Huggies: Going To Great Lenghts To Proofread Their Online Ads

I just can't leave typos alone. Yes, I know one of my own escapes my eagle eye every now and then — but I'm not a huge corporation with a well-paid marketing department.

Tumbleweeds

I've been kind of quiet lately, blog-wise, for several reasons.

Mainly, I just haven't been able to get into it. When I come home from work, I'd really rather just chill in the recliner, check Twitter and Facebook on my iPhone, watch the news and Travel Channel, maybe read a book. Most days, I don't even turn on my computer in the evenings anymore — and if I do, it's to do some genealogy work or scan some photos or sync my iPhone or iPod.

Then there's the fact that I tend to self-censor a lot more heavily than I used to. There are the "nobody really cares about this" subjects, like what I ate for dinner or what I bought online; there are the "I'm not ready to share this" subjects, like major life-altering stuff (which doesn't come up often, thankfully); then there are the "I should really keep this to myself" subjects, like when I get pissed at someone and really want to vent, or when I play hookey from work (not like I would ever actually do that).

Once I finally come up with a blog-worthy topic, it's either so in-depth that it would take actual research and writing and editing (see lazy streak, above), or it's a timely topic that I procrastinate too long over, so it's no longer relevant by the time I sit down to write it. Long gone are the days of me sitting down at my computer after dinner and basically writing a Dear Diary entry about my day. Also long gone are the days of me working a job that's so slow and tedious that I can write a blog entry at work, e-mail it to myself, then post it when I get home.

One thing that's kept me from blogging, too, is Twitter. Topics that once would have taken several hundred words to cover now get covered in 140 characters. No buildup, no lead-in, no drawn-out resolve; just the meat and the meaning, distilled to quasi-poetic brevity.

I also have a physical journal in which I write longhand every night or so, just to clear my mind. It's quite therapeutic, and helpful for getting stuff out that I can't (or shouldn't) share with the entire internet (see self-censorship, above). It's definitely a help to be able to write down those things that aren't suitable for public consumption. It was a habit I clung to back in junior high, high school, and most of college. After college, I started blogging, and my physical journaling became sporadic; random notebooks, or text files on my computer, or scraps of paper (usually intended as blog notes for later). It's about time I started journaling again.

I'm going to try to start blogging a little more regularly, too, but I make no promises.

Restarting a Habit

I tend to approach blogging like I approach speaking: if I don't have anything to say, I won't say anything. I'm not going to speak (or write) simply to fill the silence. In some situations, I've found that it makes people more inclined to listen when I do have something to say.

Aaron asked me this weekend if I was planning to post to my blog every weekday for just the month of December. I had originally thought I should start in December, but then make it like my Photo Thursday agreement with myself: all year long. Now that I think about it, though, it might be a better idea to just commit to one month of blogging every weekday, then to sit back and see if the content quality matches the quantity. I don't want to be posting drivel, after all.

It's not like I don't have plenty of topics to cover; some topics have been in the queue so long that they're no longer even relevant. The problem is figuring out when to write. Do I sit down right after my run? After dinner? After chores? At what point will I be finished with my other responsibilities of the day, but still have enough mental capacity to focus on writing? And how do I successfully unplug from my iPhone games, my blogs, my Twitter, long enough to write something coherent?

Writing is a habit and a skill that I'm going to have to redevelop over time. As with all writers, though, Rule #1 is to just get my butt in the chair and start writing.

Dear Diary

I've kept a diary or journal off and on since I was about seven years old. My first diary had a classically late-'70s/early-'80s red corduroy cover, and my first entry was about how I was "nervice" to get my tonsils out.

As I got a little older, I was allowed to stay up a little past my bedtime if I was writing in my diary; looking back on my journal entries, a lot of them tend to either be typically elementary-school, starting with "Today I..." or a short excuse: "Nothing happened today. Memaw's watching, though, so I need to write some more..." Very rarely did I manage to record any major life events — mainly because I didn't recognize their importance at the time, or because I was too busy living it to record it.

In Junior High (and to a degree during High School), most of my journal entries recorded how outcast I felt and how depressed I was. I also recorded the stupid and immature things I did and said, without realizing how stupid and immature they were at the time. All that means that I can barely stand to read my own journals from about 1987 through 1990, with many cringe-worthy entries up through graduation in '94. And again, when I go hunting for Major Life Events, they're conspicuously MIA for the most part.

Once I hit college, my journaling was much more... journalistic, I suppose you could say. This event happened on this day, and this was my response, and these are my thoughts about it. Major life events were covered, even if I didn't realize they were major at the time, because I just wrote every night out of habit.

My private journal shifted to a public blog in late 2002, but my style hadn't changed yet. I still wrote about daily events and my reactions to those events, without any thought of the public nature of blogging. It wasn't until a few years later, when the Internet became a much more crowded place and everyone was online, that I realized my blogging topics were occasionally inappropriate (about the time I discovered Dooce®, now that I think about it).

