25 Feb 2011
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.
16 Jan 2011
by Silbena
in Creative writing
Tags: drabble, more awesome than you can handle, stories, writing
Right. So you guys know how I claim to be a writer, right? Or at least someone interested in creative writing? And that I’ve been making vague mentions to the fact that I’m currently writing a novel — and that the very URL of this blog contains a reference to said novel (I haven’t told you about that? I have to remember to tell you about that)? I could go on to write a huuuuuge post about how scared I am that I’ve completely lost my muse, or at least could have, a few days ago — but I think that today kinda reminded me of the fact that with writing my novel, which requires a lot of coordination and trying to keep facts together and everything, because hey, the thing is (also) HUUUUUUGE, I’ve tried to make writing too methodical. Once upon a time, I’d just sit down and write about what I felt like — and today, I tried to do exactly that. This is pretty much exactly the sort of piece of writing that I’ve been pining to write for like half a year now — I’m so happy that it finally came out of my head and on, er, virtual paper, that I think I’ll actually share it with you.
Word of warning before I begin, though — it’s written, at least partially, for my significant other; hence it might be a little soft and squishy for people who aren’t into that sort of thing. Also, it’s the first thing I’ve written in a loooong while — constructive criticism or any sort of comment about it is always welcome. I titled this one “daydreaming”, but I think I might think of something better at some point. Without further ado…
The summer sun is shining upon her from the half-open blinds on the window beside to her, where she is sprawled on her creamy-coloured, soft couch. She is pliant, mellow and slightly drowsy from the warmth from the gentle rays of the sun and the great softness of her couch — her body is relaxed, with her head resting on a pillow, her short hair fanned as a halo around her head. She feels comfortable, curled up in her personal nest — safe from the currently forgotten woes of the frantic world. Her eyes are hooded and with a look far away, though with also a tell-tale smile curling at the corner of her mouth, giving her the air of peace and innocence. One of her arms hangs beyond the edge of the couch, her fingers occasionally brushing the hardwood floor in the slow rhythm of her breath. Beyond the window, the blue sky stretches around and above her, dotted and made more palpable by the soft tufts of white clouds floating in the horizon. Through another window, the clouds vanish and the blue of the sky seems endless and absurd, without a given scale understand the dimensions of the heavens above.
Idly, unconsciously shifting her weight on the couch, adjacent to the shift in the flow of her consciousness, she wonders whether the blue colour is borne of some very thin, unseen layer of the sky — of the atmosphere — or whether the blue is consistent through countless layers. With a small, concentrated frown, she tries to remember the count of the layers of the atmosphere — but shortly abandons this conquest, as another thought drifts into her mind. The frown is smoothed off her face, turning into a half-smile, her body relaxing further into her fancied nest, as she ponders of the depth of the atmosphere, its volume, the dimensions of its layers.
Then, after a moment of simply savoring the comfort of lying in the sun like this, peacefully, oh-so-comfortable, without a worry in her mind, her eyes glaze over and the smile melts off her face into an expression of wonder. Now, she raptly contemplates the beauty, brilliance and immortality of this blue phenomenon stretching above her, to the horizon and beyond. She savors the moment, an inexplicable mixture of emotion swelling in her heart, mixed with the expansion of her imagination of attempting to comprehend — but it is already gone, displaced by slight displeasure at scientists from all ages and times for having wrecked the beauty and mysticism of the sky by breaking it into an exact, neat little packet of knowledge. What the scientists often failed to understand… But she cannot muster the intensity of displeasure to form a coherent argument, instead dissolving back into her reverent celebration of beauty. Her eyes are wide open, now, her body slightly tense from excitement and loving worship, as her eyes sweep the canvas above, partially obscured by the blinds she hardly even notices. Oh, the poetic sky; its clouds, its magnificent winds and rain and thunder… Its stars.
