It Came From Outer Space…

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.

It shouldn’t surprise me how easy it is for me to get distracted away from writing. I’ve been meaning to start several times but either I get side-tracked with best colon cleanser emails, or others offering me viagra or saying that I’ve won some lottery I’ve never heard of; or I get side-tracked with facebook games. I’d made a pledge to take a week off from facebook but then realized I needed it to finish organizing a friend’s birthday gather and then neglected to try again to boycott.

This concerns me for a variety of reasons.

However, I’m endeavoring to not only take time away from Facebook but also the computer itself, to turn it off for at least an hour at night before I go to bed, to help me wind down. So, far it hasn’t happened but there’s a first time for everything and at least one time is enough to start a beneficial pattern. Today I’ve spent quite a bit of time NOT on the computer, so that’s a bonus as well, but there’s the fact that I do need to use the computer for work and also for writing. I wish there was some way for me to just turn off from the internet, but it doesn’t often work. I’ll do so, not open my email, not open FF but then I’ll want to verify something I’m writing about, or check notes that I’ve left on a blog and then the spiral starts.

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’m not sure where I stand on this issue, really. I’ve been reading a lot about it from a couple of authors, George R. R. Martin on his Not A Blog, and also Diana Gabaldon on her blog: Voyages of Artemis about their dislike of people using their works for fanfiction and their dislike of fanfiction in general.

I remember when I realized I’d actually been writing fanfiction. When I first started writing I flipped between writing about two sisters who had found an otter, this was after I first saw “Ring of Bright Water” and about the Tracy boys from “Thunderbirds” discovering they had a sister called Cassiopeia. I would write this dross in notebooks between classes. It entertained me greatly for a little while. I even branched out trying to speculate on the origin story of Superman and Supergirl. I named them Lyte and Darke–so creative and tried to understand where they came from. Then I actually saw the original Superman movie and the Supergirl movie and well, I was extremely disappointed in the latter, but enthralled by the former.

Then I began finding inspiration for my own stories based on the plot holes of others. There were a great many nitpicks I had with some television shows and stories that I was seeing and I started to write my own stories that were similar. I worked out planets and races and started on time lines. Originally I was writing out plot lines in the fashion of episodes, but then I was twelve. I had a lot to learn about writing. I continued off and on with my own work in between school and things like that. When I got to college I met several people who wrote fanfiction avidly. We would speculate about things that characters would do in certain situations and would write. I do get a charge when someone tells me, “OMG it’s like you envisioned X perfectly,” or something of that nature, but as I’ve gotten older I feel a bit more guilty about the idea of writing in someone else’s universe. I know that I would not be seeking money from it, but I suppose it’s the differing perspective that comes with age, and the fact that I’m much more focused on my own goals of one day getting published and have a better ability to see things in someone else’s shoes. I wonder, how would I feel if someone ‘toyed’ with my characters? Would I be happy? flattered? disgusted?

I admit there are several times I’ve seen descriptions of fanfiction and I’m going “by the Gods that’s vile.” a lot of it is drivel, much as my early ten year old work, whether fanfiction or not was utter drivel. As you get older your skills at many things improve. When I was ten I could barely scramble eggs and now I can prepare a four course meal, provided I have the spoons.

There’ve been times when I have still dabbled in fanfiction as a way to detox and do things mindlessly and I…I just don’t know any more. I recently changed the intro to my fanfiction.net account saying that I felt that I could no longer in good conscience write fanfiction because I feel so guilty.

My commentary sparked an interesting debate within our house because the idea was postulated that once you publish a book it becomes “public domain” and the whole “this is why there are disclaimers on fanfiction” and I’m thinking well that’s true but for the thousand honest fans who just want to express their love by writing about your characters, it just takes one douchebag to in that sense “ruin it” for everyone else; to take what you’ve written and rip it off. While from some of the less flame-tastic comments I’ve been reading on various blog articles speak of the fact that most communities have strict rules about who they can and cannot take fanfiction works about and how many communities will troll, roast and oust those who “break the rules” and demand payment for fanfiction or try to take credit for things they cannot.

I suppose it is personal taste. There’s so much of me in characters I write in a variety of ways that I feel that I would take great exception to finding my characters in the compromising and heinous situations that I’ve seen many characters put in and through. However at the same time it’s finding the healthy balance between being an evil ogre and being a poor sap. I’ve been run over so many times in my life, that I wouldn’t want to shoot myself in the foot in either score.

Still, most of this is purely speculative in the sense that I’m taking liberties even assuming I might ever get published. I may be getting better with writing but I still have a ways to go before any of the nuggets going through my brain become anything resembling publishable; but I don’t want it to be something I think about too little or remember too late. From what I’m reading there are many authors out there who aren’t even aware that there is fan fiction and yet there are others who know of it and condone and encourage it: Joss Whedon and J.K. Rowling are two of those from what I understand. I have to wonder how they make it work.

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 been doing a lot of handwriting the past few weeks. I found it incredibly strange to realize that I am indeed capable of writing stories without the aid of a computer.

It’s a sad reflection. I used to while away many an hour curled up in a chair or in a recliner out on the deck at our first American house writing and writing until I could barely hold a pen any longer, and I haven’t done that in years now I realize. I wound up handwriting almost 19 pages of things for “Too Deep” and some of it was hard going because my hands would complain and ache, and other times it was hard going because things I were writing brought about such a strong emotional response…but more on my thoughts on living your stories in another post.

I really, really want to be able to finish this story despite everything but I wonder some times if I have it in me. It’s annoying on that front too because I’m still not able to get my social security disability and further on that front because it’s causing tension in the household because of the lack of funds and the inability to work, and the days where I can create and do things which are followed by the frustrating days, and the “discussions” because we’re not sure at this point what we can do.

