The Scribbler

 All right, I'm ready to admit it: Ephemera hasn't been turning out the way I planned.

My writing voice is way off mark. The plot is moving too slowly. I have all these little details I feel like I *have* to include, but because of that, everything's getting too spaced out. And I'm critical to the point that when I do editing, I'm marking down every word in every sentence except for the occasional "he" or "the" for rewriting.

I'm not taking a hiatus, but I am taking a breather for a few more days. I need to regroup and figure out how to tackle the mess I've written for myself. Ephemera will update as usual, but I'm going to be considering new takes on what I've got.

In other news: the first three bits of Naia's Tower are being edited by a friend, and depending on what he says, the series might get released in the next few weeks. I've also begun writing another storyline (I know, I know, I'm ridiculous about adding new projects; but I've got other things I've been writing since before I started the Scribblery as well, so this is just how I operate) called "PsychoActive", which I'm planning to create as a comic script and submit to Dark Horse Comics. Hey, you never know what you'll get if you don't try, right?

I signed up with a couple social networking sites, and  I'm going to do a bit of redesign on how I present Ephemera so that it's easier to read. I need to make sure to write up Bailey's bio to post tomorrow, and I want to redo Emiree's picture (and maybe Az's too), using some techniques I've been learning from an anatomy book I got from the library yesterday.

I think that's pretty much all the news that's worth mention. We'll see where things go from here!

Yep, it's that time again!

It had never occurred to him that she might move forward to pursue him. Suddenly she was propped over him, her hand heavy on his arm. Every breath was on his face now, and her eyes were inescapable, searching his blank face up and down. Playing with a smile, she hummed a purr - “Wouldn't ya rather I kept you comp'ny here, anyway?” Her fingertips ran up his arm and pressed against his good shoulder, waiting for invitation to go further.   Azrael felt his pulse quicken, and his breath catch in his chest. Responsive to her touch, he felt a shiver running down the back of his neck and all through his body - but his heart felt like a stiff lump in his chest, and he couldn't have pulled further back against his pillows if he tried. Answer, find an answer-- damn it, why wasn't his brain working! Unable to think of anything eloquent or cohesive or tactful, he gathered his breath and babbled out whatever words would come into his mind.   “Not to sound ungracious,” Azrael rushed, suppressing a rising panic as he imagined the thousands of ways this proposition could go wrong, was already so wrong, could only get worse – imagine if her father came in, right now! “But I'm not... not interested?”   The rising note at the end had been a mistake. He watched Bailey's face slacken in insult, then scrunch with anger. She bent her mouth into a scowl, straightening to her knees and thrusting her hands on her hips. “Are ya, or are ya not?” She demanded. “Y'don't seem awfully sure of yerself, and I'd rather get an answer than a wonder!”

Want to read more? WELL TOO BAD.


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Oh well fine. The full text is available for reading here!

 Tired as hell right now, and still have 500 words to write for Ephemera + 500 for Naia's Tower, but I thought I'd take a second to give a full update on my work.


EPHEMERA
Fully written through: chapter 5
Chapter 4 edits: 70% complete (down to 7,900 words, two red-marks to write in, 20+ yellow marks to revise, needs outside revisions)
Chapter 6 writing: ~4 transitions to fill (up to 10,101 words)
Chapters 7,8,9 writing: outlined 70% (7,009 words between all three chapters; may combine 7 and 8, and restructure planned chapters 10 and 11 to be 9).


NAIA'S TOWER
Fully written through: episode 1, part 1
Episode 1, Part 2 writing: ~3 transitions to fill (up to 2,806 words)
Episode 1, Part 3 writing: ~1 transition to fill (up to 2,741 words)
Episode 2 writing: 100% outlined (3,002 words).
Episode 3 outline: barely started.


And there you go! You know exactly where I'm at with everything right now. I'm trying to crank out the remaining words for the day (since I'm still trying to catch up on backlog, I don't want to fall even further behind... urk!), but given that I want to be in bed RIGHT NOW, I might have to throw in the towel for the day. Alas!

(Oh, and for anyone interested: Tatiana, the kitty that went into surgery, is recovering well. We found out that the tumor was benign - huzzah!)