Suddenly, she is enrapt in thought about the night sky beyond the blinding blue, thinking of the endlessly burning stars — though that’s not true, she concedes to herself, tilting her head with a small smile, her eyes falling closed and a tuft of hair drifting to tickle her nose: the stars that she is made breathless by on the stretch of the night sky, every night, through this very same window, are mostly dead, by now, or dying — that is how long their light takes to reach this magnificent piece of space-rock (she thinks, with a little giggle) that they call Earth. The immensity of the universe doesn’t frighten her, not in this moment, when nothing exists except for her, this couch, the sun, and the sounds of birds singing sleepily but inquisitively somewhere beyond the open door to her backyard — oh, and the green grass, and the trees, swaying gently in the breeze blowing past her, too, cooling her just sufficiently to keep her comfortable, and still so warm…
Not too long after, she has drifted peacefully asleep, her golden-haired head pillowed on her pale arms and with a satisfied smile on her face. That is how he finds her, and immediately breaks into a fond smile, for he knows — she’s been daydreaming again.
Just a quick note at the end: sorry about the rambling above. It’s kind of late now, and I’m tired, and all that up there was really half-formed thoughts. I might post later about the whole writing issue, but the main focus of this post was always going to be that short story, so don’t mind me too much~
And about the tag — I used to write fanfiction, and a common way to express something that’s too short to be a short story (my understanding of short stories is a little longer than people usually expect) and something that was mostly created on a sudden inspiration and in a small amount of time is called a “drabble.”
Love and peaceful sleep, everybody
13 Sep 2010
by Silbena
in Creative writing, Personal
Tags: 35 days, Following the Gay Umbrella, revelations, stories, writing
Er, hi. I’m sure you know me, I’m the girl who runs this joint. … Yeah, no, I haven’t been around for a bit, but I can explain that one — you see, there were things that came up and … Ok, look, it doesn’t really even matter; I have toe-socks, and hence any argument you can present on the subject of me having to have posted in this blog instead of doing whatever it is that I have done last week (mostly very unexciting stuff anyway, like trying to not die and having vigorous moodswings) is invalid.
See? Totally compels anything you can propel at me. … Yeah, I’ve even descended to the realms of cheap humour.
Who am I kidding? I was in those realms to begin with, ha! So, hi. I’m back now. And I’m going to pretend that last week didn’t happen, blog-wise, incidentally — because I find that when I’m feeling somewhat calm (if tired; but that might be because I didn’t sleep overly much on the weekend and DID sleep well last night, ironically and incredibly annoyingly enough, since I had to get up this morning and it was ANNOYING; maybe I could try to trick some sleep into me by telling my body that I have to get up at seven on a morning when I can sleep in after all, huh) and un-stressed, I don’t exactly want to begin doing something that might bring that back upon me. I’m going to do the daily challenges probably on a day-to-day basis from here on, again, but I won’t account for any lost days. Sorry! And welcome back, by the way.
Last week was both eventful and uneventful. There were many SACs and a practice exam from English — the latter of which was actually a pleasant surprise for me. I’ve never before been able to plan and write three full essays in three hours (and I even had half an hour to spare!), and I was kind of worried about that, to be honest. I suppose that you really don’t know what you can do before you try… It’s weird how, even when you haven’t done it before, somehow your mind (or at least mine does) accommodates to the present circumstances and copes with them, if only you have enough skill to pull it off. So weeeird. I don’t know if this is common for a human being, but I’ve rather recently (meaning in the past few years or so) become increasingly aware of how many things I actually do subconsciously. My discoveries almost frighten me, because it seems as if consciously, there is precious little I can do — whereas my subconscious is probably the most brilliant thing that exists on this planet.
So this is totally an exaggeration, but so what? I like my subconscious (ha, I just totally wrote “subsconscious” — I suppose that that scone I ate today totally left an impression on my brain as it did in my stomach [and my tastebuds, my dear GOD], too), and I also like finding out things that my subconscious had already figured out far later. Does anyone else do that — like, totally have this massively awesome solution to a problem, go back to whatever it is that they were having problems with and realise that, without actually noticing it, they had already begun applying the solution to the problem? I do this in writing SO MUCH that I don’t really even pay attention to it anymore.
