It Came From Outer Space…

I can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve posted here, while I’ve taken a break from writing on here I’ve still been writing on stories just not the ones that I’ve mentioned. I finally got a good chunk of input on a story I’ve had a vague idea about doing for a while. I’ve tried several attempts at getting these ideas into a more concrete form but the little snippets really haven’t taken form the way I’d like. They’ve always come off corny or cliched. This latest mapping out works a bit better, the snippet that I was writing lost itself a little towards the end as I ran out of inspiration and tried to force things, something I should have known better than to do.

However, I’ve had a few more days to ruminate on things and I have a better idea of how to tackle things now. I know this is all very cryptic but I’m not quite ready to offer snippets of anything until I check and see if this new idea I’ve had actually works. In the mean time I got another fragment of “Too Deep” that I wound up writing out at 2 a.m. it rehashes some things already written and is entirely dialogue between Sam and Brad; but I feel if I continue it on in this way the majority of the dynamic will be written out and then I’ll be able to flesh the descriptions and story around it. I’m feeling that it might be better told from Brad’s point of view, as odd as that might be for me primarily seeing things from Sam’s perspective. I’ve previously been tackling things from third person and I think, even with the majority of the story being Sam’s retelling that it should be as Brad would be transcribing it. He is the interviewer therefore the reader should become him, and while the interactions in third person were leaving the reader more able to see things from Brad’s perspective…I think if it’s going to be an interview it should be done in the Max Brooks vein, where it becomes the reader, as Brad, interviewing Sam rather than the reader as an outsider observing Brad interview Sam.

Even with all these ideas it’ll be a few days before I get any more writing done. I have a lot of things to get cleaned out as I’m going away for part of the weekend. A friend sent me some promotional products about a festival down in Boca which interested me greatly and then said that he and his girlfriend would pay for my tickets and hotel stay as a birthday present if I really wanted to go. So, I’m very excited. It’s a Japanese festival and none of us have been to anything like this before. I’m really looking forward to it but we have to set off early in the morning and so there’s a lot of things I have to do today to get ready. The most urgent of which is clean out the kitchen sink.

That’s web work NOT wet work. I’ve taken a few days off from work on stories because I’ve been sorting out some online things. I had a bit of an alternate muse takeover, in the sense that I was doing a redesign of a website just for fun, which, to be honest, it’s been a while since I’ve done that; not only did that happen but I also taught myself how to make css stylesheets and how to use them, and did an entire CSS site from scratch based on a layout I’d already done and was using iframes for but now functions through image maps.

I’ve been trying for months to grasp css and php but it just won’t stick. However this past week I was able to do a fairly complex image map within two hours. I’m very pleased with myself and my clarity of thinking this is a good amount of progress. However, there are still a few things that I can’t do without a builder of some sort, such as slide shows. One of these days I’ll get it; but I’m going to practice with stylesheets and things a bit more; then see if I can actually make a wordpress theme from scratch and then we’ll move on to something else.

I wrote a few days ago about a book that was written by someone who had gone through Mesothelioma treatment. I just thought I should clarify, because I get weird like that some times, that I’ve never had Mesothelioma, and I’m not a professional with information about that treatment. I say this partially for my own gratification, and partially because I’ve had a few messages about it, and I don’t actually know if they’re genuine messages or just spam that’s picked up on the fact that this was mentioned on my blog.

All I can say to anyone who has Mesothelioma is I’m very sorry for your bad turn in health and please go and speak to a professional.

If you have fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, those I can at least offer some personal experiences about, but not that sort of cancer.

I’m following several writers on twitter thanks to this little hashtag: #amwriting apparently there is also #amwritingparty and #wordcount I’m sure there are others. It’s nifty to be following fellow writers for the encouragement and also the inside jokes. A lot of the the ones I follow are fellow fantasy or sci-fi authors or would-be authors, and there are a lot of in-jokes about sparkling vampires and werewolf gifts and all sorts of things like that.

I’m very interested to track down their books and see what sort of things they write, but as of now I’m working my way through “World War Z” so it’ll be a while before I take on any other books. I can’t keep up with reading more than one at a time any more.

Back on twitter I remember a few years back I was all “twitter is not worth the fuss” but that’s because I was mis-using it. I was updating random things and not looking for connections, or marketing or anything like that. Now I understand more what you should and shouldn’t share, though I’m sure I do still write some inane things at times. I’ve linked it to my facebook account so that I can remember to update both; and I’m more apt to do so on a semi-regular basis. I don’t tweet when I’m out of the house unless something insanely funny happens; mostly because I’m a paranoid sort who doesn’t like the idea of someone realizing I’m out of the house and doing something untoward.

#amwriting is very fun though, there’s a lot of mutual encouragement and commiseration from people I’ve found through it, and we’ll joke back and forth about characters doing certain things, share very small snippets or funny lines, and muse on word usage and definitions. It’s very geeky in a lot of respects; but then using twitter itself is kinda geeky.

I haven’t written very much over the past couple of days, just a short scene in the werewolf story. I’m lagging a little there, but that’s okay. I’ve had a few more ideas for “Too Deep” and they don’t follow linearly but they’re going to be in there somewhere. So, they’ll be useful later on and may as well be written out now. It’s one of those interesting things to realize that you don’t HAVE to write the story in order, especially when it’s the first draft, you can hop backwards and forwards in the time line and then let it come together in editing to make sure you don’t have any plot holes and contradictions.

