Sometimes I get jealous when I surf other people's blogs. "Wow," I think. "They have their very own place on the internet where they can post what they like!"
Of course, the moment that I actually form the feeling into so many words is usually the same moment that I remember I have my own blog.
I am a silly goose, no?
At the moment, my laptop is back in semi-working condition. I don't know how long it will last -- I've learned not to take anything for granted -- but I am determined to not be disappointed, no matter what happens with it. Disappointment, when you really look at it, can be such a waste of energy. Treat everything like a gift, and with time everything feels like a delightful surprise. It's a beautiful way to live.
I am thinking that I might not do NaNoWriMo after all. This morning, I found myself thinking of November, and wishing that I didn't have to curtail all the writing-related things I want to do, simply because I think I should do NaNoWriMo. It is true that at this stage in my life, I desperately need some time devoted solely to creativity. But the more I reflect on the matter, the more I think that NaNoWriMo is not the creative activity that I need.
The reason that the passion and creativity have left my writing is this: since I discovered I could write, I have tried my best to accomplish something with my writing because I wanted to prove that I could accomplish something, not because I loved writing itself. Sure, I still loved it, but I took that passion for granted as a tool, a means to an end. The continual pressure I put on myself to perform has driven so much of the joy from my writing. I find myself longing for the days when I could start random stories in order to play with an idea, without feeling like I absolutely had to finish them. I want to be able to "doodle" with my writing again.
So, here is what I propose to do with my writing life: instead of devoting the month of November to writing 50,000 words of a novel, I will devote that time to creativity. I will play with ideas, construct plots I may never use, scribble character sketches, start stories that I will never finish, draw characters, and care not if I make a mess. I will do the things that the performance pressure has kept me from doing. And hopefully, I will heal.
"But words are things, and a small drop of ink / Falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces / That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think." ~Lord Byron
Showing posts with label novels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label novels. Show all posts
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Writing Meme: Character Ages [5/30]
5. By age, who is your youngest character? Oldest? How about “youngest” and “oldest” in terms of when you created them?
A lot of my youngest characters appeared in stories that I wrote before I started writing my ‘official’ novels – and since there are more than seventy of these stories that are only a couple of pages long each, I am not counting them.
My youngest character is Sarie, the six- or seven-year-old girl who was an important character in Tears for the Silent Lands. However, she is blessed with the gift of insight and is much more advanced mentally than a lot of girls her age, so writing her character was not exactly like writing a typical young child.
Everlyse from Enchantress is next at fifteen. She is the age I was when I wrote the story, and I based much of her character and circumstances in life off of my own.
As for my oldest characters, all of the Keeper characters in Evanescent Moonlight are multiple thousands of years old. Aside from them, Mirriae from Tears for the Silent Lands is 500 years old by the end of the story.
Considering ‘youngest’ and ‘oldest’ by the time of creation, Byeron and Faeryn from The Prophet of Aenerowaye come first (they were both born about the same time). Byeron is tall, broad-shouldered, and blonde, while Faeryn is a short, slender teenager with wavy hair down to her knees. Yes, they both are about as Mary-Sue and Gary-Stu as they sound.
And the most recent character… from an ‘established’ novel, Leiss from Evanescent Moonlight was the last character to have significant details finalized, and I’m still not sure about his name. Now, there is the secret and rather embarrassing detail that I took a little break from EM and randomly started a different story about an evil sorceress named Estella and her crazy pregnant sister, but I’m sure it’s not going to last very long and for goodness’ sake don’t tell anyone about it!
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A lot of my youngest characters appeared in stories that I wrote before I started writing my ‘official’ novels – and since there are more than seventy of these stories that are only a couple of pages long each, I am not counting them.
My youngest character is Sarie, the six- or seven-year-old girl who was an important character in Tears for the Silent Lands. However, she is blessed with the gift of insight and is much more advanced mentally than a lot of girls her age, so writing her character was not exactly like writing a typical young child.
Everlyse from Enchantress is next at fifteen. She is the age I was when I wrote the story, and I based much of her character and circumstances in life off of my own.
As for my oldest characters, all of the Keeper characters in Evanescent Moonlight are multiple thousands of years old. Aside from them, Mirriae from Tears for the Silent Lands is 500 years old by the end of the story.
Considering ‘youngest’ and ‘oldest’ by the time of creation, Byeron and Faeryn from The Prophet of Aenerowaye come first (they were both born about the same time). Byeron is tall, broad-shouldered, and blonde, while Faeryn is a short, slender teenager with wavy hair down to her knees. Yes, they both are about as Mary-Sue and Gary-Stu as they sound.
And the most recent character… from an ‘established’ novel, Leiss from Evanescent Moonlight was the last character to have significant details finalized, and I’m still not sure about his name. Now, there is the secret and rather embarrassing detail that I took a little break from EM and randomly started a different story about an evil sorceress named Estella and her crazy pregnant sister, but I’m sure it’s not going to last very long and for goodness’ sake don’t tell anyone about it!
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View the complete list of questions
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Saturday, September 4, 2010
Writing Meme: Firsts [4/30]
4. Tell us about one of your first stories/characters!
Since in my mind I had two first novels... can I talk about them both?
