maculategiraffe | Entries tagged with writing

Well gosh. It's been a while.

I've been working through a lot of personal stuff, with my grief counselor and on my own, and it's been somewhat rocky going, internally speaking. (You guys aren't the only ones I dropped off the map for-- I've gotten some "uh, so, it would be nice to know you're alive" messages from RL friends too.) But I'm alive and healthy and gainfully employed (as a barista at Starbucks! And I kind of love it!) and a couple of days ago I cracked open the word processor and was like "oh hey, that's right, I really really like to write."

So, I've got some stuff that will be going up soon, I expect, new chapters of The Mother and such-- I've got like two proper chapters and then the next installment in that Scheherezade thing-- but while I'm trying to get the engine to turn over, anybody who wants to give me a jump by suggesting a quick piece they'd like me to write would be much appreciated, and I'll do my best.

Missed y'all.

Current Music: Andrew Bird, "Fake Palindromes"

(serious classics-geek points if you can translate that subject line)

Yeah, that projected schedule worked out great, right. I'm sorry, guys. Work stress and general stress is kicking my ass right now. Summer's coming up, though, and I can get a lot more done then. I'm just going to get what I can done right now and try not to beat myself up too bad. I forgot how panicky I get at the end of any multi-chapter story, trying to wrap things up decently, and The Maiden is really giving me hives.

I'm going to post the Babysitter chapter tonight though, because I'm not trying to wrap that up, and also because I've been bribed to (what up,

mydonald!)-- I'm just not going to reread it first, I'm just going to slam it on up there. And I also just posted a thing in the comments to this entry over at the slavebreakers community that I wrote really fast and sort of liked. So that's there if anybody's interested.

I also have a new counselor therapist person (she's a grief specialist, yeah I know this is way overdue-- I guess it took the one-year anniversary to realize I am not just going to snap out of this anytime soon), and I know you guys will like her as much as I do when I report the following conversation:

her: When are you happiest?
me: Well, I... uh... I write. I write... and I post... online... and I, it's, I've been doing it for awhile...
her: Is that something you want to pursue professionally?
me: Maybe? I've been thinking about it... but that's not, it's just, it's something that I really enjoy doing.
her: What kind of thing do you write?
me: Um...

[...]

me: But anyway, I do try to do stress-relief things. You know, I try to get out in the sun, and exercise, and stuff. Spend time with people.
her: That's good. But you know what you need to be doing more of, is the writing. When you said that about writing, your eyes just lighted up. When you said "it's something I really enjoy."
me: Yeah...
her (firmly): Write more.

Current Music: Future Bible Heroes, "I'm A Vampire"

Thank you so much to everyone for your kind birthday wishes. I've been having a hard time lately, and completely off LJ, so I apologize for anything I've missed. Welcome also to people who showed up here after

lit_gal's kind recommendation (such a frisson! Beautiful Broken is one of the stories I pretty much never get tired of rereading, so I'm having this "OMG she looked at me!" moment right now). I apologize that you've found me in the middle of a fairly severe depressive episode (for those who don't know, my husband died earlier this year, and I'm still kind of... dealing). I used to be better than this at responding, and hope that one day I will be again. In the meantime, please bear with me.

On the other hand, one of my coping strategies when I'm feeling on the brink is writing, so I have two stories that should go up soon, both SB 'verse, and I also have this, which isn't a story, more of a metathingy. See, for the most part, I've ignored the sporadic kerfufflings over whether girls are allowed to write m/m, whether it's exploitative or ignorant or what, because I don't really feel the need to defend myself on that point, but I've been having one of those things, you know, a headache with pictures ("An idea?" "Mmm! Mmmhmm!") about related issues in the Slave Breakers universe, so I guess here's my attempt to ramblingly articulate it. Contains spoilers for the whole Slave Breakers shebang, so if you haven't read it yet, fair warning. Also contains profanity, although if you're here at all, you probably don't so much have a problem with that.

( Thoughts on yaoi, sort of )

Current Music: Rose Polenzani, "Olga's Birthday"

I am going out of town for the weekend-- should be back sometime Sunday-- just so y'all know. I may be able to check e-mail and LJ at the hostel where we're staying, but I'm not 100% sure.

(I'm also sick again. My throat hurts and I'm very light-headed and may have a fever. Grumble.)

But anyway, I wanted to write out something I was thinking about, about the writing process for "Lee."

I normally don't talk about my characters as "telling" me things-- not that I have anything against that phrasing when other people do it, but it doesn't generally occur to me to phrase something as "Yves finally told me X thing about himself" instead of just "I finally realized X thing about Yves." Cause, well, I don't know about your characters, but my characters' consciousness does not entail an awareness of my existence as such. So although I love them deeply and there are several metaphors I could employ for the author-character relationship, I generally do not think of them as "telling me things," except by accident when I am spying on them from portable bushes and cunningly disguised character-blinds.

