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Distinct Conversationalist
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 Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2012 1:24 pm
I've been avoiding writing.
I know I've been avoiding writing, though I don't know why. I've got IRL s**t to deal with, and I'm dealing with it. I've got computer s**t to deal with (it's added crashing web browsers once an hour to the buffet of other Fun Stuff) and I'm dealing with it. (time to update goals!)
It's not like I haven't been writing. It's just that I'm not taking the opportunity to sit down and log hours, and that's what I need to do.
Meh.
Trying to schedule a writing meet-up with my friend somewhere for later today, but I don't remember when she gets off work.
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Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2012 2:11 pm
Your story sounds awesome...have you posted it on any websites, and if so, which ones? If not...can I see some of it anyhow? 4laugh
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Distinct Conversationalist
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Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2012 2:19 pm
PandorasJackinthebox Your story sounds awesome...have you posted it on any websites, and if so, which ones? If not...can I see some of it anyhow? 4laugh Thanks, but I'm not going to post it anywhere online unless I give up writing it. Otherwise, I plan to publish it, so... I don't hand bits out. It's probably too much precaution, but I take it anyways. If you must have some of my prose, I'm thinking of posting the very, very lackluster products of my Fanfic Phase, but on top of one being very bad and the other being very short, I don't intend to finish them. Well, one maybe, as an original work. It's honestly far enough from the cannon it's riffing off of that if I just change the names it'll be almost unrecognizable. Almost. And that's the good one. But at the moment, my computer is... a bit of a problem. So I'm not undertaking any major typing projects 'till that's fixed.
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Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2012 2:21 pm
Kita-Ysabell PandorasJackinthebox Your story sounds awesome...have you posted it on any websites, and if so, which ones? If not...can I see some of it anyhow? 4laugh Thanks, but I'm not going to post it anywhere online unless I give up writing it. Otherwise, I plan to publish it, so... I don't hand bits out. It's probably too much precaution, but I take it anyways. If you must have some of my prose, I'm thinking of posting the very, very lackluster products of my Fanfic Phase, but on top of one being very bad and the other being very short, I don't intend to finish them. Well, one maybe, as an original work. It's honestly far enough from the cannon it's riffing off of that if I just change the names it'll be almost unrecognizable. Almost. And that's the good one. But at the moment, my computer is... a bit of a problem. So I'm not undertaking any major typing projects 'till that's fixed. That's okay, I look forward to reading it once it's published. wink
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Psychotic Maniacal Sanity Crew
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Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2012 3:09 pm
Keep your chin up! Hopefully your problems will only be short-lived. Good luck in whatever you're dealing with right now. :]
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Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2012 9:24 pm
So I did end up spending some time writing today, and I made up a playlist for the various members of the circus. I'd been wanting to do that. It's the first playlist I've done in a while that isn't chronologically organized, or at least, not strictly chronologically organized. I kind of have the Band of Token Minorities thing going on with the minor cast. I've got the Out-of-Time Chick, the Closeted Gay Guy, the Crazy Girl, the Irish Guy, and The Man Your Man Could Smell Like. Also Gabriella, but who remembers her? I didn't get much written, but I realized that the opening of chapter 4 was bugging the heck out of me, since Elvira started acting really out of character. I did a bit of editing on that and on the way people were talking back in chapter 1. Eugh. Back then, they all kind of sounded the same. By chapter 3, I can pretty well tell who's talking just by how they talk. So. On the one hand, I like my instincts. I think part of what was making it hard to write was knowing how uncharacteristically Elvira was acting back at the beginning of the chapter. But I want to finish one draft with minimal editing, and that's not helping. I got my computer fixed. And got a new battery. I'd like to start typing up some of what I've got written and keep a chart to find out about how many words/page I usually write with my tiny notebook pages. And now I can do that outside! Yay! We've actually had some good weather and it always makes me feel better to get out when it's sunny. So it's check-in time for logging hours. Date: 4/14/2012
Time Logged: 1:26
WEEKLY TOTAL: 3:01
GRAND TOTAL: 3:01
Goal: 5:00 by 4/21And I can't slack off and cram it all at the last minute. There's no way I could stay focused writing for five hours at a go. Edit: I tried to quote the post where I was all "I'm gonna track my time!" but I ended up editing it instead. I have since deleted it, since it looked like this post. Augh.
