I am completely and utterly FREAKING OUT NOW!! AHHHHHH!! I CANNOT WAIT TO SEE THIS MOVIE!!!!!!!!!!!

Quick synopsis, for those who didn't read my stuff on it earlier:

The Vintner's Luck follows Sobran Jodeau (Jeremie Renier), a young vintner. One night in summer, he meets an angel (Gaspard Ulliel), whom he believes is his luck. They meet every year on that night from then on, and Sobran slowly falls in love with the angel. Keisha Castle-Hughes (of Whale Rider fame) plays Celeste, Sobran's wife, and Vera Farmiga plays Baroness Aurora. The movie is directed by Niki Caro (also of Whale Rider fame) and is based on the MAGNIFICENT novel by Elizabeth Knox.

This is what it says on the youtube page, from the NZFilmCommission people: The Vintners Luck is an irresistible story of love, wine and angels set in early 19th century France. It tells the tale of an ambitious young peasant winemaker and his lifelong relationship with an angel as together they grapple with the sensual, the sacred and the profane in search of the perfect vintage.

ANYWAY, just watch the trailer and be totally enticed by it!!

( to the video )

Just so everyone is fully aware, the BBC show Merlin is coming to NBC in June, premiering Sunday, June 21st, at 8e/7c pm. Watch it, folks. Merlin is wonderful fun. Starring Colin Morgan as Merlin and Bradley James as Arthur, a young Merlin must face his destiny in a kingdom that forbids the use of magic. It sounds cheesy, and it is a bit, but it's really super fun.

The synopsis provided by NBC amuses me. "Before Merlin and Arthur became legends, they were ambitious young men looking for adventure. Both hoped to live up to their families' expectations, discover love and find their own true destiny...making mistakes along the way." Let's just say if it was how that description makes it seem to me, I wouldn't protest.

Here's the preview from the NBC site.

[This was written mostly in the last full week of March. So any reference to time is in relation to that.]

I finished the book Thursday, only took two days, it's not a long book. But the important bit is I REALLY liked it! :D Wheeeee~ I want to see the movie now. I'm perfectly okay with the movie being quite different from the book, I think it will have to be just by how the book is written and how much of the structure doesn't translate well, as the "chapters" are actually each a year, and sometimes the year can be two pages or less. Shortest one was two really short sentences, longest was pages and pages. That was an intense year.

Synopsis from Amazon: "One summer night in 1808, Sobran Jodeau sets out to drown his love sorrows in his family's vineyard when he stumbles on an angel. Once he gets over his shock, Sobran decides that Xas, the male angel, is his guardian sent to counsel him on everything from marriage to wine production. But Xas turns out to be a far more mysterious character. Compelling and erotic, The Vintner's Luck explores a decidedly unorthodox love story as Sobran eventually comes to love and be loved by both Xas and the young Countess de Valday, his friend and employer at the neighboring chateau."

It follows each year, as I mentioned earlier, so a lot of daily life is missing, so what some may consider big events in the life of Sobran are only briefly mentioned, and I got confused by how many children there were (it didn't help that they were often named after other characters, some who weren't dead yet.) But what was there to love about it? Well, because I have trouble expressing myself in words (a trait I must get over,) I could simply say "Everything!" But I will try to say something a little more intelligent, but it might not be in "review" form.

Favorite character has to be Xas. He's cool, and he also thinks about God and God's relationship to the world, which was quite interesting to read. Now, this isn't a religion book by any means. God sounds rather like a prick, which is fine by me, and works quite well with the biblical God (who is generally a jackass.) I think I will probably have to reread it to form an opinion about one event that involved God and Lucifer. (Not that I'm not planning to reread it anyway... hehehe...) Oh, that brings me to Lucifer. I want to like Lucifer, but I don't. I teared up at that part. Come to think of it, I don't like Michael either. I think the only REASONABLE angel in the book is Xas, and that's just because he's, well... an okay sort of guy. Like a human, but with some worries and not able to understand everything about humans because of his angelical status and also just that people don‘t understand others fully, but...

Sobran's okay as a character, and I'm perfectly fine following him throughout the book, but sometimes he just really annoys me. About halfway through, I wanted to smack him upside the head, but I also kind of pitied him. Thankfully, he shaped up some, but I was still kind of eeehh... about him as he grew older. Sometimes I'd be like, "That's really good of you, but at the same time DO NOT DO THAT!!!" And have I mentioned that I don't really see why EVERYONE loves him? Okay, so in the movie, he'll be played by Jeremie Renier, which that I can understand, but the character himself...