Since the mid-2000's or so, I've been much more guarded about my choice of topics. I no longer write to complain about my job or about certain people by name. In fact, I haven't been writing much at all. I'm almost reverting back to my early diary days of missing out on documenting major life events in writing, just from failing to journal every day. I post a photo every Thursday, but sometimes that's the only post (other than tweets) all week.

I don't need a new year to start a new habit. Starting in December (that's two days ago), I'm going to post a blog entry every weekday. (I'll cut myself some slack on weekends.) I don't want to turn this into a Tumblr-style reblog, though, so I'm going to sit down and write every night, just like I used to. Granted, it was more relaxing and cathartic to write whatever I wanted into a journal as I lay face-down on the bed in my dorm-room, but times have changed... and I'm not writing an entire blog post from my iPhone or our clunky legacy laptop, no matter how much I'd like to blog from bed.

A Narrow Writing Window

It's funny: I have, let's see, no less than fifteen ideas for blog entries written in my faux-Moleskine notebook, yet I can't make myself sit down and write.

Part of the problem, at least for today, is that I let myself get sucked into video games during my tiny bit of productive, brain-is-working time. Part of the problem is that my body has reacted unusually strongly to the time change this year, and demands to be put to bed an hour earlier.

If I want to write a coherent blog entry that's worth reading, I need to get my ass in my desk chair shortly after dinner, without any TV or gaming. If I want to watch TV or play games, I need to resign myself to that being the only thing that gets done that evening.

Tomorrow is Photo Thursday. That I can do.

Elf Shot The Food!

I have a tendency to forget how much mental energy it takes to write a coherent blog entry. I'll do other things I want to get done earlier in the evening, not realizing that, once it gets to that point in the late evening when my creative juices once flowed most freely, my brain and body now find themselves to be shutting down for the night.

I suppose I'll just have to wait until tomorrow to tell the tale of this weekend's fun times with Amy, and how I still lost 0.2 pounds this week, despite eating Korean and Ethiopian and Dim Sum and making multiple trips to Starbucks.

My Queue

My plan had been to get a move-on with migrating my blog to my other server tonight. I'm planning an entire redesign, and am finally ready to sit down and do it.

My hosting provider had other plans.

Turns out that, somehow, I didn't get the Past Due Notice that I'm *sure* they must have sent before charging me a late fee. So, when I tried every possible password combination to log into my Cpanel and nothing worked, I decided to log into the Members section of their site, where I discovered that my account had been suspended. I promptly PayPal-ed them my annual $85 for 5GB of webspace (plus a $9 late fee), then contacted Billing (via a support ticket, since they had no e-mail or other contact form on their site) to confirm that my payment had been received and that my account would be un-suspended.

To their credit, they responded within an hour and reactivated my account — while I was writing this blog entry, in fact. I was seriously considering whether I wanted to continue my business relationship with a company that doesn't seem to notify its customers before suspending their accounts... but this is the first real issue I've had with them (besides their initial data entry error in calling me "Dina"), so I'm willing to stick with them for another year. After all, dianaschnuth.com has been hosted there for the past three years with no major snafus.

I hadn't been planning to go off on my web hosting provider, though. I'd been planning to detail my project plan for the next couple of months.

November, as usual, is National Novel Writing Month. I've never "won," meaning I've never successfully completed a 50,000-word novel in the month of November. I've never finished a 50,000-word novel at all. I have three unfinished novels, though: the first, started in 1999 (I think) and clocking in at 19,400 words, I haven't touched since 2004, according to Windows. The second was my first real attempt at NaNoWriMo, back in 2005 — between my NaNo wordcount and subsequent additions, it's up to 16,000 words, and hasn't been touched (besides the story bible) since late 2006. The third was last year's half-hearted attempt at NaNo, which only made it to 10,000 words, despite being a plot idea I'm particularly fond of.

I'm going to pick one of these to write on this November. Since I haven't successfully completed NaNoWriMo with 50,000 words in 30 days, I'm not going to be invoking the Zokutou Clause by finishing a previous work and still claiming to be officially participating. See, the rules clearly state that all actual writing must be done within the month of November (of the current year) in order to qualify. So, technically, I'm not planning to do NaNo this year. I am, however, planning to devote much of my November to writing.

Which means I need to get my blog redesigned (or well on its way) in the next 2½ weeks. And then decide which story I want to finish this November.

Oh, yeah, and after that? I should really update my portfolio and resume.

Prayer... Warriros?

Thus saith the Lord: When thou makest thy signs in the manner of Microsoft Word, surely shalt thou heed the line of red, which marketh thy misspellings.

Seen at the Fulton County Fair, 31 August 2008.

Found the Typo... Again.

Something tells me that the "S" in OSHA doesn't stand for "spelling."

Eagle-Eye or Anal-Retentive?

I see these all the damn time online. I suppose I shouldn't be so continually surprised that professional organizations are apparently bereft of their copy editors in the rush to get news posted online. But typos in ads? This banner ad ran on CNN.com for several weeks before a corrected one appeared.

