O Great and Most Sacred Pascha

If anyone hasn't noticed, my titles usually have nothing to do with the context...at least not always.  this one is the song I have on repeat right now "O Great and Most Sacred Pascha" (Pascha=Passover, I think) and it is preformed by Cappella Romana & Alexander Lingas on the album Music of Byzantium.

At any rate, I am here to clear my head and muse for a bit as I cannot seem to focus.

My muse is stirring great ideas in my mind for Book of Seas and as of the moment she is currently poking me saying "You should write...you should write...hey!  You should write!"  I would love to do this but soil profiles are attempting to demand my time. 

Often, I am one to daydream and entertain such wild fancies that they can never be true.  O how sweet and torturous this can be!  I lament that such things can never come to pass. 

Okay, now I am annoyed...my muse is coming out right here! Save that lovely wording for Book of Seas!

On another note, I have been exchanging critiques with a good friend of mine.  We have given each other the first chapter of our works and are proceeding to tear them apart.  I feel so horrible when I do this because I know I sound arrogant and snarky: the Rodney McKay of editing!  So what to do?  I was once told, and rightly so, that whenever someone edits your work the first goal of an editor is to get you to write like them.  How true this is! 

We were discussing things we disagreed with in each others comments and I could not help but think of this.  All that she has learned has taught her that it is okay to have "he said/she said" all of the time and she told me the basis for this notion.  A very logical basis it was.  I, on the other hand, have been taught to replace the "he said/she said" with actions or the like as it brings both an image to mind and can illustrate the intended emotion of some dialogue.  Her reasoning is that it can also disconnect the reader from the story.  At length, we determined that a nice happy medium was needed to achieve "perfection." 

What about all of you writers out there?  Any thoughts on such things?  Feel free to throw out advice on the aforementioned issue as well as other things you have learned about writing.  Ages past proved much harder to write as resources and printing was limited.  Often your first copy was your final draft.  Nowadays, it has become an art of it's own nature.  One method does not work for all, both reader and author.  Now we have so many tools at our disposal with which to create many drafts and versions.  Does our original work get lost in translation somewhere? 

Take St. Augustine's the City of God.  I do so love this work and find it utterly fascinating.  However, I also find that he repeats the same point various ways as he writes.  Sometimes I wish he'd had an editor at his disposal, or at least a version of Microsoft Word!  Still, the work itself is beautiful and makes a point very well.  Do we let our editing and drafting rule us?  What do you think?

Okay, now I really have to get back to work!  My brain feels better now though!

Jennifer Love-Hewitt's Hair.

I have finally figured out how to get my hair similar to how her hair is in Ghost Whisperer.  YAY!  Granted, it takes lots of planning and doing, but SOOOOO worth it!

Anyway, that out of my system,'

Why is it that we trust spell and grammar check?  It's about as intuitive as a piece of wood.  Really.  One is simply unable to write beautifully constructed sentences or create fantasy worlds and people without those rotten red squigglies everywhere!  AAAAAAGH!!!

I am a writer!  I am an artist whose mediums is word!  The words I place on a page paint an image of something so surreal and beautiful it cannot be grasped by mortal man, yet they  will strive to obtain the beauty within my pages.

I am so full of crap.

I'm laughing to myself now.  That was funny.  At any rate, I should actually be writing. I just thought I would update the images on my blog and complain about spell check a little. 

 Peace Out!

Leave me alone advertisements!

Just yelling at the "do this or thats" of Google and many other internet things.  You know how they always pop up and say "You can do this with that!" and such?  Annoying.

Anyway, I want to write something today, because I haven't in a very long time.  Maybe that is because I was planning a very successful wedding!  Woot!  I am now a MARRIED woman!  My husband is amazing.  He is phenomenal! I am so lucky to be married to this wonderful man!

I haven't written anything else in a while either.  But now with the planning done, I intend to pick it up once more.  Though typing with the fake nails I got for the wedding is proving very difficult!

