the Bitter and the Sweet

Here's some writing for ya: A poem. A nasty, first drafty, off the cuff poem. And what better place to share it than a blog, right?

Preface: It's been a rough trip down memory lane today, and this is what resulted.

I had the pleasure of knowing you
We chased fireflies and boys
Shared snow cones and secrets
We didn’t always see eye to eye
But I loved calling you my friend

I had the pleasure of loving you
Sharing kisses in the moonlight
And secrets on the phone
Skin on skin, your warmth saved me
Your words soothed me
Your trust broke me
I swore I’d love you forever
Until forever came
But I’ll never forget loving you

I had the pleasure of being yours
I have your eyes, your chin,
Your nose
I hate my nose
But it’s a part of you I’ll always have
Something to carry on, make my own
We didn’t always see eye to eye
Too much silence, too little laughter
I turned when I should have forgiven
Left when I should have run into your arms
But I’ll take the bitter and the sweet,
Memories of joy and pain
Because together they make us
Me and you, father and daughter
And I will always be yours

What's my plot?

I have this nasty habit of starting way too many things and not finishing any of them. Cases-in-point: Isaac's Eyes. Vaampyr. Providence.

But that doesn't stop me from having ideas, and what's an idea without at least some brainstorming around it?

I've had two short stories published this summer with Pill Hill Press - "Last Rites," in Haunted, and "Evergreen", in Fem Fangs (find them here: http://www.pillhillpress.com/books.html). And these two stories were not sitting around on my hard-drive, waiting for a publisher to find them. No, I wrote them because I saw an call for submissions with vague enough (yet specific enough) theme descriptions that I decided to drum up some ideas then plot them out. And I'm glad I did, obviously. So, I can't completely discount my ideas just because I'm working on something else (or several "something elses") right?

Which brings me to my thought.

I have an idea, one that's been churning for a while, and Pill Hill is accepting submissions for an anthology that fits the bill of my idea.

The problem is, my idea is vague. It's a world, and character, and a few specific scenes throughout, and the beginnings of an idea for a plot. But I have no idea what kind of supernatural beings will take over my setting, whether they will be peacefully (somewhat, because they can never completely be peaceful!) co-exist with the humans or just decimate them all, how my MC runs into hem, or basically anything else that helps me get the ball rolling.

So at the moment I have snow in July and a woman with a cool name in an indescript job. Sounds like I have my work cut out for me!

A friend of mine linked me today to Holly Lisle's mini plot clinic, which is free, and I've actually done it before (on a very basic level, as in: lesson 1), and it was helpful. So, I think I'll give it a whirl with Unnamed Urban Fantasy story (which I'll call UUF for now!) in mind. On a side-note, I was thinking that my NaNoWriMo novel this year will be Providence 2 (with a much cooler name) but maybe it'll be UUF... hmmm...

I can't reproduce anything from the plot clinic. It says so on the first page ☺ But it's full of exercises and ideas so basic I can't believe I never thought of a story that way before - and I think it might help. The whole (as in, not-mini) plot clinic book has a quote that really struck me today as I'm staring at my poorly outlined story, and I thought it was a simple enough idea I can post it.

For all you writers out there, remember this (courtesy of Holly Lisle):

Content is not logic’s strong point. Logic will not give you passion. It will not give you heart. It will not give you magic.

That's it. Passion, heart, magic - that's a plot. There's more to it than that, of course, but that's where it starts. So with that in mind, I'm going to do a few exercises and see if I can make some magic.

PS -- the weather's awesome, so I might do this outside. Gotta love early October!! ♥

Writing Villains

I had a thought while watching Scooby Doo cartoons the other day. The good ones, from the 70s, "Scooby Doo, Where Are You?"... and that's kind of important to my thought.

The bad guy in this particular episode (Decoy for a Dognapper) was especially shady, and I mean that literally. He was a silhouette, appearing for brief instances and wreaking havoc in his trench coat and hat, leaving all his evilness to the imagination.



This made me think. As a kid, the villains in my books and movies/shows were simple. Shadowy figure, no personality, no identity. All we needed to know was that he was the Big Bad. But as I got older, the bad guys began to become blurry. A trend I've noticed recently is that the bad guys are all semi-good guys. Even if they don't really have any redeeming qualities, we learn their backstory and discover why they are evil. We become sympathetic to them and see them as real people with problems.

This was probably innovative at some point, and I see how it makes sense in some stories. But whatever happened to a shadowy, secretive, silhouetted bad guy we could trust to be evil?

After watching this episode, I thought long and hard about some of my villains. None of them are hard and fast bad guys, and I think the line between good and bad is too blurry in some of my work. I think many stories could do well to return to an idea of letting their bad guy wear a trenchcoat and hat and staying in the darkness. It may be trite, but it sure makes them scarier.

The Road to NaNoWriMo 2010

I've been working on my NaNoWriMo09 novel a bit. Really wish I had it done by now, but 2010 has really kicked me in the ass for a while. I think things are back on track now, but my writing has been severely lacking.

Good thing NaNoWriMo10 is right around the corner! Only 3 months away. Which seems like a long time, til I remember that I really want to finish Providence before starting a new NaNo novel (though I say this every year and never get the old novel finished before starting a new one). And I need to start thinking of a story for my '10 novel! I also want to make a cover for both. Err, rather, have my wonderful graphic designy husband make a cover for both :)

I think I'll post a bit from Prov soon. An excerpt, if you will. And set some goals for my last 30,000 or so words I want to write on it by Halloween. That's only a little over 333 words per day for the next almost-90 days. I'm sure I can pull that off! I mean, in the last two years I've successfully written over 50,000 words on a new novel in 30 days. Of course, neither of them have endings...

Enough procrastinating. I'm going to write. At least 400 words, before dinner. Yippee!

Back to the Writing

This blog began in August 2008 as a forum to rant, vent, discuss, and share writing-related thoughts. I blogged about my first NaNoWriMo in November 2008 (which is still not finished, sadly) and inspiration I received from authors like Stephen King and Donald Maass. I shared excerpts from a few of my main WIPs, and I vented when I got stuck writing.

But, writing kind of got lost from my life for a while, and it got lost almost entirely from my blog before that. So far, 2010 has been a pretty crappy year. I actually was thinking of creating a mid-year blog at the end of June to show just how bad of a year it's been for me. However, I recently did some intensive writing, and things are starting to look up.

Case in point: My most recent short story was selected to appear in an anthology of short stories at the end of the summer! More info on that later. But, it's pretty awesome news! Which means, I need to get back to the main purpose of this blog -- writing. Maybe I'll get around to creating a second blog; one for life, one for writing. But for now, this will be mostly devoted to writing. Again.

For now, I think I'll try my hand at June NaNo and see what I can crank out this month while I'm still unemployed (on that front, I have a much-anticipated interview on Friday with the company I really want to work for, so more on that next week!). It's summer summer summertime! And I'm spending everyday at the pool -- granted, it's a 22" deep inflatable one in my backyard, but the kids like it so I'm happy -- and doing yardwork. And writing. Maybe taking a few months off has been good for me, because I'm feeling pretty good about the words lately.

Stay tuned. I have a feeling I'll have more writing news in the future :)