Shadow Legacy (working title) and goal setting

Listening to: Evanescence - Lose Control

Reading: The Forbidden Game - L.J. Smith

I have a completed manuscript of 39,692 words with an actual beginning, middle, and end, that has been nagging me for a revision for a long time now. The versions I have of it on my computer say that it was created in 2007, but I'm pretty certain that I wrote it sometime between 2005-2006. The original draft on my computer back in South Africa will probably have the more accurate date for when I finished it.

It took me an entire week to write it from the first to the last word. Can I write a book in a week again now? Heck no! I was young, I had no job, I wasn't going to college, I was going through an anti-social stage (what writer doesn't?) and I had no other responsibilities to contend with. Well... I probably did but I can't remember what.

What I do remember is having my muse chain me to my computer until I was done. I really did live in my room for that week. I was up at 6am, typing away the entire day, taking only the necessary breaks to the bathroom when I absolutely had to. I think I even ate my food with one hand and typed with the other that week. And sleep? Sleep was non-existent. I would force myself to turn in at midnight, and I'd be lying in bed with my eyes closed, going over the plot and the characters in my mind, and 'dreaming' about what was going to happen next and how that would affect the course of the story. I'm sure I drifted, but when I was awake, I was plotting. That's where my saying 'I don't sleep, I plot' stems from. And I'd be up again at 6am, typing like a mamba.

I had that urge of intrigue; I was so wrapped up in this world I've created, even when I wasn't writing it I was definitely thinking about it, and I had that insatiable compulsion to get back to it. Nothing else mattered. Everything else was insignificant in comparison. I just wanted to stay lost in the story. It was kind of like the feeling you have when you pick up one of those books that you just can not put down until you've finished it, only it was coming from the writer side of things.

I also remember how completely bushed I was on Sunday afternoon, when I finished writing the ending. I had lunch with my family, I washed the dishes and thought about how well the story had run, and then I passed out on my bed. I felt very much accomplished.

I still do, in a sense. The upside is: I have a completed manuscript!!!

The reality is: I have a completed manuscript. I have a story that's too short to be a novel, that needs to become a novel. The reality is that I have a lot of work ahead of me.

My ultimate goal is to polish it as best I can before starting the query process. But I'm taking it in baby steps. So my first goal is to schedule writing into my daily routine and then to maintain that routine.

Once I can achieve that, I can worry about the next goal.





Blogpost 27 March 2010/Bayonetta review and some writerly rambles

Reposting this because I'm no longer using the other blog.

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So, due to over-abundance of boredom and nothingness, I decided to play some more Bayonetta. I completed Route 666 - and that bike is killer. Although the game smacks of facepalm-worthy moments (the cherub statue with the tallywanker episode;the nutty babyfaced thing in Paradiso that falls in love with Cereza, to name a couple) it is ridiculously fun to play. I love Bayonetta, I love Cereza even more (I want to adopt her!) and I completely HATE Jeanne and Luka. Talk about annoying! Especially Luka whom likes to repeat one word over and over and over again and again in each and every sentence he splutters out. *Major facepalms Luka* Guh!

But those are just the characters you encounter. The actual gameplay - phenomenal, once you get the hang of it. I'm a sword girl by nature, I very much abuse Rebellion and swordmaster style, Red Queen and Yamato Dark Slayer style in Devil May Cry, so you betcha I'm going to overuse Asura in Bayonetta. It's got Rebellion and Yamato moves wrapped in one - can you get any better? (The answer is NO)

That aside, Bayonetta truly is the female version of Dante. I want to BE Bayonetta - and then I want to team up with Dante and torture Nero some. And once I'm done with Nero, I'll torture Dante some too ;) Seriously though, their personality type is one and the same, and it is awesome!

All right, Game-Gush over (for now). I've managed to write two little scenes last night, including an analogy shared by a mother with her son. I am very happy with it, but at the same time I'm quite frustrated, too. They are good scenes and vital to the plot - but not the current plot I'm working on. None of it fits into my novel that I'm writing right now.

This of course means that I'm going to be sitting with pen locked to paper until midnight tonight trying to get some order going. I'll be rewriting the first chapter from scratch, and moving the original chapter 1 to become chapter 2, which means all other chapters will need to be kicked one number up. Up until chapter 9, that is, or should I say the new chapter 10? I'm rewriting that whole chapter, and relocating the original chapter 10 to chapter-much-later, which is where my secondary character, Sebastien (tarumtarumtarum!!!)enters the novel, and most of the character development for my main character, poor liddle Galen, takes place from that point onward. Not that Galen's not going through some changes prior to that meeting, because he most certainly is going through drastic, frightening changes, but Sebastien will be the one to help shape Galen into the uber-cool king he will one day become. I should probably tell you what the novel is about, and of course I will once I've got the summary strung together.

