Feels Like Fanfiction

I’ve decided that since I can’t manage to keep up with a blog about my life, I’ll try to keep up with a blog about my random thoughts. Let this be the first.

More than once, I have told writers that their writing “feels like fanfiction.” Most times, there work is not fanfiction or in any way related to it (though once, after making this comment, I was rewarded with the confession that the piece of work I was reviewing was a synthesis of several fandoms). But I’ve thought about it, and I feel I need to define what makes a story feel like fanfiction. I used to punctuate by intuition, so I could never tell people how to fix their punctuation. Now that I know the majority of the rules, it’s easier to help the punctuation-challenged. Thus, I can only surmise that it will be easier for me to help fanfiction-feeling writers if I can define what makes a story feel like a spinoff of a beloved book, game, or movie.

First let me begin by saying that there are some fanfictions—a meager percentage, but still a strong number—that feature superb writing. Fanfiction also serves as a wonderful forum for honing writing skills without the baggage of notebooks full of prewriting.

That said, the genre of fanfiction also attracts a large number of less-than-mediocre storytellers. When I say something feels like fanfiction, I’m referring to the work of these storytellers. So, first I will list some of the things that most bother be about these sub-par stories.

1. Overly detailed description that does not further the overall plot or even the action of a particular scene. These descriptions are largely in reference to characters, especially main characters. The reasoning, as far as I can see: all specifics of the fandom must be preserved, and any ideas unique to the fanfiction must be enumerated on, because otherwise what is there to distinguish this work? These descriptions can also be due to an over-crafting of the physical appearance of any main character that has been added to the fandom for purposes of the fanfiction. Which leads me to point 2.
2. Strong attachment to a particular character, whether it be one lifted from the fandom or one invented to infiltrate the fandom. This is largely what drives a fanfiction of the less-than-mediocre sort. It is not a character development that is fascinating; it is the character’s current state of being. This defeats the purpose of having a character arc, which is often the point of a story. Characters are never infallible. Even Sherlock Holmes, the genius of crime solving, is occasionally bested in the set of stories from A. Conan Doyle. Even Holmes must accept infrequent defeat, or at least less than he was aiming for. When a strong fanfiction-like attachment is formed toward a character, every aspect of that character must be detailed, and that character is more or less perfect, even in his or her flaws, because the writer is obsessed with him or her. This brings on point 3.
3. Lack of conflict. Oh, there might be apparent obstacles or occasional hiccups, there’s no denying that. No one wants to read about anyone sitting around having a lovely time doing nothing, at least not for any length of time. But these meager obstacles and hiccups never try the character who is so beloved, and that is the point of conflict. Conflict is meant to tax characters, to push and challenge them. It is meant to drain on their faculties and force them to find or create reserves they never thought possible. When I say “lack of conflict,” what I mean is lack of true challenge.

So, returning to original fiction that smells of fanfiction. When I say something feels like fanfiction and I’ve only seen a small sampling, it is usually because of point 1. There is overly detail description that serves no purpose. It’s all fine and good to know exactly what your character looks like, but it isn’t usually necessary for all the details to be forced on the reader. Readers like to see things for themselves. If your purpose is to entertain your reader, give them what they like. Do not, ever, put the story on hold for the sake of description. Long chunks of description should always grow organically from the story. For example, if a strange man barges into my room late and night and begins talking as though he knows me, I’m going to examine him thoroughly to try to discover why he’s doing so. Do I recognize his laughably beakish nose? Is his gravelly voice familiar? Do his eyes tingle at my memory? Or does his clothing or manner suggest that he knows me through another acquaintance? Does he, for example, sport the tell-tale raccoon-eye tan lines of a lifeguard or pool-goer? In this instance, every detail would be worth something to me. If I’m meeting my friend on the bench we always meet at, on the same day we always meet, with her looking exactly the same as she always does, I’m much less likely to stop and note her every feature.

Forced or artificial description smells of fanfiction in an unpleasant way. It is also the first step to falling to the other fatal signs of mediocre writing. Don’t let it happen to you!