Another character, one that I was actually surprised I ended up liking, was Aurora. She was actually quite cool, though sometimes I thought she was annoying... But when she first showed up, I was lamenting that I wouldn't like ANY of the female characters, none of which you get to know very well except Aurora and a bit Celeste, but not really Celeste. I hate Celeste. I'm sure you're supposed to not like her much. It did feel a bit Jane Eyre, actually, with her and Sobran and his affairs... But back to Aurora. Yes, she definitely surprised me by the end of the book.

[Okay, the rest of this is being written about two weeks after I read the book, so I might be a little fuzzy on some things.]

I completely fell in love with the book several years in. The first few years were a bit awkward to read (Sobran having sex with a pregnant woman and some weird symbolic thing with dead wasps?) but when it got a little bit further in, maybe when Sobran was about 27? Oh, I was in love. There was this one scene that was just amazingly touching. What someone says about it the next day is a bit melodramatic, but that interpretation is meant to prevent the possibility of Sobran and Xas’s discovery. And it’s a character’s interpretation, not the author beating you over the head with some metaphor. So I can overlook that, and in fact, upon reflecting on it a little bit more, see how it actually adds to a loose discussion of God and people’s faith present in the novel. Now, I may be phrasing that not quite accurately, because it isn’t really commentary on the existence or place of God in the real world. But it’s interesting, nonetheless, when it does concern religion.

I think I have a thing for stories that span across a good deal of time. Benjamin Button, Vintner’s Luck… Well, okay, I can’t think of a third example at the moment. So maybe that isn’t true. Well, I did like Jane Eyre, but I wasn’t in love with it. Good Omens just skips the 12 years during which the Anti-Christ grows up… (And also the thousands of years between the Fall from Eden and the modern day.) Hmmm……… Well, I don’t know. I guess I take that back.

I really want to reread this book again, which isn’t quite possible at the moment, because there are several other things I’m reading and several things I should be doing (like school related things…) so I don’t really have the leisure to do so. I will probably when summer starts (or when AP exams and my independent study are over), but maybe before. We’ll see.

In the meantime, I highly recommend The Vintner’s Luck. I absolutely loved it.

A few notes on the movie, which I don’t think I’ve mentioned. Jeremie Renier stars in it as Sobran. I love Jeremie Renier. Gaspard Ulliel stars as Xas. That makes a very attractive pair there, and because I know a few of you are Gaspard fans, I am totally going to make you watch this movie (unless it totally sucks, but I don’t see that happening.) The girl from Whale Rider, who’s all grown up now, is Celeste, and the entire movie is directed the Whale Rider director. So it’s all very exciting. I can’t wait for it, but I must. It’s scheduled to come out in New Zealand in October, but don’t ask me if ever it will get a theater run in the US. It should, because otherwise I would be totally devastated and impatient waiting for camrips to show up online and then a DVD to finally be released SOMEWHERE. It’ll be in English, so it’s easily accessible to an American audience.

And can I say that Gaspard’s current style is actually really, really hot? I like the clicked back, longer hair on him. AND HE’S TALL. Or Jeremie Renier is just really short.

AND OH MY GOD I FOUND TWO IMAGES FROM THE MOVIE!!! Because Google loves me! <3 One image isn’t really all that cool, but another one shows Sobran, Celeste, and one of their kids. EEE. I am so excited. Plus, someone uploaded a couple of wonderful images of Ulliel and Renier at the Cesar Awards, I believe. It’s funny, because Ulliel’s so cheerful, and Renier is all “I don’t really want to be here right now, or at least have my photo taken.” But anyway. It still makes me go :D

If it is released in US theaters, we ARE ALL GOING. I will be going multiple times. Hehehehehehehehehe….

Obsessed? Me? Never!

WHEEEE!!

I am very happy. My sister basically messed up the nice computer, which my mom is pretty upset about, but now I don't care, because she agreed to give me my graduation present early (a laptop) and she did!! Yay!

So I'm playing around with it, and trying to fix it up and make it all nice and perfect and how I want it, but it'll take a little while to do all that. Later peeps!

WAS ABSOLUTELY AMAZING, AND I AM IN LOVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOVE, I TELL YOU, LOVE!!!

Once upon a time, there was a young woman. Now, this woman wasn't very special. She was neither very attractive nor very intelligent. And she certainly couldn't make up for either with money or general likeability even. But she got by in the world, because on the whole, she preferred being a cheerful, optimistic person. But well, her real problem was she was as lazy as hell.

See, she sort of had lots of things to do. Which kind of included two essays and practicing her forensics pieces and not wanting to go to stage crew. And she was stressing about whether to quit her job or not, which caused her stress, the work, but she rather liked having the money. But she figured she could go poor for awhile, if she saved, and she could try to find a better job (though that would be unlikely.) All in all, she was sometimes happy and sometimes really miserable.

