Write, ya bastards…

God is busy
There are many writing gadgets out there, but this may be the most gleefully sadistic yet: Write or Die, designed to make sure you keep that wordcount going. I’m very tempted to try it, if only so I can hear “The Devil’s Interval” play at me whenever I stop writing…

Showing and Telling

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I’ve ranted about the “Show, don’t tell” rule a few times before, but this is probably my most coherent post yet. I even use examples! :D

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6/24/09: Untitled Sketch

I recently came up with an idea for the skinshifters in Gemini City, namely that when they take human form, their animal skin remains as a living mask. This is an initial sketch of a wolf skinshifter, putting the idea to paper and seeing what I can come up with. The hand is awkward, I know; I couldn’t settle on a position for it.

Placed behind a cut due to nudity.
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Liminal Being

cupidandcentaur
A few days ago I was idly reading an analysis on The Virgin Suicides when the word “liminal” caught my eye. Intrigued at a shiny new term, I looked it up on Wikipedia, my go-to site for a quick summary of information. When I found the entry for “liminal being”, my jaw dropped:

In speculative fiction and, loosely applied, in mythology, a liminal being is a fantasy character that combines two distinct states of simultaneous existence within one physical body.

Holy shit. Is this not the heart and soul of Gemini City, my in progress novel about skinshifters and demon possession and transsexualism? Is this not the strange tree-human hybrids that continually show up in my artwork? Is this not even me, a writer and artist? I think I’ve finally found a name for my creative core, a face for the driving force behind words and pigment. It feels wonderful.

Sadly, all this navel-gazing is taking time away from aforementioned novel. Back to the grind…

6/22/09: Untitled Sketch

Untitled

I like the flow of the tree branches, but the anatomy’s definitely sketchy. Not sure if this will turn into anything more.

On Critique

type

Critiques are a painful part of a writer’s life. Let’s face it, few people like being told their story sucks. It’s felt on a gut level, like someone just punched you in the nose or called you ugly. But you know what? Unlike the aforementioned actions, critiques are actually beneficial.
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6/16/09: Progress

630 / 90000

630 words. Not bad, considering I’ve only had two hours of spare time today.

“Unlucky”

Title: Unlucky
Unlucky
Media: Watercolor
Size: 9 x 12
Price: $50
Print Available (8.5 x 11)

_ _ _ _
Occasionally a particularly unlucky treechild will grow from opposite limbs, resulting in some very odd positions until they have fully separated from their parent trunk…

Phase One Complete

Booyah! The outline for Gemini City is finished. Tomorrow, I begin the actual draft. If I’m feeling especially industrious, I may add a wordcount meter on this blog’s sidebar. Because I do like my shiny toys. :D

Outlining: the Devil is in the Details

I’ve had a strenuous relationship with outlines, alternatively snubbing and singing their praises. Once I believed they snuffed out the creative spark in a story; this was when I tried to outline stories down to the tiniest detail. Then I believed the only way to coax coherency out of my writing was to harness it to a fully-realized (and written) plot; this was after I tried totally winging it and ran into dead end after dead end. Rewriting the same chapter four times to find the plot again is Not Fun. It’s like those Choose Your Own Adventure novels where you always made the wrong choice and ended up dying.

Now I consider myself a hybrid writer, working with the sketch of a plot and fleshing out the story as the characters develop. This results in a first draft really beng more of an outline, allowing for greater interaction and flow between character development and plot. Unfortunately it also renders the writing of a story as stable as a weathervane, at least until the initial draft is finished. Plotholes and writer’s block are much more likely to trip me up.

So I’m going out on a limb for the time being, fully outlining one of the stories I’m working on. My goal is to write the entire story arc while leaving enough room for character development to fill in the details. Flexibility is the key word here. If a character decides to do something that destroys a chunk of the original outline, then I’ll simply rewrite the outline before continuing. It almost seems too simple, yet it’s often the simplest things that I overlook.

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