The nature of memories...

I've been thinking, and reminiscing, a lot lately. Like A LOT... And it's made me wonder about memories.

There are memories I have that I wish I could forget, but know I never will...

There's memories that I find are slipping away from me, no matter how I try to hang on to them...

There's things that I should forget, or just don't need to remember, that just won't leave my mind...

And I wonder about why... And I think about how I feel...

It's frustrating, the things I can't forget, but at the same time, in some ways, I'm glad that I can't forget them. And I'm sad about the things that are slipping away from me.

Believe it or not, it's not like me to be so ... philosophical, but this has really been on my mind lately. And I wonder, sometimes, if I'm the only one who wonders about things like this!

The strangest ...

So even just a few days ago... or maybe it was only yesterday... I didn't know how I was going to start writing my newest story idea.

Today on the bus, it hit me, and suddenly I just knew.

I haven't actually started writing yet, but I know how I'm going to start. And knowing where to start, I know a little bit more about the tone of the story, the characterizations...

I'm looking forward to working on this!

Hopefully tomorrow or maybe Friday!

Stories, characters, notes, and more...

Well, I didn't exactly get any writing done, but I did spend some time this weekend making notes.

I sat down, made out a list of questions that need to be answered for my new story, and then made notes about the answers.

I can't say for certain that it got me closer to writing, but it sorted out a lot of the complications in my head.

Not only that, but I think I've got a base for a character, and the funny thing is, I've known her for a while already. She's actually a character I came up with for RP a long time ago, but never played more than once or twice. She'll need a little editing, and a lot of fleshing out, but I think she'll give me a good leaping point.

I'm hoping that I'll actually get some writing done in the next few weeks... But my problem is, I don't really know where to start.

This is really one of the first times I've really sat down and made notes and things like this for any of my writing. Usually, it doesn't work for me... But this time I had so many things to try and figure out, that it was necessary. And really... I feel pretty good about it.

In other news... I have a lot of other things going through my mind. I'm hoping to be able to get a lot of that cleared up in the next little while too.

Wish me luck.

When something sticks in my mind...

So apparently wolves have been on my mind lately. Not entirely surprising, since they're my favorite animal.

Well... My favorite animal that is commonly accepted to actually exist. :p Dragons, of course, most people just don't believe in.

Wolves... and Wer. Sometimes ~though not always~ together.

I read a series a while ago (as I'm sure you've seen as per my last post :p) that dealt a great deal with Alpha wolves. Some of my favorite books (which I plan on reading next) are about Wer-Dragons. Right now, I'm reading a book that has brought up an interesting new idea... an Omega wolf.

When I haven't been reading, I've spent some of my spare time playing around online as my very own Fairy, in Pixie Hollow.

All together, in one way or another, these things have got me thinking about a few new ideas.

First... I started wondering about Wer. What kind of Wer have I heard or read about? What kind of Wer have I imagined? ... What kind of Wer would I be, if I could be Wer? I didn't really get very far with this idea... Other than to have some sort of vague ideas about a Wer-fox.

But then I got back to thinking about Wer and wolves, and Alphas, and now Omegas... And that's when the idea really hit me.

My main character isn't a Wer... but she probably should have been.

I can't decide if only one of her parents was Wer, or if both of them were. Either way, she was born human.

With a slight twist... *evil grin*

She still has the instincts, the personality, of any other wolf. And being female, and not any normal wolf ~wolves don't usually like what's different~ she is decidedly submissive.

The long and the short of the story ~or at least the idea behind the story~ is that she is, for one reason or another, alone in the world without her parents or her pack, and trying to figure out how to deal with her wolfish nature in a human world.

She doesn't have a name yet, but she's already an interesting character. I'm really looking forward to working with her, and telling her story.

Wolves and men, and the strange thoughts that go through my head in the middle of the night...

So, for the last week or so I've been reading a series of books that include werewolves as a lot of the main characters. And it gives them a lot of traits of normal wolves, especially the pack dynamics. There's a lot of discussion in the books about dominants, and heirarchy, and rank and status.

Now, all my life I've had an affinity for wolves. Other than the raptorial birds, wolves are probably the animals that I feel most ... I hesitate to say akin to, but you get the point anyways. So because I've always been interested in wolves, I have done a little looking into the way they work, and the pack dynamics and such.

But anyways... These books have got me thinking about that... If I was a wolf, where would I fit? Where would the people I know fit? And how would that change things?

I've been thinking about this a lot over the past weekend, and only managed to come to one firm conclusion... The person who would have been my Alpha is gone.

Working... At last! *huge sigh of relief*

After a hiatus of more than a year, I've finally managed to resume work on my novel.

