I started writing seriously in early 2008. I was living in a small 600 sq ft, one room apartment in downtown Calgary, by the Mac’s everyone refers to as the “Crack Mac’s” (you get three guesses why they called it that, and the first two don’t count). At the time, I was sharing that home with my husband and our cat, Minkers. As I’m sure you can imagine, space was at a premium. Most of the time I wrote sitting on the couch or occasionally at our kitchen table. Usually my husband was sitting in the same room playing video games. I finally decided that I wanted an actual office to work at in, namely so that I could get away from being distracted by the hubby’s activities. I was originally thinking of setting up a table and chair in the bedroom, when my husband came up with an even better idea. We had two walk in closets and my husband helped me to convert one of them into a tiny room. That first office was only 4 feet wide by 5 feet long and we fit into it a desk, a large chair and a small DVD stand that doubled as a bookshelf. I couldn’t even shut the door when I was in it.
I’ve come a long way since then. My husband and I moved into a much larger home and I was able to steal one of our new rooms to use as a writing office. Needless to say it’s much bigger than 4′ x 5’. I have an actual bookshelf now as well as shelves covering one wall again filled with books. I used to have an actual desk in it but I found that no matter how clean I kept it or how much I tried to convince myself to start using it I never wanted to. And it wasn’t just when I was having trouble writing. Starting mid-December I was doing 750 words and making my words almost every day. Yet even so, most of those words were written in my front room. I used my office in November for Nanowrimo but only when I couldn’t use my hand any longer and I’d have to start using my Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
Finally it occurred to me what the problem might be. All day I work in an office, as insurance agency here in Calgary. I sit at my desk, working on my computer and looking at the clock hoping that they will be over soon. I was subconsciously connecting my desk working at my day job and does avoiding my office as much as possible. I was feeling like I was working two full-time jobs no matter how much or how little I was getting done. So I decided to try something completely different. I took my comfortable chaise from our front room and moved into my office. My productivity jumped amazingly. I really enjoy being in my office now. I haven’t been writing an insane amount more since I started but I have been in here more. The more I’m in here the more I find myself looking at my writing and opening it up when I get bored.
To make the split complete I don’t even refer to it as an office now. I call it my Writing Lair. I’ll include pictures after I’ve finished moving everything into its final place. It’s nice to not only have the place that suits me better but also to be constrained by how I think about something. I learned about this was that it’s not just about having the space, it’s about how you think about your space and what your mindset is in that space.
So where do you write? Do you have a preferred spot? Also what’s your mindset when you’re in that spot?
It’s only been a few days since I last blogged, but I figured another one certainly couldn’t hurt. Especially since it’s been a pretty good week for me and my writing. I haven’t moved ahead in my novel yet (I’m really good at procrastinating) but I know where I need to go in it. What I have been doing is writing a lot this week on my D&D characters. While most of this writing won’t ever see a publishing world, it is very relaxing for me to try and write about characters that I’m intimately involved in.
That’s actually what today’s topic is… not D&D and how it influences my writing though. That topic has been gone over to death. Instead I’ll talk about the newest thing that me and my fellow geeks are doing is actually a really good idea, both for the game and for writing in general. Theme Songs! I may be getting ahead of myself though. Let me start at the beginning and explain.
Years ago (a good three years ago, maybe four, if memory serves) I started running a D&D game for my husband and friends. It wasn’t the first game I’d run but I decided that I wanted to do something different than the usual type of game. What I decided to run instead was an evil game. We’re playing D&D like we normally would but instead of just having evil alignments or being jerk’s (though they are that as well, quite often), they had a semi-firm goal. Go from being nobody’s at third level to running an evil empire before level 20. Rather early in this game one of my players was pleased enough that he was thinking about it all the time. He was listening to music and suddenly realized that the game as a whole has a “theme song”. The whole group agreed and Nightwish’s “I Wish I Had an Angel” got the passing grade. Although the whole song applies to the game, for me it’s the line “Burning Angel Wings to Dust” that really makes the song match the game for me.
Recently the evil fighter in the group realized he was “Indestructable” (Note: It has a really 45 second beginning before the song starts) and claimed that as his individual characters theme song. It’s now at the point where all of the PC’s (player characters) and most of the important NPC’s (non-player characters) have themes for themselves. We’re doing it for most of the games we play in at this point.
As with anything that takes up my time, I eventually start wondering exactly how I can use this in my writing. To be fair, this idea was easier to implement than you would think. I have started looking at my novel and characters in my story and have been trying to figure out what their songs are. I can see a few of you out there are looking at me as if I’m an idiot now. “How hard can it be to find a song that means something to your characters?” Quite a bit harder than you’d expect actually.
First you need to know about the character, their motivations, how they view the world and why they view it the way they do. Then you need to find a style of music that matches the character. Having a folk song done to acoustic guitar for a tattooed insane woman, like ”Jack” off of Mass Effect 2, just wouldn’t feel like it matched the character. After music type, you need to pay attention to the lyrics. Simply because a character is a pyro-maniac does not mean that the song that applies to that character will be about burning something. In fact, I usually find it more true if it doesn’t. Third, you have to be willing to accept that sometimes it will be the song that you least expected it to be.
As an example, I am playing a Cat-Folk battle dancer in one of my games. She is pretty much a caffeine kitty… She only sleeps two hours a day, and she is always either on the move running around or she is completely at rest and almost cat-napping. She is a happy, pleasant woman, who speaks with a slight accent. She always looks for the best in a situation. I originally thought that her song would show off her nearly inexhaustible energy and pleasure, but in doing so, I forgot about her past. I forgot to ask why she forced herself to look for the bright side. Unsurprisingly, while I was ignoring this, I couldn’t find a song for her.
The perfect song came about when I was listening to an artist that I normally don’t listen to. Avril Lavigne’s Innocence (shown below) encompassed not only my caffeine kitty’s predilection to ignoring unhappy things, but also took into account her tortured past as a sex slave (by the way, the answer is “Yes, my characters never have happy histories.”). The song is below and suits her to a ‘T’.
So, now I’m doing this and every song I listen to has the potential to be a song for a character in my book. “Tear you Apart” by She Wants Revenge is now the theme song for Zack, Xiam’s boyfriend in my Vampire Fiction “Falling through the Threshold”. Listen to the song and tell me that doesn’t make him that much creepier as you read through “The White Citadel”. I dare ya.
So, do you have a theme song? Do you use theme songs for characters? Do you think that you’ll be using it in your own writing?
I have been looking at my own work recently, and trying to decide how best to prepare for Nanowrimo while finishing up my current WIP. Of course, the new project is shinier… It’s new, I haven’t thought about it for months or years, and I haven’t seen ¾ of the book and decided that its crap. The fact that 4 months ago I thought this work was good and now I’m looking at it and worrying that its unsalvageable means that I’ve probably reached that area of the book where all authors suddenly think their work is bad and horrible. On the other hand, I also know (unfortunately) that I’m not yet skilled enough to be able to decide on my own. Of course, my husband says that the story is engaging and interesting but I know that he has a vested interest in it. I wish that I was part of a writing group so that I could pass around a chapter or so and find out what it looks like.