Hallowe'en...Late

Traditionally, my writing club has a Hallowe'en party (not Halloween; the hostess is very clear on that). It's always been a murder mystery, like a How to Host a Murder gig, but with a few differences. Difference one would be that this isn't only one murder: the murderer continues to kill people as they see fit throughout the night. Difference two is that the plot line is written by the hostess and a few others every year.

I helped this year.

Of course, since everyone's away at college now, we postponed it a month so we could get everybody. It took place Friday night.

It was very interesting to be on the planning side of things. I've been the murderer before, and I got killed about halfway through the party last year, but I've never had to worry much about the plot line beyond my desire to solve any mystery. This year I was a fortune-telling gypsy, which also gave me the ability to randomly give people direction if they were going too far in the wrong direction.

But it also required a great deal of improvisation on my part. To begin, we started the night's "entertainments" with me telling each character's fortune. I was not expecting that. I thought I would randomly grab people and spurt mystic nonesense, but then, there I was sitting at a round table with an audience of fourteen people. An hour before the party, I had spent five minutes reading up on palmistry on Wikipedia. I couldn't even remember which line was which, beyond the life line. So to supplement my lack, I added a twist. I had a red velvet bag of shiny polished rocks, and I had each person draw out a rock as I was going along. Thus did I invent a great deal of minerology that somehow had to do with the future. I also tried to spice up each fortune by changing how I behaved toward the people.

My success: at least people were laughing.

The second hitch I ran into that night was the fact that I was the first person to be killed off (that wasn't part of the original plan, but we had to do some last-minute adjusting). This normally wouldn't be a problem: ghosts are allowed to interact with everybody, and their motives and all extend beyond death, but they aren't allowed to discuss who exactly murdered them. The problem was my handicap. Ghosts at the party always have a handicap: blindfolding, not using one of their hands, speaking in a whisper, etc. However, since my character had, up to the point of my death, been quite cheeky and altogether too loud-mouthed (I was a gypsy with no respect for authority), I was given the handicap that I could only speak when asked a direct question, and only to answer that question.

Try keeping everyone on the right track when you can't talk unless they want you to.

In the end, my most effective method involved grabbing people's wrists and staring at their palms until they asked me what I wanted to say. Some people tried to get away, though, so I had to employ a rather firm grip. When I couldn't grab people, I had to gesture like a madwoman and caper about endlessly. I can't tell you how many times my facial expressions were misinterpreted because they lacked commentary.

But all in all, it was a very interesting experience, and luckily the plot worked out well enough. And me and my friend have so many ideas on how to make it even better next year!

Ironic Response

Today I found out that my submission to the university literary journal was rejected. More than that, it was rejected without a discussion. And I am absolutely elated.

Of course, this response requires a bit of delving into. The reason I gave the girl next to me was that I had written the essay in one night and sent it...and regretted the sending two minutes later. Admittedly, that is part of the reason: I was in no way proud of this submission, except in the vein that it is the first essay I've written that fits into the genre of essay that is published in the lit journal.

The heart of the matter is a bit deeper. I have never, in all my life, submitted something I was truly proud of to any sort of publishing establishment. Call it a chronic fear of failure, but I've never wanted to take a risk on anything I cared about being rejected. However, even with this reining in of the quality of work I send, I have never truly been rejected. (To be fully truthful: two of my submissions to my high school lit mag this last year were rejected, but I submitted seven or eight pieces, so the rejections don't really count.) Outside of the high school scene, I have had several poems published (and I am not a poet), one essay, I've been invited to publish one other essay (I declined, because it was a pathetic, writhing thing), I've written last-minute essays with no soul that got me thousands of dollars in scholarship money, etc., etc.

I could take this as a vast complement, the idea that work I don't consider up to snuff is being accepted for publication. Yet I have never really felt that way. The concept that lurks in me after an acceptance letter is one of being cheated. I should have to try. Life should not be easy. Even something I love as much as writing should not, I reason, come so easily to someone who is so obviously not a genius. Robbing me of motivation to grow, to excel through hard work, is a crime I cannot forgive.

