Into the Shadows: Nonny's Writing Log

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Okay. It's been awhile since I've updated this... must really remember that this damn thing, like, exists. :-
I've been somewhat busy recently. All right. Maybe that's a bit of an understatement.

Towards end of EvoLunacy, after realising that I wasn't going to finish plotting out To Weather the Storm in time to finish the marathon, I decided to go through my unfinished stories folder. I have a very bad habit of starting stories and losing interest in them. Usually, if I don't finish them within ... mmm ... a week or so of starting them, I don't finish them.

One specific story jumped out at me. Wings of Steel:

Cursed to flightlessness, Princess Rhuigra of Vhrika is an abomination in the eyes of her people. When her father dies, she is barred from taking her rightful place as Queen. The curse can only be broken by Death's Kiss.

Rhuigra travels to the Land of the Dead to beseech its King for his aid ... but she didn't plan on two things:

The kiss didn't work. And now she's falling for the King.

I started the story about a year ago. I left off about 2.8k into the story when I got distracted with another project and never actually got back to it. I've always loved the story, the concept, and the characters... but I didn't really know where I was going with it.

So I dusted it off and started working on it again. I figured I'd wrap it up in a couple thousaund words, no big.

7k later ...

It's 11k long. At this point, I'm pretty certain it's going to hit at least 20k. Perhaps longer. I have a number of plot points I haven't hit yet, and it's developing oddly. After it's finished, I may need to evaluate whether or not it's worth it to add scenes and subplots to bump it up to novel length. (If so, it'll be the first time I've ever done that. I've known a good few writers who work best writing a 40-60k draft and then edit in enough material to bring it up to 80k+, but I've never thought it was something I could do.)

So I'll see where that goes. I'm posting it in installments under a custom filter on my LiveJournal. (Any of y'all who're on LJ and would like to read, let me know. :) Which gets amusing, because I've apparently a good few people addicted to the story. After a couple years, I forgot how much encouragement like that helped me. I mean, it's one thing for someone to take a look at your wordcount and cheer you on and quite another for them to read what you're writing and want more. (This isn't to say that the former isn't helpful... but it's not helpful enough for me.)

(IE: Keep up the threats, guys. It works. ;)

Aside from that, I've also started working on an erotica story, tentatively titled Vesper's Call; I'm aiming at Ellora's Cave style and length, but I'm not sure quite how that will turn out. I'll have fun writing it, anyway. It's somewhat nice to actually let go and write without the outline for once--but the story is more for fun than anything else. (Not to say what I outline isn't fun... but with my usual work, I'm challenging myself, whereas this is just relaxation. And prelude to good pouncy fun with the male. ^_^)

I'm also teaching Above and Beyond, an intensive novel-writing course based on the principles of Donald Maass's Writing the Breakout Novel, over at Evolution. While teaching the course, I'm also doing the homework with another project, as of yet untitled:

When Lucifer rebelled against Heaven ... God lost. Cast down into Hell, he is all but helpless to stop Lucifer when he sends the Christ child to bring about Apocalypse.

Except Christ rebels. Enraged, Lucifer arranges his crucifixion. The one thing he doesn't plan on: Christ's martyrdom.

Now, hundreds of years later, Lucifer has chosen another soul to act as his son, the Second Coming: Mordred.

Foreseeing his nemesis's actions, God begins gathering forces to battle Lucifer and stop Armageddon. First is his young pupil, Morgan le Fay, who acts as his voice on the physical plane.

I figure the refresher will be good for me ... and some of the things I'm including are based on the workbook exercises, which I haven't done all of. So, should definitely be interesting... and I'm really looking forward to mangling Arthurian legend. Bwahahahaha...

I'm also going to be running a workshop in October covering application of breakout principles and theory to short fiction. Cause it's entirely possible to do so, and better overall for your work. IMO.

I've also founded a weekly short story prompt community on LiveJournal, Bunny_Stew. Take a look; I'm rather pleased with how it's turning out. :)

Add to that I'm doing the usual adminny stuff over on Evo ... yeow. OK. I guess I have been busy. And considering my personal life has been interesting of late ... and that I'm going to be getting a job once we have the car on the road, given impact of said personal things ... yeah ...

*sighs*

I'm never happy unless I'm insanely busy, am I?

Nonny Blackthorne wrote at 9:57 PM