rflong

Oh yes, the serious me can't be seen for dust in the post St. Patrick's day fog!

Which Torchwood character are you?

You’re Captain Jack - impossibly handsome, suave and mysterious.

Off y'all go now
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/tv/2008/01/which_torchwood_character_are.html

Oo - I should say I finished draft 2 of To Regain Heave last night, shouldn't I? Now I have to edit it within an inch of its life.

Anyway, back to the memes!

Current Mood: giddy

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And a whole lot of nothing done...

So, to round it up:

Friday (I think): work work work. Submit The Penitent to the same publisher who is looking at The Wolf's Sister. Well, its the same world. And she asked if I had anything else suitable!

Saturday: (Writing) I typed up/edited about 2000 words of Moy Tura - the whole Nuada among the Sidhe section. Kind of a disturbing chapter altogether, necessary as it is time to up the anti. I know I said 32k in my last post but its actually 43k now. Typing in/editing the Robert Emmett scene. Hmmm. Some people are not going to like me for this one I fear.

(Not writing) We also drove to Belfast and shopped in Ikea. It took HOURS but we came away with six matching chairs. Six actual MATCHING chairs. Never in my life have I owned such a thing! Delighted. And we also bought assorted cushions, napkins, nightlights and a tablecloth. Oh, and a step. Because I am short and certain areas in my kitchen are not!

Sunday: (Writing) Em. Yes. Em. What was that again? Well, I did a little bit on To Regain Heaven. A little. Under 1k. And I am a little disturbed by the new tendancy I have developed to call it To Regain Heave. That's just not right is it?

(Not writing): Took Diarmuid to see a preview of The Spiderwick Chronicals. Excellent movie. Freaked us both out a bit. Then went to Chapters on Parnell Street. I haven't been in it since they moved from Abbey Street and I want to know where they acquired the Tardis to house it in? The place is huge. Just when you think you must be getting to the back of the shop, you turn a corner and there's more. Space/Time rift bookshop eat your heart out!!! L-space lives. Went home, built chairs (3 of them). Very pretty. Watched Ella Enchanted. A lot more fun than I thought it would be.

Today: work work work. I finally have a blurb ready for To Regain Heaven. Now it needs to be made shiny. And I bought a tv corner unit. And cushion covers. Coz... You know... em... Yeah.

Oh, and I may be going to P-Con. If so I hope to see Ladywolf! That would be cool!

So that's it. This evening (brace yourselves) more chair building. Maybe some tv corner unit building. A large g+t, at least.

*sigh* I think i've exhausted myself again.

Current Mood: blah

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To Regain Heaven now at 36835 words. Just finished Chapter 15.

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My little boy just came downstairs. As I ushered him back to bed, I said "It's very late. You should be asleep."

He replied indignantly: "Well, have you seen the time? You should be in bed."

You can't really argue with that, can you?

Current Mood: sleepy

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ericreynolds has the TOC for Ruins Metropolis up here. I'm rather excited about this! :D Can't wait until its out!

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In other writing news, I heard back from an agent last night. Not a yes, don't get excited. But a very pleasant and encouraging response to a query, with the comment that I might send in my urban fantasy (Moy Tura) and paranormal romance (To Regain Heaven) when they are ready as those fields are more to their interest at the moment. What an incentive to get some work done! Guess what I'll be doing from tonight on! :D

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Very upset to hear about Heath Ledger. I remember watching Roar and he just sparkled in every scene. I only just found Ten Things I Hate About You in one of our moving boxes (where it has been for over a year!) and took it out the other night intending to watch it while Hubby is away. Sad now!

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As my son told me the other night, its only "2 more sleeps" until my hubby comes home.

R

Current Mood: conflicted!

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In some ways I'v e ben quite hard at work on the old writing.

Draft 2 of To Regain Heaven is coming along nicely (ie I am typing it up!) and I have about 40% of it on the pewter now (according to the Zokutou wordmeter), A further two chapters have gone off to my CP (Hi!) and my husband has read them too (he liked. High praise!) I should get more of that done tonight.

