Writing Ray - Where I'm at with things

Evenin' folks! I thought that I'd do a bit of a post Nano update talking about where I'm at currently with my writing shenanigans (God I love that word). I haven't done much writing since I hit my camp goal, little bits on a couple of scenes that are going to go towards the end of the book and also one which is purely for the repayment of feels to my dearest Alpha reader and Twinnie Jess since she was rather upset with me after she read the dreaded Dramatic Death Scene.

So I'm not going to be allowed to kill any more of my protags for at least one book - which is fine by me since I have already created for myself a musical trigger for tears from writing that death scene. Which is going to be very awkward later this month when Le Boyf and I go to London to see Yoshiki (Former drummer for the band X Japan) play his classical piano music which does include orchestral versions of some of their songs - two of which were playing as I wrote the final bit of the DDS. So it's very likely that I'm going to burst into tears in the concert hall on hearing either of those songs (One is ironically enough *called* Tears - skip to about 3mins in and then tell me that you wouldn't well up. The other is Forever Love - this is a shorter version and do excuse wet Yoshiki :P).

The plan for the next few months is going to be to get the end of the book done (only two scenes left I reckon) and start working on the beginning. Due to how I started writing this project I have the first scene I wrote being the first time my two main characters meet which I have got to write up to and then continue with the next section of the story. Originally I thought this scene was going to occur about a third of the way through the book, but now that I've written about half of the first draft I think it's going to have to come earlier than that.

But then will come the question of do I need to re-write that scene when I get to it? How drastically different has my writing become from that first scene to now? I don't really want to the consider the possibility that I've got worse from that point but one should never rule these things out and with me I have found that the more I do something the worse I get at it in certain bizarre occasions (cf. my book reviewing). It's shit like this that keeps me panicking.

However I gotta keep that neurotic side of my brain crammed in a teeny-tiny box otherwise it'll just jettison my confidence in this book and I'll stop completely - which I really don't want to do. Seriously I am really fucking enjoying writing this book even when it's mashing my brain or making me cry.

All being well I should hopefully *fingers crossed* have my first draft done by the time I finish work in July so I can spend leisurely days sat outside with a stack of paper (heck knows I will need to buy a efficient printer with affordable ink) and a heap of red pens alongside Jess editing this thing into something that works as whole and not in chunks.

I don't currently plan to even attempt to publish it, that is just something I don't have the energy or mental fortitude to put myself through. I want to finish a book, for me, so that I can say that I have *finished* something before I continue writing the second book, which may eventually turn into three depending on how out of control the world-building gets and what plot bunnies spring up from that. If I get to the end of writing this story, however long it turns out to be, and I am happy enough with it that I'd like to start submitting it then maybe I will. But that won't be for a while yet.

Until then I'm just gonna keep plodding on with it and dragging y'all along with me if you don't mind.
Current rough count on the manuscript is probably around 57,000 words but that's with two scenes to write and one to complete that I kind of abandoned. So by the time I hit the "end" of the book I should be at around 60K.

Now this post has got really lengthy and kinda meandering so I'm gonna go back and carry on with this scene that is going to hopefully stop me receiving Howlers :P
Until next time folks
Ray

Read more...

So I kinda suck at Read-a-thons

Good evening all you lovely people, it's a tad embarrassing coming back here after supposedly starting a readathon last Monday and realising that I just, sort of stopped by Thursday. While I did get some reading done that day (Started on the Repossession by Sam Hawksmoor) events conspired against me and I just didn't get round to updating the blog that day. Then the weekend arrived along with that wonderfully lovely specimen of awesomeness (Also known as my boyfriend, Mark :D) and all blogging went out the window and was replaced by Doctor Who marathons and copious amounts of Cricket (Alas not the Bell variety).

Hilariously I did get a bit more of the Repossession read on Saturday morning while I was volunteering at my local library. I've been helping with the Summer Reading Challenge for les enfants and there was quite a hefty lull so one of the librarians asked if I wanted a magazine to look through, I said thanks but I've got it covered and whipped the book out of my handbag. I'd got it with me just in case although I felt very odd about bringing my own book to a freaking library but eventually got over the weirdness and zoned out. Thankfully there were not many other kids during the two hours I was there.