In essence, my experience in writing has been the opposite of my experience in swimming. In the pool, I gave everything I had, plus more, every single day for four years--more, even. Yet my results were meager: I qualified for state every year, but only barely; I was captain because there were only two senior girls; I was rewarded with some of the closest friends I've ever had (the latter is the greatest reward ever, but it didn't come because of my efforts in the pool). With writing, my half-hearted attempts have been accepted with open arms, even praised.

How wonderous it is to be so soundly rejected. Thank you, Inscape, for validating my firmly held belief that I am mediocre, that I have loads of work to do.

This is such a liberating feeling!

Raving

Raving for research, that is.

Something is definitely wrong with my brain. Today in my writing class, we were going over the syllabus (she procrastinated writing it until this morning) and talking about the end-of-semester research paper (assigned to be at least ten pages, and less than twenty pages). When she said we could write about anything we liked, I was practically ecstatic (still on something of a little high right now...). You mean, I thought, I get to research in-depth about whatever I want? Holy cow, what an opportunity!

Only now, I'm trying to decide if my first thought is really a good one.

I want to research the representations of, symbols of, reactions to, relationship with, etc., death in various cultures, especially in the myths, legends, and folktales thereof. But that's too big, so I want to zero in on old Celtic traditions. Arawn, Bran's head, the Bean Nighe, the Banshee, ravens, hounds that bay like geese, and so forth. It would be awesome.

But people might think I'm a little crazy for picking such a morose topic. It gives me too much delight to be a healthy fascination.

I could, on the other hand, discuss a set of legends from a certain subdivision of Celtic lore--Manx, Scottish, Irish, Briton, Cornish, Welsh--and how they reflect social dynamics of historic society.

On a completely unrelated note, I could research old sailing ships in hopes of getting around to writing out that idea about the lonely, vindictive embodiment of the waters of the world, Lady Undine, and her fascination with Former-captain Lund. Since he practically lives out at sea, I'd need to know more than a thing or two about the ship he'd be sailing on.

Or I could write about Malayan bladed weapons, or focus on the use and structure of the European longsword.

I could theorize about why the constellation Orion often crops up to be a warrior/hunter type fellow in various cultures. I mean, he doesn't even look all the human. Yeah, he's got the belt to draw attention to himself, and his armpit's pretty bright, but you can take those stars and make them into something other than a guy about to bop a bull on the head.

Heck, I could write about the history of swimming.

She also mentioned the option of turning in the first chapter of a novel--even though she's not supposed to allow that sort of thing--if we worked out what sort of research we were going to do in advance, and displayed it in the writing. Some people, upon first hearing that first chapters were allowed, seemed somewhat jaded at the thought. But she glared everyone down and asked if they knew how much research actually goes into a novel. When she said that, I let my head fall against my desk. Too dang much, in my opinion. And even when you think you checked enough facts, something you learn in astronomy class pops out at you and shouts, "Hey, idiot! New moon, even though you can't see it, isn't up at night! Dipsmack."

So yes, I have quite a few options floating around in my head. For Son of Sferesh, I could even just research medieval travel, city layout, and social structure and stick it into the first chapter.

Problem is, now that I've thought of so many, I have to pick one. Yikes. Any opinions are welcome, of course.

(In favor of the Celtic idea, no matter how ultimately useless the research would prove to be for me, I have a book full of Celtic stories that has, in the back, a list of recommended reading. I'm not sure where I would start with most of the rest of them.)

My Villain

Cedric N'gaz is so much better this time around. The revision is definitely going to improve due to his increased character development. Along with his increased screen [?] time.

In other news that is also related to my revision, I have gotten to the disastrous point I referred to in the first version as "Chapter 4". Now it's at the end of chapter six, but that's okay. This version is so much better.

Now Hiring: Must Have People Skills

Lifeguards are supposed to be able to be polite, even when perturbed. Yeah, missing that quality. This was my Fourth of July at work. Yes, I wrote about it in third person, but I'm not using the ocelot. Yes, I was being an idiot. Warning: it's kinda long.

She walked into the lifeguard break room, drained already. Her family, wanting to take advantage of dad’s day off, had spent five hours out on the lake. It wasn’t as though it hadn’t been fun—quite the opposite, really—but five hours on the lake is five hours in the sun. The July sun. Now, why the sun, the source of all energy, found the need to drain hers was beyond grasping, but that was how things went. Now she looked forward to a further five hours in the sun. Except this bout also involved people.

