WIPs, goals, music and the weather

I had a dream in recent times that stuck with me after waking, and I just knew I had to write it up as a story. I've written a little bit, and yet I don't really know how to proceed. This is one of those situations where I think some sitting and some stewing on the idea for a while may be in order. I've already shared my dream with my CPs who are awesome at giving me direction for my plotlines. So right now I'm just sort of feeling my way through the story (as it unfolds in my head, not yet on "paper"). I will say that it's a love story but there's a lot more to it than that. It requires world-building. And it could be steampunk-ish, but I'm pretty sure it's set in the future. Maybe an alternate reality? Anyway, as you can see I'm not sure where I'm going with it. But I love being inspired, and I love my cool dreams.

In other news, I finished my rewrite of SUNDOWN, and I'm quite happy with how it went. I'm not quite satisfied with the ending, but that's yet another project I'm letting sit for a while. My CPs have already given me plenty of inspiration for revisions/partial rewriting, so I'll be making use of those ideas when I get around to revising. For now, I'm happier with where the story went this time. My MC, I believe, is more likeable (including by me, her writer) because she's stronger and more independent (I always intended her to be that way, but somehow she turned out whiny and passive. Passive! No MC of mine should ever be passive, unless s/he's planned that way. ;)

What I'm focusing on mostly right now is my music project, the collaboration involving me putting vocals on a guy's songs for him, and in return him making my simple acoustic numbers into proper songs with drums, bass and all that (which I also then put vocals over). Then I need to get back into my actual goals that I set myself this year, because I have fallen behind with many of them. Shouldn't be long before I can get stuck back in!

It is now springtime over here in Aus, and I wave a sad goodbye to winter for another year. I love spring, don't get me wrong, but I cower in dread of what follows after it. ;)

It's Day 28!

Last night I reached 90,873 words, after writing 7712 (I thought it was over 8k, but the word count API tells me differently) to catch up on all the days I had missed writing the full required amount. I have notes throughout my manuscript for VICTORIOUS that say "needs filling", so I can easily find the parts I have yet to write out. So far with this novel, there are bits I love and many more bits I don't love. But that's to be expected! I haven't touched DANNA since Day 16 began, except for at the end of Day 16 when I had already written my quota for VICTORIOUS and added a few more words to DANNA.

It's pretty well confirmed that neither novel will be finished by December. And right now I am listening to Magic Dirt, a beautiful song called "Smoulder".

If I were to release a "best of"

Truth is, my albums tend to contain bits and pieces that I'm not entirely thrilled with, but some contain more bits that make me happy than others. If I were to compile a 'best of', it'd probably look something like this (let's fantasise for a moment that it's a double disc affair!):

Disc 1 Shelter Yes, New Loving Xerxes (it's not really about the Persian dude, but you know...) U.F.O. Northern Storm (worse than demo quality, recorded using Windows Sound Recorder and el cheapo headset microphone, but I've never managed to record a version I'm happier with) Revelled By the Wayside (Lush Version) (it's a bit too quiet, but if you turn it up you can hear it! hehe) Restrung (at present I'm rather fond of this one, and I listen to it a lot...yes, I listen to my own music. Sue me) Glossary Head (2011 version) (yes, there is an original version which I also quite like, but I think this one's a bit more "special") Build A Bridge Pay Beyond Pale and Ageless (Alt. Version) Leaves Chaos Theory ('cause it's weird and experimental and I like it) James Dale (Edit) (it's short, sad and about a character I killed off in a novel) What Do I Have To Do? (haunting, weird, experimental, reminds me of snow) A Lizard (like a fair few other songs of mine, these lyrics were written during high school...and set to music only in recent years) Interlude 3 (the third of the interludes, and yes, my favourite) Back Flip

Disc 2 Judgement Line I Need Sleep Run Like A Man (edit) (it was only an edit 'cause I messed up the ending...still kicking myself for that, 'cause this was the best recording I ever did of this song, apart from that ending mess!) Red (this one reminds me of my character Louise from SUNDOWN) Burn This Need Debutantes (this song came to me in a dream, and Billy Corgan was singing it. It was a lot more rocking in my sleep) Weights On (remix) Snail Break (this is a song I co-wrote with a friend in primary school...I think he did most of the writing. Our early recording of it sounded nothing like this one) Judgement Line (Electric) - more haunty than the original Rude On the Clock (Snook Sessions) (I have no good recordings of this yet, but I think it has potential) Backhand (short and not so sweet?) Death's Business Experience (dedicated to at least one bastard out there!) Domino Head (I do believe the tempo's a bit messed up, but I still like it) Storyteller Fall on Death Token (possibly the first song I ever wrote? Definitely the first I ever shared with anyone) Ten Times Ten (Billy and WAG) (my first ever collaboration, so very exciting! This Billy guy seriously made my song sound amazing!)

And okay, maybe some bonus tracks (some of my favourite covers):

1. Real Love (Smashing Pumpkins cover)
2. Darkangel (Gabriel) (VNV Nation cover)
3. Scientific (the Government cover) - these guys are my friends and I used to go see their band live all the time. There aren't any recordings of their version of the song, as far as I know, and I really wanted to preserve it on 'tape')

P.S. NaNo word count = 57,331.

Some scribbles for day...16 of NaBloWriMo

Chrysalis wordcount for the year to date: 93,917

Number of stories written: 41

That is all I'll say for now, as I will be doing a proper statistical analysis when the year is over.

Paper edit progress: up to page 84 (start of chapter 17) in the transfer!

Current Scrivener word count: 98,535 (goal is 95k)

And I'm completely serious when I say: that's all, folks!

Except I am a liar, because I must compulsively add a P.S. to mention that I'm currently reading EPIC FAIL by Claire LaZebnik, and enjoying the heck out of it!