So my Readathon was somewhat curtailed but it was really great to be able to sit and actually read since July was a very low yield reading month. I think I blitzed about 5 6 books in the first week of August which already has equalled July so I'm hoping to get through a fair bit more before we hit September (although srsly what the frack? I'm gonna be 22 around the start of October and that's getting scarily close!).

The final tally for my Readathon was as follows;
Frostfire by Zoe Marriott - 45 pgs. 4 stars
Slated by Teri Terry - 327 pgs. 5 stars
How to Marry a Marquis by Julia Quinn - 375 pgs. 4 stars
Fat Cat by Robin Brande - 327 pgs. 4.5 stars

I think it is rather fabulous that I managed to read four completely different genres of books that almost perfectly sums up the majority of my book collection; Fantasy, Dystopia, Historical and Contemporary. Yea I do have a lot of "classics" but seriously when have I last read a good chunk of those?

I do actually want to write reviews for all the books I've read so far this month (including at least one from the end of last month) so maybe I shall get uber productive and post a review a day for a week or more sensibly post two a week so they last me a bit longer since who knows when I might write another?!

Well this has been a rather lengthy ramble about my inability to finish another project (C'est la vie non?)
But I shall now bid thee adieu.

Yours wistfully
LadyV

Read more...

In Despair of not quite being there

Yes I realise that I have totally dropped off the face of the planet for nearly a month and a half and I apologise for doing so without notice. While I was on holiday I was all optimistic that I could have a decent work-play routine that actually left me with enough energy to so much as switch on my laptop when I got home. Well, you can all see how brilliantly *that* plan turned out.

I'm rather at a loss to understand where August and in fact Summer has gone, I'm somewhat doubtful that Summer even exists at the moment since I'm wearing a hoodie as well as a dressing gown and thick bed-socks- oh and not to mention the fact that the central heating is on - IN FREAKING AUGUST! Bah anyways I didn't dig myself out of my hermit hole merely to rant about how effing cold it is right now.

Basically I've realised something recently - I am getting ever closer to my 21st birthday (bricking it btw) and I have yet to find the niche in this world where I feel like I truly belong. This revelation of sorts came to me this weekend while I was in Oxford with my family for a Bank Holiday weekend break. Back when I was still with my boyfriend I went down to Oxford to visit him at uni several times so I knew my way around the town reasonably well. As we walked about I found myself wishing I could live in this gorgeous town since it's chock-full of bookstores and coffee-shops, which are pretty much the two best things I could hope for in a
place to live.  Yet for some bizarre reason I felt like I shouldn't be there, like I was invading an intellectual nest where I wasn't welcome.

Before I ended up at Aberystwyth Uni, I had applied to Oxford university (although in retrospect it really was a crap idea and a waste of a uni choice) and when I got rejected I couldn't help feeling like it was a massive door slammed in my face which really quite upset me at the time. It was like being told that I wasn't smart enough to deserve to go to Oxford when I'd been told waaay back in primary school that I was in fact *that* smart.

After I left uni last December I did actually reapply to do a totally different course which at the time I thought I'd really enjoy, ironically enough the best place in the country to do that course (Publishing media if you're interested) was at Oxford Brookes - Oxford's little sister uni as it were. In the months after applying I slowly lost all enthusiasm for the course and when I finally got the email saying I'd been unsuccessful in my application I really wasn't massively bothered (bear in mind that it was on the day of my Grandad's funeral and I had just got a job that morning after 5 months of being tediously unemployed so I was a tad hysterical) but this weekend I came to the conclusion that perhaps I'm supposed to stay away from Oxford since neither of the universities want me there so as much as I'd like to live there I just don't ... belong there.

