#WIPpet Wednesday – Something a bit different

I deliberately skipped WIPpet Wednesday last week because I knew that with my parents visiting, I wouldn’t get a chance to read anyone else’s posts, and I was already feeling bad about two straight weeks of posting and getting lovely comments, and being too lazy to return the favour. I also haven’t really been writing anything, though I think I have found the story I’m going to write for NaNoWriMo and in the last couple of days I’ve started doing some planning.

As I don’t really have any proper writing to share, I’ll share a character interview I wrote with the main character yesterday. As for WIPpet maths, it’s the first of the month and this is the first actual character exploration I put into writing. 😛 It’s actually pretty vague at the moment because I’m still working on exact settings and plot points, and it’s a little inconsistent because I’m still playing around with the character, but I think you’ll get the gist. It’s a little long, but I don’t think it requires much explanation, so I’ll just launch straight in. Everyone, meet Josephine!

[there is a knock on the blogosphere door and it edges open. A young woman with wavy brown hair tied back with a silk ribbon sticks her head into the room]

J: Hello? Do I have the right place?

EW: [skids into the room] Hi! Yes! Please have a seat. Sorry about the mess. I’ve been a bit lax on the blog upkeep as of late.

[Josephine shows no sign of having comprehended anything that was just said, but she sits daintily in the lounge chair provided. She’s wearing a maxi-dress with short sleeves, which she keeps picking at, as though wishing they covered more of her]

EW: So… can you tell us where you’re from?

J: You know the story of Beauty and the Beast, don’t you?

EW: Of course.

J: Beauty was my sister. Our other sister, Christine, and I were always jealous of her. She was the youngest, and our father always doted on her. Christine and I couldn’t stand it. We were horrible to her, and she just took it all with good grace. That’s the type of person she was. When she married the prince, the same witch who had turned him into the Beast turned Christine and me into statues so that we would have to watch Beauty’s happiness until we became better people.

EW: What was that like?

J: I’m not sure it’s something you can imagine without having ever lived it. I couldn’t move or speak. I couldn’t even fall asleep. Beauty used to talk to us – she was the only one who remembered we were there. Even her husband thought she was odd for talking to statues after a while. At first, I thought she was pitying us and I resented her just as I always had, but it didn’t take long for me to start looking forward to those moments.

EW: You were stuck that way for a long time. It can’t have been easy once Beauty and her family were gone…

J: Not at all. I watched my little sister grow old. When she and the Prince were gone, one of my nephews inherited the estate, but after a few generations it left the family and not long after that it was abandoned for a long time. You don’t know how lonely it was.

EW: The witch said that you would be freed when you learned the error of your ways. But you were trapped for centuries… surely it didn’t take that long.

J: Of course not. It’s hard to remain spiteful when you can do nothing but watch someone having a far better time than you and reflect on why it can’t be you. I don’t know why the spell broke, or why it only broke for me and not Christine, but Armand says that my reappearance is only one of a number of strange occurrences lately, so maybe it’s all connected.

EW: As though trying to get used to a new century isn’t hard enough with strange things going on around you.

J: That’s true. I learned some things from the people who visited the castle over recent years – there wasn’t much to do other than watch and listen – but you only learn so much from that vantage point.

EW: Is anyone helping you adjust? [tips head to the side and gives a knowing look]

J: [blushes] Armand has been helping me learn. He’s been very sweet to me. [she sets her jaw] But I can’t stay with him much longer.

EW: Why not?

J: Well, it’s not proper for a start. I’m sure people are already talking. Not to mention he’s…

EW: What?

J: [she is trying to find the most delicate way to phrase it] Well, he’s hardly my…

EW: Your what? Equal? Are you trying to say you’re better than him?

[Josephine is quiet]

EW: You’re no longer the daughter of a rich merchant, remember?

J: [averts her eyes] I know. You’d think I’d have learned.

EW: [relenting] I think you have. We all have our faults. Anyway, look, I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other over the next couple of months, but right now I need to go and chop vegetables. Thanks for coming today.

J: You’re welcome. I’ll see you again soon.

