This blog was created with the intention of posting a webcomic. That never happened, because page 2 never got drawn. Instead, I made it into a writing journal, namely, a way to talk about stories I'm writing, to keep a record of various stages of my writing, and to be able to recieve advice from other writers if they should stumble across my LJ here. As yet, that has not happened, but then I've not exactly gone out plugging it or anything up until time of posting (which is not really 2014, as the date at the top of this post suggests, but 2007).

Not everything on here is about writing, however. I intend also to post images I have created, pictures I've drawn and photos of stuff I've made, because, let's face it, everyone likes showing off once in a while and crit is useful for artistic endeavours too. And while I'm at it I may as well shamelessly plug my new Cafepress store, which can be found here. The designs are, so far, about internet humour really, but I intend to have greater variety soon. I've also got a UK-based shop selling many of the same things here.

So, come and have a read, give advice if I ask for it (or even if I don't), ask questions if you want, tell me if you want to read, or better, critique my stuff, and generally enjoy reading my thoughts.

Oh, and if you're interested in reading other writer's blogs, take a look at One Girl's Quest to Kill Trees. She linked me :) and anyway, it's a good read.

I've been ignoring this LJ so much. I'll just take this opportunity, however,t o point out the new avatar I am now boasting. That's right; I've written 50K words in 29 days, 25 and a half hours before the deadline. I'm so happy :)

Ok, I've gotta stop doing that.

I just wrote the start of a post, then noticed I have a new message and like an idiot left-clicked it rather than opening in a new tab, and in doing so lost what I'd written. Ironically, I was writing about the reason I've written nothing for a while. See, about 10 days ago I wrote a scene and then quit without saving by accident, and lost the entire 1000-word scene. It is for this reason that I've not written much. Knowing there's a scene I've written already but which isn't there anymore is rather off-putting. And now I've forgotten how that scene went (and i recall I was quite pleased with it at the time too).

I remember that the scene was about Willenar; only her third scene in the entirity of the story. The scene was an insert; I'd placed it at the start of the battle of Farrekley, where there is a large gap where I need to insert scenes I couldn't be bothered to write during NaNo (I didn't know the characters and thus would have struggled. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

Anyway, yeah. Willenar on the wall across the narrows separating the southern part of Marrak, where the city of Birnaol is, from the central and northern part. She sees Vixen, who really really needs a better name, during this scene. I also used the scene to describe from Will's POV what's going on in the south during the battle of Farrekley. Birnaol is getting cautious, and refugees see the southern Peloponnese-like region as a safe haven.

The other scenes I need to write which occur at approximately the same time are those that describe the actually battle of Farrekley. It's a big city, with a wall all around it more for the sake of appearance than actual defense. The wall around the palace is sturdier, having been built at a much earlier time before the Marrakans had complete control of the southern half of Ishtu. It occupies a hill overlooking a river, which runs north-west to east to the north of the palace. There are two Marrakan characters, the son and daughter of Councillor Darfe, who fight in the city's defence. They are not trained as soldiers, but both are strong; their father is a retired blacksmith and they both know the trade. I also have a character whose name I can't remember. He's a Kithem fighting for the Tengrashis, and has the rank of captain. He doesn't know that the Marrkan Queen Oradis is the same person as his fiancee, Susel, but he knows that Susel is working undercover in Farrekley and as such is less eager than a good Tengrashi officer should be. I'm considering writing from the POV of him and his subordinates for some of the battle scenes, and may try to insert other scenes involving him in earlier too.

I've also got a much more concrete sequel than I had before. In my previous post, I made mention of a "potential sequel" which I wanted certain characters alive for. I now have five new characters for this, who arrive by ship and therefore are of a completely different culture to those on Ishtu. There are also a few other characters on the ship who I have not yet explored properly yet, and have not named. I believe the gist of the plot to be that there is a political coup in Deolhern after Sathura and his clerk Jes vanish (they go to Kithem). Sathura's wives and all but one of his sons are murdered, and one of his lords takes over. In the far south, no-one hears about this until long after the last of the Marrakans have been killed or enslaved by Skeab and his army. The new ruler, Fettem, sends immediately to Skeab demanding loyalty; he knows the army is a powerful tool in politics, and builds an army for himself by conscripting every able-bodied man in Deolhern.

