Friday Rants and Raves - October 24

[sarillia]

Hey all! It's been a while. I hope everyone has gotten a lot of fun writing done. Let's hear about it. Had problems? Let's commiserate.

Before I go, here's an illustration by Max Ernst that I find intriguing:

Comments

[sarillia]

I haven't been getting much done lately. But now I'm getting ready for NaNo next month and I have high hopes. It's looking better than it did a few days ago anyway. I had jury duty and the judge said the trial could go until November 14th, but luckily I wasn't picked.

[agilebrit]

All my projects are making me crazy right now. I'm wanting to do something for the Temporally Out of Order antho, and I have 400 (awesome and hilarious) words of setup--and nowhere to actually take it. Deadline is the end of November, so I've got some time to hash it out, but, just. Ugh.

I didn't manage to get Hitman in Hell done for the I Am the Abyss antho, because that puppy turned out to be, well, a novel. It's backburnered.

I did finish my Blurring the Line story, and it's subbed, and my betas' reaction to it was exactly what I wanted, so hopefully I'll see some success with it somewhere.

And I hashed out a broken bit of plot in another thing last night, which was a simpler fix than I thought it would be.

But I don't know, everything has me cranky right now.

[inevitableentresol]

Great picture. Is that a Lilith/Biblical reference? I like that its meaning has become hazier through time, if it ever was clear.

I took a break from writing for two months recently to get some things done around the house. We moved 3 years ago and due to a combination of long term illness and flooding we still haven't unpacked all the boxes or have enough furniture to live on. We nearly had, then the flood came and we had to pack up again. :(

We're finally getting furniture now (we'll have a sofa soon!) and are putting up curtains, paintings etc. It takes a lot of time and mostly I'd rather be writing. I don't really care if I live in a hovel as long as the major utilities work, that's my problem. But I'm not the only one to consider who lives in the house. It was nice to concentrate on it for a few months, but now I'm definitely bored. There are only so many curtain patterns you can look at.

Now that I'm so sick of it that I just have to get back into writing, I'm feeling guilty about all the things that are still left undone. But then when I'm sorting out the house, I feel guilty that I'm not writing. I can't win. I believe this is what they call Catholic guilt, which was drummed into me as a kid.

Just before my writing break, I was on the very last chapter of the first draft of my very first novel-length thingumy. It's a huge life goal for me, to write something that length, never mind the quality, never mind the subject, but the timing was just bad to finish it at that point.

My plan now is to warm back up with some smaller bits of writing and then go back and second draft the story before hitting the end again, to gather momentum to get to that final point. Arrgh, I don't even want to think about it too much. It's scary. There are a few plot things I have to fix along the way, but I think they're not too difficult. I kept a checklist. More difficult is getting myself in the mood again. I have to trick my mind, sort of sidle along into accidentally picking up old stories when I have to take a break. If I big it up too much, "Woah yeah I'm writing!" kind of thing, I just freeze and lose the stomach to write anything at all.

So that's where I am now. I wish everyone the best, wherever they are, whatever the weather, and whatever they're writing.

[dhampyresa]

Look, person on the internet, if your dialogue is punctuated thusly throughout:

She rose, "Hello."

"Hi." He said.

It does not fill me with confidence in your ability to tell a story. And no, if you intend to be professionally published, this is the sort of thing you should know and not "something to pay attention to in editing" (that makes it sound like you don't see the problem, btw).

[splinteredstar]

It goes in fits and starts. It's been a rough semester, and it's gotten to the point where I have to carve out writing time just as a matter of mental health.

But I've managed to get a few short pieces done. Occasionally done world building on longer things, but nothing for certain. Working on a couple of request fics, right now. One was easy as anything, the other two though...

[serria]

I've sadly lacked a lot of time to write. Graduate school is, not shockingly, pretty busy. But it's a topic I love and one that I adore writing in (medieval history) so I'm getting inspiration left and right, but just haven't been able to balance my time and energy enough for much creative writing. On the odd chance I get, I've sadly found that my fiction writing is definitely out of shape. Still, though, ideas are constantly churning in my head and if I don't get some of them down soon, I just may explode.