I’m really hoping that I can finish it before SiWC. One of the classes I’m really looking forward to is the one Master Class that I sighed up for. It’s taught by Robert J. Ray. It’s called “Welcome to Your Novel Rewrite”. Since this is really the area I feel I need help in, I’m very excited. I say that I’m rewriting my novel now, but I know that what I’m actually doing right now is perhaps the smallest part of the rewrite… filling in scenes that I didn’t write during November. A small amount of this will be at the beginning, and I’m doing it now. I also know that I condensed an entire scene into the words “romance montage… write when you have inspiration”. I now know what’s supposed to go there (and it’s not really a romance montage, but a scene detailing characters getting to know each other/teaching of the magic system mix) and so I should finally be able to write it down. I know I also need to rewrite the ending. The end of last nano was a bit of insanity for me and I was desperately trying to get 10k words in three days. Not that I required it to win… but I wanted to get more words than a young girl who writes here in Calgary (she routinely hits 100K during the month).
Even so, the main problem with my ending isn’t actually that it’s bad, but that it doesn’t follow the storyline anymore. What had happened is that about 4 days before the end of Nanowrimo, I realized that the story was no longer going where I thought it needed to at the beginning of the month. Instead of writing organically and seeing where the ending needed to go, I ran straight back to my outline trying to write those scenes. Since they no longer fit the story it was hard going, and even harder to fix, since I didn’t realize what had happened when I tried to start editing it.
This is all part of the very painful process know as Improvement. It can also be a very painful process. What it teaches you is that the good work you were doing before isn’t good… in fact it may be painfully bad. For most of us though, the hardest part of this is proving to ourselves that we can get better.
On that note, one of the things that are going to help me prepare to write is the beautiful inspiring Miyazaki film, Whispers of the Heart. This movie is about a girl who falls in love with a boy who seems to know exactly where he wants his life to go. She is amazed at his dedication when he travels to Italy to study for two months towards his dream. Though he also likes her, she is unsure if she is good enough to be with him since she doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life at all. She decides to try writing a novel while he is gone. When she is finished she invariably says it’s horrible, but a friend tells her that what it and she needs is polishing. Like a gemstone, it’s dirty and flawed when you pull it out of the ground. Only through work and knowledge can you make it into a thing of true beauty. I now keep a geode on my desk to remind of the fact that even when my writing looks like stupid ordinary rock that it can still be polished to a thing of beauty and something worth publishing.
Other things that I need to finish before Nanowrimo are:
1. Cleaning up my office so that all the garbage is gone and it’s organized. Even if I don’t have my bookshelves by that time, I would like the room to be clean. When it’s a mess, I don’t want to go in and remember that I need to clean it, especially during Nano.
2. Reading a few pages of writing into my computer about my characters for this months novel… I want Dragon to recognize what I’m saying when I talk about Xiam and Zack (the main characters in the novel). Corrections and changes only slow you down during Nanowrimo and I’d rather have as few of those as possible.
3. My novel, nicknamed “Seirei” and called “Memories Written in Moonlight” finished, or at least finished enough that I don’t mind other people seeing it.
4. I would like to have cards done before I attend the conference, even if they only have my name, website address and “Writer of Dark Fantasy” on them.
Everything else can wait if they need to. On a more personal front, I still do not have “The High King of Montival”… The store was out of them. “Mr. Monster” is out now as well for purchase, so I’ll grab both when I head into the bookstore around October 15. This weekend I am gaming, playing my little Whore Queen, Demona… hopefully, I’ll have some wonderful little tidbit to mention in my next blog about that.
Also, coming up mid to end of October… Pictures of my Writing Space! Keep an ear out and I’ll keep you updated on my progress until I put out the pics!
Very little hilarity happened today, but even so it was a good day. I had the day off work, which meant I got to sleep in, but had enough cleaning and other plans to keep me more than busy enough. We had a friend come over, but most of what I was doing were dull things like laundry. I’m going to be doing quite a lot of gaming this weekend… or at least, at lot of character building. And just to make sure the weekend is awesome I’ll be roughing it somewhat, setting up the tent and camping in our friends yard. The game should be interesting since it’s mainly a pirate game taking place in the Shackles… a hive of pirates run by a man now known as the Hurricane King. My character, Demona, is a brothel owner in the Shackles, and an information broker of no small caliber… or at least that’s the idea.
I’ve decided that she follows, at least nominally, a quartet of Arch-Demons, known as the Whore Queens. Which leads me to my gripe for today’s blog. The book has very little information on these demonic deities and from what I can tell, even the book on demons in that world simply gives the information “the whore queens are believed to be angels who fell hoping to find power and equality in Hell.” Long story short, they didn’t. But each has become powerful and worshiped in her own right, even with the bigoted male demons working against them, which is interesting. It’s not just their fight of do I/don’t I and good/evil, which every demon makes, it’s also the inner conflicts that mirror the ones they are making in their world. How did they gain power and respect? Do the other demons respect them for it after all this time or are they still treated more badly than others?
Since the books are less than useless (and I’m a “couch-feminist” in case you couldn’t already tell), I’ve decided that since the books do give me the names, I’m going to write up a story for each of them, what trials and tribulations they’ve faced, who their allies, enemies and minions are, and finally what their goals and dreams are. It would be nice to know what they require of their followers. They’re Lawful Evil… do they require sacrifices? If they do, are males the preferred offering, since in Heaven and Hell all four were treated as little more than decorative wrapping?
They say when you’re holding a hammer every problem looks like a nail… I’d like to change that slightly. When you’re a writer, you react to every situation by wanting to write about it. To quote Timothy Clarke (writing, in turn, about Lazette Gifford), “I’d be afraid to get between you and a sheet of blank paper if you had a pen in your hand.” Off hand, a fellow Nanowrimo-er re-quoted it at me last November, when I told him that I’d was pushing to get over 80k in the month, and he knew that I’d only written 2k in the first week.
Anyways, so I’m taking on a new writing project as well, in writing up the Whore Queens, to be (hopefully) used as a supplement in our Dungeons and Dragons Pathfinder game. If possible, I’d like to write 5 – 10 pages on each of the four, fleshing them, their religions and their priests out. If any of you have official information on them to help me out, I would really appreciate your help. After all, there’s no point just writing up what I happen to think if it’s going to be completely wrong and thrown out my GM’s window when/if they put out more on it, right?
This does make me stop and wonder why though. Such interesting characters, and they get a few lines in the main Pathfinder book? Even in the Book of the Damned; Princes of Evil, which focuses on the demons/devils/otherworldly evil of the Pathfinder word, a book of over 100 pages, they spend a meager four paragraphs on them, I’m assuming one each (although I don’t own the book yet. Again, if you do, letting me know what the domains of each Whore Queen is would be nice as well).
Do they truly think that nobody will care or have the desire to look into them more? It’s not just a state of the industry in this case, but a state of them deciding that women don’t constitute a large enough share of the “target audience”? Why go to the trouble of mentioning them at all if you don’t plan on expanding on the information? This is my real point of contention. In a novel, you hope to have the entire world planned, and if you are truly blessed you may be able to use 40 – 50% of the history and setting info in your book. You need enough setting to have everyone understand what the setting is, how the world works, but you can’t do so at the expense of the story. If there’s one thing I hate when I’m reading my books, it’s having the author suddenly take five pages to info dump the history of the last war on me.