I've been feeling somewhat the same at work recently, it gets remarked on frequently that I use a lot of big words - my production manager kept asking me to repeat the word "eviscerate" most days for nearly 3 weeks. Whenever someone asks me what I was doing at university there's always a quiet moment after I say  "French & Spanish" like they don't quite know what to make of me. My love of Harry Potter is gently mocked on a regular basis by one of the directors (whose 16 yr old son got onto to Pottermore early) like my enthusiasm about the books is something to find amusing.

I have a bad habit of launching into long-winded explanations for things that could really be summed up in a few short sentences (this blog post for example) - although I try to improve myself on this front it's pretty dang hard so I do waffle on a bit at work. However I find it rather hurtful when my production manager (who I end up pestering for large portions of the day so I know that jobs are getting done and that I'm not going to have angry customers ringing me up wanting to know where their mugs are), blatantly tunes me out when I'm trying to talk to him and maybe making a hash of it. It's bad enough that my own sister does it to me if I'm waxing lyrical on something vaguely nerdy but when my employer does it to me when I'm trying to do my job then it does make you feel pretty shit.

At the risk of sounding terribly snobby I feel like no one at work is quite on the same intellectual wavelength as me. Don't get me wrong most of the people I work with are lovely in their own quirky way but I feel like I'm masquerading in a boxful of round pegs when I am secretly a octagonal one - I can't help but wonder if there are some other weird pegs like me in jobs that don't entirely satisfy.

All in all I'm not altogether happy with the turn my life is taking right now - yes, I have a stable job which on it's less stressful days I do enjoy. But the next few months are going to get progressively more insane and I worry that the day will actually come I that do stay so late at the office that I fall asleep there. At my age I *really* don't find that prospect appealing, I need a job that won't keep me stressing all weekend because I know everything is going to go horribly wrong the next week when half of the factory staff is on holiday (this will soon become a reality so don't ask me how my week's been on Friday - it's for your own safety). I need a job that I can switch off from in the evenings, one that doesn't keep me late and take up my lunch hour. I need a job that doesn't lump a massive amount of pressure on me and leave me with inadequate managerial support. I need employers who respect and appreciate how freaking hard I work sometimes and don't just bitch about how infrequently I make the tea.

Basically I need a new job - but considering how long it took me to get this job I'm obviously very wary to just hand in my notice and jump ship blindly. I'd actually have to have another position secured without a doubt before I could say "cheerio" and in these times that's next to bloody impossible.

So my dilemma is eating all of the brainpower I've got left at the end of a day, I'd read almost nothing for a week until this weekend. I've not blogged since I was on Holiday, I've not made a youtube video since the same time, I'm barely on facebook or twitter anymore. It seems like I've living for work, food and sleep with odd moments of sociability on Friday nights - I cannot spend the next year like this, I just can't.

Help. Please. I need to get off this merry-go-round of highs and lows. Hell I just need this whole year to become a faint memory - it's times like these that I get mightily nostalgic for high school.

You may now go back to your lives (thank you if you were dedicated enough to reach the end of this - I owe you a cookie or something).

LadyV

Read more...

Braaaaains, Rock Salt and other bizarre ways to cope

Yea you read that post title correctly, I promise you I've not gone totally barmy but I reckon some folk might think I'm slightly touched in the head by the end of this post. If you've not seen my In My Mailbox post from Sunday then you might not know that my Grandfather died suddenly last Thursday and instead of taking time off from blogging like saner people might do, I'm gonna be blogging through my grief as it were as I think keeping my mind occupied on something I love is better than being sat ruminating on how bleak life seems right now.

