Writing and friends

Helllllloooo!

Do you know what I've been doing lately?

Writing. (If you've seen it, read it in the voice of that Patrick Stewart skit where he talks about acting.)

I have been! I've been writing a lot, so many different stories, and I haven't blogged at all. It saps my writing mojo, y'know. (I've also done other things - I went to Japan for a month, and left Australia not speaking a word of Japanese! I moved house! I helped my boyfriend's parents buy a flat! I've also started on anti-anxiety meds that crushed my creativity for a few months there too, but it's much better now.)

My goal for 2013 was to get a story finished and e-published. As always with deadlines, I'm not anywhere near close. BUT. I have made progress. (Some of it is backwards but ultimately it is good.)

Through Reddit, I recently found a fabulous Beta/writing partner AND an awesome writing/critique community called Scribophile. I also posted the first part of my latest and favourite story up for critique on Reddit. Between beta-ing for my partner,  beta-ing and critiquing on Scribophile, and reading the comments on my Reddit thread, I've decided that honestly NOTHING I have written so far is publishable to real standards. If I release something, I want to be proud of it - and thinking "I'm just gonna bang something out and get it finished and it will BE OUT THERE IN THE WORLD" is not really a great mindset to be in. I think I'll still stick with my same story, but the 10K words I've got so far will probably be scrapped. The 10K words of outlining should still be okay though! I just need to speed the story up a bit and add a little more personality. I think that will help.

Anyway. Now I'm on Scribophile I'm basically just thinking about writing all of the time (especially at work, which is DANGEROUS.) I've joined a few groups and one of them posted a cute prompt that I really enjoyed. Here's something I wrote up in 5 minutes.

Maybe This Explains My Towel Obsession

“Arthur blinked at the screens and felt he was missing something important. Suddenly he realised what it was."Is there any tea on this spaceship?" he asked.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 

As May 25th, Towel Day, passes once again and we bemoan the loss of my favourite author of all time, people start reposting these great tributes, and I sit back and think of everything Douglas Adams gave me. If nothing else, his gleeful ignorance of deadlines ("I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.") is something I can appreciate as a writer.

There was the time when after the breakup of my long-term relationship, the saddest part was when I was unpacking in my new flat and realised that my ex-boyfriend had taken my entire well-loved collection of the Hitchhiker's Trilogy, a series I'd spent years collecting from second-hand bookshops. The pages were soft like fabric and the spines were ready to flutter apart at the slightest touch. I loved them and carried them around like a toddler with a blanky.

I remember the time one fateful Towel Day when, dressed in my pyjamas and with a towel slung over my shoulder, I took my camera and tripod to the nearby 'Dent St', set the self-timer, and stood under the sign with my thumb proudly raised. Yes, this photo is still on the internet. No, I'm not going to show you.

I'm also a die-hard Doctor Who fan, and in anticipation of the latest series final, the other day I rewatched one of the greatest Classic Doctor Who serials of which Douglas was the Script Editor - the City of Death. I wonder how much modern Doctor Who gets from Douglas' inspiration - especially the idea that no matter where the Doctor intends to go, his Tardis always takes him where he needs to be.

As for the lost Hitchhiker's series? I bought a box set from Ebay to replace them - all excited, I unwrapped them to find out that the books looked nearly identical to the set that had been taken from me. Identical, down to the creases in the cover and crinkly looking spine. To my horror, the creases had been scanned from someone else's beloved dog-eared copies, and printed on to the new pristine cardboard covers. It was all wrong.

I haven't touched them since that day. Instead, I relive my favourite Arthur Dent moments on the internet and through the ereader apps on my iPhone. Perhaps Douglas Adams would appreciate that.

Aaaaauggghhhhh

It’s raining outside! It’s raining and cold and I finally have the perfect excuse to sit inside all night and all weekend and just computer it up. I’ve also just emerged from a two month unplanned Internet hiatus (don’t ask about it, suffice to say that dealing with landlords and telcos together is a nightmare).

