It Came From Outer Space…

Yesterday a compatriot on facebook suggested that if I were to write a children’s book I should write one about mermaids. It actually perked me up though I still don’t think I would necessarily write a children’s book perhaps a YA.

I have had an affinity with mermaids on and off since I was younger. I’ve even drawn pictures of sea nymphs as recently as when I was in college. The idea of writing a mermaid story actually appeals to me, although it would be something that I would really start to focus on after NaNoWriMo and the Mars story, writing some thing that isn’t a story I’ve had on the go for ages would be refreshing, not colon cleanse refreshing, but still it might bring some new life into my imagination; and seriously there aren’t enough decent mermaid related stories out there, most of them are cheap knock-offs of “The Little Mermaid” and other sorts of hideously cliched love stories.

I’ve been told on several occasions that I should write children’s books. My step-father, in particular, was a big advocate of this, to the point that he, at one point, filled out a form for me for some sort of Children’s Literary Association who then proceeded to send me all sorts of things telling me if I just filled out their questionnaire or sent them a writing sample they could assess my writing capability.

In the end after several different requests from them and further badgering from my step-father I did send in a writing sample. The first chapter of something I was working on. It involved a metamorphic police officer chasing down a suspect through a traffic jam and finally catching up by turning into a fly and freaking them out when she turned back into a person on their windshield.

After that I kept getting letters from them telling me how talented I was and offering to set me up with a writing coach and all the rest of it for X amount of dollars. That was when I realized that it was a scam, just like some of those offers for cheap insurance and viagra and things you get in your spam folder can be. Up until I was in college for several years I was still getting letters from them. Since I’ve been married I’ve seen the last of it.

However I get offers now and again from random publishers or agents who are wanting to help me self-publish and a lot of the time when I investigate them they’re also scams. I do know that their are some authors out there who will mentor people but I doubt that they’d be involved in something like that. I realize now that they’re more likely to do guest lectures and courses at actual universities.

We’ve been watching a lot of “The Colony” on Discovery today. It’s an interesting concept and I find some inspiration for the Mars colonization story in the adventures of the volunteers who are striving to survive in what appears to be a post-apocalyptic wasteland after a viral outbreak.

They have little in the way of amenities and forage everything from auto accessories to old computers and industrial leftovers to give themselves what they need to survive in an abandoned warehouse. There’s a lot of living off the land and going without which reminds me of how many comforts we have in our life despite not having a wealth of money and also puts me in mind of what the colonists of Mars would be facing as they make their way to the new habitat and try to make it work.

One good thing that has come out of recent things, other than a major purge of a lot of unnecessary items from my household is that I have found a potential starting point from which to begin the story that I want to start for this year’s NaNoWriMo.

At about midnight one night this past week I got a flash of inspiration for a place to start the piece and jotted about three pages worth of notes. Things are still a bit clunky but there is a much greater starting point than I previously had which will hopefully mean that I can start first thing on November 1st without staring at a blank page for several hours and demotivating myself.

I’ve been a bit out of it for the past few weeks because I’ve been sick. At first I thought it was the fibromyalgia acting up but after things got so bad that I could hardly move for the pain my husband took me to the doctor.
It was a strange sitting in the doctor’s office. There were people in equestrian apparel next to pensioners, and children.

In the end it was established that I have a virus which is aggravating the fibromyalgia because a lot of the symptoms of the virus mimic fibro, but with the added bonus of dizziness and nausea. I’m on a course of antibiotics, and am hoping that the plague will be knocked out of me soon so that I can feel better and be more up to catching up on work and things.

…they make it hard to do writing and also do work. My room mate has graciously let me borrow her computer for the evening to try and get urgent things done, but after that I’m going to be depending on whether or not it’s the video card and therefore an easier fix, or the mother board, which means their by the grace of the Gods go I as far as getting it sorted out.