With a gaming book though, you’re writing it the other way around. You want to include every organization, even rule for how the world works, all of the important people, and a bit of what their plans are. A gaming book is all about making the setting so interesting and well thought out that people won’t want to leave it. Gary Gygax, known as the Father of modern gaming, knew this and his world Living Greyhawk (Known to it’s inhabitants as Oerth) is still being played today, with its adherents who hate the idea of playing in any other world. Ed Greenwood, the creator of the Forgotten Realms setting followed in Gygax’s footsteps, and in my opinion, the Faerun source books are brilliant. More than enough information on everybody who could be important to your game, while leaving more than enough open for the GM’s to make it their own.
Now, I haven’t read the entire Pathfinder book yet, so I’m not going to argue that they haven’t done their work yet. The odds that you can fit everything into a single book is slim when you’re doing world building for a gaming system and as I have noted, Source Books are still being released for the world setting, so it’s not as if they aren’t working to fill in the gaps. I will say that thus far, I am disappointed with the information on such interesting characters and that I hope my additions will be looked at fondly, and leave it at that… for now, at least.
On a final note, I do want to let everyone know that I reserved my hotel room for SiWC later this year in October… I can’t wait to get there!
Well, I’m back after way too long an absence. It’s been nearly a week after all. I only got one post up and no writing up this week either. I do apologize. I was supposed to have more time than I ended up finding. On the other hand, it turned out to be an odd week all around, so perhaps it’s just par for the course.
Unfortunately, I found out that the weekend long game that I mentioned previously had been cancelled. So my weekend plans died, to be replaced by other more regular plans, although still busy enough that every day had something (for instance, Saturday officially became “recover/sleep day” from the party the night before). Speaking of which, on Thursday my husband and I went to see The Last Airbender.
It was a really fun movie and I’d suggest going to see it. However, I do suggest that you go in with low expectations. Expect a great action movie, with wonderful element-bending effects, but don’t expect much else. The acting was terrible (generally, at least. Assif Mondi did a great job as a villian, and the woman who played Princess Yue was exceptional. Uncle Iro was great, although true to the original he was not, and yet his character motivations were definitely still in place.) The story, unfortunately, turned into one big info dump and Aang decided that scaring an army without ever hurting a man, was the best way to deal with them… ‘cause you know, when army men get scared they always turn tail and run away instead of desperately attacking the thing that threatened them. I’d actually suggest watching the cartoon instead. It was much better in the places that mattered like plot and story, even if it wasn’t so cool in the “3-D/live-action” end of it.
Other than the movie though (and a new book I’m reading… don’t worry I’ll be posting a review of it next week), all I’ve been doing is gaming recently.
Alehandra, my priestess/summoner(also known as the Scourge of Lirr), has been saving people left/right and centre and had to make one of the harder decisions she’s had to make in a while. We found a torturer and one of his victims… not a pretty site, especially since the girl was still alive. Alehandra realized that she couldn’t save the woman, so she killed her out of mercy. The men in the group had tried taking on the guy, but were getting their asses whooped… and even when that’s due to insane roles on the GM’s part, it’s scary. Knowing that my character could die, especially if this guy was higher level than us, I decided that Alehandra still would insist that this evil man had to die. So, my character healed up the party and started the attack against him again. By a wonder we succeeded! My character is so energized about it. Now if we can just get these rescued people out of here, we’ll have it made.
Talia, the kick-ass swords-genasi-woman, has a just found out about a meeting arranged with her superior at work. She’s busy wondering what she could have done wrong lately, though it’s more likely that they’ll be commending her on getting Dremere to turn himself in and getting him to join the watch than wanting to punish her for something… maybe another job that they’re having trouble with? Also, her date with a Dwarven priest has been postponed, which means she may end up choosing Dremere accidently, even if as a guy he’s all wrong for her. Mind you, the dwarf did mention that it was clan matters calling him back… I’d hate to not give him a fair chance due to family concerns.
Rapture, the cheerleader sorceress, may be having the “it’s not you, it’s me” talk with her boyfriend… which is surprising in that it’s not Rapture dumping him, but him dumping her. Not that this relationship has been a match made in heaven by any means. He got out of a bad relationship about a year ago, and hasn’t really gotten on well since. And right now, Rapture seems pretty damned perfect since she’s a nympho who he can actually talk to about metaphysical stuff. The real problem is that his old fiancé is still holding a torch for him and trying to ruin the relationship. She’s smearing Rapture’s reputation by calling her a whore, and her boyfriend just made the situation worse by getting drunk and “buying” her away from her boss for an evening. On the other hand, I suppose she has just cause. Not only did Rapture steal her guy, but she also smashed the girl verbally at a party, before she knew who she was. In fact, if memory serves me, she told the girl that while Rapture’s dress may have been bought by her boyfriend, that at least she hadn’t needed her father to buy her a date. Yeah… A great smack-down, considering I had no idea who she was at the time. **Sigh** Good times, good times.
I don’t have my new brothel owner finished yet, but as I won’t get a chance to play her for a few more weeks, I can work on finishing it.
I will be putting a few of the pictures I’ve drawn up soon… I do give everybody some warning though. I’m only a hobby artist at the best of times. On the writing front, I am doing Julnowrimo, but as of Day Three, I hadn’t gotten a chance to do any writing yet. Not that I expected much more, since I knew that this week was going to be insane. I can’t wait to start writing tomorrow though… hopefully some before my game (yes, more D&D. This time I’m playing a catgirl Battle Dancer named Mmrumbra or ‘Rum for short) and definitely some afterwards!
As a treat for you today, I’ve decided to detail some information on the writings and workings of my first Nanowrimo and the novel that came out the other end.
I have been taking part of Nanowrimo since 2007. Like nearly everyone who does Nanowrimo, my first year was a failure, with me forgetting that I was going to do it until November 13 and then giving it up when I realized that I was already busy enough that I was sleeping less than 4 hours a night. I promised myself that the next year I’d do better, and when Nanowrimo came about in 2008, I cleared most of my calendar and decided that this year I would be a rebel and work on a previously existing novel that I had lying around. I finished the month with a novel, mostly finished, at 67,306 words for the month, and approximately 92,000 words total. I was ecstatic with my progress and actually had very high hopes of publishing that novel… until I actually sat down and read it, three months later. Then I realized that the brilliant story I had in my head hadn’t translated to what had gone onto the paper. I was missing an over-arcing plot, a villain, and my story was (all told) a collection of short stories about the characters. It was meant to be a romance novel, but when I read it, I realized that even that had been over-done, turning it into the only thing the novel was about.
Although I was discouraged, I decided that to look at it logically. Okay, so the story sucked, the plot was non-existent and I had no villain. Most people would have considered that a complete failure and I would have as well, if I had not decided to do something that most people don’t. I also looked to see what I did well.
