Callisto's Journey

:D

It's a beautiful day outside, and it's not too cold at all! I am settling in for some serious writing time, and I'm really excited about it! I have started all the meat and stuff for dinner marinading, the house is clean, the kid is distracted, and I am happy. Been to the gym, had my coffee, had breakfast, played with dishwasher, done all the bare mininum for a clean happy house and it's time to get to work.

I have no idea what today's post is about, so I might talk about Skintree, which is the book i want to work on today. Skintree is about a woman who has a Skintree. She's the only one of her kind and the adopted daughter of the royal family, and the strongest magic user in the known world. The Skintree looks like a tattoo across her back, until you see the tiny leaves are actually swaying on a gentle breeze across the woman's skin.

As her twenty first birthday approaches (it could be her sixteenth, it could be her 21st, whatever, as her age of adult-hood approaches) she expects her future to run in certain ways, but of course things never run to plan. Betrayed, she finds herself running from everything she ever loved. Struggling with her blood birthright she has to learn who she is fast, or else the lives of all of her countrymen are at stake.

Every novel of mine tends to have a theme or concept I am exploring, and in this one I am exploring the ownership of self and body. Our protag (Deniah, currently) has been very firmly trained to be a patriot to her country, and views all of her activities through the window of knowing she is a powerful asset in any game of thrones. She expects to be used for the benefit of her country and kingdom, and would lay down her life for her King. But of course this absence of 'selfhood' causes problems, and when forced against the wall she struggles to seperate her own self from her patriotism, and she has to alternately defend a kingdom that betrayed her while also finding who she is without the walls in her mind of selflessness. As a woman of the kingdom, she expects to bear children for the good of the realm, but this too is a bigger issue than imagined as her magic is of great value to any ambitious noble or royal. Plus, of course, there's the Skintree.

So she not only has to untangle years of propaganda from the way she views the world but she also has to re-determine the use and abuse of her own physical self, and learn to make choices based on these issues without external influence. Her body is her own, except when it's not... and she has to find out what that really means.

This is currently only at about 42k, since I started it for Nano last year, and then deleted a lot of it. There's a lot of good stuff already there, but I was unhappy with our secondary character, since, you know, we needed one (LOL, whut, dialogue is required? Hahahaha) and I have sorted out who they are and what they do. So, wish me luck! *rubs hands together* It's time to start my pomodoro timer and put some A into G.

GAH! Awake! Oh my EYES! Not the best of nights sleep last night. *sigh*

However, the markets should be open and I can buy the wool to finish my projects! Yay! 

( Listy List List List )
Eh, that should do for now. Eeep, it's 7 already. Ah well, did get the first item done already! 

Think I am finally through the worst of this cold and well onto the way to health. I have been crocheting this cold away, which has been brilliant, and also given rise to some writing ideas! Yay me!

I bought a whole bunch of writing books last night at Adrian Bedford's suggestion, plus a couple of others I have wanted. Finally getting a copy of No Plot No Problem and Nick Mamasta's Starve Better, which should be an amusing read.

I have a co-conspirator! Yay! I have someone to write with again! Oh how I miss that! Anyway, that won't start until next week, though I shall do my stuff regardless. Had a good chat about what stops people from writing and what keeps people going and ways to keep yourself going last night. In my first attempt at a novel, my characters had a dinner party every time I ran out of plot and ideas. Boy did they have a lot of dinner parties LOL 

Anyway, I have had yet more ideas for writing and stuff. I want to get back into reading again too, and have been sidling up to LSS again. I'm still not entirely sure what my method is. I seem to find it a small stumbling blocvk to log what I read. I am sure I have forgotten an anthology or two, but I haven't sat down to work it out. My gosh, what exactly do I do with my time LOL? 

I was sick on a daycare day this week, which sucks as it's my thinking/processing/development time, as well as all the fiddly bits that gets blog posts done and decent and etc, bt these things happen. The other problem was I was going to be helping Mel at the school and it didn't eventuate. Ah well, later. Looks like I will be helping at breakfast club tomorrow morning again. The kids keep asking when we are going next!