To the tune of nearly 2000 words today.

I lost a lot of myself last February, and I can't even express just how deeply and how much of my life was affected by that loss. Since then, no matter how I've tried, I have been unable to write.

Until now.

Over the last ... we'll say 2 weeks ...I have been trying steadily to get back to work on my novel. It has been slow going for the most part. I spent 4 hours one day to come up with a total of about 75 words. But then I had a dream, I knew what needed to be happening next, and the words began to flow again. *chuckles* To the point that I went back through the entire story and added a whole new character!

Granted, it started slowly, but if today's progress is anything to judge by, my goal of reaching 50,000 words by the end of the year is not as unreachable as I was starting to think it was.

I'm not holding my breath yet, or counting any unhatched chickens, but I'm actually feeling vaguely optimistic.

And over all, I know that the one I lost is still watching over me. And I hope that I manage to make him proud of me.

Well...

Okay, so I've got my computer back!

I've actually had her back for a few weeks, but it took me at least a week to get her up and running again. Apparently while they were running diagnostics there was indications that my hard-drive was failing, so they replaced it.

Which means I had to reinstall everything, and that took a while.

After that... Well, life was just pretty busy, so I haven't had a chance to come up with anything interesting to write.

I am writing though.

I've been working my way (slowly, but still...) through a book called 30 Steps to Becoming a Writer. I've got myself set up with a writing place, and a writers notebook, I've set goals for the next year, and I've been working on lists of things that move me somehow. These lists will eventually turn into huge wells of inspiration (or so the book says, anyways) that I can come back to whenever I get stuck.

And I've been trying to work on that short story that I posted part of, but that's not been going so well. I'm thinking about restarting it...

And I've got a few new ideas that I may or may not start working on. I'm kinda struggling with one of them right now... It seems like a rather cliche idea, so I'm not sure if I'm actually going to work on it, or just let it go. It would be kinda cool to make a cliche idea seem not so cliche, but I'm just really not sure if I can do it.

*shrugs* Eh... One step at a time, right? You try more steps than that and you're bound to fall over! :p

Counting down...

Well, I find myself on a borrowed computer, counting down the days until I hear from Future Shop again...
I have been having problems with the disc drive on my laptop (otherwise referred to as my "girlfriend" ... don't ask why... ) for the last few months. I wasn't worried about it, cause I don't use it too much. I didn't think I'd bought a service plan when I'd bought the laptop, and it just wasn't worth the cost to get the bloody thing replaced.
Until today...
My lady fell off the couch, and landed quite nicely on the power connector... which snapped.
That was when I found out that I had in fact bought a 3-year extended warranty. Since I was taking it into the shop anyways to confirm that I had just snapped the head off the cord and not damaged the connector itself, I decided to get the disc drive replaced.
The news was not exactly good...
As I had expected, the service plan does not cover the cord, as that was physical damage. According to the guy at the shop, I'd be looking at about $200 for a new one. (since we got home I have found other options, thank god...)
As for the disc drive... They think that they can replace it. But my lady will be in the shop for the next month or so.
Which means that I'm without my lady until then, and I'm borrowing Duncan's old laptop from when he was in NAIT...
She's nothing like my own lady, and I'm finding it awkward to use her, so I don't know how much I'll be online or how much writing I'll get done. I know that this sounds retarded, but working on someone else's computer just isn't the same as working on my own.
I can't express how frustrated and upset about this I am... Though the few of you that know me really well and recall the time just before I got my last computer may have some ideas what my reaction was to this whole mess.
One of the worst parts of this is that I probably won't have my computer for my birthday.
Wish me luck over the next few weeks (and believe me, I desperately ask for your wishes!!!), and I hope to be back as soon as possible!

Sleep and the nature of the writer... and more...

There's a few things I think I have to say right now...

The first involves the way that writing buggers a sleep cycle.
A friend of mine commented on this in her blog a little while ago (http://rachlanger.blogspot.com/2009/02/pandoras-box.html), and I myself have been experiencing the effects over the last week or so.
Take last night, for example... I think I was lucky to get a whole two hours sleep last night, and even those two hours were far from restful. I wandered through my day like a zombie because my mind was running around about a million different things. And I'd say that probably 750,000 of that million was stuff about my writing (in one way or another).
Of course, considering other circumstances in my life at the moment, I'm not going to place all the blame for my sleeplessness on my writing, but it is a large part of it.

