Reading and Writing, October 11

[scribblemyname]

This entry is part 10 of 10 in the series Daily Scribble Reports

So this morning was one of those mornings where feeling weird and what-have-you, I skipped straight past anything I ought to do and went and read Beneath Ceaseless Skies on my morning work break. It's a double issue. Then I dug through my email and dug up Laurie's story instead of waiting until I was at home this weekend where I already have it saved.

When I feel weird, I read. That's me. When I hurt, I fanfic or write an angsty poem. Otherwise, I write. I wonder what that says about how often I feel weird.

So I finished Laurie's story. Awesomeness. Then I finished editing all 13,574 words of story from inferno goodness—which I only say because it's done. Unfinished stories are not good. They taunt and tease and bother me. This is the first novelette I've written ever. Now, of course, I want to typeset it and publish it, which requires getting a Rachelle-worthy cover which makes me need to buy a stock photo I don't have, which would imply the need for a Kickstarter-type campaign, but this is micro-funding on a micro, micro, micro scale, so…

Thinking.

Maybe I ought to write. Hm. Nope, first I read through the ficlets from thecatisacritic. I'm glad too. I'm still not all that settled down for writing.

Talking with the beta yesterday about maybe doing Nano, which would mean picking a story for it. I'm all over the map on what I'd want to do: Collateral Damage, the Seven Days book, or something in Vardin, or seriously, Lovemark the Seasons. So yeah, on the fence there.

I edited and finalized a story. I'll write more this weekend. Bad me, but it's Friday, so no after-work scribble-time was available anyway.

Count

• Total Fiction: 0 words - Month to Date: 13,881 words
• Total Blog: 291 words - Month to Date: 5,495 words

Finalized Pieces

• "Dowse and Bleed," Kingdoms and Thorn, 13,574 words

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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[scribblemyname]

Ah. Well, I'm Christian so I believe in souls. Nevertheless, it is quite divorced from religious context here, but you are right that if you don't want to deal with souls, then stay out of this storyworld because I played with breath instead of genes here and the people often call it soul.

The cat was part of Breath, but I have yet to publish that myth, which is like Night Bride, a myth within the storyworld, meaning even the people in the story think it's a myth and most don't believe in it. It's unlike because it actually was a real event that was very not mythic when it occurred. It's interesting to me sometimes to play with the difference between reality as it was and how my characters understand it or hear about it. But I don't do it often.

Jaguar was the name of a girl in an unfinished story. She's no myth to put it mildly.

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

I believe people are souls.

I do think I'll stay out of that storyworld.

I've done some minor exploration of that myself: Trystan studied myths and there's one that comes up a lot in that story about a woman whose tears created the world, but none of them really believe in it, it's just something they grew up with. There's also a few mentioned here and there in other stories (that's how I figured I could call some of them fantasies even if they defy the usual definition of that genre.)

[scribblemyname]

So we're in agreement in general, but as the people don't understand how it works, there you have it.

I don't blame you for staying out on the basis of we don't want to actually find out where we differ, though I still admit to thinking if that weren't an issue, you'd like the world.

And for the record, that's how all my myths are. As I said, I'm Christian, and I don't even touch origin stories.

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

Yeah.

In general, I do like people with advanced abilities/powers, but I have lines about where and how they get those abilities as to what I will and won't read, and even some abilities that I won't read about.

I've only touched on a few things with myths to show the differences between worlds, but I try not to go too far into them, and the woman who wept that created all the water in Trystan's world is not their origin story. It's more about the picture that hangs in the castle that led to Trystan learning a painful secret about his mother and the fact that Anson thinks Lodi looks kind of like it (a claim that Trystan denies and isn't true, it was just the dress that was similar.)

[scribblemyname]

I think the major line here is the one I have to remember sometimes exists: the implication thereof. It's not always how something works, but how it seems to work. I don't have a problem with people misinterpreting me and will take my own merry time to get it untangled in fic, which is why I can deal with the rothnen (their world is too big and too different to be able to address all potential concerns before I novel it) and things that seem like fantasy (Vardin, Breath, etc.) that actually aren't at all. I don't have a line about implications, which is why I don't care if your fic implies all sorts of things you work on clarifying to the nth degree.

Again, everyone's different, and it certainly doesn't bother me if you don't read the world. Breath doesn't promote investment in it because it doesn't actually stick with any character or set of characters. Which makes it even harder to explain much of anything about how the world works when the people themselves don't know how the world works, just think they do.

Come to think of it, Faeology would be more up your alley, but again, there just ain't enough of it yet. I put that book on hold when I realized that Kingdoms and Thorn was exploding. Faeology takes the idea of "fairies" and says what if this was actually a crash landing by a spaceship on an icebound world and "fairies," etc. were all actually nanobots? The only issue you'd have with that one is that the characters call it magic, even though it isn't. So there's that. That implication line.

Yup. I think you're stuck with K&T and Seven.

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

I can't do implication. I have to know that it's not one of those things that bothers my conscience, or I won't go forward with it. Granted, my lines are convoluted, but I also have that line about stumbling someone else in the back of my mind, too, and I just can't be less than clear in what I write and what I read.

I don't think I'd like that world very much for that reason as well: I am a person who likes to read about people I care about. The world is never as interesting to me as the people in it, so I don't think I'd enjoy one that doesn't have that connection.

I read the blurb about Faeology, and I thought about it, but I couldn't read it with them calling it magic.

So, yeah, stuck with those two, I guess.