Continue reading “No story bumping at my mind demanding its voice”
Category: aethersphere
Writing angst, part deux
So I finally got motivated to do something with my writing rut, and contacted my old writing coach in San Francisco. I figured she could help, because her specialty was classes to help people find their inner writer, their inner stories, the stories that really get them going, and that’s what I need. She’s not cheap, but this is pretty damned important.
I didn’t hear back from her for several days, and started to wonder if she was active in the writing coach business, but she wrote me back today! She’s a busy stay-at-home mom at the moment, but she and I have worked together via email correspondance even when we lived in the same city, so this is a good, and I am cautiously hopeful.
Back in SF
Good trip to AZ. Very enjoyable/productive in many ways.
For some reason, this time coming back home on the airport van, I got thrown in with people heading downtown instead of the usual folks from the outer Richmond and Sunset districts. So I got to see the more romantic side of SF–Grace Cathedral, Chinatown, etc. And I’m thinking to myself (not for the first time), “I’d love to write a novel and *set it* in San Francisco.” Once you don’t live in a place anymore, it gets its mystery back.
2006 fic round-up meme
I think this meme is for fanfic, but I’m going to do OF as well. Accomplished in 2006:
– Finished season 1 of “The Destroyer”, started season 2. Eppies included:
121: Heart of Darkness
122: Beneath
201: Dead
202: Knowledge
203: Inappropriately Neurotic
204: Dramatis Personae
Only six episodes the whole year? Well, I traveled a lot. My favorite episode of this lot, I think, was “Heart of Darkness.” Although “Beneath”, the season ender, was about Connor’s inner struggles (which is what TD is, in the end, about), “HOD” had some good Unholy Family stuff I enjoyed writing.
Second favorite, “Inappropriately Neurotic.” I don’t know what it was last year, but I got on this Goth and Noir kick. I wanted to explore things with a darker, kinkier edge to them. So I invented this OC, Alix, and this nightclub setting, Sekhmet, in part to do that. Expect to see more of them in future eps.
– Co-wrote/edited “Reconciliation“, and wrote “Rise” in the AtS Season 6 series.
Those two episodes were the only ones to come out in that series in 2006. The Mutant Existential Scoobies were having lots of RL issues, good and bad. “Rise” was a lot of fun to write, ’cause of the Faith+Wesley. I also enjoyed tinkering with the Connor+Spike and Congel bits of arethusa2‘s Reconciliation script.
– In April, I did my so-called “NaDraWriMo,” thirty original fic drabbles in thirty days. The best of that was posted here.
I was really hoping this effort would kick-start an idea for an original fiction story of some length greater than 100 words, and I did sort of glom onto a character towards the end of the month (who, judging by my commenters’ icons, reminded them of Faith), but I couldn’t seem to get a handle on what her story was about.
– I gave it the old college try, though. For the next couple months (May-July), I posted eight story bits to the community, hoping to get a critical mass that would enable me to participate in NaNoWriMo in November. But the story wasn’t setting fire to my butt. The only thing fueling it was my desperate desire to write original fic, not anything compelling about the story itself. So that fizzled out.
– I did participate in NaNoWriMo in November. With a fanfic WIP! (*headdesk*). And I won, ’cause their word counting machine doesn’t actually check to see if you’ve written a self-contained original novel.
I’m not going to pressure myself by having some New Year’s resolution to “get that original fic story going already!” I think the wiser course of action is what I decided to do, read more, see more films. Feed my muse.
Drabbles
Drabbles are short fictional pieces of exactly 100 words. I wrote one a day (original fic!) throughout April. A few of them are connected, the same character, who I latched onto towards the end of the month.
NaDraWriMo
So I finished NaDraWriMo–30 drabbles in 30 days. A few days (2, 3?) I did none, so a few days I did two, all exactly 100 words, no more, no less. It was a discipline, like haiku.
A very painful discipline. I’m glad it’s over. For someone who can belt out a couple thou words in a day when she’s on a roll (like yesterday with AtS 6.16), I had more trouble coming up with a mere 100.