Secondly, I feel as though I am learning more about my own nature as a writer...
The nature of the writer is pain, struggle, difficulty. Perhaps the true nature of the writer is escape and exorcism.
My best work is done when I'm struggling through something, battling some kind of inner demon, feeling some sort of intense emotion. When I encounter something in my life that I don't know how to deal with, I write. I don't usually write about what I'm dealing with, but it seems to help none-the-less.
And beyond all that, the nature of the writer is solitary, and yet dependent.
I work best when I'm alone. Home by myself on my days off, or up late at night after everyone else has gone to bed. I think I'd be the kind of person who would go away on my own for the weekend and spend all my time writing (if I had some place to go, that is), and be perfectly happy doing so. It would be an interesting experiment, and I would like to try it some day. Be out somewhere with my writing supplies, my imagination, and my cell phone as my only real connection to the rest of the world. (Part of me insists that me and my "girlfriend" - aka my laptop - would need wireless internet too, but that's really just too much of a distraction. Too many things to do other than write... It just doesn't balance the few writing tools that I use online)
And yet... I like to share my work. I enjoy knowing what other people think of the thing I've created. And I feel... almost almost a little hollow when I can't share, or don't share, or get no response to what I have shared.
I thrive on solitude, and yet I crave feedback and input... So apparently the nature of the writer is a little bi-polar *chuckles*

Experiments... Or maybe exercises would be a better word.
I would be interested in trying out a few different writing exercises... I saw a writers desk kit thingie at Chapters once a long time ago, that had a book of different writing exercises, one for each week of the year (or something like that). I mocked the idea at the time, but as I've gotten older, and learned more about myself and my craft, I wish I'd looked into it a little deeper.
I cannot be content to do as I've always done, but I don't know how to go about doing things differently. And I'm at the age where I'm willing, even enthusiastic, about admitting that I need some help.
Now I just have to take that admission and move forward with it.

And now, with those thoughts removed from the ones flying around my head, perhaps an evening of relaxation will help me sleep.

*bows deeply, and wanders away*

My latest story ... the promised exerpt!

I promised that once I had something worth sharing, I'd share.
This is the latest idea that's drifted into my head and anchored itself in my thoughts.
For anyone who's read the exerpts from my last story, don't worry. I am still working on it. It's not going to fall by the wayside!

~~~

Everyone had tried to talk her out of making the trip to the cabin, but the more they talked, the more determined she was to go. Even though she was only a few weeks away from her due date, she just had to get out of the city. She needed rest, and she needed peace, and she wasn't going to get either surrounded by a city full of concrete and steel. The cabin was the only place that she'd ever really felt at peace, and she needed that right now even more than she needed sleep. She finished her last day of work, left a few voice messages telling people where she was going, and then she climbed into the car.
By the time she made it out to the lake, the sun was only a few hours from setting. The cabin was stuffy from being closed up, and overheated from the long day under the summer sun. She'd opened the windows, but it wasn't until she was getting ready for bed that she remembered to turn on the air conditioner.
The air conditioner was little and old, and down in the kitchen. It couldn't cool the cabin very quickly, and the bedrooms upstairs were always the last to benefit. About an hour before midnight, after tossing and turning for what felt like forever, she'd finally gotten dressed again and gone out to sit by the water. The breeze off the lake was cool, the sound of the waves lapping the shore was soothing, almost hypnotizing, and the moonlight was a pale, silvery glow. Within minutes, she was sleeping deeply in the grass.
As the old mantle clock in the cabin struck one, she still lay sleeping, sprawled on the ground at the edge of the lake, her heavy, pregnant body an untidy heap in the long grass. Her flowing white blouse and pale, faded blue jeans almost seemed to glow in the moonlight, and the tiny, multi-colored crystals threaded into her long black hair glimmered like a rainbow of stars. Her eyes were closed and her chest rose and fell in the regular rhythm of sleep.

~~~

Fascinations...

Over the last few days it's become clear to me how much my fascinations influence my writing.
Two fascinations in particular really. Elements in personalities, and sensory experiences.

I've always believed, and maybe it's strange of me, that everyone's personality has one of the four elements dominant in it. Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. And beyond this, that each element is represented by some particular trait, or characteristic.
The strength, stability and balance of Earth. The logic and intellect of Air. The vitality, the life-force, and the passion of Fire. The intuition and vast emotionalism of Water.
I couldn't say where my fascination for this came from, but it's something I've thought of as far back as I can remember, and I find that I apply the same kind of thinking to my characters when I am defining their personalities.
Of course, I'm not saying that anyones personality is strictly one thing or the other. Most people do have a nice balance of two elements. Though there is the occasional person (like myself, for example... :p) who have an abundance of just one element.
Even more interesting, is that in my closest circle of friends, all 4 elements are definitively represented. The vibrancy and laughter, the wild power of Fire. The beauty and stability, the mighty strength of Earth. The knowledge and intellect, the logic of Air. The intuition, the emotionalism, the depth of Water.
There are 5 of us, but we compliment each other so well. We balance so beautifully.