Who am I kidding, it’s so fucking freaky that of course I pay attention to it all the time, probably fail and rant at my amused significant other for a while, after which he pats me on the shoulder and tells me that he knew it was going to happen all along. Seriously, this happened with one of my characters, in my novel (which I haven’t been writing for aaaages, but then again, I haven’t been doing much fun stuff for ages, either). Somewhere around chapter 20-ish, I had the abrupt realisation that he was gay (just a bit of background information: this wouldn’t be necessarily a surprising thing, considering that this is me, and I’ve been a major fan of slash [google it, I dare you], though it’s kind of dying now; however, I wasn’t necessarily PLANNING on making the guy gay, since I already have Dee, who is as omnisexual as can be). This was before my significant other had stopped reading the new chapters of my novel, and he just smiled at me and said “oh, I saw that one coming.” And it’s not a one-off thing, either: I look at some of the other things that I’ve decided to implement only later in the novel, then go back to some of the earlier chapters and realise that I was dropping hints about it along the way.
It is MASSIVELY freaky, and simultaneously incredibly awesome. That thing they say about stories writing themselves? SO TRUE.
Speaking of which, I’ve left myself a note in my phone asking for me to write a blog-post about language and sentence-structure. Since I’m feeling kind of happy and light-hearted today, I don’t think I’ll launch into a full discussion about what language means to me and how much I love it, but I might mention how much it annoys me every time my English teachers ask me to write shorter sentences. In fact, the whole premise of the English exam annoys me for the same reason. The best example to explain this is probably to use the context task (remember that essay I posted? That same task). The task is to write a piece reflecting on your ideas and viewpoints on the prompt by using “big ideas” from one of the texts we’ve studied specifically for this task in English. However, that’s not really the gist of the task — the gist of the task is to make it incredibly clear that you are a good writer and you have clear, understandable ideas; and, of course, to make it relatively easy to follow your logic. This infuriates me, because sometimes I feel like I somehow have to dumb down my ideas — or make them “more complex” deliberately, because saying stuff like “everything is real” is too simple for this task, as is grouping every nuance of a reality under one simple banner (which is something I am wont to do). Anyway, this means that I’m not allowed to express myself as I would LIKE to express myself, or to the extent that I’m able to express myself.
Along the same lines, my writing style uses a lot of long sentences and brackets (as I’m sure you’ve noticed), because that’s how I think — I think in looong thoughts, beginning at one point and then following through, sometimes making notes on the way, to the logical end of that sentence. Sometimes I let the sentence run long only because it would sound … the opposite of fluent (what the hell is that, anyway?) if I just cut it off there. I’ve always been taught that long, complex sentences are a sign of a good writer — though I do agree that if all sentences are long, the whole thing might be rather difficult to follow, and that less experienced writers (hell, I do it sometimes, too; and I’m not really _THAT_ experienced — I’m just saying as a general rule, not compared to myself) can’t always pull it off coherently.
Eh, well. What can you do?
Ok, I noticed that I’ve answered Day 21′s prompt and added that to the beginning of the previous post just to notify of the filling of that. I also decided I’m skipping Day 22, because I’ve got no very old picture of me on this computer, and I REALLY cannot be bothered booting my pc up for the sake of one blogpost (and I still want to go play Kingdom Hearts: BBS for at least an hour before I go to bed and pass out).