I'm such a stickler for typos anymore. I guess I always was, but I'm finding them even more lately. I just finished reading a trade paperback — a Sci-Fi Book Club printing, I believe, of The Dragonriders of Pern — that was embarrassingly rife with typographical errors. They're like speed bumps; they take me right out of the story. I can't fathom how a three-in-one book like that got published with so many typos. Don't these companies have editors? Even for a reprint, mistakes happen, and I'd think there would be someone to catch them.

Simple errors like that can make or break a professional relationship, especially one so dependent upon the written word. Would you trust a newspaper that misspelled the word "missile"?

Sapping My Will To Blog

I think that being able to Twitter quick updates all day long is diverting my blog creativity. Well, maybe not my creativity so much as my desire. I mean, I still have plenty of topics to blog about. I have a list. But twittering quickies about how I feel or what I think about during the day is seeming to take the place of blogging. Which isn't what I'd intended at all.

So, for those who subscribe to the RSS and don't read my sidebar (wherein lies my twitter feed), here's what I twittered today (in reverse order, of course):

• 19 days until Hawaii. 26 minutes ago
• Longest Friday EVAR. Because I had nothing to do and had to look busy at my desk. And it was beautiful outside. Now I am home. about 3 hours ago
• last.fm appears to be mainly unb0rked now. we'll see when i go to scrobble today's listenings... about 6 hours ago
• iPod just shuffled from the Beasties to Bonnie Tyler (Total Eclipse of the Heart). WTF? about 6 hours ago
• o noes! @wilw sez that last.fm asploded. well, their datacenter lost power, anyway. ungood - i'm addicted to tracking my listening habits. about 8 hours ago
• New live-action Speed Racer by the Wachowski bros looks sweet: http://tinyurl.com/6absre about 9 hours ago
• Still can't concentrate on work. Doesn't help that I'm waiting on someone else before I can actually do what I need to do. about 10 hours ago
• Can't concentrate on work. Want to be outside! Argh! about 12 hours ago
• Just found out how to set Windows Movie Maker to widescreen mode. AFTER I already captured and uploaded the video wrong. Fix it after work. about 12 hours ago

See the fun crap I post all day? My tweets seem to be par for the course: mainly self-centered updates about the status of me, occasional interesting linkage, and random observations about life in general. Kind of like my blog, but shorter.

My 8th-grade English teacher, Mr. Jay Falls, signed my yearbook (or was it a comment on an essay of mine?) that, like a world-class athlete, a writer like me should practice every day. So, in honor of Mr. Falls and his wisdom, I'm going to make a concerted effort to write a blog entry every day, from now until I go to Hawaii (on May 7).

That doesn't mean I'm going to stop twittering, though...

Edited to Add: Just for kicks, I Googled Mr. Falls to see if I could find out what he's doing now. I think I found him... so I wrote him a "thanks for being a good teacher" e-mail. Am I a goober? I think I might be...

Butt In Chair

I like to write, but I am not a writer.

I have several unfinished stories of various scopes and degrees of completion sitting in the Writing folder on my computer — a dozen short stories, two potential novella-length works (19,500 words and 10,100 words so far, respectively), and one completed piece of short fiction that I wrote seven years ago, trite and utterly predictable though it may be. (I believe it was Ray Bradbury who said that a writer's first million words are just for practice.)

I'd like to try my hand at short fiction, especially since I don't seem to have the mental stamina to stick with a novel-length work long enough to finish it. (I'd love to know how both of my books end! I'd love nothing more than to pick one of them up at a Barnes & Noble and thumb through it in one of the comfy chairs in a corner, learning about my characters and their worlds... but that's not how it works.) Short fiction, though... that takes a certain amount of wit. Savvy. Planning. All of which will take some time to develop.

Unfortunately, the base issue I have with my writing is the same base issue I have with my Zen practice. Call it Butt In Chair, call it Tush To The Cushion, or (in photography parlance) call it f/8 And Be There. It all boils down to just doing something. Do something, and keep doing it until you get better at it.

Until I get better at it.

Haiku: Winter Commute

giant fluffy flakes
(this is the way it should be)
drifting down to earth

Writin' My Novel With A Stick In The Sand

The astute observer will have noted that my NaNoWriMo word count has not moved since the end of the first week of November. This is not for lack of updating — this is for lack of writing.

I had a strong start. I cycled between four subsets of characters, and wrote one chapter for each. I'll share their synopses, even though you may not care:

Character Set #1 is a married couple who has recently suffered a miscarriage (art imitating life? what?), which is nearly unheard of in this future society of DNA analysis and "selective progenesis". They go to therapy, as prescribed by their doctor, but it is unhelpful. The wife ends up submitting her late embryo's perfectly healthy DNA to an online service which is able to provide her with digital images of what her child might have looked like at various ages. She becomes obsessive and delusional, despite the therapy.

Character Set #2 is a teenaged couple; he was raised at home, she in a centralized government children's home — an orphanage of sorts, although her parents may very well be alive, but allowed her to come to term without having successfully applied to have a child. This couple ends up experimenting with multiple simultaneous partners and drugs — basically, the girl invites the boy and his friends to an orgy at the children's home.