You would think that with the weather and the lack of communication network and cat videos that I’d have gotten a lot of shit done, and I sort of did, but I sort of spent way too much time and 3G data checking reddit on my phone and also watching actual honest-to-god Free To Air television. (You guys? Commercial television is absolutely horrible.)

I did get some writing done but I think that my desperate clamouring for anything online (as well as the last few Doctor Who episodes for the series, which have had to be planned around the actual television showing) made me too distracted to focus. Now that I have internet back again, I've written more than I did in that two months of enforced offline time. How about that?

Scheduling SOS

I’ve been on a roll lately after I wrote up a proper outline of my current story and decided to start my draft over and make things a whole lot more difficult for my hapless protagonist. My brain keeps popping up little drabbles of dialogue and snippets of scenes at the worst time, and my handbag and coffee table are littered with scraps of paper that I’ve scrawled on during my commute.

As a result, I’ve found myself wanting to stay in and write rather than go out with my friends and my poor boyfriend that I never see due to our horribly clashing work schedules (don’t tell him I call my story ‘my other boyfriend’ in my head). Between reading (you cheeky minx Gemma Burgess, I think I spent more time reading The Dating Detox at work yesterday than actually working) and writing and blogging and work and friends, how do I create a balance? Help!

Bad At Lunch

It’s not an uncommon instance that I forget to eat lunch in my break at work because I’m too busy tweeting/foruming/checking my Facebook Sims (shh) so I don’t get to sneak out for lunch until 3 or so and then there’s only the choice of Starbucks or McDonalds since all the decent sandwich places are closing up for the day. In each case I need to pass the bargain books place that’s opened up right near my office, where I have to force myself not to gaze wistfully at their window displays because I’ve been in there at least once already that week and I don’t need any more books when I already have an iPhone stuffed to the gills with unread ebooks and a chockers bookshelf at home oh but they’re just $5 and surely I’ve got $5 to spare and I don’t really need to get a 10-pack of nuggets anyway, ooh, look there’s a Jennifer Weiner novel.

I picked up Good in Bed the other day because I wasn’t sure if I’d read it or not and a little way in I realised I had actually read it before but I still devoured it hungrily until I realised what was coming up and my guts twisted in horror and anticipation as my eyes sprinted towards it and then that thing happened and I cried my eyes out, again. Oh, Jennifer Weiner, I wonder if I’ll ever be as good as you even if I write every day until I’m ninety-three.

The Proof Is In The Puzzling

I’m currently reading a gripping mystery that I found for free on Amazon (oh, cloud-connected Kindle app on my iPhone, you’re so beautiful), but what’s taking me out of it is that it’s quite clear that the story was originally written in Third Person Omniscient and then very sloppily switched to First Person after the fact. There are regular personal pronoun errors such as these:

(…Whose fingers are you licking again? The old lady you’re talking to? That’s sort of creepy and awkward.)

Add the fact that the omniscient aspects, where we hear the (often completely redundant) internal monologue of another character that’s not the protagonist, have simply been changed to italics, and it’s pretty chaotic and confusing. Which is sad, because it takes away from the small-town murder mystery that I’m quite enjoying.

I know I do a lot of complaining about these stories that I download for nothing and consume greedily, but it is a little disappointing that things like this, as well as simple typos and grammatical errors, are rife in the market. I understand that most of these books are bashed out pretty quickly and uploaded by their author, but a little proofreading and editing go a long way.

Back in the day when I wrote fanfic (no, I’m not telling you what fandoms) it was a necessity in some communities to find yourself a Beta reader (or maybe two or three), who’d go over your story and make sure everything made sense before you uploaded. I had some pretty okay Betas, who would just have a quick skim for typos and proclaim it all fine, and some excellent Betas who would question the authenticity of canon references, help me rewrite sentences that weren't flowing, and even assisted me with the plot. I beta-read myself a few times, and tried to be as helpful as I could, to make sure none of my charges ever uploaded a page that wasn't as perfect as we could make it.

It'd be nice if we could see a bit more of that in the self-published ebook community these days.

This 'Everywoman' Confuses And Infuriates Us

The thing that probably keeps me reading free ebooks is the total and utter unreality of them.