In the meantime, Sathura's son is hiding out somewhere (I've not worked out where yet) and over in Kithem the whole place is in uproar as they wonder what to do. Sathura, locked up in a cell, is completely unaware of the coup. It is at this point that the ship arrives with my five plus characters aboard. Four of those five characters are immortal; the other is mortal, a bounty hunter who was aboard the ship against her will. They have come from the same country the Marrakans originally came from some 300 years previously. The king who they named themselves after died within months of their departure, but they never found out, because no ships ever made the journey between Kentek and Ishtu more than twice (ie, there and back; they never returned to Ishtu, due to civil war in Kentek). Anyway. So the ship is from Kentek, and because the Marrakans came from there they all speak the same language (cop out? A little. But it works.) The immortal characters have issue with the guys on the ship, who abandonned them on shore about two miles north of Kithem, where the ship later dropped anchor. Anyway, the immortal characters discover the presence of Sathura and Jes, and at the same time the people on the ship convince the Kithem that slavery is long gone in Kentak .

That's about as much as I have. My immortal characters become the focus of this story, but it still contains characters from Discord's Secret quite prominently, such as Oradis, Jilta, Tem, Sathura and of course Sathura's son, who has a name somewhere.

Anyway, it's like nearly midnight and I should go to sleep now.

Wow. Look at that. I've not posted in a while.

For the record, I finished NaNo with about 29K words. Since then, mainly in the last 10 days, I've written a further 4000.

I've obviously progressed quite a bit since my last post. The story is realy starting to come together. But during NaNo I cheated: I skipped over a section that needs to be written because i didn't know how to write it and I didn't know the characters at the time. I still don't, since I created those particular characters for the purpose of illustrating the big battle, and to give their elderly father a motive for something later on.

However, going back to that section I've realised a few other scenes I also need to write. The so far barely mentioned Willenar, who is supposed to be a major character, has another few scenes including one where she meets another of the characters, Vixen, and forms the plan which eventually leads to the confrontation between her and Tem.

I've given Tem a friend too. Shef guarded Tem's cell quite often during his stay in the palace, and his mum is one of the Council, who is also a new character this draft. He's younger than Tem, about 17, and is starting to understand the meaning of teh word "independance", having previously depended entirely on his mum and what she said (I have quite a few points where he says things like "That woman's a right crow, my mum says.") So as part of his growing independance he realises he doesn't have to stick around with his mum all the time, and when Tem leaves the group Shef goes with him. This fact I'll use later on during the confrontation between Tem and Willenar in order that Will doesn't kill Tem on sight. Which, let's be honest, is precisely what she would do.

I'm still undecided about the fate of Willenar. Now that I've had the opportunity to develop her a bit more, I'm more inclined to the "not kill her" path, but the reason I wanted to kill her was partly because my fiancee thinks she's a dick (which she isn't, especially now; she just was in the one scene Matt had actually read) and partly to make Tem a more tragic figure, which I no longer wish to do to such a great extent. Instead I was considering making it so that Tem never finds out whether Willenar survives or not, because he gets arrested and sent back to Deolhern, the Tengrashi capital where the Emperor Sathura is believed to be by the general.

Sathura always was going to be quite a tragic character, right from the moment I decided his daughter (now with a name! Buy now while stocks last!) would die. He has the added bonus of having a greater (metaphorical) height to fall from than Tem, who starts out as nothing more than an average solider, and thus Sathura's tragedy is far more traditional, more classical. Thus for Tem to suffer too much emotionly might be overkill in terms of tragic Tengrashis.

This is also the reason I decided Kioldo wouldn't die.

However, this leaves me in an awkward situation. No-one major is going to die, and that's just too unlikely. Thus either I introduce characters with the intention of killing them off, go back in the edit and give names to minor characters who I know are going to die at a particular event and build them up a bit before they die, or kill off existing characters who are already pretty major players but not one of my original main cast, ie Oradis, Tem, Sathura, Willenar, Kioldo, Vixen (who really needs a name change) and Caeros. This leaves quite a few paths open.

There's Shef, who could quite easily be killed in the battle that ends the war at the hastily-contructed Wall from Sea to Sea. However, I don't think he'll be at that battle, since he'll go with Tem when they discover Oradis has been captured and as a result will either A get killed at the palace or B return with the escapees to Kithem. But I quite like Shef, and if he lives but either doesn't know where his mum is (if she's sold into slavery) or knows she's dead (if she's killed) he could develop in quite interesting ways in the potential sequel.

Cerwora, Shef's mum, is a Councillor to the Queen and is with Oradis when she's captured. So either Cerwora gets killed then or later, or she gets sold into slavery, or she stays at the palace long enough to be rescued and then goes back to Kithem.

Darfe is a much older Councillor to the Queen and could easily die of natural causes or be killed at the battle on the Wall from Sea to Sea. I think he's dead, then.

Jilta is similar to Darfe, but she's also wily, and would find some way to be away from the Wall when the fighting gets too intense for her. She's too useful as a potential stick-in-the-mud for a potential sequel, so I think I'll keep her alive.

