Category Archives: writing

writing

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 2 Comments

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.

college, writing 2 Comments

The Bad Old Days

I’ve been spending my breaks and lunches at work thinking about my novel / story / whatever, scribbling down one-page scenes and ideas and such. My main plot is currently being overshadowed by my romantic subplot, since I don’t know yet how to really get into the thick of my main plot. I’ve figured out how it goes at the end, pretty much, but I don’t know how my protagonist manages to even get into the seedy underworld he needs to in order to solve the mystery, much less how he ends up actually solving it.

So, anyway, I came up with a romantic subplot, one that strengthens the other subplots involving my MC’s ethnic heritage and his morality and why he’s at university, et cetera. This subplot involves playing one woman against another—or, at least, neglecting one woman while thoroughly enjoying another’s company, then feeling like a total ass about it and not knowing how to rectify the situation.

In order to give myself some perspective on how it feels to be in such a situation, I pulled out a couple of my old journals. It wasn’t something I was looking forward to, because those times in my life were some of the worst and most stressful and depressing times I’ve ever experienced… but I figured that remembering how that felt would improve the believability of my writing.

Flashback: Spring semester, 1995. I was such a ho. Not literally, of course, and perhaps not in the view of others; but even looking back on it now, I agree that I was quite the virgin ho. During this semester, I “went out” with four guys (not including Ted, aka “Mr. Winkie”). And, yes, all four (or five) of these guys I met on the BGSU IRC. All names and nicks will be withheld to protect the innocent and the guilty stupid.

Guy #1 was seven or eight years older than me, quite the Christian boy—and, like me, had never french-kissed before. He just had too many mental issues, though, and was even more socially inept than I was (and, honestly, his face wasn’t very aesthetically pleasing). We ended up being “just friends” after not going much farther than kissing.

Guy #2 was my age, and was really the Boyfriend Starter Kit for me. Unfortunate, though, as the thing I most remember about him at that time was that he thought my shoes were ratty. At the time, all we really did was look over each other’s academic papers and make out. After a month, he decided that he didn’t have time for a relationship, and we decided to be “just friends.”

Guy #3 was the bassist in a local college band, and pretty much ended up being a fuck-buddy (minus the actual fucking). Every few days we’d get together, be silly with a friend or friends, then he and I would go up to his room and have make-out-like-monkeys time. This was usually either prefaced or concluded with him sticking his socky old feet in my lap while he played his guitar. And I liked it.

After Spring Break, Guy #3 “broke up” with me over IRC, saying he had been interested in another girl for a good three weeks before he and I had gotten together. Unfortunately for him, this other girl didn’t want anything to do with him, but he wasn’t giving up the chase. Strangely enough, even though our relationship was mainly physical, that breakup really shook me bad—for about an hour, that is, until Guy #2 showed up (in person, not over IRC) and we ended up deciding to have an “open relationship.” Confusing, but still not entirely bad.

Not even two days later, Guy #4 enters the scene. Slightly older than me, more mature than the other types I’d been seeing, and the first to really make my heart do a little pitter-patter. I had more in common with him than with Guys #1 through 3, and I figured… hell, Guy #2 wants to see other people, so here I go, seeing other people. Only thing is, after several hours-long dates and hours-long phone calls, Guy #4 admitted that the only thing that would really piss him off would be cheating.

So much for the open relationship with Guy #2.

Guy #4 was SO much cooler than him. I ended up totally blowing off Guy #2, never calling him, never e-mailing him, in favor of Guy #4. Until Guy #2 called and wanted to go to Cosmo’s with me. I was so torn, and I felt so bad for doing this, but at the end of the evening, I told Guy #2 all about Guy #4 and how he made me feel. And Guy #2 was surprisingly understanding about the whole thing. Agreed to remain friends. Even gave me some friendly advice, telling me that if Guy #4 had a problem with me having guy friends, then he was just a pain in the ass and he wasn’t worth it. I agreed with that.

Not even a week later, Guy #2 declared that he wanted me back. Which confused the shit out of me. And we were both horny bastards, so I let him spend the night in my room. (Incidentally, neither of my Freshman year roommates actually *lived* in our room.) That little fling really cemented the fact that I preferred Guy #4 over Guy #2, though. Their personalities and styles were just so different, and I knew who I preferred.

Not even a week after *that*, Guy #4 told me (over IRC) that he wasn’t ready for a relationship.

Good grief.

So, to avoid dragging this whole soap opera out any longer, here’s the Reader’s Digest Condensed Version of the rest: I told Guy #2 what happened—and after some “am I only second best?” rhetoric, we agreed to “try to make it work.” I went to Guy #4’s frat party as a “friend,” and had to correct everyone who asked if I was his girlfriend. Guy #3 managed to make a repeat appearance during the last night of the semester when I agreed to one last make-out session in my room “for old times’ sake.”

Then I spent the summer in drumcorps, and the fall at home in Parma under Academic Suspension. When I finally returned to BGSU, I learned that Guy #2 had gotten himself another girlfriend without having the decency to break up with me first. No big loss, though, as it left me unfettered during the pivotal Spring 1996 semester (when I met Aaron).

Why am I spilling my guts like this? Good question. It’s actually kind of awkward, now that I think about it, though it’s also a touch cathartic. Getting in touch with my former ho-ness, all for the sake of my art.

Point being, in the end, that between all the crazy, fucked-up feelings I had that semester, I can certainly remember one that would be appropriate to what my main character will be feeling when he realizes that he’s cheated on his girlfriend back home.

writing 1 Comment

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.

writing

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?