The results were pretty good, I think, especially when I ditched the prompts I was using and just started fiddling with this old story I started back in ’99. Remember those days, before there was an ATPo to distract me? I’m just playing with the old story, writing bits and pieces, and letting those bits and pieces reflect the mood of the day. This isn’t anything that’s going anywhere. Just me writing words that aren’t fan fic.
I’ll post highlights later. I’m knackered today and want to play.
Conversation at the Masqdom
Masq’s Brain: So I had a thought.
Hands: Oh-oh. You know what happens when she has thoughts.
Big Toe: Essays are conceived. Fic is written! Empires are forged!!
Nether-regions: And we most decidedly don’t–
Masq’s Brain: My thought is, drabbles.
Hands: Drabbles?
Masq’s Brain: Original fic drabbles.
Hands: I don’t do *sniff* drabbles. I write EPICS.
Masq’s Brain: This is in service of epics! Idea-mongering!
Big Toe: Tell us your plan!
Masq’s Brain: Thirty O.F. drabbles in thirty days. NaDraWriMo. If ann1962 can do poetry, we can do drabbles. All we need is some decent writing prompts.
Hands: Welll…..
Masq’s Brain: They could be about anything. Any characters, any mythologies or worlds I can dream up. And they can suck! As long as we’re writing original fic.
Big Toe: Yay!
Nether-regions (to Toe): Oh, go exercise or something.
Masq’s Brain: And we wouldn’t have to share them with our friends unless we–
Big Toe: Can’t resist showing off! Yay!
Hands: I suppose I’ll have to do the actual work. *Sigh* And after cleaning and redecorating your apartment all weekend!
Nether-regions: Looks spiffy, though. Like a real person lives here, and not an oblivious armchair potato.
Masq: So it’s a plan, then. Along with Angel 6.16, 6.17, and TD 2.01…..
Hands: *faint*
Myth-taken
I’ve decided I need to read more mythology and folktales. You know, the classic stuff from various cultures. I can’t help feeling that that’s where my next novel’s going to come from. It will be fantasy, but not historical fantasy. It will take place in the contemporary world, but will be about opening your eyes to the fantastic that’s all around us–or, at least that’s all around in the world of my fictional characters. The best fantasy, I think, builds on the classics, the way Mutant Enemy built on classic horror tales of our own culture and other cultures to create the rich landscape of Buffy and Angel. But oh, I haven’t read mythology since I was in Jr. High. I was one of those Greek-Roman-Norse myths freaks at the time, and I even forayed into Native American mythology before “real life” stepped in and I got more interested in gay and lesbian romance novels.
Now I hardly read anymore at all, which is like, doom, if you want to be a writer.
So I need to read stuff. Mythology, folktales, contemporary, ancient, fantasy. Anybody got any good recommendations to re-start my education?
Writing blurb
I just got back from my monthly free-writing class. I feel crappy because I didn’t share anything with the rest of the group, even though I eventually wanted to. I always tell myself that I don’t have to share if I don’t want to, because that loosens me up, allows me to write more freely. If I know I have to share ahead of time, I end up writing nothing at all. Or I write funny or goofy things that are purely for entertainment value. I don’t write “where my energy is”, I don’t write where my heart is that day.
Today I did manage to eek out a few interesting little blurbs. The first I wrote at the very last second, after wasting 10 minutes of a 15-minute free write session getting no where. It was swift and cryptic, so I didn’t share it.
The second blurb was in response to a free-writing prompt where we had to write about a memory. The teacher gave us several common experiences in life, like “A hangover”, “kissing”, “unexpected news”, “a costume”, etc. We had to write down memories we had around those events and then, after we made a list of memories, let one of those memories “pick us” and write about it. I immediately was drawn to a memory I had of kissing. We were supposed to make our lists of memories, then take a coffee break, then come back and write. I just wrote right through the break. That’s what it means to write where your energy is.
I wanted to share this one with the others, but the two women on either side of me read their blurbs, also about kissing, and mine seemed redundant. So I didn’t. And now I feel bad. So I’m putting this blurb in here.
Author Nancy E. Shaffer 