For some stupid reason I've started up over at Myspace.

Don't ask me why....I've no idea. No friends yet either...so feel free to help me out there. LOL


No writing. Have been reading. In fact, I need to update my good reads thing with some books.

Been working...and it's not going so great. If I had a twenty for every time I've wanted to just walk out and not go back...I'd be halfway to quitting. LOL


Have been playing WoW. Yes, I know...less gaming more writing. Maybe. But probably not this year with expansion coming out. For those who care...I went back to Illidan server. And my warlock is decked out in pvp gear because I don't raid. Arena team's doing okay. Slipped a bit this week after dragging our asses back up to 1500.


That's it for this update. Hopefully I've not mangled too many words...I'm typing this with hair color all in my hair...hence, no glasses. Fun. Fun. :D

There was a girl who liked to read. As she grew up, the love of reading started to morph until she was creating stories is her head and building fantastical worlds on paper. Soon, individual personalities began to emerge with the worlds and so naturally she began to write these newly formed characters' stories.

And started to dream of being a full time writer.

Real life proved to make that dream hard to achieve. But, life itself is hard, so that wasn't surprising.

But, then the writing itself got hard. All the does and don'ts. All the fads coming and going. All the negativity about how hard it is to break into the industry. Still, the girl tried. Sending in stories, joining writing groups, soaking up all the knowledge she came across.

Until one day, she stopped trying because it was just so hard.

Life was good. No more stress about writing. No more worrying about whether or not this character or that character was fleshed out and motivated. No more trying to plug that plot line into that story arc.

Just.

No more.

Everything.

No more reading either. Life revolved around work and WoW -- which offered the escape from work that writing should have, but didn't because it too had become much too much like work.

But, as the months passed small plot ideas and world ideas started to appear again. The girl found herself writing them down and realized the cycle was started all over again. The bad stuff still lingers in her mind, making her hesitant to actively pick the writing back up. But she wants to.

Really wants to.

It's still hard though.

But, no one ever said life would be easy...did they?

Probably not.

So, time for another once a month update. I'll spare the promises to keep up with this more often. I think we've all seen that's not the truth. lol

I've been working on a story in my notebook, mostly while partaking of public transportation to and from work. Was going to try typing what I have up this week while I was on vacation, but that didn't happen. First half of the week I was sick and second half I've been buried deep in World of Warcraft. Surprise, surprise. Tonight might be an all nighter to get to Outlands, depends on how tired I feel. What's killing me is being on vent while another guildie -- one we finally got in contact with from our old guild -- is on. He's west coast. I'm east coast. It's making for very late nights again. lol

But, there is more good news on the fiction making front:

I have been reading more, so that's a positive sign toward heading back into serious writing again.

Let's hope the trend continues.

Buh-bye for now

Oh. my. god.

My legs hurt. Obviously, I need to do less WoW and more walking. That mile walk home never used to mess me up like it did today...


Brainstorming is slowly being conducted it the back of my mind. Research will have to be done at some point -- at least enough for me to draw out a plan for my ghost town -- but luckily I did a lot of that a couple years ago when I was playing with the idea of a western ghost town with monsters in it.

And, that's that for today's lovely conversation. I'll leave you with the quote google was kind enough to give me on my homepage for sense, it does make:

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.

- Umberto Eco

Now....to see if I can get back into the groove of pvp with my warlock for methinks I might have an arena partner again.

Dear Universe,

Why must you toss the child with loudest piercing scream I've ever heard come from a human throat on my bus when I've got a headache?


Here I am, trying to work through the pain -- which always flares up when I'm dealing with anything writing related, ummm -- and get some serious worldbuilding done and that child WILL NOT shut up.

Seriously Universe, why do you hate me so?


I mean, come on, there was applause when the child got off the bus!

So.....

I work with a couple people who play WoW and we'd talked earlier about possible arena match-ups. I'm looking for a partner or more to do arena on my lock and the one guy has about three different 70s who qualify and that he's used to arena with before. Sadly, our warrior, lock, and holy paladin trio did not work that well. Nor did it work that great when he used his rogue instead of the warrior. Although, we only tried that once. Sucks going up against overly geared players. And, I ended up going 2v2 with a druid for a bit. Who then got bit by the Age of Conan bug and disappeared. There were compatibility problems with some others in the guild too.

