Saturday, January 21, 2012

This is When Rhyme and Reason Don't Rhyme and Aren't Reasonable

Sometimes I forget that this blog doesn't update itself--I half expect it to collect all the data from my life and turn out witty blurbs to keep every body else up to speed, but it never does and then I've gone months without blogging. Sigh.

I'm in two Creative Writing courses this semester (a trial I'm actually enjoying). In the Advanced class we'll be spending the semester working on a novel/novella. I had a really difficult time choosing which tale to focus on and if you've glanced at my upcoming projects list you know why. In the end I decided I shouldn't begin anything new when I'm so obviously falling short on the projects I've already begun so I chose to spend my academic semester with Clocker (my unfinished 2011 NaNo)and to spend my free time (if I end up having any free time)on my unfinished 2010 NaNo Iron Shoes.

Despite my resolution in my last post to return to all my most frustrating projects, I had totally dropped Iron Shoes until recently. My university has a weekly forum/devotional where a speaker is invited to address the students. Last week New York Times Bestselling author Jason F. Wright came to speak and I had the spectacular opportunity to eat lunch with him and a group of other students who are studying in the Humanities. In the course of the conversation I mentioned that I had an incomplete 65,000 word project and he told me that once I had invested that many words in a single project I had essentially lost the choice to discard it completely. So long story shortened, I'm going to finish it.

My main focus, however, has been on making Clocker coherent enough to be work-shopped. The issue has been that the world is a conglomerate of so many genres and cultures that I worried it would distract my peers from the actual story. It's also set in a gritty, nasty city which I would equate with Tortuga in Pirates of the Caribbean--essentially not a nice place--and I've been concerned that the callous portrayal of casual violence and squalor might prove offensive to my classmates. And then I took a step back and realized that, as long as it adds to the story's atmosphere, as crass as it sounds, I don't care if it offends someone.

So I'm researching weapons and old time London and vicious mythical creatures. To be honest I'm getting really pumped up to write a little of the darker stuff. I love weapons, especially the strange ones that hardly work but look really cool anyway. My favorite recent find is the cestus, the Roman gladiator's version of brass knuckles, which I am seriously considering making into my main character's weapon of choice. I'm taken with the idea of a female character who would rather wear a leather, studded boxing glove than carry a firearm.



But, to balance out that darkness so I don't spaz out and become a violence nut (any more than I already have) my music choices have become very very light. This week's speaker at my university was Mindy Gledhill and her visit has set me on a whole other kick. Her songs make me feel hopeful, silly and a little giddy so, as you can imagine with the combination of dark geeking and happy singing, I've become a very odd person to be around.

Light by Reilly Powell on Grooveshark

2 comments:

  1. If my stuff hasn't offended anyone, I don't think you'll have to worry. Also as long as it's not like that one story that was 3 pages about a girl getting hit by a car.

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  2. dear darling nieces pieces I wish your blog kept up with you. I wish I kept up with your blog. I wish I kept up. I have a thing for Iron Shoes, as you know, and then I never got to hash it with you, and then I thought you'd dumped it for good. Now Mr Jason Wright says Write, Right? good girl, I'm with him. Oh, and just FYI I too have put the pen to paper and have a one-page prologue written for a 600-page novel. I don't care if it's only one page. it still makes me happy:)

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