For example, I was just sneaking in five minutes of iPhone time in the loo at work, reading something where the protagonist just lost her job to a clear-cut case of sexual harassment. Of course, she’s just floating on home moaning half-heartedly about how she’ll have to find a new job. She can afford to kick off her Jimmy Choos and dig her toes into the plush cream carpet of her big-city apartment, but I bet you she isn’t going to head out in the morning and talk to a lawyer, or at least her HR department.

Throwaway fiction is a land of over-exaggeration and excess. There are no ordinary, in-between people, and I guess that’s the way it has to be to keep a reader glued to the book, because without completely contrived situations where you’re just shaking your head and yelling at the idiot woman, where would most chick-lit be?

I don't know. I’m still hanging out for a female character who:

• Has a healthy relationship with shopping and her appearance. She doesn't max out a different credit card each month on Blahniks and spa days, but she doesn’t let herself go because she’s damaged goods and it’s not worth putting in any effort and oh she's just so plain anyway and her boobs are tiny and that other girl is so much curvier and surely my boyfriend will think she is more attractive and oh I don’t deserve adoration anyway. Also, it'd be nice to see someone who doesn't binge eat at time of crisis, moan about how fat she’s gonna be, then wave it away with plans of eating nothing but water crackers for the next week. Oh, oh, and while we're on appearances - I also do not care, dear character, about what you are wearing. I don’t care one little bit. Most of your outfits sound terrible anyway.
• Has real, human flaws that aren't clumsiness or insecurity or naiveté or credit debt
• Isn't afraid to get her hands or feet or butt dirty (most places to sit outside in the city have bird poop on them. Get over it. I bet you hover over public toilet seats, don't you?)
• Doesn't have a supportive gay BFF or cuter/married/more successful ladyfriend, but also doesn’t have NO social network at all. I get that lots of these stories are catalyzed by moving to a new city, but surely you have someone else to talk to aside from your mum, your one co-worker and your new sexy man love who’s making everything difficult for you? We do have the internet these days, you guys.
• Doesn't have a bland office job (where are the stories about hairdressers or bicycle mechanics or factory workers?)
• Has other things to do that aren't working, shopping, going out for drinks, watching girly movies/reading classic literature and, of course, mooning over guys. Someone take up knitting or programming or go for a bike ride or something! Write some fanfic! I don't care!
• Doesn't drink Starbucks (seriously, what is the obsession with Starbucks? And why do you need to tell me your order as if it's such an important character detail?)

Smut In The City - Romance For Hipsters

Most romance novels in the Free section of the iBook store seem to be written by family lovin’ ladies in the American Mid-West, if all those gushing dedications and author blurbs from titles like ‘Almost Perfect’ and ‘Blindsided by Love’ are anything to go by. This leads of course to monolithic novels full of lustful pining, Christian guilt, getting married as soon as you realise you love each other, and maybe popping out a much-wanted baby in the epilogue (or for the daring, the old ‘oh no we didn’t use a condom and now I’m pregnant but I’ve always wanted a baby anyway’ plot trick).

I’m almost sick of spending my 40 minute commute devouring missives from ladies who have never known a loving man’s touch but are suddenly inexpressibly content when their overly endowed new lover sinks to the hilt without a drop of lube (Aww, who am I kidding? I still love this shit).

But! Where’s the cheapyfree trash for the 9-5ing city-dwelling girls who don’t need a man, or a baby, to fulfil them (literally and/or figuratively). I’m sure they’re out there, of course, but geez it’s effort and a lot more before the decimal on my iTunes invoice if I do find that sort of stuff. I want to find good ‘Modern Day Girl Who Don’t Need No Ring’ stuff but it usually costs more than 99c and it's in actual book form and come on, I live in Sydney. I spend all my money on rent, locally roasted coffee and small-batch beer. I read my dirty Austen sequels on my company iPhone and inwardly smirk at the ladies reading the softcover 50 Shades on the train (at least I downloaded it - at ten bucks a pop! You price gouger, EL James - so a casual glance wouldn’t give away what I was reading).

Maybe I’ll come up with something to help out my ladies, but in the meantime, can anyone throw me a bone(r)?