That was when I realized that the characters that I’d come up with were engaging, entertaining, and all had their own voice. I decided that the novel itself may have been a failure, but in trying, I’d inadvertently discovered where I shined as a writer.
Like all novelists, it is my fervent hope that the writing that happened for that book never sees the light of day (I’d probably die of embarrassment). I also came to the decision that the characters still deserved their story, and that the best way to do this would be to rewrite the story during the next Nanowrimo. A silly idea? Perhaps. I decided that this year would not be quite so haphazard.
I continued to write different stories and work on a separate novel for the rest of that year, and kept those characters on the back burner. Two weeks before Nanowrimo started, I began to do some basic work for my story. I wrote up the over-arcing plot I thought I wanted, answered some basic questions for each of the main characters and came up with a set of villains.
I didn’t finish that novel during November, but I did succeed at Nanowrimo, ending the month with a few hundred words over 83,000. I planned to finish it in December, but predictably, I was exhausted and somewhat burned out. So, I put it to the side, and now, 7 months later, its Julnowrimo, and I’m determined to finish the book. I’ve gone over the stuff I wrote during Nano, and I have an idea of what I need to write to fill in the gaps.
I’m attacking it with a plan, and hopefully, I’ll succeed. What about you guys? If you’ve taken part in Nanowrimo, have you guys won? What was your word count? How well did your first novel turn out? Do you think it’s good enough to get published or will it take a tweaking and rewriting before you’ll be happy with it?
On a final note, I’m going to be gaming all weekend! So, you might want to expect my next blog to be about gaming in some way shape or form! It should be an awesome weekend!
So, the last few days I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather… not actually sick, but a bit tired, a bit dizzy and certainly not able to concentrate like I normally am. The usual stuff that doesn’t actually stop you, just makes everything ten times harder to do. Especially things that you have to keep a modicrum of attention on. Today, my drop was very noticible, mostly in gaming unfortunately.
Dungeons & Dragons (tabletop roleplaying) isn’t horribly confusing, but our game does have a lot of characters to remember, along with other world knowledge. I know that I need to read up on the world we’re in again, so that I can remember all of the small world bits (rulers, the name of my characters homeland, ect.), but today it would have been nice to just remember the small things. Like my mission… or what my mission means.
My character is a blunt-as-all-hell earth genasi (re: half human/half elemental). Female, of human stock, but she was raised among the dwarves by her human father. Long story short, she’s a hard woman to please and although she’s confident about her abilities, she is hopeless when people skills are required. Her sense of humor is macabre and can be confusing at times, and people tend to think she’s joking when she not, and serious when she’s joking. All this means that she tends to feel alienated from those around her, and she has serious issues with self-confidence.
Fun character, but last night was horrible. Her mission was to arrest this guy. The official orders were “We need to arrest him and then interrogate him on a few things…”. Okay well, what does he look like? (A half breed dwarf and answer only slightly more precise than saying ‘you know, the elf with the bow’). What are his skills? (We don’t know.) What are we arresting him for? (We need to question him/interrogate him on stuff) When did he arrive in the city? (sometime over the last few months and 3weeks). My character decides that the guys obviously want him brought in for questioning, since they obviously don’t have enough information to arrest him for anything, and they are actually hoping to get him to admit guilt while holding him. For a criminal, 24 hours of questioning is a pain, but easily do-able. Me and my captain find him in disguise but he escapes. Later, the coin I had tossed him to pay for a drink gets dropped at my feet. After work I head to the bar he told me to look for him in, and find him waiting for me. We chat, and the guy is intriguing. Interesting, Intelligent, not afraid of a fight, and seems to find my character attractive. We start talking, and I eventually convince him to turn himself in. Apparently I’m throwing this guy to the wolves, and my captain and sergeant don’t just want info, they want to really throw the book at him.
Now, I’m not going to complain… it’s roleplaying after all, and mis-communications happen in real life all the time. However, now my character is in a quandary. Considering that she finds herself attracted to him, she wouldn’t have convinced him to turn himself in had she realized that they wanted him for more than a 24 hr ‘Where were you the night of the thirteenth?’ line of questioning. I don’t think she’d even consider breaking him out of jail until every other option had been chased. Most likely she would try to convince her bosses on leniency (my character convinced him to turn himself in after all. She was off duty, so she may not be listed as the arresting officer. On the other hand, it looks better on the books if she was, since that explains why she was chasing it on her off-time.). My question is now all motivation. Would she care that much about a guy she just met? Even one who intrigued her? If she does, what level would she go to for him? Would she post bail and tell him to stay hidden while she pulls some strings and gets him out? Could she afford bail, even if she wanted to? How about begging leniency from the courts, bribing the proper officials and then waiting for him to get out and handing him her own club to beat her with? What about allowing him to tie her up and letting him do naughty things to her (hey, it’s been quite a while for the character… she can dream of ‘fun’ punishments, right?) Even if he was forgiving enough to date her afterward (unlikely for a criminal), how far would she be willing to take a ‘fun’ punishment with her self-confidence issues?
This, in a nutshell, is why I love playing role playing games! There is nothing else in the world that allows such a simple situation to be played in, experienced, and the human condition delved into in quite the same way. For example, my life is actually quite boring. The closest thing I’ve ever had to “criminal” boyfriend is the time an ex of mine got pulled in for questioning because he’d been seen with a guy known for petty theft. The idea of her being so shy is also a factor, and since I’m a more outgoing person normally, I have to stop and think about what a shyer person would do in the same situation. It’s an exercise in imaginative situations and character motivations, as well as helping with little things like dialog and character interactions. On the other hand, I do experience the guilt in this sort of situation… I mean, come on. A guy she’s attracted to is in jail because of her!
On the non-gaming front, I do have one bit of news worth talking about. Today I signed up for a literary convention here in Canada happening in October. The SiWC (Surrey International Writers Conference) is a literary convention, and should be a heck of a lot of fun. They didn’t seem to have any interviews available with people who specifically work in the Dark Fantasy genre, but I was able to set up a ten minute meeting with Susan Chang from Tor Books and a 15 minute meeting with CC (Chris) Humphreys to discuss my novel.
CC (Chris) Humphreys writes Dark Historial Fiction and the Blue Pencil event is 15 minutes where he will work with me on defining my promise, fixing up those three pages and working at least a bit on presentation. Speaking with editor Susan Chang will be brilliant as well, giving me the change to pimp my own story, and then to get information on how to improve my pitch, suggestions on who may be interested in my genres and (if she’s interested in my book) showing her my three pages to three chapters of work. It should be awesome and I can’t wait to go.
Happening in October, this literary conference has some incredible courses available, some incredible names as instructors and should really help me improve as a writer. I’d suggest anyone interested in improving as a writer should think about attending! I’ll definately let you all know my other thoughts after I’ve actually gone to it.
What do you guys think? About my game or my trip? Have a similar situation? I’d love to have you share a comment!
