Musical creative assistance

My character, Evelyn, is half Czech. This music helps when writing about that half, plus who says that lullabies can’t make an adult fall asleep? ^^;

Facing the Veil

Accidentally bumped into a 20-ish muslim mother today- she was covered up, wearing the traditional veil that covered her head and hair but not her face. Very polite, very smiley, accepted my apology for the bump. Lovely woman. Her little girl was with her, free spirited, (minus a veil/headdress) looking at everything with wonder in her eyes. Adorable, looked at me like I was some kind of giant, though. (I am rather tall for a girl.)

I wondered at this woman: How is it that you can suddenly, one day, make this free-spirited, laughing little girl cover up what she is? To cover her head as if she should be ashamed of what you believe ‘God’ gave her in the first place? How can you tell your own child that her freedom is forfeit, that she has to hide herself away?

I am of the belief that girls should wear what they want, while having respect for themselves and their own dignity. I believe that hair should be a glorious thing, uncovered- the ‘Boudicca’ or Artemis image of wild and free and that a woman should be exactly that. Religion quashes freedom- even the most basic type of it. Allow your little girl to grow up as she wishes; EVERY parent of EVERY religion… don’t tell your daughters that they should hide themselves from the world.

Old and new worries.

I may as well start using this blog, even if NaNo may be a no-no this year. It almost wiped me out and it took me over a month to even look at my writing again without feeling a gut sense of revulsion come over me. But maybe it was just first-time of 50,000 wording that took some getting used to.  I was proud of myself for all of a few hours before I just started to wish I’d never started The Words Between. But there it is. I have my plot for next year’s NaNo, if nothing else. I’m saving a piece that’s been on my mind for roughly 3 years until then.

I do know that it will be in diary form- something tells me that ordinary prose is never going to be my forté. That is my main worry with all this. I can come up with plot and idea and theme and yet my focus having been on poetry ever since I was tiny, I have no idea what constitutes good or great prose. I love books, I would live in my own private library if I could, but I can’t lock onto the secret of how to write well. Exposition, plot etc is not the issue. It’s the wordiness, description of the physical parts of the story… everything that would be picked up on before plot even came into play and makes a novel either readable or trash-can fodder.

There. Mumbling worrisome stuff ranted.

Supposed to be generating notes and plot order for Script Frenzy. Not sure now if I will be doing it or not, given that I will be doing very boring job-stuff from 23rd March. Yuck. Damn reality trying to drive me insane. Most annoying. Would prefer to stay in my dream worlds forever and live with my characters through all their ups and downs which are FAR more interesting than mine.

The physical world is not my friend.

In the mood in the moonlight.

I have a mind to write my entire NaNo whilst listening to nothing but Glenn Miller and Oingo Boingo. Would five CDs worth of Miller magic cover 50,000 words? Add to that nine (downloaded- don’t tell!) cds of Danny Elfman howling down my speakers and the mood is pretty much set.

Roleplaying with NaNo characters is amusing, especially when the opposite RP-er is using her sex-crazed succubus to tempt my repressed character into wickedness.

Attempting to organise all my poetry into three distinctive categories: Static Cats, Pagan Prayers and Unusables. Unfortunately, more of them are in an unfinished state than I realised, being scribbles torn from notebooks. A Static Cat is written on the back sheet of a Pagan Prayer and the unusables are thrown about all over the place. Give me six extra right arms for the copying up, because I don’t EVER want to lose the originals- not just original scribblings, but original feelings, often lost in the edit. I’d much prefer to keep them for future reference.

Honour the glorious poets. Their shades that left us are now returned.

Natural oppressor.

Is it wrong that I come up with the way my main characters die before I get the rest of the plot done? Or that I had it in mind that at least one of the five characters had to be deceased by the end of the book? It’s a common plot-point, in many many hundreds/thousands of books, I know, and people die in literature all the time: But to enter into a plot with the determination to kill off a character right from the start?