Character Set #3 is another married couple, but this couple has had their child application denied. The buggy DNA belongs to the husband, who is summarily sterilized so as to prevent his mutation from spreading into the gene pool. His wife is unable to face the prospect of a childless future, and serves him divorce papers.

Character Set #4 brings back a familiar face: the doctor from Sets #1 and #3. This doctor has been practicing since before "selective progenesis" became government policy, and hates having to have people sterilized and having to terminate pregnancies for a few shady genes (or SNPs, if you prefer — Amy, I'm looking at you). He joins an underground society whose focus is saving fetuses which would otherwise be "reclaimed," or terminated and collected for research purposes.

There was almost a Set #5, involving a law enforcement official who specialized in finding people who attempted to subvert the progenesis laws. After writing about a paragraph, I realized that I didn't know enough about the process of detective work or about the inner workings of law enforcement officials and their driving sense of justice. ("Think Javert," I have in my notes on this character.)

When I started the cycle anew, I got to a roadblock. I didn't know what happened next with Set #1. So, I skipped them and moved to Set #2, whom I liked better, anyway. Then I realized that my NaNo could so easily turn into a smut book, even though I did have a focus for their story (guess who gets knocked up and ends up connecting with the rebellious doctor to save her baby?).

Then I just got distracted, and, well, there went the NaNo. Now I have decent starts to three, count 'em, three stories. And that doesn't count the dozens of shitty false starts I have, too.

I'm not overly disappointed. A little, sure, but think about it. This ended up NOT being the month I could or should have concentrated all my effort on writing. New job, mainly, plus stuff with the sangha and trying to wrap up some of my other long-term projects (which I haven't officially wrapped up yet, and I'm feeling kind of guilty about... but more on that later, probably).

I'll get back to it eventually. I'll try to plow through it, too, NaNo-style, and not think too hard about the details. That's what editing is for.

NaNoWriMo 2007

So, who's in?

I have Amy, Beth, and Aaron on my Writing Buddies list at NaNoWriMo.org. Anyone else I should add? Post your NaNo username in the comments, and I'll add you as a Writing Buddy.

Last year, in 2006, I didn't officially do NaNo; instead, I tried adding to my incomplete NaNo from 2005. I didn't get terribly far with that. In 2005, I actually started a new story for NaNo, but petered out halfway through November. In 2004, I wrote on a previous story, but didn't officially do NaNo. This will be my first year actually successfully "winning" NaNoWriMo.

(Like my positive attitude? Me, too.)

I have 1800 words written for my first day. I've figured that if I can write six pages a day, with how I have Word set up, I should get between 1700 and 2000 words per day, which should get me to the finish line in plenty of time. It also makes it easier for me to break things into 2000-word chapters, so I can finish one complete thought in one sitting. That's going to make the month a lot easier to swallow, I think. My plan is to write several different characters' stories, and tie them up at the end into one big overarching story of how things work in one particular aspect of my future society.

So, again I put out the call: who's in?

Writer at Heart

Despite my assertion that I would get to bed early after a day of being exhausted for no good reason (except lack of sleep, I suppose), I'm still at my computer, twiddling with my "story." Well, my most recent long and unfinished story, anyway. The one I worked on for NaNoWriMo 2005, I believe it was.

I've been listening to my backlogged episodes of I Should Be Writing, and have (unfortunately) started getting the writing bug again. I say this is unfortunate because I have a list of other creative and quasi-creative projects that are much higher on the priority list than fiction-writing. So, in lieu of getting wrapped up in my world of love-struck vampires (I really should read up and see how effing cheesy my premise is, compared to other valid plots within the genre), I went technical and decided to reformat the 16,000 words I have into standard manuscript format.

The last time I had touched my story was November 2, 2006 at 10:46pm. I'm sure I'd edited the wiki since then — jeez, maybe not. Only a few days later. Guess I really haven't worked on this in quite a while. At any rate, going through and adding a pound sign in all the scene breaks allowed me to skim through the story and see things that jumped out either as ridiculous or as needing more detail.

My start of a manuscript was 35 pages before reformatting. Now, double-spaced in Courier font with one-inch margins, it's 75 pages. I'm so used to seeing computer-generated type that looking at a layout that simulates the typewritten page seems odd and blocky.

Once I finish my laundry list of job-hunting-related and other website responsibilities, I have a good part of my story in my head, ready to go. I just need to type it out. And make it sound right. (Aye, there's the rub.) I have my offline wiki "story bible" underway (thankfully — there's a lot I can forget in a year), and I really, REALLY want to finish this story.

Remember, this is my second attempt at a potential novel or novella. My first "real" attempt at novel-length fiction is a good premise, but I'm afraid it's going to need a complete rewrite, and I'm not even halfway through it yet, and I haven't touched it in... *checks file* ...wow. Almost three years. Main setting/plot points to that one: Matrix-esque Arthur-C-Clarkian headgear for direct information transfer, mobsters infiltrating the police, virtual crime and violence, a subplot of racism vs. cultural pride, and the requisite love interest. The trouble with that one is the setting, really. And all the crazy subplots. I want it to be something I would enjoy reading, but I don't know how it all fits together yet. I want to jump into the future and read it and be entranced by the story, instead of having to figure out the story myself. You know?