In explanation of the post title; last night I watched the first episode of The Walking Dead on Five. I know this series was shown in the US several months ago but it's taken it's sweet time in getting over the pond so when I saw the adverts for it I got majorly excited (this was maybe over a week ago).
Now you'd think that after a death in the family that you'd want to avoid any and all TV shows that involve death and gore, me... well I'm a little odd and I love shows like that so I sat myself down last night and revelled in the serious creepiness of the spectacular zombie SFX in The Walking Dead. Oh and maybe drooled a wee bit over Andrew Lincoln cos I really rather liked him in Love Actually :P

I also have been binging on another TV show recently and just this morning may-have-kinda-sneakily ordered the third season boxset off Amazon. Yea I'm talking bout them Winchester brothers in Supernatural :P
Normally I consider myself to be pretty wussy when it comes to horror films and other scary shit like that but with Supernatural there's enough humour and non-scary stuff to balance out the terrifically creepy beasties that Sam and Dean come across every episode. So I get the thrill of being scared without being so terrified that I have nightmares for weeks afterwards, plus the added bonus of Jensen Ackles & Jared Padalecki being adorably bitchy with each other and suavely wasting ghosts like the bad-ass pros they really are.

I realise that my choice of comfort TV is probably rather disconcerting (at least it is to my parents) but my reasoning is that the more shocking and scary it is, the smaller the chances of me bursting into tears at some random moment. If I watched some fluffy rom-com I'd most likely spend half the film getting misty-eyed and to be perfectly honest I look hideous when I cry and it exhausts me like hell so I'd rather avoid a crying jag if possible.

I wonder if I'm the only person who has turned to seemingly "inappropriate" TV shows or films in times of grief - I'm hoping that if I drown myself in vivid imagery of things worse than I've seen it'll overwrite the memories that at the moment are seared onto my mind. I would love to have nothing but pleasant reminders of my Grandad and to have that Thursday night erased from my visual memory but I reckon it will take more than a few zombies and demons to shift it.

So I'd like to know, has anyone else got a bizarre choice of movie/tv show/book that they turn to when they need comfort whether it be merely after a bad day, or after the loss of a loved one, that other people would consider as odd?

I swear I'm only half-mad
LadyV

Read more...

You Know You're Doing Nanowrimo When...

.... Random stuff starts to happen in your story without your say-so!
I know I've read despairing posts from people on the NaNo Forums saying that their characters were holding mutinies and doing what they liked but I've never really had that problem myself - but I suppose that's because I've never properly written out my story ideas, they tend to just live in my head like little movies *cough*

But that all changed the other day when one of my Bad Guy's henchmen decided to inform me that he is *not* complicit with Bad Guy's nefarious activities and he is only still working for him because his twin brother (who is of equal magical power) *is* complicit. They've grown apart since they started working for the Bad Guy (most people don't really know how much of a bad guy he is) so the Bad Twin could be ordered to kill his own brother should he decide to defect and probably have no qualms about doing it.

To counteract the rather negative impression that working for an arrogant, rather power-hungry warlock can create, Luc (my defecting HenchTwin) tries to be the voice of reason and present the more moral options when a decision regarding punishment or law enforcement is put before the King (Oh bugger I forgot to say, the Bad Guy is the King of Sous-Paris where all the paranormal folk live). I think he wants to help Celestine (my FMC) cos the King *really* doesn't like her and he may even be ambitious enough to try and claw his way up to potential romantic interest. He's not developed much further than that and I don't really know what he's done while working for the King but I reckon it's not all pretty. We'll see what happens I guess.

I had a bit of giggle earlier while outlining Chapter 9 cos there's gonna be a scene with a trebuchet. Yep you heard me - a full blown medieval trebuchet. There's an awesome thread on the forums here where people can decide to include a Trebuchet somewhere in their novel. Even if it a contemporary novel (sort of like mine is) the challenge is to write a scene where this awesome siege engine appears. My Trebuchet scene is gonna be taking place in the Louvre (in Paris obvs) on a Tuesday which is when the museum is actually closed. My MMC is an archaeologist and is currently working in the Egyptian Antiquities department. So on this nice Tuesday many of the staff congregate in the Court Carre (That big square courtyard behind the pyramid) as some the chaps from the Medieval dept. have built a miniature trebuchet and of course I imagine that there's nothing that a bunch of highly educated historians enjoy more that flinging rubbers (ERASERS US-folk) and lumps of dirt across the massive courtyard in the Louvre.