I (finally) posted the next bit of Moy Tura on NB - Chapter 17 (I write VERY short chapters at the moment). In which bad things happen to good and innocent people. All bystanders trashed. Isn't it always the way!

( Here is an except (with spoilers, I guess)... )

I will seriously have to do some more work on this as I think the next scene is going to involve Maeve and they are never easy. I need a Fionn and Emer scene too. But Maeve is more fun to write. She's nasty.

Main problem at the moment is that I have got to stop going into Notebored and editing the piece! It's a really bad habit, but once I look at it and see a nit I have to fix it!!! Jeeze, I'm even doing it now.

Tonight I should have some time. Last night we finished repairing the bath. Tomorrow night is my work party. Then on Saturday we have the kids party thrown by my husband's work. This is usually enormous fun, totally chaotic and really really exhausting. We're also hoping to get our Christmas Tree in the morning. At the same time I will need to order my meat from the butcher. God alone knows when I will manage to get the cake ingredients, but I'd better do it soon or no cake! And that would not go down well at all.

R

Current Mood: (or at least trying to be)

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1 draft down. Who knows how many more to go. I finished the last scene of To Regain Heaven last night (in first draft longhand, lying in bed and trying not to fall asleep. No wait, that makes it sound boring and it isn't boring. But it was exhausting!)

So the creature stands at just under 50k words which isn't bad as a first draft for me. I do tend to run to the school of "just write something down and come back to it later if you're stuck". This can lead to some very short scenes and copious notes in the margins saying things like "Change Finbar and Úna to Fionuala and Aidan", and "A happens, then B, then C" or even "Go back and make sure his car is outside the house and not abandoned three miles down the road or the quick getaway will involve a long walk". (Ok, it actually says something like "RETRO: Car should be here." but that probably doesn't make a lot of sense without context.) This also falls into the school of "how do I get them out of here? RUN!" which I mentioned in an earlier post.

Quick writing. LOADS of editing.

I got horribly stuck on the final scene sad to say. It was kind of an anticlimax to reach it. So, he doesn't go away afterall but she thinks he has and is very said. But THEN he walks into the room. HEA! It's a bit lame. I mentioned this to wonderful husband, trying not to give away plot points as he is going to have to read this. I will make him! :D And he came up with a lovely, magical way to have him arrive, which I am using and I am very happy with. All right, they still talk far too much, but that's nothing judicious use of a delete key can't handle.

So now I will have to (a) type this up as Draft 2 and then see how long it is, followed by the editing, layering etc and (b) start to seriously look at Moy Tura Echoes again. I've been trying to block out some of the scenes for that. I think next is another Maeve one, which should please some of the NB critique group.

The sad news is my other critique group seems to be crumbling around us. There are only three of us at the moment. My concern is that if we do start to take breaks we will not get up and running again. The last time it took about a year. Very frustrating!

Anyway, I think I have earned a little bit of a break in my writing (although I will probably type tonight, while watching tv though, which doesn't really count as creative). Writing To Regain Heaven so quickly (for me - a first draft in about seven and a half weeks is VERY quickly) has left me a bit washed out. It is far from perfect (VERY VERY far) but I am quite proud of it. I have not really planned a novel in this manner before - writing a paragraph for each chapter and allowing it to flow from there. But the method certainly seems to have worked in terms of just getting the words out and down on paper. I will try again shortly I am sure. I already have some ideas.

However, priorities are as follows:
Draft 2
Moy Tura Echoes

And then some other stories I have hanging around that need to get edited - The Wolf's Sister, for example!

It's too easy to get carried away and end up not finishing anything. Far too easy.

R

Current Mood: creative

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I've been fixating so much on the novel, I missed the anthology challenge on LH. Well not missed, but as the deadline is tonight and I haven't written anything for it...

Yes, missed!

I got Old Friends (with its reworked opening) into the Polish Challenge though. Then hopefully I can send it out again. Where, I'm not sure yet. Somewhere.