Herthin, the general, is likely to be killed as an example by Sathura upon his capture with Oradis. He plays quite a major role politically, but doesn't have that many scenes, so is perfect for public execution in Deolhern.

There are others, but I can't remember their names and it's quite late and I have a 10am lecture tomorrow. So I'm off to bed and will think about this further tomorrow. Or today, as it actually is. Oh dear.

Well. Today has been productive so far. I had a Greek language seminar and an Archaeology tutorial, both of which had homework due which I hadn't done when I left from the bus stop this morning. I looked at the Greek homework upon arriving at Uni and immediately gave up; twenty minutes was not enough to do that much work in. Instead I read the reading for the seminar, a document of some 10,000 words on Britain and Ireland in the Mesolithic. By the start of the tutorial I'd not finished reading it and that much of it I had read, I hadn't taken in. So along with the others, including, surprisingly, a girl from the year below at my school who hadn't come to any of the other tutorials, I went into the seminar room.

And waited.

After an hour and a bit of reading stuff about shell middens and cremations and axes, the tutor never even turned up. Didn't even warn us, I checked my emails just now. But what's worse is that I missed the start of lecture he took on Monday morning (thank, Arriva, you really know what you're doing with that student bus service), and intended to ask him about it in the tutorial. Instead I now have to seek him out tomorrow to get the stuff I missed.

Ah well. At least the Greek tutor didn't ask for the homework in today, so I've got til Friday.

But to be honest I've never really cared about Halloween. What's really on my mind is two other events. One is the due date of a 1000-word essay for Ancient History, which shouldn't be too hard, and the other is the start of NaNo, both of which coincidentally fall on the same day, Thursday November 1st.

The essay is about the events of Thermopylae, and because of the hype over 300 over the past months I thought I'd mention it. I've neither seen the film not read the comic the film is based on, not because I don't want to but because I have yet to get hold of the comic without paying any actual money, and I want to read it before I see the film (I have a book-before-film policy when films are based on books). Instead I have read Herodotus, our main source on the subject. I should point out at this stage that I have not in fact begun writing the essay, nor even selected which of the three essay titles I will write about. I have three hours spare tomorrow between lectures and will make use of them by planning my essay (that's two days before the due date; a day earlier than with the book review I handed in this morning, which I began about 10pm last night.)

NaNo, however, is a completely different kettle of fish. Unlike my essays I can't leave stuff to the last minute, because I'd need fifty times as many last minutes. It's a Marathon, not a sprint, and I expect to have a hard time setting a good pace, at least at first.

What I really need to do is get the plot straight before attempting to write it, and get to know my characters some more. The four main characters are fine; I assigned them each to one of the four elements ages ago, more as a memory exercise for my own benefit than as a running theme, and have since developed each character further based on those notes and previously written prose.

In this way my favourite, the outlaw Tem, is water; Oradis, the Queen of Marrak, is earth; Sathura, the Emperor of Tengranash, is air and Willenar, whose "profession" is harder to pin down, is fire. Willenar certainly needs some tweaking, but I think I've got the others down nicely, Sathura especially. In early drafts he was a definite villain; for NaNo he is ten years older than he used to be and has several wives and children, and is less of a bad guy as just a ruler trying to balance responsibilities of country and family and live comfortably while he's at it.

The less main characters are still a thorn in my side though, and I reckon I'll have to work those through during NaNo cause I'll be too busy catching up on Uni work tomorrow and Wednesday to think about it much.

There's Kioldo, an orphan who was brought up from the age of 7 at an abbey and is now a monk-in-training; tradition dictates that on his 17th birthday he leaves the abbey to travel for a year, generally blessing crops and cattle and stuff (the gods his sect worship are all related to farming), but he is expected also to study human behaviour and draw conclusions on the nature of the world and the best ways he, personally, can serve his gods. He's pretty racist towards Marrakans, but then that's just the social environment the entire population of both Tengranash and Marrak grow up in; they are rival countries which until recently were merely wary of each other with the occasional border raid to capture food, goods and slaves. As the time the story begins the two countries have been engaged in open warfare for several years. Beyond a mixture of humility with reagards his gods and a typically teenage arrogance towards other humans, and the racial prejudice thing, he's not actually got much in the way of characterisation, though I find writing about characters in a blog or Word file useful to sorting out such details. Unfortunately I have to go shortly, and will therefore briefly mention some of the other characters I'm having trouble with rather than go on about Kioldo.

Skeab is a general in Sathura's army. He doesn't actually feature much as a character, but is mentioned by other characters a few times. He appears more in the latter chapters of the story, mainly because he's doing more stuff relevant to the plot, and appears in particular in a very late scene where he shows compassion to people who are strictly speaking enemies. That's really all I have on him at the moment, except that his name used to be Sleac but when I was writing on my phone, using predictive text, it came out as Skeab instead and I liked the sound of it more (goodness knows why skeab is in my phone's predictive text dictionary though).

