dianaschnuth

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…
Continue reading →

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.

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.

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.

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?

Leave a comment below with your answer, and give a little background explanation of why you picked that choice. Your motivations will help me shape my main character and his motivations (assuming that more than two or three of you answer).

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.