Diary of a Novelist

Don't cower at the title. I won't tell you every intricate detail of my upcoming plot and how many words I've written today. I tend to avoid talking about things I'm working on. But people have been sniffin' around, so I'll answer the questions in a round-about way. If you weren't one of those you who wanted to know:

Yay! Rainbows and kittens! Hold that thought and look away now.

I've spent most of this year working on basic writing skills, but I'm now at the point of writing a novel. I'm hoping to be done by Christmas (at least to the point of getting other people to read it and tear it into tiny pieces and stomp on it).

I'm not someone who has one great novel I'm burning to write. My mind is full of ideas, ranging from picture books to adult fiction. So to me the question wasn't "Should I write a book?" but "Which book should I write?"

My creative brain didn't have an answer. I asked my Vulcan brain instead. My short stories are aimed at adults. It's logical to go with an adult novel. I like writing fantasy and science fiction. A science fantasy would hedge my bets.

Add in a short story about one man and his cockroach, and the premise is formed. I'm writing a little bit everyday. I even have something I like to call a plot outline. Unlike most plot outlines, it has several threads of main plot which could end the story in multiple ways. What can I say? I'm just not linear (but if all else fails, it'd make a great Choose Your Own Adventure).

Desert Alien Buses

I currently live near a construction site. This lonely place used to be the local supermarket. But never fear, because there's a free bus to the next nearest one!

This is normally a good thing. I head down with my mum and buy turnips. They also do tasty biscuits in the supermarket's coffee shop.

It's not a good thing when the bus driver is from a strange race of desert living aliens. The buses don't have air conditioning, so usually, the drivers open the doors when they're in the little narrow lanes to let in some air. This driver was different. Not only was it closed up, but the heating was on full blast.

Perhaps the bus was being used to incubate eggs from the motherworld. All I know is it was too hot. I was not in a good state by the time we got to the shops. This was my excuse for why I definitely needed a cup of tea and some of those tasty biscuits.

Alphabeti Spaghetti Meme

A-Attached or Single? Attached. I've been dating for three or four years. I'm a bit vague on the anniversaries.

B-Best Friend? My boyfriend.

C-Cake or Pie? Cake. I like cupcakes and muffins.

D-Day of Choice? I prefer nights.

E-Essential Items? My computer and camera.

F-Favourite Colour? Purple.

G-Gummy Bears or Worms? I'm easy when it comes to the shape of my jelly sweets. I like the ones with sour covering best.

H-Hometown? Hastings, East Sussex.

I-Indulgence? Doughnuts.

J-January or July? January. I like it colder.

K-Kids? Nope.

L-Life isn’t complete without... fun.

M-Marriage Date? None.

N-Number of Siblings? One.

O-Oranges or Apples? Resist the urge to put up the picture, resist the urge... I eat more apples, but I eat more orange flavoured things.

P-Phobias or Fears? Black holes. I don't consider it a phobia. If there were a black hole, I'm toast. And so are you.

Q-Quote? "Yay!"

R-Reason to Smile? Games! I don't smile much when I'm happy, but I do smile when I'm playing games.

S-Superman or Wonder Woman? Wonder Woman. You can't beat those bullet-deflecting bracelets.

T-Tag 5 people. I'll leave the tagging open again, but I'll edit the post to add the first five people to do it and tell me. And if no one does, I'll take it as a sign you've all done this already (which often seems to be the case by the time memes reach me).

V-Vegetables? Either cauliflower or turnips. Or maybe broccoli. Sweetcorn is good. I like vegetables.

W-Worst Habit? Being quiet? Bouncing? Fiddling with my hair? I don't know. It's hard to rate bad habits yourself. Probably the talking quietly thing, as it annoys people.

X-Ray or Ultrasound? X-rays are cooler! People become superheroes after x-ray exposure, but do how often do you see Ultrasound Man?

Y-Your Favourite Food? White chocolate, raw potatoes, tea.

Z-Zodiac Sign? Fishy

(The meme isn't really called what I called it, but I think spaghetti is a great metaphor thingy. It's all twizzly and goes everywhere, just like a meme getting tomato sauce all over the internet.)

Dancing with Spore (Videos)

It turns out the Spore Creature Creator has a built-in video recording system. This includes uploading the videos to YouTube. Here you can admire the way the game works out how each creature would move... or laugh at the dancing and eyes. Either works.

Dancing Dragon Movie - A dragon using the dance moves.

Eye Whale Movie - The movement of a legless creature.

Invasion of Spore - Creature Creator

Spore is getting ready to invade the internet. This simulator game will allow people to evolve their own creatures, have them build cities and eventually travel the stars. All starting from the humble beginning of a single cell lifeform.

