Sometimes it is okay to take a breather

You know what happens when you complain? Someone will tell you a way to fix things to stop complaining. In this case I was grizzling that I’m suffering from a dead brain, an absent muse and the hangover of Daylight Savings starting this weekend here in New Zealand (don’t ask me why we have it so early in the spring, I wasn’t listening.)
So any way I got told to find a pretty picture and write something to go with it. So I found a picture, and I set my mind to it. And all I got was terrible terrible writing. I had planned to share here what I wrote even in an unedited phase but honestly everything I wrote was bad. Now I’m not saying that to get a flurry of “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad” comments. I know when I write something that is wooden and forced and dismal. We all know those passages, the ones that don’t flow and seem to be written almost entirely in clichés and end up with little or no point to them. That is what I wrote because I am simply trying too hard to write something for the sake of writing something.
Sometimes prompts work. Sometimes they do not. This is the later. And that isn’t a bad thing. Today I am tired and today the muse is comatose aside from the couple of replies I did get out and maybe for today that is okay. I do not have to knock out a couple of thousand words a day and no one else expects me to. Why should I?
So I am just going to let that pressure off. Oh and focus on the payroll again now that my break is over….

Oh and in case you were wondering about the picture that nearly inspired….

Pretty isn’t it. Maybe inspiration will still come….

A closed door gathers no distractions

Back in 2006 I read Stephen King On Writing. I took a lot away from it, including the concept of writing with the door closed. I did that. Literally. I took the spare computer out to the garage, set up a desk near the punching bag and each morning I would come out shut the door, do an hours work out on with the swiss ball and the punching bag and then I would sit and I would write as I munched away on seaweed rice crackers and drank water. In six weeks I wrote 115,000 words approx. and I also dropped a dress size.

But now, now I don’t write with the door closed, heck I don’t even hold off on sharing writing all that much anymore. My partner Sam gets to see everything pretty much, raw and in all its glory. Is this a good or bad thing? Often I will post things up on the character in question’s tumblr, or maybe share it with my other friends and writing people. I didn’t do that with Nyssa, still haven’t. Sam has read it but there is another person I am dying to show it to but I am resisting, I am keeping it closed to the world as I go through and edit it. Now this is hard for me, I’m a Leo, I thrive on praise and knowing that people like what I’ve written and getting feedback. (So if you haven’t already go and read Babypire and tell me that you like it, do it now, yes right now, this post will wait, I promise I won’t write anymore until you are back. Are you back? Good, we can continue.) Now it’s not exactly closed door writing for Nyssa but it’s the closest I’ve done in a long time, and what happened. On my holiday I knocked out nearly 40,000 words in just shy of two weeks and finished the story. This is a good thing. So I’m wondering if I should do that more. Stop just writing in spurts for my own personal writing, take one solo project on and run with it. Keep from showing all in sundry until it is finished. I am thinking that I might just set myself a goal for November, write Babypire. No word count to meet, nothing like that, just a deadline, to take Babypire and finish it. I’m assuming at this stage it’s going to be a very long short story or a novella, it doesn’t seem to have the complete substance for a full blown novel. So I won’t be doing NaNo as such, but I will be taking the chance to set myself a goal and achieve it in that month. After all according to the pagan calendar that will be the first month of the new year so why not take the chance to make it a good month. I just need to focus again and keep the door closed. But don’t worry Sam, I plan on locking you in the room with me *winks*

NoNo to the NaNo

NaNo WriMo is just around the corner again. And thanks to Sam here, I got reminded about it again. I tried to do it last year not truly understanding just how work was going to pick up for me. My part job stopped being quite as part time. I did manage to knock out 25000 words in the first week and a half but after that… the muse just up and left on that story. There were some other things going on too that helped the muse get annoyed and take flight but for the most part it was work that got in the way. So I made the decision months ago when I got an email about it that I would not be participating this year.

After finishing the first draft of Nyssa I started to think about it again. But really, I don’t need NaNo WriMo to get me writing, I write because I want to write and because I need to write. It is a desire within me, I don’t need that added pressure of competing against all these people who are happily showing how wonderful they are doing, how they’ve already shot beyond 50k and are starting down 100k by the end of the month.
Working on a time frame is one thing, but it has to be realistic for me. I realistically cannot devote the time to just one single project, at that time of the year and still have a life and be a mum and all of that. I failed at it last year and I realistically know I will not be able to suddenly achieve a miracle this year.
My muse and myself don’t like being limited, we like to roam around ideas and while it does make it harder to get singular things finished at times, it is the way we write and I am okay with that. I write because I want to, because the voices in me will not be stilled and at my own pace. And I am okay with that.