One other thing I wanted to write here before I go crash out without making my lunch: I was listening to the Motivation to Move podcast the other day, and Scott Smith rattled off a quick but fascinating list of questions to ask yourself about a situation or decision you may be having trouble resolving. I thought these questions would also be great writing questions to determine character motivations and plot possibilities:

1. What would happen if I did?
2. What would happen if I didn't?
3. What wouldn't happen if I did?
4. What wouldn't happen if I didn't?

Seems bizarre and circular to just look at the questions, but think about what they really mean. You could use these for plot points, for character decisions, for all kinds of writing-related issues. Just wanted to throw those out there, so I'd remember them later.

And with that, my readers, I am going to sleep.

P.S. - Is it bad form to ask your First Reader to read your work-in-progress? I feel like I want feedback on where the story is going before it gets there, so I can rein it back and take it elsewhere if it's getting dumb and cliché.

Day Two of Not-NaNo

I wrote nearly 1,000 words tonight, and came up with a more detailed backstory about one character's genealogy. I also wrote out a timeline of events, so I can decide in which month each event happens, so I can more accurately present the setting and all that shit.

Basically, I'm filling out the interpersonal part of the story, because that's what I'm feeling right now. Later on, I'll add in more of the supernatural bits, the backstories, the setting and more characterization and all that. For right now, I'm being very juvenile and wanting to write my more emotionally charged scenes — and no, they're not all love scenes. Actually, I'll end up having very few of those, all told. I'm going for more tension than actual fan-service. Y'know?

I ended up writing for around three hours tonight, and I wouldn't have stopped if my brain hadn't wanted to go to sleep already.

This weekend, I'll be in Michigan at Youmacon, so that'll put the kabosh on any writing for a few days. I'm sure I'll get back into the groove when I get back, though. I'm finally starting to get over my "what do I write next" hurdle, and am just writing *around* the story until I figure out the exact logistics of everything, and the backstories of all the characters and such.

I remember why I enjoy this now.

Day One of Not-NaNo

I am officially NOT participating in NaNoWriMo this year. I am, however, budgeting at least one hour per day (preferably two) during the month of November to work on last year's NaNo.

Tonight, I successfully rearranged my story bible wiki into a more navigable tree; I fleshed out my female lead's background and personality; and I rewrote an argument between my male and female leads that had been bothering me and was a big part of why I'd stopped writing on this story. I'd painted myself into a corner, and I've successfully unpainted myself with this rewrite. Making the male lead do what he wanted to do, instead of walking off silently and meekly without even a "fuck you," really added some dimension to their relationship and to their personalities.

I also did some more succubus/incubus research online. There are several resources on the internet that start with, "the only way to kill a succubus is" — and they all end with something different. Burning her. Starving her of sex. Trapping her in her own reflection. And so forth. With all these ideas, though, I'm finally coming up with a halfway decent idea of how my Guild of immortals probably hunts down and destroys incubi and succubi.

I'm not sure what I'll do tomorrow evening, but I'm sure I'll make some more headway of some sort.

Grammar Geek

James: Which is right: "you or I" or "you or me"?
Me: In what context?
James: "Let me know if it is you or I."
Me: *pauses* "You or I" is right.
James: OK. It sounded right, but I wasn't sure.
Me: Yeah, it's "you or I," because it would be "me" if it were an object, but "is" is a linking verb, so the object would take the same...

*pause*

Me: I just totally geeked out on you, didn't I?
James: Yeah.

In Lieu Of NaNoWriMo

I now have two unfinished stories — at least two, that is — which I think are worth finishing. One I began in 1999, and one I began officially during last year's National Novel Writing Month, although I had the ideas brewing for a couple of years before that. I also have... *counting* ...twelve unfinished stories and one complete short story.

The last thing I need is to start a new project for NaNoWriMo.

If I'd ever successfully "won" NaNoWriMo — that is, written 50,000 words during the month of November — I could invoke the Zokutou Clause, which states:

You have to start your novel from scratch, unless you are a previous NaNoWriMo winner. If you have already attained the status of Winner, you do not need to start a new novel, as your main aim is now to finish one. You can now consider yourself a winner if, by midnight on the 30th of November, you have either:

1. Written 50,000 words on one or more previous works.
2. Completed your novel's first draft.

I have, however, not written the requisite 50,000 words in one month, so I do not qualify.

14,681 / 50,000 (29.4%)

My plan is to research where my characters hail from, discover their individual backgrounds, and figure out precisely how a team of vampires can capture and kill an incubus without seriously injuring themselves. Hopefully, by the end of November, I will at least have enough backstory figured out so that I can continue writing without worrying about the details that form the basis of the intrigue.

Don't be surprised if I come to you for help, like I have in the past. I suck at dialogue, which is only a symptom of my general social ineptitude, so I'll be needing some guidance along the way.