I've always been fascinated by my senses, particularly touch and scent.
I can be enthralled by something soft and smooth under my fingertips, or by the touch of something rough. I have a lot of clothes that are pleasing to the touch, either because they're fuzzy, or silky, or just plain soft. And contrasts between textures seem to fascinate me even more.
And I know that they say scent is one of the most powerful of our senses, and I find that easy to believe. I can be swept away by scents. Into memory, sometimes. Or into imagination.
I think that this has always shown itself very prominently in my writing. I have always written very descriptively, very vividly. It just feels so natural to me to talk about the things that my characters see, taste, touch, hear, and smell, just as much as I talk about what they think, know and feel.
I think that what our senses experience becomes just as much a part of who we are as what our personalities are, so it doesn't make any sense to me to leave them out or belittle them in my writing.

I've actually been working on something new... As well as trying to work on my other story. I don't have much down yet, but once I do, I'll post a little here for you all to read.

Reading and writing

I've been reading Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon over the past week or so. I'm planning on reading The Once and Future King by T.H. White next. And at some point I need to get my hands on a copy of Malory's Morte de Arthur and read that too.
It's interesting to read the same story from so many different perspectives. Especially from the perspective of the women, like in The Mists of Avalon.

But that's not really what I wanted to write about tonight. I wanted to write about what really makes a writer.

This is something I've been thinking about for a long time... More and more as I've struggled with my writing.
What really makes someone a writer?
Is is talent? Is it ideas?
Honestly, I don't think it's either of those things... Specifically, I think that it's one thing in particular.
It's the soul that makes a writer.
A true writer isn't made by talent, or ideas, or even how much they write. I believe that a true writer has words in their soul. That's how they see the world, through words. Almost as though they live in a great story.
I wish I could explain it better, but my problem has always been that the words get stuck on their travels between my soul and my fingers.

And voice...
I've been told that I have a strong voice in my writing. Sometimes that's been a bad thing... Like essays in school for example! *chuckles* Teachers and professors don't like to hear the writers voice in position papers!
But in my own writing... I wonder. A few things.
Do I really have as definitive a voice in my writing? And if I do, is it a detriment to my story? Does my inexperience and naiveity come across as contrary to the story I'm trying to tell?

I must beg your pardon... I know that this post has been a lot of rambling, nothing really important, but it's things that've been on my mind lately.
Especially what makes a writer... If I can organize my thoughts on that a bit better, I may touch on that subject again someday.

Writing styles...

One thing that has always seemed to confuse Duncan, is how I write.

I can't write if I go into a quiet room and sit by myself. I can't write if I close myself off and just listen to music.
Well... I can I suppose... but it's hard. And the product is never very good.
I seem to do my best work... in front of the television. Usually watching a movie.

You know those tests that they tend to make you take in school? The ones that tell you if you're a tactile, audio, or visual learner?
I was always a highly tactile learner, with visual coming in an average second, and audio a very very very distant third.
I need that visual connection for my mind to really work properly. When I get stuck in my writing, I need those visual images to focus on... even though I'm not really focusing on it...

Wow... did that ever NOT make any sense!

Looking at the TV and letting the images on the screen just kinda flow past me helps me refocus and reset my brain in a way. Like I can think about things better when I'm not thinking of them. My brain works better when my thoughts aren't so busy getting in the way.

And this isn't even what I had intended this post to be about.
Though my digression is a fair demonstration of my other point.

I rarely know where my writing is going to go. I usually have some kind of basic idea, but no clue how I'm actually going to get there. I write my characters, and then they take me along for the ride.
It makes for some interesting times though. When all of a sudden I realize things that are right at the heart of my characters, things that they've been telling me subtly for pages, and I just didn't realize what they were trying to say until they came out and hit me with it. *chuckles* There's been a few things like that in my novel. With one character in particular who keeps giving me trouble... But that's really a whole different post.

Apparently it's an unusual way to write. So many writers talk about outlines, and have huge notebooks of history on their story and their characters. I can't write that way. I've tried, and I wind up with notebooks full of involved backstory, but nothing at all in the current-times story that I was trying to write.
(By the way, can you just imagine what kind of difficulties I had in creative writing in school?! Where the teachers are obsessed with outlines and carefully controlled characters and narration?! It's no wonder I almost flunked English ... sorry Language Arts :p ... in sixth grade!!!)
So I gave it up. I stopped trying to make myself be that kind of writer, and I just write. I have some basic ideas about where my characters are coming from, but they tell me they're life stories as they help me figure out what's happening with them in the story I'm telling.
It may not be the way a lot of people write, but I think it works for me.

