It Came From Outer Space…

It’s funny how things come to you after you hear something from a caller or see something online.

“I’m gonna tell Turner about the tm-t88iv,” Steve was persisting in saying. Dane was having a hard time tuning him out, “it’s so much better, all this color, faster, the customers will love it.”
“I don’t think the customers give a shit about color. They just want their receipts, and they don’t want to have to come inside for them. They want to get them out there,” she pointed to the pumps, “not in here, and that doesn’t look like it’ll fit out there,” she pointed again.
“What are you saying?” Steve asked.
“I’m saying you need to get your ass out there and change the tape in the pumps.” She chewed on the end of the lollipop stick in her mouth, getting the last possible iota of flavor off the little stump.
Steve looked at her. She looked back. His eyes slid away from hers, and he slunk around the counter picking up the keys he would need and tromped outside into the cold. She sighed.
That was mean!
She jumped, the stump of lollipop stick dropped to the floor, “Stop doing that!” she hissed.
Why? her eternal tormentor inquired. It’s such FUN.

I’m trying to establish Dane’s angel as being playful despite the severity with which it acts in the prologue that I have written so far. I need to work a little better on the attitude, and get across the energy and spunk with which it engages in it’s very depressing job.

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.

Some times words are hard to come by. I don’t get writer’s block quite as much recently while working on the story. However, I’ve been trying to come up with some personalized gifts for my family and that is where it gets a bit tricky.

I really just need to write what comes to me, but it gets hard some times to write what I want to when it’s coming from the heart. I feel strange putting such deep emotion out. I’m not sure why it gets so difficult. It’s like I lock up, freeze, I think it comes from a nervousness at expressing my feelings.

I should employ the same routines I use when I’m writing a story but that always seems to go out the window when I’m not writing stories.

The previous post about editing mad me thinking about fanfiction.net and how long it’s been since I’ve been there. I got my original account when I was a young proactiv-smearing college student. I, actually, deleted that account after saving anything I thought might be viable and restarted in the hopes I would actually perfect and finish some of the stories that I’d been writing.

Except it didn’t happen, partially due to the depression, and a lot due to the fact that my tastes have changed. I feel strange writing and getting comments from people who are in some cases less than half my age. It makes me feel uncomfortable.

For the most part the content on there is…strange, twisted, drivel. There are some gems, but a lot of it is just not good at all. It’s the same way with places like deviantart. They attract anyone who wants to showcase their work whether or not it’s good. A bit like an American Idol audition.

I decided just to do a little mini-blurb based on some of the planning I’ve been doing for “Too Deep”. It’s when he’s telling Brad about the time that he gets re-recruited, after a resistance member overhears him having an argument with a gang member, and then tracks him down in time to prevent him successfully committing suicide.

Brad let go of his hand, so that he could reach up and wipe his own eyes, “Sorry,” he murmured.
Sam gave a shrug, “Shit happens, I guess.”
Brad shook his head, “No, I mean…most of the people I grew up around they were the sort of shallow like your ex, Roy, where they would want to kill themselves if their family didn’t buy them the best best acne cleanser, so they had to go to school with blemishes, or they’d find some other vapid way to manipulate their parents…it’s not like I haven’t seen the scars before, and there has to be more than one time, based on those…” he hesitated reaching a hand out towards Sam’s sleeve, to roll it back and trace the lines, “Of course most of them would have the scars cosmetically removed after a certain time when it was no longer cool. Us poor Earthers with our terrible problems,” he laughed sarcastically.
Sam gave a slight smile, “It’s still kinda stupid,” he said, “here I was on the one hand wanting to help make things better, and then I did that, but I was completely lost. I knew the father had connections, but everything was so mysterious, I hadn’t had time to find anything he had written. I was terrified that my leaving the orphanage so quickly meant the idiot military police had found that information and torn apart the entire resistance. Not logical thought I know, but still…”

I’m having an issue deciding on tense. I had to go back through and edit the blurb a little because it started out past tense, shifted to present somewhere in there and then back to past. My issue with the tense is based on the fact that he’s telling the story of his past in his present, so I feel as though it should be in present tense, except for the flashbacks being in the past; but I don’t know if that will be too jarring.

