Life Viewed Through an Amber Focus

I took a 27 day hiatus from writing. I had the worst inflammation of my life with the rheumatoid arthritis, brought on by having to sit in waiting rooms in awful chairs for four days in one week for a combined total of eight hours. It doesn't sound like much, but when you are held in an uncomfortable position for long periods of time your joints just can't take it like a normal person. The flare lasted two and a half weeks and by then I felt like I had lost my writing mojo.

Earlier in the week I was able to do one scene from a regular romance series I've been working on off and on for the last year or so, but today I got back to THE story and wrote chapter thirteen. Just sat down and did it, so things seem to be back. I know exactly what is going to happen in chapter fourteen so all should go smoothly when I get a chance to work on it some more tomorrow.

I was really happy with how this chapter turned out. It felt like such a stumbling chapter at first, but then it straightened itself around when I decided to change the viewpoint of the character it was being shown from. Sometimes one character wants to tell the story far more than another. Sometimes I don't listen to that. But after fighting it for a bit, I went with the other person and it was definitely the right choice.

I have a tendency to want to stay in one person's head, but the story rotates through several different people in several different locations, so I can't do that. I have to pick the ones that would be feeling the most or whose actions in that scene matter the most to the overall story. In this case it could have been one of two people, but it further developed one character and didn't really the other one, so it was better to choose the one it further developed.

I will have to remember that for future reference. I can be stubborn, but so can the story. When that happens, I'll have to see if switching viewpoints improves the flow. It sure did this time.

Well, chapter eleven is completed and I am well into chapter twelve. So pleased that things are rolling again after being stuck so much last week. I've got 29,556 words, so things are definitely going well. Feedback has been positive so far.

I don't feel quite so manic with writing now. I feel more steady and evenly paced. Which is probably good long-term. I have too much stress in my life waiting on my daughter's biopsy results to be bouncing off the walls. Calm is good as long as it produces results.

I am so sick of sitting in waiting rooms, though. It is literally killing my back and tail bone. It is nothing like my comfy Serta desk chair made for 8 hours of continuous use (although six is generally my limit).

Well, that was a rough weekend. I still wasn't happy with chapter nine and so I rewrote it twice. It is now about 1000 words longer than any other chapter and a lot of stuff hit the cutting room floor, so to speak, but I am quite satisfied with the result. I also wrote an additional 1209 words on chapter ten and it is flowing well now.

Sometimes I just get stuck because a chapter doesn't feel right, it just doesn't sing in the same way as the rest. It's like the difference between a harmonic chord and a discordant chord. The former makes you feel good and the latter makes you sit up and take notice and maybe makes the hairs rise on the back of your neck. Or it does with me, but I am almost as closely connected to music as I am to writing. There is just as often a new song in my head as there is a story to tell, but I seldom transcribe the music. I don't think I could ever share my music the way I share my writing. It's more personal. And writing is darn personal.

I've hit over 25,000 words now. I think that's about 1/4 of the way through the book. I am still thinking about signing up for NaNoWriMo. I've never done it. I guess I have about a week and a half to make up my mind. I'm not sure if I can finish the whole book in that amount of time, but maybe. My problem is I edit and I don't think you are supposed to with NaNo. I write two to three chapters and then I edit. I still think I can hit the word count even with doing that, though.

Amy is beta reading and so is my son and both are being very detailed with feedback. I just sent the first nine chapters to my husband to read, but I don't know when he'll get a chance to. He's going to put it on his phone. I'll definitely need people outside those to beta read as well at some point. It's a little scary going beyond that, though. I know I've had a few other betas before with my DW fanfic, but that was a chapter here and there or a one shot, not a book length story.

It's a little like having someone keep your kid for a week when they are small instead of just baby-sitting them for a couple hours. It's nerve-wracking to even think about it.

I got sick over the weekend, but I still managed to write chapters seven and eight and start on chapter nine. I also wrote out a page and a half of back story on one character and wrote a long scene that belongs in book three, so go me.