So anyway, a few thoughts on weddings.  First, go ahead and pay attention to every little detail.....IF you can remember that they don't matter as much as the fact that you are getting married.  What, you may ask?  I mean that if you want every little detail perfect, go ahead and plan every little detail.  Just remember that if it doesn't turn out exactly as you wanted, it may be better! 

I had a few things go wrong.  I could have flipped out but didn't.  Save your "bridezilla" moments for the important things.  Like when the hotel has put all the groomsmen next to your room and they're up at 1am going in and out of their room, making noise and talking with a loud TV.  Feel free to send a nasty text message to your Best Man at this point who, as such a good friend, will understand and get them to STFU! 

OR, his phone will have died and they will have magically shut up anyway.  He will then, in great humor, read the text message once his phone has recharged and proceed to laugh his rear end off.

Make sure that everyone knows there are certain things that should and should NOT be told to the bride.  On the list of things to tell her, CHANGES in anything.  Do not surprise her with changes.  Would you rather have a bridezilla rant on you or in public? 

Avoid telling her any negative comments until after the wedding.  Usually it is a good idea to keep most of these to yourself anyway.  I didn't really have any negative comments, but a couple of things were said and told to me at the wrong time.  It is a very emotional time for a bride.  You never know what is going to bother or not.

As the bride, BE MELLOW!  Let things go and trust everyone to do what they are going to do!  Nothing ever turns out like it does in your head!  It turns out BETTER!  I trusted my guys to get their tuxs, they did.  The same for my girls and their dresses.  I trusted the vendors to do their jobs, and they did, so much better than what I imagined!

At any rate, the important thing is now...I am a wife.  I am wife to the most loving, caring, and sweet husband anyone could ask for.

The End

The Nameless City

So I had a dream, the likes of which I have before, where my boss, myself, and a few of my Archaeological colleagues discovered something cool.  This time we were in muddy mountains and discovered a secret city.  Pretty cool huh?  My boss thought so too.  His response was "Cool!  Write a story about it so I can read it."

Crap.

Double crap.

Triple crap.

A large portion of pig dookie with a side of horse crap.

Do you realize what this means?  It means that while I am supposed to be working on Book of Seas and touching up Stolen Child, I am now pounding away something new.  Don't get me wrong.  I am enjoying the large amounts of what I deem AWESOMENESS that is being produced from this.  However, I have other things I need to do...such as finish writing those blasted thank yous for my shower. 

Oh well.  You know what?  I WANT to write.  I want to produce something incredibly awesome.  I hope that this turns into something really cool and that maybe I can submit it.  We will see. 

I know I have spoken about how music inspires me and how I constantly find new music to write to but this time it is killing me!  The music I have been using to inspire this mostly comes from Lisa Gerrard's album The Mirror Pool.  It also reminds me of H.P. Lovecraft.  So a lot of my influences for this story are coming from Lovecraft's short stories...particularly the Nameless City.  The mystery surrounding his works is exactly the sort of environment I wish to create with this new story.

 I have absolutely no clue where this story will lead and who will live and who will die.  Considering that these people are my co-workers I am a little concerned what I do with the characters that are slightly reflecting them.  On one hand, I just can't see a character living or remaining so with their sanity intact with this kind of theme.  On the other hand, I don't want them to kill me. 

Choices choices.  Lets be honest here?  How many of our characters draw upon elements of those around us?  We certainly put ourselves into our own stories...what about others?

I am going to electrocute myself....

.....if I keep on chewing on the headset cord for my iPod.  Not to mention, I'll end up without ear buds!

At any rate, I am in serious trouble!  Oh my am I in trouble!  I have fallen and fallen hard.  Would you like to know the reason why?  Well here he is...

Commander Nathaniel Taylor, Terra Nova

Yap.  That is right.  Commander Nathaniel Taylor.  I feel like I am in High School again based on how hard I fell for this guy!  I mean, he's so bad ass!  Not to mention he is an incredible babe!!!  Lord please make my body thinner and stronger then sweep me away to live in his universe because I don't know how I can go on!  (And while, you're at it, please give me Jennifer Love-Hewitt's hair from the first season of Ghost Whisperer.)  I'm going to die now...of heartbreak.  Actually, I think if I go and write some horrible Mary Sue Fanfiction, my life will be a little better.