Three Days Left :O *faints*
Oh but on the bright side, today my bf said that he's thinking about doing NaNo as well *happy dances* I was sooo not sure as to how I was gonna explain my scary bag-lady appearance and ink-splodged hands when I go to visit him next week so I think it's wonderful that he'll be writing like a fiend alongside me!
*sickeningly gooey sigh*

LadyV

Read more...

Monday Musings

I thought it might be a good idea get into a routine of posting on here or else I'm highly likely to let it fall into neglect very quickly and then it'll be a total waste of... something that I know not.

So I decree that Monday posts shall be reserved for ramblings of a varied nature - sometimes they'll be book related, other times they may be for random musings on things in my life (not that my life outside of the internet is terribly interesting but I like to whinge about certain things from time to time).

Today several interesting and extraordinary things happened; the first was the phone call I got this morning from my sister telling me she'd slipped over outside and may have broken her ankle (it later transpired that she had indeed broken her ankle). To me this was partly amusing because in my family it's been a long-standing joke that I am never ill nor have I ever broken any bones whereas my sister has broken the same leg twice in one year and had more time off school ill than I will ever have in my life.
 But I am still concerned for her (it's my job as the older sister) as she's got to spend tonight and possibly tomorrow night in the hospital as the Doctor's want to operate on her ankle to pin a bit of bone to her tibia to stop it "flapping about" (technical medical term quoted to me by my dad) but since it's swollen to elephantine proportions they couldn't do it today.
On the bright side for her - she gets time off school (which is always enjoyable when you're fourteen) and she gets a load of time to read. I've recently managed to get my sister reading as before she hated it but since I lent her my copies of the Twilight saga she's become semi-addicted. She's read the Twilight books almost to death (they're basically her books now since I haven't read them in ages, nor do I want to) and I've been suggesting to her other books to read.
While she didn't really get on with the Sarah Dessen books I lent her she has really hooked onto Nicholas Sparks (whom I adore) after reading his newest book "The Last Song". She actually keeps pestering *me* to read it which makes a change but since I already have a mighty stack of TBRs it's not too high on my priorities. So I suggested that she read The Notebook and the other Sparks books which I own and I got the impression when I called my dad earlier that she's commandeered all of the books and has them stashed in her room which is great, so long as she doesn't damage them by leaving them about (I'm ridiculously fastidious about the condition of my books).
It is really wonderful to be able to share the books I love with my sister because we didn't use to be as close as we are nowadays. So now that we have more things in common we have truckloads of fun together and although I'm sure she won't ever have the exact same taste in books as me, it's good to know that we can find books that we *both* love.

The second extraordinary occurrence happened this evening while I was pottering about on LibraryThing which is one of my web addictions - this website (if you don't know about it) kicks ass and is brilliant for all you book-loving nerdy crazy people out there. Well anyway I got a comment on my Profile Page from a lady called Gillian Philip who is a British author who has written a YA paranormal book called Darke Academy: Secret Lives under the pseudonym of Gabriella Poole. I read this book the other week and made a small review on my 75 Book Challenge thread. I really quite liked the book since I hadn't really known what to expect what with the plethora of paranormal books for  teens that have flooded the market in the last year. I gave it a positive review and pointed out in particular that it *wasn't* a vampire book despite what impressions the cover and blurb gave.
Well Gillian actually saw my thread and left me a personal comment on my profile (she even took the time to find my real name on the page instead of just addressing me as LadyViolet) which thanked me for my review and my comments regarding the "not a vampire book" bit and she hoped I would enjoy reading the second book Blood Ties which is released in February of this year.
This comment left me totally amazed and rather impressed, that she singled me out and personally thanked me for reading and enjoying her book and for trying to convince other people to read it. It isn't everyday that the actual author of a book takes the time to speak to their readers so this just made my afternoon.

Since I have now waxed lyrical about today I shall finish now but I shall be posting again this week as I would like to try my hand at one of the weekly memes floating about the bookblogosphere - possibly Booking through Thursday which looks rather intriguing. 

Adios
LadyV

Read more...