One of these miserable times was brought about when she couldn't get a DVD to play. It just wouldn't. She was sure it wasn't region encoded. It was PAL format, but she figured that that hadn't made much of a difference, considering her very brief search had told her that DVD players usually don't have issues playing both PAL and NTSC. This was the third time she had tried playing a DVD in PAL format, and it was the third time that it failed. And she was very angry about that indeed. And if the formatting wasn't the problem, then it WAS region encoded, and she felt too lazy to try to figure out if it was or not (which in and of itself wouldn't be too hard, she figured, but it was work she felt she shouldn't have to do.)

What she REALLY ENTRULY wanted was everything to be region free and the same format. It was very disheartening for the people who wanted to maybe watch FOREIGN DVDs and have to putz around with things that they shouldn't have had to putz around with, and everyone would be so much happier. She knew it all had to do with licensing rights or whatever, and that was all very inconvenient for her, because it negatively impacted the consumer, and instead of PROMOTING something, it actually encouraged people to NOT buy aforementioned DVDs, thus lowering multi-cultural exposure.


The End

I'd like to say she got what she wished, but I can't. That's also why I think "write what you know" is silly. Because it proves for a very boring story indeed when I do that,

"One of my many theories about short stories is that their titles and first lines ought to be memorable, because if not memorable they will not be remembered, and if not remembered the stories will not be reprinted (because no one can find them)." - Damon Knight

I am planning on submitting a short story of mine for a scholarship. I don't really think I'll get it, but, hey, might as well try. I really need to sort of rewrite it. Anyway. Wait, wait. I don't even know which story I'm doing. Yikes. That's a little worrisome.... Well, I have two possibilities. I just need to choose. And then revise.

"Grease lying! Go! Grease lying!" Sorry, I'm listening to 15 Minute Musical - Washington High School Musical. And that's McCain's/the ending song. It's kinda whatever, but a little fun. Over now. Hm.

I need to finish doing some things now. And... don't ask me what the quote had to do with this post. It didn't really, much. Except maybe I should keep that in mind. I don't even know who Damon Knight is, and I'm too lazy to find out.

Anyway, later!

I WON NANOWRIMO! Just so y'all know... Like... the... imaginary people that read this... ANYWAY.

In writing land for me, what has been up lately?

....

Other than winning Nanowrimo (with about 50,200 words)... nothing. I haven't even FINISHED the novel. I just hit the 50,000 word mark. I am close to finishing, though. It's the climax, and we just have to have this final confrontation and then the resolution, and BAM. Done. Though that might be several more thousand words.

I haven't written in awhile actually. What is wrong with me? Well, school and applications and whatnot. I guess that gets in the way of things. But then again, I am watching silly, silly shows... I mean, I could be writing the Next Great American Novel instead of watching the MIghty Boosh and waiting for my copy of the Mighty Boosh book to arrive (mid-January, by the way.)

But as it is nearly Christmas (which I celebrate when I probably shouldn't, because I am not Christian. Or anything.) and then New Year's afterwards, I will make some changes.

Change 1 - ACTUALLY WRITE.

Change 2 - Give up the title of Queen of Procrastination.

Change 3 - Spread Good Will to all those I meet. Or at least try not to hate the really detestable people as much as I usually do. We're all just people after all.

Change 4 - Refuse to make resolutions I cannot keep.

NOTE: None of the above are resolutions, it not being New Year's yet, and so therefore, Change 4 does not apply to them. :)

Thank you and have a nice day.

I am... not even at 24,000 words yet (EEP!), have school, work, birthday, and Thanksgiving to deal with this week (EEP!) and here I am posting. When I should be writing... Yikes.

BUT! I LOVE Write or Die. It is brilliant. I don't know if I could win this year without it. But I think I can make it. Hour and a half each day, yeah...

BUT! I am so happy about MERLIN!!! episode 10. It was great! Merlin and Arthur.... Gwen and Morgana... and Arthur and Gwen, because you cannot escape Arthurian Legend completely with me! <3

Okay, NANOWRIMO! Must... write... *ignores everything ELSE she has to do today... Namely schoolwork*
 

Starting this Saturday! AND I HAVE NO PLOT!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I DID have a plot, I really DID! But then... then... I thought, I don't really feel like doing this now... So I no longer have a plot! I am plotless! D:!!!!! No!!!!!

I will be looking for MEGA INSPIRATION. ......... This IS kind of fun, though... Having no plot.. But I really DO want one before i start.

...... I can't do it. Simple as that, I can't do it.

Which is bad, because a) I have to write my Jim Henson speech for forensics and b) I need to write some college application essays and c) I need to write an ancient history essay today.

............. I hate this.

