sofiaviolet | Entries tagged with writing:auriel

So now I have a character living in my head who likes to write his twisted, give-you-nightmares novels with a glass of liquor beside him and the equivalent of a Lisa Frank notebook in front of him. (His best friend/roommate/other half buys all his notebooks. The first ultra-girly notebook was an accident, but now it's Jack's real preference to have ballerina bunnies and shit wrapped around his words.)

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.)

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 )

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.

Daily Song (right-click): Jack Off Jill - When I Am Queen
One of the first songs I put on the Gwyneira playlist (Gwyneira being one of my characters - she lives in the foreground of my brainchatter and likes to accompany me when I go shopping. She also has the dubious distinction of having been resurrected from suicide by the professor in charge of her floor at Argent University. Number of people who know she was actually dead: 3. Number of people who were in the room when she came back: 3. Number of people who live with her who know this stuff: 0.)

Link roundup will be delayed. I am writing the essay for my honors seminar, the one on mental illness in popular culture, and it is prodding at the epic 'meh, fuck it, idunwanna' that characterizes my depression. Meaning the essay is going so slowly omfg. (Current plan: write essay until I can no longer think. Set alarm and go to sleep. Finish essay tomorrow. Go to campus, print essay and hand off to professor. Come home and email essay to classmates, as they requested in class.)

I can also post the paper, or excerpts, if any of you would like to read about the differences in portrayal of mental illness between The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath's journals, and a biography called Rough Magic.

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

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... )

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.

* Dreamwidth has just implemented a Latest Posts feed, which shows public posts from users and communities which have not opted out.

If you want to exclude your own posts from the Latest Posts feed, go to the Admin Console and enter set latest_optout yes.

To exclude posts in a community you maintain, go to the Admin Console and enter set for communityname latest_optout yes, where communityname is the name of your community.

Locked and private posts will not show up in the Latest Posts feed.

* The latest posts feed can also be filtered by certain site-defined tags to entries. Currently, the only such tag is nnwm09, for NaNoWriMo. If you want your public NaNo posts included on Latest Posts page for NaNoWriMo, you will need to tag them nnwm09 in addition to any other tags you may use.

* I am going to hate myself so much by December. Not just because 2500 words per day, but because those words are going to come from putting a character I really do love through hell many times over.

Or, when I can no longer cope with Marcus and his alcoholism/depression/dead and dying friends and relatives/et cetera, the words will come from the prickly young genius who does not like to talk to anyone, not even his creator. I guess it's cheating to have a backup novel to work on, but I do expect to burn out on And In Darkness, Light early and often throughout November.

(I should note that by the time AIDL is completed, Marcus will have found some stability and happiness. But for the ending to actually get written - well, I'm waiting on some people to deliver the framework I will need. And they will not be rushed - certainly not by the likes of me - and believe me when I say I'm not the only person going nuts over it all.)

Current Mood: hungry

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.

Today I helped people process materials in Spanish and Chinese. Which would be totally cool if I actually knew either of those languages. >.<

Also, meet my new tag for archives-related stuff: the basement - pretty cold actually. Now I just need an icon, lol.

Our mice have a personal grudge against me. Or an epic sweet tooth. They ignore any other food product in favor of chocolate, little furry bastards. >.<

Anybody know of something like LJlogin which is compatible with Dreamwidth? Or a way to modify LJlogin so it'll support DW? (This question brought to you by

lissa_and_kitty and

brother_marcus. Warning: no content yet.)

Memorial Day Instant Gratification at

wyrding_studios!

Gwyneira is making noises about wanting a shiny, but she won't tell me what. Might get her something to go with that gown she swears she's not going to buy because it's impractical (except that she will, because Salvatore was with her when she tried it on, and he told her she looked pretty).

I need to write an outline. It's getting to the point where I need one desperately. The pieces I'm writing are starting to not fit together, because I don't have a strong enough goal to write towards.

Who am I kidding? They haven't been fitting together for about a year now. Ever since I decided to see what would happen if I had the characters meet in a different way.

I have a lot more than two openings now, and I need to figure out what to do with them all. Some of them contain material that can be reworked for later scenes, at least.

I also need to figure out what I want to write next. Because it's not like I'm going to finish the current story any time soon, but. I'm a lot closer to "done" than I ever have been before.

