Protected: Conversations with Lune
Birdmad Girl
This girl has got a smile that can make me cry.
She flies outside this cage
Singing girl-mad words
I keep her dark thoughts deep inside
As black as stone
And mad as birds
This is based on the main character of my second NaNo novel, and the photography I did last week in Benton Park.
Had to do a little day-to-night action on the BG photo, but I am very pleased with it. Click here for full size (it’s worth it, much better at 1200px wide)
Also at Rendo for those who hang there.
Filed under: 3d related, CWaCS, NaNoWriMo, art stuff, writing | Comments (2)So what have you learned, Dorothy?
So NaNo is over for another year. At the risk of sounding overly proud of myself (I am!) or preachy (I’m not!) this whole post is about lessons learned during this process and personal growth and stuff, so be warned.
During the process of NaNoWriMo, you learn a lot. You obviously learn about your own novel and you learn about writing in general, but you also learn a lot about yourself – as a person and a writer. What you’re capable of, your best working patterns, your hidden feelings about things which suddenly become glaringly obvious when they’re words on a screen instead of amorphous attitudes floating around in your head.
So first, you learn about these bizarre characters you have created, and what they’re up to. You learn how they talk to each other and how their world works. Some of it feels like it’s under your control, but a lot of it feels like it really isn’t. I honestly don’t know that I make things the way they are in my writing, they just are that way and I chronicle them.
Last year I had what I thought was a much stronger basis for my first novel: a cool original character, a universe to put her in, some antagonists for her to deal with, some things for her to figure out. This year I had no earthly idea what I was going to be doing, I only knew who my main character was. For a while I was sure that there wasn’t even a story there. I didn’t know what the hell this chick was doing in town. When I finally figured out why she was here I was as surprised as anyone else might have been. Continue reading »
Filed under: CWaCS, NaNoWriMo, writing | Comments (2)NaNoWriMo – To Write or not to Write?
I posted this over in the forums at NaNoWriMo HQ, but I’d love the opinions of those of you who read my blog as well. You’re all creative types. What do you think?
Filed under: CWaCS, NaNoWriMo, writing | Comments (7)Last year was my first year participating in NaNoWriMo. I had a crazy-insane wild ride and I did win by getting to 50k words. I got the complete structure of my novel down so I have a beginning, middle and end to my story, I just needed to do more research and rewrites. (“Just” probably needs to be in quotes there.)
Right after November I had a major trauma at work, broke a bone, got really sick and then proceeded to have an utterly crap year. Last year’s novel is therefore not completed. I am still working on it whenever I can. I understand that this is not National Novel Editing Month, so I shouldn’t use it to work on an old piece.
I’d always planned a sequel to last year’s story. That was bopping around in my head even as the first book took shape, so I am considering writing that this year – but I hesitate because last year’s novel isn’t finished and shiny-pretty with a beautiful bow on top. Since I am new to this, I need advice.
On the one hand, writing the sequel may help me to refine the original. On the other hand… what? Will writing something new before the old thing is totally put to bed destroy the creative process on the first piece? I have a situation this year in which I can take significant time off work to devote to writing in November, and I hate to pass up a year of participation just because I haven’t finalized my last work.
So, for those of you who’ve been doing this for a while, what is the best course of action? To write or not to write?
Sunday Feeling on Monday
Despite a pretty robust (3/4) lifescore today, and (what is for me) hyper-sociability for the last three days, I am still pretty melancholy today, without really knowing why. I’ve been around people, I’ve been to parties, I’ve been to bars, I’ve been writing, I’ve got laundry done and dishes done and house clean. I don’t know what my fecking problem is, really.
I can say that the editing and revision of a novel is much more tedious and time-consuming than the actual first-draft writing of a novel. Very stop and go, very “crap, does that make any sense with what I said three chapters before?” and stuff like that.
What’s funny is that as I was writing the first draft I made little notes to myself, “research blah-blah, look up the date that such and such happened, find out about xyz” Well today, sitting at the gelateria and writing with Todd doing homework next to me I ran into a psychiatric/medical question that I had noted “ask Todd the correct psych diagnosis for this disorder.” So I was able to stop what I was doing and ask him, and that was an interesting discussion.
For each of the main characters in the book I’ve created play lists. “What would be on their iPod” kind of stuff and also songs that I feel capture parts of their personalities. Maybe part of my issue today is that my main character is kind of depressive and feels out of control and helpless. I’ve been listening to her play list all day to get me in the frame of mind to write her and that’s probably having an effect. I’ve switched over to a more hell-raising character’s list, which may perk me up.
Also, the “delete” key on my new laptop’s keyboard is in the place where the “backspace” key was on my old one. That fucks me up because I am a big back-spacer. That’s irritating, and instead of blaming the keyboard and my finger-memory, I blame myself for being stupid, every time I do it.