I have a few ideas for another post, but it's gonna take a lot more thought before it's ready to go up.
Complex issues, like voice... and what really makes a writer.
Hopefully tomorrow or Friday... Though I don't know if I'll be up to actually posting on Friday, since I've got a nice long massage that afternoon!
We'll just wait and see, I guess!

Ponderings of the day...

This post has kinda been simmering in the back of my head most of the day... You'd think that would make it a little more coherent, but it's still not... Too many pieces in it, I think.

So I keep something called an Inspiration Book. It's just a little leather-bound notebook that I keep in my purse, and I write down things in it that inspire me. Sometimes it's song lyrics, sometimes it's quotes from movies, or little lines from books. There's a few things in there that I've written myself, and even a thing or two that friends of mine have written.
Anyways, I've been going through it lately, copying it from a large book, to a smaller one that's a little bit easier to carry around. It's interesting going back and seeing some of the things that are in there that have moved me somehow.

And that kinda brings me to the second part of what's been going through my head... Things that move me.
I read a poem a while ago, something that was written by someone I knew, and it moved me to tears.
Sometimes I feel like things move me, but I don't really understand why. I can read a poem or a story that I really have no direct connection with, maybe because I've never experienced anything like what's being described, but it touches something deep inside me anyways. Almost as though I had experienced it. As though there's a million different people inside me, and that it's really them that's being touched...
And yes, I know that makes me sound like I have MPD, but that's not what I mean at all. Maybe it's just part of being such a character-centred writer...
Besides, I'm just kinda rambling here... Bear with me.

Because this brings me to the third part of my thoughts... My novel. (such as it is)
For those of you that may not be familiar with that particular piece of work in progress, I've been attempting to write a novel for about 2 years now. It's coming slowly.
There are a few little excerpts hiding somewhere on my blog (all very helpfully titled with excerpt in the post name!) if you're interested in reading a bit.
But what gets me is... Where did the story come from, and how am I managing to write it?
I have no first hand experience that is even close to what my main character is going through, and yet I've been told by a few people that my portrayal is very accurate and convincing.
I remember where I got the idea... But that still doesn't really explain how such a complex, emotional story has managed to fight it's way out of my head.

... And now, I don't know what to say anymore. The thoughts have tumbled from my fingers through the keyboard, and onto the screen, but I really can't say that they make any more sense to me now than they did when I was just tossing them around in my head.

I'd welcome any insight you may feel like sharing!

Two poems...

It would take me a long time to go through my story and find another excerpt, so here's a few poems.
One of them is the one I mentioned in my last post, and it was written this past summer, on one of the most beautiful nights I've ever seen.
The other one... I don't actually remember when I wrote it, but I found it on my computer while I was typing something else up, and it still managed to speak to me, so I decided to share it too.

~~~
~Mother Moon~

Mother Moon, I see thy face,
And thy golden reflection
In the water's night-dark glass.

I see thy tears
Streak, one after another,
Across the midnight sky.

You call to my soul.
Hearing my darkest wishes,
The most forlorn and forgotten dreams.

Answer my prayers, Mother Moon.
Grant the wish of your quiet servant.
For one moment… Bring thy heaven to earth.
~~~

~~~
~The Darkness of Insanity~

In the darkness
I feel the insanity closing in on me;
The insanity and the sadness.

In the darkness
I wonder about the world around me.
About the truth, and about reality.

In the darkness
I doubt everything around me.
I see nothing good in myself

In the darkness
I feel like I'm drowning.
The pressure around me is awesome.

In the darkness
It's so much harder to fight the insanity.
So much harder.
~~~

Well, there's my sharing for today.
Enjoy.
Comment.
As you wish!

Well...

It's been a long time since I posted, mostly cause it's been a really long year.

Losing my dad last February was really really hard on me. I couldn't write anything after, for a long time... I didn't have the heart for writing. I couldn't work on my story, had no poetry in me... I was a mess.

But in about June or July (4 months or so after we moved into our new place... Yes, we bought a house), I picked up a pencil, opened my laptop, and words slowly started to flow again. Not quickly, not as brightly as before, but flowing.

I haven't written much, and I still haven't been able to write a poem for my dad, but it's nice to be writing again at all.

I do have a poem that I want to post, but it hasn't made the transition from paper to computer yet. I'm gonna try and do that later today, and then I'll post it.

And hopefully I'll be posting a lot more often now.