Them stories I write
25 Feb 2011 Leave a Comment
by Silbena in Creative writing Tags: characters, more awesome than you can handle, stories, writing
I think it’s about time that I blog more explicitly about my current writing projects — and hopefully blogging about them will also encourage me to get back into the whole big writing projects thing. Here goes~
At the moment, I’m working on two different novels, one of which I started working on in 2009, planning to write it for NaNoWriMo. I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about Following the Gay Umbrella before — and the fact that the very url of this site comes from the fictional reality of that novel, Crazyland. People always ask what this specific novel is about, and it’s kind of hard to summarise specifically in the terms of MY story — the base plot, however, is one that’s not rare: five teenagers accidentally stumble upon an alternate dimension and then embark upon an epic quest to save said dimension. The problem with all of this, however, is the fact that Crazyland doesn’t seem to make much sense at all, what with its fickle gods and decidedly weird characters. … Yeah, I was right to begin with, it’s very hard to describe my novel without it sounding very vague and very lame. You’ll just have to read it at some point! *grins*
Anyway. This is the novel that I’ve put so much work in that it probably surpasses the amount of work I’ve ever put into any novel before. Oh, yeah, I’ve always tried writing novels or stories that I perceive to have grand endings — the problem I always have with them, however, is that I’m insanely inspired for the beginning and the clever end of the story (because beginnings and ends are my things — I’m really good with starting and ending a story creatively), but it’s the middle part that I struggle with. I always get bored of a story, because I have to struggle to fill the void between the clever beginning and the clever end. With Following the Gay Umbrella and the novel I started working on before that (the second one I’m working on — I’ll get to it) I started working around this problem by creating a plot outline — my plot outlines are basically the rough rough rough draft of the novel, which tell exactly what’s going to happen next. Curiously, sometimes my characters have wanted things to go differently than I had first imagined them, and chapters that were supposed to be short become long, basically because instead of moving forward, my characters sit down and discuss something — but I’m fine with that. My characters usually know best.
Yeah, my longer stories and novels are usually very character-oriented. When I start writing a story, or a novel, I usually begin with a concept — Following the Gay Umbrella began with the title phrase. I’ve showed you a picture of my gay umbrella before, probably in one of the earlier posts — you go find it, I’m way too lazy to search for it for you. Anyway, the concept was “a girl and her friends follow a magical umbrella she believes to be gay to an alternate dimension, where said umbrella works a bit like a compass for a reason unknown to them.” From there, the girl — Ada — and her friends started taking shape and personalities, and from there, their own dimension and then the alternate dimension and the alternate dimension’s quirky characters all appeared. I never create a world on its own — a world and characters must compliment each other, and I much rather build a world around characters than characters to fit a world.
Regaaardless. There’s some 31 chapters of Following the Gay Umbrella, nowadays, and countless pages of description and planning and character profiles etc. etc. etc. The problem I’m having with this novel is that I took a too long break from writing it — it’s such a huge and complicated project that I’ve completely lost track of it, and now find it incredibly hard to get back into writing it. And before that, the problem was that in building a world around how characters react, you sometimes miss the essence of the world — and in this case, this is exactly what has happened. I’ve created a world that my characters don’t always understand, and as a result, I don’t understand it either. This really isn’t good, and I struggle to keep writing about it, because I’m not really sure of what’s going on, either. The goal, right now, should be just to push this problem aside and just keep writing ’til the end of the novel, at which point I should read it through once more, annotate it and then try to make sense of what has happened. I strongly believe in figuring things out through exploring them further, and what’s a better way to explore than to just keep pushing forward? But I’m so busy with other things and other thoughts right now, that it’s unlikely that I’ll get into it in a while.
Shame. This one really looked promising.
The second novel that I’m KINDA working on began a year or two earlier than Following the Gay Umbrella, but gained its title only after I had stopped working on it. The problem with ‘Till Horizon Do Us Part is the fact that I started writing it in Finnish, and in the first person — meaning that the very language I used in writing it became the essence of its main character, Ruben. This wouldn’t perhaps be as problematic if there were as many characters in this one as there are in Following the Gay Umbrella, but ‘Till Horizon Do Us Part only has two main characters — Ruben and Angel. As with FTGU, THDUP (oh LOL) began with an idle thought: “what if an angel just randomly appeared on the doorstep of a skeptic, stubborn young man with his life and values pretty much figured out?” As you can see, the whole concept revolves around Ruben’s personality and the way in which Angel’s presence impacts upon his life, and so, translating it into English — since that’s the language I write in, nowadays; my grasp of Finnish has diminished greatly, recently — has become really difficult, since his personality is so… Finnish in nature.
I’ve got an idea for a third novel as well, again older than the aforementioned two, but that one is so rough and unrefined that I don’t really wanna talk about it further. Regardless, hopefully my life settles down a bit in this following year, and I can start working on my big projects again — as of now, I think it’s more beneficial for me and my novels if I just leave them be. I wouldn’t want to work on them half-assedly just out of some sense of obligation: I want to do it in a manner that honors my love for both of these budding stories.
I mean, I wouldn’t be much of a storyteller if I told a story I HAD TO, instead of a story I love, right?
If you guys have any questions about my projects, feel free to ask — I love talking about my babies. Just ask all the people who were around me when I was still working on one or two of these novels. :3 I bet they’re all sick of me and hearing about Angel, Ruby and the fellowship.