~*~

So that’s Josephine. Armand will be the next character I try to expand, and then the wicked witch/fairy character who is my villain. I think you can probably grasp enough of the plot just from reading this. I’m excited to start plotting this properly. We’ve got a long weekend this coming weekend (just had one, too; everyone in Canberra loves this time of year) so some of my writing group, me included, are going for two-day planning getaway. Hopefully I’ll be able to bounce ideas off them and really get a sense of what’s going to happen in the story.

Thanks to K. L. Schwengel for hosting the WIPpet Wednesday blog hop. Join us by posting an excerpt from your WIP (or something like this) that somehow relates to the date, and then join us at the linky. I’m going to go and chop those veges I mentioned now. I’ll see you all soon! 😀

#WIPpet Wednesday – Plot twist

On the left is a picture of my yesterday evening. I am a bit poor now, but I can confirm at least that the Bailey’s was a good life choice, and I expect the Pratchett collection will be, too. When I first started reading Discworld, I was really a bit young to understand the satire, and as such enjoyed them on a superficial level, but still found them a bit hard-going. I think now is a good time to get back into it.

Anyway, you know how last Wednesday it was July 2 and I had plunged into Camp NaNoWriMo the day before without really any idea what I was writing, but the story was promising to be a fun, light-hearted thing with Greek Gods and romance and fun times? Suddenly on Monday it found something of a plot and has suddenly taken a turn for the dramatically romantic. Also there is now time travel. And after Camp, this may end up being quite a different story. Possibly no Greek gods. Possibly steampunk. But I’ve gotten quite attached to my romantic leads now, so at this stage I’ll be sticking with it post-July.

So onto WIPpet Wednesday. Today is the 9th, and 9 is a multiple of 3, so I’m going to give you three sentences from Unicorn Love (title is also probably going to change when the story does). In this scene… well, Aphrodite is basically messing with Alex’s head. The third sentence refers to the fact that Alex hailed from Sydney before Aphrodite recruited her as a cupid, a bit over a hundred years ago.

Aphrodite’s gaze wandered around the food court before settling on a man a few tables away. At first, Alex thought the goddess was eyeing him for herself, but then she actually took in his features and felt her stomach drop for the second time in as many hours. She recognised the short brown hair and the square jaw all too well, and for a moment she was seventeen again and back in the Sydney she used to know.

I’ll admit I’m a fair bit behind on Camp NaNo, as I’ve only been getting about 250 words written a day than 500. However, I am focusing on the positive: 250 is better than none at all, particularly when I’m not entirely sure where my story is going and playing it by ear. I also spent most of the weekend cleaning my house because I had guests arrive on Sunday, and they are hear until Saturday. Since one of them is a friend of mine who has now moved to England and the other is his girlfriend, I’m actually spending time with them rather than writing. Since at the moment he thinks the next time he’s likely to be in Australia is October of next year, I’m not feeling too guilty about not writing. They are seeing How To Train Your Dragon 2 tonight, but I opted out, so I’ll get a bit more done tonight, hopefully.

On that note, I might leave off. Edy needs the computer to do some work stuff, and I might indulge in some more Baileys, and write some more, or figure out which of the books in that photo to start reading. To join in on WIPpet Wednesday, post an excerpt from your WIP that somehow correlates (however loosely) to the date, and then join us at the linky. Thanks to K. L. Schwengel for hosting. The paragraph above is essentially my ROW80 check-in. You can read more about that (“the writing challenge that knows you have a life”) and sign up here. Now I shall be off!

#WIPpet Wednesday – introducing Unicorn Love

First of all, here is an article about a bunch of famous authors who dressed up as their favourite literary characters. There are photos. This is a thing that happened. Neil Gaiman’s is my favourite (which may have something to do with the fact that Badger is my favourite Wind in the Willows character)

So yesterday I wrote a big deep and meaningful goals post for the rest of the year. Well, for the next five months, since I have no idea what I’m going to feel like doing after NaNoWriMo. You can read that here. I was feeling really scattered and listless in regard to my writing; I only wrote 2879 words in the entire month of June, and I kept thinking about the stories I’ve started recently and not finished. The more I thought about it, the more upset I started feeling about everything. So I wrote a list, because lists are nice. And I’m feeling much better now.

