seldear | Entries tagged with writing

Day at work; ostensibly to print things, go through my mail, check my things, and work out how to delete my computer HD when i leave next week...

getyourwordsout is asking if people want to be put into 'encouragement groups' for our writing this year.

While my instinctive answer is 'yes', I'm well aware that I should be extremely wary of signing up to be randomly grouped with people that I'll be accountable to for an entire year, and with whom I may or may not have anything in common.

Technically, I have my real-world writing buddies, but that group's more social and less writing these days. The person who organised the write-ins went to Wales for a couple of years and is due back in May this year, and we've become more social, less writing over the last five years that we've all known each other.

( stuff )

I'm not sure what I want in a writing group, I guess. I'm bad at reading other people's fic, TBH, so I'm not good for feedback. I guess I want people to write with, and talk with about my fic, or my original ideas, and possibly to be accountable to...

IDEK.

Writing things, mostly rambling to myself.

( Dance Me To The End Of Love )

I have the ending in place, although there are still a few things in flux...

--

Sharp Evening Stars And Bright Morning Flame is satisfactorily plotted out. Can I write it in the next 3 weeks? I'm doubtful.

I seem to have overreached myself in due dates right now.

There's

crossovering and

marvel_poc, both of which have plotbunnies, only they're pretty decently sized ones and will probably be written right up to the deadline.

I signed up for a quilting swap for Marvel characters about a month ago, and am planning to make a polygon hulk shoulder bag. Paper piecing is harder and more intricate than it looks.

And then I signed up to pattern-test a new bag pattern which is due...you guessed it - October!

Summercomp hockey starts up in the 2nd half of October, too.

And a 'proof of concept' has been floated at work, and I got assigned to it. Only I'm the database and the main interface, and I've been working on another project for the last couple of weeks. The UI developer has more or less stepped away from the project in disgust and concern that it's not managed properly, and the project managers are all either really high up, or else in sales and more concerned with whether it's pretty enough and not whether it does anything that the proof of concept is wanting.

Plus, new tech and skills. Always harder to do than just leaping into something familiar...

So I'm a bit stressed right now.

On the plus side, the parentals come home from the US by mid-October, so I get B2 back in the house. It'll be nice to have someone at home to come home to and chat with.

I leave for Vietnam in 4 days, and so little is ready!

Dad got the dates he's supposed to be in Russia wrong. *facepalm* So he's due in Russia this week and probably over the weekend and everything's all kind of confused.

The worst part is that he doesn't tell me what's going on so I don't know what to expect. This is a perennial problem with him - literal paternalism, where I'm not expected to worry my (pretty little) head about it.

He means well, but it's a PITA because even if he's making the decisions, I'd prefer to know what they are so I can adjust my expectations accordingly. eg. if he decides we're going to visit museums about the Vietnam war, and I was hoping for a nice quiet day. (I do want to see the Vietnam war from the Vietnamese POV; how they see it, how they spin it. Everything's spin, and while the facts are the facts, and the reasons are the reasons, right and wrong are complicated and messy.)

Gifts for people I'm staying with are a big problem: it's nice to leave something behind - preferably something useful or enjoyable. I just don't have TIME to finish things.

Tonight is dinner with a couple of friends, one of whom I haven't seen in maybe a decade?

Tomorrow is bible study - last before I go away.

Thursday and Friday night are what I have free, and on Thursday I have a massage appointment and need to pick up a luggage from my parents. Friday will be packing EVERYTHING FOR A MONTH.

I haven't organised travel insurance yet, my travel documents are in order, but I also need to let my family and friends know the specifics of the travel plans (so if my plane is shot down by some country who thinks it's a foreign MIG they at least know I'm among the dead, but also so pickups and dropoffs happen correctly - a rather more probable circumstance), dig out my foreign currency and my Oyster card for London (does San Fran have a proper transport card yet, or are they still using those flimsy paper excuse things?) which I haven't seen since before the move...

Phone card for travelling in other countries.

Possible trip to visit

alphaflyer if I can swing flights and times and dates and ARGH.

There's a lot to do. And I have to tie up all my work before I go...

Writing? Yeah, right...

*sigh* I probably shouldn't even be writing this.