But, anyway....

One of the other guys we work with has a new hunter at 70 and wants to try arena. I've heard lock/hunter combos don't work that well, although I'd be willing to try it just to get some points and shake the arena dust off, but I started thinking about it and when I ran into the two of them later this convo took place...


"Dude, you should totally arena with your hunter. Two hunters and a lock...we'd take most healers down without a problem."

Another employee (one who doesn't play walks into room at same time): "Hooker? what are you talking about?"

Me: blank stare. "I didn't say..."

Dude: "HaHaHa. Hell yeah, send in a hooker and game over. We'd win every match."

Okay. First awkward post out of the way.

Second awkward post coming up...if I can remember how to use this thing.


Lets see....I pretty much dropped off the face of the 'net, yes? Sorry about that. Sucky Life = run and hide in world of warcraft. And, recently, Age of Conan. However, as the real life people I know and played with are not really playing WoW anymore it's starting to lose it's appeal. lol

Well, sort of. I need to find a server that fits me better for my 70 Horde lock. I have a 70 priest too, but I hate the toon and wouldn't spend money to transfer her anywhere. LOL.


Recently dug out Persephone and started making notes on how to expand it and fix some of the characterization issues in it but until I get back into writing again with some regularity I probably won't start working on that. Unfortunately my writing comes with reading and I haven't been doing much of that lately either.

However, I have a huge branch...that is the size of a small tree so branch is something of an understatement, in my backyard from the recent storms that went through the area last weekend that I'm even more interested in avoiding so maybe that reading thing will start happening again. Luckily no property was damaged and the dog was inside the house when it fell because it landed right where his section of the yard is.

Anyway, blah. Not thinking about that. lol

I did notice a new JR Ward book on the shelf...maybe I'll pick that up tomorrow. Granted, looking at some of the books I've bought and read....I might get around to reading it in the next six months or so.

Must stop buying books if I'm not going to read them. Heh. I could fill a small library with all the books I have now.


Will try to catch up on things around LJ here in the next couple of days. I haven't read my friend list in...well....pretty much this entire year. I foresee some trimming of communities and such in my future.

*takes a deep breath*

.
...
.....
.......
.........


*whimpers*

runs away

0 / 15,000 (0.0%)

And, no, this isn't an April Fool's joke. Well, if it is, it's probably on me. My brain does like to play tricks on me.

Damn. Five weeks since I last posted? *blush*

The sad thing is...other then doing some plotting and starting a story that I haven't gone back to finish (1600 words written though...that's more than I wrote for the last half of 2007) yet...things are pretty much the same.

Work is...well, I see brief glimmers of sunshine but keep getting dumped on by stupid clouds that piss me off. My ability to have any patience seems to have worn completely away. Not a good thing especially when I'm running my mouth off and realize I should shut up--but don't. I know I'm not impressing my new boss but the feeling is mutual.

Personally, I'm fighting off a major bout of depression (another reason I can't keep my mouth shut --self-sabotage tends to be my favorite thing when in the dumps). I'm also withdrawing into hermit mode as much as possible. I'm hoping those of you I've been ignoring will forgive me once I drag my ass back out, but I understand if you don't.

First round of Shoveling

Snow = 1

Me = .5


On to the second round.


Frickin' heavy ass snow this time. Last time we had 2 more inches and I managed to get all the shoveling done in one shot. *sigh*


ETA: Second time = I won

( 2007 review (Cut for depressing lack of content) )


2008 Resolutions


Writing

- Write everyday. To help with that I'm going to do novel_in_90. And I'm going to damn well stick with it.

- Send Persephone out again.

- Read more.


Health

- Make an effort to lose weight with a two step program.

First up is joining and following to the best of my ability the National Body Challenge for eight weeks. (Starting tomorrow)

Second, work on finding something to do other then eat when battling stress.