Day 23: Three things you want to do before you die
I suppose that this is another one of those prompts that ask you to be all epic and reveal all the grand masterplans you have for life — but like you saw in the whole prompt that I described the apartment I want to live in (day 10, I think — I’m not sure), I don’t exactly have any really cool plans for my life. And that’s really the way I like it — I don’t want to visualise this epic life for me, who really doesn’t want it. I’ve never wanted to be an astronaut, though I’ve loved looking up at the stars and studying the constellations. Well, that’s not entirely true, when you talk about it as a metaphor: I do have a lot of ambition, but I think that most of that ambition actually stems from my understanding of my own skill; I believe that there is much that I can do, and since I have the ability, I also have the partial responsibility to do as well as I can. Also, there is a certain satisfaction you get from succeeding…
But that wasn’t the prompt at all. Three things I would like to do before I die… I want to go back to our summer cottage in Finland, because that’s one place that I miss, back at the freezing country with its even colder people. Sometimes you need to surround yourself with nature, and I find the Finnish forests and lakes beautiful and well-suited for that task. Plus, I associate that place with warm summer rain, summer vacation, saunas, peace, midnight sun (oh GOD I miss that — it seems like the summers here aren’t just quite light enough)… pokémon, oddly enough. It’s just somewhere that I like and want to be.
A second thing I’d like to do before I die.. I suppose that I’d really like to publish a book. I just love it when people read what I write and tell me what they think about what I write, even if they don’t necessarily think too highly of it. I love to share what I’ve made, just so that I can see people reflect it, and… Hell, I just really like it when they come to me and tell that they’ve read what I’ve wrote. I’m not exactly certain what it is about that that I really like, but meh.
Oh, the third thing is probably far simplest — I want to own a cat. In the coming years, this space might become occupied by “I want a child”, but as of yet, I’m not quite ready to think that sorts of thoughts. I’d be fine with a kitty-cat. Do want. Stupid allergic sister & mother.
(I’m skipping 24, because it’s another photo-prompt, and I already know I’d just make up some excuse not to do it)
Day 25: Your favourite part of yourselfDay 26: A picture/description of one of your scars
Holy mother of pineapple but that became a lengthy post. I’m sorry. I suppose I had a lot more stuff to say than I thought, when I finally got the ball rolling.
I’m sure you all missed me terribly, and won’t mind, hee.
Love and orange-flavoured lollipops to everyone~
14 Jan 2010
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.
18 Dec 2009
by Silbena
in Creative writing
Tags: editing, stories, writing
Before I start talking about anything else, I would have liked to flaunt the greatness of having a quiet house, specifically when my parents have taken the family that’s visiting here to see the Great Ocean Road and thus they’re not here, but then my sister started booming music I don’t like, and, well, somehow the flaunt seems empty now.
Anyway, I did some writing yesterday. *gasp* It’s always fun to get back working on a novel that I’ve put so much effort into (though I am just writing and worrying about the quality later), and seeing the words pile up. Well, actually that’s incorrect – I enjoy seeing the chapters on that list Scrivener gives me pile up, but I don’t exactly enjoy seeing my word count, because when I do, I become entirely too aware of the fact that it is now, in the middle of chapter 29, 196,000. This would mean, of course, that having 45 chapters (since I cut the outline for chapter 28 into two, seeing as the chapter was becoming too long) would end me with an approximate word count of 312k.
It’s freaking me out – and not just the fact that there are still so many words to write, but the fact that something that long is entirely too monstrous for anyone to properly enjoy/publish/what ever. That means that if I want to make Following the Gay Umbrella into a proper novel, either I have to cut it into two (something I don’t know how I could accomplish, because the beginning doesn’t really stand alone, unless I make some major modifications), or then mercilessly cut things down from it.
I don’t like this as a thought. So what, first I go through all this trouble to think of these characters and these scenes and situations, only to end up cutting most of them? And then there’s always the thing that how many of them should I cut, and what of them does the story really need. I’ve never been very good at this editing business, since I just prefer to create and if I’m not happy with it, create something I am happy with.
Oh the throes of creation~
See? Totally compels anything you can propel at me. … Yeah, I’ve even descended to the realms of cheap humour.