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Distinct Conversationalist
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Distinct Conversationalist
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Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2012 1:07 pm
Date: 4/16/2012
Time Logged: 1:46
WEEKLY TOTAL: 1:46
GRAND TOTAL: 4:47
Goal: 5:00 WEEKLY TOTAL by 4/21
Mmkay. Haven't been updating enough.
Monday, I went and hung out and wrote with a friend and had coffee. I finally got the scene out of Caliban's cart, which I am characterizing as a Victorian RV. So we're finally out of the Victorian RV.
I numbered the pages like... a while ago? I don't know. I didn't enter it in here, so I have no record of it. Chapter 1 ends on page 26, Chapter 2 ends on page 51, Chapter 3 ends on page 73, I got to page 88 on Monday and I'm on page 93 now. Remember that these are Tiny Notebook Pages, not proper MS Word pages. I'll try and figure out the word counts later. There will be spreadsheets involved.
Date: 4/17/2012
Time Logged: 1:26
WEEKLY TOTAL: 3:12
GRAND TOTAL: 6:13
Goal: 5:00 WEEKLY TOTAL by 4/21
So I'm not doing too horribly on my goal. I rather think I'll make it, but not with too much time to spare. I've been doing a lot of IRL stuff to change my profession from Habitual ******** to Student. I've been to two appointments already this week, and they have things they want me to do. I'll probably start taking classes this summer, part-time before full-time. There's also a money issue, so I've got that to work on too.
Urgh, Majoring is an issue. I have a bad track record in English, but I... I miss it when it's gone. If I want it, I'm going to fight for it, and I might have to fight people who have been helpful so far. I keep wondering what Elvira would have to say on the matter. It's the sort of thing she'd have something to say about.
But to make matters worse, I am that (supposedly) rare breed of intellect for which math and language are equally engaging and accessible. I do not think my advisor was happy when I told her that if I don't keep going with English, I would probably go into math or programming or a hard science. I'm expected to have a major by now, or if not, to know whether I'll be working towards an AA or an AS, but... but... urgh. It's this thing, where the administrative part of higher learning starts getting in the way of learning. I can see the connections between math as a symbolic reasoning system and language as a system of symbolic expression and understanding, and it's the underlying similarity that I'd most like to study, I think, but that's not a thing that is done, because there is this big giant wall between MATH and LANGUAGE.
I'm probably going to go off an write a journal entry about this somewhere where I'm not supposed to be talking about writing.
But the thing is, I'm wondering how my academic career feeds into or detracts from or what have you my aspirations of being a Great Writer. I can see how continuing to study Literature would help me. It's helped me immensely, and I've been failing horrifically at it. I kind of get the feeling that publishing is off in it's own little world, and I know that once you're published, the work kind of stands (or doesn't) on its own, and that it doesn't even matter what I'm doing in school so long as what I do in the world of publishing stands up for itself.
But... but. Despite all my optimism sometimes, I know it's not wise to try to be a career author. And so I can't have everything I do be in service to that. There are people who are career thinkers but I think, no matter how brilliantly I train myself to think, I've already blown that. Before it even occurred to me to aspire to be the person who writes the essays that everyone reads, I'd built up and academic track record that will bar me from that. I'm not quite sure when, though. I would have like to have gotten rejected from at least one college or university, just so I knew where the upper limit was. Some of my grades were crap but my SAT scores... commanded respect. I test well. No, sorry, that's an understatement. I test really, really ******** well.
Only I was too proud, then. There was no way I was going to not fail.
And I don't even know what's possible, now. I'm only just trying to convince myself that I can pass English 101.
I don't know how to grind. That's the problem. And the counselor (appointment yesterday) says I might have some sort of ADD. Not the one where you have to get up every five seconds and fidget. I don't fidget. But apparently there's another kind, and it's treatable.
And that's hard, on so many levels. My mom is a psychologist. An infant psychologist, which I still think is a bit bullshit, but still. I... I don't particularly respect her professionalism in all regards. She let her obsession with crime dramas (and their horribly inaccurate representation of psychology) bleed into her work. She talks a good talk, sometimes, but other times it seems like she's re-making Freud's mistake of sailing the USS Make s**t Up, and she's really, really imperceptive.