Vixen is a Tengrashi living in Marrak. She was a slave, but escaped, keeping the name given to her as a slave as she doesn't remember her name before that (she was captured age 6 and is now about 14 or 15) She doesn't want to return to Tengranash, partly out of fear of being captured at the border, and partly because she isn't used to it, so instead disguises herself, covering her ginger hair with a scarf or hat, and pretends to be a normal poor Marrakan city kid, at which she mostly manages okay. However, in order to maintain her disguise and out of fear of discovery she acts more anti-Tengranash then most Marrakans and anyway is pretty ruthless as a character.

There are three other charatcers I can think of as promient at this time, all connected to Oradis. One is her brother, who is a messenger (Oradis herself was elected into power, and her brother is not known by others as her brother.) Another is her personal servant, with whom she is good friends, but I haven't decided on this girls name, or whether she is older, younger, or similar in age to Oradis (who is 27). The third is Oradis' advisor. Of course, she would have many, all of whom are members of the Council of the Marrakan Government, a body of about 60 people prominent in their own professions, nominated and elected to the position on a ten-year basis, who subsequently nominate and elect the Monarch, who will hold that position for a period of four years. Oradis is currently a little over three years into her term, and besides which was an unexpected nomination (the nomination usually is a non-council prominent citizen; she was a servant to one of the council members at the time), and as such some of the council see her as a stand-in until the next Monarch is elected; nominations for the next Monarch can be submitted from the Marrakan New Year (which is in spring) until Midsummer and the election takes place at Midwinter, and the second scene is the New Year festivities. Anyway, I'm waffling on a bit. I need to get characters for at least three or four of the Council, at least one of which must be well developed enough to be a secondary character.

Anyway, I need to head off now, but writing this stuff has helped me sort a few things out in my head and I will definitely have to add to this and work through these characters more thoroughtly later on.

I'm utterly mad. Let's get that on record at the outset. The reason? I've decided to attempt NaNoWriMo*. That's 50,000 words in a month. Ouch. But wait, that's not just 50,000 words in a month, that's 50,000 words in a month while I'm also busy writing 2000 word essays for uni, which must be word perfect and edited.

Ok, so that just means I write 50,000 words on my novel and about 6,000 words for various essays and such, right? It's not that much more, surely? Wrong. What I perceive to be the hard part here is not the volume of words, but the editing. In order to write 50K words in 30 days I must squash my inner editor, ignore her, pay no heed to that little voice that says "What you just wrote is crap. Delete the whole scene and start again, biatch." I can do that, just about, if I keep my mind focussed. But here's the problem. For my assignments, at least two of which are assessed and count for, respectively, 40% and 50% of the final grade for the two modules in question, I must pay attention to my inner editor. I must plan carefully. Paragraphs must flow. There can be no typos. Sentences must make sense. My argument must be clear and balanced and well constructed.

So while on one hand I'm writing large quantity and not bothering about the quality, because that can come later, on the other hand I've got several small quantity, incredibly high quality essays to write. I can just see it now: handing in an essay not worth the paper it's printed on while one scene of my story is fully edited and perfect. Or witing into the night working on my story when reall I desperately need to get my essay completed. Spending all Sunday deleting sentences, rearranging them, editing them, so find that somehow Herodotus or Themistocles has suddenly become a character in my book, not a point of reference for my Greek history essay; or, worse, to find the names of my characters in place of those of Heinrich Schlieman, Pitt-Rivers, John Aubrey or Darwin; or even to find I'm suddenly writing my story in the ancient Greek alphabet (with correct word endings approriate to gender, number, declension and case, argh!)

Perhaps I'm going a bit over the top here, but my point is this: I'm worried about mixing up two different styles and purposes of writing. The one is fiction, written quickly and with no thought to quality and every to quantity. The other is non-fiction, written taking into account a carefully constructed plan and written with the intention of making it is high a quality as possible before the Monday 5pm deadline.


Earlier I said it's not the volume of words I need for NaNo that worries me. While it's less of a concern than differenciation between my two, for want of a better word, projects, writing that much in a month still scares the hell out of me.

My main problem here is that I've never written so much so quickly before. The best I ever managed was 30K words, one April Fools, and I set that goal myself in the knowledge that it would be a challenge and was as likely to fail as to win. A more recent AF I set the same goal and wrote half. So what I have before me is 20,000 words more to write in the month than I've ever managed before, combined with the fact that I've barely written five thousand words in the last 6 months, let alone fifty thousand. What's more is I attempted the 24 hour comic on Saturday and failed miserably, giving up after just 6 hours and 7 pencilled pages.

