Revising old work into something new

The last few months have been sort of challenging for me.   I’ve been trying to maintain a decent university GPA while trying to make a living while trying to get over some health issues.  In the back of my head since the beginning of December, I’ve been feeling the urge to work on  Shadowfighter again.  For those of you unfamiliar with it, Shadowfighter is the novel I wrote in tenth grade.  It was handwritten, and I’ll admit that over half of it was written in Mr. Jensen’s world history class.  (It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested in history, but rather that it came more easily to me than most of my classmates, but I digress.)   It followed the journey of Erin Allen from naive, stupid 15-year-old, to awesome warrior woman.

Or at least that’s what I thought when I was 16 and writing this.

Flashback Time!

So I’m gonna have a flashback to middle school here.

I’d like to introduce you all to the Planetary Power Force.

They were the brainchild of a twelve-year-old mind fed on Power Rangers (especially my fashion sense) and Star Wars and early memories of Voltron.  Oddly enough, I didn’t discover Sailor Moon or the Animorphs until after creating the PPF, which you could theoretically see the influences of in my more final version at age 14.

It started off as a series of short stories, which later evolved into a novella (the revision process at work!).  I’ll offer you the very first short story.   I’ll even preserve my original formatting, syntax, Random Capital Letters, etc. so you can all see how silly (pathetic?) I was back then.   Typing this up from the original handwritten very first draft was filled with alternating cringing and facepalming and giggling, punctuated by exclamations of “what the hell” and “oh, geez…”.  So by all means do not feel like you have to take it seriously!

I know I was giggling, and I wouldn’t expect any sort of critical acclaim from my readers at reading this.  I’ve grown as a writer, as we all do.

Enjoy!

Title:  Planetary Power Force (short story #1)
Rating: G  (Or is that TV-Y7?)

Nano 2011

So, it’s that time of year again.  I’ve been neglecting almost all of my creative works, except for the bare minimum I have to do to get by in my creative writing class this semester.   I’m sitting right at 7400 words in my NaNoWriMo project.  Those of you familiar with National Novel Writing Month will know that on the 17th of November, 7400 words is a BAD place to be sitting if you want to finish on time.  Luckily I have all of next week, but I’m not even a fifth of the way through yet.

I’ve decided that it’s difficult to do Nano when you’re in school, trying to get your own business going, worrying about family, and wondering how you’re going to pay next month’s rent.  Add fibromyalgia to the mix and life just sort of sucks, really.  I don’t think I’m surprised that my creative energies are low.  Disappointed, yes, but not really surprised.

So where am I going with this?

I’m only at 7400 words because I’m stuck.  No amount of “just write through it or make yourself skip it” has been able to provide me with the next segment I need.  I don’t know if trying to start at the beginning of the Soldaris Saga was just a dumb move on my part, and if I should have started at a different point in the series… or if I should have picked a different project altogether.   It’s a little late to be second-guessing myself.   Definitely too late to start over.  And yet, I am very tempted to try.

So really, I guess I’m going nowhere.  I’m still sitting at 7400 words, and just wrote 275 words here instead of on my novel.  It hasn’t been like pulling teeth, which is what I need.  I don’t need to keep fighting this story if it doesn’t want to go anywhere.

All of this leaves only the question: what am I going to do instead?

Challenges

Wow.  I never realized just how genre-bound I was until I got into a class where fantasy and any other genre fiction is strictly forbidden.  It’s been crazy trying to find ideas for literary fiction that don’t bore me to death.   I love playing goddess; I’m not nearly as keen on the idea of illustrating a slice of life.    It’s been a real challenge to force myself into that mental space, with deadlines.  I have a list of ideas for stories, but keeping the supernatural elements out of things is extremely difficult.

Also, speaking of challenges, NaNoWriMo is coming up!  I’m excited.  I have to redeem myself after last year.  Still don’t know if I’m working on the Soldaris Saga, giving Shadowfighter a complete re-write, or working on a different project sort of inspired by Doctor Who.

I’ve also thought of doing Doctor Who fanfiction, but there’s something in me that insists on being original rather than derivative.  Still, if I have to start over as I’ve ended up doing for the last three years, it’s an attractive option.  It’s been years since I’ve written any fanfiction, but fanfic is how I taught myself to write.   I can’t hate on it.  People who do hate on fanfic just don’t recognize its value as a learning tool and an exercise.   And hey, there are some people who get paid to write fanfiction.  Star Trek, Star Wars, many different games, even comic books….  Fanfiction’s nothing to simply dismiss, even if a good amount of it is poorly-written slashfic.

Anyway.  Didn’t mean to go off on a tangent like that.  I just felt the need to spill some thoughts about writing and my current challenges.    Now it’s back to work; I have to have something written by Wednesday afternoon, and preferably something better than my last workshop…

Camp and the first line

So.  Camp NaNoWriMo started six days ago.  It’s like the standard Nano event in November, except it’s on a smaller scale with more intimate groups (“cabins” of 5-6 people) and less of the crazy pressure that drives the main event.

I’m six days behind.  Between the finishing of my last summer class, helping my best friend move, and then packing and going out of town, I haven’t really had the time to write.   It might have been easier to make time, if I knew where to start.   I’m one of those people that can let the words flow for a long time, but only if I know my starting point and direction.  I don’t have that starting point yet, that one scene that grabs the reader and pulls him into the story.    I’ve always been pretty good with in medias res beginnings, but I’m not sure what event that’s supposed to be this time.

