Tag Archives: seldom

seldom

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Seldom is the lead character’s name in Gallows Dogs.

Yesterday I re-plotted using index cards.  Well, I tried to, but there is still so much I don’t know about this story, including whether I should be writing it at all.  Now I have to wonder if maybe I should be working on a sequel to godlight?

Why do my novels start with G?

Anyway, one of the many hings I don’t know is whether my next step should be an outline or a quickdraft.  Logic would seem to indicate the outline comes next, but I kind of think the quickdraft might turn up some issues that will need to be addressed in the outline.

Writing and plotting are not circular or linear, not for me.  It’s more of a rat’s nest scenario, really.

I don’t have to decide what to do next right this second though, since I have a lot of non-writing things to do today, like finish my reading for Web Scripting class (PHP, whoo…hoo), take an online quiz, clean the kitchen, steam my week’s worth of breakfast eggs, sort my pills, start the vast quantities of laundry that have piled up again.  Funny how that keeps happening.  Kind of like dishes.  People just keep eating and getting dressed, damn their eyes.

Best to get started.  When you boil it down (or steam it), getting started is always the next step.

something I (might as well say) never do–sharing rough draft material

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From Facebook, the writer’s seven meme.

Jade Zivanovic tagged me, so blame her. 🙂

Go to either page 7 or 77 of your manuscript. Count down 7 lines, then copy the next 7 lines to your status. After that, name 7 more authors to come out and play

This is a rough draft manuscript. It’s so rough, it doesn’t even have a working title yet. I just call it Seldom’s Story or Seldom Untitled. So this is on page 7 now, but it could end up anywhere…or nowhere at all.

Sirens screamed in the distance, but they would come too late. They always came too late. With her heart thundering in her ears, Seldom tightened her grip on the cold steel of the tire iron and threw herself backward, using all her weight.

Open, you bitch. OPEN!

The washing machine door squalled, and then something gave: SPANG! A piece of shrapnel flew across the room and struck the wall above the dryer bank. Perfumed suds and water gushed onto the yellowed tile. Someone shrieked.

But inside the drum the sodden shape remained motionless, and time spun away. In slow motion the mother crumpled into the spreading lake in front of the gaping door and drew out the tiny body, gathering it into her lap.

identity crisis

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Yesterday, for the first time in a long time, I tried to write, or actually to plot.  It has been so long, I feel completely disconnected from anything story-related, and I decided re-plotting Seldom’s story might freshen it in my mind and re-energize the project.  I packed pens, highlighters, and index cards, and parked myself on a stool at the computer bar in the college’s rotunda.

I got nutten.

Today’s mission:  not to freak out.

Confession:  I don’t even want to write.  I want to play with Illustrator’s gradient mesh tool.  I want to draw kickboard thumbnails.  I want to sit on the sofa watching Frasier on Netflix and cuddling my critters.  I want to visit my family.  I want to call some friends from whom I can feel myself growing apart because there is no time for relationships besides the ones within elbow range.  I kind of even want to dust and go on cobweb patrol around the house.

But I don’t want to write, much.  I want to want to write, but…I don’t actually want to write.

So here’s the point it’s taken me three days to find:  I don’t know what I am anymore.  Ironic, considering one of the major reasons I decided to return to school was to figure that out, only to learn I already knew but now perhaps I’ve changed into someone I don’t know.

My mind refused to produce.  The workers in the basement responded to the office memo with one of their own.  “We do pictures now, not words.”  Or something.  At any rate, no plot.

I could dig out my old plot cards, outline, and etc., but I doubt reading old material will re-energize this tale or prime the pump for new story.

Now I wonder.  Do I have to start over?  Do I have to accrue another million words of crap before I start producing decent material again?

Do I have that in me?

I’m afraid I don’t.

Oh, and that mission?  To not freak out?  An abysmal failure.

seldom on a black friday

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I don’t shop on Black Friday. The whole acquisitional frenzy thing just bums me out to the point where I have hated Xmas for years. Then last year I decided I would take Xmas on my terms, including the X, since I don’t think the frenzy is very Christ-sanctioned. I would embrace the things I loved, the trees and lights, the cards, the food, and perhaps oddly given my relationship with the X, the carols.

Not just any carols though. It has to be choir carols. Preferrably the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but definitely not anything sung by “the new” country and western set, and not really the old country and western set either. I might make the occasional exception for Burl Ives.

But about Black Friday, I don’t do it. I don’t celebrate Capitalism Day. Not that I think Capitalism is an inherently bad system. Flawed, yes, but not evil. But! NO BLACK FRIDAY. No pushing and shoving among the huge numbers of greedy cretins who think it’s the day when courtesy and good judgment are suspended.

I don’t do NaNoWriMo, either. I tried it twice, and it left me burnt out on a level I can hardly bear to recall, let alone describe. After each NaNo, it was months before I wrote again. Their rate is, if I recall correctly, 1,667 words per day. A more natural rate for me is 600-1000 words per day, with days off to recharge and feed the muse. (Maybe more on this later, if I remember.)