Not that she had anything against most people on an individual basis. But in groups, on hot days, when she had a baby migraine, that was when people became stupid. Of course, that could be her perception. Or maybe it was just another one of those things: inexplicable, but true.

She looked through the break-room window and nearly wept. She could barely see the water for the people in it. What, had everyone decided to spend the Fourth of July outside, then come to realize it was at least 100° outside and opt for swimming? Some part of her, the part that existed in the courtroom of her mind as a defense attorney for humanity, huffed that it did make sense. But the rest of her, the prosecutor and the biased jury, didn’t listen.

Why couldn’t they all just suppose that everyone else would have the same idea, and avoid the pool for the sake of avoiding the crowd? Crowds, she had found, were the worst of it. In small groups, patrons could be managed with a firm, authoritative hand. Heck, sometimes they even learned from each other. The lifeguard told him not to do that, so I shouldn’t either. But in crowds…ugh. You got the worst of the worst, and you got it all at once. The defense attorney sighed that you probably got the best of the best while you’re at it, but who notices things like that?

What she did notice, when she went out on deck and took her place on her small plastic chair, was all the annoying people. The couples that didn’t realize they were at a public pool. The teenage boys who thought rules were for other people, and the things certainly weren’t there to keep you from causing harm to others or yourself. The hundreds of small, aquatically challenged children who managed to get away from their parents with a speed jet pilots would envy. The idiots who couldn’t grasp the concept that lap lanes were for lap swimming. The boys and girls who didn’t go to the end of the diving board before trying to do a front flip.

Peter, a high-spirited, goofy co-worker, appeared at the base of her chair. Time to rotate.

“Hey you, how’s it going?”

“I’m alive.”

That, she decided, was the best she could say.


Break time. The air conditioning caressed her sunburned skin, and she rummaged around in the cupboard for her cup. She could feel dehydration setting in. Water needed to be in her mouth within the next minute. Why couldn’t she find the blasted thing? It wasn’t like it looked like the rest of the cups. Yes, it was a cheap red plastic affair, but it was covered in permanent marker designs. She hated it when her cup looked like everybody else’s. Similarities made it hard to find.

“Where is my cup?” she wondered aloud.

“Ahaha,” said Paul. She turned to the boy on the beaten old couch. He was far taller than her, and had the grin of an imp on his lips. “I put it up there,” he pointed to some vague spot, “and Tim threw it away.”

“Gosh dangit, you idiot!” She snatched the first weapon at hand—her shoe—and hurled it Paul’s way. Surprisingly, considering her typical accuracy, it hit him square in the chest. “Why’d you go and do that?” Like he needed a reason. Paul was just mean spirited like that. He hardly treated anybody better than the ground he walked on.

Paul didn’t answer, but instead popped to his feet and gently placed her shoe on top of one of the suspended light fixtures.

“Get it down!” she shouted. Yes, she was making a scene. Yes, there were other people around. And yes, it was her own fault that Paul had a chance at her shoe in the first place. But that wasn’t the point. The point was, Paul was going to have to pay some sort of toll for being so utterly imbecilic.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

Whatever, she didn’t have the patience even to argue her point. She jerked a guarding tube off the ground and climbed onto the couch. With a klutz’s care, she eventually knocked her shoe down. Of course, before she could get off the back of the couch, Paul had picked it up and was running to a different light fixture. One far from the couches.

She swung the tube at his back, getting one of the best smacking noises she’s ever heard from a tube. But that didn’t stop him from depositing her shoe high above the ground.

“Paul!” He collapsed back on the couch. She reached for his sunglasses, but he held them at an arm’s length.

“Pull his hair,” someone said. She glared at the newbie guard. Was his name Matt? What did it matter? He was a new guard, and not a particularly good one either.

“No,” she said. There were some lows that she would never reach, regardless of the blood rushing through her already pounding brain. Instead she whirled back around and threw her knuckles right beneath Paul’s ribs. “Get it down already.”