Personal

- Get a social life that doesn't involve playing WoW with people I work with. :P

- Work on accepting myself for who I am and not focusing on who I wish I could be or might have been if different roads in the past had been taken.

- Work on driving

And, the most important resolution for the year that affects all of the above:


STOP PROCRASTINATING

Dear Author,

Dialogue is not evil. Please stop telling me about the conversations and let me actually read one once in a while, ok?


Also...I generally can get the point being made with one point of view. You don't need to switch to the other characters in the scene and give it to me again. And again. And again.

(Plus, the practice makes the pov switches get sloppier and sloppier as the story goes on.)

And, last but not least....

Stop making the oh so super tough heroine do stupid things and then have the oh so macho vampires save her. And the turning her over their knee thing....that's just stupid. Once, I can forgive...but twice. *le sigh*


Love,

Irritated reader

I continue to plug away on the historical but it's very hard getting into the proper mind space after work. A paragraph a day isn't getting me very far. Especially when I cheat and count a line of dialogue as a paragraph. *is shameful, yes*

I'd hoped by reading books in the same genre as well as primary sources I would be able to keep it up. Only, doing that takes time something I don't have a lot of. At least not quality time when my brain actually functions at a level that can form a semi-decent sentence consistently.


So, I've been looking at some of my old story ideas. Specifically -- the fantasy I started plotting out a bit for a novel writing thing nonnycat started to give on Evo. But, I'm unsure. Should I try running with it? I have enough information to start writing from. And many of the themes and situations are ones which pop up over and over in my fantasy ideas so I know I'm still interested in exploring them. I just don't know if I'll find myself mired in the same issues which had me faltering when it come to writing it before.

How often do you guys go back to old story ideas when looking for that next project to write? And does it turn out well?

I'm curious.


(Also, I'm going to try to get a couple crits done for DII. Depending on how it goes, I'll come off leave or slip away more permanently until the writing comes back. I also have a beta read which I should have finished months ago and didn't. I fail at meeting that promise. *sigh*)

When I get back into writing...I don't do it with a somewhat easy (aka research lite) genre. No. I have to go for the historical romance. Regency, which I am pretty familiar with but will still require a good amount of research if I want to do it properly. On the other hand, I do tend to keep the bulk of the story far away from London and any major society interactions. Traditional Gothic, baby, that's what I want to write. Dark moors, crazy killer, possible ghost, and a disfigured hero who might be a murderer too.


Now, if I can get myself slowly trained to write more than a paragraph or two a day, this story might go somewhere.


For my next stunt, maybe I'll try to merge the fantasy plots I've been playing with for years.


First things first though. I need to keep the current story surviving until the end. Considering I only have like....2 pages written right now....yeah.

On the other hand, I think about the story every day and play out the scenes in my head. Thus I'm putting in a request for all you geniuses out there -- please come up with a machine that can pluck the visions out of my head and type them up for me. Thanks. :)

It came to my attention today that the day job had a big hand in creating my writer's block (something I knew) but it's also helping my break through it. I always loved helping out other writers -- it's one of the reasons I was more than willing to help out with Evolution. Unfortunately it also seemed to take up so much time and many of the lurkers we attracted over at that site were just that -- lurkers. There was no give and take. And for those who were the givers...well sooner or later burn out was going to happen. Coupled with the new job and a rise in self-doubt there's really no surprise that I've been struggling like crazy and losing just as bad.

But, there's someone at the day job who's interested in writing -- has in fact started writing one (and it sounds good) -- and they've been asking advice. I started by giving them a few of the lessons I had from a correspondence course I took a few years back and then I handed over a copy of the Self-Editing for Fiction Writers book. (I had two copies of it somehow.) And, at work, we've been talking about different ways to plot and how to figure out what to write, taking notes, editing, etc.

It's awesome.

Their enthusiasm has helped me remember just how much enjoyment I did get out of writing before all the other crap swarmed over me. And, as a whole, I've been a much happier person now that I've started doing some positive things in regards to writing. The paragraph a day? Sure, I'd love to get more. But the fact that I can sit down and look at the last sentence or two and not cringe and immediately delete everything as crap?