Oh, and P.P.S. (didn't you love doing heaps of P.S.s as a teen? i.e. right up into the P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S.s? Or was it just me?) Go NaBloWriMo!

Satur'dee

It is day something-or-rather of NaBloWriMo (I know I could find out what day it is by deducing the date, but I'm feeling too lazy to lift my hand to the top right-hand corner of my computer screen where the date and time lives! I can tell you it's Saturday, just by glancing at that corner, though. Gosh I'm good). Now for the meat of the entry:

• The image above is a manipulation (and, naturally, serious cropping) of an original piece of art done in really dark pencil (yes, that is the technical and Trisha-rifically correct term for the kind of pencil I'm talking about...because I say so!). It doubles as "song art". See, when I first started writing songs, I did a little picture - sometimes more than one - for each song. I've slacked off on that in recent years, mostly due to no longer having easy acesss to Photoshop, but maybe someday I'll get back into it!
  
  
• I finished reading ALEX CROSS'S TRIAL today. It was such an awful story, mostly because it was based on events of history. I have no idea how people can be so horrible, or ever could, even when it was 'the norm'. But at least not everyone in this story was horrible. I really enjoyed the fast-paced writing, short chapters, and Ben Corbett's voice. In short, it was an easily devoured, if shocking in parts, read. It doesn't have the realism of some nasty pieces of work I've read this year, which is probably a blessing - who wants to really truly be there in the awful moment with a story like this?
  
  
• As of this very second, I am up to page 63 in my paper-to-Scrivener editing, and my current word count is 99,441. Yay!! Under 100k again. But I have another 4.5k to cut before I'll be satisfied.
  
  
• I am thrilled to report that I have found my first beta reader! But I will report on that in more depth later! For now, I post this, in the hopes that everyone is having a great weekend even as I speak (or, rather, type).

In conclusion, thanks everyone for the input on the face transplant topic. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who'd prefer to walk around with a fake face (or no face at all) than to sport somebody else's dead one.

Thick Skin - my story

The following blog post was inspired by Ruth Schiffmann's "Thick Skin" blog post. Thanks Ruth!

Recently I read a blog post in which a fellow writer asked the question: Do you have a thin skin/thick skin story to share? I'm going to expand on the answer I gave her here. I've gone through life being told my writing's great, albeit mostly by biased friends and family members. I've had some criticism from strangers that I'd call 'flaming'. They helped me develop what I thought was a pretty thick skin. But then I got serious about my writing, and joined Absolute Write.

For those unfamiliar with it, AW is a great place to go for honest feedback on your writing. I submitted a chapter for critique - a prologue. Feedback started rolling in, and for the most part it was pleasant but honest. Pleasant. Honest. Helpful. Encouraging, and constructive. Then it happened - I got some more critique, and it was harsh. Seriously HARSH. Like a huge bitter angry rant, intimating the reader's utter boredom with my writing. My writing was so boring she couldn't get to the end of the chapter. I was wasting her time, and that made her angry.

Fighting back tears, I turned off the laptop and went to bed. Couldn't sleep. I lay there stewing, feeling by turns devastated and angry and...confused. Didn't this girl have anything nice to say about my writing? Everyone else had! Not this one, though. And for all the 'niceness' of the other feedback, this brutal stuff was what stuck with me, whirled around in my head, plagued me. I couldn't stop thinking about it. And slowly it dawned on me that while the mean girl was seriously mean, she actually...had a point.

A really good one.

I got up again (it was a "school night", already way past bedtime), turned my laptop back on. I started rewriting. Mad scramble to fix what the mean girl had (rightfully) bitched about. It started slowly, but I wound up cutting about 7k of unnecessary words. Like, the whole prologue plus other chapters. Seven thousand words from a seriously bloated manuscript that needed trimming. Trimming is a funny word to use. Doesn't quite do the task justice. Point is, this horrible mean feedback that had so upset me resulted in huge improvements to my manuscript. It also taught me that I can take harsh critique. I can take it or leave it, but if my gut tells me to take it, I can do so and it won't kill me. It'll help me.

I'll say it hurt. Oh yeah, it hurt a LOT. But it taught me a valuable lesson. So I thank that mean girl, because she gave me a wake-up call and helped me develop this thick skin of mine.

"Projects" update

So...since that blog entry where I mentioned I had taken everyone's advice and stepped back from SUNDOWN, I've been working slowly but surely through NAUSICAA. But I really do mean slowly. I'm only on chapter 6 or something. This, my friends, is procrastination. Still, I am editing, and that's one of the items on my Goals 2011 list. I've found myself alternately inspired and excited by the story, and bored by it. When I really think about it, I'm not bored. But I still feel like maybe there's something missing.

Part of me wondered if it was a passionate romance subplot that was missing. There is romance, but it's not particularly fiery. I like to have the addictive love spark in my works, if I can at all help it (SQUEAKY being the exception...he's a mouse! Mouse love would be weird...). One of the sexiest characters (in my opinion) in NAUSICAA is a guy who dies midway through the novel. So now I'm wondering if maybe he should come back from the dead (not as a zombie, but as one more person who survived the massacre). I can imagine him meeting up with Nausicaa later, after Kyam's downfall. I can imagine her returning to Persas with him in tow. He would have been drastically changed by his experiences - from good, obedient soldier to betrayed, disillusioned refugee. But Nausicaa would/could be his solace.

So yeah...just a thought for the time being. My main "love interest" in the novel is meant to be Jonathan. But Nausicaa needs somebody more enthralling than him (originally I really thought he'd be totally enthralling, but he didn't really turn out that way in the novel...their love is more chaste and...well, sexless...than I expected). She and Jonathan are just too...similar, or something.

In other words, I'm undecided about plot!! But I'm thinking about it.