Sian

I'm really beginning to appreciate the purpose of an outline for this bookwriting thing.  That's mostly because I didn't have one when I started writing the novel I'm revising, and it's really beginning to show.  It's causing me a lot more work.  I'm not sure I'm actually capable of maintaining an outline, but it would sure be nice to have one.  If I didn't have a computer to cut and paste on, I think I'd be dead in the water.

I suppose I could work on an outline for the next novel, and I probably will...  But my poor little brain doesn't think that way.

posted by: SianNorah at 21:27 | link | comments (2)

I can't believe it's been that long

I found a roommate, I joined a writers' group.  I'm now three hundred <i>and one</i> pages into the second draft of my novel.

I just spent fifteen minutes trying to remember what my user name was last year for nanowrimo.  I finally thought of it, even though the e-mail address I used for it isn't exactly functional, anymore.  I'm really not sure what I'm writing this year.  It'll finally give me the chance to put last years novel in a drawer somewhere and forget about it for a month.  As it turns out, I'm way too anal to put it down on purpose without some more pressing interest to keep me away.  Although I think the editing that I've been doing has been working out really well.

I started to build my computer.  Now, there are only a few pieces left that I need to put in place in order for the damn thing to function (moderately, at least), and I hope to have them before November 1st so I can write my novel in the peace and quiet of my own home.  New Roommate is a computer geek, and has offered me a Linux distribution on CD, so I might just do that.  Probably a good thing if we were running exactly the same distro, anyway.  After all, I'm willing to pimp out my mid-full tower thing in exchange for the use of laptop.

posted by: SianNorah at 16:40 | link | comments
nanowrimo

Up against a wall

I've been spending the past month or so feeling absolutely impoverished.  And it's not just the fact that my roommate moved out and I haven't found a replacement.  It's the fact that I have my dream job.  This month I'm meeting and working with about a dozen authors, including a couple that I've read and loved since I was a kid.  I want to be where I am.  But I'm paid so little that unless I have a roommate, I can't afford a cup of coffee on the side.  It's the fact that yesterday there was free pizza at my free writer's group, and woo hoo, good times.  And so, I'm debating what to do about this little dilemma.

On the one hand, I absolutely have to have more money.  That's not a capitalist-pig, greed issue.  That's a food issue.  What I have is not enough.

On the other hand, the connections that I'm making with this job are priceless, I love the environment, the people, the... books. 

So, I've been thinking about second jobs, except, of course, that the second job would have to work in around the first job.  And the first job has really weird, unpredictable hours.

So, what I've come up with is that I have to reduce the number of hours at this job, and make it the second job, if I possibly can without losing all those wonderful authors.  And that's what I'm doing, today.  I am sending out resumes to see if there's anything I can do real-job wise.

posted by: SianNorah at 19:57 | link | comments (1)

182 pages into my second draft, and right now, it looks as if I'm going to have to rewrite the entire ending.  Or at least some large part of it.  I have decided that my protagonist actually has to shoot the antagonist with her very own hands.  Or stab, bite, or pinch him, at least.   You'd think that would have been obvious, when I was writing it the first time, but you'd be wrong.  On the bright side, I'm almost finished with the part of it that I had written before.  About 40 more pages until I have the same page length.  And I know the thing will run longer than that.  I'm thinking about three hundred, in the end, but I'll see how it goes, first.

Once I have all the structural things cleared up, I think it'll be better.  I wrote another ten pages which weren't in the orriginal, yesterday or the day before, and added them, and I feel pretty good about that.

I'm finally approaching the end of the class that I hate, and debating the use of taking another round this fall.  It would be a different professor, but I'm still hesitant.  There seems to be an atmosphere in the department that I'm not sure I can live with.

 

posted by: SianNorah at 18:33 | link | comments

Do men ever actually think about what they're thinking about saying before they actually say it?  And why is it that they always seem to say the scariest damn things to me? 

I bumped into a guy while I was shopping the other day.  Literally.  Guy I thought I had never seen before in my life.  Seriously.  Walked around a corner too fast, and bam! 

And then he started being sorta lurkey, weird, so I hurried to get my soda and chips and get the hell out of there, and wound up bumping into him about three other times...

Before he finally decided to open his mouth and talk to me.

At which point I really wished that I had ditched the chips and gotten out.

What he said was, "I saw you a month ago, and...." 