While I didn’t really go into it in that post, I’m also making sure that I make this half of the year more about me. I’m taking it a bit slower at work (still getting everything done, just not necessarily blitzing through it like I normally would) and I’m going to start eating better, too. Admittedly, the eating better was supposed to start yesterday, but we had a party at work on Monday and there were leftovers, so… yeah. Working on that one. I’ve also got three days off approved for the beginning of August, and Edy and I have spent this evening booking a little trip away for ourselves, which will be really nice. I’ve only had two days off in the five months I’ve been in this job, and we’re entitled to four weeks’ annual leave, so I figured I ought to start using it.

Anyway, so as you may have gathered if you read the other post, Camp NaNoWriMo is a go, though I’m only aiming for 15500 words (500 words a day, easing back in slowly). As such, Afflicted is on hold, and we’ll see if I return to it (I was always calling it a post-show project, and by the time July is over, my group will be working on its next production, so I’ll have probably moved on…). My Camp story is one I found on the Adopt A Plot forum because I actually had no clue what I was going to write. It’s called Unicorn Love and if you want a synopsis, here is my Camp Page, but I’m hoping it (or at least the premise, anyway, as well as the reason for the title) is fairly obvious from the snippet. I’m sharing seven paragraphs for the seventh month but don’t worry, they’re short (fewer than 200 words)!

Cupid, frustrated, breaks his bow. National Gallery, Athens, Greece

“I want out.”

Two hands smacked down on the glass desk, knocking aside the nameplate which displayed the name “Aphrodite” in a curly font that would have been considered unprofessional in any other workplace. The tip of a bow swung unsettlingly close to Aphrodite’s head, but she held up a dainty hand and it lost its momentum mid-swing.

The Goddess of Love raised her eyes to meet the gaze of the woman in front of her. Her perfect features creased in an expression of concern.

“Alexis, darling. Whatever is the matter?”

“Am I the only one who sees how pointless this job is now?”

“Alexis, a Cupid’s job is never pointless.”

“Really? Do you even know what it’s like? You’re not down there! You’ve got all this!” Alexis motioned around the glass office. All that could be seen out the windows was blue sky and a neat ring of fluffy white clouds around its base. “You don’t see the couples you brought together splitting up after a month or a week or some crap like that! Finding true love in this day and age is about as likely as finding a unicorn grazing in your back yard.”

Gotta say, somewhat-vacuous-but-secretly-knows-exactly-what-she’s-doing Aphrodite is very fun to write. Some of the world-building to do with the gods and the heaven-as-a-bureaucracy theme will have to be sorted out properly post-NaNo, but for now I’m just having fun with it. Which is to say, I’m slightly scared because I actually have no idea how the plot is going to go, but we’ll see. There were two people in today’s excerpt who will probably end up becoming characters, even if only to serve as padding. But I actually need some more characters from probably tomorrow onwards, and might as well use the ones that have already been foreshadowed, right?

I also had a moment earlier today where I was like, “Wait… Aphrodite is Greek… but isn’t Cupid Roman?!” but I’m ignoring that fact for now. Not even sure it really matters in a story like this.

Anyways, this post has turned into a bit of a mammoth thing, so I will finish up here. If you would like to join in on WIPpet Wednesday, just post an excerpt from your WIP that somehow correlates to the date, then link up with us here. We welcome new participants with open arms! 😀 All right, I’m off!

Cupid image by Tilemahos Efthimiadis used under Creative Commons 2.0. Copyright 2009. Source.

Heading into the second half of the year

Today is July 1, the first day of the second half of 2014. Since finishing the edits on A More Complicated Fairytale in April, I haven’t really written anything amazingly useful, and have spent the past few days leafing through notes I’ve made on stories I’ve never completed and wondering (read: stressing about) whether I’ve only got one complete story in me and I’ll never finish another one (don’t worry, I’m 99.9% confident this is not the case, I just every now and then let that o.1% get to me… like when the only thing I’m writing is fanfiction and I’m only writing a few hundred words every few days on it).

I had a big think about this on the weekend and as a result, I’ve decided to try to work out what I want to achieve in the next six months, and how I might go about achieving it. So, without further ado:

Ongoing Goals:

• Not a writing goal but putting it here nonetheless: return to using My Fitness Pal as a way to track eating and hold myself accountable if I am over-indulging/encourage myself not to over-indulge.
• In months where I’m not participating in a NaNoWriMo-type event, return to previous writing goal of two nights a week, sitting down for an hour and working on writing. I usually end up achieving more than this when I’m really into a project, but two hours a week doesn’t feel like work when I’m not on a roll.
• Participate more fully in ROW80 again – post check-ins on Wednesdays, as well as try to visit five blogs after each check-in.

