8 posts tagged “muses”

Sometimes muses can be a pain.  They interrupt my thoughts in the midst of uni reading, essay writing, revision, exams, driving, work; name a time when I cannot write and they will demand that I write anyway. 

But sometimes, sometimes they are a blessing, more beautiful than a kitten playing with a butterfly (assuming, that is, the kitten doesn't eat the butterfly. That's less beautiful). 

In my last post I wrote about not being able to find words.  And then what happens?

Bunia slides into my mind, slips her fingers into mine, and I write just over a thousand words of her journal (reaching the 14th's target) and am left with a reasonable sense of where it is going. 

I have a sneaking suspicion that I will finish the journal entries during Nano, and that I will then begin Bunia's novel.  But I don't mind.  Writing about her is a joy. 

It's nice to know that she's happy enough in my head to help me out like this.  *smiles*

I am a little annoyed with the Nano counters I used in my previous posts.  I'd hoped they would continue to show my word count at the time I posted them but they actually update to show my current wordcount, which right now is...

10,115 words

Understandably, I am quite happy about this fact.  I fell behind yesterday, writing only 300 words to bring me to a total of 5,734.  This morning, lying in bed and feeling proud for waking up at 9.30, I finished the first draft of the longer, still-nameless D'sil story.  Then I wrote a whole chapter of PAINTED ANGELS.  But while working on PA, something... interesting... happened. 

Bunia prodded me.  I've been growing quickly used to this, so I was about to brush her aside in favour of Trifmara, but Bunia held her ground.  She informed me that when I write her novel, I should post it in a seperate vox account under her name, and that I should get said account right now before someone else steals her name. 

Sighing, I complied, and you can find the account - HERE!

I returned to PA, then I ate some dinner, and at the end of the PA chapter found myself less than 500 words from the target I had set myself of reaching 10k.  I decided to start penning a piece for On the Premises 1, but I was a mere paragraph into the story when Bunia smoothly stepped in my path with another declaration. 

While she accepts that I won't be starting on her novel any time soon (though I suspect I will be starting it sooner than I originally intended), she said that I should use the journal to write journal entries of what happens between TANSU and the novel.  Sighing once more, I was forced to comply.  The journal entry is in her blog, friends-locked.  To my delight it knocked me over my 10k target.

All in all, I am feeling quite satisfied with my Sunday.  I have a written a lot, and I even managed to fit in some university reading too.  Bunia is happy too, which certainly makes my life easier. 

Nano was definitely a good idea.  I haven't felt this productive in far too long. 

So far, so good, and that's up to the early hours of this morning.  I haven't written any in what I really consider today - I need to do some uni work first before I get stuck back into my story.  Aside from what I mentioned in my previous post, I've only been working on the longer D'sil story, currently untitled, and I intend to continue doing so until a first draft of it is complete because I headed back over to the website of the anthology I will submit it to and found that the deadline is earlier than I remembered: 15th December, not sometime in January.  Fortunately I know pretty much exactly what will happen - not the exact specifics of who says what, but a lot more than just bones - so I shouldn't have any trouble completing this.

Adding icing to the cake, Bunia has been nudging me.  About a week ago, or maybe less, Bunia and D'sil informed me by way of coy glances at each other that they wish to be in a novel together.  And here I thought their worlds were seperate!  Well, not any more, and I intend to write a novel in which Bunia goes on a quest to find an exciting piece of furniture and in which D'sil does.... stuff.  I don't know what yet.  So, with my attention focused on D'sil, Bunia has been getting a bit excited.  She is quite a vocal muse, but she needs to understand that I can't work on her novel yet because a) I have other things to do, like finish Painted Angels, and b) I don't really know what's going to happen in her novel.

Hopefully she will be temporarily placated by the extra bit of work I intend to put into her short story, Tansu, before sending it away to Fantasy magazine of the gorgeous covers.  I received some wonderful critique from the Lady of Buns and when I gain a greater lead over my Nano target I'll make the changes.  I aim to have sent Tansu away within a week's time. 

Yesterday, on kind of a whim, I decided to send off Digital Dialogue, a 600-word short story told only in dialogue that I wrote for an informal contest, to this magazine.  If it earns a string of rejections, or if a magazine gives me a personal rejection saying that it should be more than just dialogue, then I'll add non-dialogue narrative; at the moment I can't be bothered, and I don't see the harm in sending the thing off in the meantime.  I quite like it as just dialogue, anyway, but I suppose rejections will probably change my mind. 

Right. 