Unfortunately, the clock keeps ticking.  I better figure this out soon, if I want to use “camp” to my advantage.  Right now I only have to write 2,000 words a day in order to reach that 50,000 word mark.  I think I’d really rather not have to write more than that in a day if I can help it.

Wish me luck.  I’m clearly going to need it in order to redeem my horrible showing of November 2010.

Jenna’s Avengers?

Well, if there’s one good thing to be said about fibromyalgia it’s that it often brings some very strange dreams when I’m having a flare-up.  And by strange I mean in the way that I might be able to make stories out of them.   As a fantasy writer, I can often use these weirder dreams as story seeds.

This morning’s dream is a perfect example.  I dreamed that I could sort-of fly.  It was really more of a gliding action, but it was powerful and if I did it just right, I could go for long distances.  If you’ve ever played DC Universe Online, it was a lot like the mechanics of the acrobatic movement set.  It’s the way that I’ve been flying in my dreams for years and years, as far back as I can remember to that dream when I was four and I took off from the sidewalk with a jump and started gliding.

Anyway.  Irrelevant asides aside, this was one of those dreams where I ended up with a team around me.  In a way, it was like gathering X-Men or something.  We found each other, we all had different powers, and there were some interesting challenges.  I mean, beyond the usual villain threats and whatnot, we also had to find a headquarters.  We ended up settling for an old converted warehouse of several stories on the bank of a river in a forest.  It worked for us, until the higher powers decided it was time to meddle and get us involved in the bigger conflict.  I woke up with a sort of “to be continued” feeling after meeting the supervillain/archnemesis figure with a rather standard “this is only beginning” parting line.

Still.  There were enough non-standard elements that it might be worth pursuing, such as a giant concrete dome disguised as some sort of mushroom sculpture over a holy site/park, the idea that not everyone wants heroes, something about fire on the mountain stands out at me, more running away early on than fighting… It’s an interesting seed idea that could develop into something more.

One of the more amusing things that made it clear it was a dream was the fact that we were making our own paper towels.  What the heck?

In the beginning…

This is going to be one of those posts where I work out where I’m thinking at the moment.   Figuring out where to start is often one of the things I have the most trouble with when writing.  Usually once I have a start, the rest can just flow for a while.  It’s coming up with that starting point that’s difficult.  The first book of the Soldaris Saga is begging to be written for the August session of Camp Nanowrimo.

Wish me luck.  What I start on Monday is a long road to reaching out and finally grabbing my dreams.

I guess a good place to start, and it usually is with my work, is in medias res.   When I wrote the fourth book of the saga for regular Nanowrimo two years ago (not expecting it to become this epic), I began on the battlefield.  It was effective, and while I’ve played around with it some since, beginning in the middle of the action has stayed.

The first book is about a young Thorven Soldaris, and his path away from his birthright as crown prince and toward a more important role as a paladin.    It is also about the beginnings of the war that continues right up until resolution of the saga.   I have enough figured out of the plot that if I can just come up with that opening sentence, the opening paragraph, the rest should fall into place behind it.

Do I start it off with another battle?  Do I throw us into the stirrings of war in enemy lands right away?  Do I fall right into training with Thorven, or the precipitating event that sets him on the path of abdicating the throne to his brother while he goes off to save the world?   I’m sure that I’ll figure this out before Monday.

 

More epic than intended

Every once in a while, you get this one project that makes you sit back and wonder “what the hell have I gotten myself into?”  What started out as a simple attempt to make up a background story for a role-playing character has turned into an epic fantasy saga.  The tentative length of this saga (as my very vague outlines dictate) is seven novels, and it’s demanding to be written.

Ancient History

Pop pop fizzle fizzle… 

That’s the sound that all my projects have made while I’ve been going through a year-long identity crisis known as the post-divorce period.  It’s been hell on my creativity, and a few medical issues thrown in haven’t really helped, you know?   But.  I’m not here to make excuses today.  I’ve done enough of that in the past, and I can’t always be feeling sorry for myself or apologizing if I’m going to make any forward progress.  Today I’m here to talk about my history with writing, and my renewed enthusiasm for it.

When I was younger, writing was something that just came naturally to me.

Focus, or the lack thereof

I’ve come to a realization lately:  my time management skills are not very good.

I don’t know or not if it’s because there are a million things I could be doing.    I could be leveling my low-level characters or running heroics on my level 85 paladin in World of Warcraft.  I could be indulging in the joys and the dramas of online, text-based role playing.  I could be doing the homework that’s due tomorrow.  I could be reading a trashy romance novel for “market research” or to “clear my mind of hardcore academics”.   Heck, I could even be doing dishes or cleaning, or, heaven forbid, my homework.

Whatever the reason, it’s really difficult for me to make time for writing.  I don’t know if it’s the fact that I fear success if I buckle down and just do it, or if I’m addicted to the internet or something.  I don’t know why I keep making excuses for myself.   But what I do know is that if I want to be as serious about this as I’m sure I do, then I need to schedule writing time and have the self-discipline to stick to it.

I know I don’t have many readers yet (if any), but I’m asking for you all to cheer me on as I work harder to make time for writing.  This is something that’s important to me, and with any luck, everyone else will benefit from it as well.   Thank you.