I started writing seriously in early 2008. I was living in a small 600 sq ft, one room apartment in downtown Calgary, by the Mac’s everyone refers to as the “Crack Mac’s” (you get three guesses why they called it that, and the first two don’t count). At the time, I was sharing that home with my husband and our cat, Minkers. As I’m sure you can imagine, space was at a premium. Most of the time I wrote sitting on the couch or occasionally at our kitchen table. Usually my husband was sitting in the same room playing video games. I finally decided that I wanted an actual office to work at in, namely so that I could get away from being distracted by the hubby’s activities. I was originally thinking of setting up a table and chair in the bedroom, when my husband came up with an even better idea. We had two walk in closets and my husband helped me to convert one of them into a tiny room. That first office was only 4 feet wide by 5 feet long and we fit into it a desk, a large chair and a small DVD stand that doubled as a bookshelf. I couldn’t even shut the door when I was in it.
I’ve come a long way since then. My husband and I moved into a much larger home and I was able to steal one of our new rooms to use as a writing office. Needless to say it’s much bigger than 4′ x 5’. I have an actual bookshelf now as well as shelves covering one wall again filled with books. I used to have an actual desk in it but I found that no matter how clean I kept it or how much I tried to convince myself to start using it I never wanted to. And it wasn’t just when I was having trouble writing. Starting mid-December I was doing 750 words and making my words almost every day. Yet even so, most of those words were written in my front room. I used my office in November for Nanowrimo but only when I couldn’t use my hand any longer and I’d have to start using my Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
Finally it occurred to me what the problem might be. All day I work in an office, as insurance agency here in Calgary. I sit at my desk, working on my computer and looking at the clock hoping that they will be over soon. I was subconsciously connecting my desk working at my day job and does avoiding my office as much as possible. I was feeling like I was working two full-time jobs no matter how much or how little I was getting done. So I decided to try something completely different. I took my comfortable chaise from our front room and moved into my office. My productivity jumped amazingly. I really enjoy being in my office now. I haven’t been writing an insane amount more since I started but I have been in here more. The more I’m in here the more I find myself looking at my writing and opening it up when I get bored.
To make the split complete I don’t even refer to it as an office now. I call it my Writing Lair. I’ll include pictures after I’ve finished moving everything into its final place. It’s nice to not only have the place that suits me better but also to be constrained by how I think about something. I learned about this was that it’s not just about having the space, it’s about how you think about your space and what your mindset is in that space.
So where do you write? Do you have a preferred spot? Also what’s your mindset when you’re in that spot?
It’s only been a few days since I last blogged, but I figured another one certainly couldn’t hurt. Especially since it’s been a pretty good week for me and my writing. I haven’t moved ahead in my novel yet (I’m really good at procrastinating) but I know where I need to go in it. What I have been doing is writing a lot this week on my D&D characters. While most of this writing won’t ever see a publishing world, it is very relaxing for me to try and write about characters that I’m intimately involved in.
That’s actually what today’s topic is… not D&D and how it influences my writing though. That topic has been gone over to death. Instead I’ll talk about the newest thing that me and my fellow geeks are doing is actually a really good idea, both for the game and for writing in general. Theme Songs! I may be getting ahead of myself though. Let me start at the beginning and explain.
Years ago (a good three years ago, maybe four, if memory serves) I started running a D&D game for my husband and friends. It wasn’t the first game I’d run but I decided that I wanted to do something different than the usual type of game. What I decided to run instead was an evil game. We’re playing D&D like we normally would but instead of just having evil alignments or being jerk’s (though they are that as well, quite often), they had a semi-firm goal. Go from being nobody’s at third level to running an evil empire before level 20. Rather early in this game one of my players was pleased enough that he was thinking about it all the time. He was listening to music and suddenly realized that the game as a whole has a “theme song”. The whole group agreed and Nightwish’s “I Wish I Had an Angel” got the passing grade. Although the whole song applies to the game, for me it’s the line “Burning Angel Wings to Dust” that really makes the song match the game for me.
Recently the evil fighter in the group realized he was “Indestructable” (Note: It has a really 45 second beginning before the song starts) and claimed that as his individual characters theme song. It’s now at the point where all of the PC’s (player characters) and most of the important NPC’s (non-player characters) have themes for themselves. We’re doing it for most of the games we play in at this point.
As with anything that takes up my time, I eventually start wondering exactly how I can use this in my writing. To be fair, this idea was easier to implement than you would think. I have started looking at my novel and characters in my story and have been trying to figure out what their songs are. I can see a few of you out there are looking at me as if I’m an idiot now. “How hard can it be to find a song that means something to your characters?” Quite a bit harder than you’d expect actually.
First you need to know about the character, their motivations, how they view the world and why they view it the way they do. Then you need to find a style of music that matches the character. Having a folk song done to acoustic guitar for a tattooed insane woman, like ”Jack” off of Mass Effect 2, just wouldn’t feel like it matched the character. After music type, you need to pay attention to the lyrics. Simply because a character is a pyro-maniac does not mean that the song that applies to that character will be about burning something. In fact, I usually find it more true if it doesn’t. Third, you have to be willing to accept that sometimes it will be the song that you least expected it to be.
As an example, I am playing a Cat-Folk battle dancer in one of my games. She is pretty much a caffeine kitty… She only sleeps two hours a day, and she is always either on the move running around or she is completely at rest and almost cat-napping. She is a happy, pleasant woman, who speaks with a slight accent. She always looks for the best in a situation. I originally thought that her song would show off her nearly inexhaustible energy and pleasure, but in doing so, I forgot about her past. I forgot to ask why she forced herself to look for the bright side. Unsurprisingly, while I was ignoring this, I couldn’t find a song for her.
The perfect song came about when I was listening to an artist that I normally don’t listen to. Avril Lavigne’s Innocence (shown below) encompassed not only my caffeine kitty’s predilection to ignoring unhappy things, but also took into account her tortured past as a sex slave (by the way, the answer is “Yes, my characters never have happy histories.”). The song is below and suits her to a ‘T’.
So, now I’m doing this and every song I listen to has the potential to be a song for a character in my book. “Tear you Apart” by She Wants Revenge is now the theme song for Zack, Xiam’s boyfriend in my Vampire Fiction “Falling through the Threshold”. Listen to the song and tell me that doesn’t make him that much creepier as you read through “The White Citadel”. I dare ya.
So, do you have a theme song? Do you use theme songs for characters? Do you think that you’ll be using it in your own writing?
I have been looking at my own work recently, and trying to decide how best to prepare for Nanowrimo while finishing up my current WIP. Of course, the new project is shinier… It’s new, I haven’t thought about it for months or years, and I haven’t seen ¾ of the book and decided that its crap. The fact that 4 months ago I thought this work was good and now I’m looking at it and worrying that its unsalvageable means that I’ve probably reached that area of the book where all authors suddenly think their work is bad and horrible. On the other hand, I also know (unfortunately) that I’m not yet skilled enough to be able to decide on my own. Of course, my husband says that the story is engaging and interesting but I know that he has a vested interest in it. I wish that I was part of a writing group so that I could pass around a chapter or so and find out what it looks like.