July:

• Camp NaNoWriMo, 500 words a day on new WIP “Unicorn Love” for a total of 15500 words by the end of the month.
• Organise (or at least make a proper start on organising) a cover for AMCF
• Have AMCF proofread.
• Bribe Edy with cake (or similar) to achieve said proofreading.

August:

• Decide whether or not to continue with Unicorn Love depending on how July goes.
• Brainstorm and write an outline for AMCF companion, An Eventual Happily Ever After.
• Read over the version of AEHEA from last year’s NaNoWriMo, decide what might be kept.
• Publish AMCF?! (I had August in mind as a publication date at the beginning of the year and if I get myself into gear, this is totally still possible)

September:

• Work on new version of AEHEA (and Unicorn Love if I decide to continue with that as well), following two hours/week goal.

October:

• Continue work on AEHEA and UL
• Decide what I will write for NaNoWriMo
• Start planning NaNoWriMo.

November:

• NaNoWriMo madness!

December:

• Take a bit of a break, but don’t let up entirely.
• Work out a better December goal closer to the time, and when some more progress has been made.
• It feels a bit too far away for me to make any kind of goal right now.

Even though the new round doesn’t start until next week, I’m using this post as my ROW80 Goals Post for round 3 as well, since I’ve pretty much listed my goals. Hopefully I’ll see you around there as well! 🙂

#WIPpet Wednesday and some pondering

Psst! The WIPpet is in the second half of this post. Feel free to scroll past my ramblings about other things.

So I’ve been thinking about Wattpad recently. One my friends, Sam, has achieved great popularity with his story Darkness Girl: Trickster God on there (I know it was at the top of, or quite close to, the Teen Fiction section at one point, and he has secured an agent to publish the book traditionally as well) and K. L. Schwengel has just recently announced that she’s going to post her first novel First of Her Kind on there a chapter a week as well.

The reason I’ve been thinking about it is that I have a new writing project in mind, and I’m wondering if Wattpad might be the place for it. Basically, ever since doing the Crucible, I’ve wanted to tell Abigail’s side of the story. Any girl who saw her parents violently killed in front of her at a young age (“I saw Indians smash my dear parents’ heads on the pillow next to mine…”) is going to be more than a bit messed up, and while I’m sure Arthur Miller was going for “Abigail seduced John Proctor with her evil feminine wiles”, I feel like Proctor is presented as more blameless than he should be (not to say Abigail is entirely blameless, just saying it takes two, y’know?). 

The reasons I’m thinking of maybe using Wattpad for this are:

a) this actually probably counts as fanfiction, since the play is not in the public domain yet and while part of my brain goes, “Yeah, but the characters are all totally historical figures, you could totally argue your way out of it”, it would be following the events of the play, and Arthur Miller definitely made some of the important bits up himself.

b) I’m not 100% sure I’d be willing to put in the effort to make this the kind of work I would be willing to ask money for, either from a research/accuracy standpoint, or a “write a million drafts until it’s as good as it possibly can be” standpoint. I’m thinking of it as more of a personal post-show project, like how I’m reading lots of books about the Salem Witch Trials as well, rather than something I’d be likely to pursue in the long term. But because I live for the validation of strangers on the Internet, I’d probably want to share it anyway.

I considered Archive of Our Own as another possible location, what with the whole fanfiction vibe, and maybe I’d post it both places, but AO3 seems to be where people who know things about fandom go for their fandom needs, while Wattpad seems to be where people go if they just want something to read. It used to be fictionpress.com, the sister-site for fanfiction.net, but I think it’s pretty quiet on there these days. I do still get the odd review for a story I put up there when I was 13 or something. The two most recent ones were to tell me that it’s spelt “realize”, not “realise” and to request I use a spell checker in future. Whatever, dude.

I have a sort of an outline for it, and I’ve been pondering things like style and voice and tense (annoyingly, the pen I was trying to use at work was useless and kept slowing me down), but I’ll probably not start it seriously until the weekend. (Related: how is it only Wednesday? This week’s been dragging on forever!). Has anyone else used Wattpad, either to post or read? How did you find it? I haven’t seen Sam in ages, but I’m possibly seeing him on the weekend, so I’m probably going to grill him about everything.

