Victory

NaNoWrimo is done for another year! I managed to complete a few days early, so came in with a final grand total of about 56k words, which i'm moderately happy with. The problem is... i seem to have underestimated the final length of this piece. I was aiming for fifty thousand words in total, but going by my 40 page synopsis (40 notebook pages, it's not as bad as it sounds), I'm about 25 pages through. That is WAY off. I can't believe i underestimated by so much. So the story's not finished last month, and i doubt it's going to be finished this month either.

i know i shouldn't be complaining, since i've got 56k words more than i had at this time a month ago, but still. It irks me more than it should.

But i love Nano. It's one of my favourite times of the year. I love frantic, deadline writing. I've got more done this novemeber than in the past three months combined. And now i've got to start planning for ScriptFrenzy... but i don't like that so much. I completed it this year and it turned out, eh, not so good, Al. The last thirty pages of that story were some of the worst writing i've ever done. In fact, the last ten pages was a flow-of-consciousness drunken discussion between three characters, because i reached the end at 90 pages and COULD NOT find a way to pad out an extra ten pages.

Also i have no idea what i'd do for ScriptFrenzy next year. What the hell would i want to write a screenplay about? It's weird. None of my ideas seem to come in script format.

Moth-eaten news

suppose i should get round to the self-publicising thing at some point...

My second novel, "Moths" is slowly making its way out into the real world. It's on the official Guy N Smith website, along with some very nice words from the man himself, and also (apparently) on Amazon, along with a frickin awesome review from the gorgeous Chris Hall, altho Amazon's saying it's out of stock at the mo.

I've also got a wodge of signed books here for sale at cover price (£6.99 - hopefully a cheerful and affordable price in these scary economic times) so if anyone wants one, drop me an email and i'll sort ya out. If i can figure out how this Paypal business works. :)

Part 1 of 3

November starts on monday... and with it comes NaNoWriMo. Doesn't seem like a whole year, does it?

if anyone wants to friend me, i'm here. This year, i'm doing a sequel to a story i wrote about a hundred years ago.

It's the second sequel i've ever attempted - the first was abandoned after my sister beat me with a Doc Martin boot. She gets very... punchy on the subject of sequels, and most of the time i tend to agree with her. After all, at best a sequel takes a bunch of characters you love and throws them back into a terrible situation, after they spent all that time and effort getting out of danger. At worst, they kill off the people you care about and sabotage relationships (hello, Alien 3 and Men In Black II, respectively). Plus, as someone much smarter than me once pointed out, a movie (or book, or whatever) is supposed to be about the most exciting/interesting story in the character's lives. So any sequel is going to be about the SECOND most exciting/interesting story in their lives. And who wants to pay £6.50 for that?

Don't get me wrong, i've nothing personal against sequels. Some of my best friends are sequels. I may be the only person you'll meet who's watched The Fly II more times than both the originals put together. Piranha 2 had flying piranhas AND Lance Hendrickson ditching a helicopter into the sea. Terminator 2, Aliens and Ghostbusters 2 were all better, imo, than the originals, altho i'm sure not everyone would agree.

What i dislike is the current trend for setting up franchises. Every freakin movie you see these days seems designed as the first in a series. No one gets to kill the bad guy, save the love interest and live happily ever after anymore - the bad guy has to survive, the love interest has to stay fiesty and out of reach, and we all go home and wait for the next movie. It irks me.

The Bitter Script Reader said something similar recently, which is maybe why it's on my mind.

so i'm wondering, is the same sort of thing happening with books? Does every novel need to be the start of a franchise? (Or, at least, the first of two or three?) Do we need to start being like Brian Keene and STOP THE GODDAMN STORY RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE?

