sofiaviolet | Entries tagged with writing

Lissa Valery (older than she looks, sacred knight of her adopted hometown)

"It is true, I was born in the hills far to the west of this city. But I was a sickly child, afflicted with the curse that sometimes befalls my people. I had been born away from my true home and would wander the earth until I found it, or wither to nothingness. This city of Auriel is my homeland. I am not a citizen born, nor even yet sworn, but I am Paladin and this place is written on my bones."

Ruth Behrman (teenage assassin, very angry that her parents are dead)

When his blood stopped flowing, Ruth wiped the knife off in his matted blond hair and tucked in back into the sheath strapped to her thigh. Then she took out a sack of salt and a bottle of kerosene from her bag, and set about reducing the last of her vendetta to ash.

Julia Sgraffa (apparently unkillable, but otherwise pretty ordinary)

"I. Uh. I definitely went splat. It was awful. I don't think human beings are supposed to feel that level of organs going squish, I think we're supposed to die before it registers."
"And yet, you're looking remarkably well. Completely uninjured."
"Yeah. I know. I got up, lost my lunch because, seriously, awful - and anyway, the short version is that I apparently don't stay splatted any more. I hereby volunteer as self-replenishing cannon fodder, if required."

(Lissa is the divinely appointed protector of the city! Ruth's parents belonged to the order of assassins who do the dirty work that people like Lissa aren't supposed to do! Julia was just Lissa's best friend and guide to Life In Auriel, and now she's all special! Together, they fight crime!)

(I have another thing in progress, too, but no one has final names yet and everything is just porn so far.)

Recently

Work, mostly. solarcat and I are going to Garment District and maybe some other places this weekend, for Killjoys costuming purposes. (I also need to figure out a Ramona Flowers costume, since Cory has decided that's what we're doing for Halloween, since I'll be in Grand Forks and all.)

Ellie and I spent some time last night talking about our plans for revamping the apartment. The main thrust is to make our space better for our creative pursuits. So much of it depends on her having the time and spoons to build new furniture, so no idea when any of it will get done. I can post an outline of our plans, with crappy diagrams, if anyone is interested.

Links

via saystheheart: Safeword, the s&m superhero

Married to the Sea: new uniforms

via cofax7: Gerald M. Weinberg: What’s Been the Effect of Banning My Stuff?
Whatever it was intended to do, banning things increases interest. When one of the Pope’s Cardinals banned The DaVinci Code, lagging sales picked up and made a few more millions for Mr. Brown. Banning Harry Potter had a similar effect for Ms. J. K. Rowling, now richer than the Queen.

(Tangent: I once got to attend one of Jerry's workshops. He and my dad go pretty far back; we would usually pay him a visit when we took our road trips to New Mexico. Jerry knew I was working on a novel, he was running a writing workshop and it was going to be pretty fiction-oriented, and he hadn't seen Dad in a while. So Dad and I took a week off work/school and went. It was awesome.)

(And another tangent: Wow has my life been full of fantastic opportunities and experiences that resulted directly from grown-ups taking a chance on me. Including my current job.)

Plans

I am considering StrowlerCon, but would need roommates. I also need to run it past Ellie and see if she wants in.

Notes

Ask Me Anything still open for questions.

Recently

Ellie has painted the front room! It's light blue now, instead of salmon. I approve.

Also, I'm sneezing myself to death. IDK why. *drowning in own snot*

( 7 links )

I promise I will update with actual things from my life! Some time later today (as it is now technically Monday).

But for now, the links: ( 10 links )

( 13 links )

( 20 links )

$sofiaviolet: Dreamwidth logo and Paul Gross arms (dreamwidth \o/)$

skip=400

Since Saturday morning. (I mean, I do use Dreamwidth as my feed reader, but that's still a lot of posts.)

( 26 links )

Today's Daily Song is not a single song! I have zipped eight songs from the supplementary playlist for And In Darkness, Light, the name I use for stories about Marcus (currently in progress: a trilogy plus some other stuff).

And In Darkness, Light (Supplementary Soundtrack) 47.2mb

( tracklisting )

( how the music for AIDL works )

If I post about the actual content of AIDL, in terms of themes and plot and everything, that'll probably go in

auriel, but I'll link to it the next time I update my journal.

( links )

Today's post is slightly late. I went to work and was super-productive! And then I did stuff other than read my dreamroll when I got home, and then Ellie and I went to get groceries. And then we didn't finish dinner until half past ten. /o\

Daily Song (right-click): Taking Back Sunday - Sink Into Me

I wore a skirt today!* I also made a very poor decision with regards to shoes. I've worn this pair before, but I guess never without socks or tights or something. I could feel that they were rubbing on my heels, but I didn't pay much attention until I was already at work and had a bunch of boxes out, since it didn't hurt that much. And then I happened to actually look at my feet, and there was kind of a lot of blood going on. I had to use four bandaids from the archives supply (normally reserved for treating paper cuts, methinks), and shall be wearing sandals for several days, until the wounds heal.