Or should I say that I reached my goal?
As of an hour or so ago my wordcount is at 25212, which means I beat the goal I set of 25000.
I wanted to make sure I did a good stretch of writing today because I work tomorrow from 7 a.m to 3 p.m. so I doubt I’ll get much done tomorrow, if anything at all. I ended at the end of a chapter, and am hoping to work on the story some more at a later date. There’s a lot of work that has to be done on it. A lot of things that I thought would work while planning really don’t work as I’m trying to write things out; and certain elements or rather character perspectives were a lot harder to write from than I thought.

Still I’ve written the most this month since I did this time last year, and that’s saying a lot. A friend of mine has put together a community on LJ for “Nanoing all year round” Nanowrimo_ayr and I just requested to join in the hopes that I can keep going with motivation of fellow writers all year rather than just in November and get some writing done on other stories that I’ve been trying to get to work over the years. I think the first one I might tackle is “The Ledger” which is about a group of D&D players who get to experience what is a lot of players dreams fighting monsters in real life but, of course, it’s nothing like the game and a lot more dangerous.

I’m stalled with NaNoWriMo once again. The past few days I’ve not been feeling so great, and haven’t been up to much in the way of writing, and so other than a few hundred words that I wrote last night I’ve been around 14000 for the past few days, current goals indicate that it’s supposed to be around 28K by now, so I’m halfway behind again and I’m not sure what I’d be doing as far as catch up because I seem to have lost the thread of where I was going somewhere along the line.

I’m trying to skip ahead a little in the hopes of picking things up, perhaps I can talk about one of Kelsey’s alters being interested in carolina designs, something, anything to actually get the words going again. I think part of my problem is that I already know that I’m going to be scrapping half of what’s been written or at least moving it to later in the story to try and salvage it, because the way things are being written right now there’s nothing much in the way of actual action going on compared to what I was hoping for when I originally decided on the plot, some times that’s not a bad thing, but in this case I feel as though things are dragging a lot in certain ways, where I’ve been writing pages about things that aren’t entirely relevant just to keep writing.

I’m behind with NaNoWriMo as I anticipated, but I’m okay with it. I’ve been angsting a bit even though I told myself “just to be writing” was okay, but I’m gradually coming to peace with the fact that I’m behind and just dealing with it and writing what I can when I can.

I’m currently at just over 4500 words, which is the most I’ve written in a while, so that’s the main thing. I’m sure some of it isn’t great, but it’s out and it’s following a plot line and that’s the main thing. Writing’s not easy it’s not like taking christmas photo cards where after a half hour or so your work is done and you just have to mail everything you have to persevere and that’s what I’m doing. If I get stuck I walk away. I ask for pointers and help, such as last night where Kore brilliantly advised me, “If X character is giving you a problem in the scene remove her from it.” and I was able to rattle off another 200 words before calling it a night.

I’ve been working a bit on other things today, blogging, tweaking a site design for someone and am going to write for a bit while I’m waiting for feedback on the design. I’ve got 40 words done so far; but hey 40 words are 40 words ^^ and at least they’re sentences they’re not just word salad.

I’ve spoken at length about writer’s block quite often and how I find it hard to get any inspiration at times. The other night as unexpectedly as if I’d found myself participating in rv towing I found myself writing.

I wrote, by hand, about six pages of something that was completely unrelated to anything that I’d currently been trying to work on. It flowed from my pen almost as if I were channeling it. I read it the next morning and was floored by the content because it’s not something I generally write. I recognized one of the characters as one I’d written about a few years ago. I’d been mapping out his world and it’s political environment and some of his history, and here was a scene that I had glanced around because, frankly, it’s hard for me to write things involving sex at times, and here was a scene where not only was their sex, but multiple partners. However, I’m taking it as a good sign that my muse is coming back, even if she is being more than a little perverse.

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.