Self-Publishing

There's only one work of writing that I've actually a.) finished and b.) felt was acceptable overall. I wrote it back in 2001, and I will admit that the first paragraph or two was loosely based on my own real life. After that, I let the story do its thing, and if elements of myself appear in the main character... well, it happens.

I've decided to post it here, under a Creative Commons license. I think it's entirely too cliché to ever be published anywhere, but deserves to see the light of day somewhere. I did post it on my website years ago, and got some positive feedback about it, so here it is again.

I know my writing-related limitations. If you feel the need to critique, I'll try not to take it too hard, but I'm not specifically calling for critique. I'm just sharing, for whatever fucked up reason. Remember, this is a sample of my writing from five years ago — not that my writing style has changed *that* much since then. Although I was hard-pressed to keep myself from making minor edits as I plugged in the HTML for italics and such.

[Update: I didn't mean you shouldn't leave any comments... If you read it and liked it, or even if you were ambivalent about it, feel free to leave your thoughts.]

Please be aware that this story contains sexual situations, occult hocus-pocus, and ending dialogue adapted from a chapter of one of my favorite Star Trek books. If you aren't turned off yet, read on...

read more...

Nothing Special

dianaschnuth.net is never going to become an internet giant. It's never going to earn revenue (or at least, not of job-quitting calibre). Hell, it's probably never going to get even 100 hits a day on a regular basis.

It's just an excuse for me to write almost-daily. Who knows if I'd still journal if I didn't have my blog?

I have volumes of journals dating back to when I was seven years old. Most of my life is documented in journals of one form or another, be they bound volumes of lined paper in fuzzy bookcovers, stacks of notebook paper with single metal rings holding them together, or electronic text files. The years that aren't documented seem almost lost to me. The important events that I skipped over sometimes seem hazy in my memory. Then there are memories that I'd completely managed to push into the farthest corner of my subconscious and had almost forgotten, but were documented at the time, and later read and remembered.

This is really just an open journal. For you, and for me. For you, so you can laugh at my funnies and muse with me about stupid shit. For me, so I can look back later and remember what it was like before [insert major life event here]. The only thing that differentiates this from what I would write for myself alone is that I can't (or won't) go off about any particular person for any particular reason. The internet's a big place, and a potentially permanent one, and I don't need people (or their friends or family or bodyguards) coming to me years later, after I no longer have a beef with them. Or while I still do.

I don't make a concerted effort to always be witty, or to have a great punch line, or even to maintain coherent structure in my entries. I try to effectively get out what's in my head. If you like it, that's cool. If all I've got to say is, "Man, I'm really in a mood tonight," then I'm just going to say it and not put some sort of interesting spin on it for my readers. I'm not Dooce or Wil. I'm just me.

My English teacher, Mr. Falls, wrote in my 8th grade yearbook something along the lines of, "Like a world-class athlete, a writer like you should write every day!" Well, Mr. Falls, here I am. Getting it out of my head. Trying to express myself. My fiction has gone by the wayside (dusty and neglected, but not forgotten), but my little essays about my life keep on keeping on.

Neglected NaNo

I want to write.

I have part of a story done — my NaNo from last November.. I need to do some character studies and some research and figure out what happens next.

Thing is, this is the second time in a few months that I've read my story, to get a feel for where I'm at... and still didn't know what happens next. I can't get excited about doing research on undead myths of various cultures, and I can't get excited about writing background pieces, although both are very necessary at this point.

Maybe this is my social inadequacy coming into play. I don't know what happens next in this scenario:
- man falls in love with woman
- man does (non-sexual) favor for woman
- man gets no love (so to speak) but stays faithful
- woman hears gossip that man is sleeping around
- woman gets pissed and sleeps with the gossiper, despite not having made her feelings known to the man
- man goes to see woman and gets an earful
- man walks out on woman mid-rant
- man refuses to do favors for woman any more, despite being in love with her

...And then? Who's zoomin' who?

Wait. This is my story. Am I not supposed to know what happens next? WTF?

It has a happy ending. I know how it ends. I just don't know how to get there. The supernatural bits I can deal with. It's the interpersonal bits I have a problem with.

Any ideas?

P.S. - It also sucks that I have these characters brewing in my head as anime/manga characters... and I CAN'T DRAW MANGA OMG. But how I want to. My heroine would look like Haruhi in makeup and goth clothes, and my protagonist would be a tall, lanky, pale-skinned bishonen type with narrow, evil-looking eyes.

What's also funny? The setting of the story in my head is Bowling Green, even though I don't mention it in the text.

NaNoWriMo Update

Well, I cranked out 3,300 words last night, and that felt pretty good. I got up over the 10,000-word mark. Never mind that I should be past 25,000 by now. Baby steps.

My only fear now is that I'm plowing through my plot a little too fast. I'm already way too far through my outline for being only one-fifth done, and there are still details of the climax and resolution that I haven't quite worked out yet. I know how the story ends, I think, and I pretty much know how to get there, but there are a lot of flashbacks and explanations in the interim, and one main scene I won't be able to duck gracefully past.