I think my hands are finally starting to get used to all the typing. While I still have to ice them after a writing binge, I don't have to do it for as long.

At this point I think I am averaging about two chapters every three days. I don't know if that kind of pace can continue, but I certainly hope so.

I've got a bit more on the agenda than usual. Aside from taking my Mom to physical therapy twice a week, my daughter is having a procedure done at the hospital. I really hope it will fix her or at least find out what needs fixing.

Chapter six is complete. It ended up being a little longer than I expected, but I had to introduce two new characters. One's a little high strung, but the laid back one makes up for it. I made up a character list today just so I can keep the bloodlines from getting tangled in my own head and remember who is connected to who. It's not finished, but there are four pages. The list is for the full trilogy, not just the first book. I've cast some of the characters with actors as well, just so I have in mind more fully what everyone looks like. It's helpful, although I think I'd like to print them out and make a big chart with photos, names, powers, and familial connections and put it on the wall while I'm working on it. I think that would be very useful.

Word count for the first book is at 15,057 words. That's an average of about 2500 words per chapter, though some are longer, some are shorter. 2000 to 3000, depending on the story, is about what I averaged when I was writing Doctor Who fanfic for a chapter, so it feels right.

Well, onwards to chapter six. I think I'll keep documenting as I go. I think I'll like to have that to look back on when I'm done. Hopefully book one will continue to behave itself and not have book three jump in again demanding I write scenes. I really want to keep this on track, but I'll go whether the writing takes me. At least I'm writing. I had forgotten what a balm to the soul it is.

I had forgotten, there for a while, how much I love this writing thing. Book one finally started cooperating last week and I have just finished chapter five. I've got 12,347 words so far and I am totally in love with my characters and my story. Honestly, I haven't felt this way about any of my writing since I wrote Wolf Moon. It is just coming out like I'm bleeding words into the keyboard. And when I finish a chapter it is like there is now an empty spot in my head waiting for new words to come and fill it up. And they actually come. I am definitely well into the writing mania.

I haven't really set any goals for myself like for word count or anything. I'm not even necessarily writing every day, though I am most days. Some days are spent in full on day dream mode, sort of just breathing the characters, while I listen to my playlist of songs that literally have the ability to put me in this other world and this other head space. But I don't listen while I write. For that I need silence because the words are so loud and the pictures so vivid that there isn't any room for music.

I love living in this head space, but I literally have to set timers to go off so that I remember to do things like eat, make dinner, transfer and fold laundry, and do dishes. You know, all those boring, mundane tasks that keep the world chugging along. It was five o'clock before I remembered I hadn't eaten anything all day. It's just that absorbing. But I love it. I really do love being here. There is just so much satisfaction in writing and I really, really did miss it. It is so good to have the magic back.

Sorry it is a day late, Dev. Somewhat inspired by the poetrython on BWR.

Title: Give In (A Ten/Rose Poem)
Author:amberfocus
Pairing: Ten/Rose
Genre:  Romance, Poetry
Rating: Teen
Warnings: None

( Read more... )

Sometimes I wonder why I write when 80% of the time it just makes my crazy. I mean, I love it, I do, but I have times where I just want to throw the computer against a wall or the characters or both. I often think it takes a special kind of madness to be a writer, or rather, a writer of fiction.

It is actually easier for me to pound out non-fiction most days. And it's clearly well received as my finance blog has close to 7.5 million views. But that is not my love. Why is it so hard sometimes to write what I love as opposed to writing what I know?

I'm kind of stuck on the epic fantasy story. My problem is that it's a trilogy and I just want to write book #3. I don't know, maybe I'll just have to write it backwards. Meanwhile, I've shelved it while two characters are warring it out. Instead I'm thinking through another story that's just a traditional romance story that may or may not be very trope-y, and wants to be a series. I can't seem to pin down my focus, though, which is so frustrating.

So then I go and look at my unfinished fanfiction and wonder if I can take a stab at a new chapter on one of those, but I just don't feel it anymore. I lost my joy in Doctor Who with the 12th Doctor and quit watching after his first season. I still want to finish those stories, but motivation is just not there. Ugh.