Today marks the release of the free creature creator (you can download it here). Many of the options are disabled, but you can create a strange gangly creature of your own. I fiddled and new life was created. Behold the Grassgore! I didn't have much to work with, but I'll always have a fondness for this guy as my first.

One feature I like is the community aspect. You can share your new creatures, for other players to rate and download. Even with the free trial version, this feature is active. I have a profile which'll show all my creatures. Each creature also has its own page. It's a slick system, making it easy to share creatures with your friends. Or to spy on the wackiness of people's imaginations.

Fun though all of this is, I can't wait for the full game. I want to test drive my monster and see it munch things with its head claw. And squirt poison out of the poison squirters on its knees! It's a simple wish.

Poem in Boston Literary Magazine

As you might tell from my creative title, one of my poems has burst forth into the world. Something like that. It's a freeform poem called 'Waiting'.

I'm giving a sadness warning. The funnies aren't here.

Waiting

A Child's Questions

'Tis blog chain** time. This one has mostly been about kinky stuff. That could have been a problem as I'm not the over-sharing type. Fortunately, Freshhell gave me a way out, as she discussed telling (or not telling) her child about the facts of life.

So I'm going to ramble about the things I wanted to know as a child. There were two major questions on my childish mind.

The first was a group of related questions: Why do people look different? What dictates hair, eye and skin colour? Why do different races look different? Some were obvious, like darker skin for sunnier climates. But why lighter skin for darker climates? Wouldn't it be a good idea to keep the dark skin for heat waves?*

My mum was faced with explaining the genetics of eye and hair colour inheritance. I understood it, but it only raised more questions. It took some years and becoming a biologist to find all the answers. Those answers led to more questions, but at least my parents don't have to try and field the answers anymore.

The second question: Can I have a kitten? I got the answer to that a few years later, when the kitten arrived.

Were your childhood questions deep and meaningful? Did you want a kitten? Inquiring Polenths want to know.

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* I'm not going to answer the questions posed in this blog. There's plenty on the internet about inheritance and racial adaptations. I'd have loved the internet as a child, but that was back in the day when Pong was still pretty neat.

** Blog Chainers: [ Spittin' (Out Words) Like a Llama | Polyamory | Life in Scribbletown | Polenth's Quill | Auria Cortes*** | Blog in a Suitcase | Delirious | Asian Business | If you ask me anything I don't know, I'm not going to answer. | As Yet Untitled | Puttin' Words on Paper | Fumbling with Fiction | Rotating Bear | spynotes | Virtual Wordsmith ]

*** Auria Cortes is next.

Comparing Short Stories and Novels - A Fruity Debate

How different are the skills for writing short stories and novels? Many writers I've stumbled across seem to think it's like comparing apples and oranges*. I don't follow that fruity philosophy.

I see it this way. Imagine I wrote a story 1000 words long. Next time, I write a 2000 word story, then 3000, 4000... you get the idea. I end at 100,000 words. That's lots of stories, each slightly longer than the last.

At what point does the writing method change? Does it suddenly change between 49,000 words and 50,000 words? No. Gradually, the stories become more complex. There will be more subplots, more gnarly twists and more of everything. There isn't anything that is radically different. I use the same methods for 100 words as 50,000 words. The latter just takes me longer and ends up more gnarly.

I'd argue that the things which change most between 1000 and 100,000 aren't down to writing. It's those 'transferable skills' teachers always go on about. A longer story needs better time management and motivation. 1000 words could be finished in an evening, but you're going to have to keep writing for weeks (at least) for a novel.

I've seen my writing improve greatly since January (when I decided to make a real effort at getting shorts published). I'm confident that it will help my novel writing skills, because it isn't time management and motivation I need to learn. I need to work on stringing words together in the right order.

This doesn't mean there's anything wrong with seeing them as apples and oranges, but I've seen people discouraged from writing shorts as practise because they're told they won't learn anything. If you think you'll learn something, chances are you will. It's just as valid to view shorts as the juicy little red apples and novels as the ginormous cooking apples. You don't have to have oranges in there.

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* I admit it, I only used that saying so I could put up my photo of apples and oranges. I saw the apple and oranges signs together** and thought "comparing apples and oranges". Since then, I've been looking for an excuse to say it.

** This was in a supermarket. You might think someone taking pictures of the fruit displays would raise some comment, but it didn't.

Short Storyist Diary: Muddy Mires

Time has elapsed, so I'm diarying again. There's not much to say though. My submissions are all stuck in the mire. It looks like a busy time for the magazines, judging by Duotrope's statistics.