Fuckin' priceless.

Seriously.

One step at a time = one paragraph a day


Hey, at least writing is being accomplished. Is it a story I'll stick with? I don't know yet. I'm trying not to pressure myself too much about and just be happy I've averaged 100 words a day since I started working on it.

I've come to the realization that I need to work on a system of pre-writing I can work with. I don't like to outline -- it's never worked for me in the past -- but with the added demands and stress of my day job I'm pretty much going to have to. See, when I'm stressed I tend to get a bit scatterbrained. The effects aren't too bad at work, but when you consider how many hours come between possible writing times, the outcome is pretty much where I've been sitting for the past year. Staring at a blank page -- or the end of a scene -- and having no idea where the hell to go.

I've sat down all week to write something, but this morning is the first time I've accomplished anything remotely resembling the act. And that was just to read through and revise a bit of an old chapter of a fantasy story I'd started a couple years ago. Is it a story I'm interested in reviving? I don't know. I do know I had a similar idea last night and that's why I got curious enough to take a look at it. On the plus side...I didn't cringe at some of the sloppy writing in it. There were a couple sentences I paused with a WTF? blink or two to figure out what the heck I'd been trying to say there. But that's to be expected in a rough draft, oui?

Anyway. I've by writing out some possible story ideas in longhand for the past couple weeks, but when it comes to sitting down and actually figuring out what should happen in them, I lose interest. Hopefully it's just that their time hasn't come yet. As I play with writing down ideas, I'm hoping I can settle into some sort of outline method that works for me. Granted, there's no way to know without trial and error. I just haven't gotten to the point yet were I can pick myself back up after the error happens.

Too bad there's not an Atlas Mod for my brain. It would make life so much easier.

I've done a little cleaning up around here. Went through my flist and took off most of the icon-making related communities I had. I haven't had the time or the interest to really bother with that creative exercise anymore, although I haven't left the communities so I still have an idea of where to go if the urge comes back. I also went through and added some more of you to my flist -- sorry I didn't get to that sooner. The few of you I didn't add -- mainly that's because you haven't updated in quite a while. I also strolled through the lj syn-feeds and added a few more. I really need to go through my google reader and get the important sites over here. For the moment I only have the attention span to check one place -- and this is it.

Writing wise, I've started a notebook for regency research. My original plan for the day was to go through the various sites I have bookmarked and grab the interesting stuff from them, especially the fashion plate images (got to love One Note for organizing this stuff), but I got distracted by dusting around here. ;) The idea I've had floating around in my mind has been regency gothic one...but I don't think it's ready yet to come out. Every time I start writing it things feel off. But, there are some other notebooks I have in One Note that I have no memory of making so I think I'll browse through them and see what's going on.

I'm also debating going active again in Dreaming In Ink with the hope that critiquing others will help me get back into the swing of things. Then again, it might have the opposite effect on me. Especially as I don't have anything that I really want to be critiqued at the moment. Hell, I don't have anything new for anything. This is what happens when you don't truly write for over a year and a half.

There is nothing.

How pathetic I feel as I sit in front of a nice clean empty piece of paper and the words which once came so easily to my mind are nowhere to be found. And the sensation is even worse when confronted with the smooth white clarity of a new .doc file just waiting for a few keystrokes of adornment to be added.

Once upon a time all it took was a word. A simple one — the, a, in, — written (or typed) down and another word would follow it. And another, and another, and another. You get the picture.

The advice flows freely. I know others are trying to be helpful by offering it to me. Except, I’ve tried it all and nothing has truly worked. Trying to explain that however, is futile. I end up sounding pathetic and ungrateful. I don’t mean to be. I’m sure many have come to this fork in their writing life — one branch leading toward the light of every day normality where writing is only a hobby to dig out once in a blue moon and the other branch which is dark with thunder rumbling in the distance as a warning that the path of a writer is filled with hardship and strife. And yet, doesn’t the world tend to look bright and clean after the violence of a storm has slipped away?

I’ve stood in this spot for a good year now. It’s time to make a decision on which path to take. If only I could get my feet to move…