Still Writing! (blog)

Yes, I've done some:  Got the outline to the place where I stopped writing a couple years ago... You see, though I love microbiology, and have done some of the Amateur Study on it, I am by no means an expert in the field.  So it makes me nervous... You know the thing that keeps me going at it?  A year or so ago, I read <i>Vitals</i> by Greg Bear, my absolute favorite sf author... partially because he writes about microbiology stuff too!  And well, I wrote him fan mail, something I only ever do if I'm insanely fanatic about the person's writing.  So he and Tamora Pierce are the only ones who've ever received it from me... (*G*<lj user = "jimhines">, I'm not counting you because I know where you live -- in here!)

Well, so anyway I wrote him fanmail, and -- gasp -- got a reply!  I'd told him that reading his book got me inspired to work on the bac book I had in the hopper because I had run into a dry spell with it... he actually said he was looking forward to seeing it in the stores someday!  Ohhh, gasp...

So that's what keeps...

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The short news about this, guys, is that the Kritter world is going to get somewhat bigger.  I've gone into the why of it over on LiveJournal, but yeah:  basically, an Admin over at DnDOnline asked me whether I'd be willing to let people in to play in Kritter.

So after taking a deep breath, to prevent my eyes from popping out of my head and all that in amazement, I basically gave him the HELL, YEAH!

*G* Like, are you kidding?? 

I have no trouble with fan fiction -- not that anyone writes Kritter fanfic; it isn't THAT popular, which is why I was so surprised -- and so I also had no trouble with  the idea of someone willing to play there.  Uhh, yeah, you can come into my sandbox!

I didn't know anyone wanted to, you see.

Make no mistake, I've made it clear that Kritte is my own creation, and want to just get that credit from them -- other than that, as long as I can keep my creations to play with in my own way, I'll certainly do this.  And in return, I've gotten assurance that yes, that's what'd happen.  So I'm good.  Well, you guys...

Tags: writing

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I'd like you to give a welcome to this month's drollerie guest, Angela Korra'ti!  Stay tuned...

Jess

For this month on the Drollerie Press Blog Tour, the topic is "summer". We all have been writing on various aspects of the season: what role it plays in our various stories, or how it may influence our writing. For my own part, I'd like to give you all a glimpse of the summer of 1989, the toughest summer that a young Warder-to-be, Christopher MacSimidh, had faced to date in his entire life--and which would stay with him up until the events of _Faerie Blood_.

Thanks for reading, all!

Anna

Christopher MacSimidh, Winnipeg, Manitoba, July 1989

The height of summer should have been a thing of glory. July sunshine slanted off the buildings of downtown Winnipeg, gilding them all in light, and countless tiny fragments of radiance glimmered along the surface of the Assiniboine River. Christopher saw none of it. Even tempered by the breeze off the river, the sun's heat bore down upon his head, in league with his sour mood for all of its brilliance. His feet hurt in their old shoes after hours of walking the docks in the...

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Been writing more and more at helium.com, which is good; trying for $25 at least by the end of the month which will get that to me by the month after.  The good thing is that now when they do contests, they do contests for the creative writers there too!

So, this month, I'm working on their creative writing short story contest.  So far doing pretty well, if I say so -- I even snuck a Kritter story in, heh heh... and there's one or two characters I've used for stories today that I'm pretty sure I'll use again somewhere.  

At least I'm putting the current state of insomnia to good use!

http://writing-contests.helium.com/marketingcontest/leaderboard/825?cms=creative-writing

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The most prominent father character that I have ever written about is Zorovin.  When we meet him, we meet the king of the North Frost Dragons.  A few years ago he sent his son to the “other side of the world”, the world where the things and people of magic do not exist.  He makes his way to this world to find his son, and because dragons do not exist in our world, he is forced to become a man.  The way dragons think and feel and perceive is very different from the way that humans do, and it’s something he’s not comfortable with.  But that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love his son:

<i>As Zorovin looked up at the sky, he was struck by how much he missed his son. He remembered TorVanith’s birth. He had wrapped his body...

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In order to help separate out the writing I do fiction-wise and the writing I do solely for helium.com (which is also a lot of creative writing), I've created a "zone" there. It's kind of like a website, for those of you who don't know. Figured I'd put my ducks in order:) Check it out:

http://www.helium.com/zone/2622-Jess-Howe's-Personal-Zone

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Oooh, I'm very excited!  StereoOpticon is just about ready, I hear, and hence the really pretty addition to my "welcome" page:) 

Meanwhile, after the health scare this past month, I've begun settling into my new brain (literally).  So now I'm working on a whole different schedule, with a few things remaining the same:

Mondays - WIP

Tuesdays - WIP: helium

Wednesdays: EDIT: anything and everything (at the moment that includes beta reading for two people and editing for my mother, as well as Critters stuff)

Thursdays: alternating library and museum ("museum" could be the Ecotarium or the Aquarium down in Mystic, or a performance at Mechanics Hall)

Fridays: SUBDAY/WIP

I have found that I'm much better at the days where I'm doing specific stuff like subday or edit day.  Sigh.  Actual writing is a hell of a lot harder than it was! That is so frustrating -- but never fear, I'm not going to let that stop me.