I’m really hoping that I can finish it before SiWC. One of the classes I’m really looking forward to is the one Master Class that I sighed up for. It’s taught by Robert J. Ray. It’s called “Welcome to Your Novel Rewrite”. Since this is really the area I feel I need help in, I’m very excited. I say that I’m rewriting my novel now, but I know that what I’m actually doing right now is perhaps the smallest part of the rewrite… filling in scenes that I didn’t write during November. A small amount of this will be at the beginning, and I’m doing it now. I also know that I condensed an entire scene into the words “romance montage… write when you have inspiration”. I now know what’s supposed to go there (and it’s not really a romance montage, but a scene detailing characters getting to know each other/teaching of the magic system mix) and so I should finally be able to write it down. I know I also need to rewrite the ending. The end of last nano was a bit of insanity for me and I was desperately trying to get 10k words in three days. Not that I required it to win… but I wanted to get more words than a young girl who writes here in Calgary (she routinely hits 100K during the month).
Even so, the main problem with my ending isn’t actually that it’s bad, but that it doesn’t follow the storyline anymore. What had happened is that about 4 days before the end of Nanowrimo, I realized that the story was no longer going where I thought it needed to at the beginning of the month. Instead of writing organically and seeing where the ending needed to go, I ran straight back to my outline trying to write those scenes. Since they no longer fit the story it was hard going, and even harder to fix, since I didn’t realize what had happened when I tried to start editing it.
This is all part of the very painful process know as Improvement. It can also be a very painful process. What it teaches you is that the good work you were doing before isn’t good… in fact it may be painfully bad. For most of us though, the hardest part of this is proving to ourselves that we can get better.
On that note, one of the things that are going to help me prepare to write is the beautiful inspiring Miyazaki film, Whispers of the Heart. This movie is about a girl who falls in love with a boy who seems to know exactly where he wants his life to go. She is amazed at his dedication when he travels to Italy to study for two months towards his dream. Though he also likes her, she is unsure if she is good enough to be with him since she doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life at all. She decides to try writing a novel while he is gone. When she is finished she invariably says it’s horrible, but a friend tells her that what it and she needs is polishing. Like a gemstone, it’s dirty and flawed when you pull it out of the ground. Only through work and knowledge can you make it into a thing of true beauty. I now keep a geode on my desk to remind of the fact that even when my writing looks like stupid ordinary rock that it can still be polished to a thing of beauty and something worth publishing.
Other things that I need to finish before Nanowrimo are:
1. Cleaning up my office so that all the garbage is gone and it’s organized. Even if I don’t have my bookshelves by that time, I would like the room to be clean. When it’s a mess, I don’t want to go in and remember that I need to clean it, especially during Nano.
2. Reading a few pages of writing into my computer about my characters for this months novel… I want Dragon to recognize what I’m saying when I talk about Xiam and Zack (the main characters in the novel). Corrections and changes only slow you down during Nanowrimo and I’d rather have as few of those as possible.
3. My novel, nicknamed “Seirei” and called “Memories Written in Moonlight” finished, or at least finished enough that I don’t mind other people seeing it.
4. I would like to have cards done before I attend the conference, even if they only have my name, website address and “Writer of Dark Fantasy” on them.
Everything else can wait if they need to. On a more personal front, I still do not have “The High King of Montival”… The store was out of them. “Mr. Monster” is out now as well for purchase, so I’ll grab both when I head into the bookstore around October 15. This weekend I am gaming, playing my little Whore Queen, Demona… hopefully, I’ll have some wonderful little tidbit to mention in my next blog about that.
Also, coming up mid to end of October… Pictures of my Writing Space! Keep an ear out and I’ll keep you updated on my progress until I put out the pics!
Very little hilarity happened today, but even so it was a good day. I had the day off work, which meant I got to sleep in, but had enough cleaning and other plans to keep me more than busy enough. We had a friend come over, but most of what I was doing were dull things like laundry. I’m going to be doing quite a lot of gaming this weekend… or at least, at lot of character building. And just to make sure the weekend is awesome I’ll be roughing it somewhat, setting up the tent and camping in our friends yard. The game should be interesting since it’s mainly a pirate game taking place in the Shackles… a hive of pirates run by a man now known as the Hurricane King. My character, Demona, is a brothel owner in the Shackles, and an information broker of no small caliber… or at least that’s the idea.
I’ve decided that she follows, at least nominally, a quartet of Arch-Demons, known as the Whore Queens. Which leads me to my gripe for today’s blog. The book has very little information on these demonic deities and from what I can tell, even the book on demons in that world simply gives the information “the whore queens are believed to be angels who fell hoping to find power and equality in Hell.” Long story short, they didn’t. But each has become powerful and worshiped in her own right, even with the bigoted male demons working against them, which is interesting. It’s not just their fight of do I/don’t I and good/evil, which every demon makes, it’s also the inner conflicts that mirror the ones they are making in their world. How did they gain power and respect? Do the other demons respect them for it after all this time or are they still treated more badly than others?
Since the books are less than useless (and I’m a “couch-feminist” in case you couldn’t already tell), I’ve decided that since the books do give me the names, I’m going to write up a story for each of them, what trials and tribulations they’ve faced, who their allies, enemies and minions are, and finally what their goals and dreams are. It would be nice to know what they require of their followers. They’re Lawful Evil… do they require sacrifices? If they do, are males the preferred offering, since in Heaven and Hell all four were treated as little more than decorative wrapping?
They say when you’re holding a hammer every problem looks like a nail… I’d like to change that slightly. When you’re a writer, you react to every situation by wanting to write about it. To quote Timothy Clarke (writing, in turn, about Lazette Gifford), “I’d be afraid to get between you and a sheet of blank paper if you had a pen in your hand.” Off hand, a fellow Nanowrimo-er re-quoted it at me last November, when I told him that I’d was pushing to get over 80k in the month, and he knew that I’d only written 2k in the first week.
Anyways, so I’m taking on a new writing project as well, in writing up the Whore Queens, to be (hopefully) used as a supplement in our Dungeons and Dragons Pathfinder game. If possible, I’d like to write 5 – 10 pages on each of the four, fleshing them, their religions and their priests out. If any of you have official information on them to help me out, I would really appreciate your help. After all, there’s no point just writing up what I happen to think if it’s going to be completely wrong and thrown out my GM’s window when/if they put out more on it, right?
This does make me stop and wonder why though. Such interesting characters, and they get a few lines in the main Pathfinder book? Even in the Book of the Damned; Princes of Evil, which focuses on the demons/devils/otherworldly evil of the Pathfinder word, a book of over 100 pages, they spend a meager four paragraphs on them, I’m assuming one each (although I don’t own the book yet. Again, if you do, letting me know what the domains of each Whore Queen is would be nice as well).
Do they truly think that nobody will care or have the desire to look into them more? It’s not just a state of the industry in this case, but a state of them deciding that women don’t constitute a large enough share of the “target audience”? Why go to the trouble of mentioning them at all if you don’t plan on expanding on the information? This is my real point of contention. In a novel, you hope to have the entire world planned, and if you are truly blessed you may be able to use 40 – 50% of the history and setting info in your book. You need enough setting to have everyone understand what the setting is, how the world works, but you can’t do so at the expense of the story. If there’s one thing I hate when I’m reading my books, it’s having the author suddenly take five pages to info dump the history of the last war on me.
