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darlingdeathbird
darlingdeathbird
21 April 2014 @ 08:25 am
Jennifer needs to vent.  
Hello, brain?

MAKE UP YOUR MIND.

We are not going to do this tango where you write half a page of your novel and then think you're "done", and then you go and think to yourself "I must figure out how to download Adobe Premiere for real this time", and then suddenly you are conspiring to create episode photosets for AIW.

First of all, tumblr is off limits to begin with. Every time you are on that site, you turn into a pathetic, drooling, page-refreshing note-douche. Note-douche is the word I'm making up on the spot to describe people who are way too happy when people give them attention. You are going to learn to get no attention and be happy that way, J. :D

Besides, you only got to Act III of A Midsummer Night's Dream when you should have read it all by now, and you should have finished CH5 of your novel. It really doesn't even make sense that you haven't finished it since the only scene left is arguably the most interesting. You're only introducing a new character that will be there for the rest of the story...

How can somebody spend so much time thinking about doing things without doing any of them?! If only I could submit myself to an MRI or something. "Patient is always wanting to get things done, and she has many thoughts on how she would do them, but when she walks through the door all she does is take off her pants and play the Sims. Could she have a tumor?"

Okay, I have just now decided on something. By the end of the month, I will have HT's first 6 chapters finished, up until their first meeting. And there it shall be, and I can begin to edit them with my new criticisms. Then I can replot the first draft's ch14-28.

And the lovely thing about the first draft's ch14-28 is that they will not translate over as 15 chapters. They will be more like 5-6 chapters. Nobody probably is keeping track of this but me, but I am successfully shrinking the story down without losing development. I consider there to be four arcs in HT (the first is her introduction and getting to know him without meeting him, the second is meeting and clashing with him until he has convinced her he is what she wants, the third is when she alienates herself from everyone, the fourth is when she realizes she's made a mistake.) The first arc, in draft one, was 13 chapters/70 pages. The first arc in draft two is looking like it will be 6-7 chapters and 55 pages. The second arc, in draft one, is 15 chapters/almost 100 pages. Almost 100 pages! That is absurd. So if it will be 5-6 chapters instead... :D

I'm particularly happy that the second arc will be so much shorter because that was the section of the story in which I got far too content stretching out their arguments and realizations about how different they are from the other... And Lily just takes eons to realize she still likes him when it's not as if he's actively convincing her she should like him. He's just a run of the mill psychopath who has a messy amateur plan about winning her affections. Thank goodness nobody will ever have to read that shit again.

Okay, time for work.
 
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cloudsinvenice[personal profile] cloudsinvenice on April 22nd, 2014 12:48 pm (UTC)
Oh my god, I have been that note-douche. And the insidious thing about it is that it's never the thing you THINK will get a ton of notes that actually gets attention; that thing will languish while something you never thought would attract notice blows up six months later. The ways of Tumblr are mysterious and unknowable.

How can somebody spend so much time thinking about doing things without doing any of them?!

THAT IS THE GREAT UNANSWERED QUESTION OF MY LIFE.

Seriously, I've been thinking about this a lot lately, in particular. I've learned that there are times when I get a hyperactive feeling of OMG I WANT TO DISCUSS THINGS/MAKE ZINES/DO MIX CDS/I HAVE THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS AMAZING MUSIC/WHATEVER IS MOST APPEALING TO ME AT THE TIME, and that what I have to do the second I feel that enthused and zingy is to get the hell straight to my novel draft and pour that energy in there. Because I've never been one of those writers who is Driven To Write Every Waking Hour, and I feel bad about that, but I'm starting to learn that it's my unfocused impulses that I have to throw at writing even if I have something different in mind. And today I did that and nearly doubled my usual daily word count. :D

I am successfully shrinking the story down without losing development

And that, right there, is the holy grail. It sounds like you're getting real satisfaction out of distilling it for the new draft. :)

[identity profile] ladybows-fs.livejournal.com on April 22nd, 2014 05:09 pm (UTC)
Right, right?! I don't know if you're like me, but I think the reason I'm not always writing (and drawing, another thing I used to love to do all the time) is because I've lost most of my attention span and my motivation. Every time I go outside, I'm exhausted by everything and have to burrow in my apartment and "recuperate" by doing mindless things. I've wondered if anti-depressants would help me, but I have no money to check into that. But yeah, I do the same thing - if I'm bouncing off the walls, I'm like "okay, by late afternoon you are going to be face-planted in your bed. RIDE THE WAVE WHILE YOU CAN."