 Oof... what a hellish couple of days. As if it weren't bad enough that I managed to get my days and nights switched (and then fixed on Friday, and then switched on Monday... it shouldn't be so natural to be awake all night, but it is for me), one of our  cats, Tatiana, got a fast-growing tumor on her belly, which had to be removed. She's been put into my room so that the other cats won't mess things up while she's recouperating. The poor girl pulled her stitches last night, so she's going to have to go back to the vet's today.

Now, I love Tat. She's a marvelous, loving, affectionate and beautiful Maine Coon girl, and I enjoy her company dearly. However, it is impossible to type when she's around. She demands to be on my stomach while I'm reclining, or my lap if I'm sitting; which is, y'know, where I need my laptop to be so that I can write. So I'm left with only a few options; I can leave the room and try to find somewhere else to write, I can continually kick her off my lap (but very very carefully and slowly, because I don't want to aggravate her injury), or I can give up, put on Hulu, and let her be happy.

As you could probably expect, I've take the course of least resistance for a while, and watched more episodes of King of the Hill and American Dad than I ever anticipated I'd actually have the patience to absorb.

So, I've begun falling behind on my writing. It's not so bad, though; I'm just one day behind on Ephemera, two days on the second series (working title is Naia's Tower, but who knows if that'll stick?). If I had the proper inspiration, I could probably make it up in a day - assuming I have room on my lap. Here's hoping for today to be lucky! I'll be updating with a teaser tomorrow!

 Aha. Fool that I am, I decided that I'd take a day off of writing to set my sleeping schedule back to rights. Spent a day or so in a haze, and now I have work to make up - but little motivation. Whoops!

So, while I'm about 55% of the way through my 2,000 words for Ephemera (and 0% through my goal for the second series... eesh), watching the clock tick away to the 2 am switch to Daylight Savings and wondering how the hell I'm going to get this all done in time to get to sleep at a decent hour tonight, I feel the need to take a break and make a new journal entry. My work ethic = AWESOME.

Today, I am going to talk about my writing method.

Right now, Ephemera is basically what I do. I schedule a certain number of words that I have to complete in a day; some days, I can get this done in about an hour and a half, and others, it can take upwards of eight hours for me to sort out all that I want to write. I rarely go over it, mostly because I have a fetish for round numbers and I HATE looking at a word count that doesn't approximate around 500 or 1,000 word; if I do go over it, even just by 100 words, I either need to write 400 more to bring it up to snuff, cut out enough words to get it JUST under, or I turn off the computer, go to do something, and am immediately struck with idea after idea after idea.

Because I work based  off of word count (as compared to sane writing ideas like, oh, set hours, or "whenever I feel like it"), a lot of my writing is organized. For example: when I start a new chapter, I fill in the text with three words:

[beginning]

[middle]

[end]

Just like that. Then, as I get ideas for what scenes I want to write and where they fall in the chapter, I begin to fill out this outline further with one-word cues. When I'm motivated to write a scene, I write it just as far as I feel like; filling this out gives me ideas for what the lead-up to the scene would be, and the follow-up, so I write in cues for that.

Eventually, I'm stuck with a huge chunk of text that is nearing my 7,000 word goal, and usually upwards of 15 unwritten scenes or parts of scenes (I just call them "transitions") that I am utterly unmotivated to write. This is usually when I call the chapter in its mid-progress stage; I try to always have one chapter that I'm actively editing, one chapter "resting" (i.e., unedited but waiting in the queue), one chapter at mid-progress, and one chapter I'm just beginning. This gives me a nice rotation to work through, so that while I try to do at least half of my words on the mid-progress chapter, I can let loose on the chapter I'm just beginning, and work on the chapter I'm editing when I'm stewing things over for the other two.

So far, I think this has been working pretty well. We'll know for sure when we see the reaction to chapter 4. I'm due to start editing that sometime in the next week; I uh, honestly haven't started because I keep all the chapters in a series in the same document while I'm working on them, and aforementioned "number fetish" keeps me from chopping words out while I'm still working on chapter 6. :D; Eheh.  

For the record, chapter 4 has about 10k words pre-editing; this is about normal for me, and I'll be aiming to eliminated 2-3k of those once I dig into editing. I generally keep editing right up until the time I release the chapter - I always change a few words as I go through coding the text onto the website, to give you an idea - so it's a long process for me, and one I've yet to be satisfied with.