*Skirts are a big deal for me, since they take more effort than pants. I find them harder to coordinate with tops, and I tend to get nasty razor burn when I shave my legs, and I have to figure out shoes (since socks look dumb, and I don't own many pairs of stockings/pantyhose, and *points up* going without is not always feasible), and they're harder to wear in cold weather. So my skirt collection is sadly underutilized.

( three weeks for dreamwidth links, part whatever )

requested by

blnchflr

Unreliable Narration in Auriel, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Protagonists' Issues

Background: When I refer to Auriel as a body of work, I refer to a group of unfinished (and, in some cases, unstarted) novels and stories about several characters, tied together in some cases by relationships between characters and in other cases simply by all happening in the same city around the same time.

( Onward! )

So, in short, I love the idea of characters who pass incomplete, flawed, delusional, or false information to the reader, and I love writing them.

I took some nyquil a few hours ago because I think I have a cold. It has helped with the epic sneezefest, but now I feel really fuzzy. Apparently, it takes a full dose of nyquil to make me feel like I do at three in the morning (see icon); if I take just one gelcap, I can pretty much function normally.

Daily Song (right-click): The Distillers - Drain the Blood
I have been listening to this a lot lately.

( Here are the links I've collected so far. )

Now I sleep.

In my enthusiasm for this whole enterprise, I'll be continuing the daily link roundups. I never thought I'd be that kind of blogger, but I seem to have developed the habit, even before I was doing a specific kind of link-gathering. But while link-collecting is a useful service, I also want to be making other posts, especially in the context of

three_weeks_for_dw.

One thing I'd like to do is provide a new song every day!

Daily Song (right-click): Hole - Celebrity Skin
Within the first week this song was on my ipod, it went straight to the top of the most-played list. It remains in the number one spot, with almost three times as many plays as the next song down.

blnchflr has asked me to write about unreliable narrators, although this will take a few days. (I shake my fist at the end of the semester.) I am still accepting prompts, questions, et cetera, via comment/pm/email/carrier pigeon.

Poll #2898 Some ideas I already have...

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 32

View Respondents

I think you should post about...

View Answers

... your physical surroundings.
25 (83.3%)

... history.
19 (63.3%)

... your artistic endeavors.
22 (73.3%)

Physical surroundings:

View Answers

Fashion and/or the contents of your closet.
19 (63.3%)

Your apartment.
15 (50.0%)

Your neighborhood.
23 (76.7%)

History:

View Answers

Life in the archives.
16 (61.5%)

Your research interests.
22 (84.6%)

Artistic endeavors:

View Answers

Jewelry.
23 (76.7%)

Other things involving wire.
20 (66.7%)

Painting.
20 (66.7%)

Poetry.
10 (33.3%)

Prose.
13 (43.3%)

Auriel.
10 (33.3%)

Icons.
14 (46.7%)

follow still-technically-friday!

academia is for academics. They have a friending meme up.

anchises writes excellent jdn. You may want to brush up on Mezzanine (product of

synecdochic and

ivorygates) beforehand.

brackets, for all your tournament needs!

As far as

napowrimo goes, I'm doing all right. I managed to write yesterday and today, but only late in the day ("oh shit, gotta do my poem"), and they're essentially remixes of older poems I've written.

I definitely have a huge problem with consistently being able to write poetry. Sometimes I get into the groove (usually coinciding with poetry-writing courses or segments of courses, which is convenient and suggests it's more about habit than some kind of cyclical inspiration thing).

I haven't done much Auriel stuff lately, either. I haven't worked on the Big Damn Map for a week or so, and I haven't been writing for *cough* way too long. Ugh ugh ugh. Poking through my journal from mid-2007 to whenever I started the next one, I've found some little tidbits that might prove inspiring, tucked away amongst bandom squeeing and notes from Italian class. Because I'll take that kick in the pants now, even if it fucks with my ability to write poetry this month.

Bleh. On that note, to bed with me.

Signed up for

12in2010. I am aiming for 12 completed stories. Length, content, style, and other such things don't matter. I just want to get a dozen of my stories done, so I can feel like I haven't wasted a third of my life.*

I also signed up at

copper_street for a 2010 overall goal of 200k words. Should be doable.

* Yes, this means they'll be

auriel stories. And I designed my goal to force myself to post them.