But the thing is, see, there's this controversy about ADD and overmedication. And... if I get diagnosed, I want it to be by someone who can pull rank on my mom, because otherwise I get caught in the middle of a debate that is so much bigger than me, and... it's not something I can take part in. Just something I can get caught in. And I don't know how that all is going to work.
And then there's the whole issue of medication. It's scary. I don't like it. I know how science works, and I know that the truth is that we don't know the truth. And no one does long-term studies because they're not required, and there is no economic benefit to finding out that your product will have some horrible effect on people over time. Neurologic medications mess very profoundly with a very complex system, and... I really, really don't want to ******** with that.
Unless I have to.
And I might have to.
Or it might just be a matter of learning how to grind.
I don't know. And I'm afraid that if I find out, it will start limiting my options and putting me in places where I don't want to be.
And that... that is my life right now. I would not tell so much to... well, to almost anyone I know. But there's something about strangers.
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Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2012 1:19 pm
And, because holy ******** that was... well, that was a thing, here is a story about Lucky Jim, which is exactly the sort of thing I've been saying I'm not going to post. It stands fairly well on its own, but it does expound upon several themes that are present throughout The Black Circus. Quote: "Jim was King of the Circus a while ago. He's retired now, or says he is. But a man like Jim wouldn't be content to rest and while away his days," Caliban began, and he went on to tell of how Jim had challenged a man, a discontent patron of the circus, to pick an act, any act, and Jim would learn in just three weeks. "Jim was a betting man, and he never lost. That's why they call him Lucky Jim. But Jim knew better than to bet on luck. He always bet on skill." Lucky Jim was a trick rider, known for his nimbleness and grace, so the patron, thinking himself very clever, told Jm that to win the bet, he would have to go through the strongman's act. Jim accepted, and in three week's time, he invited the patron to a performance where he took the strongman's place. "Jim's figure was as wiry as ever, but he did the act flawlessly. It was a thing to see." "Do you mean to say that you were there?" Elvira asked. "No, but the one who told me was." The patron was sure that Jim had cheated him somehow. Nothing could convince him otherwise. He stormed off, threatening to tell everyone he knew that all the members of [circus name] were liars and cheats. "Did he make good on his threat?" Elvira wanted to know. "No one knows. If he did, we never heard of it." Caliban replied. When the patron had gone, Lucky Jim rocked back on his heels and laughed. "What a fool!" Jm told his confidant, Caliban's source. "If he had watched me ride, he should have known that I could already lift at least my own weight with ease!" For one of the tricks that Jim was famous for was riding upon his hands, with his feet in the air. "Then the man was taken in," Elvira said, "by the difference in appearance between a trick rider and a strongman." "Indeed. There is always a trick to the circus, but it is never the one that the audience sees."
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Distinct Conversationalist
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Psychotic Maniacal Sanity Crew
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Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 1:01 pm
You've got me. I love your style. ninja
Sorry for not posting in a while. Finals, you know. But I am lurky-lurking as ever!
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Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:45 am
What have I been doing these past few days?
Not writing, so I guess I failed my five-hour goal.
I typed up the first chapter of The Thing All of Whose Working Titles Might Well Be Cannibalized, and it's almost a standalone. Never going to finish it. I'm probably pretty well done with fanfiction, unless I do that one thing where Draco has read Homer and Harry hasn't. It starts of mildly slashy and poetic and ends with a reminder that someone failed to realize that an entire subculture of people writing at the fifth-grade level would be... not a good thing. Ah, Rowling, your defective education system provides me with endless humor.
Oh, and I posted the No Working Title thing as The Amphisbaena Ring, under the Post Your Work subforum of this guild. The titular ring (and the titular Ring) makes a brief appearance, but... you wouldn't know it. Ever-dangling plot threads! Yay!
But really, writing that was where I learned subtlety. It's pretty much the first thing I wrote where characters weren't constantly flying off the handle at each other. Things weren't super dramatic and tense all the time. I started marrying descriptions to actions, although this is the one where the main character constantly gets distracted and goes off about the architecture and then realizes it. Everyone gets to do that once, I think.
In my writing, there are no free actions. Talking does not press any sort of pause button, I kind of have to describe any gestures at the end of the clause that they occur during, and even describing the decor (and certainly pondering the significance of various events) is a thing that takes time, even though I'm not writing in first person. I'm not quite sure when I started doing this, or why, but it's not anything I have any intention of changing.