Great.  Just great.  And now, you're talking.  Good for you.  I think I'll spring for the extra four bucks and load my .357  with the long rounds, tonight.

And yes, there was a compliment somewhere in those ellipses, but, ewww!

The moral of this story would be Sian's Helpful Hint:

If you walk up to a woman at random and tell her how you've been watching her for a month, her response is going to be ewww!

Because it just isn't cute if you tell someone that it took you a month to get up the nerve to talk to her.  That's only romantic if you've been married for forty years and she's sure you don't wind up chopping her into little bitty peices at the end of the book.

posted by: SianNorah at 23:10 | link | comments (1)

I took the evil mid term, and sure enough, he gave us about three times as much as we could possibly be expected to get through in an hour and a half.  Then, he spent ten minutes walking around and whispering that we didn't need to worry about the various parts that we hadn't gotten to.  Very efficient.  Not at all disruptive.

I bought my baby cousin a book for Christmas.  No, I'm not that organized, really, but the author was in, so I got the thing signed and personalized.  Now I just have to find something for the other two. 

I do strive for some kind of equality in the way I treat them, but in all honesty, the little boy I just couldn't help buying the book for is my favorite.  I'll admit it, and I'd probably even admit it to them.  (Well, not to the other two.  Not while they're little.)  But maybe just the parents aren't supposed to have favorites.  Maybe not even them.  I'm not really sure.  I happen to think mine is the smartest and the best.  In any event, he's outgoing, and we get along well, and he reminds me of a lot of people I loved when they were his age, so there you have it.  He's my favorite.

The middle one is a crier.  Really.  The kind of kid who gets beaten up every day because the other kids know they're guaranteed a response.  It gets on my nerves.  And the little one has very little personality, to speak of.  Maybe he'll grow into it.  Or turn into an accountant.  One or the other.

Of course, I'm going to buy them all books.  But child #1 gets a book because I wanted to buy him a book.  The other two get books because after I bought the first one a book, it was right to buy the others books, as well.

That's one of the big things that scares me about having kids of my own.

What if I get one that just isn't any good?  What if I don't like him?

What if he's stupid, or ugly, or just sits there like a lump?

What if he doesn't like Monty Python?  Or... gulp....  what if Terry Gilliam is his favorite python, and we don't do anything but stare at eachother until he turns eighteen?

The author warned me that Baby Cousin #1 might "need some help" reading it, when I told him how old BC#1 is, but of course, he won't.  Probably one of the reasons why he's my favorite.

posted by: SianNorah at 19:49 | link | comments

I don't know why the hell I continue to do this.  Maybe I'm just a masochist, or maybe far too much of an idalist for my own good.  So, I'm slowly pedaling closer to graduate school, but the truth is, I'm just not having fun in this class, anymore.  And it isn't the language, or the grammar, or the people I'm taking the class with.  In fact, the only real variables are that instead of doing Catullus, we're doing Juvenal, this semester, and the professor.  Back to Professor Nostrils, I'm afraid, and the results are conclusive.

And I'm really not the only one who feels that way.  In fact, I may have some of the most neutral-leaning tendencies of anyone in the class.

Part of it, of course, is that this is a very young department, and there's nobody in it who has any kind of checking influence on him.  In fact, there's no one in Classics, itself, who has tenure.  That's how young it is.  Nobody notably older than Nostrils.  Nobody who people come to the University to study with.  Which, in and of itself, would not have stopped me from studying here, but still gives you a little bit to think about.  In other places, in other schools, there would be someone to whom the younger professors look up, someone whose high opinions they would desire, and someone to whom the students could turn, when things get out of hand.

You know the prof I'm talking about.  The semi-emeritus genius whose whole life has gone into his research and the university.  The guy who has left us everything in his will, and who really does think of us as his children.

There's no one like that here.

And even though I'm getting closer in the objective end of it--the x number of hours of this, that and the other--I'm certainly no closer than I ever was to the subjective.  I was hoping to be able to use a recommendation or two from this little endevour, and I'm just not going to be able to do that.  And for more reasons than one.  So, I'm thinking about what I should do, and what I can do, and all those things.

posted by: SianNorah at 17:19 | link | comments
quest for graduate school

Finals over Finally...