Current Mood: nervous

azurelunatic: PSA: RTE data loss warning |

azurelunatic: PSA: RTE data loss warning

If you have the <lj user> tag more than once in your entries, with a user first and then a community, the RTE is eating the data between those tags.

Bug only seems to be occurring on LJ.

***

I have written almost 4000 words today. Not sure how that happened. Going to finish this entry and see how far I can get.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I will be 22. I have to go to work for 9am (my finding aid is ready to level up, although it will probably need a lot of work after Boss and I go over it), but classes don't start until the 11th.

ETA: By the way, guys. I do not answer my phone if I don't recognize the number. If you have my number and want me to ever pick up the phone when you call, PLEASE email your phone number to sofiaviolet@sofiaviolet.com, so I can add you to my phonebook.

This message brought to you by someone calling from a 631 number and not leaving a message.

ETA2: If you don't have my number but want it, email me! Though again, please give me your number so I know who the heck is calling/texting me.

ETA3: Broke 5k. I have no clue how, since I just sat around notficcing with myself. \o?

Look, I wrote stuff!

(The wall is actually a real place in my neighborhood, though

auriel is a fake place in my head. I walk past the wall every day. Maybe it will give me something I truly need, one day.)

***

All the MCR fans reading this journal have probably already seen

morebliss's Gerard Way picspam/quotespam, but my mom hasn't. (We are crossing our fingers so hard that they play New Orleans in June, so I can take my parents.)

Speaking of my parents! They will be here on Saturday!! !!!!!!!

***

( Mainly intended for people who are seeing this on LJ... )

( Follow Friday: all-communities edition )

As always, please share your Follow Friday posts at

followfriday.

***

Today is Dad's birthday. (I am not actually sure if he still reads this. Mom does. I already said 'happy birthday' on the phone, but it doesn't hurt to mention it again.)

I've bugged my honors advisor again, about the junior/senior project this time. It's not a requirement for the honors program (one can earn a course distinction and/or project distinction, and I'm on track for the former), so unless the history department will let me count it as my capstone, I don't think I'll do it. The effort:tangible-benefit ratio just isn't good enough.

( blah blah spring blah )

Why yes, yes that is two days off and no class earlier than half past one in the afternoon. *smugface*

Words: Well, uh. That's the thing.

Word tells me I have 6180 as of writing this entry. The NaNo word counter tells me I have 6267. This is good, actually, but the discrepancy is really bugging me when it comes to my super-detailed spreadsheet.

I am doing fine with regards to standard NaNo targets, but my personal goal was 2500 per day, and I haven't hit it yet this month. I mean, I have some excuses - burlesque on the 1st, random Amanda Palmer show on the 2nd. And it doesn't help that I'm behind three of my writing buddies right now (of seven who actually seem to be doing NaNo this year). Way to make me feel inadequate, guys (I still ♥ you).

Here, have a quote from the part of the story I'm not supposed to be working on yet:

He ducks his head, bites his lip – he's going to puke butterflies all over her if he opens his mouth, 'I like you' and 'I'm nervous' and 'please be okay with me' and 'please believe I'm okay.'

Perhaps I should do something with

brother_marcus? I mean, I am writing his story for NaNo.

Ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Or any sort of question, really.

I hope to get something relatively substantive up in the next few days, but a quick list:
* Work continues to be good.
* I haven't been doing enough writing and it bugs me.
* I haven't been doing enough anything lately, except for going out, and it bugs me.
* I know what I'm doing for NaNo (two ideas, actually - focusing on the more heart-wrenchingly miserable one, but will switch to the other one whenever I cannot go on *hands*).
* I suspect I need to go back up to 250 mg. Maybe even 300, but I'm scared to try that again since my memory was so badly affected last time. We'll see how I do between now and my next appointment.

( things I spotted on etsy, version I Can't Wear That To Work! )

hederahelix: Sizeism in fic and society

'Cis' is hostile? I remember being quite pleased the first time I became aware of 'cis' and related terms - it filled a lexical hole that I had not realized was there.

Weird passage of time at work today - doing really tedious stuff apparently makes the day fly by. Probably because I can devote a portion of my brain to pre-writing.

April 2014

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Page Summary

txtbx

Not nice, but friendly.

picked a handful of violets in my name

right between the scapulae, back of the heart

Entries tagged with writing

Navigation

apparently I'm writing things again!

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Recently

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Plans

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Notes

Recently

Not dead.

liiiiiiiiiiiiinks

moar links

I warned you that this would be long.

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Unreliable narrators

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

oh make me over

eleventh hour

Let's see how this one goes.

LJ: beware the RTE

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Follow Friday. Spring registration.

NaNoWriMo update.

Not a real update.

(no subject)

April 2014

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