“All right, all right,” he said, pretending he was giving in to be nice. But she had felt it, that inexplicably satisfying feeling when a punch hits its mark. He threw her shoe on the floor and she returned to the cupboard. She selected an unmarked—though probably not unused—cup and wrote her name on it. If she wasn’t so thirsty, Paul would have had to answer for the cup. She kept telling herself that, trying to drown out the part of her that was hurt that she’d broken her promise.

No one was harder on her when she broke promises than she was. And she’d punched somebody. Again. Yes, it was Paul. But it was still a punch.

The cool water quenched her thirst, but it didn’t calm her temper.


Everyone was finally out of the pool and outside the gates. That is, aside from the lifeguards. They were all scrubbing the deck and mucking out the locker rooms.

She snapped the foamer onto the hose. She didn’t see why it was so hard to attach the darn thing. Anyone could do it. Except, of course, Briana. Trust her to fail to see the obvious.

“There, Briana. Now give me back my squeegee.”

With her squeegee, she resumed guiding the—ahem—disinfected, yet still quite nauseating water toward the drain. She heard a clicking sound, and she instantly looked toward the hose.

Paul—not the same Paul who had messed with her shoe, but still a Paul—stood with the foamer in his hands and started for the exit.

“No you don’t!” she bellowed. Unlike many girls her age, she actually knew how to bellow. It helped that she could sing tenor. “Put that right back on the hose!” She was brandishing her soiled squeegee, and Paul backed away with his hands up.

“I thought you were done with it.”

“I said, put it back!” Who did he think he was? Hadn’t he been nearby when, last summer, she had devised the Thou Shalt Nots of lifeguarding? Number one: Thou shalt not rotate late. But it was closely followed by: Thou shalt not steal thy neighbor’s [insert cleaning equipment here].

Paul scurried back to the hose and put the foamer down with exaggerated care.

“Hook it up!”

He did. Then she stepped away from the door and let him pass. Stupid Paul. She knew she shouldn’t think that—Paul was nice enough, even if he didn’t always think things through—but she thought it anyway. Stupid Paul.


Finally, the locker rooms were clean. Well, as clean as they were going to get without a hands-and-knees, corrosive-chemical, all-out cleaning. And she wasn’t volunteering for anything like that.She hung her squeegee in the maintenance closet and started for the door. At the threshold, however, she found her nose inches away from a dripping, putrid squeegee. Not funny. The fact that she had pulled a similar stunt only half an hour ago on Paul didn’t even cross her mind.

“Peter!” she snapped at the red-haired boy at the other end of the squeegee. He wasn’t trying to be mean, she knew quite well. On the contrary, he was trying to perk her spirits, cheer her up. He’d been trying all day, and he was having adverse effects on her already volatile disposition. “Get that thing out of my face!” Most people would have been slightly hoarse after the consistently high volume she was using, but her voice pealed.

Peter quickly twirled the squeegee out of her way and she stomped into the open.

“Somebody’s having a bad day.”

She spun around, saw Newbie Matt’s face, and stood on her toes. Matt wasn’t much taller than she was. She held her arms slightly away from her body, flexed every muscle she had, and lurched toward him. “You know what?”

Matt cringed. “I’m not gonna mess with you.” He cowered away.

That’s right, she thought. That’s right. Don’t mess. She really shouldn’t intimidate new guards like that, but somebody had to do it. Otherwise they got ideas. A voice under her anger said that shouting at everybody handed people ideas, but it was ignored.

“You know,” Briana said from behind her, “you’d make a good character for a book.”

She was certainly put-out at that point. “No, I wouldn’t. I’d be homicidal, and the rest of the cast wouldn’t exist for long. In books, you can get away with killing people!” She didn’t mean that like it sounded, but she didn’t feel like adding a clause about at least getting away from your conscience.

She felt dozens of eyes on her face, but didn’t meet any of them. Instead she started on her way to her car.

One thing was for certain: she hadn’t made any friends today.

Porah

My subconscious does not have my saniy's best interests at heart. Of course, I've never been of the opinion that my subconscious has a heart at all, and I don't think it even has its own interests anywhere handy. I think it just chucks things at me to see how I'll react, like some sadistic scientist. It gets irritating every now and again.

