Main

May 27, 2004

ahhh, love

HA HA HA I AM MAKING THE MAIN CHARACTERS FALL IN LOVE!!!!1!!1!

I love it when a plan comes together.

Finally something for Kaiji's tattoos to do!

Really. It'll all make sense. Someday.

Twenty-One rewritten and clocking in at 10 pages (the new standard for chapters). Twenty-Two started. I gotta sleep now. It's late even for me.

Posted by sdshaver at 03:17 AM

May 25, 2004

the way you shake, shake, shake

Chapter Twenty-One done -- it includes a bath house visit! (GemStone III players -- rejoice!)

Also, I made chocolate coconut macaroons. And falafel. And a kinda-nasty eggplant pasta with cream cheese and white wine. It was good until the white wine. Waaaay too acidic. Needed to use something else (like broth or butter or plain ol' water and salt).

Holding off on remix for the moment. Got some steam for 21 and 22, and I'm running with it.

I now know the terrible things they did to her. And admittedly, I'm a little angry at them.

Bad characters.

Posted by sdshaver at 01:11 AM

May 24, 2004

peel away the skin

What a great time to rediscover "Skin" by Oingo Boingo. It pretty much sums up exactly where I am in the story. It was on an old mix tape I'd forgotten about. Yay for old mix tapes!

Wrote some in Twenty-One, but it's been a long month, and I'm tired. Working on defining the main characters more. Will be attended to in rewrites. They're crystallizing, which is nice. Kaiji is not just Erim with tattoos anymore. I swear this will all make sense someday. I hope.

Little cat says: "It's bedtime, nyan!" So to bed I go.

Special limited time only bonus: "Skin" mp3. From the Best o' Boingo CD. If you love 80s pop and Danny Elfman and don't own at least one Boingo CD, you...uh, well, you need to have your head examined.

Posted by sdshaver at 01:38 AM

May 22, 2004

ballad of fallen Angels

As I told a friend: "Well, that officially frees up an hour of time a week for me."

In the wake of the shockwave of seeing Angel end, the first thing I thought was: "Wait...it's over? WHOA."

And the second thought was: "GodDAMN. THAT is how Buffy should have gone out."

Remember last season, when we all thought the whole Jasmine storyline was stupid and Connor was a whiny little bitch who needed to be shipped off to Siberia? When Evil Cordy/Good Cordy made us all scream and fling pillows at our TVs? It really says something about a writing team when they can resucitate a series that had fallen so far, and return with their best. season. evah. Don't believe me? Watch the reruns. In spite of one or two blemishes (what was up with the WWII sub episode, eh?), this season was the best they've turned out. And the restoration of Connor and Cordelia was awesome, and Fred's transformation was awesome, and the final episode was not only awesome, it was fan-fucking-tastic.

And I'm sorry it's gone. It's like seeing an old lover grab his hat and head for the door. But better that he leave with me sprawled on the bed and wanting more, than me throwing my shoes at him and screaming for him to get the hell out.

For those of you still with us after that bizarre analogy....

Next week is the last week of my weekend working. And after that, I get a loooong weekend off. During which I will clean my house, cook my meals, and finally, finally get some writing done. Which is good, because I've started talking to myself as Myr/Erim/Kaiji in lieu of writing, and that's just weird.

For now, I bid goodnight to the Whedonverse, and look forward to its eventual return, in one form or another.

Posted by sdshaver at 12:27 AM

May 17, 2004

chapter one remix

Re-read chapter one, and was actually pleased with what I've written. Have started the remix and will move on to two from there.

Working weekends has made it rough to write, but I'm doing what I can. It's entirely possible, though, that between Spain, brown belt testing, and all this overtime I won't get back to a "normal" writing schedule until August.

Such is my life.

On another note, we (my friends and me, not the Royal "we") went to City Museum. It was fun, and a nice change for my wee little brain.

Posted by sdshaver at 07:29 PM

May 14, 2004

backfill

Long time no blog....

Basically, took a week (or so) off to let the story percolate in my head. Discovered today that I'm somewhat burned out due to work. It's affecting everything. Aikido, writing, housework. I was fine with the pace until they made me start working Saturdays. That leaves me one day to prepare the week's meals and get housekeeping/groundskeeping done. One house, one Steph. If I had a roommate or a husband I might be able to manage it, but I don't, so it all falls on me.

Anyway.

I decided that I'm going to be backfilling for the rest of the month; gonna go into Chapters 1-20 and flesh them out, weed through and fix any problems I find. The horses have changed names lots of times, I've discovered; I really need to build a flowchart of who rides what and who looks like what -- heh heh heh. I also need to give character to the characters who are not the focus, which leads to the decision that....

Erim is going to become the third character, which is good. I've written about four pages with him so far and he's a bastard, and this is good, because I like bastards, and you all know that, la la la la.

I seem to have a thing for two-guys-one-girl stories. All the ideas for Kitsu rest on that sacred tripod. Hm. Something to ponder, I guess.

I need sleep.

And sleep I shall get.

Posted by sdshaver at 02:01 AM

May 10, 2004

collaborate, collaborate

It's easy to take for granted the permanency of the Internet.

I was realizing this evening that I really wish I could read over the script from the 1994 Fantasy Worlds Festival production of "Free Amazons of Gor". Then I also realized that it was typed up before the WWW had come into its own, and that the script never saw a web page or an archive, and has very likely completely vanished. Such a shame.

I was Amazon #2, for the record. It was a fantastic show. Standing ovation. The damn songs still haunt my head.

Posted by sdshaver at 11:11 PM

May 05, 2004

contemplation

Here at the halfway point, I have to pause and consider my next plan of attack.

I know I have to write backfill and introduce a third perspective (Erim's). This will turn him into a more significant presence, which may be necessary as he is the insider/outsider who will make fleshing out the world more...natural.

Up to this point Erim's just been a tagalong and relatively pointless. In my head he's a high school quarterback with enough brains to know he's in a tricky situation, but he's not much more than that. I have to develop on that, or eliminate the character altogether.

I have considered doing something insane and starting Part II from the beginning of Part I -- but I think that would just drive people nuts, and I don't think there's enough differentiation and momentum in Erim's story to do that. So, that probably won't happen. But I did think about it....

...and in the future I may want to write a story in that vein. It's not an original idea, but there is a certain appeal and trickiness to it that I would enjoy working with. The problem is that -- for me -- it needs to be something I'm aware of from the start of the novel, and not something I do midstream. The flow of this story is that each paragraph follows the previous chronologically.

It's very straightforward, but I think it works (in this case).

So, that's where my brain is at. Sorry for the wall o' text. I'm drawing up battle plans, and it always feels good to spill them out somewhere.

Oh, and I'm going to Spain in July.

Posted by sdshaver at 02:15 PM