It's got me thinking because i was talking to a few of my writery friends (we were in a coffee shop and everything), and, apart from me, they're all working on the first of three books (or the second of five, or... you get my point). It seems to be the done thing at the moment. Now, is this a corresponding trend in the publishing industry? Do publishers look at submitted manuscripts and say, "well, it's good, but it's a stand-alone novel. There's no way we can get a sequel out of this. PASS."? Would you get marked down for NOT leaving potential to continue the story?

why can't stories be told in a single book or film anymore?

does that question make me sound old?

i'll see y'all for the start of Nano on monday. :)

hmm

don't seem to be doing so well with my NYR of keeping this blog updated. Pleh, i'm not cut out for this interweb business.

anyways. Things are slightly hectic here. I've got a new job (of a kind - it's actually an unexpected transfer to a different department, but at least the contract's for a year instead of a month), which is eating a lot of my times, but does at least let me go to court (i'm a stenographer!). Aaaand i'm about two days away from finishing a new story.

this makes me very happy. Of the four things i've written in the past year: one is a time-travel novel with so huge a central flaw i doubt anything can be salvaged from it; another is a super-hero-dectective story abandoned at 60k words after i realised a) i can't write detective fics, and b) i apparently can't write superhero fics either; the third was my nano novel; and the fourth was my attempt at script frenzy which started out well and now i can't even read through because i don't know where to start making it better. So it's kind of a relief to finish something and it not be awful.

I mean, it's not good yet. That goes without saying. Also I think everything i write is an attempt at copying a writer i love, in which case this is my David Eddings story. It's a D&D setting without the magic and with added zombies. Oh, and in the jungle. So kinda like Sapphire Rose meets The Rising meets Platoon, but minus the overbearing sense of futility and Willam Defoe.

Um, that maybe makes it sounds better than it is.

there's also some tentatively good news about one of my older stories, Home Ground, but i'm reluctant to jinx it by getting excited too soon.

a first... probably not a last

rather belatedly, i've realised what's been bugging me these past few days. I was at an acting workshop on sunday, and at one point got partnered up in improv with this amazingly good-looking guy - he could've walked straight out of Tokyo Drift, he was that pretty. Anyway, in the course of things, we found out he was 17. Just turned 17.

now, i know this is not an original freak-out or anything, but i'm old enough to be his mother.

well, if it'd had him when i was 14, but still, that's still POSSIBLE, isn't it?

that is the first time i've ever looked someone up and down, then realised they're young enough to be my son. And it won't be the last time, of course not. But it's the FIRST time, and, like your first grey hair, it's a sign of the inescapable passage of time.

he was DAMN pretty tho. Siiiiiiiigh.

Feck-Arse Industries

so i reckon i'm at the end of a first draft of the dumbass story i'm working on, which always provokes mixed emotions. I'm happy it's done, but i'm less happy it's totalled a grand 76 thousand words. that's... shorter than i wanted. And less than i expected. I've also got the usual worries that it's generally a bit pile of poo and i've wasted three months of my life on it.

on the plus side, i think i've figured out what's wrong with the beginning - i started in the wrong place. Once again i've tried to jump into the middle of an exciting scene to, y'know, stop everyone falling asleep, then realised i've not developed the world or the characters enough and tried to jam in a load of backstory and exposition, in what's supposed to be an action scene. Gah. I've also belatedly realised my last three and possibly four stories have suffered from the same problem. What the heck's wrong with me?

so i've got the easter weekend to kick the crap out of the stupid story and maybe make it into something good. Yaaaay.

fangirl overload

my husband bought me this movie today. How happy? MOST happy.

i love Dave Bautista. I know it's sad and i know the movie's gonna be awful and i have a sneaky suspicion Mr Batista's not even going to be in it for long (like they gipped me with Chris Jericho in Android Apocalypse) but, my god, i can't help it. The man brings out the fangirl in me.

You know what i'd love to see? A God of War movie with Batista as Kratos. I think that would be the best thing ever.

Screnzy

so i'm planning to do Script Frenzy this year. Tried last year with a graphic novel, failed, am trying again.

