more things

Remember in Emily Climbs when Aunt Elizabeth makes a deal with Emily that she will allow her to go to school in Shrewsbury if Emily gives up writing fiction until she has graduated there from? And how the untold stories festered in Emily for years? And then when Aunt Elizabeth lifted the ban on fiction, she was bubbling full of stories like a brook and giddy with her new freedom?

Now that NaNo is finished, I find that I rather feel this way myself.

I think the best thing about NaNo, besides giving me the first fourth or so of a manuscript I cannot just yet bear to look at (really. it's bad. ohhh, it's bad.), was that it showed me that I can force words out of myself, and sometimes when the words are forced out important ideas that I have been trying to find crop up amongst them, and suddenly I am over that lump of indecision or un-knowing and can go where I want. So I will attempt, in the next month, to apply this principal to various and sundry unfinished projects, some of which have been sitting dusty and forlorn waiting to be taken off the shelf for more than a year.

End of NaNo party this afternoon with Victoria and Jonathan, a good twenty minutes or so of which was occupied by watching a candle burn. No, really, it was fascinating! Due to some wax-covered paper towel, there were seizure-inducing flare effects, and then all of the wax from the candle turned into some kind of bizarre condensation and floated down the bottom of the bottle and the whole effect looked very much like something Snape might have in his classroom.

And The Mix is being Worked On. I promise. It is half done, anyway.

Also I am tired and dourly depressed and there isn't a half good reason for it. The most arbitrary things keep sending my stomach hurtling down some pit. Bah. And today was my only day off this week. I was so utterly exhausted and cross last night, getting out of a nearly pointless workday, and having so much more work to do when I got home, that I got all messed up in the car and got to sniffling. But I couldn't go and medicate myself with soothing music and a book and cookies: I had to go home and write. And I think I would be more excited about having won NaNo, my first year, even, if I had something to show for it besides a quarter-written shambles of a manuscript and still half the plot points missing. And maybe I'm just all kinds of pessimistic and broody lately. Sigh.

hey you lot, i want to send you stuff!

Those of you who are interested in critiquing my horrible shambles of a NaNo draft, and possibly make me feel a little less pessimistic about it, despite its sad lack of vampires and consistent characterisation and plot and coherent events and most of the really awesome things I thought up for this story (Mr Caruthers' Sordid Past has yet to have made much of any appearance at all, the underground city is yet unmentioned, the primary vampire has featured in some short experimental bits that I don't even like right now, and I'm still trying to find a decent reason to throw him and Evy together that doesn't include her going out to the lake at night and ending up getting captured by a lot of vampire degenerates who have them both chained to a wall because his vampire rival wants to poison him with her blood and ...yeah).

(What the plague is up with this copy of Sunshine? Sunshine cannot possibly have dark hair, and how is Publishers Weekly calling Con "hunky" when the whole book pretty much goes on about how vampires are Really Not Attractive At All not to mention Really Bloody Terrifying and Con spends the first third of the book looking like old mushrooms? And I do not like this cover at. all. It is pulpy and not subtle and Bad Art and the chandelier was so pretty!)

Anyway, drop your email address if you're really interested in wading through a lot of disaster and telling me how I might make it less disastrous. I need to be optimistic about this story again. I need to be in love with this story again.

And! Christmas cards! I want to send them, oh yes I do! But first I need your address, otherwise I will just have to rope an owl and really hope it's a properly trained one, and it might get eaten on the way, and then you'd think I never sent your card even though I promised, and you would never speak to me again because your heart, verily it had been wounded unto the quick, and I would be oblivious, and sad, and lonely, and all of this would be dreadful. So: write your address out here nice and proper and since the post office is a block or two away from my house I will actually get them sent this year.

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