flighty_dreams

Best wishes to you all in 2013. :-)

2012 was good for me on other fronts, but definitely not the LJ writing/posting front. I'm sorry I've been so MIA around here. Consequently, posting more often is marked 'High Priority' on my New Year's Resolutions list. I know my story updates were pretty pathetic in 2012, but fingers crossed, they will improve this year. (Not much further they could fall, sadly, so it has to be trending up, right?)

Anyways... yes I am still working on my WIPs. I am optimistically hoping to update Spliced before the end of this month, now that the craziness of the holidays is over. We'll see how that goes; it's a long chapter. I'll give another status report later if things start looking grim there, but I'm hoping that won't be necessary. 

I've had some readers ask me about new Spliced, and I thank you all for your patience. I really do appreciate it.

Hey all, just posting to say, yes I am alive! I'm sure it doesn't look like it, but I have been my obsessive productive self and am still writing away, even if I have not been good with the whole regular updates on LJ thing.

( Spliced Newsletter - May 2012 Edition )

It's been rather busy around Chez Flighty lately, so sorry for my delayed well wishings. I hope everyone had a good holiday, and is looking forward to the fresh possibilities of the New Year.

I'm not really a Resolutions kind of girl, but I do have plans, if anyone would be interested to hear them. Either way, I can look back on this post a year from now and either cry or pat myself on the back. :P



All right. That's all I got. Best wishes to you all for a safe and happy 2010!

Between the Lines by Jessica Page Morrell is easily my favorite book on writing. It's a snowy day here and I'm just sitting at home, so I thought I'd share an excerpt from the chapter on Pacing:

( Excerpt and my thoughts )

My brother sent me this questionnaire for fleshing out your characters. He found it off some site and converted it into a Word doc format for me. Download Doc version here. (Let me know if it doesn't work and I'll email it.)

It has some great questions on it to help you figure out your characters (especially the leads) really well. For example, I filled this out for Min and WOW. First I was amazed by how many of these questions I could answer, and then I was amazed at how some of them really got me to think!

Some examples I enjoyed:

Do they act the same alone as they do with someone?
Most important childhood event that still affects him/her?
If granted one wish, what would it be and why?
What 4 things would they most like to change about themselves?
Followup: If they were changed, would they be the same person? Why/why not?

Unfortunately the formatting won't work in here, so I'll just link the basic version and its description. If you'd like the Word version with a handy easy to fill out table, check out the link above or just leave me a msg! ;-) I have to fill this out for NaNo MC.

( Link and Description )

So I'm finally giving NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month for the uninitiated) a try this year. Since the premise is you have to write 50K words during the month of November... needless to say I won't be updating Spliced or Scotch during November (unless it was a chapter I had already written this month). I'm gonna try to finish Part 3 of Spliced this month if I can, we'll see though.

As for my NaNoWriMo story, the first line is:

The body on my doorstep changed everything.

It's different from the stories I've posted on here. First off b/c it's written in first person, but it's also a fantasy story. So we'll see how it goes! I shall probably fail spectacularly, but I'll give it a go. ;-)

One of the panels I attended at Dragoncon was called Mean Streets: Urban Fantasy. And one of the questions asked the panel of 5 authors (4 women and 1 man) was how difficult or not it was for them to write the opposite sex. They each commented, but I especially remember the story the male author (J F Lewis) told as an example of how men and women differ. I'm paraphrasing here, but here it is:

"I was having lunch with my wife the other day, and we're sitting at the table eating and not talking. Just eating in silence. And I notice she has this pensive look on her face. So I ask her, 'What are you thinking about?'

"And she looks at me and says, 'Well I'm thinking about the kids, wondering if they're okay staying with their grandparents. And I'm thinking about what I have to do at work on Monday, and how I have to go pick up the dry cleaning, because I forgot to do that before we left. A bunch of things.' She pauses and then asks me, 'What are you thinking about?'

" 'I'm chewing.' " 

XD

Women always have stuff on their minds, they're constantly thinking about all this random stuff, or seriously pondering something else. Meanwhile men can have this blankness to them, where they aren't worrying about anything at all and are just... blank. I can't think of a better way to describe it atm, I'm tired. But I find it really funny.

And it makes me want to go back and look at my writing and see whether I made the men too thinky. But I also have two major male characters that are both brooders. Surely that counteracts the normal tendency towards blankness? Also it's funny, I was thinking that when someone is described as 'broody' it usually IS a male, because its a male who thinks a lot, like women do! XD

Anyways, just wanted to share this little anecdote with you all.

So last weekend I went to Dragoncon (3rd time going) and it was wonderful as always.

( The Dragoncon Experience ) 

Anyways, that was my Dragoncon adventure. I have the 2nd half of Chapter 7 (Part 3) of Spliced sitting on my computer, it's been sitting here since before Dragoncon. Yes, that's a week and a half and I haven't posted it. I'm a bad person. I'll get it up very soon...

I've also been sick for almost a week now and it's not going away. Ugh. I even called in sick to work TWICE last week. I never do that but I was just too miserable to go in. Here's hoping I get better soon... I've forgotten what it's like to be able to breathe clearly...