Must stop procrastinating, must get some uni reading done, and then I can get on with more Nano-ing!  And at some point I need to do some beta-ing.  I have fallen very far behind on that.  My apologies to Rhi, and also to the other two lovely ladies (who almost certainly won't be reading this blog, but heh); I will get round to it eventually. 

Something I've noticed about the world of science fiction and fantasy is an aspiration among some to strive for something noble and grand, to say something profound in their work.  Take, for instance, this extract from the submission guidelines to Asimov's Science Fiction magazine:

"A good overview would be to consider that all fiction is written to examine or illuminate some aspect of human existence, but that in science fiction the backdrop you work against is the size of the Universe."

Why, exactly, does this need to be the case?  Why should any fiction strive to convey a greater message?  Whatever the heck happened to writing for the simple pleasure of crafting a story, creating and developing characters, and watching it all come together in a conclusion? 

My stories have no greater meaning.  I am not setting out to say something meaningful about humanity.  If there are morals and themes to be found in my work, then that's because they crept in without my being aware of them.  You can blame my muses for morality or lack thereof in their lives; I certainly don't decide that about them. 

I find it annoying that Asimov's might reject a story because it doesn't deal with profound statements about humanity.  I think they're underrating the simple joy of a story. 

Sent Statues off to America today.  All that remains now is waiting for a reply from the people of Writers of the Future, which will probably not come til after Christmas judging by the time it took Rhi to receive her response from them. 
    I think the story is good.  I don't know if it's good enough to win, or come second or third or be an 'honourable mention', but it's good, and I don't think I could have made it any better.  I'm a little nervous about the results, because obviously I'd really like to get a ranking position (something really good to put on my covering letter when I submit Painted Angels, not to mention the awesome factor of my story doing well); I'm also happy I finished it.  The story wanted to be told, so it wasn't a waste of time, and if it fails in this contest it won't be resigned to the gutter.  Esh is already bugging me to write the next part of the story from her viewpoint.  I can conceive of a grand story as a collection of shorter things about the length of Statues, with Statues being the first, and all progressing along the story line to an eventual ending.  Don't know what will happen after Esh's story, but I'll figure it out as I go along. 
    It was also a good diversion from that bloody meetings chapter in PA - speaking of which, maybe I've finally got it sorted.  *crosses fingers*  I played around with it this afternoon, dividing it back into two chapters and adding more of people's expressions and body language as per Rhi's suggestion to make the atmosphere of the meetings more tangible... and maybe, just maybe, it's worked.  I'll see what I think when I reread it. 

I've finished my contest entry piece, but Illan's story is definitely not over. 
    Statues charts the story of her discovering the truth about her world.  Right now she's going to do something about what she's learnt, and then she'll come back and tell me what happened.  *grins*  In the meantime her lover, Esh, has started knocking gently on the inside of my head, suggesting that I tell the next part of the story from her viewpoint.  I even know where it would begin - with Esh giving Illan's mum the birthday present Illan can't give because she's not in Haven - but I don't yet know much more than that, other than it would also feature Jer, a minor character from Statues.  He's determined to let me know that he's not a bad guy, which his brief appearance in Statues suggested. 
    *sighs*
    Gotta love these muses. 
    I knew a while ago that Statues would spawn a much larger piece, and keeping it in check to fit the contest's word count was tough at times.  But without a deadline on anything else I write with these characters, I can proceed at a leisurely pace.  Crucially, I can shift my focus back to the recently-neglected Painted Angels and the wonderful Meetings chapter that still doesn't work! Argh!
    Still, I am pleased to get this piece done.  Now I've got about two weeks to polish it up before sending it over to America for judgement. 

Finished Book 5 of the Saga two days ago.  It was absolutely awesome, especially the big battle at the end (why can't I write space battles like that?), but now I want to read Book 6.  Because, naturally, he's left two massive cliffhangers at the end.  Though it looks like the major foe is finally defeated, two more threats have popped up - one of them not all that surprising, really, and the other pretty much out of the blue.  And I want to know how things turn out for some people, and I particularly want to see what mental thing Basil does next.  But as Book 6 is currently being written, I expect it'll be sometime next year before we see it in print.  *wills Kevin J Anderson to write faster*

As if desiring to distract me from the Saga's cliffhangers, manga has arrived in the post! Godchild vol 2 by Kaori Yuki and Saiyuki Reload vol 4 by Kazuya Minekura.  I've already read Godchild vol 2, and it rocked muchly.  Kaori Yuki's artwork is absolutely stunning, so beautiful and fluid, and the story continues to be suitable bizarre.  It's about Cain, a young earl in Victorian England, who lives with his half-sister Mary Weather and manservant Riff, and collects poisons.  Death seems to follow him wherever he goes, brought on by his not-so-dead father.  It's told in a series of short stories, but with the thread of his father running through it. 