The AW essay NEEDS to get done today. Or at least, 90% done. The speech needs to get done today. Or, well, 90% done. The essays I need to do this week. I need to apply this week. The second NaNoWriMo begins, I'm going to be off on that and will have no time for anything else. Why? Because in addition to my 50,000 word novel, I'm doing some short stories, and plan to use the momentum I get from writing my NaNovel to do that.

Well, now I know my career choices are limited at least, knowing that I can't write essays and speeches. If you can, you are lucky and amazing and I bow down to you in your supremacy.

Fiction is EASY. You toss some people together and a conflict and voila. Speeches/essays, though... *shakes head* They should poof out of existence.

"I kind of liked it your way how you shyly placed your eyes on me. Oh, did you ever know that I had mine on you?" - Faye Wong, Eyes on Me

I am a romantic. I can't write romance. I also don't read romance novels as a genre. But I like my stories to be romantic.

I find myself, recently, drawn most to mature romances. Now, this may sound a little weird considering I am saying this after finishing a manga volume revolving around a 16-yr old kid and a... 28, 29 year old? So you'd imagine that it'd be rather teen like. But the kid has to be mature and take into consideration things most teens in teen romances don't have to consider, making him more mature and the romance more mature (even though when it comes to what results from that romance, he's extremely embarrassed and reserved. But it's cute.) One of my favorite manga volumes ever right there, though... Ahh... I cry (from happiness) and I can listen to the drama CD again and again. (And I have.)

But, yes, back to mature romances. What is the typical youth romance you think of? A couple of teenagers finding love for the first time and it's passionate and awkward and full of confused emotions. More mature romances can still be passionate and awkward and full of confused emotions, but it's different somehow. I probably should put more thought into this before saying it, but...

So that's what I want to write. Mature romances (and just for the record, I'm not dealing with level of explicitness here. You know what I mean.) But I can only imagine what that's actually like, and use other stories as a point of reference. But that's okay, I think. I'll learn. So my first "mature romances" might be pretty silly, but with time..  Which is one thing that makes the romances more interesting. The characters have had more time to sort out their confused hormonal feelings from their teen years and generally have more experience and knowledge about relationships. They can have a deeper, more meaningful relationship because they understand people better than teenagers do.

Maybe that's a load of hogwash, but that's what I feel it's like.


I love this song. Fame from FFVIII obviously. When it is played in the game, I love that part (a nice scene between Squall and Rinoa, who I think are cute together, even though for fannish pleasures I'm a Seifer/Squall fan all the way), but what I really love is how you can apply it to two other characters in the game. I'm not sure if it was written SPECIFICALLY for the game, but it certainly sounds like it does from the lyrics. I'm too lazy to look it up, though. I have yet to win FFVIII. That should be my goal this next year. Been trying since 8th grade. (I finally got to the last disk though! Wooo!)

Click here for an introduction to this post.

"........all..service.. Story..Heliogabalus..Vatican..request..take..vampire..hunt..toward..Charlie.However, there is a back in the request. ･･･ It faces it in Rafro that sleeps in the coffin, and disgusted Charlie forcibly takes Rafro and ..bed.. faces purchase. Bubble over..perplex..manage..hope..all..realize..bed..obtain..the..bed..ghost..provide. Others collection to drama CD ChapterI or Ferris wheel date of Rafro and Charlie complete collect story of synchronization original of three comic blur id magazines 2005 year drama CD ZEBEL EDITION........" -Description of Vassalord Drama CD: The Hidden Palace of Heliogabalus as translated by Excite Translator (parts I cut out are marked with multiple elipses as the translation has elipses already.)

..... *giggles insanely*

Ahhh, excite translator, how you... excite me.  Okay, okay, sorry for the pun. Bad one, I know. Oh well.

I cut some of the original Japanese (just the beginning and ending, trying to isolate one line) and this is what the translator came up with: "･･･It faces it in Rafro that sleeps in the coffin, and disgusted Charlie forcibly takes Rafro and ..bed.. faces purchase. There is ghost in the bed though the bed where all his hope was realized though it manages to be perplexed to bubbling over of Rafro is obtained ･･･. " Which makes little sense, and knocks out the fun that "hope..all..realize..bed..obtain..the..bed.." has. Unless "his hope" isn't the ghost's hope, but rather... Then it still is a bit fun. Suffice it to say, it's all interpretation anyway, pretty much, because the translation is so lousy in the first place.