With a gaming book though, you’re writing it the other way around. You want to include every organization, even rule for how the world works, all of the important people, and a bit of what their plans are. A gaming book is all about making the setting so interesting and well thought out that people won’t want to leave it. Gary Gygax, known as the Father of modern gaming, knew this and his world Living Greyhawk (Known to it’s inhabitants as Oerth) is still being played today, with its adherents who hate the idea of playing in any other world. Ed Greenwood, the creator of the Forgotten Realms setting followed in Gygax’s footsteps, and in my opinion, the Faerun source books are brilliant. More than enough information on everybody who could be important to your game, while leaving more than enough open for the GM’s to make it their own.
Now, I haven’t read the entire Pathfinder book yet, so I’m not going to argue that they haven’t done their work yet. The odds that you can fit everything into a single book is slim when you’re doing world building for a gaming system and as I have noted, Source Books are still being released for the world setting, so it’s not as if they aren’t working to fill in the gaps. I will say that thus far, I am disappointed with the information on such interesting characters and that I hope my additions will be looked at fondly, and leave it at that… for now, at least.
On a final note, I do want to let everyone know that I reserved my hotel room for SiWC later this year in October… I can’t wait to get there!
Well, I’m back after way too long an absence. It’s been nearly a week after all. I only got one post up and no writing up this week either. I do apologize. I was supposed to have more time than I ended up finding. On the other hand, it turned out to be an odd week all around, so perhaps it’s just par for the course.
Unfortunately, I found out that the weekend long game that I mentioned previously had been cancelled. So my weekend plans died, to be replaced by other more regular plans, although still busy enough that every day had something (for instance, Saturday officially became “recover/sleep day” from the party the night before). Speaking of which, on Thursday my husband and I went to see The Last Airbender.
It was a really fun movie and I’d suggest going to see it. However, I do suggest that you go in with low expectations. Expect a great action movie, with wonderful element-bending effects, but don’t expect much else. The acting was terrible (generally, at least. Assif Mondi did a great job as a villian, and the woman who played Princess Yue was exceptional. Uncle Iro was great, although true to the original he was not, and yet his character motivations were definitely still in place.) The story, unfortunately, turned into one big info dump and Aang decided that scaring an army without ever hurting a man, was the best way to deal with them… ‘cause you know, when army men get scared they always turn tail and run away instead of desperately attacking the thing that threatened them. I’d actually suggest watching the cartoon instead. It was much better in the places that mattered like plot and story, even if it wasn’t so cool in the “3-D/live-action” end of it.
Other than the movie though (and a new book I’m reading… don’t worry I’ll be posting a review of it next week), all I’ve been doing is gaming recently.
Alehandra, my priestess/summoner(also known as the Scourge of Lirr), has been saving people left/right and centre and had to make one of the harder decisions she’s had to make in a while. We found a torturer and one of his victims… not a pretty site, especially since the girl was still alive. Alehandra realized that she couldn’t save the woman, so she killed her out of mercy. The men in the group had tried taking on the guy, but were getting their asses whooped… and even when that’s due to insane roles on the GM’s part, it’s scary. Knowing that my character could die, especially if this guy was higher level than us, I decided that Alehandra still would insist that this evil man had to die. So, my character healed up the party and started the attack against him again. By a wonder we succeeded! My character is so energized about it. Now if we can just get these rescued people out of here, we’ll have it made.
Talia, the kick-ass swords-genasi-woman, has a just found out about a meeting arranged with her superior at work. She’s busy wondering what she could have done wrong lately, though it’s more likely that they’ll be commending her on getting Dremere to turn himself in and getting him to join the watch than wanting to punish her for something… maybe another job that they’re having trouble with? Also, her date with a Dwarven priest has been postponed, which means she may end up choosing Dremere accidently, even if as a guy he’s all wrong for her. Mind you, the dwarf did mention that it was clan matters calling him back… I’d hate to not give him a fair chance due to family concerns.
Rapture, the cheerleader sorceress, may be having the “it’s not you, it’s me” talk with her boyfriend… which is surprising in that it’s not Rapture dumping him, but him dumping her. Not that this relationship has been a match made in heaven by any means. He got out of a bad relationship about a year ago, and hasn’t really gotten on well since. And right now, Rapture seems pretty damned perfect since she’s a nympho who he can actually talk to about metaphysical stuff. The real problem is that his old fiancé is still holding a torch for him and trying to ruin the relationship. She’s smearing Rapture’s reputation by calling her a whore, and her boyfriend just made the situation worse by getting drunk and “buying” her away from her boss for an evening. On the other hand, I suppose she has just cause. Not only did Rapture steal her guy, but she also smashed the girl verbally at a party, before she knew who she was. In fact, if memory serves me, she told the girl that while Rapture’s dress may have been bought by her boyfriend, that at least she hadn’t needed her father to buy her a date. Yeah… A great smack-down, considering I had no idea who she was at the time. **Sigh** Good times, good times.
I don’t have my new brothel owner finished yet, but as I won’t get a chance to play her for a few more weeks, I can work on finishing it.
I will be putting a few of the pictures I’ve drawn up soon… I do give everybody some warning though. I’m only a hobby artist at the best of times. On the writing front, I am doing Julnowrimo, but as of Day Three, I hadn’t gotten a chance to do any writing yet. Not that I expected much more, since I knew that this week was going to be insane. I can’t wait to start writing tomorrow though… hopefully some before my game (yes, more D&D. This time I’m playing a catgirl Battle Dancer named Mmrumbra or ‘Rum for short) and definitely some afterwards!
As a treat for you today, I’ve decided to detail some information on the writings and workings of my first Nanowrimo and the novel that came out the other end.
I have been taking part of Nanowrimo since 2007. Like nearly everyone who does Nanowrimo, my first year was a failure, with me forgetting that I was going to do it until November 13 and then giving it up when I realized that I was already busy enough that I was sleeping less than 4 hours a night. I promised myself that the next year I’d do better, and when Nanowrimo came about in 2008, I cleared most of my calendar and decided that this year I would be a rebel and work on a previously existing novel that I had lying around. I finished the month with a novel, mostly finished, at 67,306 words for the month, and approximately 92,000 words total. I was ecstatic with my progress and actually had very high hopes of publishing that novel… until I actually sat down and read it, three months later. Then I realized that the brilliant story I had in my head hadn’t translated to what had gone onto the paper. I was missing an over-arcing plot, a villain, and my story was (all told) a collection of short stories about the characters. It was meant to be a romance novel, but when I read it, I realized that even that had been over-done, turning it into the only thing the novel was about.
Although I was discouraged, I decided that to look at it logically. Okay, so the story sucked, the plot was non-existent and I had no villain. Most people would have considered that a complete failure and I would have as well, if I had not decided to do something that most people don’t. I also looked to see what I did well.
That was when I realized that the characters that I’d come up with were engaging, entertaining, and all had their own voice. I decided that the novel itself may have been a failure, but in trying, I’d inadvertently discovered where I shined as a writer.