Thus we have Porah, the Tamer of the Drums. Just when my creative juices seemed to be completely occupied, I have to find time and energy for this. I mean, I have a collaborative short story going on (collaborations, I've found, are honestly more draining than solitary endeavors; you have to have a clue about where you're going with a train of thought, because somebody else has to understand and expand on it), I have a revision that is mired in about the same place as the original was (which is bad, because I get wordy when I'm mired, and wordiness is what the revision is trying to fix), I have a sequel that needs a thickening plot (no one likes a watery plot, in my experience), and then I get saddled with some seventeen-year-old kid who thinks he can tame the spirits of his ancestors. Ha! I say. Ha!

It's not like I was trying. There I was, minding my own business, enjoying a presentation on the various cultures of Polynesia. No harm in that, right? I was just watching. But that's not what my subconscious was doing. Oh no, it had to work while I was at it. Next thing I know, some BYU-H student started beating Tongan drums with tasseled sticks and my subconscious brought out the inspiration catapult. "He looks like he's trying to tame them, like they are wild creatures," it said. I gritted my teeth and pointedly continued watching. I would not reach for something to write on. I would not. "Maybe he believes them to be inhabited by spirits of the departed," it crooned. I didn't even glance toward my mother's handy bag full of writing implements and pieces of scratch paper. Lastly, as if I didn't know what it was hinting at, it named a main character. Loudly. "PORAH!" it screamed. That was it, then. Concepts can be forgotten, they can slip away--even willed away--as easily as wriggly fish, but characters are forever. They can change, they can evolve, they can even run around plotless (the equivalent of stark nekkidness, in my opinion), but they are never forgotten.

And thus I am here, writing about a drum made from a sea turtle's shell. Soon I'll be writing about a very strange funeral, and then I'll be describing things in terms of touch, taste, smell, and sound, because Porah will be blind.

It's no wonder the Housing Department of the High Council of Krys has trouble. People move in without any plans for their future. Porah settled in when all he had was a wooden drum and a pair of loose, baggy pants. Stupid vagrant characters. Hobos, the lot of them!

Building Backwards

This is kind of longer, and might not completely make sense to anyone but me . . .

Today I was talking with the wood duck, and he mentioned that physics—string theory and all its ilk—is easier to understand than social agendas. Now, in my mind, physics is about as impenetrable as it gets, so I had to defend the nuances of sociality, despite how tangled they can become.

“All you really need to know is what everybody wants,” I said, “and everything else follows after. If you can burrow down to a person’s motives, everything they do makes sense. Nothing to it.” Even less to it when I realized what I was really saying.

One of the first things a writer has to do with a character is determine what the character wants, what drives that person. After that, plot becomes simply a matter of obtaining what that character wants, plus a few obstacles thrown in the way. Any complicated situations that arise can be reduced to a question of conflicting desires. So, in essence, understanding people and social dynamics is just a matter of constructing characters in reverse. Instead of building a person from nothing, you are given a fully developed cast. You watch a few situations, you see how people react, you talk to them a little, and you start to dig down to what it is that they want, be it on a grand scale or not.

My thoughts kept moving along while my mouth logick-ed the wood duck into complacence, and I was allowed another insight as to why I am so unenthused about going to college. I have been with the same cast of characters for years. A good portion of the characters in my life have been around me as far back as my memory reaches. Slowly, the cast has grown, and changed composition, but always I had a base to work with. I had characters that helped me explore the minds, motives, and emotions of others. Every scene change left me with roughly the same people, and a change of scene doesn’t throw me off all that much when the people are the same.

I’m quite good at understanding the current cast that touches on my life. It isn’t difficult for me to accept and comprehend what is going on, why, and how I should deal with it—if I should deal with it at all. It is a rare enough thing that I know every detail of what is going on with my acquaintances: I’m not in tune with the local gossip (not that I’m upset about that; people skew things too much). But because I know people, when I hear about snatches of situations, when I latch onto fragments of gossip, I can generally puzzle out the details myself. I don’t need to know what’s going on, because I understand the people that are involved.

That is why I don’t like the idea of college.