I am taking a new direction: I have American stamps in the mail (for the stamped addressed envelopes). So far, I've not submitted to any snail-mail only magazines. It's not a trivial matter when you're in another country. I've chosen a story to make the journey across the ocean in a real and papery way. I hope it doesn't get eaten by a kraken and I look forward to the papery rejection slips. My first!


Un-Loved Markets

I try to link to useful markets, but a few slip through the gaps. These are ones I've submitted to at some point, but I haven't given any link love (either in the diaries or the short story reviews).

Flashshot - A non-paying market which sends out a story each day (100 words or less). The stories are genre (of various kinds, including speculative) and include both light and dark stories. The latest ones can be read on the site, for some idea of what they take.

Ideomancer - This magazine takes stories in these categories: fantasy, science fiction, horror, slipsteam, classic and flash fiction. They pay (yay!) and seem to have wide-ranging tastes.

Strange Horizons and the Holographic Collecting Tin

Strange Horizons is having a fund drive. You can visit them to find out about it and watch the rocket fill up with fund fuel and explode and take the planet with it!*

!! Strange Horizons Fund Drive !!

They're obviously excited about it, from the exclamation marks! And there are other reasons to be excited, because you can win prizes in the prize draw if you donate. They're nifty prizes, like books and stuff. You can also win prizes by linking to them from a blog. I've said before that I'm all for a bit of bribery...

But joking aside, they're a good thing to support if you have some spare cash. They're an online publication for speculative fiction, which pays professional rates to their writers. They don't charge readers. So a bit of donating helps keep them going. If you want to see what you're paying for, you can visit the front page.

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* Possibly a slight exaggeration.

Comparing Avatars

I did the rounds of some online avatar/doll makers. My quest was to make avatars that looked like me. This is exactly* what I look like. My basic criteria are: I should be able to choose body options for a reasonable match (hair, skin and eyes) and find some basic casual clothes.

(* Well, sort of.)

	Candybar Doll Maker Website Elouai.com has a number of doll makers. I used Candybar Doll 2. This doll maker had bucket loads of clothing options. It had no body choice - it's that shape and that skin colour. This seems to be a problem with all their dollmakers. Guys will need to search around on the site, as the male dolls are separate. The adverts were a bit obtrusive. The dolls are cute though and the clothing range is a definite plus.
	South Park Website A generator for avatars in the style of South Park. This isn't the one you'd pick for prettiness, but if you're a fan of the show, knock yourself out.
	Yahoo! Avatars Website This needs a Yahoo account and is used for Yahooish things. It's not a bad doll maker and I like the automatic linking to the Yahoo social sites. There's a decent selection in all the categories (hair, skin, clothes, etc.)
	Lego Avatar Website It isn't easy to make one that looks like you (unless you're a legoman), but you get to have a legoman avatar. How nifty is that?
	Whuddle Website I don't know what Whuddles are, but they're cute and fantasyish. Also, mushrooms.
	Meez.com Website I didn't like the way the characters jittered around like they had a problem. It's enough to drive you sane. I've fixed the jitters in this image. To get the most from this site, you need to sign up. There's some sort of points system to buy special items. The basic items are good enough to make a reasonable likeness.

Conclusions

I like Yahoo best for basic avatars. It's a good all-rounder with a decent range of options. Candybar has far more accessories, but I consider having a few common skin tones as an essential.

Top Five People to Avoid at Parties

If they walk through the door, it's time to leave. Your life might depend on it. In descending order from safest to least safe:

5. Joyce Barnaby ("Midsomer Murders", from books by Caroline Graham): She is the wife of Inspector Barnaby. Each episode, Joyce takes up a new hobby or joins a new social group. Deaths always ensue and Joyce's new hobby is mysteriously connected. When Joyce Barnaby arrives at your village fete or joins your painting group, flee while you still can.

The only thing that keeps her down at five is her restricted area of influence. Stay out of the Midsommer and you're probably safe.

4. Miss Marple (Books by Agatha Cristie): Murders happen near her, but at least you have a good chance of getting away. She can't run too fast at her age.

3. Professor Plum (Cluedo Board Game): He has a shifty look in his eyes. Just look at his card portrait and you'll see. If you're in a house with a library and lead piping, it's time to find a new place to party.

2. Hercule Poirot (Books by Agatha Christie): He is surrounded by murder. Don't invite him to stay. Should he turn up on a ferry or train, you're probably safer jumping off.

1. The Doctor ("Doctor Who"): You might be lucky with the others. Murders happen, but most people survive. Not so with the Doctor. When he attends a party, the host turns into a monster and eats everyone, Daleks invade or you're turned into a Cyber Man. Death happens on a massive scale. Should you decide to stay, remember not to blink.

The Moral: Beware of Agatha Christie and Timelords.