Got to agree with kara_gnome. You can't do much better than Liberty Hall and Notebored for a writing site.

The novel is going well though: bear in mind it is a first draft but I have in and around 43,000 words, many of them drivel. I have about 5 scenes left to write (I think), there is the basis of a pretty smart plot (again, I think), and I will have to go back and do a considerable amount of editing and layering.

The word count sounds very short, but I'm not really bothered about that. There will be other scenes I need to add, existing scenes which seriously need fleshing out and another which I already want to rewrite! I left out large parts of description for example, to get on with nailing down the story first. I also figured things out as I went along, so there will be some retro-fitting along the lines of

me:"They're in the caves"
MC:"What caves?"
me:"The caves you never knew existed in walking distance of your home, in a forest that has suddenly quadrupled in size. Get over it and go save your love interest!"

and such like. But on the whole I have a great big mess to play with. I've stalled on typing and am just concentrating on writing it down. I love the feeling of writing longhand, but it is time consuming. I think I have come to the point of treating longhand as first draft, typing as second, and frantic printing and crossing out as third.

May be finished by the weekend? (the first draft I mean)

Then I will try to leave it alone and fail. Instead I will type it up pretending I am making it better. Then I will go back and fix everything I broke while doing this.

Writing 'sfun

Current Mood: content

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Yes, I decided to go with an actual honest to God picture of me for a change. Ok, its slightly blurry, but it is me. In Kinitty Castle earlier this year. You can see a bit of curtain!

Last night I wrote a hum-dinger of a scene for To Regain Heaven. (Ok, I hope its still a hum-dinger when I revisit it but that's how writing goes.) Its a pivotal one, with loads going on, the main theme being betrayal, or suspected betrayal. Very exciting one to get out. I actually could hardly sit still writing it - which means the writing is a bit all over the place. It also presented the awful "so how do I actually get them out of it?" moment. I admit I resorted to "Run!" but with some style (I hope). So currently my hero is about to abandon my heroine in the woods at night (along with her possibly treacherous, possibly enchanted, possibly now all right again brother) with the entire company of the Slaugh bearing down on them. The one thing that is keeping the Slaugh back will dissipate the moment he leaves. And he HAS to leave.

Ok, so he can come back obviously! Wouldn't be much of a hero if he didn't come back would he? There is a word for what he would be but I can't type it here as this is a public journal! There's more than one word. You can string them together to make it really effective :D

This has really been a case of writing to a plan and then discovering characters going - "no, I don't think I'll sit here and wait for someone to come and get me. I think I will walk into the trap entirely of my own volition!" and my particular favorite "You think you're going to just turn up with the antidote to the problem? Ah-ha, by the time you get here I'm going to be consumed by my dark side and try to kill you instead!" I have largely stuck to the guidelines I laid down initially, but... BUT... I have never encountered characters as stubborn and bloody minded as these two.

Writing 'sfun.

Yes, I'm in a better mood. I'm into that headlong rush towards the end now. The weekend should be interesting. Family and friends will want me to do things. How do I explain I have at least two lives and a relationship to save in a world inside my own head?

Hmmm...

Sometimes I see why they worry.

Current Mood: bouncy

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Yes, an actual genuine new story. Over 2000 words and everything. With a plot. (I think.)

Its called "Carrying Keptara" and is supposedly for the Ruins Metropolis anthology which closes next week. No honest, I never leave things to the last minute! Its... not easy to define. Sort of a world proto-myth revolving around the evacuation of Atlantis. It even has bull leapers in it. Hence the new userpic. :D

Anyway, I am happy. I have written something new. It is now up on LH, (warts and all) waiting to be taken apart! Then I will try to put it back together again in order to kick it out the door before the 31st.

It's all gone a bit Humpty Dumpty then.

I wrote more of To Regain Heaven last night, and, more to the point given my moaning about it the other day TYPED more of it too. Granted not much more but some. I tend to edit as I type - for plot rather than typos. My typos can be subtle and quick to anger. They can also be downright glaringly obvious!