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Distinct Conversationalist
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Distinct Conversationalist
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Posted: Fri May 04, 2012 12:05 pm
Again, where have I been?
Well, remember that massive angst post above? Yeah, that... gets in the way of things. I finally talked to my mom, and things kind of went in both the best and worst possible ways. I think mom takes it as kind of a blow to her professional credibility but psychiatry... is so not her strong suit. It never was. I think she still thinks that "psychopath" is actually a thing. It's not.
And I need a job. Like, a lot. I don't have to pay for a lot of thing, but what funds existed for my education have been dwindling whether I spend them or not. Things keep coming up. The dog has cancer. The dishwasher breaks. The porch needs to be replaced. We're trying to live on social security benefits, investments, and my mom's part time work with a non-profit agency, but that... is difficult. And like I said, things keep happening.
So there's Job Finding Activities, and they have priority over Writing activities. And I still have to pitch in with the house. And help take care of the animals. So I'm busy. It's worse than just having a job, because the hours are indefinite and they have a tendency to become "every waking hour." I try to squeeze writing in, but... it's hard. Sometimes I end up staying up much later than I should, and I'm not very productive then.
Aside from that, my most recent work has been a little flat. The stress and lack of sleep don't help, but it's also just a case of FIND MORE WHIMSICAL STUFF TO DESCRIBE. It's a circus, for chrissake. There's whimsical s**t everywhere. I just have to figure out what to say about it, and how it's relevant to the various themes. And I'm getting out of touch with Elvira. I hate it when that happens.
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Posted: Fri May 25, 2012 11:50 am
What have I been doing? Part III.
Uh... avoiding Gaia like the plague. There was a thing, with the thing, and an individual who shall remain nameless has failed habitually at recognizing comedic overstatement, which admittedly doesn't come across perfectly over the internet. But now, unless pressed, I'll probably go along pretending none of it ever happened.
Not that I've been very productive in the meantime. I've written precisely jack s**t, and I don't know whether it's a good thing or not that I've gone back to essay-tizing in the Auxiliary Notebook Mark III. Aeru has a playlist, and it spotlights my selection of Classical music, in amongst the usual sort of... whatever my more modern music tastes run to. He also has a CD, so I can listen to it in the car. It was almost physically painful whittling down the songs, and I had to do one or two major re-thinks to get some Classical music on there, which I really, really wanted.
Anyways, I'm pleased with how Aeru's character is turning out. He seems genuinely human these days, and his actions, though not admirable, are nonetheless understandable and consistent. Also TEA. There is lots of tea. EPIC TEA.
And on that topic, I recently purchased a teapot and two proper teacups (as opposed to the mugs we usually use) because all this thinking about Victorians and TEA has put me in the mood to do some experiential research on the subject. Because you won't know that fresh razor clams smell like cucumber unless you've cleaned your fair share of them, and if I've learned anything from visual arts, it's that the USS Make s**t Up only sails so far up the river of Believability.
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Distinct Conversationalist
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Distinct Conversationalist
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Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2012 1:23 pm
I think I'm taking a vacation from Black Circus and I think that I just have to get over it. My writing desk was overrun by dirty laundry for the longest time, and that was a pain, and I've cleared it away now, but I'm in the middle of cataloguing a different idea I've had for a while now. It can best be described as "X-Men, if it was the prequel to Watchmen." I've even written excerpts. They are, for some reason, all in first person.
It's the sort of thing I'd love to go forward with, but not at the moment, so that I can go up to my agent after my latest fabulously popular novel has hit the shelves (yeah, right) and be like "Hey, how do you feel about hooking me up with a comic artist?" and they can rub their temples and wonder why I have to switch genres every other minute. If I run out of other ideas, I could go artist-hunting on my own or adapt the idea to be text-only. It's probably already halfway there, I just have to find a way of conveying how fantastically unreliable the four narrators are.
So. I will probably post excerpts from the Superhero Thing when I get them typed up, and let people know once I get back around to the Black Circus.
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Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2012 5:39 pm
Date: 6/30/2012
Time Logged: ???
WEEKLY TOTAL: ???
GRAND TOTAL: 4:47
Goal: greater than 1:00 continuous by 7/7
NEW PAGES: 4 and 2/2
TOTAL PAGES: 101 and 1/2
Goal:125 by 7/14 and probably finishing Chapter V
Got back from vacation late last night. I was hoping I'd get lots done on Black Circus, as last time, I pretty much transferred the entire first three chapters from one notebook to another and wrote... I forget how much. This time I got like... 4 and 2/2 pages. Which is... I got back to it, I guess.