The mother board is expensive and as old as the computer is then it’s not really worth getting it replaced. I’d be better off getting a new computer. That’s prohibitively expensive though, unless the repair place will let me pay in installments for a Frankenstein computer made from parts of the old one which still work and other parts that they have. Maybe I can get a second job selling or testing hgh releasers to earn a bit of extra cash in the mean time.

I’m so ticked off right now. The computer was fine last night. There’s not really be any warning that anything was going wrong. It just wouldn’t work this morning. Normally I back the computer up every few weeks but with us going to the wedding a couple of weeks ago and me playing catch up I let that slide. So, silly of me.

If this place is quieter than usual for a while though that’s why. Wish me luck.

Today I’ve assigned myself to write at least 300 words about the Biosphere story. I’m hoping that some of these random shorts will help me find a spring-off point to write the full story from later on.

Kelsey sat on her bed flipping through the photos in the digital frame and trying to remember when they were taken. There were a couple of pictures that she felt she should be able to place, and a couple of them she recognized the place but not the situation. One of them was taken near the second classroom building but she wasn’t sure she knew who it was who was with her, and a lot of them she couldn’t place at all which disturbed her given it was a frame in her side of the dorm, which meant that it was hers, especially as she was in several of them, but it was as though she was looking at a stranger.

She sighed, and set the frame down. The mood Dionne was in she wasn’t going to ask her to help clear up the matter. They’d had another blazing row just before her room mate had gone to class, this one involving Kelsey’s purported change of heart about hosting a party that weekend. She had a test the following Monday so she didn’t want to have a huge crowd of people over and she’d thought Dionne would understand, but to Dionne this was the final straw and she’d had enough. They seemed to be doing nothing but argue lately, about stupid things like dishes, and other chore rotas. A ton of little things that were just mounting up. She found herself more and more seriously considering Isaac’s offer, but she didn’t want to move in with him purely to get away from Dionne, that wasn’t a good reason to move in with someone, and with all the things which were happening with Dionne she wasn’t sure she should subject Isaac to them. She didn’t want to risk the relationship that way. She didn’t want to put him through whatever was going on with her memory. She wasn’t stupid, so why was everything slipping through her mind like this, or was it? Still, this seemed an inordinate length to go to for a practical joke and Dionne wouldn’t have the patience for it.

I like a few elements of this but not the majority. For a free-writing exercise it served it’s purpose, but I think it’s too confusing. I need to get a bit better grounding in the situation.

I decided to try writing a little bit involving some of the characters in the Mars Colonization story. This is set while the main character, Kelsey, is in college and involves her interacting with her room mate Dionne.

The first thing that greeted Dionne when she emerged from her half of the dorm was a pile of dirty dishes. She managed to smooth past the compulsion to smash them right then and there given she had spoken to her room mate several times over the past few days about washing them, given they were mostly hers, Dionne had no interest in baking marble cakes or experimenting with strange pasta concoctions preferring to live off Lean Pockets and ramen noodles, but still nothing had happened.

She wished she’d kept the white board. Then she could have written a huge note on it going, “WASH THE GOD DAMN DISHES!” She was about to print one out in 100 pt font and tape it in multiple spots around the dorm room when Kelsey emerged from her room, sleepily tugging out the braids her hair had apparently been in. It seemed this morning she wasn’t in a very morning mood. Unlike other people Dionne had roomed with her ability to deal with early morning seemed to change from day to day. They’d been living together several months and Dionne still hadn’t gotten her pegged on any score, some days they could spend hours debating the best skin care products and others she was plain Jane scowling at everything and hiding in her room for hours doing who knows what, or just sleeping, it seemed while listening to music that Dionne couldn’t even understand. It was like Jekyll and Hyde and Hyde’s evil twin.

“Why aren’t the dishes clean?” Dionne demanded, “Other people who live here would like to use the sink, you know?”

Kelsey blinked at her, “Those aren’t…my dishes?” she ventured, sounding genuinely confused.