And yet I can't back out now, because I've said I will attempt it and I've told people I will and besides I want to win and I want to get back into writing but I just can't seem to see how the hell I'm going to actually get to that hallowed 50,000 word target. Breaking it down into 1667 words a day helps a little, but then I think, hold on, that's 4 pages a day. Can I really write that much every single day for a month?

I guess I'll have to.

Here's to success, and the fervent hope I'll have some.

And here's to all the previous NaNo winners, and also to those crazies who set and achieved targets of 100K or more words in April Fools. You guys are an inspiration.


*NaNoWriMo, for those who don't know, is short for National Novel Writing Month, the idea being to write 50K words on a novel in the month of November. Click here for their website.

I have spent much of today reading Robin Hobb's The Golden Fool, book two in the Tawny Man trilogy. And in some ways it has made me despair, because her writing is so darned good, her plot so cleverly woven, her characters so complete. I read the smoothly flowing scenes and wonder if anything my foolish hands can type or pen will ever be so much as a quarter of Hobb's incredible skill. Such thought I occasionally have while reading Pratchett, too.

I wonder what it is I am lacking. Is it the years of experience both writers have over me? Is it nothing to do with time and more to do with study of humans and humanity? Is it that they have spent time and effort in researching and observing, watching and listening, that I have so far done little of? Is it obvious, what I have not seen, that people react in particular ways?

I read of Sam Vimes and FitzChivalry Farseer and Susan Sto Helit and Althea Vestrit and the Fool and Carrot and Rincewind and all of them, and of course I know real people with different personalities. I see how my brother acts different around friends than he does around me. I know how things people say and do affect my own thoughts and reactions. Yet I find it difficult conveying any truly human character when I write.

I wrote a fanfiction recently, or rather, part of one. It was based around the Tribe season 1, which I had stumbled upon after years. I inserted a character into it, who was based largely on me, and even then I had great difficulty making her, or any other character, seem real. The closest I could get to even writing a character as they appeared in the series was Jack, and more because of his nervousness and speech impediment and the fact that of all the characters I remembered him the best from when I watched the show on TV many years ago. The next closest I got was Lex, but then I see him now as quite a shallow character, as much, I think, as a result of poor characterisation as because his character is written to be one-sided and manipulative. Even with a fanfiction, where I did not have to conjure up any more characters than the one I inserted, I found creating a character-driven plot difficult. Perhaps I based my fanfic too closely on the events of the first half of season one which I changed, rather than the way the characters reacted. I wanted to plot to move a certain way, though I knew I was pushing certain barriers which I knew even then were stretching the characters beyond their personalities in the series.

What I'm trying to convey is this: I am confused. I don't know whether to give in to my semi-romantic wanderings (and I mean that not in terms of love-romance, but in the way that pirates and highwaymen and Robin Hood are romantic), or to let the characters pick their own path, which in my experience have resulted in dead ends and abandonned manuscripts.

I try to build up characters. I try to make them real. And then I try to bend them against that which makes them real to satisfy my own yearning for the story. It is too long and complicated to give an example of this, and besides I am tired, but my romanticising has gone far beyond changing just one element of the plot to include what I have always called in my head the "mercy factor" - when one likeable character had opportunity and reason to kill another likeable character but did not. It's the reason the third Harry Potter book has always been my favourite of the seven; why of all the David Gemmell books I own, Hero in the Shadows, featuring the character Waylander, is the one I have always gone back to (and indeed features in one of my art A-level coursework pieces). It is why I squee and grin foolishly and clutch my squirming hands under my chin at films in which such a scene appears. It is part of the reason I like the (now complete) webcomic Inverloch by Sarah Ellerton (www.seraph-inn.com) so much. And so too do I love to write such scenes, and especially to start with them, and I plan for them later in the story and work out which characters and how, and add characters to make more such scenes possible when in reality all I am doing is making the story one long stream of mercy factor scenes and build-ups and hints of more to come, which while being what I enjoy writing, what I thrive upon, is diminishing the story and demeaning the characters I had built up.

Is it something lacking in me, that I try to create such situations for my characters? Am I a lost cause to sensible and logical writing, unable after so long to backtrack to more simple observations of true humanity, rather than my own romantic dreaming? I know how clichéd the mercy factor scenes I push for are, and yet even that does not stop me. Yet clichéd they are, for why would someone spare another's life in such situations as I have put them: in one, the character threatened has killed friends and comrades of the other, has himself injured her, and besides that is of the country at war with her's. She has caught him sneaking around where he should not be, yet allows him time enough to explain, apologise, flatter and convince her, and finally she spares him, slightly resentfully, and very much against her character - normally she is impulsive, quick to anger and to act, and slow to listen or to consider what is right and what is wise. Yet in this situation her adversary's words get through to her as those of her friends and family never did, and she listens and does what is right rather than what she desires. Can such a thing be explained away by implying she has changed, or acts differently around this other character? Does it deserve such treatment?