Too many countries in too little time. And my priority is to get to [country x] to see [fannish person a], which is in a section of the trip where, naturally, I have the least time in which to get things done.

Cryptic enough? :D

Anyway, even if Dad isn't working in Vladivostok for too much longer (I'm kind of wondering about this, because he was supposed to finish that work contract back in June) then I can always go back at another time.

I am in a cheerful mood today. I finished my FemmeRemix PH and polished my FemmeRemix assignment. I discovered a new Steve/Maria writer who looks halfway decent, and an existing Steve/Maria writer who has a pretty good sense of plot and dramatic action(even if her SPaG needs work and I'm not 100% on her characterisation). I have a concert tonight and a family dinner tomorrow, and Saturday is free, FREE, FREE. (And Sunday is pretty much hockey with a break in the middle.)

I go travelling in a little over a week, haven't written a fraction of what I want to for my Marvel Bang, and am sorely tempted to ask people to drop me prompts for writing. I will, naturally, regret doing any such thing, because they will become epic plotbunnies and I really don't need any more epic in my life...

But on the whole...I'm feeling kind of okay about things right now. Maybe that will change in five minutes when I check Tumblr, but...

So, update on life, the universe, and everything.

( house/moving things )

Amidst all the cons of moving house, one of the benefits is having a garden. A NEW GARDEN.

( garden things )

I have also started getting my writing brain back.

( novel by 2015 )

Oh, and also: seasonal card post. Want a Christmas/Seasonal card from me? All comments screened.

1. My knee. (Ouch.) Getting better, but still achey and prone to twinges when bent too far. Constantly strapped.

2. I wrote over 50K of words in June. o.O Obviously not all of them are viable - some were story notes, by and large the majority were discards from scenes (where I wrote several thousand words that just weren't the right ones for that scene) - but I did finish 7 stories (nearly 8)!

3. Hockey. See #1 - Knee.

4. Joined "Camp NanoWrimo" - basically 50K of words in July. We'll see how that goes. *looks dubious* I'm going to try to add those words to Avengers Epic Of Doom. But the first scene between Maria and Steve is giving me heartburn. Too many iterations by now, so frustrating! Action? No problem! Relating? Ugh.

5. Worked really irregular weeks. A few days here, a few days there. A weekend or two. *grumbles*

6. Getting back into quilting - current project beneath the cut.

( 1, 2, 3, GO MOMO! )

7. Had 3 quilts I worked on displayed at the Sydney Quilt Show 2013! (No prizes, though!)

( eternity, santorini, and the rainbow connection )

July will be the last month where I have large blocks of time free, so I'm going to have to split it out between my quilting and my writing. August will be full-time work again, and September will be travelling to the US and Italy! I'll put up a post for cities I'll be in if there's anyone who'd like to meet up!

things what I have to do in July

a) quilts, quilts, quilts - for the people I've stayed with and am staying with this trip! (got a colour or style pref? let me know!)
b) get as much of The Right Hand Knows Not (Avengers epic) written as possible before August.
c) lose 5kgs (~10 lbs) - enough so my clothes aren't all tight around the waist.

So I'm off the bench next week for a 10-day job. Fixed price, so they need it done on time and to spec.

There's a brief meeting on Wednesday morning - 2 hours in the morning, out near a big fabric/craft store... *whistles innocently*

It will be nice to have work again, although now I feel like I've just wasted the two weeks I've had. (I probably haven't: I've written quite a lot and plotted quite a lot, and sewn quite a lot. I just always feel like it's not enough. Ever. I suspect that if I wrote a novel in a week, I'd still feel guilty for not having written two...)

Anyway this (last) week of freedom will be the week of Doing Things.

I have at least one quilt top to get quilted at the local quilting store. I have time booked in with the local quilt shop - we'll see if I can do two in the three or so hours I have before the store closes!

The plotting for Crazy Epic Avengers Fic is...not going well. It got all tangled up when the bad guy changed, and now I have to unwind all the plot threads and reconnect them properly.

The Brisbane job hasn't fully materialised yet - the office is still negotiating the contract for our work, but if it does, it's probably going to be after the 10 days (which are here in Sydney - thankfully). And it's going to suck because hockey starts up over easter.