Now, I read a lot of professionally translated things - manga, subtitles for anime/movies/tv shows, a few novels, though less often - so I'm not completely estranged from the world of professional translations. Within professional translations, you find a lot of discrepancies. I've read the released books from Only the Ring Finger Knows, by Kannagi Satoru with illustrations by Odagiri Hotaru, and they were... simplistic  and somewhat awkward. I wasn't ever sure if that was just due to some weird style thing or if the translation was bad (I ruled out that the writing was THAT bad, because it is pretty popular, the series, and there ARE four drama CDs, which I've listened to and seem perfectly fine from what I can understand.) I've been leaning toward a poor translation, more so because I recently heard that DMP, which released the books, has been known for poor quality translations of their BL books. Pity. If you're going to spend the money to license something and then translate it, you may as well get it done WELL.

For manga, I've noticed poor translation and editing before, too. I ran across a comparison of the fan translated Prince of Tennis manga and the professional translation done by Viz. ......... Like hell Atobe would say anything like that and Sanada? Yeah, right... And that was for the professional translation. There was also much to note on the editing. I've noticed this myself. Because they changed the names to the first name, for whatever reason which I can't understand, as I can refute every argument I can think of brilliantly, It isn't odd to see someone being referred to by the wrong name. Inconsistencies are common in Tokyopop's translation of Dragon Knights, and I've caught myself backtracking when I catch something amiss in Viz's version of Yu-Gi-Oh (well, I did when I still read it. And don't even get me started on the editing of the art... *shivers* That was... just completely awful...)

Now, I understand translating is a tough job. It takes time and effort and checking and rechecking and stylistic and slang/idiom decisions that the translators must make. But does quality need to be sacrificed for that? I don't think so. But then, who's going to listen to me? I don't know if I would even.

I hope that my works will get translated into other languages. Sure, it won't be EXACTLY like my words, but the story will still be there and the emotions can all be conveyed. I just hope for quality rather than speed.

One of the translation errors (or so I've always thought... Whether it was from English to Japanese or from Japanese back to English...) that I can't stand is Markle from Howl's Moving Castle. In the Miyazaki movie, Markle is a young boy who is Howl's apprentice. In the book, Markle doesn't exist, but a boy (older, age 15, not 6 or however little he is) named Michael does. I can deal with the movie Solomon or whatever she was called, even if she IS a mish mash of characters. But Michael to Markle? That's not acceptable to me. Sure, his age changes, but why couldn't his name have stayed the same? Lettie was still Lettie, even if she isn't really Lettie in the book, and they didn't explore that storyline (time constraints, MICHAEL'S age change, etc.) But, again, I don't know where the mistake was made, so I guess I can't point fingers. Well, yes I can, but not COMPLETELY fairly.

I guess that's all I really have to say... Maybe I'll cover this topic again, because there really is a lot to say, but this is what I feel like saying at the moment.

Vassalord is originally a manga by Chrono Nanae (I didn't touch much on the spellings of names. I've seen Krono before, but the official translation has been Chrono, so... And then there's the fact of whether or not the author/original publisher spelled it a certain way already or not.) about a cyborg vampire (and vampire hunter) and his vampire master, who he uses as his meal. Rayflo's the master and Charley's the cyborg vampire. Tokyopop uses Charley, while I've seen Charly and Charlie before. Charlie makes the most sense to me, but...

And if you want to know what the Japanese introduction is saying (or what it SHOULD say and mostly does, actually...), here.
Hello. I don't know if this is correct, but it sounds cool all the same. Welcome to Eddy's blog. I hope you all enjoy your stay here. I write about my writing. I also talk about my thoughts on different aspects of the publishing world. There are probably mistakes in this as I am using an online translator. In fact, that's partially what I am going to talk about today. Please, read and have fun. Comments are appreciated.

What to do with a premise but no plot?

So, I've been coming up with short story ideas quite easily as of late. I just started and finished one yesterday (ooo, one day! Well, that's what you get when you have a really short story idea and two study halls with no homework...) Still need to edit it, but that can wait a little while. Come mid-September or October, I'll begin asking for editors. Have a few other ideas I need to work on, including two dragon stories, one of which is almost done, and I figured out a suitable ending, which is always a plus. (I sometimes never know how to end things. *shakes head*)

Thought up a new story idea today while talking to my mom. It's about a band, and I've begun figuring out their characters. I rather like this bunch, and this will probably be a longer short story. Like... You read When You Are Engulfed in Flames, by David Sedaris? No? Well, all but the last... essay? are quite short. The last one is much, much longer. So I can have a few like that.

HOWEVER...

It may be about a band, and I may know about that band, but I don't know what actually HAPPENS. A point of tension is how two of them are dating, but I don't really want it to be all about that. Make it about the music? I don't know if I can do that. Or HOW about the music. .............................................................. THAT could work.... *is thinking* ...................................................................... Okay, yeah, I'll try that out... Thank you, Star Trek and the music industry!! *throws confetti*

Alright, so now I do have a plot. But there are a few other stories that I have that DON'T. And what do you do when you have an interesting premise but no plot? And you try and try to figure something out, but nothing WORKS?

