this meterological change. Why? How? Simple: I stocked up on suncream. So yeah, blame me.
Thursday, 4 June 2009
The Blank Page
So today is the second day of world-building. Yesterday was landmass and geography, today is beasts and fauna. Great, except I haven't started yet.
Have spent all day stuck between the Dwarf story and the surreal bus-crash. I think I'm actaully going to go for the Dwarf story. Which means more world building, a lot of culture-building and quite a lot of thinking up Dwarf names. Or I could just use an online generator. But I'm not sure if that's cheating, just a little bit.
Well, today is short and sweet, that map isn't going to draw itself and Dwarf culture isn't going to invent itself either.
And no snarky comments about how Tolkein already invented Dwarfish culture. Dwarves with beards for crying out loud! On the other hand, I could simply make up a whole new species, it certainly worked for the hobbits... how about catmonkey humans?
Have spent all day stuck between the Dwarf story and the surreal bus-crash. I think I'm actaully going to go for the Dwarf story. Which means more world building, a lot of culture-building and quite a lot of thinking up Dwarf names. Or I could just use an online generator. But I'm not sure if that's cheating, just a little bit.
Well, today is short and sweet, that map isn't going to draw itself and Dwarf culture isn't going to invent itself either.
And no snarky comments about how Tolkein already invented Dwarfish culture. Dwarves with beards for crying out loud! On the other hand, I could simply make up a whole new species, it certainly worked for the hobbits... how about catmonkey humans?
Tuesday, 2 June 2009
Sunshine, more plotbunnies and 'other parents'
It's been a glorious day here in (not usually) sunny Yorkshire. The sun has blazed down, skin has reddened, souls been revitalised. After yesterday's trip first to Emsley Farm where we fed sheep, goats, pigs and chickens and then to Yeadon Tarn, where we spent several more happy hours wandering around with the kids (four adults and seven girls aged 9 months to 10 years) today has been only a little less busy. Today we had two adults and six kids (aged 5 to 10 years) and we all trooped off to see Coraline, a film much awaited round our house.
Coraline is a film by Neil Gaiman about a little girl who crawls through a small door in the living room of her new house and finds herself in another version of her life. It was dark, and gloriously Gaiman, and obviously a little too scary for the youngest of our party, who spent the second half of the film sat on his Mum's knee. I thought it was a fabulous film, filled with weirdness and oddness and those sort of jangling elements that tell you that something is not right, not right at all . And it has dancing mice and flying dogs. You really can't ask any more of a film. Much recommended for those slightly older than five.
So, more plotbunnies. The Summer Of Fantasy is upon us and I ought to be world-building. It would help if I had settled on a concrete idea. Yesterday's idea of The Isle Of The Moon In The Summer Sky has not disappeared but been joined by two others.
Firstly a sort of post-apocalypticish world, technology stripped back to its basics, the world scraping a living in the wreckage of its former glory. Not sure what the story would be there but it's a possibility.
The second is more Tolkeinesque. It's about dwarves (dwarfs?), and to be more precise, the female of the species. I don't buy into the theory that even dwarf ladies sport beards and most of dwarf courtship is determining which genitals lay underneath all that armour - but it's rather amusing to read stories with that basis, thanks Mr.Pratchett . I think a society where the men outnumber the ladies by a considerable ratio would be an interesting concept to explore. Thanks again Mr. Pratchett, you did a fabulous job with the Mac Feegles, who I think are much closer to how a dwarf society might function. The trouble with this idea is that it's not only strolling into Mac Feegle territory, it's possibly laying itself wide open to getting itself waylaid by Rob Anybody and ending up being fanfiction with the title 'A Kelda's Story'.
Perhaps then with the most nebulous of today's ideas, although again, it's an idea that has been floating around my conciousness for years. I think Vampires are the misbegotten half-breeds of two similar but very different Elf races: Dark Elves that live underground, and Winged Elves, that live high in the canopy way above the normal tree villages of your common or garden Elf. Somewhere in this house I have a notebook that has pages of stuff on this. I may just have to dig it out.
