Young Writers Society

What I've found, is that I force her into talking to me about The Chair, ask her what she is struggling with, then hurl helpful tips and rambles at her, so much so that she feels inspired and then goes and writes. I think that happened last time? Whether she actually wrote is the question--inspiration is easy. hehe

*hugs Bechka*

No! Dreamy, you have to make the deadline this time, or you won't be able to do NaNo with us! =(

And then no lemon cake for you! Muhahaha...

Hehe. On a less lets-make-you-feel-guilty note... can I be added to one of these mailing lists? Whichever one you would rather have reviews from. =) I'm sure I must owe you loads...

I hate deadlines and prompts. Contests are all right, but prompts? Fugget about it!

So, I'll wish you best of luck, Dreamy. Sorry I'm not the cheerleading type.

Snoink: I am imprevious to guilt. Muaha.

Till: I wrote... one paragraph last we talked. But it was a really good paragraph, with lots and lots of depth and! And bells! And whistles!

Kay: Well for the sake of the lemon cake alone, I'll redouble my efforts, of course. And sure, I'd be glad to send you scraps of whatever I come up with. I think The Piano Player's going to end up being my NaNo this year, so I'll be flooding you with that regardless. ^_~

Kyte: Thanks very much for the luck. ^_^'

Eight more days 'til NaNo. Eight more days for the Chair. Eight more days in which I really should tell Shan at some point that I am so thoroughly sorry for putting him through all of this.

Snoink, Till, and Imp? Brace yourself for the onslaught, and prepared to be chairorized [definition: bad pun, centered on the word 'terrorized'].

Chairorized! I still love that word a whole lot...


Dreamy, if you torture your characters, don't say sorry! Poor Armin will hate me when I am done with him. Send me it all hee hee, though, I probably won't touch it until Dec.


You can do it, you can do it! What is your current word count?

I'm not telling. =P

You'll find out soon enough, I suppose... *hides eyes*

Good Lord, what did I get myself into. You're going to read this and go "What the...?" and scorn me forever, I think. Or, alternately, you will go "I didn't understand a word of it, but it was pretty!" Which is better, of course, than "I didn't understand a word of it and it was awkward", haha.

Ignore me, I'm being pessimistic! But do cross your fingers for me, yes? Eight more days to go, and at some point within that week and one, you're going to get a great mass of metaphor and rain drops and glory and pain flung at you. Oh. The joy. I would not give up writing for the world.

--

[And give dear Armin a snug and a hug for me, will you? He'll need one, when you're through with him.]

I would not give up writing for the world.

print this out, sign it, and tape it everywhere you will see it. Keep that in mind when you're cursing and throwing a fit about writing and how horrid the Chair is. XD


I'm sure it will be amazing. Your words always leave me speechless, so don't expect much. and I really want to know a word count!

Nein. I shall keep you in suspense.

Haha, no, I'm really not being mean just for the sake of it. The plain and simple thruth is that half of my writing is not confined to one word document, and the other half is not even typed, so it would be impossible to give you an accurate count.

Yes, I maimed my self-imposed deadline. Yes, I maimed it excessively. But life's short and you're dead a long time, so - with only the most marginal of regrets - I return to my corner of cobwebs. Haha, but no. I'm lying. Full of regret. So much so that only supreme force of will is keeping me from gouging my eyes out with a grapefruit spoon of creativity.

. . .

Update -- April 16, 2007


Novels:

♪ The Chair of Wind & Darkness: Dead a long time. A very long time. There is no pulse in Shan's wrist, no light in his eyes. I try to revive him to no avail. I lure myself towards writing with pleasantly formatted livejournals and books on the craft, but the Chair never gets any longer. I suspect that this problem might be solved by actually sitting down and writing it, being willing to be terrible, et cetera. It would also be useful if I could get my Microsoft OneNote to work. All of my scattered notes are stashed there within, and I feel particularly directionless without it. But first and foremost, I need to rethink the form of the novel. I need to rethink the set-up and the atmosphere. The story's fine, the characters are fine, but how I'm going about displaying them is dubious. Something to work on, in any event. My 'vivacity redux'es are becoming less vivacious every time they occur, and I miss Livny. I owe one to the Imp. And to Till, for I shall die without more Death Machine.

♪ The Piano Player: Making more progress than its pseudo-fantasy counterpart. Against all odds. This novel has such seamless dialogue, I have no idea how I've managed it. It just flows out of my pen and onto the paper. Which is, of course, grand. But I worry incessantly about the musical aspects of the plot - how does one go about describing music, after all? Unless the reader is familiar with a specific piece, how are they going to understand the subtlety and undertones of the music there described? My lack of knowledge also worries me. Originally, the story took place in St. Petersburg, near the turn of the century - Dostoyevsky meets Schumann in Russia. I wrote a few scenes, and it felt like it was xeroxed from Crime & Punishment. So I thought I'd be all brilliant and transplant the story line. Somewhere semi-Slavic and semi-something-else. Something far out of my comfort zone. Something wholly alien. The Balkans sneaked up and grabbed me from behind and thus, Viktor sits in Dubrovnik, watching the sea and contemplating suicide. He's like Shan, only high maintenance and with less of an ability to act rationally. Which is to say that I'm making no progress whatsoever, and should, in all fairness, become acquainted with the aforementioned grapefruit spoon.