So, there you go! The Scribbler writing methodology. I wonder what other ways people organize their writing?

In acting class, I was always told: "It's better to put in too much than too little. If you're throwing yourself into it too much, a director can tell you to pull back; but if you're putting in too little, it's harder to push you into putting in more."

It stuck with me - maybe a little too much. As I've been writing Ephemera, I've had the same challenge over and over again - [i]pull back[/i]. It doesn't mean producing a poorer product, it means consolidating it, finding what is necessary to communicate and taking out what is not, and presenting a finished piece that is relevant and powerful.

Chapter 3 is going to follow the course of Chapters 1 and 2, I'm afraid. Not because I think those chapters are terrible - they need work, sure, but they've got a lot of intensity, and I'm proud of a lot of things in them. But if I could, I'd pull both of them, consolidate the three chapters back down to the single chapter I'd originally outlined them to be, and have a hugely better product for it.

That's for the final manuscript, though; tonight, I'm celebrating.

I've made huge strides as a writer in the less-than-a-month since I started the project, more than I've probably made in the past three years of quieter pursuits. I can recognize my competence, and I can recognize my incompetence; I can see it in others, as well. I've made a few great new friends already (Mondo: thank you so much for your help and support with improvement, especially with editing! Jay: you've been a great support as I've been trying to find my footing in the writing community, and made me feel accepted and ready to continue!), and strengthened some great friendships with others (Cerena: I'm so excited for you, and I want to thank you so much for helping me to do this! Pales: you've been absolutely supportive every step of the way, and I could never tell you how much your friendship means to me!); I'm feeling more at home among the different forums I've stepped into, and have been eagerly learning more about the business of writing, both as an online self-publisher and a hopeful someday-publishee.

This coming Friday, the third chapter of Ephemera will go live, and I'm treating it like the end of the debut. I've got so much to work on, and I feel like I need to apply myself harder than ever. So to everyone who has encouraged me, supported me, and especially reviewed me - thank you so, so much. Cheers!

 Well, today was the first day I had a car run out of gas on me. This sort of thing is inherently unfair, due to the fact that I DON'T EVEN HAVE A DRIVER'S LICENSE (I like my feet just fine, kthx) - but nonetheless, it was the case when my mother and I were doing some grocery shopping for my grandmother today.

We were an hour late to get started, and my mother was pressed for time - we had to get prescriptions for my mother, go somewhere else for my grandmother's prescriptions, grab dinner, swing by my grandmother's, go to her specific store, run back to give her the groceries, go pick up my dad at the shop, and then finally go home. At the beginning of this trip, my mother notes we're low on gas. I tell her, "all right, so after we get your prescription, there's a gas station on the way to Target - we'll get it there".

She drives by it.

We get my grandmother's prescriptions, walk to a nearby sushi place to eat, and get back in the car. "Aren't we still low on gas?" I asked. "Yeah," my mom said, "but we ought to keep going."

We get to Nana's house, and get her shopping list. Get to the store - shopping takes about half an hour. As we're leaving the store, I remind her again - "We need gas...."

We drive to my grandmother's house without stopping for gas. It takes us only one trip apiece to get all the groceries in - we're late picking up my dad from work. We make hasty goodbyes, head out to the car--

And of course, it doesn't start.

We try a couple things, they don't work. We try to call my sister (the only other person in the family with a car), she doesn't pick up. My mom threatens to call Triple A, but I tell her it's fine - I'll just get some gas for us.

Cue me walking to the gas station in two-inch heeled boots, dropping $4 on gas and a $9 canister to carry it in, and dragging it all the way back. It was leaking, I'm damn sure - my hands and clothes still reek. I'd just gotten this damn jacket cleaned, too.

But I get it back. At which point, we find that the attendent screwed the cap on improperly, and not even with fifteen minutes of battling it between the two of us can we get it open. Did I mention, it had started raining during the walk? Yeah, it started raining.

My mom's on the verge of tears by this point, and swearing up and down that she's going to call Triple A. But she decides she'll try my sister again first -- who I can tell picked up, because my mother just starts wailing into the phone.

