Category: Writing

2015: The Year in Review

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Okay, seriously, who keeps making off with all this time?  Feels like the year just got started and we’re already on the cusp of 2016!  (And from what I’ve heard, this sense of time distortion only gets worse… ugh.)

I am definitely in a better place at the end of 2015 than I was last year.  Many of my 2014 goals have been reached, and it feels like I’ve got a better handle on life in general, which is a massive relief!  I want to give a huge thank-you to all of my friends, readers, subscribers, and followers.  You make this all worth-while.

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Favored Fairytales: Beauty and the Beast

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This entry is part of an on-going series discussing my favorite fairytales and their multiple modern re-tellings.  Any entries relating to this topic will be labeled “Favored Fairytales.” 

 

Have you ever found yourself consuming numerous variations of a single story?  I go through different spurts, often tied to genre, but sometimes a particular kind of story grabs me and won’t let go until it’s sated.  So I wanted to talk about one of my favorite fairytales, one that is probably familiar to most people.

Like most kids, I was raised on Disney films.  Some I always felt lukewarm about, some that used to be favorites no longer appeal to me, even though I can appreciate the talent and artistry that went into making them.  I never liked Sleeping Beauty and I was always ambivalent about Snow White and Cinderella.  Some, like The Lion King and Mulan, have withstood the test of time and remain favorites.  When I was a kid, The Little Mermaid was my favorite, hands down.  But now, as an adult, a different film has risen to the top of the list:  Beauty and the Beast.

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False Dichotomies

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Greetings to everyone from the end of National Novel Writing Month!  Wow, it’s really hard to believe that a month has gone by and, for once, I actually have an almost complete rough draft of a novel.  It still needs work and some scenes, but I think I’ll be able to progress to the editing stage this December and January.  And I’m actually looking forward to it!  My creativity has come back, I’m eager to work, and I’ve been writing over 2,000 words a day more often than not.  Which, like, never happens.  So, I’m really pleased with my progress and hope to have a finished product to show for my effort sooner rather than later.  (Then I’ll go back to Ravens and Roses, I promise.)

Now, on to a topic that has been percolating in the back of my mind for some time:  false dichotomies.

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Checking In

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Greetings to you all from the beginning of Week 3 in NaNoWriMo!  I have to say, this month’s writing has gone a lot better than it has for quite a while.  You may have noticed that my last few entries (although few and far between) contained a note of despondency.  Or maybe a healthy dose of it.  Or perhaps entire buckets of the stuff.  At any rate, I’d essentially stalled out on Ravens and Roses, which I’ve been working on pretty much non-stop for longer than I care to remember.  I know that I swore (again) that I’d have a finished draft at the end of this year (sound familiar?) and I still might.  It just may not be the project I was expecting it to be.  

My 2015 NaNo project, “code-named” AFiLaW (pronounced A-F-I-Law), also referred to as All’s Fair, has gained a lot of momentum, despite containing two genres that I’ve never worked with before:  Romance and Steampunk.  I’ll admit that at this point the prose is a little light on both; I keep forgetting to add steampunk descriptive details and I haven’t touched the sex scenes.  In fact, I may decide not to write any of the latter at all.  Scenes with that particular kind of intimacy are alien to me, and every piece of advice I can find about writing in the romance genre says: “If you are uncomfortable writing sex scenes, then don’t write them because your discomfort will show through.”  So we’ll see.  Still, even with those quibbles, I’ve been writing at least 1,000 words each day and often pass the 1,500- and 2,000-word marks.  That’s practically unheard of for me; I don’t recall doing that well even when I began Ravens and Roses in earnest back in 2010 for my first NaNo.

I think the reason I’ve been doing so well lately is threefold:

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Happy Halloween!

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When I was a kid, I liked Halloween.  I enjoyed acquiring bags of candy and my mom always made us kick-ass costumes, but Christmas was better because presents.  Now that I’m an adult, Halloween has replaced Christmas for two reasons:

1) Any gifts acquired during Halloween are edible and therefore do not take up any real space in my house.  

2) Costumes.

Since getting into anime and cosplay, Halloween has become the best non-convention excuse to showcase some of the awesome costumes that I’ve put together over the last five years.  On Wednesday this week I wore a dark blue yukata decorated with white butterflies I bought at Katsucon, complete with a very simple white obi, tabi socks, and black wig.  On Friday I wore my latest iteration of steampunk.  (Yes, I skipped Thursday because I didn’t have anything else prepped.  My closet is in a state of disarray.)  And today I wore a lovely green and white vintage medieval-style dress that my friend Storm Elf bought for me years ago, but I’d never worn it before because it’s too fragile to survive the Renaissance Faire.