Anyways, this post is apparently already 600 words long, so I’d best get onto WIPpet Wednesday. I’m going to share another snippet from An Eventual Happily Ever After. While this is probably going to change, in the NaNoWriMo version, Ginny deliberately ran away from home because she was so sick of all the constraints being put upon her. Not to mention, Sir Kieran, the suitor mentioned in last week’s WIPpet, did not make a good first impression. It’s the early hours of the morning, she’s ended up in the woods on the edge of town and suddenly she’s remembering all the stories she and her friends used to tell each other about these woods when they were young. WIPpet maths is nice and simple: 4 sentences for the 4th of June.

According to the story, one day an employee had been killed in an accident at a mill that had been on the edge of the town. Rather than inform their superiors and possibly get in trouble, the other workers just roughly buried the miller who had died somewhere on the edge of the woods. His ghost now supposedly roamed the space between his shallow grave and the old mill site, waiting for someone to lay him to rest properly. As she found a tree to lie underneath, and tried to settle her mind down, Ginny wondered if the Miller’s Ghost had his eyes on her.

The story of the Miller’s Ghost was originally intended for A More Complicated Fairytale, but then the whole section of plot where it featured ended up getting replaced with something far better. I was pleased to be able to recycle it in the sequel. 😀 Speaking of AMCF, I got the third draft printed the other day so proofreading can begin. Now to just entice Edy to embark on that adventure. Maybe I need to figure out how to make a vegan version of the berry cheesecake cupcakes he made for the Crucible after-party, and he can have two per chapter. (He has recently started doing freelance copy writing [as opposed to copyrighting; I only learned the difference when he started doing the former] from home and is busy with that, but he did promise he would put that Editing and Proofreading diploma to some use for me).

To join in on WIPpet Wednesday, simply post an excerpt from your current WIP that somehow relates to the date, and then join us at the linky over here.Many thanks to K. L. Schwengel for hosting. 🙂 It’s taken me way too long to write this, and I really need to fold some of the clothes strewn across my bed before I can get into it. I shall take my leave, and probably see you on the weekend! 🙂

#WIPpet Wednesday – I’m back!

Hello! It is I! I have returned to the real world from the depths of the Salem Witch Trials (though I will say that Abigail Williams is proving a difficult character to let go of). Our production of The Crucible went really well. Audiences on both days were very impressed (even though we were all really tired by Sunday and it was not as good as Saturday’s performance). We raised $2500 all together, $1500 of which will go to the charity we support and the other $1000 of which will pay for theatre hire for our next production in October. Our director is still forwarding us emails from people telling us how great the whole thing was. One of my co-stars has given me the details for her agent and told me I should get on her books, which is incredibly flattering, and I am thinking about it, but she also gave me the details for some people she’s done various acting classes with, and I think I might follow those up first. I have no desire to make a career out of acting, but there are some short film festivals in Canberra and that sort of thing, and it would be fun to have the contacts to participate in something like that.

Here are a couple of photos taken by our director’s daughter-in-law (whose daughter played my little cousin, Betty). The first one is from Act 3, when I’m claiming that Mary Warren is sending a cold wind on all of us because she’s clearly a witch (this is what happens when you decide to dob on Abigail Williams). The second is earlier on when I am arguing with John Proctor over whether or not he’s still into me (he totally is, at least a bit, and we both know it, hence the look on his face).  Also, check out those wigs. I have a pixie cut, only the bangs are mine.

“Oh, Heavenly Father, take away this shadow!”

“I have a sense for heat, John, and yours draws me to my window, and I have seen you there, looking up and burning in your loneliness. Do you tell me you’ve never looked up at my window, John?”

All right, you’ve now indulged me enough, so I shall give you what you came for. It’s Wednesday, and that means a WIPpet is in order. To be honest, I haven’t actually done any work at all on my writing in the past couple of weeks. Rehearsals are my main excuse, but I am basically up to give-it-to-a-proofreader stage, and I really need to find myself a new writing project, since AMCF really is in its final stages. As such, today I’m just going to pull five paragraphs (for the 5th month) from one of last year’s NaNoWriMo stories, An Eventual Happily Ever After, which is a sort-of-sequel/companion piece to AMCF, starring Cait’s younger sister, Ginny, in the lead role. Ginny is only 12-13 in AMCF, but she is 18 in this one, and certain people are thinking its time she got paired off with a nice gentleman somewhere.