“Yes. They are.” Dionne slammed open one of the cupboards, “These are mine.”

“I use paper plates…” Kelsey said.

“Since when?” Dionne asked, “I have no idea how to cook. Unless the culinary school has been sneaking in here while we’re both in class and bogarting our kitchen they are totally yours. Please wash them like you’ve said you will for the past week. I’m not your maid.”

Kelsey scratched her head and blinked at the sink, doing a very good imitation of someone who thought they’d woken up in the Twilight Zone.

“Or get your boyfriend to do it,” Dionne continued, “Throw them out for all I care. I just want them gone. Please for the love of–”

Now it was Kelsey’s turn to confuse her, “Boyfriend?” she inquired.

Dionne tried not to scream, “Seriously? Are you on drugs?” she said, “Or are you just trying to drive me insane?”

I found a list of questions that my former creative writing teacher had given us to help us flesh out our characters while we were trying to develop our stories. I thought I would share them in case they could help others with their characters. Some of them are more necessary or helpful than others and I find that not all of them are applicable to every character but they can help a lot.

Basic:
What is their name?
How old are they?
Are they male or female?
Do they have siblings?
What is their parents status? (living? dead? divorced? never married? together?)
Do they have pets? Would they like pets?

Then things get a bit more in depth:
Are they in school? Did they like school? Did they finish school? Go to college? Serve in the Armed Forces? Were they a good student?
Do they have religion? what type? are they a holidays/special occasions worshipper or more devout?
What sort of social activities would they engage in?
If they were given a million dollars/pounds how would they spend it?
What is their living situation like? dorm? apartment? house? rent? own? with parents?
What was the best thing that happened to them in childhood? the worst? how did that affect their outlook?
What is their favorite food? music? movie? book? tv show?
Are they in love? have they ever been in love?
What’s their preference for a relationship?
What would they do with an afternoon off?
What’s their ideal job?

I must say that the more I read about certain things the less I feel like a “normal” girl. This makes things very difficult for my husband some times when it comes to gifts, but on the other hand he tends to be grateful that I’m not necessarily looking for the expensive gifts, but at the same time there are those times when he wants to get me something that is jewelry and needs help.

I hear a lot about people wanting to get engagement jewelry and spending a lot of time trying to make a selection and often wondered why they don’t just ask their prospective spouse. I was reading about the engagement ring on Bellatrue and felt a bit ambivalent about a lot of the advice there because we really didn’t do things traditionally when my husband and I got together.

My husband proposed to me before he got the ring, then we went together to get the ring, and when we did we bought a colored gemstone ring, a marquis cut sapphire with two small diamonds around it laid on white gold, so that it looks silvery as I don’t wear yellow gold.

My step-father was mortified when we picked up the engagement ring that we didn’t get a “set” where the engagement ring would fit with the wedding ring, but that wasn’t important to me, what was was being economical. Sure I could have had my then fiancee spend several thousand dollars on a ring but then I would have been afraid to wear it lest something happen to it.

The engagement ring is unusual. I continue to wear it now on my opposite hand because it doesn’t fit with my wedding ring, but I love it so I wear it.

When it comes to other pieces of jewelry I still go towards more unusual things. I don’t wear jewelry often and tend to wear the same few pieces day after day. It’s only a special occasion that will prompt me to up the anti and wear a necklace as well as my customary two pairs of earrings and three rings and I much prefer colored gemstones rather than white diamonds.

So something like this:

is what’s going to catch my eye because of the unusual combinations and styles. I remember when we were shopping for a wedding ring several jewelers were extremely perturbed by my lack of interest in gemstones on my ring. I wanted a white gold band with a little bit of design on it, something with weight rather than the flimsy strips of gold they were showing with tiny sapphires and diamonds in them. I put one of them on and I couldn’t even feel it on my finger and that terrified me.

At least something like this:

would have some weight to it, but it’s all a matter of personal preference. I’m just not the type of girl who has to have the latest jewelry.