Wanna friend me? Pls?

these are the Glengarry leads

ahahahaha, thank you Royal Mail, you finally came through for me. And, may i say, BOUT TIME.

this, the thing i hold in my sweaty palms, is Ex-Heroes by Mr Peter Clines. I am VERY excited about it. *squeeeee*

EDIT: btw, i don't actually live in a store cupboard, it's just the way my webcam is angled, honest.

because you're mine

btw, go to Concern.net and download their charity single, raising money for Haiti. Not only is it a good cause, but amazingly, it's a damn good song as well. And Simon Cowell has been nowhere near it.

(best reaction of the day: "who told Shane MacGowan he could sing?" ... to which the answer has to be, who the hell's gonna stop him?)

spacey sunday, friend of mine

a smug smile of female solidarity to Kathryn Bigelow, first female director to win the Oscar. You go, girl.

Hurt Locker wasn't my favourite film of the year (i'd probably go for District 9 there), but it also wasn't the worst and it at least deserved the win. Quite apart from anything else, i'm kinda glad Tarantino didn't win. Not that i have anything against Quint, but an Oscar would just encourage him.

and Christoph Waltz as best supporting... the academy are slowly rebuilding the faith they shattered with the Titanic fiasco.

blame it on the bad actress

seej is sitting next to me and helping edit this post by usurping the delete key, so this may take longer than usual...

i'm perservering with my acting classes, altho i did miss a couple of them due to the whole getting married thing. Acting is fun (discovery of the week, i know). I'm not sure i'll ever get good at it--in fact, i'm pretty certain i never will. Like most things in life, i reckon that if i really put forth the effort and tried my very hardest, i could manage a solid C average.

something i've picked up over the last few weeks is that writing isn't actually intended for actors--Instructor Carl has told us that most stage direction (and pretty much everything else in the script that isn't dialogue) can and in fact SHOULD be ignored when you're acting. It's a distraction, the writer telling the actor how they should be feeling when the emotion should be coming from inside the actor.

and i'm not quite sure how i feel about that. I mean, speaking as a writer, how dare those flipping actors ignore all those hard-written words? who do they think they are? But equally, when you're reading the scripts as part of the class, you start to notice how superfluous a lot of stuff is. Like, if the sleasy male character says "there's something you need to know about your husband", is it necessary to tag the woman's reply as "(worried)"?

you also realise how annoying it is when people put commas in the wrong place in dialogue. I may have to start bringing a red pen along to make corrections.

partiallyclips

remembered something i wanted to squee about. Since it's been around for eight years and i'm notoriously slow about these things, y'all probably know about it already, but anyway:

PartiallyClips.com, which has been consuming my attention all week.

this one is my favourite.
or maybe this one. It's hard to say.

you also wouldn't believe how long it took me to understand the name.

you see the hat? i am MRS NESBIT.

afternoon all, i have returned and i am now a married woman. Again. :)

thank you everyone who sent happy wishes, twas very much appreciated. We had a lovely time, drank far too much wine and danced to Abba (it's obligatory, isn't it?). For those of yous with facespace tolerance, there's some photos up here.
i'll post some up here when i get my stupid internet fuctioning like it should again.

anyway, i have more stuff i wanted to mention but it's all gone out of my head. Pleh.

belated invitation

afternoon, all.

right, so, me and my significant other, John (aka Special John, aka SJ, aka Seej), are finally getting married on saturday (cue much rejoicing). We're tying the knot here:



which is, y'know, moderately cool.

also, because of multitudinal reasons not least of which is the fact that i've left this to an amazingly last minute, i appreciate that at lot of people won't be able to attend. So i've sort of organised a pre-wedding chat room get together. Jacob-Pancake at Permuted Press has very kindly loaned us the PP chat room for a few hours, and basically, there's a party there and you're invited. :)

the permuted boards are here - you'll have to register to enter the chat room, but seriously you should be on this message board anyway because it's the most fun.

so yeah, if you're not busy, drop in about midnight UK time (that's about 6 pm CST... i think... please correct me if i'm wrong). There will be party hats and glow sticks and cookies.