“I hope you’re not going to meet Sir Kieran with that expression on your face.”

“I don’t know. It will depend on Sir Kieran.”

“Ginny.”

“I’m sorry.” Ginny turned on the dressing table stool to face her mother. “It’s just that you and Father and the King and Queen have decided that this man is a good match for me and I don’t know a single thing about him. Cait was a commoner and Prince Felipe convinced his parents to let him marry her because he loved her. I’m not a Crown Princess, why do I have to marry someone of a certain station?”

“Unfortunately that’s the way it works,” her mother said, and Ginny thought she sounded almost as glum as Ginny felt. “Cait’s a part of the Royal Family now, and by extension, we are, too. Sometimes we have to go along with these things.”

If you want to join in on WIPpet Wednesday, please do! It’s very easy. Just post an excerpt from your WIP with some correlation to the date. Then join us at the linky here. I’m going to dash away now, and continue to cross-reference this GoodReads list of novels set during the Salem Witch Trials with my public library’s catalogue. Since I have no rehearsals or performances this weekend (sadface!), I hope to be able to get back to visiting you all on a more regular basis. 😀 Laters!

#WIPpet Wednesday – Is there something I’ve forgotten?

You guuuuys! I worked out how to turn my phone into a Wireless hotspot, which means I can use my own Internet quota at my parents’, rather than simply relying on theirs (which is nothing). We’re six days into NaNoWriMo now, and I am nowhere near as far in as I had hoped I would be. Which is to say, I am pretty much on par with your average NaNo schedule (10,000 words by Day 6) but I had hoped to be well ahead because of my travels in the coming weeks. Not to worry, though, I am gradually persuading myself that a blue circle in among the purple ones on one’s NaNo profile is not the end of the world.

Today is also Wednesday, despite my brain telling me that my parents always visit me in Canberra on weekends, and since we got home yesterday, it couldn’t be any later than Tuesday. Wednesday means WIPpet Wednesday, in which a bunch of us writers post an excerpt from our current WIP that somehow correlates to the date. Then we link it up here and check out each other’s work. Feel free to join in! 🙂

My maths for today is the 6 (for the day) plus 1 plus 1 (for the month) for a total of eight lines. In this scene, from one of the stories I’m working on during November, the characters have just completed their first year of university, and are heading out on a road trip to celebrate. It’s not the smoothest read at the moment, but, well, NaNo.

“Does anyone else feel weird and slightly guilty?” Justin asked. “Like you should be studying something instead of driving off for a holiday, even though you know you don’t have to study anymore?”

“Yes!” Nate exclaimed. “There is this niggling voice at the back of my head that is convinced that I’ve forgotten some major piece of assessment.”

“You had that perfect calendar up on your wall for the whole semester,” Dom teased him. “You couldn’t have possibly forgotten anything.”

“Doesn’t stop me from being paranoid.” 

This is based on my own end-of-semester experiences. Didn’t matter how many years I was at uni, this was always the mindset after handing in that last paper. I’ve gotten far more into this story than I expected, and it’s been quite fun. I am glad, however, that after a couple of days of the characters being drunk, they have finally sobered up in the light of some stupid decisions which are going to come back to bite them. I’m also nearly at the part where I get to start telling the parallel story that also goes on in this one. I’m hoping that will boost my word count quickly, since I’m quite invested in those characters and have been waiting to get to them.

Anyhoodle, I’m going to head off now and see if I can bash out another 1000 words or so before dinner. I’ve been a bit procrastinate-y all day, but I shouldn’t have too much trouble, methinks. I’ll catch up with you guys over the next few days.

Drive by #WIPpet Wednesday post

Firstly of all, if you would like to participate in the blog series type thing I mentioned last week as a way for me to keep this blog running while I’m overseas, I set up a Google doc over here for people to claim dates and topics. If you have a Google account, you can edit the form yourself. If you don’t, let me know which day you would like and I will fix it up for you. If you could get your post to me before about November 10 and I can schedule the post before I head off overseas, that would be fantabulous, but don’t stress if this is not something you can do. While this blog may not be receiving so much attention, I will still be checking my emails obsessively, and blogging over at my travel blog, so it won’t be too hard to put up a post here while I’m at it.