I guess that means it's time to regulate that to the back burning, and wait for inspiration to strike.

"Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it." - Collete

So you write a story. Big deal. It's not done yet.

I've been (half-heartedly) editing a story of mine, the only one I completed over the entire course of the summer (fanfiction doesn't count, and I only finished one of those, anyway.) I can't cut things, though. I've always found that I have issures cutting lines and words from my stories. It's not very good, I imagine, to have that issue. I mean, you should have pride in your work. And there should be things that you really do like. But I think that in the end, if it's unfixable crap, you have to recognize it as unfixable crap and start over.

... While I think most of my work is crap, I certainly don't think of it as unfixable, but I don't spend any time trying to fix it. Maybe my attachment to it is a problem, maybe my not editing it is a bigger problem. Maybe these aren't problems at all, and I'm just imaging my entire life and nothing is real. But that's getting a little Matrix, isn't it? (I don't think I can use that reference, actually, as I've never seen the Matrix in full, and therefore know very little about it. The whole bug-in-the-stomach thing scared me too much. I don't know if it's the red or the blue pill that takes you back to our little dream world or not.)

So, I think I should look at my story again and get rid of repetitive lines and such, at the very least. On that note, I'm going to also be looking for editors soon, so be forewarned. I'll probably send a mass email to my friends begging them, with a description of the story, and the explanation that this will happen 8 more times or so, and they can refuse or accept based on whether they're willing to help me with this and if they find the story interesting. Because reading things that don't interest you is just painful.

Changing direction, I bought... 6 books, one manga yesterday at a halfprice book store. With 20% everything. I went a little shop happy... But it was only $33.02 in the end, which is pretty sweet for that amount. There were more manga I wanted, but I figured I should restrain myself a LITTLE. I can go back later and buy them maybe. Though they won't have the sale anymore. Ah, well.

One of the books was The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy. It looks rather interesting. It lists and talks briefly about, by media then year, movies, television, authors/creators, games, iconic characters, worlds (Discworld had a fairly long section in this, obviously.), magazines... With a foreword by Terry Pratchett. So I thought it sounded pretty awesome and it looks pretty good, too. Though I am forced to giggle when the first full page picture for the Television section they choose is a half-naked Kevin Sorbo as Hercules (which I'm watching right now, incidentally.) Which is probably one reason I did laugh, the whole currently watching thing.

So, today, I am planning on just relaxing, because I have to be distracted by real life starting tomorrow. *rolls eyes* Geez. Pesky little things like school are not inducive to my writing... Well, except for the fact that I liked many of the books we've read in English class the past two years, and my idea for last year's NaNoWriMo came from the title of a textbook... *coughs* But that's negligible. Outliers (well, outlying circumstances) if we were talking math, right? Which I'm not taking this year. *grins*

And I have three free periods which I can use to write. Or... do homework... But that's for people who actually care about school. I'll just slap something together the morning of or the night before, as I always do.

So, no clue who this "Colette" is. Writer at the turn of the century, and a bit past. Didn't die until after both my parents were born. Umm... Yeah.

(I slept horribly last night. So hot... Argh... And I really like Oblivion Dust. My sister left me some of her [mostly complete] discographies, such as Penicillin, Aikawa Nanase, and Oblivion Dust.)

"Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as writer." - Ray Bradbury

As much as I'd like to be a genius, I am not. (Where was I when the brains were handed out? I do not know. Maybe I can blame it on the Vorlons.)

I need to keep this in mind. I need to work hard. I need to write, rewrite, edit, polish, submit, get rejected, submit, redo, until I am an old, crippled woman, on her last breath, and I can look at my life and say, "By gosh, darn it, I gave it all I had." Will I be in a luxerious chamber or on the streets when that happens, though? Or somewhere in between? While option number one is the most appealing, I guess I can go for number three.

Alright, so I get depressed easily when I hear "Oh, Christopher Paolini wrote Eragon after graduating high school at 15." Or "This book has two authors, one 17, the other 40, but they are both the same man." (In reference to The Carpet People, Terry Pratchett, which he reworked and republished.) I'm at that age now, and what do I have to show for it? One novel I'm unwilling to look at, and a handful of short stories that I've written over the past couple of years.

Okay, so I'm not a genius. We've asserted that already. So I may not, for all I know, be published in me teens (my years are fast waning.) I may not even be published in my early twenties. But I'll never know what I can or can't do until I work hard and try.

I'd like to think my job instills in me a desire to work hard, but it mostly encourages me to be lazy when I can. But when it comes to writing, which I am going to make my life (I figure positive assertions sound the best,) I need to work hard.