And damn fanfiction. Receiving alerts for 'favourite author' and 'favourite story' is detrimental to my health. It makes me want to drop my originals and go back to my addiction. Though that would be pathetic of me - no one is going to write this novel except for me, and it won't get done just because I keep thinking 'I need to get this done'.

Sit down.
Take the pen.
Put tip to paper.
WRITE.

Discipline, discipline, discipline.

Quote of the day:
Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life - Confucius.

Book Review: The Haunted

"Spectacular! The Hollow keeps you reading from beginning to end without coming up for air." - L.J.Smith, bestselling author of The Vampire Diaries and Night World.



I have a knack for picking trilogies, don't I?

Miss Smith couldn't have described the reading pleasure of this book any better. I got sucked in from the first line, and I didn't want to put it down until I got to the end. (Of course, the end is not truly the end, considering this is the middleman of a trilogy).

We meet a mourning sixteen year old Abbey, taking time out from her life at Sleepy Hollow by staying with her great-aunt Marjorie on a farm. She's seeing a therapist because she thinks she's gone nuts, because see, Abbey fell in love with this hot studmuffin, Caspian, who has white-blonde hair, and who has vibrant green eyes, and who just so happens to be dead. I'm not talking vampire-dead, I'm talking ghost-dead.

Abbey doesn't know whether he's just a figment of her imagination that she had created to help her deal with the drowning of her best friend, Kristen, and in the beginning there are a few moments where the whole situation plays mindgames with you - is he real, is he in her head?! - until Abbey finally finds closure. She later on goes to visit Caspian's grave. That's when I, as the reader, fully accepted that he wasn't just some shadow that was going to disappear when her life starts getting back on track. Part of me half-expected him to do just that when she was kneeling at his grave, but nope, Caspian looks like he's there to stay for good.

The plot and subplots all blend together nicely, from Abbey getting resolution on Caspian's surreality, her awkward friendship with Ben the science-geek, accepting that her best friend had kept secrets from her that were starting to leak out, and five Revenants chasing after her signalling that her death is near. Oh. And there is of course the issue of raging teenage hormones between Abbey and her other half, Caspian her Shade.

The characters are interesting; I loved Abbey's parents and her relationship with them, and the fact that unlike most young adult books, her parents never took the backseat of 'they're-briefly-mentioned-because-they-have-to-be-mentioned' characters. They had a role to play and there was love and effort put into shaping their characters. I liked Ben - albeit he did seem like the typical cliche geek - and the detail put into the Revenants were wicked. I felt freaked out by them, but I think that's what the author was going for. I liked Aunt Marjorie, too, and Uncle Bob... actually, I don't think there is a character I didn't like.

Except for the cheerleader and Vincent. That guy gave me the creepy-crawlies.

Abbey's love for perfumes is a brilliant contribution to the story, tells more about the character, and then there's Caspian. Every time I read his name, I kept getting the tune 'Casper, the friendly ghost' going through my head. Did I ever get a kick out of it when Abbey later nicknamed him just that! I didn't get such a good feel for his character, as I saw him as this sad, lonely boy who is absolutely smitten with Abbey, but according to Abbey he suffered from moodswings. I don't get it. I could follow his track of mind and get where he was coming from when his mood changed, but those don't class as moodswings, do they? Moodswings are more of a spontaneous thing that is triggered at random for no 'apparent' reason.

To conclude my review: it was like reading a fanfiction of The Forbidden Game, post-The Kill, with a few details changed. The author's inspirations show through The Haunted very clearly, and I couldn't help but think 'JULIAN!' every time Caspian was in the limelight. But then, I'm a pathetic Julian-fangirl who sees the character in anything with white-blonde hair, so do I mind? No! The fact that Caspian's character very clearly was inspired by Julian's character, makes me love Caspian even more.

This is one of the best YA paranormal romances I've ever read, and will definitely recommend it for anyone interested in the genre. The plot, the characters, the chemistry, the visuals, all = WIN.

You can check out the author, Jessica Verday, and her other sources of inspiration for the Sleepy Hollow trilogy, on her website.