I'm just so scattered. It's like knitting. I have all these things I want to make, but I keep missing a stitch and then have to unravel rows to fix it. That's how I feel it would be if I leap ahead and write the third book first, like I'll end up having to unravel a big mess if I do it that way.

I can't stop watching the news, either. Maybe things will settle down after this weekend. Just hoping the world doesn't go boom. Then maybe I can focus again and stop feeling so stuck.

I've had a story in my head for, more or less, the last four years. It's not come to much of anything over that time period, other than an idea I knew I wanted to develop at one point. Well, for reasons that have much to do with my recent foray down the rabbit hole of Labyrinth fanvids and fanfiction and such, and more that whole epic fantasy of a girl going from one world, normal Earth, to another, I pulled together every scrap of it that I'd written over the years, decided I couldn't use much of it, but the basic tenant and a few lines of clever dialogue, and spent about a week trying to figure out exactly where I thought this thing should go.

Then I built a playlist, songs that seemed to take me there, on youtube. Then I wrote a three book synopsis. I built the families. I built the world. I image cast my main characters to fully realize them in my head. And finally over the last two days I have sat down to write. Nearly 5000 words in and yes, I think this might actually be something. I have that writer's mania right now, that need to get the words out of my head at a rapid clip. Last time I had that I wrote Wolf Moon in 2 months.

I want to get these stories out of me as the characters are talking non-stop in my head most of the time right now. Sometimes it is like a walking dream and I have to pull myself back to reality. I'm giving myself two hours a day of uninterrupted time to write. Or at least as uninterrupted as I can make it be. It's not whofic, but it feels powerful, like a story begging to be told. And I want to tell it. I've wanted to tell it for years. It's just taken this long for it to find its true voice. I hope it stays. This is one rabbit hole I want to keep going down.

Anyone else watch Stranger Things on Netflix? This show was amazing. It really put me in mind of The Goonies, only darker. And with more time period inappropriate swearing from kids aged eleven and twelve. I mean, I was twelve and thirteen in 1983, so that's my time period and my age. Even the bad kids didn't talk like that very much. Kids today, yes. Kids then, no way. If a child swore they were immediately chastised by any adult around (which happened once in the show). In fact if a kid said crap they were chastised. And while kids did swear, it was on occasion and only in times of great stress or to try to impress other kids. It wasn't used the way they used it here or casually like it is today. It only bothers me so much because every other detail of the 1983 setting felt so right, the clothes, the music, the hair styles, the tape decks, the grocery store worker uniforms, the school, and the cars.

They cast well, too. Really well. Not only was the acting amazing, the families looked like families. They cast Mike and Nancy so well I actually thought they could be brother and sister. Same with Jonathan and Will as brothers and their mother Joyce all had physical similarities. Each boy resembled the mother in different ways, resembled each other less except at the eyes, but enough to see what looked like a blood tie. Siblings in shows and movies often look so different that it is hard to see why any casting director would try to pass them off as family. (The cast of 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, while a wonderful cast, is a prime example of casting people who resemble each other in no way whatsoever, making it much harder to believe they are a family).

It was a grand adventure in the sci-fi/fantasty realm. Alternate reality, a monster, nerdy (but a little too attractive to be true nerds) kids who overcome, mind powers, a big bad government entity doing shadowy unethical things, a good cop with a bad attitude and a mother on the edge of mental illness who isn't wrong about the crazy going on around her. It was so well written.

I ship Nancy and Jonathan (even if there was a bit of questionable stalkerishness there in the beginning). Steve can go off himself. Last minute redemption so does not count. Also Eleven and Mike, but on a chaste level, because of their ages.

I think I am going to rewatch the season and maybe do an in-depth review of each ep. It is only 8 episodes and definitely worth a second whirl.

Also, can I just say, Winona Ryder, welcome to your comeback. Also something from the 1980's I am happy to see again.