Spent too much time on the road, too much time stressing about a job I haven't heard back about (and probably should have) and read an entire book rather than writing.
On the plus side, taking a break was probably a good thing. I was making myself sick of Black Circus what with listening to Black Circus mix CD's nonstop in the truck and driving about a fair bit. Still listening to other stories' playlists, but Elvira and her friends are fun again. Would've kept track of time, but I left my watch at home.
I'm on a And Then Time Passed section at the moment, a bunch of specific scenes happening at the same time and a bunch of general details kind of linking them. It's basically the retelling of Elvira's first time seeing a circus performance (not to be confused with a Circus performance) as well as the four days between the time she learns she has six days to prepare for her first circus (not Circus) performance and the time she gets her costume. It's kind of a pain keeping relevant ideas together (Elvira watching Tricia's performance should be directly followed by Elvira and Aeru discussing said performance over EPIC TEA, but where should Elvira watching Gabriella's performance go, and how should I get to the bit about what kind of a teacher Tricia is? Much editing ahoy.) but there's plenty of Enchantingly Magical Details to go around.
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Distinct Conversationalist
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Distinct Conversationalist
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Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2012 4:07 pm
Date: 7/14/2012
Time Logged: 0:32
WEEKLY TOTAL: 0:32
GRAND TOTAL: 7:26
Goal: greater than 1:00 continuous by 7/21
NEW PAGES: 2
TOTAL PAGES: ~103
Goal:125 by 7/28 and probably finishing Chapter V
Haven't been able to write nearly as much as I wanted or expected to. Got a new chair for my desk, but I need to refinish it and redo the upholstery. But other than that, my writing area is perfectly functional. Might need a tea tray, though. Hauling the teapot and cup and sugar and napkin and teaspoon up there is a little difficult.
The perfectly good utility of sort of old-fasioned things is kind of a theme in my life of late. Going mushroom picking? Hope you brought a wicker basket. Not to mention taking baked goods to neighbors in any sort of civilized manner. Straw hat? Totally useful. Tea tray? Check. I'm so used to microwaves and plastic bags and such that I tend to think of old technology as decoration, but it existed in the first place because it was useful. Which might be useful for writing? I don't know. I'm probably going to revise a tea tray into the scene with Aeru and Elvira.
Anyways, blew last time's writing goals, so here's some new ones. Probably be able to get around to it? Maybe? There's still a lot of real-life s**t going on, mostly the sort of thing in my own head. Why I spend all day sitting on the computer when there's a million other things I'd like to do.
I'm reconsidering my approach to the next couple of chapters. Or chapter. I don't think just Elvira's first performance or her getting her dress would stand on its own as a chapter without filler, and... well, Chapters III and IV are filler enough for me. Some things need to happen, but I don't, say, need to spend pages and pages of Elvira and Gabriella chatting. I know it's editing, and I'm not editing, (just making notes of things I don't like) but those chapters are probably going to be seriously condensed.
This story has some serious recursive narration going on. I keep having it flash back to things within the timeline (not things that have already been narrated, just things that have already happened) and some chapters (like the one I'm on now) just seem to be kicking a linear timeline in the balls. I'm not sure who to blame it on. It's a major narrative quirk, and it certainly mirrors the structure of Victorian sentences, but my narrator... isn't a character.
It's third-person, but as I keep saying, that doesn't make me the narrator. Just makes it someone who doesn't simultaneously exist in the narrative. I kind of feel like it's a guy, for some reason. Their syntax isn't as antiquated as Elvira's (if she was a person, I would make her a t-shirt that said "I heart the remnant subjunctive") but it is getting there. And the order of things. It's just weird. I can kind of see why, but man.
Anyways, Elvira's got a habit of acquiring more personality traits as I write her. Everyone has, really, except for maybe Tricia. Tricia is Tricia is Tricia. She's a feral prodigy and that's really all there is to it. But now Elvira has picked up a habit of thinking in visual metaphors. Which is perfectly congruous with her other established traits. It's a way for her to be indirect about things she must be indirect about. It's just more of why she's kind of the perfect Victorian.
But. Back to things I need to be doing so I can go write after.
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