My first attempt at a novel (when I was about nine or ten years old) was called Return to Romelia. It centered around a girl named Leslie who was transported by a unicorn though a magical portal in a diamond to the fantasy kingdom of Romelia, where she discovered that she was the long-lost eldest daughter of the king and queen, and that she must save the kingdom. The main reason I quit was because I couldn't figure out how on earth she would do that (and because my young mind finally realized how cliche it was). I decided at that point that while I had some talent for writing, I didn't have enough talent yet, and until I had a good idea, I should give up trying to write fiction.
So I did, for the most part (even though the whole time I was sneakily scribbling the first pages of novel wannabes). I didn’t entertain any serious novelist thoughts, though, until I joined Homeschoolblogger and found a whole host of teens my age who were writing their own novels – and who were doing a pretty good job! I congratulated them on their success in comments I left, but secretly I burned with jealousy and found myself wishing that I had a novel I was working on. So I waited impatiently for a good idea to come around.
Even so, the beginning of my second ‘first novel’ came unexpectedly. It was right after I’d finished my schoolwork for the day, and I was messing around on my parents’ old laptop and decided to start writing a random story. But that random story became more interesting as I typed it – a man lying hidden watching a road and thinking he must warn the king of something, and a princess who longed for adventure and was vaguely troubled by things she saw in her own life? I had to find out more.
The man became Byeron, a prophet who condemned the savage religion that enslaved the kingdom, and the princess became Faeryn, a girl who risked her father’s anger to free Byeron, on the condition that he would take her to meet this God he spoke of. I put in the story everything I wanted – mountains, forests, dragons, elves, nymphs, and even a great battle at the end. Faeryn embodied all the things about myself that I liked, but she was also everything that I was not. Mary-sue? Yes. Cliché in many ways? Yes. But I loved that story, and even though I often wince when I think about the faults, I still look back on it fondly. The colors and contours of that world felt so vibrant, and I could see everything clearly in my mind’s eye – more so than most of the novels I’ve written since then.
I never finished The Prophet of Aenerowaye (generally abbreviated POE, from the days when the last word started with an E. The spelling kept changing). That’s fine with me. The novel would have been a misshapen behemoth, and in any case, I learned all that I could from it. It did make it to 68,000 words, which is not a bad number at all (and more than my current WIP has at the moment). Sometimes I entertain thoughts of using the world that I created, or maybe taking one or two aspects of the story for use in some later work. Old stories are wonderful places to hunt for ideas to steal and reuse.
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View the complete list of questions
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Since in my mind I had two first novels... can I talk about them both?
My first attempt at a novel (when I was about nine or ten years old) was called Return to Romelia. It centered around a girl named Leslie who was transported by a unicorn though a magical portal in a diamond to the fantasy kingdom of Romelia, where she discovered that she was the long-lost eldest daughter of the king and queen, and that she must save the kingdom. The main reason I quit was because I couldn't figure out how on earth she would do that (and because my young mind finally realized how cliche it was). I decided at that point that while I had some talent for writing, I didn't have enough talent yet, and until I had a good idea, I should give up trying to write fiction.
So I did, for the most part (even though the whole time I was sneakily scribbling the first pages of novel wannabes). I didn’t entertain any serious novelist thoughts, though, until I joined Homeschoolblogger and found a whole host of teens my age who were writing their own novels – and who were doing a pretty good job! I congratulated them on their success in comments I left, but secretly I burned with jealousy and found myself wishing that I had a novel I was working on. So I waited impatiently for a good idea to come around.
Even so, the beginning of my second ‘first novel’ came unexpectedly. It was right after I’d finished my schoolwork for the day, and I was messing around on my parents’ old laptop and decided to start writing a random story. But that random story became more interesting as I typed it – a man lying hidden watching a road and thinking he must warn the king of something, and a princess who longed for adventure and was vaguely troubled by things she saw in her own life? I had to find out more.
The man became Byeron, a prophet who condemned the savage religion that enslaved the kingdom, and the princess became Faeryn, a girl who risked her father’s anger to free Byeron, on the condition that he would take her to meet this God he spoke of. I put in the story everything I wanted – mountains, forests, dragons, elves, nymphs, and even a great battle at the end. Faeryn embodied all the things about myself that I liked, but she was also everything that I was not. Mary-sue? Yes. Cliché in many ways? Yes. But I loved that story, and even though I often wince when I think about the faults, I still look back on it fondly. The colors and contours of that world felt so vibrant, and I could see everything clearly in my mind’s eye – more so than most of the novels I’ve written since then.
I never finished The Prophet of Aenerowaye (generally abbreviated POE, from the days when the last word started with an E. The spelling kept changing). That’s fine with me. The novel would have been a misshapen behemoth, and in any case, I learned all that I could from it. It did make it to 68,000 words, which is not a bad number at all (and more than my current WIP has at the moment). Sometimes I entertain thoughts of using the world that I created, or maybe taking one or two aspects of the story for use in some later work. Old stories are wonderful places to hunt for ideas to steal and reuse.
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View the complete list of questions
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