To all my fellow dreamers, how often do you fall for a fictional character?  How many are in your "harem?"  Who are amongst the top?  Here's a really important one...HOW OFTEN IS IT A CHARACTER OF YOUR OWN CREATION?

Let's be honest, there is a Mary Sue hidden in all of us.  So long as she's not the rabbit sitting in our heads and working the controls, we're okay.  (Father Ted reference.)

I suppose that is it for now.  I just had to share this with the world.

I AM MADLY IN LOVE WITH COMMANDER NATHANIEL TAYLOR!!!

Weekend

What is a weekend?  I hear that it is this wonderful time that people take to enjoy time from work.  I don't have that.  I get home from work and I go to other work.  :P  I also hear there is this wonderful thing called sleep.  I'd like to try that sometime.

At any rate, I move on.

I am thinking of beginnings for Book of Seas.  You know something annoying about my writing?  I can always think of random scenes within the story, random parts that connect somehow, but I hate trying to come up with the filler.  I always can't help but think "Oh man.  People are going to be so frakking bored by this part and they'll put it down!"  Don't you ever wonder that?

What is it that keeps a good story going?  Is there some formula? 

I have heard multiple things about writing and techniques and not all of them ring truth to me.  So I use what I can but in the long run I don't think good writing has any one way that makes it great. 

Rewind a minute to high school English class.  I remember my literature teacher going over "How to write a fiction story."  Wow.  She was dead set on this being the way you had to do it or your story would fail.  Now don't get me wrong.  There were some good tips in there somewhere, but honestly I don't think you can't rope most imaginations and force them to follow a certain structure.  I know this is very true of mine.  My imagination doesn't even listen to me sometimes.

To illustrate.  I was creating a story in my head for my own enjoyment.  This is also known as daydreaming.  My day dream was about some romance with a television character (I think from Firefly...or Stargate. One of those.) and there was this super sweet moment where my Mary Sue and this character (I want to say it was Daniel Jackson, but this was a long time ago.) were professing their feelings but in an unspoken way.  Suddenly mercenaries attack (or was it wraith?  G'ould? The Alliance?).  What?!  I didn't put this in here!  Why are they interrupting my wonderful moment??  Seriously!  It was frustrating.  But for whatever reason my imagination took control and wanted to spice up the story.  Perhaps it had to do with the music I was listening to.

Anyway, I just think that my English teacher was wrong to make it seem like if you didn't have this structure to a fiction story you won't write a good one.  Now, if she had taken more the "These are the elements you need to consider when writing, here is one way of structuring your thoughts on the matter." approach, I would have listened.  (Maybe.)

It wasn't that great of a structure anyway.  If I remember correctly, I believe it had the characters and their backgrounds coming before the plot.  What kind of structure is that?  It took me ages to come up with actual characters and their backgrounds.  For Stolen Child, I spent hours on Snowberry's name alone.  The archivist didn't even get a name because I thought it fun to not give him one even though he's a fairly important person.

Well, at this point I look at the clock, am satisfied with the time and will now go to bed.  Anyway, I hope you all have a wonderful night/day/morning/afternoon/weekend and may you actually get your weekends!

Gravy and Cheesecake

So my obsession with cooking and baking is growing.  I have now spent my entire day looking up recipes...beginning with the idea to look up a swirled cheesecake so I can use my huckleberry syrup.  I have since expanded the recipes to pumpkin things, Christmas things, Shepard's pie, cheesecakes, Italian food, Greek food, and, well, the list goes on. 

I have now decided that I am going to attempt to make and almond spice cake tonight.  I'm thinking a light butter cream frosting glaze will do nicely.  I would like to make it a pumpkin spice cake, but it isn't fall and I don't have any pumpkin.  Buzzkill.

I think that I should go to bed.  But I want to make this stuff so much!  I am inspired to cook!  (Currently I am waiting on some things to heat.)  But you know, I can't wait until fall and winter to make spiced things.  I love spiced things...and pumpkin things!  I can't wait to make pumpkin things.

As for you, what do YOU like to make?