Would it, then, be better to forget for now the entire story and begin anew, from the very beginning. Can I, should I, unlearn what I already consider is right and relearn how to create a character, and how a plot is formed? Is it better to let this story finally lay to rest after two years of prodding and poking, and work on something completely new? Instead should I foresake writing anything of any length for the time being, as I begin my studies at university, and instead concentrate on that, on real life and real people instead of a world I have created and characters I build only to alter and put into the situations I dream about?

I have now been writing this post for well over an hour. Allowing my thoughts to flow freely in this manner has been liberating, but also sobering. It began with the simple issue of creating believable characters, and turned into a question I must ask myself: is it worth creating believable characters if I force them into situations in which I make them act out of character? I know I have always had the ambition to ber published, yet now I realise that something so lofty comes only with writing deserving of it, and mine certainly isn't. Is it, then, worth continuing for my own enjoyment when I know it will come to nothing, and the enjoyment eventually diminish because of that, or should I stop before such becomes too painful and put the same passion into something else: my university studies, perhaps, or some other hobby?

I know I spend too much time day dreaming. I always have. Even when my mind was not on a specific story I was writing, I fantacised about situtions in my own life which I know would never happen. Celebrities I had crushes on being suddenly and inexplicably wanted by the police and for no better reason than that I had written a fan letter, coming to me for shelter. People from the past appearing, confused and out of place, near my home, and I emplaining to such a person about cars and planes and TVs, and hearing about thousand-year-old legends as recent news or the gossip of a long dead King's court. Situations in which I was on the run, and working out where I could hide, how I could prevent authorities from discovering my whereabouts, how I would survive. I put myself into TV shows - Prison Break, for one - and told the characters, as if they were real people, things which seemed so obvious to me, who had seen the other side of the show, the bit outside Fox River because that was how the thing was written. And yet all too often I put myself in situations and imagined myself doing things I would never truly do. If confronted with a strange man speaking old English and wearing strange clothes I am more likely to look strangely at him and hurry away than talk to him and introduce to him the world he had stepped into. When my parents are away, as they are now, I imagine plane crashes and terrorist attacks and natural disasters which result in their deaths, and allow myself to get worked up, as even now, typing such a thing, gets me upset, imagining life without them. I wonder how other negative things, less tragic, would affect me: if a burglar entered my house, if I was involved in a car crash, if I was arrested because my fingerprints were somewhere (fingerprints which theorettically are no longer in the police database - they were taken months ago when the cafe I worked in was broken into, and I was promised they would be removed within three months). And I let myself get stressed, and upset, and am thereafter withdrawn and restless.

And now it is 11:20 at night, and I have made myself feel ill and unhappy once again. I am certain I will not sleep for another hour at least, and even then only after completing the book I am reading. My bedroom, so small when I moved into it from a larger room, now feels to large. And in truth it is, compared to my boyfriend's bedroom, and those of my closest friends. But somehow, dispite the clutter and the mess and how I have covered my walls and filled my room with my computer desk and my bookshelf, it seems so large and empty as it never did before, and I so lonely in it while my parents are so far away, and my boyfriend today so busy getting ready for uni, as I should have been today too.

Now I just feel emo, and there's no excuse for it. It's my own fault I have not attempted any social contact today, not even to eat supper with my brother or turn on the radio.

I don't know why I still write, so late into the night, when all thoughts have turned from writing to self pity and self loathing. I will stop now.

On one hand, I've been procrastinating. On the other, I really have been busy. I made a cake for Talk Like A  Pirate Day, and another cake for a friend. I've been cooking for myself and my little brother, who, though 16, can't cook for crap. Seriously. The pasta he made the other night was a little hard, and he got ill after making a pizza a few nights before - pizza base ready made, just add toppings. Mine was fine... The next meal he makes for the two of us is Heinz tomato soup with bread. The bread I bought today. The soup is in can form. He shouldn't be able to mess it up.

Anyway, I digress. On one hand, busy busy busy. On the other, I haven't tries to find time to write because I'm worried about scene 5. As I mentioned previously, I've had trouble with it before, but it is a necessary scene. So, rather than write it and once again be disappointed, I've been putting it off. Spending time reading, playing games, cooking, baking, socialising, rather than writing.