Long story short, my sister picks up my dad, who does his Manly Thang and gets the damned canister open. We get home, Mom goes to bed... and I look at the clock, now reading 11 PM, and say "shit, I have 2,000 words to write today still!"

Sigh. Oh life, are you always so adventurous, or am I just special this week?

For twenty-four hours, I had a dog.

This entailed that for twenty-four hours, I did nothing BUT have a dog, of course; I'm now two days behind on my writing, because these twenty-four hours meant I didn't get any sleep on one night. But oh, what glorious lack of sleep!

Her name, as we later found out, was Hershey. She was a beautiful Husky girl, with milky blue eyes, that made trouble when she got out of her yard about four houses down from ours. We didn't know her owners, but we nabbed her off the street when she ran out in front of my sister's car.

In the time we had her, she:

* Escaped five times.
* Whined and scratched at my door sixteen times.
* Howled seven times.
* Broke into my room once.
* Ate my garbage once.
* Slept inside in my bathroom with my sister on the floor with her once.
* Scared the living daylight out of ten cats.
* Went crazy barking at dogs on walks three times.
* Threw up kibble four times.
* Ate said partially digested kibble twice.
* Marked her territory twelve times.
* Played ball three times.
* Played with the frisbee zero times... but got hit in the face once while I tried to teach her.

It was a busy, busy twenty-four hours, as you can see. In the end, the kids living next to us were able to identify her and show us where her owner lived - and even though they weren't immediately home, my mother scrounged up a neighborhood phone list from two years back and we managed to call the owner, who came by to pick her up.

One of the things I'll remember best about this experience was my mother immediately after we got in contact with the owner. We were walking the sidewalk toward our house while she talked on her cell phone with the owner, Hershey pacing alongside. I was holding the leash then, like I had at every point in the walk before that point - but, putting down the phone and looking to me with a smile of relief and triumph, my mom cleared her hands, held out a palm, and said, "Okay, well, now that we know the owner's coming...."

I laughed and passed the leash over to her, and ran inside to find a quick bite to eat (since I'd woken up, gone to check on Hershey, and immediately wound up taking her for a walk, I was starving by that time in the afternoon). When I came out, I found that my mother was a decent ways down the street with Hershey - just far enough that my poor eyes saw the outlines of both, colored brightly, but without the details. She'd gotten Hershey to sit, and just as I was watching over, bent over to scratch the Husky's chest affectionately. I remembered all the stories that my mother ever told me, about the pets of her past - Sherry, the big St. Bernard, was the first to come to mind. It was surprising how touchingly in tune she was with the canine kind, especially since we're such a big cat family. It was very meaningful,  that moment where I watched her when she was alone with the dog. A side I rarely get to see of her.

***

Well, in any case; that's my excuse. I'm doing 2,000 words a day for a few days to catch up on the backlog of writing. I finished the last few gaps in Chapter 4 today, and have begun to ready for outlining Chapter 7. Did some edits for Chapter 3 as well; I think I'm going to cut down on some excess monologuing, and really try to add in a bit more direct conflict to help pull the chapter together for a satisfying conclusion to the Arrogance installments, before I move on to the next series (which, for those curious, will be the Envy series).

I'm also contemplating launching a second series, though I've been warned against it until after school's started; even if I keep a buffer of a month of updates, I could be setting myself up for trouble if I pick too many responsibilities (hence why I'm updating biweekly even though I can probably  be producing weekly right now; the free time I have is going away in a month or so). If I do go ahead with this second series, it will be more episodic than plot-based, and would update once or twice weekly with smaller installments than Ephemera does. In its conception, it take place in more of a Dark Ages/Medieval-based period fantasy world, but I'm also tempted to make it a modern-day or even futuristic piece, to sort of spread out the ideas I can pull into it and open it up to different audiences.

Any thoughts out there? I'd love to hear 'em! Otherwise, it's about 1:40 am, and I should *not* be awake. Good night, all!

 Hm. Maybe using a teaser last week wasn't such a great idea... now I don't have anything to post that wouldn't give away plot or get into the best scenes, and the chapter's actually up!

If you want to check it out, you can read it at my main website:

http://www.thescribblery.com/ephemera/arrogance02.html


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