More than anything else, I fear a change in my cast. Right now, even if everything isn’t perfect, it at least makes sense. When I move on to college, I will only be taking a small part of my former cast with me. With the current state of affairs, I will have hardly any of my time-tested characters to help me understand things. And when I don’t understand things…well, suffice to say that I don’t do well when I’m confused.

The second I get to college, I’m going to have to do some NaNoWriMo-pace character exploration, or I’m in big trouble.

Cam vs Mak

It's been interesting to pound out two relatively in-depth characters in the space of a week. It went from one character with little more than a snippet of action and a poorly veiled name to describe him to two characters complete with full names that suit them, backstories, temperaments, abilities, reactions to people, and, ultimately, a plot big enough for the both of them (it helps that neither is very large of stature).

Cam has become something of a little friend that needs assistance. He doesn't see the world clearly, and doesn't understand all that he could be. He's a sad sight to see, when you understand what you're looking at. The really sad part is that nobody does.

Mak is good with kids, and that's all that really matters about him. Though, he's the first truly shortsighted character I think I've come up with. He lives supremely in the present.

Though I can't claim them as only mine (I have more of a claim on Mak than Cam, even though I care about him less), I at least had a strong hand in their creation. I've never worked this fast before, and it's been really amazing to watch them come to life even before the penning of their story begins.

It's also been interesting to watch the theme of the story evolve into something more than an attempt at fairy-tale reversal. I can look at it, and the little twists that my co-author and I have tossed in "for fun," and see that it could mean something deeper than an anti-hero if we write it the right way. The question is, can we do it?

This is why I write. I can only assume it's a bit like raising children, only different.

So It Begins

700 words today. Only 133.33333 words off of the schedule for a half NaNo.

At Last! An Idea!

Adapted from a writer's headstone: At last, a plot!

Anyway, I finally found a topic for one of our English essays that is personal, but not so personal that it's going to kill me to write it or share it! It's far removed from the present time, though effects are still present, it didn't have any heartbreaking effects, and it's actually pretty hysterical in retrospect. I thought it was funny then, too. I love having a thick skin.

Oh, you want to know the idea? Yeah, for the "write a narrative about a time when you were an outsider, isolated because of social, intellectual, or ethnic differences between you and others" question, I'm writing about being the only girl who played kickball in elementary school. Score for freewriting. That wasn't what I was planning on doing at all, but it kicks my other idea's trash.

Settlement

Since that last post is soooo depressing, I decided that I can't let it sit around as my current post for any longer. I'm tired, but I'm not depressed. So instead I'll stick a rant on top! Huzzah for a change!

I have written so much crap! I'm not even kidding. Because of the Sterling Scholar stuff, I've been going through every line of prose that I've saved since the Great Explosion of the Compuker of Death. Some of it actually extends to before the GECD, but those are few. Anyway, the point is that so much of it is so sickeninly crappy. And not all the crappy stuff is old. Example: I just wrote a reaction paper to stuff we did in government and citizenship. Gag me! It's terrible, as far as literary merit goes. But I won't fix it either (by my logic, Rhees can't talk, so he really can't judge if my writing struggles in one essay). There are so many times when I've settled for less than I was capable of. Even with the application essay I wrote recently! The idea was excellent, especially for a late-night idea, but I didn't bother to clean it up. All it really took was one deleted sentence, a few added words, one taken out here and there, and it was ten times better. But I settled. I'm sick of settling! No more settling.

(Says the Cynic in Me: Yeah, that resolution will last until the next deadline. Explications are due soon, aren't they?)
(Says the Realist: Um, Cynic is right. You're gonna be settling on some of the less important scenes. I betcha that if we looked at it, we could even figure out which ones you'll settle on.)
(Says the Optimist: Shushupyourmouths! See if I care! Oh wait, I'm the optimist. Happy day, all!)

Officially

Officially, I'm going to take a crack at Kin of Kumei, sequel to Son of Sferesh. If all does not go well, and the plot line that does not yet exist in its entirety never solidifies, I can always abandon it and go back to the Son of Sferesh as a stand-alone plan.

As far as revision of Son of Sferesh goes, my mum finished reading it, and gave me quite a few criticisms that were very refreshing. I'm bouncing a few ideas around because of her. Endrea might not be so stupid now. She might have a brain. Heck, the rest of her family does; she must have picked something up. She can still be a cocky jerk, though.

