What Am I Doing

[tinhuvielartanis]

I'm listening to the Gothic genius mix on iTunes and attempting to proof The Blood Crown. I've learned that 8-10 pages is my limit before my eyes begin to cross and my belly turns into a knot. I'm just not good at all at reading my own material. I know I have it to do...twice...but I don't wanna. The manuscript is 11,722 and I'm averaging about 3500 words before I have to stop. I'm marking my stopping point with a big Ω, so I'll know where to begin again. I just hope gunslingaaahhh can make heads or tales of the narrative when she has it in her hot hands. I need to write her today and have her trash the copy of The Blood Crown she has because I've already changed some things. I want hers to be the most up-to-date version there is, so her work won't be so daunting, although daunting it still shall be.

booraven22 has mentioned on several occasions about making major revisions to the story. I've never had to do that. The story is exactly how it was told to me and I just wrote it down with my many grammatical mistakes. It's like I channel the stories, so revising it would be like sewing an extra leg to one of my dogs. It just seems unnatural. booraven22 must have much more control over her stories and characters than I do mine. At some point, early on in my stories, the characters take control and write through me. I barely remember anything about The Augury of Gideon, which is kind of scary. All I remember is getting up way early and writing like a fiend until the early afternoon, sometimes beyond.

Is this a sign of my insanity? Was Tish right to peg me for a lunatic. That still bothers me more than it ought to, I guess because Scott doesn't know the whole story and probably never will. Whenever I do something odd or out of the norm, I always wonder if Tish was right and was justified in shutting me out of helping Scott with his career. Then again, if I were still helping Scott, I wouldn't have gotten these manuscripts written in the short period of time that I did. Everything happens for a reason I guess. It doesn't mean I have to like it though.

Like any warm-blooded human, I like to be appreciated for my work. I haven't been and I won't be on the Scott front, but maybe I will with The Vampire Relics. I'd like to someday see it on film. I know that's stretching the dream a little tightly, but it's a dream nonetheless. Tom Hardy would make such a perfect Cadmus unless young Finn wanted to take off the hat, shave his head, and try his hand at acting. I doubt that was ever happen.

Okay, enough babbling. Time to read around 5000 more words before I can't take anymore.

Comments

[waterdawg.livejournal.com]

Proofreading for me is easy - writing no way....at least not a novel.

[booraven22.livejournal.com]

Revisions for me come in two ways, first: line editing so a sentence flows better, adjusting a scene so it flows better etc.

The second is the hard one. It involves sacrificing good scenes because they stop the action. Or cutting a ridiculously long exposition scene. Or changing the ending because it was unsatisfactory. Usually I end up rewriting stuff because I did it without the muse's input. It's like spaghetti, sometimes you throw it against the wall to see if it sticks.

The major re-write I just did? Works better. But it was also because I decided to take a free standing story and make it part of a trilogy. In a bigger universe.

You are LUCKY that you can write the way you do. I have a tendency to OVERWRITE a scene, talk it to death and bore the shit out of the reader.

I guess it just depends on what serves the story best. I'm hoping this next book doesn't need as much massaging as the first one did. Of course that started as a plot bunny scene that exploded into a book. :)

[tinhuviel.livejournal.com]

I wish I were more like you, or we could reach a happy medium and feed off one another's specialties because I tend to skip descriptive scenes altogether and get right down to the characters. I've been told I should be a screenwriter.

[booraven22.livejournal.com]

Girl, you and I both write like screenwriters. When I read your stories, I can see the movie unfolding in my head.

There's a scene late in my story that takes place in a dungeon like setting and I read it out loud to the husbeast. He got queasy from the descriptions, which made me happy. :)

[falkenna.livejournal.com]

Don't know about Booraven, but as for me, it just means you can hear them more clearly -- I have to keep listening over several sessions of the same scene to get it right! (Sometimes not so much, though.)