For fight scenes and sex scenes, I've been using the ploy of writing up to the event, then skipping past it and writing the aftermath of the event. It's been working well so far — but for the denouement, a supernatural fight scene involving four to seven vampires, one human, and an incubus, I don't see me being able to dodge it so easily.

I think I've done well with my flashback sequences, finding places for them to live alongside the modern-day storyline without being too confusing. I'll probably continue along these lines, because I still need to include several Highlander-esque moments between my main character and his mentor, among other scenes.

If anyone would like a synopsis of the story so far, or maybe a snippet or two of the NaNo-in-progress (beyond the intro that's posted on NaNoWriMo.org), just post a shout-out. Oh, and you have to answer the question I posed yesterday, too. ;-) I've pretty much solved my character's motivation dilemma for now, but there are still some mighty cheesy moments that could do with some motivation assistance. And lots of editing.

NaNoWriMo By Committee

OK, faithful blog readers. I require NaNoWriMo writing assistance.

So, without giving too much plot away... let's say you're a guy. You see this chick in the club, and you don't know why you're so attracted to her, but OMG, she just makes your stomach do a flipflop. Not in that I-want-to-sex-you-up-NOW sort of way, though; more of an I'm-totally-infatuated-with-everything-about-you sort of way. You don't end up hooking up at the time, though, and you're kind of unsure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. She's quite a bit younger than you, though not jailbait by any means, and that (among other social reasons) makes you think that you two getting together would be a Bad Thing™.

Now, let's say you run across this girl again, later on, and you find out that she has a big problem. One that you know how to solve. It's actually your job and mission in life to solve these particular kinds of problems. You're still totally attracted to her, more so than you ever have been before. Love at first sight, even -- at least, on your side of the equation. You're still not sure how she feels.

What do you do, and why? Do you:

1. help her solve her problem, and use the thank-you-so-much reaction to try to get together with her, and damn the consequences?
2. help her solve her problem from arm's-length, because it's your job, but reject your desire for her, even if she ends up wanting you?
3. try to find someone else to solve her problem for her, so you don't have to deal with the temptation of possibly hooking up?
4. choose to banish her from your thoughts completely, and ignore her problem, even though you could help?
5. or some other solution, or combination of solutions?

Yes, yes, I know I'm supposed to be half-done with my NaNo by now. I'm only 15% done. I'm dealing with the fact that I probably won't "win" NaNoWriMo this year. But that doesn't mean I'm not still going to try.

Give It Away Now

So, it's prewriting time.

The NaNo rules clearly state: "Outlines and plot notes are very much encouraged, and can be started months ahead of the actual novel-writing adventure." Therefore, my prewriting exercises are completely legal.

Now I have to decide whether to keep my plot ideas to myself, or to share them with my readership for comments and suggestions. Or whether to just share them with my Aaron and Amy (my husband and my old roomie).

I'll share the basic premise, anyway, I suppose: A vampire living in a modern-day college town falls in love with a mortal woman, while in the midst of attempting to avenge himself upon his father.

That's the almost-run-on one-sentence version, anyway. I'm kind of proud of how the major plotline finished writing itself while I was reading the alt.vampyres FAQ yesterday.

I don't know. I tend to be just as secretive with my prose as with my poetry and my music, so maybe making my NaNo public would do me good. Still, though, it's a big leap. NaNo attempts are inherently *bad*, being Very Rough Drafts. (Really — when you're cranking out 2,000 words a night, who has time to proofread?)

I don't know. We'll see.

Writing

Despite my laundry list of things to do (various websites, mainly, and fabricating my cosplay outfit), I'm still seriously considering participating in NaNoWriMo. I participated last year (although I cheated by working on my existing story), and I'm already signed up for this year.

The interesting thing about my writing is that... well, it arouses me. Yes, in that special way. Back when I was pubertizing, writing was my favorite way to get my ya-yas out, and I wrote some really cheesy (and utterly unrealistic) soft-core porn during the summer of '88. (I wish my Mom hadn't made me tear it out of the back of my journal after she found it, because that shit would be worth a giant laugh 15 years later.)

I can look back on that and chuckle... but as that was my longest and most intense stint of fiction writing, it did make an impression. Now, when I sit down to write, I have to fend off the urge to write erotic scenes between my characters, even if it really does makes sense for them to hook up. Once I write the Big Scene, I lose all of my momentum, and my story suddenly seems stupid and vapid.

All of my old stories were still living on my Power Mac up until this evening (which might tell you how long it's been since I've written). In all, I have the beginnings of thirteen stories. Of those, sex scenes are a vital part of four and an incidental part of another three. In just the beginnings. Beginnings consisting of 1,000 to 19,000 words. (Most are between 2,000 and 7,000 words, FYI.) I feel like such a perv, admitting that I write smut a lot of the time... but admitting your problem is the first step to solving it, right?

According to the NaNoWriMo rules, you *are* allowed to do outlining and note-taking before November begins — but no actual writing. So this year, I think I'm going to flesh out a story idea I had years ago... and the few sex scenes, though integral to the story line, won't be overly graphic. Neither will they be early in the story (I refuse to call it a book or novel).

