Writing Stuff
May. 14th, 2012 08:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chocolatepotI finally finished my mom's book and reviewed it on Amazon. I had been getting caught up in pepper-jack-cheesey things like the protagonist's interest in/knowledge of architecture and her preoccupation with plucking eyebrows (okay, she mentioned it twice), but I'm pretty sure that nobody else would be distracted by them. Overall, it was a fun read.
My own short story's made me $14 so far, which is nice considering that it was never going to be traditionally published. I'm pretty sure nothing I write except maybe academic things someday (hopefully) is ever going to appear in bound book form, and I don't really mind anymore. I used to be in a very Emily-of-New-Moon mindset, wanting to be Accepted by Editors, a writer before anything else, but when I wasn't paying attention my priorities changed. I'd like to write more than I do these days, but the trouble is that I can't sew one day and write the next and then switch back, I have to devote myself to a single type of creative energy. This is why I still haven't finished a cardigan I started ... gosh, over a year and a half ago, I think. I started sewing those blue stays when I was nearly done with it and have been sewing pretty much ever since. The couple of weeks when I wrote A Worthy Attachment I don't think I was able to do any sewing.
Anyway, I haven't got anything else finished or near-finished, unfortunately. Well, I do have the last NaNo I did, 2008 - it's fantasy Regency and fairly silly. I need to reread it to see whether or not it hangs together, but I'm slightly nervous that it's going to be so incredibly terrible I won't be able to deal with the excruciating embarrassment.
For NaNo this year, I want to go back to an earlier one, either 2005 or 2006, and rewrite it. 2005 only got to 2,869 words; it was (going to be) an Edwardian Mairelon-the-Magician-ish thing with a vaudeville soprano heroine and a love interest/hero who is a real magician and from a very wealthy family but who's pretending to be a stage magician/comedian while searching for some MacGuffin. I had a dense outline written in a notebook somewhere that I don't remember. I'd like to move it into the 1910s and keep it vaudeville, or change it to burlesque. Then on the other hand there's my 2006 story, which completely captured me and I'm still somewhat obsessed with; it managed to get to 31,057 words, and I have a whole trilogy planned out. The first book was set in the early 1910s, the second was WWI, and the third was the early 1920s (and you see now why I love Downtown Abbey so very, very much). The main trouble with it was that I didn't have enough planned, I think - there was an overarching potential plot about (the heroine) Ophelia's uncles trying to do some huge nefarious magic thing, but I'm really really bad at that sort of thing and wasn't sure what to do with it. Even then, I was tired of "doing it all to overthrow the king just because" plots. I was really far more interested in Ophelia's relationships withDickon the kind and understanding stableboy and Colin the whiny rich boy being magic-study fostered, finding out about her scandalous birth, and the sudden change in her circumstances when her power is discovered.
My own short story's made me $14 so far, which is nice considering that it was never going to be traditionally published. I'm pretty sure nothing I write except maybe academic things someday (hopefully) is ever going to appear in bound book form, and I don't really mind anymore. I used to be in a very Emily-of-New-Moon mindset, wanting to be Accepted by Editors, a writer before anything else, but when I wasn't paying attention my priorities changed. I'd like to write more than I do these days, but the trouble is that I can't sew one day and write the next and then switch back, I have to devote myself to a single type of creative energy. This is why I still haven't finished a cardigan I started ... gosh, over a year and a half ago, I think. I started sewing those blue stays when I was nearly done with it and have been sewing pretty much ever since. The couple of weeks when I wrote A Worthy Attachment I don't think I was able to do any sewing.
Anyway, I haven't got anything else finished or near-finished, unfortunately. Well, I do have the last NaNo I did, 2008 - it's fantasy Regency and fairly silly. I need to reread it to see whether or not it hangs together, but I'm slightly nervous that it's going to be so incredibly terrible I won't be able to deal with the excruciating embarrassment.
For NaNo this year, I want to go back to an earlier one, either 2005 or 2006, and rewrite it. 2005 only got to 2,869 words; it was (going to be) an Edwardian Mairelon-the-Magician-ish thing with a vaudeville soprano heroine and a love interest/hero who is a real magician and from a very wealthy family but who's pretending to be a stage magician/comedian while searching for some MacGuffin. I had a dense outline written in a notebook somewhere that I don't remember. I'd like to move it into the 1910s and keep it vaudeville, or change it to burlesque. Then on the other hand there's my 2006 story, which completely captured me and I'm still somewhat obsessed with; it managed to get to 31,057 words, and I have a whole trilogy planned out. The first book was set in the early 1910s, the second was WWI, and the third was the early 1920s (and you see now why I love Downtown Abbey so very, very much). The main trouble with it was that I didn't have enough planned, I think - there was an overarching potential plot about (the heroine) Ophelia's uncles trying to do some huge nefarious magic thing, but I'm really really bad at that sort of thing and wasn't sure what to do with it. Even then, I was tired of "doing it all to overthrow the king just because" plots. I was really far more interested in Ophelia's relationships with
