I know I'm in my own world... it's okay, they know me here

Decided freaking out about my writing by myself was not really very helpful or productive, so I'm going to post the project I'm currently working on here, and I'd really appreciate it if people could take the time to read it and give me a little feedback? Any level of response is fine, just need some reassurance that it's not total pants.

ETA 13/7/10: now updated with additional crazy!

( This Mortal Armour )

101,729 / 120,000 (84.8%)

120,000 words is a total guesstimate, but I do still have to write a few more parts before the Exciting! Conclusion! so it's probably a good one. Anyway, yay!

Today I'm going to go see Canterbury Cathedral down in town. If I don't go I'll be annoyed at myself later, even if I do feel like being a bit of a hermit today. Maybe go to the cinema to see Indy IV, too, but maybe Ill do that later in the week.

Dad told me on the phone on Friday that he and Gail have decided to set a date for the wedding! They're sick of waiting for the housing market, and they'll sort out whatever logistical problems this causes afterwards. Of course, typically, they decided to have it in early November, which is when I told them not to because I'm going to be on placement God knows where, so now I'm going to have to go to Gail Stephenson and beg for help on being close to home for this one, especially since I'm going to have to take a day or two off placement for it and they add up to marks this time. Dammit, Dad! I love you but this is aggravating!

I thought of this while swimming today - I plan to write it up into a proper short story type of thing later, but thought I'd put it up here in its raw form and see what you thought. It's a folkloric tale from Va'andosa, the country my novel project The Night Tower is set in. Let me know what you think!

The Eternal Swimmer - a Va'andosi Folktale

There was once a sailor aboard a merchant ship who, on quarrelling with his shipmate, cast him overboard in a storm, where the other man drowned. Nobody saw what he had done, and the sailor believed that he had escaped his just fate.

But that night, a knock came sounding at the door to the berthing deck, and when the cabin boy got up to open it, a woman stood in the doorway, her hair in wet tangles around her face and eyes blazing with an unholy light.

"Who has thrown my son into the ocean, and left him there to drown?"

The sailor said nothing, while all around him his shipmates awoke and cried out in fear, as she stalked amongst their hammocks, the cold wind coming through the open door setting them to swaying rough from side ot side.

"Who has thrown my son into the sea, and raised not a hand to help him?"

The sailor said nothing.

"Who is that threw my son into the deeps, to make food for fish and worms?" she asked a third time, and stopped beside the sailor's hammock, staring deep into his eyes, her mouth growing tighter and tighter until it split open to reveal a shark's sharp teeth. "You. You did this." And she grabbed the sailor by his hair and dragged him from his bed, all the way to the deck where she cast him out into the waves. "Never again will your foot touch land."

The sailor was a strong swimmer, however, and kicked his way back to the side of the ship, clutching to the wood and crying out for mercy, but when the nightwatchman stepped forward with a rope the woman turned to him with a snarl and said, "Any ship that takes this man onboard will surely sink, for a great beast will rise from the depths to devour those who help this murdering wretch." And the man stepped back, sorely afraid.

Behind him, the sailor heard the sea begin to moan, as though something came that the water itself feared. And he began to swim, panic rising in his heart until it was all he could hear, that and the strange moan of the sea.

To this day, you can hear him tap-tap-tapping against the side of your ship in the night, if you lay quiet in the stillness of the darkest time. But he is always turned away by the man on watch, who holds his lantern high, brandishes his boat-hook and tells him "You may not come aboard, sailor, for fear of she who cursed you." And the sailor cries out in his exhaustion, cries out for pity, but finds none, and swims away to find another ship to beg for mercy.

God, I hate myself sometimes. Not as in 'self-loathing', but just sitting here and staring at the blinking cursor on Word, trying to think of what comes next, I have absolutely no idea what the hell I'm doing, and all I can think is that I hate my bloody brain for ditching me like this.

I probably need to sit down and have a good think about it, or brainstorm it with somebody to play soundingboard. Something is going to have to give, because I am finishing this goddamn book if it kills me.

ARRRRGH!

Word count update:

95,042 / 120,000 (79.2%)

Total expected wordcount has increased because I have no idea when this mother is going to goddamn end already. Hopefully I won't have to edit it down too much when I'm done so that somebody will publish it *cries a little*

When discussing what I was writing with katsideswide this evening:

Amy says: This sort of scene is the sort of thing I just get writing and writing. It's nice
Amy says: (of course, that makes me worry that the tough-to-write stuff is not as good, but I guess that's where editing comes in.)
Katnip says: it's important to get it down. worry about the niggly bits later
Amy says: I'll finish eventually (I hope! Or maybe it will go ON AND ON FOREVER, more and more things always happening, until i am old and creaky!)
Katnip says: wow! o_O
Katnip says: nuu! but then it shall never be published and landon's fangirl army shall never be
Amy says: and they will never write Landon/Felix invisisex stories!
Katnip says: ...invisisex?
Amy says: invisible sex
Katnip says: ...how? o_o
Amy says: well, Landon can do illusions, right? So they could have sex in public and nobody would know.
Katnip says: i could see the point with visual porn
Katnip says: oooooohhhhh
Katnip says: *clicks into place*
Katnip says: ...hell yes!
Katnip says: ...why did that never occur to me before!
Amy says: i have no idea, it seemed fairly obvious to me
Katnip says: my smut brain is obviously broken
Amy says: XD
Amy says: seriously, that is one of my big anticipations for if fanfic was ever written, that somebody will write that story
Katnip says: wow. just, wow.
Amy says: you totally want it now, don't you
Katnip says:

You may not have noticed, but I am a very competitive person.