I remain a writer.

DAMMIT! 

Tags: writing

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Hey, I've decided to put in a story post today.  Been doing a lot at helium.com (come see at http://www.helium.com/users/edit_show/279739).  Small stories, but they pay pretty well in the end... ok so it's at most something like $50 if I'm lucky per month because I'm terrible at actual freelance. But I've learned that people seem to like the creative writing I come up with there, so I'm doing that.  Don't worry, I haven't given up on other writing -- far from it!  But this is so I have a little bit.  I'm still working on getting myself off social security, and this is the only way I can think of, via writing at home. 

"So, without further gilding the lily, and with no more ado...", here we are:

When our people first arrived here on Dor, it is said there was a mass of water, more vast than anyone can imagine.  Evil things with no names lived in that water, which was full of salt, and the sun was always golden.  The water made a swoosh-swoosh sound. 

The first creatures who spoke with us on our new world were the invisible Dorites.  Yet, they were very obviously the ones...

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First of all, I'm sorry to those at Drollerie for being late.  Today knocked me for a loop, as my dad would say, healthwise.  I'm not doing well just for basics.  Doing the tiny bits I can when I can -- but anyway, I figured you guys deserved an explanation in brief.  Now on to the blog post!  This month I have Heather Ingemar discussing how she started out as a writer.  Enjoy!  And if you want to see my own origin post, head over to Meredith's blog...

Origin Stories blog post, 2/28/09

By Heather S. Ingemar

When people ask, I tell them I've always been a teller of tales.

I did not, however, always know I'd be a writer.

Beginnings are usually rough and full of pot-holes, and mine was no exception. Writing, in the beginning, was difficult at best, though I read like a starving man ate at a feast and possessed a vocabulary above my age-level. That whole grammar thing.... I'll be the first to admit I did not grasp the semantics easily and failed at parsing. But I heard words like music, and putting my thoughts onto paper was natural.

It was even better...

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So, on to stock characters. I try not to use them, personally. Because, well, they're boring.

Sure, The Hobbit could never have happened without a Wizard. And sometimes you do need stock characters: they aren't just for playing Dungeons and Dragons, y'know! They're useful, for getting your story going. Keeping it moving. I have a nasty wizard in one manuscript and a nasty landlord in another, and each has his specific Victim. I'll admit that.

Doesn't mean I like using them.

However, if you look at any story, you can pick out these elements -- English teachers have been doing it for years! It all comes down to these basics, in the end.

It's what you do with the stock characters you find that drives the story or destroys it, in the eyes of an editor or readers. The way to do that is not easy. If you don't want extremely obvious Heros, for instance, then you must put up a fight with your own writing mind.

The way I do that is to try and see what I can do to give that person more depth.

1)what's he like to do? Say Sir Whatsisface plays chess -- badly,...

Tags: character_clinic, joely, writing

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Joely Sue Burkhart is doing a Character Clinic on her blog. The post previous to this was actually from an idea from something Bethanie wrote me:) ...however, this post deals with the Clinic.

So her question was today whether or not we recycle characters after they've been sacked from one story.

My answer is ohhh, yeah. I have characters I've destroyed from one story, that show up in another -- nobody's the wiser. But on the other hand, do I save characters more to the point? Yes. So far I've moved an evil fairy from one story where she's the name of another evil fairy in a different tale (and that one got published:)) I also moved a dwarf from that same original story which was really bad to a Kritter book that has to do with something completely different.

The dwarf, though, is where I make an interesting note: you see, I not only moved him, I moved his core story to that book. So, the lady he captured, the evil wizard -- yeah, they're all in there. And they've provided the catalyst for that book.

All in all, I'd say it's a good thing.

There are of course...

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So, I've mentioned I'm a sociology major (it was actually sociology of health, which was a new course back then at Simmons; I was part of the "guinea pig group", as our thesis advisors called us*G*)... I have an inane fascination with sociology and anthropology, therefore (yeah, it goes along with the language fascination as well).

When I'm doing story characters, I therefore invariably write up a LOT of notes on said character. I mean, a lot. I just went to WalMart today and got two more of those accordion file binders, because Perriwinkle is rapidly developing new and interesting creatures/people/stories, and well the other binder is for when another world starts to do this.

But, like I was saying, I do a lot with characters. In my last post, I discussed how I develop characters in general, beginning to end: this will be about the different kinds of characters I do.

