Return to Phae

I have been super productive today.  Even though I spent a lot of time online doing ... not much.  I still managed to:

1) Move and organize my image folder (even going so far as to delete about 150 MB worth of them - go me!)
2) Write a little essay (re: rant) about Paganism and tolerance
3) Install both Dreamweaver and Photoshop on my sadly deprived of memory laptop (if I had known how much memory Vista needs to work properly, I probably would have had them put in more).
4) Dug out my new brick of Sculpey and my mask sketches.
5) Grab a rough batch of new smilies and figure out instructions for coding them
6) Figure out what the whole deal with the spellcheck dictionary is
7) Finally quit my stupid grocery store job


Now, I am going to have a quick bath, look for some word puzzles that I can print out, and finish up the part of my novel that I am in the middle of polishing (re: re-writing).  Not too shabby for a lazy Monday ;)

Oh, and I added up the word count for Ella the other day - 48,730 and hopefully only about a third of the story left to write!  Yay me!

--Phae

OH!  and I have to re-pink the hair :P

Well, being completely unable to access my journal last night kind of freaked me out, so I have finally created my LJ clone journal.  I decided to go with Insane Journal, cause, let's face it, 100 icons for free is way too cool for me to pass up.  Plus, Tweak is the best character ever (for those of you who watch South Park, you know what I mean ;) ).

I think I am going to have to make a special Tweak icon for my clone journal, which I call TweakJournal.  You can find me easily enough at http://phae-talon.insanejournal.com  I am very uninspired when it comes to URLs ;)  Enter phae-talon into something, and if I am there, I will pop up :P

That is about all I wanted to say.  I am having a bit of a no brain day.  I need to type out about 1,000 words worth of story (if I am lucky it is only that many ... I am not sure how many words fit on 8-10 notebook pages).  I need help.  Every time I start to work on this story I add more to it.  I am a little worried that when I am done I will top 100,000 words (and that is before we even start THINKING about part 2 that is already floating around in my mind).

I need to be taught how to write short stories.  I want to build up a profile of something that has been published.  I am not sure that Pagan interest articles count.  Though, I suppose I could spit out a few that were on general interest Paganism and general Pagan life.  That might be considered by one of the local mags.

It is so frustrating to find all of these new publications popping up wanting short stories and essays, and here I am trying not to let my tale turn epic on me.  Ugh!

I probably owe the C&P folks a new story chunk.  Though, I am not really sure that any of you are interested in Ella's story anymore.  Maybe I will make you all wait until NaNo time ;)

Well, I guess I did have more to say than I thought.  Back to work with me.  Have a happy weekend folks!

--Phae

I say this a lot, I suppose, considering that it is in my little drop down list of post titles. The last few days I have been writing more. I have two spots in my novel where I am actively writing ---> the beginning, and the middle. When I started writing again, I couldn't remember where I had left off, so I thought a good thing would be to read from the start and see where the story took me.

It tripped and fell flat on its face after the first couple of paragraphs. And so I started re-writing. I know that I shouldn't do this, that I should wait until I have it all out of my head and on paper before I start polishing, but dammit! I can't abide crap! LOL Well, it wasn't that bad, but it certainly wasn't up to the level that I am at now. I keep all the parts that have been re-written, though. They show me where I was when I first started this story oh, about ten years ago now, I guess.

I love that I have grown out of writing scenes. Or grown in to making them much more seamless. I don't need to 'add a scene' to let you better get to know a character anymore. You know them because Ella knows them.  The world is more realistic despite the fact that my knowledge of 18th century Scotland is limited.  I have a time line now for the novel that I didn't have before.  When I first started writing this story, I could let things go on for weeks or months, and it wouldn't really matter.  Now, I am working with days, where every hour actually does count.  And it works for me.

This past decade has really given me a lot in the way of learning my craft (well, one of my many, anyway). My story is more ... mature, I guess than it used to be, and the characters are more like people rather than just flat caricatures meant to make the main character look good. Ella doesn't get to be invincible, and she doesn't get any extra talents of prowess to make up for her short comings. She's got to get by on her wits and charm. And when that doesn't work, she takes her lumps like the rest of us.

I think that makes her a more attractive character. She's real now, in a way she wasn't before. She has a lot more lumps to come, and a lot of weird stuff that is really outside the scope of her experience, but I have some good things in store for her too ... or maybe they are just more complications that she doesn't need. I am kind of a bitch when I am playing Fate ;)

Gotta get ready for work now.  And get a bit more writing in before I go.

--Phae

Yesterday I wrote 2200 words and typed out nearly 1000 more.  I found the parts that I had written from last time and had either neglected to type or had typed and somehow lost.  I also realized that I am not as far along in the re-read and edit process as I had thought.  Which sucks, but it will give me a chance to figure out just what is said already and what needs to be added.

I had thought that I had written a prologue, but I guess not as I cannot find it anywhere, and only vaguely remember what it would have said anyway.  I think I will wait until I have actually finish the 'writing it all out' process before I worry about that.  I am getting more insight into how Ella works, how her vices fit into her personality and the new subplot is fitting in rather seemlessly (like it always should have been there), which is good.

It is sunny and gorgeous today, and I am exhausted from staying up until 2am writing and typing.  But, when you have to get it out of your head, there isn't a lot of choice.  I tend to find that writing at night is how I do it best anyway.

In other news - I am thinking that I am going to be redesigning my website yet again (I know I am not even finished with the first redesign).  I have been inspired recently to use photos for the art of my page, and on my walk home from the market the other day, I got some really beautiful shots.  The trees are all in bloom right now, and the streets are carpeted in pink and white petals.  I love spring :)

The new job is set to start at the end of the month.  I am still trying to juggle how I am going to do the training weeks (which will be Mon-Fri) while I am hanging on to my other job.  So far, I have decided to just take the first week off entirely, and take it from there.  They are not very firm on details, which is very frustrating.  I am getting a little sick of hearing 'when I know something, you'll know something', but what are you gonna do?

That is about all with me at the moment.  Or it is all that my coffee-deprived mind can think of at the moment.  I will prolly try to post something new for the C&P crowd today or tomorrow.

Happy Weekend (even though it isn't a weekend for me)!

--Phae

What started yesterday as an attempt to work on my webpage became a jump right back into the deep end of my novel.  I hadn't left myself any notes (that I have found yet ... I am still looking) about where I was going with the current sections, so there is a bit more that I have to do before I can dive into that one.

I think I am also going to write some articles.  I really need to work out the one on 'Witches and Other Pagans' one.  And I am about ready to boil over with my rant about being Eclectic (which is still in the form of 'OMG STFU!! You SO totally don't know what you are talking about!!!' - which doesn't make for a very good read).  Also, I need to worry out the one on Love Spells.

Maybe I will get some of my webpage done today after all.  Coffee first.  Then some writing ... we'll see what the next eight hours brings.

--Phae