Another friend finished it, and he hasn't given me any feedback yet, aside from his opinion on the projected sequel. I've plunged into working on it, but it's reminding me why I've always hated beginnings. Blegh. Pretty much all the torment that kept me from Son of Sferesh for so long...all over again. But still, I'm only thirteen pages in, and I can totally tell the difference between my viewpoint characters. That makes me happy. I didn't even try, but they're so easily discernable. Huzzah for things working out!

Useless Information

Tonight was a UI escapade with mi padre. We discussed everything from the origination of the term "hooker" to SKSes/Vietnam War to how customs will confiscate a bayonet but not a semi-automatic weapon to the history of several major narcotics to, eventually, the course of The Illiad. I love my pappy.

In other news, that I had meant to deliver differently to Terri, I finished SoS on Sunday. 330 pages, 42 chapters. I MADE IT!

Broken

I'm in the last chapter (chapter "Broken", FYI). Two more have died in this chapter, and at the end of chapter "Sacrifice" I killed one more (have I mentioned that Ciria is dead yet? She is). Right now Maric is suffering from the loss of two loved ones and another close acquaintence, the most immense, total muscle pain that could ever be imagined, and skin that hurts so bad that he would rather enjoy it if all of it fell off. But that's okay, because soon the last two will disappear. I'm so close I can taste it. *licks her outlines* Yes, precious, nearly there.

In other news, today I wrestled with a slimy, moldy, evil hose that saw fit to attack me with soiled water and its own mildewy self. Ewwwww. I hates it, I do.

Sabotage!

So there I am, striving to make a battle scene worth reading. I'm certainly not in the mood, but there's hardly anything for me to skip to instead. I mean, the end of the battle is the End, so I can't skip to the scene I feel like doing. I've resorted to mood music. In short, that means I'm desperate. Not so desperate as to make me walk down and up the stairs though, so my mood music was the Pirates of the Carribean soundtrack instead of Lord of the Rings. So I'm at the computer, struggling with what I want to say, what Maric wants to say, and what Rehde will say whether he or I wants him to or not. I'm tussling with formations, with how Sferesh will charge, with how Kumei will answer, whether Kumei will answer in time to save the front rank, whether half the pikemen will be dead before the armies even meet, how in the world Maric is handling this, and how to work this all into the part of the battle I've already written, and my dad decides to sabotage me. He gets on his computer, picks the stickiest, most repetitive pop queen song that I haven't expressed complete dislike for, and blasts it on his compuker! It's been stuck in my head ever since. Grrrrr. He's not helping the stress of the scene. When it comes out flat and lecturish, I'm blaming him. Nyeah.

Slaughter

It's begun. I killed a slew of scouts the other day, and today Heth was impaled by an arrow shot by Eyend'sal, Endrea's and Elyste's guard. Next chapter, Eyend'sal dies, at Elyste's hand. I doubt Elyste will see that, but that's to inform him anyhow. He does get to kill a named character (though, I won't grant his wish of killing Endrea; I like Zefran too much to do that to him). In the following chapter, my favorite character croaks (being my favorite is the bane of any character's existence, whether I'm writing the story or not). In the next one, at least three other named characters keel over (more of them might die). So really, I'm not that gruesome. I only have five scheduled deaths that anyone really cares about, and one of them should have some people rejoicing. So there.

Oops.

*peeks over the edge of her legal pad*
Urm, I just broke 300 pages. It was an accident, I promise.
*adds another check mark to the "Does Son of Sferesh need to go on a diet?" poster*

Overwrought

I have never worked so hard for so little. I spent seven hours, total, writing a grand scene that took up all of two pages. SEVEN! And it still isn't what I wanted it to be. I haven't been this frustrated since the second chapter (that thing was of the devil). I guess I shouldn't be too hard on myself; I've always cheated my way out of goodbye scenes before, so I don't have a lot of practice. Still, two pages, seven hours--what's wrong with this picture?

One Step Closer

All the required winter activities should be concluded in one chapter, approximately five pages. Then we move into spring. Guess what happens in spring? THE END!