Lastly, the gelateria guy asked Todd if I was his wife. Why that should be so funny to me, I don’t know. I suppose most people who don’t know us assume that we’re a couple. But it made me laugh anyway.
Filed under: CWaCS, Lifescore, out and about | Comments (3)In which we all gaze at my navel
Breathe through it
write a list
of desiresMake a toast
make a wish
slash some tiresPaint a heart repeating, beating
“don’t give up, don’t give up.”- The Weepies, Not Your Year
I guess I am pretty introspective at the moment. I am not really trying to be, but to be honest I haven’t really tried to be anything at all for the last eight months, except alive.
Last summer when my Mom got better after being so sick, I swore that nothing non-fatal would ever seem serious to me again. And that really lasted for a while. I did my best to embrace life, to forge new connections, to be happy. Things were going well at work, at home, in my personal life. It was exciting and new and fun. But there’s no accounting for fate, what will happen and how/whether we will be able to accept it. If I had known at this time last year what the following year would be like… I think I would have just given up on it, quit my job and gone to live on the beach somewhere. And I would have hucked sharp rocks at anyone who tried to get within 30 feet of me.
Maybe the only reason we don’t get to see into the future is that none of us would choose to live it if we saw it coming. It was hard enough to live through this year once, I would never choose to do it again.
Life is seeming better right now. The summer, full of sun and flowers, is in front of me. I am off for vacation next week and will have the chance to finish my Savannah research for CWaCS. That means a hell of a lot to me. Not just the getting out of town aspect, but the “finishing something I challenged myself to do” aspect, too. Things at work are absolutely dismal, but dismal is four-and-a-half steps up from where they were in March. I finally got a diagnosis for WTF my problem is (again I remind you that it’s not mental – I don’t CARE what it seems like to you). I can walk (almost) normally again, with little pain on most days, although my foot has a tendency to swell up all crazy-like if I sit too long, and I feel like someone’s dead grandma when I take my first few steps each morning. But I can get out and about, I am not trapped in the house for day after endless, depressing, repetitive, gray day. I am back to where I was last year at this time – a state of “OK, OK this isn’t as bad as all that. I can do this. I really think I can do this.”
Hopeful, I think we call that.
And I am trying to look forward rather than back. Trying hard.
But by nature I like (love? need?) to dwell on things, pick them apart, put them back together until I really see how they work – and I am in that phase now. Maybe I need that phase right now. To be honest, I had enough on my plate just trying to stay alive this winter. I didn’t have time or energy to ponder, understand or learn. Just moving my exhausted, broken carcass from place to place and doing the basics needed to survive – that took every ounce of will I had, and then a few. So now that I have some energy to spare, some time on my hands, some new internal strength reserves from which to draw, I am in full-on wonder mode. If it bores you, there are many,many porn sites within a few clicks of here, knock yourself out.
What I am dwelling on right now is the fact that I seem to keep learning the same lessons over and over. And each time they seem so shiny-new, and I think “How did I not know that before?” and then I read something I wrote a long time ago, or re-read something I underlined in a book a long time ago and I realize that I DID know that before, I just didn’t know it THIS MUCH.
My wise, beloved, former therapist once told me that you need to learn the same things over and over in life. You can know something on Monday and know it on a different level on Wednesday. Friday you can know it ten times more. A year from Friday and you know it in a new way, about a new thing. Understanding comes in layers, you rarely get to bottom.
I haven’t gotten to the bottom of any of my own lessons yet, I suspect. Right now I am working on three things.
This summer I am going to:
1) Let the past fall away
2) Dare
3) Stop trying to fix things which are irreparably broken
It’s that last one I anticipate trouble with. I am nothing if not tenacious. I hate to accept broken as a diagnosis – for situations or people. I know that I need to, but I suspect I am going to spend most of my life relearning that particular lesson.
Dabblers, Dabble.
Trying to pleasantly waste my free time in between baking cupcakes and freezing to death. This is another scene from CWaCS, toward the end of the novel. Yumi is discovering something she never wanted to know. This is also the first thing I’ve done with her as a more normal looking person, while still (hopefully) maintaining the graphic style of the other pieces.
The character is exactly the same, but the hairstyle and clothing style have changed.
I couldn’t find any good interior wall shots (growth market, anyone… anyone…?) so I cobbled this together from some furniture in my runtime and images from one of DAZ’s “Dark Designs” packs. I was pleased with the result. I am not going to bother to post this anywhere other than here, as it makes no sense to anyone but… me really – and then only as part of a larger series. Anyway – hope you enjoy.
just for fun
Some of the images I’ve put together over the last year or two while CWaCS was just living in my head as a graphic novel.
Of varying quality and interest to anyone I guess, but for fun here are a couple of ‘em.
Filed under: 3d related, CWaCS, art stuff, writing | Comments (3)