Human

These are done fairly simply. I do drawings for them; sometimes I've done roleplay with them at either Mylanders, which is a freestyle roleplay area, or I do the discussion with them that I talked about last post. I have a whole list of characters I...

Tags: character_clinic, joely, writing

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Some of you have wondered how it is I create characters. The response is pretty clear to me at first... sort of.

Finding the bases

1)Actually finding the characters somewhere else:

I watch a lot of -- and varied -- television, when I'm not at the computer (and sometimes when I am here, because I like it for background). I watch reality shows, and cooking shows, bizarre movies and lame ones (ever seen the SciFi Network at 3AM?). There are some amazing people out there in TV-land, and I guess it's the television version of people-watching, really. I pay attention to different ways of speaking, to different ways of dress, different customs -- usually, I end up with an amalgamation of various people I've seen this way, though every so often I run into a character who could stand on its own (ever seen "America's Next Top Model"? I do have a spy who's solely based on Jade...)

I do a little bit of historical reenactment with the SCA -- the way I people-watch there is roughly the same as if I were watching television or a movie, but it's more fantastical in this case. SCAdians work with history, and...

Tags: character_clinic, joely, writing

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I have an interesting bit of fallout from the Blog Tour:  I've started getting a little more confidence with regards to sending stuff in.  See, to me the Tour and the resulting hanging out at other writers' blogs has lent me a bit more of a feeling like "I can do this".  I really can't explain it any other way.   It's comparable, I guess, to hanging out at Baen's Bar, I guess, but in a broader spectrum.  Then again, I rarely get to visit the webpages of others at the Bar, and it's mildly intimidating because well, there's hugely famous authors there... so yeah, that kind of makes me timid about it.  But the Tour helped me get some of that confidence I needed, for better or for worse.

What do I think I can do now? 

See, you authors out there probably know this problem:  I have several manuscripts, some of which I've slashed out in the course of a few months or one month, some of which I've taken years at "perfecting".  There's two for Kritter:  "Rose of the Desert", and "Urchins of Wenterly".  There's a spec-fic one called "Crop Circle" right now because I...

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So, if you read this blog you know I write in different lands.  There was a little mention on the Drollerie Press email list about Joely Sue Burkhart having a love writing clinic around Valentine's Day, and that caught my attention. 

The humorous part of it is, I have a couple of worlds where there would be no such thing:  Glana, which is fantastical, but doesn't have the same religions we do here (actually I haven't explored it enough to know yet what they practice); Rubikia which definitely wouldn't have it, being an alien world of and by aliens, so to speak; Kritter, because I'm pretty sure they don't do Valentine's either since there's only a tiny bit of early-Christian-esque influence.

So then, I went and thought "yeah, but I now have a couple of worlds that feasibly could have a Valentine's Day".  Which is interesting!   I didn't have that one before...   there's the candyland-gone-wrong world of Perriwinkle, for one, and there's Fylde for another.  Fylde itself is based on Colonial-era America, while the country to the south of them is based on the Victorian era.  Oh, all sorts of possibilities are in my head, germinating, for both Fylde tales...

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I've gone and done it at last; joined up with the folks at the Lupus Foundation's forum: http://www.lupus.org/newsite/index.html.

Back when I was first diagnosed, things were very different than now. I can honestly say I was amazed to actually find people on there talking about CNS lupus, Lupus Fog, and memory problems! In 1989, I didn't hear of those things for certain. But twenty years makes a difference. I don't begrudge the newly-diagnosed of this current time the amount of information available to them that I didn't get. I'd rather they have it now -- better late than never! So I'll be on those forums every so often. It's there, the Absolute Write Watercooler, and Drollerie Press forums that I visit most frequently anyway, and sometimes Facebook and Horrorworld. Yes, I'm a busy little bee -- well, sometimes.

Coming soon: a review of a book on Fibromyalgia...

Tags: illness, writing

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Hi! If you've managed to get here, this is the new-old blog about my issues writing with a chronic illness. There are a few categories that will be included, namely: [writing], [totally illness-related], [reviews]. I want this blog to be informative and entertaining as well! You may comment if you wish; in fact please do.

To begin with, here's some old information about me, regarding my life with lupus erythematosis in its many facets. Please note, I also sometimes hang out at the blog "living with chronic illness". So, the information:

I've had SLE since I was ten years old, back in 1989.It used to be considered unusual at that tiime, according to my doctors; by now I've met several who were in the same boat thanks to LiveJournal. I've had Generic SLE symptoms like rash and arthritis, but the illness seems to have centered more on my brain over the years. I've had two strokes, one major and one minor, gone comatose for a bit, had kidney failure, at least one bout of hepatitis (which is not as scary as it sounds; it's only swelling of the liver for some reason or other), and so on. Oh and...

Tags: disability, illness, writing

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