"The hell you say!" ...you say. (Ha ha, no, really, I know that you know. Do you know that I know that you know that I know? Well, you do now.)

Myv wanted to move back into the flat she lived in next year - it has better views, is in a quiet block, etc. I didn't - don't - really care, because all that means is that I will have to move all my stuff again, but, whatever.

Of course, as soon as I found out other people were after the same flat, we were going to win, goddammit, come hell or high water! I got really fired up and adrenaline-shaky (we got it, too.)

And don't even get me started on eBay. I get an adrenaline hit just out of fighting people out of the thing we both want at the last second. For instance, just won a lovely dress :D

It really is silly, but I suppose it's the small pleasures that make life worth living, hmm?

But...

Today I printed out my manuscript so far. Size 11 font, 1 1/2 line spaced, right and left justified, came to 167 pages. And I started to read it, thinking, 'let's see where this is at, get motivated again.'

But... I can't help noticing everything that's wrong with it. I'm sure it improves as I wrote it, getting into practice and improving and things, but I can't feel anything for it. The emotions I should be feeling just aren't there. And it makes me worry whether or not it's actually good or not. People tell me it is, but how can I tell when I'm so blank about it?

Argh! This is just what I was talking about yesterday. It makes me so frustrated!

As of the day before yesterday:

80,126 / 100,000 (80.1%)

Whee!

One of the things I really love Myv for is when she'll sit down with me to discuss a plotline, make some great suggestions, and generally play Devil's Advocate until I've somehow ended up with a stonking plot and only need to work on the details. We have a seriously good creative connection when it comes to stuff like that - she gets what I want to go for, and helps me get there.

So today, after a while of floundering around going 'I have no idea what to do! Every idea I have is a wash/rinse/repeat of the first book! Oh my God I suck!', I finally am actually working up a very general plot chart type thing for the second book in my as-yet-unnamed series :)

Tentative title (at least until I think of something else): The Blood Rose. I think it might be a little overdramatic though, what do you think? I like the three-word format, the+adjective+noun, to follow on from The Night Tower, but I'd like some opinions, if you could.

(ETA: Having just done an Amazon search on 'The Blood Rose', I can also say that the two words 'blood' and 'rose' are in so many book titles you wouldn't believe, so it's going to have to be something else. I want it to stand out in a search, not be hidden so anyone trying to buy it can't find it.)

(ETA 2: What do you think of 'The Rose Vault' or 'The Rose Vaults'? I like to have a title in my head when I write something, you see, so I'm thinking about it now.)

So basically I'm happy, anyway. I wanted to have some idea of where I'm going with the next one before I finished the first one, so I could point the right way. I'm pretty happy with the ideas. They just need thinking on.

I haven't been posting a lot lately (I know I've said that before) so I thought I'd give you a little rundown of my day, that sort of thing. It really consists of two elements:

a) finishing my goddamn stats assignment that is due in tomorrow
b) watching Chuck, which is an AWESOME show.

Chuck is totally my new fandom. I had run out of fic to read, and this should hopefully solve my problem, so voila!

Mostly it is awesome because Adam Baldwin, the guy who used to play Jayne in Firefly, is in it and is awesome. But also, it has strong, developed female characters! And it's lots of crazy fun! And the main character is a cute geek! And there is lots of crazy fun!

(You should totally watch it if you're not already.)

...that's pretty much all I've done today, anyway. I have one more exam to go (this Wednesday afternoon, Management of Concomitant Strabismus, two hours) and then I'm done. So, tomorrow I hand in this paper and start revising for ORTH 215. Luckily I have already written up all my notes for it so it's just reading and rereading, really (I am SO GLAD I finally got down to revising over Christmas. It has saved my life.)

Also! The day before the day before yesterday I finally managed to get some more writing done! Only 750 words or so, but during an exam period I'd say that's pretty damn good, yeah?

I've been thinking about something Myv has said to me, about the way I work and how much work I do. She says that, at least at the moment, I'm not taking a degree, I'm writing a novel - and to some extent I think she's right. I'm not very good at doing things I don't want to do, and too good at doing the things I do. I need to find a better balance between the two and get work done.

...I still desperately want to crack on with my novel, though.