Tumblr is itself quite insidious! It makes you either happy or sad about stuff that ultimately doesn't matter at all. Like recently I lost 5 followers at StrangeCargo for mysterious reasons and (of course) I took it as "OH NO~, FIVE PEOPLE DON'T LOVE ME ANYMORE WHEN THEY TOTALLY DID BEFORE".

On that note, I'm sorry that I haven't been very talkative. I wanted to say thank you for the comments Rem was leaving on his and your behalf, and I also wanted to respond to your email, but I've been trying to avoid screens. Maybe instead of emailing you I can just tell you the two main things that would have comprised an email: 1.) I wanted to clarify myself by saying that no, the start of this story and the point at which she is telling it aren't that close together. It starts in October and ends in May, and only in the very last scene is it in present tense, but she's not describing very many actions - she's just thinking. The last chapter itself is a little bit like an epilogue because some time has passed since the one before, and she finally catches us up to "now". It's hard for me to say if what I'm describing appeals to you -- I could only really say that I think it works, and so have a few others who have read it.

2.) I'm very curious what more you could tell about this creepy D&D guy or that abusive boyfriend you knew about. I've read a thing or two about emotionally abusive relationships and seen them up close, but I wonder if what you've encountered is anything along the lines of cult mindset. I have another reader who is delightfully critical of me and has been with me for years, and she brought up something like that "Erik" turns their relationship into a cult of two. She wanted me to check out the film Martha Marcy May Marlene, but I'm taking absolutely forever on that!

Text walls, woohoo!
-J
cloudsinvenice[personal profile] cloudsinvenice on April 22nd, 2014 05:57 pm (UTC)
A cult of two... holy shit, that actually reminds me of something totally different. Moreover, it's something that happened in fandom and has ongoing repercussions, since the con artist guy is still trying to lure other fans into his web.

Did you ever hear of a guy in fandom called Andy Blake, aka Thanfiction? Well, make a pot of tea and get ready for a long read, because one of the people he more or less brainwashed into his fandom-based cult has written a series of blog posts about everything that happened and how she got out. It's an extraordinary experience and she's been very courageously open about it - posts on that subject are
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A cult of two... holy shit, that actually reminds me of something totally different. Moreover, it's something that happened in fandom and has ongoing repercussions, since the con artist guy is still trying to lure other fans into his web.

Did you ever hear of a guy in fandom called Andy Blake, aka Thanfiction? Well, make a pot of tea and get ready for a long read, because one of the people he more or less brainwashed into his fandom-based cult has written a series of blog posts about everything that happened and how she got out. It's an extraordinary experience and she's been very courageously open about it - posts on that subject are <a href-"http://kumquatwriter.wordpress.com/category/the-crazy-train/">here</a>, though you have to go back through the tag to read it in order...

As to the creepy D&Der or the abusive boyfriend, that's probably best saved for email. Seriously, poke me if I don't email you about that in the next couple of days. And thanks for the update in 1); will pass that on to him as well! :)
[identity profile] ladybows-fs.livejournal.com on April 23rd, 2014 09:19 pm (UTC)
Oh. Mein. Gott. I just spent all yesterday afternoon on her blog... Thanks for sharing that with me. I also see there's a book about it by someone else involved called When the Fan Hits the Shit. Some of it happened here, outside of Portland! I mean that garden she talks about is probably a 20-25min drive.

But what's super interesting is that I saw a lot of parallels with her story and with mine. A part of me isn't surprised since someone already brought it up and gave examples, but another part is, just because... I'm desperately wondering how someone would receive this story who had been through something like that.

This is probably not relevant to you yet, but someone reviewed HT (the first draft) who read up to chapter 45, and they were like "I was on board, but now it's gotten too disturbing", and... never heard from them again, so don't know if they kept going, or why they felt that way. I had to think twice before I said I would take their reaction as encouragement.