Orphaned Stories – Averly

So once more Peter Dawes is to blame for a blog post. One might wonder if I have a mild infatuation going on here, but shhhh Peter might get a big head if he heard. *insert a wink and a laugh here*
But today the reason is orphaned stories, you can read Peter’s blog post here. I have a million and one orphaned stories. I started writing at age 14 and most stories between now and then have remained unfinished and are what can be called orphans. I am attempting to fix that, well with the ones that are worth it, and I think perhaps the ones sitting there with 40,000 words on them are owed some measure of love and attention at some point, heck even the ones that are only 1,000 words deserve it. Now there is one orphaned story that I keep going back to often because well I just fell in love with it when I wrote it. It’s probably something that would fall into the category of a supernatural romance given how it started but I really don’t know since I never got further than the initial writing and then emailing it to a few of my writing partners to get feedback, before it just sat there in the writing folder on my harddrive to be opened and read occasionally and nothing more done to it. The title on it is Averly for the main character and because clearly nothing else moved me to name it something more interesting. Part of me wonders if it shouldn’t be rewritten and placed into the Children of the Immortals tales. I know a certain fae bard and her sister who were kidnapped as young women and it could tie in with a little rewrite here and there, or I could just continue with the story as is and see where things take me. But enough what if thoughts. I give to you Averly, an orphaned story that may or may not need to find a home.
Averly closed the door and leant against it. Her breath hissed out her nose, a violent sound in the silent and dark room. She made no move to turn the lights on. She wanted it dark and she wanted it quiet. She wanted nothing of the world in here with her. It was too damn much having her in here. Fuck. She’d said that word a lot tonight, her mind was filled with two things; I still love you and Fuck. Both statements were on infinite loop playing in her mind. She was fucked completely. What was she meant to do with that information? They were bad together but so fucking good at the same time. God when he touched her, when that husky voice of his filled her ears. God. The boy was sex on a stick to her and she couldn’t ever get enough of that. And it wasn’t that they didn’t love each other. They did. But none of it was enough to overcome everything else. She had to marry who she was told to marry and he was a warrior and not just any warrior he was a Guardian, a warrior for the Lord and Lady. He protected the people, their existence; they very rarely were given approval by their divine masters to wed.
Fuck.
Averly closed her eyes. She wasn’t going to cry again. She was stronger than that. Like hell she was. She’d been crying a lot lately and she hated herself for it. They had both agreed it was for the best and then those damn Tremans had attacked her home. The Guardians had come to protect her family, they had protected them, they had killed every one of those sons of bitches. Her father and brothers were a little worse for wear but no lasting harm had been done. Well not to them. As the only female of status there she had been the first to be evacuated here to their safe house in the country. She could have taken herself here easy enough but protocol dictated someone come with her, Davyn had been injured and was the obvious choice for guard detail and so she had ended up with him, alone here. They’d stayed on opposite sides of the room, the tension between them so thick she could have carved her name with her nail across it. They were still bound together and it was all Averly could do to remain in place her palms fixed against the wall behind her back. Not that the positioning of her body was helping matters, all she could see in her mind was Davyn over her pressing her back against the wall, her hands pinned behind her his body pressed against her, his mouth devouring hers as he set her body on fire. The strangled look in his eyes led her to believe similar things were playing across his mind. And then in their fractured conversation. I still love you. And fucked if it hadn’t been said on both sides followed by the mother of all awkward silences. Well what were they meant to say at that point? They’d both agreed to end it. Most days she had no fucking clue why but it was done and if their track record was anything to go by it was the best for both of them. Only was it? Yeah, maybe another time, another life, another society dictating the ways of the world, yeah maybe they could have had a true love story. But neither of them was willing to change what needed to change to be together. But fuck. Didn’t mean she didn’t wish it was otherwise. Didn’t change what he meant to her or how much she fucking wanted him. And fuck, he still loved her.
And to make things even more awkward, he’d been assigned to her as her personal protection. Right now he was in the room next to hers. A daughter of a council member was a big thing, god forbid she was taken by the Tremans. But that is who they were after. It had happened before and would again. Her blood was strong and pure and not to mention her talents. The Treman wanted to bring that strength into their young. Their females couldn’t produce so they had to look elsewhere. And their customs were very specific about who they could breed with. One like Averly would be taken and breed with as many for as long as life sustained her body and the Tremans had many magics of their own for making sure that she lived long under their careful and terrible care. It wasn’t the future Averly wanted for herself and no one else did either. So she was stuck with her Guardian again, same one she’d had before, same one she’d fallen head over heels in fucking love with. The Lord and Lady had a hell of a sense of humour on them at times. Averly considered taking to her knees and having out with them but they so rarely saw fit to reply. Besides she still owed them big time for that night. The night Davyn had first whispered those words, honesty as he lay bleeding out in her arms. She’d prayed so hard that night, promised half the world, and possibly her first born, if they’d just save him. Lord and Lady had been kind and he’d stayed with her and that was the night that everything got complicated between them. Gone were the hidden looks and flirting, the carefree smiles and instead they got heavy complications both knowing that this was pretty much forbidden let alone doomed. But the heart wants what it wants and hers had wanted him and he had reciprocated in kind. And here they were right back to complicated awkwardness. But sitting in that dark quiet room there was a light inside her heart that was jumping around like a flickering flame that he was back so close to her. She’d take awkward weirdness any day over the constant wondering of what he was doing, where he was, was he fighting, was he bleeding out on a cold marble floor somewhere without her there to beg for his life in exchange for hers.

Averly shot into the air at the sound of something breaking. A window maybe? Something shattering down onto the floor in the room next door. Her first thought was that Davyn was in trouble. It didn’t really register on any level that he was the warrior not her and if he couldn’t look after himself she couldn’t really do a lot for him. She thundered into his room expecting to find him overrun with Tremans but he was alone in the room the remains of a very large vase embedded in the wall and across the floor. Davyn’s dagger was in his hand at her entry and with a sheepish look he put it down again and stepped in front of the wreckage as if he could hide it from her. Averly’s breath caught in her throat at the sight of him standing there in naught but his pants. She finally let the breath out in a strangled noise and turned and fled from the room.