Yesterday I wrote the first section of Seldom. I would say I wrote the first chapter, but chapters are an unnatural concept to me. I won’t know where they should really break until the next pass at the earliest. But the first section, piece, whatever…rough drafted. 1,399 words. A few of those I’d put down longhand while waiting for Zor to get out of school on a Friday, but regardless. Yay, me.

There are always so many things I ought to be doing…and only time for a few of them.

Yesterday I also, with Zor, watched the film Alien. It was Zor’s first time. I was rather jealous of that, in spite of the fact that my first time, I saw it in the theatre. With my father, who pronounces it thee-ATE-er, and my brother who was probably eleven or so. We plan to watch the Alien Quadrilogy, and the entire Harry Potter series before we go back to school in January.

Oh, and also to figure out how to make good homemade macaroni and cheese.

thankful thursday

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I dreamed last night that Lita had more babies, and they escaped. I am thankful neither of those things is true, although I did come right in and wake them all up for a head count.

Still six.

I am thankful for Goodreads, because although I don’t use the social networking aspect of it, I’ve been keeping lists of books I’ve read since I was ten or so, and I love being able to keep track them in a place where I won’t lose the paper. I also love how simple it is to add the books I’d like to read. And if I get busy and ignore Goodreads for awhile, it’s still there waiting for me when I catch my breath.

Big Blue Berta, who just keeps zooming along.

T-Moth.

The opportunity to get a (mostly) free education. We normally don’t qualify for things, because we aren’t living at poverty level. But there’s no way I could afford to go back to school if not for help from the government, and neither could Zor.

Still on that same subject, today is Tolesday–Mr Toles being the instructor of my favorite class.

Fall. O, how I adore Fall, and we seem to actually be having one. The heat is over and the snow isn’t here yet. Yay!

And lastly, I’m thankful for an auxiliary character that popped into my head during Contemporary American Business. This guy suits Seldom’s story so much better than the cardboard guy I had planned for that job; he serves multiple functions. The Maasster would be proud.

updates

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Critter Update:

Lita in her Cage-Cleaning Bucket

Zanny and Lita have grown.  They squeak and squabble a lot.  Zanny is heftier, and lets Lita have her way about all things.  Z also zooms the exercise wheel so vigorously, the cage scoots across the shelf where they live, imperceptibly, until I notice it’s moved half an inch and put it back.  Lita is less friendly, and less substantial in my hand.  Her soft gray fur makes holding her like holding a wisp of fog, although I think she may be picking up a little.  She doesn’t like having the cage cleaned out.  After cleaning, I won’t see her for a day.  Zanny runs upstairs to the dining room when she hears me, and no longer cringes when my hand is coming toward her.  She’ll sit on my bosom and be stroked.

Leta tries, but as soon as I pick her up, she freaks and tries to squirt out of my hand.  That’s why their last names are now Squirt, lol.  Also, they are squirts.

The rodent sisters kick out quite a few seeds, but not as many as Dmitri did.  I brush the kickouts onto the floor and Cobie and Kelly hoover them up for me.

Writing Update:

I stopped, for now, the pre-writing, and began…chapter one?  Except thinking in chapters doesn’t come naturally to me.  With godlight I added the chapter divisions after I started submitting things to my critique group, and I cheated a little by just dividing wherever the point of view changes.  So, let’s say I began the first scene.  Scenes make sense to me:  goal, obstacle, disaster.

I began the first scene and then fizzled.  I’m just not there, in the story world yet.  I want to be, and I will be.  I wish I were stronger about it, and could say, I am a writer, and I make no excuses!  I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow myself right into the story!

But yeah, no.  That’s not happening.

School Update:

Zor and I got our books.  Because the powers that be aren’t releasing our student loan funds until sometime after the quarter actually begins, we had to pay $20 each to get a “temporary loan,” which irritated me two-fold.  First because all loans are temporary, duh; if they were permanent they’d be grants.  Second because it feels like a racket to charge us again to borrow the money we already paid to borrow.

Anyhow, I shelled out $340 for three books, two of them used.  Zor’s books were over $600.  That whirring sound you hear is my Scot ancestors whirling in their graves like gyroscopes.

For now, I must fly.  I’m going to write something today even if someone dies in the attempt.  I hope not me.  That would put a major crimp in my plans.

 

one thingadingie…two thingadingies

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After days of wallowing, I finally have a one-sentence thingie for Seldom.

I know better than to share the thingie.  Nothing kills a fledgling story for me like the Arctic wind of outside scrutiny…but I have a thingie!  And I had to share that I have it–the thingie.

If I were a real writer, I’d be able to remember what the one-sentence thingie is and not keep calling it a thingie.

I can probably also share that there’s probably going to be a maguffin, or something maguffinlike.  A maguffin thingie.

Probably.

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P.S.  They are one-sentence pitches.  But I don’t need a pitch yet, so for me it’s a one-sentence summary.  Having it makes me feel less likely to wander off in hunting plot tribbles.