Would anyone be particularly perturbed, though, if I got rid of the different Top 5 topics idea and had everyone do a “Top Five Characters I’d Have Over For Dinner” post? Because I’d be kinda keen to read a bunch of those.

Anyway, onto WIPpet Wednesday. I have been finishing off the beta reading I owed people and made a start on Elaine Jeremiah’s new book, The Inheritance (which I believe is going to be free at the end of week; see Elaine’s blog for more info) this week, so I’m just going to share a little bit more of the fanfic I started sharing last week. I’m posting three lines, my WIPpet maths being that it’s the 30th and 3+0 = 3. Also, I just wanted to post this section, okay?

As Collins shook his hand, Jack wondered how Miss Fisher would feel about losing her companion, and if Collins would be brave enough to argue should she decide she wanted to keep Dot on in some capacity even after the wedding.

If you’re wondering, the answer to that second pondering of Jack’s is something along the lines of “Nope. Not in the slightest. He might try, but Miss Fisher would simply raise one perfectly sculpted eyebrow at him and his argument would crumble to pieces.”

To join in on WIPpet Wednesday, simply post an excerpt from your current Work in Progress that somehow relates to the day’s date (eg. the 3 lines) then link up with us here. Thanks as always to K. L. Schwengel for hosting. 🙂

I don’t honestly don’t know what my posting/catching up and commenting schedule is going to be like from here on out; my last day of work is this Friday, I’m heading to my parents’ place with their 1gb of Internet per month on Tuesday and I fly to England a week later. So, um… I’ll see you when I see you? Good luck to all NaNoWriMo participants! My profile is here, add me as a buddy! 😀 Love you all. ❤

#WIPpet Wednesday – This is the post that SHOULD have been titled “Aah, cold hands!”

So I had planned to use this WIPpet last week, hence the title. Except then I decided on an earlier excerpt, but forgot to edit the title to reflect that. Ah well. I don’t know how much attention people actually pay to post titles, but in case you do, this one will probably make more sense for you. This is set after the battle with the giant rat-creature-things, once Max has gotten Clara safely inside. She’s on the couch, he’s gathered some medical supplies to treat the wound on her shoulder where the magic hit her and… yeah. My WIPpet math goes like this: It’s the 16th and 6 – 1 = 5 paragraphs. I say “paragraphs”, they’re mostly lines of dialogue. But whatever. On we go!

Max knelt down beside her placing the bowl of water on the floor and the medical supplies next to it. His next move was to take hold of her shirt to pull it over her head, but she flinched away from him.

“Clara, your sleeve isn’t going to roll up far enough for me to do this properly. Please don’t get modest on me now.”

“It’s not that,” she replied. “Just that your hands are cold.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Making a mental note to clean up the mess later, he tipped some of the hot water over his hands, then dried them on his jeans before returning to the task at hand. “Better?”

“Much.”

It occurs to me that in my mental image of the rest of this scene, Clara still has her shirt on, and is not just lying in bra and jeans, but… I’m going to just ignore that because sometimes my brain doesn’t follow the cues the words on the page give it… this happens to me all the time, in fact.

In other news, I’ve been plotting a bit more on my NaNoWriMo stories. Ginny’s story now has quite a bit of plot, including pirates! [Maybe. It’s more sort of that this people need to get from one land mass to another and they’re also not very nice, so…] And it has a title, An Eventual Happily Ever After, which I thought tied in well with A More Complicated Fairytale and also ties in with some of the themes in the story as well. I usually hate coming up with titles for things, but this one came to me as I was staring at the AMCF notes I have on my pinboard, and I did a bit of a happy dance because I was quite pleased with it.

In other other news, I have a job interview at 9am tomorrow and should probably consider wrapping this up, doing some final preparation and then getting an early night. I am reasonably confident about this one; much more than the last interview I went for. I’ve done a couple of practice runs with my other half, so hopefully I won’t just word vomit like I have been known to do in the past. Now to just cross fingers they don’t ask any weird questions about things I didn’t think of. Also that it won’t be as cold as it has been the past couple of mornings, since I don’t have any skin-tone stockings and will therefore be wearing my dress without any. And even though Octobers are supposed to be NICE in Australia, that has not been the case the last few days. I’ve been wearing stockings under my jeans and up to four layers up top.