♪ [Untitled]: Progresses in religious randomness that is half-poetry, half-character-sketch. It's progressing better than both of the above projects combined, and yet I don't want to quite concentrate on it, don't want to quite reveal it. It's too... out there. But it's good. It's really, really good. Originally to be titled Mea Culpa, but Till's Michael and Delilah beat me to it, and I don't want to steal any proverbial thunder. So now it's titleless, and fills precisely three notebook pages: minuscule writing pegged from margin to margin, filling the headers and footers and spilling out the sides. I wake up thinking about it. I go to sleep thinking about it. Every writerly note I take goes towards its advancement, and yet I resist working on it with every fiber of my being. I do not want, and do not need any further distractions from Viktor and Shan. Does it care? Not at all. It's got my mind in a vice. Umberto Eco does not help: The Name of the Rose assassinates any intention to work on anything else.

Short Stories:

♪ Silence is Golden: Pianists and demons, nearly finished. Next YWS Literary Magazine, here I come.

♪ Rise, Rise: Died at a page and a half.

♪ The Luck: Another 'Portrait in Twilight'. I am so detached from reality. Came up with the concept some time ago and neglected to rediscover it until just recently.

♪ No Shame in War: Nazis and demons. Rather like pianists and demons, only with less melodrama. Wrote it about two years back, for a school assignment. Finished, but it needs edited.

To Critique:

- "Aurali" by Kingdom Carrier
- "A Pierced Heart" by PsychicNinja
- "Sourblood" by Sela Locke
- "Vetren'iy, 1.1 - Rare Word, Refuge" by Poor Imp
- "042. Tinfoils, Earth Sans Soil [rewritten]" by Poor Imp
- "018. Little Girl's Coin and Foil" by Poor Imp
- "Take Infinity" by ChernobyllyInclined
- "The Elbe is Full of Tears" by Kylan
- "Machinations" by Kylan

. . .


[If I've forgotten anyone who needs crits, please don't hesitate to jab me in the ribs.]

The Chair> Reworking, rewriting, and rethinking never hurts and in fact it can open up places you had not expected. Go for it. ^_^ If you are missing notes, try to rewrite them? You might find something juice that you didn't know before. Or maybe it needs a break, entirely. Hide it in a dusty drawer. And, why are you thanking me? Or is that you trying to get me to fall back on promises/threats?

Piano Player> On Music: metaphors, love? Metaphors. Compare the music to something we do no. Make it a central image, even? Perhaps music is like a sidewalk, haha, I do not know. But if you can find something that is more common to relate it to, cling to it. And who said research is a bad thing? And I forgot who told me, maybe you are Sam, but if you do not know something, make it up! (I complain when I don't understand the exact structure of SS hierarchy in all its detail. XD) And what was this about a grapefruit spoon?

Untitled> Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. ^_~ Run away with Mea Culpa, then. I'd like to read this, though I doubt you'll show me. You show nothing!


I feel I was mentioned far too often in something about yourself. You should, perhaps, avoid that. In any case! Send me scraps some times--twist your arm and send me things that aren't edited. You love me, do it. I want something to read.

Suzanne wrote:The Chair> ...And, why are you thanking me? Or is that you trying to get me to fall back on promises/threats?

It's the latter; I need some glorious DM revisions. XD

Untitled> ...I'd like to read this, though I doubt you'll show me. You show nothing!

I'm mysterious! *twilight zone music* And anyway, I mentioned you twice. So chill. XD [Both times in reference to your stories, because DM and the Chair are inextricably connected by writerly fate and because I don't want to rip off your title.] Because I'm cool like that. :P

I would say that I would send you scraps, but I worry, at this point, that you wouldn't believe me. ^~

Oh, The Name of the Rose! I love that book. It's not an easy one, though, is it? I'm reading his The Island of the Day Before now--at least, I am on and off between academic readings. And papers. One of which I'm supposed to be working on now. Eep.

*Scampers.*

Haha, my dad had me read The Name of the Rose - it was his book, and I suppose he figured he wanted to be the one to lend me a book rather than the more common vice versa. I'm not very far into it, but it's beyond wonderful. He tells me that Foucault's Pendulum is harder to get through...

Dead a long time. A very long time.

Dead? Oy, the the idea comes near inducing the suicidal, thought-wise. ^_~ Ach, but in all honesty, the Chair can't die--its characters were too vivid, too alive, yes? I can't imagine a world sans Shan at some point...no doubt I'll find it on my bookshelf in some few years, neatly bound and published.

But 'tis the cast-off livejournals, Russian-esque dismay and all that that I'll think of--only books bound in suffering have what stays. Half-ink, half-tears, da? ^_^

But then, as you've college now, there's the inexorable excuse of coursework to dodge working at writing.

Er, I've used it. -_-;

Sans impish flippancy, I've missed the Chair, and all Russian-esque decidedly deep dreaming prose.



IMP