This year's NaNo will also not be related to my 19,000 word project that seems to be mortally stalled and in need of a major rewrite before it's even a third of the way completed. (Incidentally, I only managed to add 2,000 words to this story during November 2004.)

I'm going to give it my best shot this time, and I'm going to try to make it PG-13. If I'm not embarrassed when November is over, maybe I'll share my results.

NaNoWriMo: Day One

I don't know about this. I'm sure I'll get back into the swing of things soon, but I only managed to write about 800 words tonight. I was still remembering how my plot worked, though, and looking through my copious notes (thank goodness I took plenty) to remember what subplots I was setting up and what my characters' motivations were.

I read an interesting and helpful character development exercise on one of the NaNoWriMo message boards, which was in turn ganked from a Harry Potter role-playing message board:

The BEEP test is a form of character development, using the following four things: Boggart, Expecto Patronum, Mirror of Erised, and Pensieve.

1) Boggart - What would your character's Boggart turn into? This is your character's worst fear; nothing can define a character like their weaknesses. They are what make us human. (And nobody likes a Mary-Sue/Gary-Stu)

2) Expecto Patronum - What would your character's Patronus be? What protects them? What might they think of to conjure a patronus? This is a character's strength.

3) Mirror of Erised - What would you see in the mirror? Your character's deepest, most secret desires.

4) Pensieve - What memories would your chaarcter put into the Pensieve? What recollections are their most treasured? Their most private? The most burdensome?

That actually helped me decide how to develop my main character, as he needs some serious development. Getting into the thick of the plot is going to be interesting, too, as I just read my whacked-out web of plots and who's-deceiving-whom. I also need to work on my writing style, as I find it to be much more laborious than my standard blogging style, which I kind of like better.

I hope I can do this... and even if I don't get my 50,000 words in a month, no biggie. At least I got my finally story back out of mothballs.

NaNoWriMo

Well, I did it. I joined up for National Novel Writing Month. I'm starting with 17,180 words, so my goal by the end of the month is 70,000 words total.

This story has been sitting dormant for a couple years now, and NaNoWriMo is as good an excuse as any to get going on it again.

...Just so long as I get my Mom's birthday present done before the end of November, too. Yeesh... I've got my free time pretty much tied up, eh?

Mr. Jay Falls, English Teacher Extraordinaire

On one of my essays, my eighth-grade English teacher, Mr. Falls, wrote: "Like a world-class athlete, a writer like you should write every day!" (It was something close to that, anyway—I can't seem to locate A Day in the Life of a 40-Year-Old College Freshman right now. I do still have it somewhere.)

Mr. Falls was a bit of in inspiration to me; at the very least, he was a wake-up call of sorts. I'd been fairly good at writing ever since that experimental creative writing course my school system tried when I was in third grade—the Developmental Writing Program, it was, or DWP. We learned to use adjectives and adverbs and big vocabulary words and our writing as a class became insanely flowery. By eighth grade, though, my writing style had finally begun to gel, and Mr. Falls noticed and encouraged that.

He was the teacher who passed out the list of "Demons" —I forget how many there were. Twenty, or 40. Anyway, they were the two, too, and to; which and witch; who, which, and that; there, their, and they're; lay and lie; allot and a lot; et cetera. He was also the teacher who read Poe's The Telltale Heart aloud and with such dramatic fervor that the entire class could practically hear the disembodied heart beating beneath the floorboards. He was the teacher who told us about the girl who chewed gum while playing volleyball and choked and died—and on a team he coached or assisted, I believe. He was the teacher who called me out in front of the class for ordering too advanced of a book (Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451) through the Scholastic Book Club, and made me defend my selection. He was the teacher who told us about the Kent State shootings and made us all cry at the injustice of it all.

He also took me and a group of other decent writers, both from our advanced class and from the "normal" class, to the Power of the Pen contest. In this contest, each student had 40 minutes to write a coherent essay on a topic which wasn't revealed until the beginning of the time limit. None of us placed, but we all felt like we'd accomplished something just by having been asked to be on the team. —Come to think of it, though, the team did attend the regional competition in Kent; so, we either did better than I recall, or the regional wasn't an invitational sort of competition.

That regional competition yielded one of the best alliterations I've ever come up with, mainly because it was a 20-minute-long collaboration amongst the whole team. We were sitting in the auditorium before the competition, waiting for Mr. Falls to go onstage, collect our folders, and return to pass them out to us. As he proceeded up the stairs with the throng of other middle-school English teachers, he caught a toe on the stage and tripped. Of course, we were all watching him and giggled, saying, "I hope Mr. Falls doesn't fall!" Which, after some giggly discussion (yes, even the boys giggled), became:

I hope Mr. Falls doesn't fall through the floor with his folders because of the flab that runs in his family.

And the fact that I can still remember the exact phrase after 15 years should tell you how impressed with ourselves we were.

Anyway... Mr. Falls, wherever you are, here's to you.