Oppression is in the author’s nature. It depends on how far you go… how they die, how many people die and are all those deaths necessary? Well, with the characters in question, at least one of them really is. My poor boy just wasn’t looking after himself, and even this modern world can’t beat the sickness caused by obsessive behaviour and reclusiveness!

Playing the bad guy when writing is only fun when the characters get to counteract it at the end. This time they don’t and though I’m not one for writing schmaltzy endings, this one would be better for me personally if it had a happy finale. But we sacrifice our wish for what needs to be written.

In other news, I am reading again! I can’t put down the His Dark Materials books at the moment. ^.^;;

Honour the glorious poets. Their shades that left us are now returned.

Lobster Lullabies and napkins.

Influence? Watch Stephen Fry either performing acapella as a musical instrument on Nevermind The Buzzcocks, or putting lobsters to sleep (rubbing their backs and singing a lullaby O.o) in Stephen Fry in America. Random at the least and disturbing at the utmost.

Itching to get November 1st over and done with. I can’t do anything more to my NaNo planning and I want to get typing! But while I can’t start my NaNo, my poetry has hit a wall, as well. I can’t get on with it!

Just because. *instant cheer-up*

Muscling Muses

A main-character that I don’t want to write about at this time of year will not turn a mute button on herself! She is non-NaNo and is therefore nothing but a pest right now. She muscles in on the writing space in my brain and wont let go. Egotistical tramp.

Suddenly my enthusiasm for writing my NaNo novel, The Words Between, is either down so far in the dumps it can’t be seen, or has taken itself for a very long and dangerous walk. I have a feeling the previously mentioned MC may have played a part in its’ disappearance- holding it for ransom in some steel-locked room in my deepest subconscious? The payment is three whole chapters in her story. TOUGH LUCK. My playstation2 is partly to blame, I know, so on Saturday I’ll be carting it over to my grandfather’s flat and leaving it there, so I don’t get tempted to play Final Fantasy instead of working out plot points.

Even this blog counts as procrastination, but at least I’m WRITING something, rather than staring at a tv, pressing triangle-x-circle-x-square-triangle-down-left-R1 oops Gameover!

Perhaps the Snowflake method will work for this book. We’ll see.

Honour the glorious poets. Their shades that left us are now returned.

When all else fails, try insanity.

Tres amusement, the lunacy known as POTC: Dead Man’s Chest bloopers. When tears are coming from the eyes, you know it’s brilliant comedy. And completely off the cuff!

KILL HIM!

I will now stop procrastinating and write up my character bios. AHEM. Writing letters from the POV of five different characters doesn’t strike me as being easy. Authorial schizophrenia maybe a fascinating new brand of psychological disorder…

Honour the glorious poets. Their shades that left us are now returned.

NaNoWriMo, poetry and all that ink-soaked malarkey.

October begins on Wednesday and the mad-cap planning for National Novel Writing Month begins: I started mine already, having rejected three other novels which would take far more than a month or two to plan out and write. Trying to focus on the story begs the question of whether I’m cut out for the novelling life, poetical endeavours. NaNo is the test of faith for any writer, an Arthurial challenge to test one’s devotion to one’s characters, stories and verses.

I have enjoyed scribbling verses since childhood and, later in life, original stories (and gods forgive me, Mary-sue fanfictions, for a necessary bout of escapism). But whether or not I have the determination to complete a novel and ignore all doubts that I have about it’s plot, realism and reception is an entirely different arena. Every novelist or poet struggles with this, I know, but it’s always that feeling that YOU are the worst writer in the world; YOU will be mocked and jeered by a hundred sneering critics, like some village idiot thrown into the mud.

The more I look at my NaNo plot, the more I think of it as something akin to a soap-opera storyline and I fear ever more that I will give up halfway through, beaten down by my own fears. I try to take my friend Steph’s advice: just to keep writing and writing and writing and hell be damned, it’s no one’s business what goes from my mind onto computer or paper. I only wish I had that kind of courage.

I will write. I wont have anyone thinking that I wont. Wish me luck!

Honour the glorious poets. Their shades that left us are now returned.