Anyway, this was all leading up to me saying goodnight. I will get to as many of your posts as I can tomorrow night, but my parents are visiting for the weekend, which means Saturday morning, when I usually do it, is out. Hopefully I’ll get around to most of you though! Goodnight!

#ROW80 Check-in: Yay, feedback! and #WIPPet Wednesday: “We would’ve believed you!”

Upon posting this post, WordPress informed me this is my 150th. Yay me! *passes around the champagne*

The other night I was doing some work on AMCF and I got to one of my very favourite scenes (for those who are reading it, it’s the scene in the restaurant). I read through it and didn’t make a single change… and that was when I thought to myself, “It’s a good thing I have beta readers.” I am discovering things I had forgotten, too, like the fact that I was already halfway through this draft when I got around to giving Cait’s mother a name – so I had to go through the first few chapters and figure out which “Her mother”s should be changed. I also had a minor character whose stage name was “Lorenzo the Magnificent”… which I completely by accident discovered was how Lorenzo de’Medici came to be known, so I promptly changed him to “Alfonso”, which I feel gives the same effect, but as far as I know doesn’t reference any Florentine noblemen of times gone by.

I got my first bit of feedback in my email today (thanks again, Shan!), and have spent most of the night reading through it, which is why it is already 10:20 and I’m only up to this part of this post. Reading the comments is much less scary than I initially expected, and even on the bits which I love don’t want to change, I tend to end up saying “… that is a very good point you make,” whilst pouting at it. And then there are other bits where I’m like, “Dude, that is the best idea ever! Why didn’t I think of that?!” And there are other bits again where the comments confirmed the mixed feelings I already had about particular scenes, and make me all the more determined to make it work better. I want to dive into those parts already, but I am convincing myself to wait until I have heard back from a few more people and consolidate the comments from at least a few of them. I sent it to eight people, I think, and I know a few aren’t going to be able to get to it until later in the month/early October, so I’m telling myself to be patient.

I’ve also decided on one plot I’m going to use for NaNoWriMo, which is exciting. If my writer’s group meets up again this Sunday (which I think is the current plan), I’m going to bounce some ideas off them. I have the premise and a vague idea of where the story needs to go, but no idea about the resolution at the moment. So that’s quite exciting.

And now I’d best get onto WIPpet Wednesday, since it continues to get later and I continue to write this post at a snail’s pace. WIPpet Wednesday is where a bunch of writers come together and share something from their current Work In Progress that somehow relates to the date. The linky is here, feel free to join in! As always, thanks to K. L. Schwengel for hosting. Today is the 18th of September, so I’m flipping those two numbers around to get to Page 81, and then adding the two digits,  together to give you nine lines. Also, look I made a banner! Sure, it’s just a screencap from Phantom of the Opera, but on my whole AMCF Pinterest board, it is the picture I feel is most representative of Cait and Felipe (even if by the time they’re at that stage of the relationship, Felipe’s leg injury would prevent any scooping up of Cait and swinging her about. Knowing Cait, she’d probably see this as a good thing).

Anyways. It’s no wonder this post is taking so long to write when I keep rambling like that. This scene takes place just after it’s become reasonably common knowledge in the war hospital that Cait and Felipe are friends, and that she’s the woman there were all the rumours about.

 “Why did you never tell us you were the prince’s friend?” Hattie asked, “I’ll admit, even Meg and I thought it a bit strange the way you were always asking about him.”

“I became quite used to rumours spreading about me,” Cait replied, “and besides, most people wouldn’t have believed me anyway, had I said that mine and the prince’s meetings were simply borne out of friendship.”

“I would have!” Hattie exclaimed, sounding affronted, “and I’m sure Meg would have as well!”

All right! That is posted, and it’s now past 11pm, so I should consider going to bed. At least I had dinner and showered and things at reasonable times so that I could then just sit on the computer until bedtime. I shall try to get around to as many of your posts as I can tomorrow night, and will try and catch the rest of you on Saturday (Friday is out, as I have a free ticket to the local production of Footloose, which should be fun! I shall see you all then!