I suppose it’s a bit like dieting, you can have the best fat burners and you can cut down on foods and exercise. It doesn’t matter which order you do those in entirely, I mean, I imagine you have to take the fat burners with food or perhaps they’ll make you sick, but it doesn’t matter when in the day you exercise so long as you do it regularly. From what my doctor tells me it doesn’t matter when in the day you eat, or if you eat standing up or sitting down, so long as you do so slowly and allow your body to catch up with how full you are, and so long as you eat meals per day, and in fact it’s best to eat small meals throughout the day. He tells me you have to retrain yourself as to what’s a meal. A meal doesn’t have to be meat and two veg with dessert. A meal can be a bagel with cream cheese and a piece of fruit, or yoghurt with honey and cereal, or a scrambled egg with a slice of bacon. It’s about retraining.

Retraining is also good when it comes to my writing. I can write whenever during the day so long as I have the time and pace myself and don’t try to force the writing when it’s not coming, but if I’m being able to write something that I know from planning happens in the middle of the story and I’m only in 15% right now it doesn’t matter. I should go ahead and write that while it’s in my mind, rather than waiting and forcing it and making it suck and then getting disheartened.

A blogging friend of mine is selling some of her domains and that starts me wondering, not if I should buy hers, because I’m not sure that I could generate enough content to fit with the names, but if I should buy another.

I will randomly have musings from time to time about buying a domain that’s linked in with a story I’m writing, but then I think that I should just get one that fits with my name as an author, but then I start debating about pen names and if the pen name that I think of now will be the one that I elect to use, or am allowed to use if I’m ever fortunate enough to get published. When I first started writing at the age of fifteen I decided I would be Tabitha Lesley; because my step-father had nicknamed me Tabby-Cat on the CB radio, and Lesley was my erstwhile middle name.

Since then I’ve toyed with others particularly those honoring the clan back in Scotland so using Watson or Buchanan as my surname. I don’t know, however, if those would be valid, allowed or if by the time I actually see a work to fruition if I would want to use the name in question and keep it for myself forever.

My husband and I had similar issues coming up with a name for our son that we liked. I found a piece of paper we’d been using when planning the baby announcements, and it had at least fourteen names on it from each of us.

Which is fitting with me really, you see I burn through screen names quite often. I’ve been Ami-chan, Heather Miriel, Miriel, AmitheCat, Lulinari, Lulinari Imonai, Rowan Dawn, Echo, Catriona and I think that’s about all of them, not counting the various others I *currently* use, so I fear that as soon as I find a name I like long enough TO actually get something published with it I will then despise it and fell horrible about being stuck with it.

Decisions, decisions.

I’ve realized I need some kind of home budget software for my time at home. I’ve had ideas before about doing a sort of daily schedule but that sort of thing never winds up working out.

It’s hard to have scheduled activities when you have an active toddler and a chronic health condition; but I figure that if I work things out properly I should be able to come up with a kind of floating schedule so that I can move things around as I need to, allot a couple of hours per day for free writing, a couple of hours per day for blogging and work-related activities, a few hours for chores and playing, and teaching the munchkin; that sort of thing, and it can be flipped around and things can be switched out and rotated depending on what’s going on at the house or with my health.

For a few days I will be without a computer. I’m able to use my room mate’s computer for a few days and then she goes on vacation, and right about then is also when Toshiba should send the box to take the laptop to their repair center. Except it’s really at the point where I can’t use it at all, the near constant scrolling is just crazy-making.

I was talking to an associate who said that he might be able to fix the desktop, and spoke about the possibility of connecting it to a Samsung HDTV, but the monitor itself and all the peripherals work fine, it’s just the desktop which is dead. I have some prospects which are very heartening, that I will write more about when I’m not sneaking time on Kore’s computer, but if my various blogs are rather quiet right now, that is why; but it’s giving me a nice break from the hussle of the internet and really helping me kick the Facebook app addiction, so that’s a good thing to come out of this. I think.

Also I have 19 hand-written pages of the story I’ve been working on and more knocking their way around my brain, so that’s good too. I’ll have a ton to write up once I have a functioning keyboard again.

I remember another of my step-father’s brilliant career ideas for me was writing greeting cards. He came up with this after I did our personalized photo graduation invitations on my step-sister’s computer so that he didn’t have to order them through the school and pay extra money.

He also thought I should be writing books for children instead of the stories that I normally write. That I would be a great children’s book author. I don’t know why he thought that considering most of the stories that he ever heard me read sections of involved war-torn alien landscapes, people being taken prisoner and their families dying (though that would be appropriate for Disney); but that’s not appropriate for children. He kept saying I could take the things I write and tone them down, make them educational and all these other things which would have meant diminishing my creativity.

As I get older I’m not saying that I couldn’t write children’s books, it’s just not something I’m interested in. My husband has often joked that I should make a book series called “Helpful Declan” about our son and all his attempts to assist me with household tasks that end in comedy, and maybe that would be something, but I have a lot of other crazy stories that have to get out of me first.

I’ve not written anything since the blurb the other day, but that’s because I’ve had a lot of things to focus on at the house, between making jewelry and a calendar to be gifts for family, looking for health insurance leads because my husband’s company are really screwing with the health insurance over this next year, and trying to get over my nerves about making a video for something I’ve been pretty busy.

I’ve had some ideas percolating but I’ve just been jotting down notes here and there to come back to after the holidays, or in a little bit of downtime. I’ve almost got most of the presents made. I just need to take some snap shots of the munchkin for this year’s Yule photo and get them printed, and then write up the explanations of the semi-precious stones I used in the jewelry and get that printed too.

So, despite my writing being slow I’m crazy-busy.