Starting from Scratch

Okay, well today I posted the first chapter of Ghost Mist on fictionpress and fanstory. I'll probably get my can in gear and do the rest later. Yeah, I really built up an empire (not an empire) but maybe a small following of readers on fanfiction.net and now I'm starting from scratch again, because I changed genre's/categories and websites.

I knew my Escaflowne readers wouldn't follow me over. I thought I was placing my hopes really low when it came to getting reviews on my new story. I'll just have to keep working hard and see if I can make my stuff appealing to a different crowd. Do I think this likely? Probably not.

Actually, I'm not super discouraged. I just sort of expected the crowd on fictionpress to be more rewarding than the crowd at fanstory. It's weird how these things work out, ne?

The Dawning of a New Book!

I just sent Kaytala the first chapter of 'Ghost Mist' for her to beta read! This is a tremendous accomplishment for me - promotions for EVERYBODY!

This time I had a boy read it and give me feedback. I want it to be an accessable piece that is readable for men and women alike, so I had him check it out and tell me what he thought. He made me work harder! Grrrr! It's so weird when he makes me work harder, because he's one of the few people I will allow to crack the whip over me.

Anyway - I'm SUPER happy because that means that the first chapter will probably be ready to come out THIS WEEK. YAY!

Maybe I can even get it onto writing.com before they end my upgraded membership ... HA! Ya right! They're going to kick me out on my can before that happens, but ... I'll take courage and satisfy myself with the three other archives I plan to post on.

Which reminds me, I should also get my can in gear and post the rest of MoaG on mediaminer.org. I'm such a lazy one! `-^1

Ethics

Imagine yourself dead.

I know, that's a great way to start a post, but seriously - imagine yourself dead. Imagine that you've lived a fantastic life as a novelist and now you've passed out on the operating table while having open heart sergery at the tender age of 67. Now instead of floating away on a cloud, you're in a tangible place - a room filled with filing cabinets. In these filing cabinets are the statistics of your life. Mostly it's stuff you never knew. It's information about people you influenced with your writing. The room is hot and suffocating, and you knew it would have to be - you were a New York Times Best Seller.

Wouldn't it be disgraceful if after everything was tallied up, you did more harm to society than good?

You see, I was talking to this online writer the other day. She said that she never used bad words in her writing because it would be degrading to herself and to everyone who read her work (that's my short version of what she said). I asked her if there was smut. She said that if there was a love scene it was only implied rather than described. So, I sat there and seriously asked myself about my ethics while writing.

She really got me thinking, but the thing I always think when I write is that my characters are not me. Instead, they are a reflection on how I view everything around me (including other people's storytelling). It was a huge barrier that existed in my mind before I could let characters be people that I am not - but only observed (even just characters and not real people at all). Yeah, I don't stab people, but Hitomi did. I don't burn down buildings, but Van does. I don't kill people, but Dilandau did. The list like this goes on. I guess I always thought that my writing was fantastic enough that no one would ever take it seriously. I don't write skank, or at least I try hard not to. Usually, I feel like that translates into 'I can't write romance', but that's beside the point.

As for the bad language in my writing. I remember the first time I used the 'f' word in DM. It was because I didn't think the readers would take the situation seriously if I didn't. Would a person holding a gun to your head have a clean mouth? Probably not. My first boss at a university didn't even have a clean mouth. Nor do I know very many people who do.

Am I being bad? I'm not sure. What I write is entertaining, not enlightening - but is that really so wrong? I haven't been able to decide.

I do plan to keep the language cleaner in 'Ghost Mist', but honestly 'Ghost Mist' is a really clean adventure story. Adding skank/slash/swearing in it would take up valuable time that could be used explaining important stuff. I'll have to think about this some more.

Writing is a reflection of what's truly in your heart, but so is everything else in life that a person does. I'm sorry that I'm not perfect, but who is?

Simple Rhymes

To be honest, I haven't spent a great deal of my life thinking about poetry. When I think about writing, my passions run like the following:

1. Novels
2. Rants (essays)
3. Poetry
4. Novellas
5. Short Stories

My favourite poet is William Blake and that's mostly because I love it when people get angsty about politics. Don't you just get shivers when you read London? "Runs in blood down palace walls" It makes me excited and grouchy as &*T*&^.

Anyway, lately I've been forcing myself to read a little on fanstory. Mostly I read poetry, because it's a shorter time commitment, and I don't have too much time to screw around with that sort of thing. Whenever I go there I get more and more convinced that it's a place for people over the age of 35 to experiment in a sort of group therapy. Seriously, I think I've only read one thing there that didn't make me want to start chewing off my own tongue. It was a poem about Nascar racing and actually it was pretty good. But otherwise, it seems like the sort of place where people write lame 'who done it's and record their role playing escapades. I have a lot more respect for that sort of thing than I'm showing here. I just don't normally read either of those and so it's hard to get excited about genres I can't sink my teeth into. But the point is that I've mostly been reading poetry.

When I write poetry, I try to tell a story. Usually it's a story that would probably be more effectively told if I was willing to write a short story about it, but most of the time I'm not interested in taking that much of a detour from my regular writing menu to write something that's just a bug in my brain. So, I write a poem to remove the bug and give me some more brain room.

I usually write freeverse, but no matter what I write I keep score of the number of syllabels I use in order to make sure it ticks like a clock if it doesn't rhyme. That's because I don't really have a skill for coming up with unique rhymes and I can't stand writing something that's too simplistic. It makes me want to gag and die if I write something that's too common. Not that my poetry is really amazing, but it can't be run of the mill or I see no purpose in writing.