I just finished my Latin final, the punch line of which was that the segment I had been stressing over was something we had never actually done.  The professor got her two classes mixed up.  So, I can now de-stress and enjoy what's left of my week, which actually includes a day off with a paycheck.   The university provided me with free "Finals Survival" food today, which is really nice, considering that my other choice was to debate the benefits of one kind of Ramen noodles over another. 

I am still working on the over all problem of enrolling in classes for next semester.  There are a couple which I would like to take, but money... the money issue, again.

Friday really will be my first real day off in about three months, since I've been either at work or in class every single day for that long.

posted by: SianNorah at 21:45 | link | comments

Frustrations galore.

An Author's mommy came into work, yesterday.  The woman had special ordered fifty copies of her daughter's book.  No.  Actually, she bought 5.  yeah.  F-I-V-E.  The general theory was that if we didn't sell them to her, naturally we'd put them on the shelves and sell them to other people.   I think I may have actually blown a large segment of her brain, when I said they'd be returned to the warehouse and shredded.  Well, if she hadn't yelled, lied, condescended....  Well, I might have been a little more diplomatic.

Then, this morning, I called one of my old friends, and was told all about my dearly beloved uncle's latest exploits.  He went to a party she was throwing for her grandfather, and started fishing for information.  About me.  Wondering about that package he sent me.  And then, was shocked to hear that she still talks to me once or twice a week.  Oops.

Today is one of my long days at school and work.  Directly from latin into the store, and then home, just in time to crawl into bed.  So, naturally, I wind up with nothing done on my novel at the end of it.  So, the book is crawling forward.  It really seems so slow I could yank my hair out by the roots at times.  Tomorrow, I'm working from about noon to eight, so not quite as cramped. 

but next week....  Next week is finals week, and for the first time, all semester, I actually have a day or two off which are actual days off.  No work, no school.  Just me and a notebook.  And I'm really going to go at some of the peices of the novel that need work.

Somebody--probably in one of the books about writing that I've been reading-said that a first draft of a novel is just to figure out what it's about.  And the truth is, I really am beginning to understand what the novel is about in more dimentions than "george murders sally, and then he gets caught."

posted by: SianNorah at 18:50 | link | comments

This post probably isn't going to be as long as the comment I just finished writing on Randis' blog, but I s'pose I should make some kind of a note of my existence.  Class was cancelled this morning, but not before I showed up on campus.  So, instead of working on pervy poetry 101, I checked out a computer from the library and read a few blogs.  Half an hour left before the computer goes back.

I finally feel like I'm making a little bit of progress in the editing of my novel.  Just a little bit, but I'm thrilled to be rid of that standing still feeling.  The writer I talked to last week invited me to one of her writers groups, but I don't think I'm going to go.  In the first place, I really don't feel like running all over ohio so I can have the priveledge of sitting and drinking coffee.  In the second place, I'm really not a social writer.  There are one or two people I talk to, from time to time, and when I feel a need for outside encouragement, I take the occassional class, but other than that, I just don't really want to discuss my work.  certainly not in one of those round-robin group therapy type things.

This morning, for some ungodly reason, one of my characters decided to turn a calf.  I had nothing to do with the decision, and frankly, I'm against it, but now that it's done, I'm the one stuck with the unpleasant chore of describing it.  That's a pen and paper thing, of course.  Really not crazy about the click click sound of a keyboard interrupting my calf-turning exercise.  It's the wrong texture.  Wednesday, I typed up the edits to twenty seven pages.  Today I have two, and I'm optimistic that I'll have a couple of new pages to add to the thing by the time I go to bed.

I'm thinking about taking another creative writing class.  It would just be on Mondays, if I did, and I would have to go there in person.  Look at all the people.  I don't know.  Like I say, I'm anti social...  One class and a job, and I'm really all peopled out for the week.

I miss Eric.   yeah.  I know.  That's just sick, and I should seek professional help, as soon as possible.  But every writer needs at least one good, literary enemy to look at his work and say,  "That's a peice of shit."  I have, of course, no idea where he is, now.  But I wouldn't mind his opinion.  Because, you see, in the fifteen years I've known him, he has stolen my barbie dolls, dressed up in honour of Curt Cobains' death, disagreed with me at every possible turn over the status of Herb Caen with the beat generation, and written me into his "erotica" wearing leather and carrying a whip, but he has told me the truth.  100% of the time.  So, of course, he needs to read my stuff.

posted by: SianNorah at 22:18 | link | comments (1)

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