Coraline is a film by Neil Gaiman about a little girl who crawls through a small door in the living room of her new house and finds herself in another version of her life. It was dark, and gloriously Gaiman, and obviously a little too scary for the youngest of our party, who spent the second half of the film sat on his Mum's knee. I thought it was a fabulous film, filled with weirdness and oddness and those sort of jangling elements that tell you that something is not right, not right at all . And it has dancing mice and flying dogs. You really can't ask any more of a film. Much recommended for those slightly older than five.
So, more plotbunnies. The Summer Of Fantasy is upon us and I ought to be world-building. It would help if I had settled on a concrete idea. Yesterday's idea of The Isle Of The Moon In The Summer Sky has not disappeared but been joined by two others.
Firstly a sort of post-apocalypticish world, technology stripped back to its basics, the world scraping a living in the wreckage of its former glory. Not sure what the story would be there but it's a possibility.
The second is more Tolkeinesque. It's about dwarves (dwarfs?), and to be more precise, the female of the species. I don't buy into the theory that even dwarf ladies sport beards and most of dwarf courtship is determining which genitals lay underneath all that armour - but it's rather amusing to read stories with that basis, thanks Mr.Pratchett . I think a society where the men outnumber the ladies by a considerable ratio would be an interesting concept to explore. Thanks again Mr. Pratchett, you did a fabulous job with the Mac Feegles, who I think are much closer to how a dwarf society might function. The trouble with this idea is that it's not only strolling into Mac Feegle territory, it's possibly laying itself wide open to getting itself waylaid by Rob Anybody and ending up being fanfiction with the title 'A Kelda's Story'.
Perhaps then with the most nebulous of today's ideas, although again, it's an idea that has been floating around my conciousness for years. I think Vampires are the misbegotten half-breeds of two similar but very different Elf races: Dark Elves that live underground, and Winged Elves, that live high in the canopy way above the normal tree villages of your common or garden Elf. Somewhere in this house I have a notebook that has pages of stuff on this. I may just have to dig it out.
Monday, 1 June 2009
All Is Not LOST...
At the moment I am reading a rather good book called The Philosopher's Apprentice which is all about genetics, philosophy and love. Well, love seems to crop up quite a lot in it. None of that sparked off the idea, but the beginning of the book is set on an island idyll and that did seem to strike a chord.
Lost things, where do they go? Keys, umbrellas, cats... I know for a fact that in the last ten years I have lost some pretty odd stuff that has never turned up. A small wooden statue, a smoking pipe, a cordless phone handset. Where did these things disappear to? I haven't the foggiest idea.
What if there was an island full of lost things? And what if a bus was to crash on it? My my, is that a plotbunny taking its first breaths? And as I was thinking these things, I was looking up at the blue summer sky and a half-moon hung there looking other-worldly and strange.
The Isle Of the Moon In The Summer Sky Quite a mouthful but I like the sound of it. And it's not like it can't be revised - probably will be.
And the best thing? The Summer Of Fantasy is coming up on Stringing Words , and if this isn't fantasy, then I'm not sure what is. Even if it is bereft of Hobbitses.
And before I sign off, a little bit of music. Today is the birthday of one of my favourite artists. Jason Webley is a musical genius, dark and beautifully morbid. I heart his music muchly. Anyway, Happy Birthday Jason!
Lost things, where do they go? Keys, umbrellas, cats... I know for a fact that in the last ten years I have lost some pretty odd stuff that has never turned up. A small wooden statue, a smoking pipe, a cordless phone handset. Where did these things disappear to? I haven't the foggiest idea.
What if there was an island full of lost things? And what if a bus was to crash on it? My my, is that a plotbunny taking its first breaths? And as I was thinking these things, I was looking up at the blue summer sky and a half-moon hung there looking other-worldly and strange.
The Isle Of the Moon In The Summer Sky Quite a mouthful but I like the sound of it. And it's not like it can't be revised - probably will be.
And the best thing? The Summer Of Fantasy is coming up on Stringing Words , and if this isn't fantasy, then I'm not sure what is. Even if it is bereft of Hobbitses.
And before I sign off, a little bit of music. Today is the birthday of one of my favourite artists. Jason Webley is a musical genius, dark and beautifully morbid. I heart his music muchly. Anyway, Happy Birthday Jason!
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