Last time I was on fanstory, I was reading this poem and I couldn't believe it, but this guy really rhymed 'park' with 'dark'. I couldn't friggin' believe it. His poem was not intended for children - it was intended for adults and I was endlessly confused at his style. I wrote him back and said something like: "I'm really sorry, but the meaning of your poem was completely clouded out by the fact that you rhymed 'park' with 'dark'. The only thing I could think of was; "Look what we found in the park in the dark. We will take him home. Will will call him Clark. He will live at our house. He will grow and grow. Will our mother like this? We don't know." I seriously haven't read Dr. Seuss in ages, but holy shimoly! Are we writing for adults or preschoolers here?

I'm probably too grouchy, but I can't understand the satisfaction of writing cute sing-songy rhymes for something that doesn't involve singing to my daughter. Sharing something on fanstory means that your audience is adults (mostly aged 35 to dead) so why would they be interested in reading something like that unless they were planning to rip off your idea so they could cross-stitch it on a pillow? But would an adult expression poorly written really classify as cute then?

Weirdos.

Ghost Mist Progress Report 1

Okay, so I had been working on revising my storyboard. I have never written such a detailed storyboard. I started writing it out long hand in a little book (I know you know the kind) and I only got to chapter eight before I had filled the entire book. Each chapter has an average of 38 points. So I started writing in another little book (please note that this doesn't include character sketches, location descriptions, or the mythology), and I believe I got to chapter 12 in the next little book. As far as I'm concerned, I've only finished writing the storyboard for the introduction. Twelve chapters for an introduction? Even I don't know if that's a good sign or not. It's even been taking me a considerable amount of time typing my notes into my netnote program - ARGH!

But today, I decided to take it to the hoop and write the first chapter, even though I'm not done the storyboard. So, I bet you're wondering why I'm breaking my own rules. Well, I have already written this novel before, I'm just gutting it so hard that it'll hardly be recognizable as the same thing. So, the whole old novel acts as a storyboard in many ways, so I don't exactly feel like I'm cheating, but I do wish that my storyboard was done.

I keep telling myself that it's okay, because I didn't have 'Mystic Wings' all planned out while I was writing 'Dragon's Moon' and I didn't have 'Mark of a Goddess' planned out while I was writing 'Mystic Wings', so it's okay. The story is going to be the same and the mythology is going to be the same so I just need to pull the two things together.

The thing I've been struggling with is Fillix. He's the second main character and I love him, but his story line isn't as intense as Tesai's, so I'm having a hard time accepting the comic relief aspect of this tale. But I NEED comic relief or my readers will expire from shear ... pantihose.

Regardless, I just finished writing the first chapter, and I think it went pretty well. It turned out to be about 3500 words. Now I know my usual readers spazz if it's less that 6000. However, I'll be attempting to scrape in a new audience as well as the old one, and I feel like I would be doing myself a disservice if I wrote really long chapters to begin with. I'd probably bore my new readers. I can have the fun of writing longer chapters once my readership for the story is established. Actually, I think that I'll earn a boy following for the first time ever with this story. It's not very feminine and though it has a strong romantic plot, it is more action oriented with lots of fighting and snappy dialogue. We'll see. I've got a boy reading it right now. Maybe he'll like it^^.

The Blanket Scenario

Hehehehehehehe. Today is a good day. I'm in a good mood and I've thought of an extra special topic to speak on today (hehehehehehehehe) - ahem - the blanket scenario. I'll bet you're wondering what the blanket scenario is. Well, wonder not. Today I will talk about the two most obvious romantic scenarios. Maybe I'll do more later, but for now - only these two.

• The Blanket Scenario
• The Alley Scenario

First off - The Blanket Scenario

This is when the main boy and the main girl somehow end up stuck in closed space (a place they cannot leave) with no heat and ... only ONE BLANKET. There are a zillion of these on fanfiction.net for every genre. But since it has been pointed out to me - this scenario appears everywhere. It's really disgusting. The other day I was reading a cheesy little romance novel and it showed up there. I was lying on my back flapping the cover back and forth like it was a birdy and seriously contamplating chucking it out the window. I would have been setting it free, right? I've also seen it in many MANY mangas. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like this situation has been used so many times that it's hard not to wonder exactly what satisfaction the author got out of writing something so ... ordinary.

Second off - The Alley Scenario

I'm a little more forgiving about the alley scenario. I wonder why. It's probably just because I think that the essense of it is more appealing. This is when our main girl is walking alone down an alley at night. As she's walking she's attacked by thugs. Then all of a sudden a mysterious shadowy male character appears out of nowhere and kicks the crap out of every last one of them. She's accidentally knocked unconscious, so she can't thank him or get up and leave. Instead, he doesn't know her and so he does the only reason able thing ~_^ ... he takes her home with him. Why that makes sense is beyond me. Later, she wakes up at his home and the mystery of the person who saved her is half way revealed. We still don't know why she's somehow in different clothing and why it was necessary to change her out of her clothes. This is what bugs me the most about this scenario. There is almost never a legitamate reason to change her clothing. I guess it adds a creepy demension to it that women, who are not me, find appealing.

Okay, that was sorta fun. I've been thinking of shutting down this blog and just doing Wild Moon Swings. I think I'm getting too big for my breeches.