Like all novelists, it is my fervent hope that the writing that happened for that book never sees the light of day (I’d probably die of embarrassment). I also came to the decision that the characters still deserved their story, and that the best way to do this would be to rewrite the story during the next Nanowrimo. A silly idea? Perhaps. I decided that this year would not be quite so haphazard.
I continued to write different stories and work on a separate novel for the rest of that year, and kept those characters on the back burner. Two weeks before Nanowrimo started, I began to do some basic work for my story. I wrote up the over-arcing plot I thought I wanted, answered some basic questions for each of the main characters and came up with a set of villains.
I didn’t finish that novel during November, but I did succeed at Nanowrimo, ending the month with a few hundred words over 83,000. I planned to finish it in December, but predictably, I was exhausted and somewhat burned out. So, I put it to the side, and now, 7 months later, its Julnowrimo, and I’m determined to finish the book. I’ve gone over the stuff I wrote during Nano, and I have an idea of what I need to write to fill in the gaps.
I’m attacking it with a plan, and hopefully, I’ll succeed. What about you guys? If you’ve taken part in Nanowrimo, have you guys won? What was your word count? How well did your first novel turn out? Do you think it’s good enough to get published or will it take a tweaking and rewriting before you’ll be happy with it?
On a final note, I’m going to be gaming all weekend! So, you might want to expect my next blog to be about gaming in some way shape or form! It should be an awesome weekend!
So, the last few days I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather… not actually sick, but a bit tired, a bit dizzy and certainly not able to concentrate like I normally am. The usual stuff that doesn’t actually stop you, just makes everything ten times harder to do. Especially things that you have to keep a modicrum of attention on. Today, my drop was very noticible, mostly in gaming unfortunately.
Dungeons & Dragons (tabletop roleplaying) isn’t horribly confusing, but our game does have a lot of characters to remember, along with other world knowledge. I know that I need to read up on the world we’re in again, so that I can remember all of the small world bits (rulers, the name of my characters homeland, ect.), but today it would have been nice to just remember the small things. Like my mission… or what my mission means.
My character is a blunt-as-all-hell earth genasi (re: half human/half elemental). Female, of human stock, but she was raised among the dwarves by her human father. Long story short, she’s a hard woman to please and although she’s confident about her abilities, she is hopeless when people skills are required. Her sense of humor is macabre and can be confusing at times, and people tend to think she’s joking when she not, and serious when she’s joking. All this means that she tends to feel alienated from those around her, and she has serious issues with self-confidence.
Fun character, but last night was horrible. Her mission was to arrest this guy. The official orders were “We need to arrest him and then interrogate him on a few things…”. Okay well, what does he look like? (A half breed dwarf and answer only slightly more precise than saying ‘you know, the elf with the bow’). What are his skills? (We don’t know.) What are we arresting him for? (We need to question him/interrogate him on stuff) When did he arrive in the city? (sometime over the last few months and 3weeks). My character decides that the guys obviously want him brought in for questioning, since they obviously don’t have enough information to arrest him for anything, and they are actually hoping to get him to admit guilt while holding him. For a criminal, 24 hours of questioning is a pain, but easily do-able. Me and my captain find him in disguise but he escapes. Later, the coin I had tossed him to pay for a drink gets dropped at my feet. After work I head to the bar he told me to look for him in, and find him waiting for me. We chat, and the guy is intriguing. Interesting, Intelligent, not afraid of a fight, and seems to find my character attractive. We start talking, and I eventually convince him to turn himself in. Apparently I’m throwing this guy to the wolves, and my captain and sergeant don’t just want info, they want to really throw the book at him.
Now, I’m not going to complain… it’s roleplaying after all, and mis-communications happen in real life all the time. However, now my character is in a quandary. Considering that she finds herself attracted to him, she wouldn’t have convinced him to turn himself in had she realized that they wanted him for more than a 24 hr ‘Where were you the night of the thirteenth?’ line of questioning. I don’t think she’d even consider breaking him out of jail until every other option had been chased. Most likely she would try to convince her bosses on leniency (my character convinced him to turn himself in after all. She was off duty, so she may not be listed as the arresting officer. On the other hand, it looks better on the books if she was, since that explains why she was chasing it on her off-time.). My question is now all motivation. Would she care that much about a guy she just met? Even one who intrigued her? If she does, what level would she go to for him? Would she post bail and tell him to stay hidden while she pulls some strings and gets him out? Could she afford bail, even if she wanted to? How about begging leniency from the courts, bribing the proper officials and then waiting for him to get out and handing him her own club to beat her with? What about allowing him to tie her up and letting him do naughty things to her (hey, it’s been quite a while for the character… she can dream of ‘fun’ punishments, right?) Even if he was forgiving enough to date her afterward (unlikely for a criminal), how far would she be willing to take a ‘fun’ punishment with her self-confidence issues?
This, in a nutshell, is why I love playing role playing games! There is nothing else in the world that allows such a simple situation to be played in, experienced, and the human condition delved into in quite the same way. For example, my life is actually quite boring. The closest thing I’ve ever had to “criminal” boyfriend is the time an ex of mine got pulled in for questioning because he’d been seen with a guy known for petty theft. The idea of her being so shy is also a factor, and since I’m a more outgoing person normally, I have to stop and think about what a shyer person would do in the same situation. It’s an exercise in imaginative situations and character motivations, as well as helping with little things like dialog and character interactions. On the other hand, I do experience the guilt in this sort of situation… I mean, come on. A guy she’s attracted to is in jail because of her!
On the non-gaming front, I do have one bit of news worth talking about. Today I signed up for a literary convention here in Canada happening in October. The SiWC (Surrey International Writers Conference) is a literary convention, and should be a heck of a lot of fun. They didn’t seem to have any interviews available with people who specifically work in the Dark Fantasy genre, but I was able to set up a ten minute meeting with Susan Chang from Tor Books and a 15 minute meeting with CC (Chris) Humphreys to discuss my novel.
CC (Chris) Humphreys writes Dark Historial Fiction and the Blue Pencil event is 15 minutes where he will work with me on defining my promise, fixing up those three pages and working at least a bit on presentation. Speaking with editor Susan Chang will be brilliant as well, giving me the change to pimp my own story, and then to get information on how to improve my pitch, suggestions on who may be interested in my genres and (if she’s interested in my book) showing her my three pages to three chapters of work. It should be awesome and I can’t wait to go.
Happening in October, this literary conference has some incredible courses available, some incredible names as instructors and should really help me improve as a writer. I’d suggest anyone interested in improving as a writer should think about attending! I’ll definately let you all know my other thoughts after I’ve actually gone to it.
What do you guys think? About my game or my trip? Have a similar situation? I’d love to have you share a comment!
B.A. Matthews is an amateur author hoping to make her way into the world of published works. Her novels and short stories tend to be Fantasy, slipping into Dark Fantasy often as not. She also used to write music reviews over at Pagan Radio Network (www.paganradio.net).
I am currently working on two novels, Falling through the Threshold and a book tentatively titled Dual Melodies.
B.A. Matthews tries to update her blogs once a week and her various writings under the Pages section twice a month.