I hear hopeful things about certain places, like Allsup, which I mentioned. I’ve had a bit of information from them which sounds really neat especially that they’ve helped so many people receive the benefits that they need and their 98% success rate. I’m not even sure what my lawyer said his success rate was; how fast they are, and how they only charge if they get you what you’re supposed to get.

However, we’re with our lawyer now, and I’m not sure what else we can do to speed things along. The hang-up seems to be my psychiatrists office and details to do with receiving medical records and the like. Apparently it’s not that simple that I can just go down there and get the records myself and then mail them to SSDI. Something I hadn’t realized; but then there are many things I’m unaware of because the way things work wind up being strange and alien.

I suppose that’s why I relate to aliens and writing things from the perspective of an outsider to whom everything is completely foreign. It’s always been easy for me to step into other people’s shoes, and on some level that is good and then when I find myself grieving so much for things that I write and go through because I’ve experienced them in other life times or can feel what’s happening on the page so viscerally. I wonder will it evoke the same in someone reading it? Is this a good thing? Right now I’m not so sure.

There’s been a lot made lately in our community about medical coding training courses, one of my friends is actually taking some right now with the hopes that once she’s completed them she’ll be better qualified, having never worked because she’s spent the past six years raising her children she hasn’t any work experience and so isn’t appealing to potential employers, which is a huge problem especially with the way the economy is right now.

I’ve thought about going back to school several times but my problem as is often the case is trying to narrow down exactly what to do with myself. There are many different things that I’m interested in but a lot of them aren’t worth the expenditure for the end result, as was the case when I tried to do Graduate Studies in Information Services.

I’m trying to focus on things which would be easier to improve and can be done from home, working on each of the blogs in turn and changing things around so that they’re working at their peak and then also working slowly on bettering my actual writing techniques, which was meant to be the purpose of this particular blog in the first place.

I’m sorry to see that I’ve lost a lot of readers and subscribers over the past few days. My sites have been up and down for a little while but that should be over now as I’ve been able to get things sorted again, for the most part.

I’m still fixing the widgets and things, but I’d rather get all the sites back up that I can and then get the widgets sorted than play around with that right now, the feed subscription is back up and that’s the main thing as far as I’m concerned.

What happened is that on Friday a person in Sheffield initiated a scam of PayPal and to do so had hacked into one of my other domains using my password which they had somehow phished. My host is incredibly wonderful and incredibly on the ball (seriously you guys should ALL host with drak.net and tell them I sent you!) and had everything locked down within a few minutes, but that’s still meant that they had to lock all my sites down in case the person had been messing around in all of them and also that once they got me fixed I decided to take everything down and put it back up in pieces anyway because I’m paranoid like that and thought it would be a good time to weed out anything that was up on the server that probably shouldn’t have been because it was old, stale, and not being used (like my old Joomla installation).

Anyway I hope that I can regain my readership and breathe new life into everything like a Phoenix rising from the ashes of this disaster.

Thanks to those of you who’re sticking with me!

So, this blog is now officially It Came From Outer Space…. I think it’s an appropriate title on a number of levels.

I’ve always had a love of science, science fiction and fantasy. When I was younger if I wasn’t going to be an astronaut I was plotting careers living on biospheres on other planets or working on space stations. In fact the first story I started writing for myself and not for class was set on a spaceship that was traveling with colonists to different planets testing their live-ability.

While I’m not a huge fan of B-Movies they do hold a special place in my heart and in culture itself. My husband loves to watch them, and he and his father are often buying them for each other, and therefore we watch at least one on special family events. The latest batch of which are a batch of Harryhausen movies, and I was actually very pleased with some of the plot elements surrounding “20 Million Miles from Earth” and the poor creature from Venus that was rampaging around.

It may sound strange but when I write I try to bring realism into stories so the B-Movies tend to be a bit much for me. Realistic science-fiction probably sounds like an oxymoron but if you stay on this ship with me hopefully you’ll understand what I mean when I start posting some samples up.

I’m still trying to come up with a witty and appropriate title for a writing blog, but wouldn’t you know I have “writer’s block”. I thought about making that the title — but I don’t want to jinx myself any further.

I got the idea of using “Cat Among the Pigeons” but I don’t know that that’s really appropriate either. When I tried to do a “writing blog” before I had used “Ergo Writing” but naming the blog that feels like naming a ship the “Titanic”; it didn’t have good luck the first time why chance it again?

I wound up getting hung up on the space-y theme for the layout. All the rotating pictures are ones I made myself in Photoshop using brushes from Obsidian Dawn‘s website. I do write a lot of science-fiction and fantasy based things so perhaps I’ll do something tied in with that.

“They Came from Outer Space…” it reminds me of the old B movies my husband and his father love to watch which I generally dislike because they’re so cliche–at the same time that’s a good reminder of how I don’t want to be–what I’m striving to move beyond, and yet at the same time honor because without things like “Attack of the 50 foot woman” or even the old “Star Trek” series (which has it’s cheesy cliche moments) we wouldn’t have the opportunities we have today in sci-fi those shows and movies paved the way and gave us some thing to dream about and strive towards. It was picking apart “Star Trek” which gave me the ideas of “Condor” which I started writing when I was 12 and intend to get finished now that I have a bit more world experience.

I’m going to give myself until this time tomorrow to get the title of this blog sorted out. If I’m going to write here, it needs to have a title. I’ve had too many blogs that are named for their domain and I really don’t like doing that. Titles are important. I wouldn’t be calling my first novel “Book About Spaceships”.