In home news, after weeks of insisting she wanted to be a witch for Hallow 'een my little girl took one look at her costume last night, burst into hysterical tears and declared she didn't want to be a witch because it was too scary! It took my son and I the whole evening to convince her that she would be a good witch á la Professor McGonagall. Of course, as

david_de_beersuggested recently, that might also make her the Last Templar! Having got her to put the costume on, (she looks adorable btw), I didn't think it would be a good idea to confuse matters.

Current Mood: creative

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Well, the receipt for ABNA arrived today, so they have my files and I am in. Around about the 12th November I should hear if the content and format are all in order. If they aren't there will be some severe kicking of myself going on, but there's nothing I can do there now. My husband is so supportive. He's all on cloud nine now as he told me to sub to ABNA as soon as it came up, which I did, and the next morning all the places had gone. Good, good husband, with lots of faith. :D Let's hope its rewarded!

The whole thing got me thinking about submissions and all the rest. My focus has definitely shifted back to novels of late. I keep intending to sub to anthos or particulary markets, but at the same time the broader canvas just seems to beckon. Now I am talking about writing to write, not writing to be published which are two very different things. I'm not big on writing to be published as a rule. The story or poem usually comes off as contrived. We see it all the time at Haruah. The "literary" part gets ignored and you end up with in your face point thumping which really irritates me. I want to read a story, experience something along with the characters, get lost in the lyricism of a beautiful poem. Not a lecture.

That said, when it comes to anthologies, you need to follow the guidelines. (When it comes to ANY submission, you need to follow the guidelines!) But I have noticed that most of the ones I have looked at recently are actually pretty broad, leaving it to the writer to create, which is what writers should do best.

I really must get back to doing some Flash challenges, or Short Story challenges soon. I need to get cracking on The Wolf's Sister and try to tie it back together after the extremely useful LH crits. Lots to think about there, but it was well worth doing. Thank you to all who looked! Sorry it was so long.

Moving ahead with To Regain Heaven. Nearly at the end of Chapter 7 now. First crits back in on Chapter 1. Lots to do I guess. If only I could shift the headcold I could stop using it as an excuse! One of my problems with gaging the length is that I write longhand and then have to type it up. I can be MUCH further along with what I have written than with typing (part of the way through chapter 3 I think) because writing is more fun than typing and typing quickly turns into editing. And that way madness lies.

I was about 7,000 on the laptop. But I estimate about 17,000 longhand (by counting pages, and having an average word per page). Really should type more, shouldn't I?

A lot of people don't like getting early crits on a WIP, but I do. It helps me to gage where it is going and what else I need to bring out in the story. Of course, you really need people to understand that the piece is a very early draft - they type of thing you could only show to those you trust. That doesn't always work I guess, but on the whole I am lucky with my crit group.

I have a couple of pieces out, a couple of things to prepare for sending out, and one or two to go "What am I going to do with this?"

Then Moy Tura. Hmmm.... There really aren't enough hours in the day, are there?

Anyway, enough waffling on for now. There's cataloguing to be done. Yes, in Italian! Yay!

Current Mood: content

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and I have a headcold. And I don't want to have to trawl the internet anymore and all my books are at home and and and...

If you were going to defend your house against an attack by Dark Sidhe, what would you do?

No, I'm serious. It's a plot point. I know about iron, and apparently straw dipped in holy water, lanterns etc. I'm trying to find any others and ways of deploying them - logically. In a way that would not look silly. One thought I had was iron filings mixed with milk - they like it when you leave out milk. Any other devious ideas folks?

R

Current Mood: devious

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Ooks all round. Today I go to the Library Ireland 2007 exhibition in the RDS.

So its all likely to be a bit of this!

And a whole lot of this:

God. I hope there's that much free stuff.

But more likely, given it is the Irish version it will pretty much be this:

http://www.keyevents.ie/Library_ireland_floorplan.pdf

Wow, do we know how to publicize our events here!