Peace and delightful stories, everyone.
You can’t do what you don’t burn for
14 Jan 2010 3 Comments
by Silbena in Creative writing, Personal Tags: characters, revelations, stories, writing
Unless some of my nonexistent readers (I know, I know, same old complaint and everything, but I’ll start believing I have readers when I start getting indications = comments from them, damn it!) haven’t already noticed, I’ve had a bit of a slump in motivation with, well, pretty much everything — but centering primarily on writing.
I mean, after those 158,388 magical words I wrote in November, I only barely even reached for the 45k line in December, and it’s already the 14th of January and I have written a grand total of (short pause when she whips out the calculator — scratch that, retrieves the calculator from the kitchen [don't ask] – and checks a few numbers) 1,867 words.
Meaningless whining aside, I’d like to go on a tangent here about keeping track of how much one has written by seeing how many words one has managed to type up. Let’s put it this way: if someone had told me some year or so ago that I would soon pay close attention to just how many words I jot down and check my word count feverishly every time I finish a long paragraph, I would have been offended. I mean, no way would I ever place quantity over quality like that! Sure, writing up one page might take more than a while, but at least it’s good-quality text, right?
At one count, this past-day me is right. Most of the to-be thirty chapters I’ve written for the novel I am currently writing will be poorly constructed purple prose which may take odd tangents (please, you know me, and you know these bracket-comments I keep putting in, how is it possible for me not to go on a tangent) and courses I never designed them to take, just because I’m writing too fast to register what exactly I’m saying. Pretty much like that last sentence, I actually have no clue of what I was going to say there, but I think the gist was that speed and quantity does not replace quality on any level.
However, there are advantages to the speedy, lower-quality sort of approach I have been, through the guidance of NaNoWriMo, been taking with my novel. For one, I will have a first draft done so much faster than I would have had it done if I were to take my traditional approach — hell, if I had taken my traditional approach to this one, I doubt I would even have finished the 50k required to win NaNoWriMo!
I’m not trying to say that I’m typing this draft fast only to get it done and out of the way (though if I’m perfectly honest with myself, there’s this other novel I’m really itching to write, and I really can’t write it if I’m writing another one — because I promised myself, ok), but also what Chris Baty, the creator of the wonderful (Inter)National Novel Writing Month said: “You can’t revise a blank page to anything but a blank page.” (or something along those lines, I can’t remember exactly…)
And this very indirectly brings me back to my original topic of discussion. This all sounds so good and grand and everything, but even low-quality and high-quantity work requires a lot of, yes, work. I remember sitting at my computer for something like five hours straight, typing up these scenes and hoping to finish a chapter before I had to go to bed — because if I didn’t, then I’d just have to stay up and finish it, and start a bit of the next one, because the one thing I learnt is that you do not, ever finish at the end of a chapter, because then starting again will be very, very difficult. I remember raving about my novel and updating my facebook status with my wordcount, my twitter status with my wordcount, and oftentimes a clever sentence I had just written up. I remember being ridiculously proud when I first reached 50,000, then a 100,000 and then 150,000…
And I miss those feelings. Lately, writing this novel has become a chore. I mean, surely I had my hard times in November: self-doubt and then self-loathing, and then just hating and being bored of my story and almost hoping it would go away and disappear so that I wouldn’t have to worry about it so much, but somehow I always managed to pull through. Right now, thinking back, I’m not sure how I did that.
Or, well, I wasn’t sure. Today, when thinking along the usual lines of “mph, I should be writing, can’t be bothered, have better and lazier things to do, snerk,” I was reminded of the fact that, well, you can’t write something that doesn’t light you on fire. It’s impossible to have the sort of determination to reach 150,000 words and over in a month, with school and exams and everything, unless there’s a serious sort of fire that keeps pushing you on there — that fire that keeps you rooted to your seat for hours on end, just typing away and blissfully ignoring the annoyances of the real life (except for eating and sleeping and exams).
And then I realised that that passion actually originated from my story. I loved it — I love it. I love Ada and the fact that she never really speaks, but is always polite, dreamy and well-suited into my fellowship’s new dimension, and that she uses her beloved gay umbrella with such finesse (and I love the fact that she is so determined about the gay part); I love Dee, because she is smart, but doesn’t show it too much, and she is naturally comfortable around people — so much so that she tries to get into their pants moments after she meets them — and I love that she is small but strong, and that she has a catchy laugh; I love Sebastian, and how he is such a tough guy to the point of being mean, but once someone threatens or hurts a friend of his, this someone is immediately on Sebastian’s wrong side, and I love that he can be playful and cool and gleefully violent; I love Sophie, because though she was supposed to be a whiny bitch, she turned out different, and I still can’t figure the woman out — I love that she always seems to be on the bad side of someone, and mostly because she chooses to; I love Nicholas because of his tall awkwardness and the brooding silences he has, and I love him regardless of the fact that he figured out almost my whole plot in chapter eight (I had to mislead the guy tremendously to get something done, seriously), and I love his occasional dark breakdowns and his discomfort and confusion.
I love the scores of my minor characters, because they are so weird in all so different and clever ways; I love my setting, because everything and anything can happen; I love my storyline and my plot, because, though this is me saying it, I think it is supremely clever.
Gosh, I’ve just got to do myself a favour and finish this story, because I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t.