Damn, it’s fun to play dress-up.  Not only is it fun to see the expressions on people’s faces and receive compliments, but it also helps one’s writing.  Getting into clothing you normally don’t wear helps improve descriptions and enter a different head-space, even if you don’t really act like a different character.  And every visit to a thrift store because a treasure hunt of possibilities.  Part of me wishes I had more time, energy, money, and talent to create and wear better costumes more often.   Alas, it can be both expensive an exhausting after a while, so I don’t do it very often.  I’m starting to value quality over quantity.

Even though Halloween has history and traditions far older than the current (sometimes chintzy) version, for me the main draw is being able to transform into something different.  Something new.  I’m hoping that sense of excitement and adventure carries over into November as NaNoWriMo begins.

Enjoy your All Hallow’s Eve!  I’ve included a list of awesome Halloween-esque songs with links to their respective youtube videos. Enjoy!

~ * ~

Awesome Halloween-esque Songs:

“Moonlight Shadow” by Mike Oldfield (Remix by Blue UltrasGE)

“All Souls’ Night” by Loreena McKennitt

“Shadow of the Moon” by Blackmore’s Night

“FullMoon” by Sonata Arctica

“Mitternacht” by E. Nomine

“Ghost Love Score” by Nightwish

“Dead Man’s Party” by Oingo Boingo

~ * ~
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How do they do it?

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As a writer currently slogging through her second round of editing, the light at the end of the tunnel looks farther away than ever before.  I guess everyone starts to flag at the end of the race, but I can’t help but wonder: am I taking too long?  How to other authors do it?

Go to Fantastic Fiction, search for a popular modern author, and take a look at their publication dates.  Nora Roberts, Janet Evanovich, Debbie Macomber, Fern Michaels, John Sandford, David Baldacci, James Patterson + Another Random Author… all of them release at least one book a year.  Some release two or more!  And I end up sitting there, jaw on the floor, asking, “HOW?!”

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Long time, no see

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Um… hi?

*waves*

Wow.  I… haven’t written an entry in a while.  In fact, I haven’t really posted anything online for at least a month.  No blog entries, no Audio Editions, no #ThrowbackThursdays, no new fanfic chapters… I regret that last one, especially since I’d made a point to say I wouldn’t make my readers wait years for the completion of a fanfic.

But, obviously, I haven’t kept up with much of anything online.  Because reasons:

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2015 Summer Reading (and Writing) Program from Nerd in the Brain

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Hello all!

Sorry, I know I haven’t been keeping up with most of my online writing, but I promise it’s because I’ve been hard at work editing Ravens and Roses.  But I did want to share something fun that I’m doing at the same time:  the Summer Reading (and Writing) Program from Nerd in the Brain.

I only found out about this challenge a few days before it started, but I’ve been enjoying it.  There are 30 reading challenges, 10 writing challenges, and 10 “other” challenges.  I’ve been reading like a madwoman, since now I have added motivation to get through the pile of library books I’ve been hoarding for weeks.  The reading challenges are really easy to write a small summary for, but the writing challenges are (for me) a little harder to tackle.  I didn’t want to just write a little summary of something I wrote, but I also didn’t want to post the entire response to the challenge in that small space.  It could be done… I just didn’t want it to be inconvenient.

So I decided to post my writing responses here on The Cat’s Cradle, as well as a list of the books I read for the reading challenge.  I’ll post a summary and a link for Nerd in the Brain, so I won’t take up all that space, but folk can see what I did if they want to.  So check back throughout the summer to see the results of the challenge.

Here goes!

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Slouching Towards Despondency

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Hi all.

I’m sorry that I’ve been so bad about keeping up with The Cat’s Cradle, the Audio Editions, the #ThrowbackThursdays, the fanfiction chapters… pretty much everything that I somehow managed to do in the depths of depression but now find almost impossible to focus on.  Part of this is because I have been doing a lot of editing work on Ravens and Roses.  Any free creative time I have goes towards that.  The other part is because of a lot of tension at home which I find difficult to mentally detach from.  So pretty much anything creative has fallen by the wayside, and I apologize for that.

I don’t know how long this funk will last.  I really want to get back into the groove and get all these things done, plus transcribing my dad’s stories for publication and writing more short stories of my own…  I think music by David Arkenstone is the only thing keeping my muse around at all.  (Absolutely gorgeous.)

Anyway, yeah.  Updates will be sporadic, if they happen at all.  I will make every effort to keep up, but Ravens and Roses has top priority.

I hope to have better news and more inspiration soon.  Thank you very much for your patience.