So, all gearing up, leaving in two hours. Hyper excited of course. Hopefully I will get at least a canvas tote bag or a free pen from someone! Oo, and brochures. Lots of brochures (they make great draft excluders)

Seriously though, isn't it sad that the librarian in me does get excited at things like this.

On the writing front, I'm up to Chapter 5 of the first draft of To Regain Heaven. Yay! It actually seems to be going somewhere.

So, on to libraryland! Ook!
R

Current Mood: ecstatic

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but given the new people in the novel group on NB, I have been reviewing Moy Tura Echoes and have come to a scary conclusion. It might be too short!

I can't say for sure. (At the moment it certainly is but that's because I only have a first draft from long ago and scatty notes). But the chapters are short for me. The pace is pretty quick. Things are happening at the moment at a rate of knots (or nots, of naughts, not sure how to spell that). And and and...

Ok, it probably is paranoia. I can make it as long as I need to. I can go back and expand on earlier chapters. I can give more background, history etc. There is one thing people rarely mention when writing: that is, how daunting a novel can be. I've completed two (four if you count A Dream of the West as the trilogy it probably is). They never seemed as difficult as this one. Am I putting more into Moy Tura than I did into the others? Well A Dream of the West only took four years to get into a full draft (which I thought was ready - foolish me!) and The Penitent is just a weird book in that it flowed (much as To Regain Heaven appears to be doing - hope I don't jinx it by saying that). True, I have three major WIPs on the go right now, but I always wrote other things in tandem before. I think its a harder novel to write. But why?

"Real life" setting - it can be hard to bring in that much reality without starting to fact-check constantly.

The concepts involved - sometimes I think I have them all worked out, sometimes I reread and go either "huh?" or "did I write that?" and my favorite so far "how on earth did you ever think THAT would work?"

The characters - often refuse to do what they are told and come up with their own ideas - I am not kidding! I can see why I portray them as belligerant, self-centred and just plain stubborn - THEY ARE!

Arrghhhghhghhh.... *pause for deep breath*

I need to take a step back again and look at the "overview" (there isn't one of course, but there are some scribbled notes somewhere. I have a plan, I tell you. I have a plan.)

Racing on with To Regain Heaven - into Chapter 4. Also a bit on the short side. I seem to be writing short chapters these days. But as long as the story wants to flow I will let it do so and worry about making it work later.

Hmm, maybe that's what I need to do with Moy Tura as well. So frustrating.

R

Current Mood: frustrated

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Seriously. It's a lot better, but the cautionary tale for all is when you have a niggly cough for a long time do go and get it sorted out by your GP and don't think it will go away by itself because it won't. It'll hang around and irritate your chest until you can't get rid of it, can't breathe properly and pass out if you do too much.

I got back to work yesterday and was generally met with people going "Are you sure you're ok?"

I did a fair bit of editing last night, taking a pen to both The Wolf's Sister and Old Friends. Having taken them apart, I hope to try slotting them back together this evening. I will also be writing more of the romance - tentatively titled To Regain Heaven. Moy Tura Echoes is getting some fresh critting on NB and seems to be going down well - yay! People like the way I write Maeve, which is worrying, to say the least. :D She's not nice.

Now I am off to do a crit (or part of a crit) before my tea break is over. Then it is back to cataloguing Italian Mariology books which came in from the Marianum. I now have really useful phrases if I ever get back to Italy such as "La Vergine Madre nella Chiesa delle Origini" and "Nuove prospettive della mariologia". Yay!

On the other hand, I don't have to move around much, so not much chance of unconsciousness. :D

It will get better. It isn't permanent. I can already feel improvement. Honest!

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Grazie Guardian

A busy weekend...

Bedtime!

Random things

So briefly

A break in the writing.

Argh!

Look! 'Sme!

New story

No witty title today!

Because I'm stuck!

National Libraryland Day!

This might just be paranoia

Kind of able to breathe again

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