But writing Lee, that's been like--

( You wrote yourself into a corner, safe/ Easy to defend your borders )

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: New Pornographers, "Unguided"

I have been catching up on friends list (still not remotely caught up on my own comments, alas, but made a big dent in flist at least) and rocking out to this song (warning: may cause levels of headbanging and/or sock-hopping that are not entirely safe for work). I don't care what any music snobs say about the Killers and their continuing musical development and their odd religious beliefs and their feathery epaulets: I love them, with a love surpassing the love of women. CALL ME, BRANDON FLOWERS. I AM WEARING BUTTON BOOTS AND LONG UNDERWEAR.

*bops*

(though as my husband says, I must be human, as I am definitely no dancer)

In other news, this certainly explains a lot.

In other other news, that thing I said, about only one more chapter of Lee plus epilogue? That, uh, may not work. Oh, the perishing of a million noble outlines for this story.

(Although, those of you who have asked how I'll ever tie up all the loose ends-- hey, what kind of a girl do you think I am? When have I ever tied up loose ends at the end of a story? Remember the end of "Bran"? And the end of "Jesse"? You should see my knitting: loose ends EVERYWHERE.)

Actually, I recently found my very first outline for "Lee," being used as a bookmark in Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Want to see it? It's adorable; it plans for fifteen chapters. (And contains spoilers for all posted chapters of Lee, up to and including 44a and 44b, but not for future chapters, although I guess you might not want to look too closely at what I consider vital information, if you're a big old spoilerphobe. Caveat lector, and all that.)

( The best-laid plans of mice and men )

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: The Killers, "Spaceman"

I'm alive, just very busy with RL. Apologies and many many thanks to you all for your wonderful, kind, thoughtful, thought-provoking comments. Going to need to do massive weekend catchup again to respond to them all properly.

In the meantime, here's me rambling about which bits of the psyche write the best fiction, plus thoughts on why Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series doesn't exactly work for me but also doesn't enrage me the way certain other badly written insanely popular books do (*coughDANBROWNIWILLDESTROYYOUCOUGH*).

( You can't see the stars, love. That's the ceiling. Also, it's day. )

Current Mood: pensive
Current Music: Dan Bern & the International Jewish Banking Conspiracy, "Sweetness"

I discovered this site while googling for cool eyepatches, and ever since then, I've been playing around on it whenever I'm having to sit still and I'm too jumpy to read (or write, or knit) anything more substantial. Just found this page. Intrigued!

( And when I am intrigued, lo, I ramble! )

Current Mood: loquacious
Current Music: Radiohead, "Fake Plastic Trees"

And will catch up on everything and everyone, eventually. Pinky swear.

Hi to the bunch of new people who recently friended me, and thank you to whoever recced me to them!

And for the rest of you, who have been waiting so very patiently for the last-- oh, good lord, nearly a month-- for the new chapter of Lee: I'm terribly sorry. As many of you know, my personal life has been, um, interesting lately, and what should have been an extremely minor and temporary writer's block grew to elephantine proportions simply because I haven't had patience left over to sit down and work the damn thing out. Plus, last time I got the chance and inspiration to write, I wrote a bunch of what I thought was chapter thirty-six, which actually turned out to belong to chapter thirty-seven, so that was a setback. Thirty-six is finally coming along at a nice little clip, though, and I think it's going to be long.

For the record, I do currently have all of the following partially written:

The next chapter of Crimson
The next chapter of Babysitter of Themyscira (hah, you all hoped I'd forgotten about that one!)
A Slave Breakers one-shot to be posted sometime in the next week
The next two chapters of Lee

Anyway, I guess I should make a start on catching up on my awesome friendslist now. (It's such a burden, having so many enthralling WIPs to read. I don't know how I manage it.)

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Neko Case, "Furnace Room Lullaby"

My internet situation is... somewhat complex, at the moment; I do not have internet on my laptop except when I can snag a wireless connection at a coffee shop or something, so while I can write all I want on my laptop in Word, and hop on quickly to paste-and-post before work, I cannot currently get on to do sustained internetty things like replying to all my comments in the thoughtful manner which they fully deserve. Please do not think I am ignoring you, my beloved commenter type people. I really will catch up, as soon as my internet situation has stabilized.

In the meantime, paste-and-post it is. Here is a meme ganked from

morgan_cian:

List ten fictional characters you wouldn't kick out of bed (in no particular order) and tag five people to do the same.

1. Albert from The Count of Monte Cristo
2. Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer
3. Mohinder from Heroes
4. Veronica from Veronica Mars
5. Luna from Harry Potter
6. Kaylee from Firefly
7. Sayid from Lost
8. Max from Dark Angel
9. Destruction from Sandman
10. Yves (what? I can pick my own characters if I want)

Tagging anyone who wants to play. :) Have at it!

And another meme ganked from

thirdsouthobbi:

( Let's Talk Writing, Or, Love On The Orient Express )

And now I have those few sentences for you of my favorite pairing.

morgan_cian, here's your boylove scene. You know I love ya, babe.

( Forty is a few, right? )