Speaking of hockey, we had massive dropouts this year. ( for those who can't take the sporting talk )

Why is it that when it's quiet at work I never want to write, but the instant it gets busy the desire to write strikes like lightning? And the words come out right. And the angels sing. (Okay, so maybe not the part with the angels. But the two paragraphs I've written this morning feel a damn sight better than what I've been dribbling out the last few weeks. Maybe it's because this is the action and I've had it in my head for nearly forever.)

And of course, the project I'm on goes to Systems Integration Testing on Tuesday, which means I have to have all my stuff tidied up and ready to be transported from our development system to the test system.

Freaking. Bloody. Hell.

Right now, my brain is scrambled and I can't seem to focus enough to finish my

avengersfest fic, let alone start a 60,000 plus story.

At least I have Black Jewels Avengers out. No more tweaks, no more touches, no more adjustments.

Right now, work is something of a pain. They have only piddly little pieces for me to do, but they keep on asking if they're done. (Answer: yes.)

Slightly tired, just a little bit down, and feeling very fat and frumpy - my weight's back up again.

So, I spent a chunk of the weekend cutting and sorting for the Supernova Quilt-Along, and am debating the relative wisdom of increasing the quilt 'stars' to 16 blocks instead of 9 blocks. I like large quilts and I think I have the fabric for it, so...now it's just a question of making the adjustments appropriate for the borders.

And, uh, finding the time.

April is going to be One Of Those Months. The Winter Hockey Season has just begun, so I have a game on Sunday (open competition), a game on Monday (veterans' competition), and training on Tuesdays. I also decided that I would attempt Script Frenzy this year, in which I attempt to write 100 pages of script in the 30 days of April.

I have two ficathons due in April -

satedan_grabass and the Remix Redux - 1000 word minimums. Then there's the

sga_genficathon due in the first week of May. And I've offered to help with the SGA Alternative Guidebook To Fandom being compiled by

skieswideopen.

On the quilting front, there's still that Sanctuary Kaleidoscope sucking floorspace in the lounge room, and which I'll need to have laid out and either sewn or sorted out by the time I fly out to Europe on the 6th May...

Busytimes.

Also, for the Asian-Americans on my f-list: 2011 Asian American Short Story Contest (up to 6K words).

Kanji character blocks.

Jewel Box pattern

Seussical Sunday Sweets
Look at the last cake. IT'S HANGING FROM THE CEILING!!

The nineteen rules governing literary art in domain of romantic fiction
Originally by Mark Twain, updated for the noughties by

beatrice_otter

Hack your way out of writer's block

On 'borrowing' from cultures not your own.

Wendell Berry: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

I've started on the first of the Alexia Tarabotti novels, Soulless, by Gail Carriger.

Anyone read these? Supernatural Steampunk Romance, and quite enjoyable so far. Maybe it just hits my kinks. Admittedly, she's a little too competent, practical, and absent 'soul' - (think 'lacking sensibility' in the old Jane Austen way of Sense and Sensibility where Elinor has too much sense, and Marianne has too much sensibility) when compared with the rest of the female cast, although Carriger has done a pretty good job of incorporating gender prejudices of the time into the society. And she has a lightly humourous turn of phrase, which adds to the entertaining style of her writing.

She does cross one of my 'lines of annoying' which is that she doesn't keep the differing POVs separate from each other. One minute you're in the heroine's head, the next you're in the male love interest's head.

--

You have seen Old Spice Grover, haven't you? HAVEN'T YOU? ("I am on a horse!" "Moo." "...Cow.")

Search "smell like a monster" on YouTube.

--

I'm going to have to start my Alt Earth novel ahead of NaNo, because I won't otherwise reach the 80K word minimum before December, let alone have time for rewriting/editing. The plot is still in progress: I know what has to happen, but not how. And I'm terribly afraid it'll turn out cliche and predictable and, well, bad. Or, at least, mediocre. Which really is worse than just being 'bad'.

I'll be using the Writer's Workshop tips I got from Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston last year at D*C to get this plot moving.

"Help me, Michael Stackpole, you're my only hope..."

Moving On From The Elections by

kyronae, for both sides.