I feel that part of the problem is that I am not confident with the character. He is under developped. In scene 5 he is excited and nervous. In a later scene, when travelling with an ally, the pair are confronted by a small group of enemies. Unable to fight himself because he was never trained and anyway he's a monk, he nevertheless encourages his companion to fight and kill the enemies and gets annoyed when the man drops his sword and surrenders. Kioldo, the monk, is young and has very little experience outside the monastry he has lived in since the age of 7. He, like all the other novices in the monastry, has been taught that the people of his own country are superior to those of the enemy country, Marrak, and this in part is reason for his reaction. However his other experiences at the monastry conflict with the way he reacts to the Marrakan patrol - counsel from his teachers to be patient and calm in all dealings, to listen and observe and accept the greater experience of others in situations he is unfamiliar with.

Should I, then, build it into his character that he was somewhat of a trouble-maker among the novices, though in such a way that the older monks were unaware? Should I make him humble and accepting of his companion's reaction to the Marrakans in line with the advice he has recieved from the monks before leaving the monastry for a year to become a journeyman monk (the idea behind which being that he is aware of what he would be giving up were he to become ordained as a monk before it is too late), or should I leave the reaction to the Marrakans, the hatred that all young men in the country would have to them, and bring out a less pleasant, impatient, impulsive and judgemental side to him?

To be fair, I know I should have worked on Kioldo's characterisation before now. I've got full characterisations on the four main characters of the story, and vague ideas about a few others, but Kioldo has escaped me. And I haven't quite figured out what happens to him later on. I have three, maybe four definite scenes in which he appears, but which don't go very far into the story, and after that I have a vague idea of where he is, but he doesn't feature much in the way of moving the story forward, instead more tagging along with what others are doing. Making up the numbers, essentially.

So my options are thus:
1. Scrap him entirely. Remove him from the story and work around the gap left, which is only of any inconvenience towards the start of the story. I would need to find another way to bring two characters together, which could prove difficult, but another, later scene would be easier as a result of Kioldo's absence.

2. Build him up, work him out, and act accordingly, but keep him in. This could enther be as the nervous, uncertain youth who has lef the comfort and routine of  holy life to experience a world far too big for him, or as a curious, excited and self-confident young man eager to learn about the wider world but without the experience of others his age to draw on around those very different from his teachers and peers at the monastry. Essentially, is he cowed or enthused by the new freedoms, experiences and responsibilites in his life?

3. Work him out briefly, so he has sufficient character to be more than a cardboard cut-out., but then kill him off some time after his last useful scene. This would feel a little like a cop-out, and I may have trouble getting him out of the way early enough that other minor problems are resolved.

Scene 4 was tricky. I wasn't happy with the first version of it, so I deleted it, put Keane on, and started again. I think it's better now, but not great. Scene 5 is going to be tricky. It never worked very well in previous drafts, but without it a later scene doesn't really make much sense. Several later scenes, in fact. I think I'll concentrate on the character's nervousness and excitement. Then scene 6 is introducing Oradis properly, receiving reports from the border and deciding to travel to Tinnak Fortress, which is important because she needs to be there.

I need to start making a database of where each character is at various points in the story. And I need to find my old notebooks with previous drafts of this story in. Draft 7b is incomplete, and that's typed from draft 7, which I was writing by hand last year during the summer holiday, I think. Which means it's probably on loose paper but might not be. Dang.

I have just seen the funniest non-comedy action film ever. It goes by the name of Shoot Em Up, and stars Clive Owen as a hot-shot tramp. If ever you feel like watching a film in which a baby is delivered incredibly quickly in the middle of a gunfight (by one of the participants of the gun fight), and carrots are used as deadly weapons, this is the film you want. If you want something with a good story, smooth action and great explosions, go watch something else, because Shoot Em Up has about as much depth as a puddle of water in midsummer in the Sahara.

Wow, that last post was a long time ago. Princess Fall is long gone now, but I'm back working on the unnamed one from 2005. The characters have more personality. Sathura's more likable, and more three dimensional. So, ok, I've only written three scenes so far, but with those three scenes I've introduced the four main characters (well, kinda - the two men far more than the two women), got the thing started, and progressed it from late winter, which is the first scene, through the Marrakan New Year, scene two, to mid/late spring when the action really starts to get going properly.

I've improved scene 1, which has been essentially the same scene since about draft three, added scene 2 entirely to introduce a different character and give the first glimpse of Oradis, and majorly changed scene 3 from a boring board-room style meeting to a discussion between Sathura and his personal clerk, who is a rather odd chap with a winning poker face and a talent for imitation. I'm quite happy with how it turned out, even if it was a bit Pratchetty. It gives a good impression of the relationship between Sathura and his daughter. And I know what scene 4 is going to be. I'm concentrating on Tem's reaction to an event rather than the event itself, and I think it'll work out well.

As for comic projects, I'm drawing a comic for someone else now. It's easier not having to worry about the writing, but it still takes up an awful lot of time. I'll see if I can work it out more easily with the new markers I bought today. Shading with lines uing my ruler takes a gazillion years.