You ever participate in NaNoWriMo, you hear over and over again that you just need to get the words out. We read "Shitty First Drafts" (the author escapes me) last year in school, and I knew all it said already. Get the words and thoughts down, rework later. It's work, and it's trouble, and it's not fun (the editing bit, I mean. For me.) But it's necessary for the average Janes among us. Well, I suppose even geniuses need to do it, too. It's just... they make it seem so easy.

And in the end, maybe they aren't geniuses. Maybe they just had the drive to work harder than me at a younger age.

But that doesn't really make me feel any better.

Ah, well. Time to put the nose to the grindmill. (Well, maybe time for bed, rather...)

I've only read one Ray Bradbury story (The Sound of Thunder), though I'm familiar with several more, because I read a book that had several of his stories adapted into comics. I also have a Ray Bradbury book borrowed from my sister, and a book with short stories by different authors dedicated to Ray Bradbury.

"I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done." - Stephen Wright (Steven Wright, comedian? Is ph on the site I got this from... *shrugs* No clue who he is anyway.)

That's about how much I feel I have accomplished often.

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I think the bigger question here is why am I typng up thoughts on writing on livejournal and NOT WRITING?

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If I ever find the answer to that, I may tell you.

"We quickly flit out of the way as Clark is bitch-slapped repeatedly by the super-strong fish's tail until he falls backward into the pond." - Smallville fanfiction, "Black Pond," by Viridian5 (It's a really funny piece)

This has been my status on gmail chat for quite some time, mostly because I am highly amused by it. It's part of a story I read online sometime last week, involving one Clark Kent and one Lex Luthor - using Smallville canon - and, no surprise, it is fan generated. Specifically, it was a nice, funny, little Clex piece that was quite amusing.

Now, as much as I enjoy something original, reading fanfiction (good fanfiction) always hits a spot with me. I believe this to be due to visiting familiar characters and worlds. But this still has a limit. I will not touch a Howl's Moving Castle story, nor any other Diana Wynne Jones book-based work. Because those are things I feel you can't tamper with, and there are other things. Well, okay, other people can tamper all they want, but I don't want to influence my feelings of the original work with fan created work (although you can't escape HMC fanart, what with the movie existing and all that. But this isn't about art. This is about fics.)

The whole phenomenon of fanfiction is rather interesting, actually. It interests me so much that I actually indulged myself in a pricey risk as I ordered a book (published 1992) on fans and fan communities more in general (it does include discussion on fan generated work, I'm certain, though. Admittedly, this came about because I was reading up on the history of Kirk/Spock slash, honestly, which is where the term came from I hear.)The book was a whopping $34. In PAPERBACK, no less. But, I have yet to receive it. Hasn't even been shipped out yet. It could be a complete waste of money. I'm hoping not, but we'll just have to see. If it is, oh well, too bad.

Now, I must admit to writing fanfiction myself. Escaflowne, Rurouni Kenshin, DNAngel... I wrote those years ago. Now, I do mostly Prince of Tennis stuff and dabble in a few other fandoms (I did Ethan Frome once, even. But that was a special request. I did not write it out of any love for Ethan Frome.) Therefore, you can firmly place me in the category of fanfiction author. So I have somewhat of an interest in all this fandom business, especially concerning fan texts.

Whether the purchase proves to be good or bad, it's something to think about at least. And, well, just having the book for Tasha Yar and Data dressed as knights, with Dr. Crusher as a queen-type lady and Capt. Picard as a king on the cover is enough. :) Heheh.

........ Honestly, I'm horribly embarrassed that I write fanfiction. I don't see why I should be. Plenty of people write it. Even published authors have written it (well, at least one that I know of, prior to being published. *coughs*Shoebox*coughs* And, although it may be a little unfair to say this, I'm sure the cult following of that fanfic certainly helped some with the sales of the original novel...) But still... There's this... stigma I guess I can't get over. I rationalize, saying it's good for practice anyway, and it's not as if I ever post anything. See... On the one hand, we seem to have perpetual amateurs, borrowing others' ideas, and on the other, we have professionals, borrowing others' ideas much more subtly. And for some reason, that's all the difference in the world to me.

I guess because I borrow whole characters and concepts, I begin to realize just how much in original writing characters and concepts are borrowed from other sources, and I despair over that. I am stuck with the entire complete originality sentiment that is ingrained in the minds of American elementary school students everywhere, when in fact, there is very little to be original about. You try something "new," it's been done in something already in some form or another. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try it. But I can't grasp that, not quite, and so I despair, and go back to writing fanfiction where no one really cares that it's all been done before, because much of fanfiction isn't very good anyway.