--

( life stuff )

Other than that, today, I have a garden to plant out - the damned bush rats got my cucumber, pumpkin, and zucchini seeds the first time, but I think I've managed to sprout them without having them eaten.

I don't know how the poppy seedlings are faring...or where I'm going to plant them.

So, I've had this short sci-fi/fantasy story sitting around on my HD for a while. I've written it and rewritten it and edited it and had friends read it.

But now it comes to the crunch. I don't know what to actually do with it.

My chiefest thought is to send it in to Andromeda Spaceways magazine - an Australian sci-fi mag. That's really all the options I know of. I'd prefer an actual anthology of some kind, but there's the issue that there are few Australian printing houses that deal in sci-fi/fantasy work. And I have no experience in the industry at all - I'd be a complete newbie.

Does anyone know of alternatives to sending a story in to a sci-fi magazine? Anthologies or compilations or...something?

Okay, so the 20K words was a bust. I didn't even manage 10K.

I've done about 6K, what with interruptions and watching three hours of Heroes: The Fix, Distractions, Run, and Unexpected. I haven't been able to find Company Man anywhere, otherwise I'd be watching that.

But otherwise, I'm caught up on Heroes, which is doing way better than Atlantis: There are still about 5 eps I haven't watched this season, and don't have any drive to do so, even with S4 spoilers and fandom kerfuffle. Actually the fandom kerfuffle isn't helping.

I hope to reach 10K by the end of the night. That's halfway at least. Still don't know how.

Current Mood: sleepy

The

stagesoflove, Five Elements challenge:

Air: No Excuse
Earth: Ubiquitous
Water: Thirst
Fire: Afire
Spirit: Somebody To Lean On

Not my best work, admittedly, certainly a long way from my most popular, but adequate to the challenge.

Now, on to Space Station...

[Poll #735578]
Leave any other thoughts/opinions in the comments below.

It's still in the "do I really want to do this?" stage of being.

1000 words to original fic, but not feeling that great about it.

At one level, it's nice to be writing my own stuff. I'm the one writing canon. I'm the one creating the plots. I'm the one developing the characters.

On the other, I'm used to working within frameworks, taking someone else's universe and refracting it through the lens of my own creativity. And I'm used to preset characters, concepts, ideas. Trying to build from the ground up is a painstaking process, and I'm still not sure I've got the hang of getting in the information needed for the story. Then, too, I don't know if I'm aiming too high, if I'm telling a story that's been told before, if it makes any sense outside of my own head.

*sigh* I don't know about the others on my f-list who've been writing their own fiction have had the same trouble. Maybe it's a fanfic-to-profic issue. Maybe it's just me and my own creative hangups.

Maybe it's the fact that my cat keeps squeaking at me in an attempt to gain a full bowl of food. That usually puts me off writing.

Damn cat.

Incidentally,

sgcbearcub? If you have the rest of Honor's Solution somewhere on the dodgy HD, I could do with reading the rest of it. Please post ASAP? Please?

Current Mood: crappy

Inspired by a rant by Robin Hobb which

chiroho linked on his LJ.

It's interesting to read another author's opinion of fanfiction. Particularly one whose books I've read. (I didn't much enjoy Robin Hobb's works: convoluted, dragged on too long, she whumped her main character over and over and over, but I know people who love her stuff.)

( Read more... )

Current Mood: thoughtful

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Page Summary

writing groups
holy cow my life
panic stations
i decided against Russia
two and a half months of moving
things what I have done lately
last week of freeeedoooommm
intersections
writing: that thing that happens to other people
quilting, ficathons, crazytiems
links: quilt and writing
novels, Old Spice Sesame Street, novel-writing
mostly life
fear of success?
Writing bust
And done!
poll about reading/writing
true friends help you crucio the witnesses
opinions on fanfiction

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Writing In Twilight

Where Nobody Reads

Entries tagged with writing

writing groups

holy cow my life

panic stations

i decided against Russia

two and a half months of moving

things what I have done lately

last week of freeeedoooommm

intersections

writing: that thing that happens to other people

quilting, ficathons, crazytiems

links: quilt and writing

novels, Old Spice Sesame Street, novel-writing

mostly life

fear of success?

Writing bust

And done!

poll about reading/writing

true friends help you crucio the witnesses

opinions on fanfiction