So anyway, one of the things I did last night was read a few pages of this:

http://aspergersquare8.blogspot.com/

which is a really, really, fabulous blog by a woman with Aspergers. A lot of the things she says makes sense to me and has crystallised some thoughts I have had. When I was doing the baby forums, I joined a writer's group on there, and was dismayed to discover that the other five or six women writing were all working on peices about miscarriages, still births, or autism. And every one of the autism ones were depressing. OMG depressing.

Reading Bev's blog sort of made me realise that one of the reasons I didn't like any of the articles about autism and the spectrum stuff is that they were always from the parent's point of view, and they came bundled in with these whole piles of issues and assumptions and some of it I just didn't like. And that's OK, but... it's still interesting, and in a real life way, kind of depressing too. We all just have to do the best we can.

I have also been thinking about power and relationships. I have had some interesting ideas to play with the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale, and just playing around. I am always fascinated by this sort of stuff though. I have so many projects I am excited about, it's kind of hard to be excited without telling the whole story! 

Also: I hate Blinky Bill. I think it's an absolutely DREADFUL kids show, and would rather subject J to pretty much any other show under the sun when it's on. I hate the way the 'friends' interact with each other, the way the 'enemies' interact with each other, how all of them interact, the fact the main character is an absolute idiot and that this is somehow encouraged... GAH!

So, where was I up to...

It's payday today, so hoping we get paid LOL Prky and Tori are not coming to San Diego with me after all, so it's Carol and me at this point. Still hoping Alisa can make it, but not holding my breath. :-) I wonder if I can take crochet hooks on the plane. I have plastic ones after all.

Anyway, I have forgotten all the other deep stuff I was thinking about, so probably time to sign off! Gosh what a busy morning. Have made lunches, done cleaning, washed my hair, journalled, and now posted on DW/LJ. Soon I take V to school, and then J and I will be left staring at each other and wondering what we're supposed to do next...

:D

Have a great day!

I have been sick. I think this covers 7 of the last 8 weeks. I hate it and I hate being sick.

( Bits and peices that stick out  )

Thanks to cassiphone , I have been made aware of people who write a LOT. Like, a LOT A LOT A LOT. Like... 36,000 in ONE DAY.

And, reading this chickie's hints and tips ... there's people out there who do Nanowrimo in Day One. Let me think about this for a minute. Day One. Fifty thousand words.

Say... 7.5 hours.

Which is 450 minutes.

So you'd need to type...

111.11 words a minute.

I know someone who types that fast.....

mynxii , you doing anything tomorrow?? Got a spare 7.5 hours to spare??

The Battersbys are screaming into the lead with excellent numbers already, Calli has already started to fall by the wayside but insists that slow and steady wins the race. Beautiful performance by Cassiphone and I expect Chaosmanor will pull ahead in the next few days.



Heee!

Lifted from girliejones
Twelfth Planet Press is looking for unique novellas to publish in our novella series.

We expect to publish one to two novellas a year in this ongoing series. We are looking for speculative fictional stories between 20 000 and 40 000 words in length. We are especially looking for strong, tightly written pieces with subject matter that may tend towards not fitting into the usual specfic novella outlets.

Word count: 20 000 to 40 000 words
Genre: science fiction, fantasy, or horror
Payment: A$250 advance for the story plus 8% royalties
Reading period: NOW (looking to publish in October)
Submit: send your story as an rtf attachment to twelfthplanetpress@gmail.com

Please feel free to distribute this message to as many people as you think might be interested!

I've dicked around with the idea of writing novels for a long time, and so when Heidi posted today about how she writes her novels, I of course checked out all the links, and was very pleased to rediscover Justine Larbeliester's post on how she writes her novels. I remember reading it a long time ago, and I sometimes go and reference it again because I love that spreadsheet idea so much. And I like her sense of humour.

:-)

I've hit 5200 words. I'm going to go and lie down for a while.

- Dushwasher
-Quick sweep and clean
- Finish novel


.....


- 2k before dr phil
- 5 k .... after...?

*sigh*

This is a warning. I am needy. Please pat me and tell me what a sterling job I am doing.
:-)