But having that attitude can also undermine the actual creativeness of fanfiction. In fact, you can even see fanfiction as doing what many copyrighted material does. For instance, take comics and long television shows. They're serials, and they have many, many different writers over the course of the series. I mean, histories even change over the course of the series. I mean, look at Lex Luthor. He has several different pasts, and it completely depends on what era of Superman you look at to see where his motivations come from. So, if people write fanfiction where Lex Luthor and Clark Kent go fishing and find a Kryptonite-mutated fish that falls in love with Lex... Hey, why not? It's not hurting anyone. If anything, such works pay homage to the original source, as people like it enough to use its characters and concepts, and generates more interest in the series as well. Free publicity.

So what's my deal?

I don't know. I'll attribute it to elementary school brainwashing for now, but the real reason? *shakes head*

It only becomes sad when someone tells you "I want to write a book so I can read slash fanfiction of it online." Then you know the shadow has become the object. But what happens to the object then?


(In the meanwhile, I have a new obsession. And guess what? While waiting for more, I'm totally going to be daydreaming about it. Might even make some fics, who knows.)

"Short stories are designed to deliver their impact in as few pages as possible. A tremendous amount is left out, and a good short story writer learns to include only the most essential information." - Orson Scott Card

Can "the most essential information" not include characters' names? Which I didn't have in my last short story? It was all "my brother" and "my mother" and "I." Though I DID come up with names after I wrote the stupid thing. Tony and Ross, I think? Erm... Yeah. The mother I never gave a name to, though. Not really any point, I guess.

How long was that story? 4959 words, for the first draft. 4939 words for the edited version I tried doing, but I never finished. I don't know if I ever will. We'll have to see, I guess. (I say that a lot. Huh.)

I have this... plan. It was MEANT for this summer, but I was lazy and didn't do it. What is it? To write a short story weekly. I'm actually on a deadline here, so I really need to start ASAP. First week of December is the latest I can go (and that includes editing said stories.) And considering November is a down time for me in short story writing (NaNoWriMo), I only really have 8 weeks, which equals 8 stories. Plus another two, plus one more if I decide to include that one... (And I MAY enlist help for editing!) This is a very special project. *glances around* I'm sure she wouldn't snoop, so... This is a present for my mom. (Okay, okay, SHUT UP about the cheesiness of it all!) Self-published book of my short stories. The plus two are ones I wrote for school (and will be appropriately labeled as such, so the distinct difference in quality is explained) and the plus one is my brother story. But I don't think I'll add that one, because... That's a little more awkward for me. "Here, mom, some short stories your daughter wrote? What? Oh, yes, that one is about incestuous brothers. Yup." ......... Awkward. And that is the almost 5000 word one I just mentioned.

I suppose I'll be a little more adept at writing short stories, and having them ACTUALLY be short, as Mr. Orson Scott Card says (as well as many others) they should be, after this. Hopefully. As long as I stick to my work. And you can bully me about it. 9 to 11 stories sounds sufficient, right? Not bad at all, I'd say.

I actually have three other stories that are finished, but I don't think I want to put them in. One is a really odd, somewhat convoluted, tale about a house, another is just about a few kisses, which is cheesy as hell, and the third... Actually, I could use the third. With a little bit of reworking...

Looking at the quotation again, I believe the best method, according to Card, is to dive right into the story. Pretend that the reader knows the world, knows the people, knows everything. This doesn't mean it's without details and characterization and such. It just means that those present happen to be "the most essential information." I HAVE read some spectacular longish short stories, however. So, if the author is good, I don't think that length really is an issue. Maybe I'll experiment. Have a few longer ones, have a few shorter ones... That makes this more of a practice test than anything, doesn't it?

Well, we'll see how it goes. (I really DO say that a lot. I'm really a laissez-faire type of person, aren't I?)

As for Orson Scott Card... I haven't read any of his short stories. I read Ender's Game and I enjoyed it, although I couldn't stand how Ender turned out at the end. I hear Ender's Shadow is really good, however? *raises eyebrow* I don't know if I'll ever get to reading it, but hey.


(You know, it's really sad when you read one manga volume that isn't billed as BL [though it IS billed as sexy] and it turns out to be hotter than the four volumes of another series that is billed as BL. *sighs* Oh, only two kisses, one not even shown, and the other not actually a kiss.... What kind of romance is THAT?! The trying-to-be-subtle one, I guess. Honestly, I was more interested in the possible budding romance between one minorish character and an extremely minor character... Actually, I had a bit of similar bad luck with a book I read recently. The characters in love were SO hesitant about their affections, and when they finally started acting on them, they were still too restrained and acted like lost, confused, love-sick puppies, and they couldn't hold my interest for long.. Though they had been that before admitting to the emotions anyway...)