(also, we're doing the donation thing in lieu of pressies, so if you're feeling generous, please check out these links:
Just Giving (UK)
idofoundation (US)
thank yooooou!!)

hey, i think i met you once!

Adding to my tenuous list of famous people I've maybe met...

We're going to see The Book of Eli tonight, a movie I've managed to hear absolutely nothing about. But I was unreasonably excited to find out it was written by Gary Whitta, one time editor of PC Gamer, who (if i recall rightly) took the reins of that fine magazine not long after the Matt Bielby Golden Age, no less. Also, I think I met him once. It was at the Future Entertainment Show in London, way back in 1994. I certainly met a very nice bloke from PC Gamer magazine called Gary, and I guess it could've been him. It's difficult to tell from his imdb photo because all chubby bespectacled nerds have a certain similarity. But I remember he was lovely, because he gave me his autograph AND a free magazine.

So there we go, yet another tenuous link to the famous and fortunate. My mate Gary Whitta--I promise not to say anything rude about your movie, at least until after I've seen it. :)

awesome creed 2

our xbox finally succumbed to the red rings of death a couple of weeks ago (i love that microsoft couldn't fix the fault that causes instant death in their consoles but they did put helpful lights in so you can tell when it's fuxxored). We thought we could survive without it... turns out we were wrong. How shallow we are.

it didn't help that i was halfway through Assassin's Creed 2 at the time of fuxxoring. So we bought a new box, and i sat up till 5 am to finish the damn game.

i... am not sure how i feel now.

the ending was better than the last one. As in it almost had an ending as opposed to abandoning us in mid sentence and causing my heart to shatter into a thousand tiny pieces. But even so it was a bit of a bastard.

oh, spoilers. Btw.

it was like the sodding Architect all over again. I'm sure it was supposed to be a head-fuck but really it was just an annoyance. What's wrong with giving us actual endings to stories? why does everything have to be setting up the next sequel? Are y'all so afraid of finishing things, in case we don't come back for more later?

right before the end credits, Desmond asks the question we're all asking by that point: WHAT THE FUCK?

so in summary... AC2 did not break my heart. But it did make me very angry at five o'clock in the morning.

a whole new year

happy 2010 everyone! 2010... aren't we supposed to be living on the moon by now?

as usual i made a bunch of resolutions and as usual i'm ignoring them to the best of my abilities. The "cut down on drinking" and "take more exercise" ones are looking particularly ropey.

One of the biggies is: WRITE MORE, WRITE BETTER, GET PUBLISHED. I'm happy enough with my output levels of writing (altho last year was a bit slow), but i can always use improvement, and i could really use getting published.

My master plan so far, therefore:
1. Buy a copy of the Writers And Artists Yearbook
(conveniently, i got a copy of it for christmas)
2. Write a bunch of synopseses
(i'm notoriously bad at synopsis writing and try to avoid it wherever possible)
3. Actually submit some stuff
(failure to actually submit anything anywhere has maybe hindered my grand plan to be more published)
4. Update website and blog more often
(hence this update)
5. Take up acting classes

okay, the last one is a bit of a tangent. Really, i wanted to take up writing classes, but since i live on an island the size of a shallot there are no writing classes, so i've taken up acting instead. I figured it could be useful - if you understand actors, that must make it easier to write dialogue for them, right? Don't correct me if i'm wrong, i'm happy in my blissful ignorance. Anyway, i had my first class today.

first thing i realised (or remembered) is that i don't really like actors. They bug me unreasonably. Maybe it's because I can't think of any other profession, other than fine art maybe, where a person can talk so much bollocks about what they do. Also, the guy teaching the class was very keen on method acting, so much so he insisted there was no other possible way to act (he also seems to have a man crush on Al Pacino, bless). Due to being ranted at by certain intervals, i've become slightly suspicious of people who insist "this is the only possible way of doing things". But aside from that it was a lot of fun. The people were lovely and the teacher guy was helpful and knew his stuff. I will never be an actor, i lack the whole 'ungodly acting talent' thing, but hopefully i can pick up a few tips.

viva la resolutions!