I started reading xxxHolic vol 1 (by Clamp) today, which has been sitting on my shelf for a while.  I picked up vol 3 a while back, because the cover art drew my eye in Forbidden Planet, and it was pretty good.  It's about a high school kid who sees ghosts and spirits, and finds himself drawn to the time-space witch Yuko's house.  There, he finds himself bought into her service; once he's worked long enough, he gets his wish to not see spirits.  And by 'service', I mean cleaning stuff and cooking, and occasionally helping out with her work, not anything dodgy.  I don't really go in for smutty manga, mostly because the artwork is pretty grotesque (over-huge boobs and penises has never really appealed to me; it just looks painful ^.^ )  Mmm, I love my manga. *hugs manga*

More good news: I finally got my butt in gear and sorted out Chapter 11 of Painted Angels, the first chapter of the Peace-Keeping Meetings arc.  I cut a scene, went through some lethal surgery with my OTT descriptions, and tacked on what had previously been the next chapter, also cutting out a brief scene that was fun to write but *totally* irrelevant to the story.  I found myself chuckling a few times at some of Trifmara's thoughts, particularly when she comments on her lack of cleavage, which I guess is a good thing - means the character is really jumping off the page.  Sent the chapter off to Rhi to beta, along with Chapter 4 of her story speckled with my CC.  I totally didn't figure that the title of her book, 'Dancing in Circles', actually had something to do with horses dancing.  I thought maybe people, but not horses. So that was a cool surprise, and it looks like things are set to get even more interesting. 

I'm currently about 9,500 words into my contest entry, but I didn't feel like working on it today.  I need to figure out exactly how the next action scene will unfold, and it wasn't flowing into my head today.  Maybe tomorrow.  I think I get off work at 3pm, so I should be able to get some writing done.  Either my contest entry or PA.  My other muses are being remarkably co-operative about letting me focus on those two, which is pretty decent of them.  As I might be writing Our Green Fairies for Nanowrimo this year (my word-count estimate for the first draft is in the region of 50k, and I was always planning to write a crappy first draft before perfecting it, which makes it good Nano-fodder), the general muse for that story is laying low.  The characters aren't muses, so much as the general idea is a muse.  It's odd, but it seems to work.  My latest muse, the cross-dressing one, has been damn quiet.  Every now and then he floats vague ideas towards me, but there's been no prodding yet. *pets co-operative muses*

With the aid of mouchoirs and a large selection of over-the-counter drugs, I got over my cold with only an annoying cough left behind.  Of course now I've said that, Sod's Law dictates my body will soon be featuring Attack of the Relapse...

Finally got all my holiday book reviews up, except for one I'm going to do in a big author review (because all his books rock and I can't be arsed to review them seperately).  As well as that, I have only got to review Neverwhere and Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, and then I'm on top of my recently-read books. 

I never quite expected my first published writing to feature in niche publishing magazines.  But it will.  At work experience, I've been writing book reviews for several magazines - Organic Life, Woodturning, Woodcarving and Outdoor Photography.  You can find them all here or in British (and maybe American) newsagents.  My reviews are probably in the Novemeber issues, but I'll find out for sure before the end of next week.  They are actually something to put on my CV, especially as I might try writing book reviews for newspapers in the future.  w00t!

In other writing news, I have a new muse poking around the back of my brain.  He thinks he's going to let my call him Reyk, and he's in his early twenties.  He's a captain of a motley crew of smugglers / bounty hunters / general freelancers.  He informs me that he has no angsty past, though he hasn't yet told me how he got into his profession.  A quiet but deadly bastard, petite and almost feminine-looking, he has one particular quirk: he likes to cross dress.  When he wants to, he can pass as a woman (albeit a slightly odd-looking one). 

Right now he's pretty quiet, just setting up home in my brain.  I reckon he's spawned from watching too much Firefly, though gods know where the cross-dressing came from.  I guess he brought that with him.  I'm not yet sure if he'll fit somewhere into my already existing scifi world (the same one as Painted Angels) or if he'll go somewhere else - he'll let me know when he's ready to tell his story, I'm sure. 

*sigh*

Addresses muses: Ya know, folks, it's starting to get a wee bit crowded back there.  Reckon some of you could act as bouncers, keep newcomers away for a couple years?  Trifmara and Falnec, I nominate you two.  I know you'll enjoy it. 

...I wonder what level of madness talking to your muses ranks at.  Eh well, I'm a lost cause anyway.