Damned writers' block.

No, that's not right. I don't really have writers' block. What I have is a severe case of procrastination.

I should have vacuumed the house and washed the floors and tidied my room and whatnot today. What did I do? I made coffee for the gardener and picked Matt up from his exam. I worked on a short story for the benefit of someone else I don't really know very well, due to the internet, and I watched various crappy children's cartoons on alluc.com or org or whatever.

I figure one of the best ways to get stuff written down is just to sit down and write. Problem with that is my in-built laziness, procrastination, and a steady decrease in enthusiasm for the various projects I've begun and not completed.

I drew one page of Banana Souffle before that was forgotten. I drew one page of Captain Elfbeard before that was put on hold. I've written less than 13K on Princess Fall and now that's added to the pile. Knowles Citadel is left in the orbit of unfinished planet. Sysona Legend probably won't even be finished, despite my hopes of Elfkin turning it into a 20-30 page comic for her portfolio of illustrations. Fugitive and Raspberry is unlikely to see a computer screen and Provost Marshall probably won't even leave the prison of my notebook.

Oh yeah, and I've not done Brain Training, Latin or Spanish for several days. And I've still not read my Archaeology magazine that arrived in the post two weeks ago. Let's all play watch my brain deteriorate.

Yay, I have commitment, honest. But right now, I'm just sick and tired of the same things every day.

The thing I've felt most proud of today? That'd be filling a small plastic bowl with raspberries from the brambles in the garden, then washing them and putting them in the freezer. Maybe because it's an accomplishment - something completed. Maybe because picking raspberries is a summer thing full of fond memories (and yes, I understand the irony that it's Midsummer's Day and there's been little but floods all over the news for days). Maybe because it was unselfish.

It comes to something when the only real accomplishment I've got from an entire week is picking raspberries for ten minutes.

Well, there I go. I started this post with the intention of writing about various creative endeavours, because that usually helps.

Ok then. Princess Fall. Stupid title, but it's only there until I get something better than April Fools Story 2007, because that's even worse, especially since it's now June. Title aside, there remain problems. Namely, writing the boring bits between where I am and where I want to be.

In my last novel (which was never completed, not one of the eight or nine drafts), I ended up writing the fun bits before getting very far into the plot. I knew pretty much how things would happen in the story, and after the first few scenes just jumped to the fun bits. Oradis and Tem in Farrekley. Willenar and Vixen and Tem in the woods running from the Tengrashi army. Tem and Willenar arguing. Willenar trying to kill Tem. Tem arriving at the Marrakan base as a Tengrashi messenger and finding Willenar there. The Tengrashi attack on the Keep and Tem's berserk fighting in the hope of saving Willenar. All that nonsense. And Oradis was supposed to be the main character. I mean, while all the stuff with Tem is going on, she's getting captured by Sathura, escapes, goes back to Kithem, and then, well, does stuff for a bit, helping Kithem out with their whole hiding a country thing, then confronts Sathura when he turns up after his favourite daughter dies of some disease or other and tells him to stop the war on her deathbed, and he tries to make peace with the Kithem and Oradis. Or something.

The point is, I wrote the fun bits instead of the necessary bits. I wrote what I felt like, which was a load of soppy twaddle, rather than writing the story.

And so once again with Princess Fall I'm stuck on a rather uninteresting scene which quite frankly should be cut right out now, not continued, when what I want to write about is when the hidden outlaw village is destroyed and when Dano helps Mos escape and when the surviving outlaws attack the palace and Dano gets captured by Iandray, his soon-to-be stepfather who he has met once before. I don't want to write a load of semi-interesting stuff about Mos learning to new type of magic and Turi killing various members of the Royal family and Eresik posting letters written on leather with a red-hot metal skewer and Dano leading his people to the outlaw village to live there. I mean, the entirity of the story works, I'm just not motivated to write it. Telling myself that I can write the fun bits when I've written the less fun bits doesn't work because the fun bits are too few and far between and I'd just cheat anyway and besides by the time I get there all to often they're less fun that I'd imagined because I don't get to write them as ridiculously cliched as my mind romanticises.

It's so hard to stay fired up about a project for long any more. And I begin to wonder, how long will it take before I get bored of university? After all the work I put into getting there, getting the grades, securing my loans, not to mention the visitor days and the UCAS forms and the prospectuses (prospecti?) and all that lot. Will I procrastinate and be lazy just like I've been the last few weeks?

I'm beginning to think I shouldn't have taken a gap year.

And then I wonder how long Matt and I would have lasted if I went off to university three months after we got together.

Well, I chose what I chose. Now I have to get out of the habit of laziness and get busy again.