Some time this week, I need to email myself all the relevant files and print everything out. I don't have enough screen real estate to deal with two or three documents at once.

And I need a title. Fuck.

I have a small patch of dead pixels in the lower lefthand corner of my screen. :( Fortunately, it's in the middle of the Dock, near the Safari icon, so it's not like it really affects my computer usage.

But still. :(

Went shopping yesterday, because it was in the 40s and I was tired of being inside. I now own purple jeans, you guys. IDEK. Also, hot pink and black striped tights which claim to contain cashmere. Also also I almost bought these shoes in black, but I couldn't make up my mind, and I have another pair coming in the mail anyway. Maybe I will go back and get those shoes if the ones I ordered don't fit.

I also bought a pink umbrella with white polka dots (H&M always has cute ones, and they get squished to death in my bag on a fairly regular basis). And Georgina Westbrook has moved on from demanding that I buy her jewelry. Now I also have to buy her nice underwear. She was annoyed that there wasn't a matching bra. Fictional characters. /o\

Accidentally stayed on the train when they expressed it from Jackson Square to Forest Hills. Oops. I do that occasionally. Followed a girl out the Washington St. exit and walked home from there - it's not that far.

Stopped by the bakery. I asked for 6 French rolls. They had 5. At 9:30.

Bakery. >:[

Wonderful lecture today on ancient Egyptian religion - so of course I had a worldbuilding brainwave. This is going to be fun, for several disparate values of "fun."

Hm. Think I might take a nap.

I think I sprained my back. DNW.

On the bright side, I did get all my furniture arranged. Now I need to finish unpacking so I can use my desk (currently blocked by two large boxes) and close my closet door (I keep injuring myself - if it's not my hip against the door, it's an ankle or foot tangling with the futon). Also: posters and artwork!

I was going to post a shitty diagram of where everything is, but it was too hard.

I have a whole wall with absolutely nothing against it. My desk is in that corner, but it hardly takes up any room. Someone talk me out of taping up a whole bunch of paper and using it as a huge map of Auriel and environs or something.

And if you do enable me on the map thing, at least stop me from taking pictures and emailing them to my workshop with the subject line "underdeveloped setting what?"*

... It could be about ten feet wide, I reckon. What is wrong with me.

Sleep. Sleep fixes everything.

*More on this when I have time to write up something that makes sense.

Ten feeeeeeeeeet of paper, omfg. Needs moar cartography skillz.

Current Mood: tired and ouchy

Which sounds more correct?

But he was only as tall as her, and prone to slouching.

But he was only as tall as she, and prone to slouching.

I am hoping my professor was trying to correct it to "she was" and just forgot to write in half of it. "She was," btw, will be my compromise between his wtaf correction and my increasingly-acceptable original.

My mother will be pleased to hear that I made a friend in meatspace. She is the other NaNoWriMo writer and fellow fandomer in my fiction workshop. We bonded over RPGs and our classmates' general fail at commas.

I have been encouraged to turn in a synopsis as my first thing for the entire class to critique, but I'm not going to get started on it until the professor emails us examples of what he's looking for. Which means I'm going to go to the library after class and print out my two existing drafts of a first chapter, so I can work without having to switch between windows.

Actually, give me your opinions!
[Poll #1265585]

Today's topic in Women's Studies is the social construction of gender. Where is my goddamn nailbat.

For once, I am being responsible and not procrastinating on homework! (Okay, I am using this assignment to procrastinate on other ones that will be less awesome.)

Fill in the blank for first year art students: "Hey, aren't you in Addison's _________ class?"

It should, if possible, be a large enough class that the (shy, not prone to people-watching or random chitchat) addressee could have been to class a couple of times and not noticed the speaker.

Or tell me if "Addison's class" could be specific enough on its own.

Current Mood: hopeful

April 2014

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30

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:auriel

Navigation

(no subject)

apparently I'm writing things again!

(no subject)

Unreliable narrators

(no subject)

oh make me over

eleventh hour

Let's see how this one goes.

(no subject)

NaNoWriMo update.

Notes on NaNo.

Not a real update.

halp

Dangers of having one's brain inhabited by fictional characters, and other topics.

writing: teal deer

My life, so fascinating. sarcasm

ow ow motherfucker ow

Quick question, internets!

(no subject)

Help?

April 2014

Links

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

txtbx

Syndicate