Category: disinhibition

Maybe it doesn’t exist

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 11 Comments

Okay, you want to know what the most difficult subject to research on the interwebs is? “Scientists in fiction,” and “fiction about science.” I am trying to get a list going of novels and short stories that depict believable (or not-so-accurate) scientist characters, the scientific process, or scientific labs in contemporary fiction, that are not science fiction. But Google and LJ and Amazon keep reading that as “science fiction.”

Maybe there are no contemporary novels showing normal, everyday scientists (in a realistic or uninformed fashion). But I don’t believe that.

ETA: Or, you know, graduate school as a setting in a fictional story, as opposed to graduate schools for writing fiction.

Original fiction project – week of 6/07/2009

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 7 Comments

More work on the morning pages this week. Not as many words as previous weeks, due to unscheduled brain-deadness. You know, there’s still a part of me that wonders sometimes what it is I am doing every morning, since I’m not, strictly speaking, “writing fiction.” I’m outlining, tossing around ideas, accepting or rejecting them, developing characters, thinking about how things will work, but not doing much that actually counts as “writing fictional prose.”

I have been a bit consternated lately since the story I’m developing is still thin on details of actual scenes and is sort of all broad strokes and general plot points. And those broad strokes and general plot points just keep getting more complicated and convoluted. And it’s consternating because I am struggling at the same time to figure out how to cut half, if not more, of the words out of my old ’93 novel, Dis/Inhibition, and here I am busily developing another story that’s going to be just as long.

The only difference is, I’m catching this fact before even a single word is written, and so I can plan ahead of time to make this not one, but a series of novels, with a natural division point, unlike my old novel.

Last weekend I was sitting in a dark theater watching the new Star Trek movie for the second time, enjoying one of the most complicated, convoluted SFF stories of all time, which is of course, also not one story but dozens, if not hundreds of stories. Star Trek is a story world.

And it occurred to me that that is what I’m doing right now. I’m not “writing my story,” I’m world-building. And that’s as important a step as writing fictional prose or plotting the novel. A good “story world” is a world we will want to visit over and over until all its stories are told.

Original fiction project – week of 4/26/2009

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 7 Comments

Another week, another five morning pages, this time totalling 2,077 words. I am really glad I have developed this practice, but only a couple things are keeping it from turning into a rut of me tapping out prose that doesn’t excite me. One morning, I was writing something about the mythology of my spirit creatures when I just thought, “Ugh, I don’t like this.” So I rewrote the same paragraph four times, each time changing the details until I wrote something that actually interested me. That’s a useful technique to remember.

The other thing that occurred to me, since I am writing in character POV now (when I remember to–hey, it’s 5:30 am when I do this stuff), is to bring in the soap opera already. I have realized this since I started re-reading my old novel, Dis/inhibition. It’s got a lot of stuff about grad school and careers and life, but in the main, it’s about relationships. X loves Y but cheats with Z. A is at odds with their boss, B, and does conniving things to get the upper hand in the relationship. That sort of stuff. It doesn’t come as naturally to me now as it did ten or fifteen years ago, but it’s still what draws a person into a story, even if it’s about space aliens or spirit beings.

It’s also time again for me to go through what I’ve written up until now and pick out the parts I like the best and expand on them in what I write next.

And just keep at it, even when I feel like it’s in a rut.

The muses have abandoned me

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 15 Comments

So Julie’s reading my old novel chapter by chapter, and I’ve had to read it myself to clean up the editing remarks embedded in the text before sending it off to her. And it’s making me kinda sad. I’m a pretty good writer, damn it, and after four years of fan fic, I think I’m even better.

I should be writing a novel again.

::sob::

I.Just.Have.No.Good.Ideas.

ETA: It’s not an inability to write (I’ve been writing a lot…of fan fic), or lack of desire to write (I’m tormented by my desire to write original fic), or even lacking for writing prompts. It’s an inability of the prompts to connect to something inside me, inspiring writing.

ETA ETA: And it’s not related to my dad’s death. It’s been going on for *four years now*.

*sigh*

Words

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 8 Comments

A recent post on my flist mentioning NaNoWriMo got me thinking. Well, I was thinking before that, because Julie had asked me about my writing and I had to admit to her it was all fan fic these days, and no original fic. And I miss original fic. The challenge of it, the greater opportunity for self-expression it provides. Not to diss fan fic by any means; I am going to be sending Julie the first chapter of my old novel, Dis/inhibition, and I’m embarrassed about it because I ramble on unnecessarily. Fan fic has taught me to say a lot with much fewer words and improved my writing in important ways.

But I’m getting the urge to go back to original fic. The only thing stopping me is, well, finding the time between life stuff and finishing my fan fics, and still having no good ideas for original fic, ideas that are tangible enough to sustain a big writing project of the kind I inevitably do.

Probably for NaNo, I’ll just push on three TD eps simultaneously like I did last year (or was it the year before?). TD 214 is going slowly because I don’t want to do anything obvious for the episode, and have been waiting for my brane to come up with something a little different (which it is, slowly).

The original fic just has to evolve slowly. That’s how my other two original stories came about. Invent a few characters, put them out there, and see what they do. I don’t want to pick up those old stories and start them up again because I want to find out who I am now, not who I was at 29 or 35.

NaNoWriMo Day 4

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 2 Comments

The woman I’m having dinner with wanted to do a “swap”–her art work for my fiction, and so I dug up a chapter of my old novel to share with her. One chapter, 8119 words. Jeez. That was before I learned that my writing was better when I cut any “full draft” down 25-30%. And also before I had mastered the art of writing descriptive detail. I was still in over-doing it mode back then to compensate for my earlier under-doing it instincts.

Anyway!

New words: 1417
Total words: 6718
Goal: 50,000
Percentage: 13.4%

Quote-worth snippet: nothing worth noting. I was just trying to finish my intro descriptive blurbs, and kind of rushing through them at that.

nano notes