#WIPpet Wednesday and #ROW80 Week 1

First of all, I have a request, though given the crowd that visits this blog, I’m probably preaching to the choir here. Can we stop fussing about how other people read books? I’m just really sick of the ebook vs. print “debate”. People seem very concerned about how other people who have nothing to do with them read, and I can’t understand why… if you like print books, read print books. If you like ebooks, read those. If you like going with whichever option gives you the fastest and most affordable access to the book you want, like I do (my process is check library, check Amazon, check bookstore), then more power to you. Now let’s all stop the fuss, yes?

(This rant brought to you by a very stupid video I saw on YouTube today)

In other news, you know how I face cast my characters? I have this perfect image of the actor I want to cast as Armand in my NaNo 2014 story… The problem is, I can’t actually place who this actor is. After it had been bugging me all day, I literally figured it out just after I typed that sentence. Actor in question is Hugh Dancy, but from about 10 years ago, around the time he made Ella Enchanted. You guys have no idea how much of a relief this is. I could see his face and even hear his voice but couldn’t work out who he was. To the Pinterest machine! *points dramatically*

All right, I’m back from Pinterest. Firstly, an update on the ROW80 front. I am yet to start putting AMCF into the CreateSpace template. Once I finish writing this, I will go get my USB and put the relevant files on it so I can work on it at work with the dual monitors.

While I didn’t meet my “write for an hour on Tuesday” goal either, I have been working on my writing at other times. I sat down on Saturday or Sunday to start working on overall goal “Work out the plot holes in Unicorn Love”. Some of you may remember that Unicorn Love started out as a very different story to the one I thought it had become. On Saturday, I realised that a) that stuff with Aphrodite was really quite good, and b) the reason that I had so many plot holes was because I was trying to weave two stories together that really should be told separately. Lexie and David’s problems can be solved with Aphrodite’s help (and to think I was going to take her out of later versions), but even time travel can’t really help Grace and Anna. Not plausibly, anyway.

As such, I’ve returned to the original version, in which Lexie is the cupid who has lost her faith in true love, and I’ve got about two thirds of an outline written. It’s not going to be a long story. I’m expecting maybe 20000 words? Though I really don’t know? I haven’t entirely decided how to approach Grace and Anna’s story, though I have some notes. I don’t know whether I’ll sit down to write Unicorn Love and come back to Grace and Anna (who now have their own story but no title) or outline them both and then start writing. Either way, I’m glad I came to this realisation.

On that note, today is Wednesday, which also means a WIPpet. For those unfamiliar with the blog hop, WIPpet Wednesday requires that you share an excerpt from your current WIP that somehow relates to the date. Then you link up here and see what other people have shared. Since the rest of today’s post is Unicorn Love themed, here is an excerpt that takes place not long after this one I posted back in July. For the 7th of January, I have 7 paragraphs.

“Lexie?” He stood up, and in a couple of strides had made his way to her. He took her hands in his as she stood up to meet him.

“David.”

“What am I… what is this place? How am I here?”

“I don’t know. I… oh, you’ve got no idea how good it is to see you.”

“What is this place?”

“It’s hard to explain. Please stop talking and just hold me.”

David seemed happy to oblige. He slid his arms around Lexie’s waist and pulled her close. She put her arms around his neck and buried her head in his shoulder. That was when she sensed something was wrong. David had no scent that she could inhale, and his clothes were too crisp and clean. This was not David, but a very good reproduction.

That Aphrodite, eh? She’s a pesky one.

Anyway, I started this post late, which means it’s even later now. I was tired four hours ago when I got home, so I think it’s time to turn in for the night. See y’all soon!

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#WIPpet Wednesday – Jumping back on the wagon

Hello all. I have been rather lax at blogging as of late, and for that, I apologise. I have no excuse for disappearing last week. I was planning a WIPpet post, but then I ended up going up to my neighbour’s house on Wednesday evening and then it was bedtime when I came back down. Also, the last week and a half have basically been non-writing weeks, as even the NaNo planning has ground to a bit of a halt. Mostly I am stuck on the development of my antagonist, and her arc. I wrote a bit about that on the Plot Doctoring forum this morning. You can read that here, and if you have any advice to give, I would much appreciate it! (If you don’t have a NaNo account, feel free to answer on this post). I’ve also had my parents here the last few days; they were giving me their old car, but were worried about my apparent over-confidence with driving, and were therefore fussing. It was exhausting.

Anyway, since I haven’t any more cute character interviews or anything fun to give youfrom the upcoming NaNo, I will instead briefly return to Unicorn Love, the story I was sharing from a couple of months ago. I don’t actually know if this is still a WIP, but I am partial to the characters, so let’s work on the basis it will get returned to. This scene takes place a fair bit after the other ones I shared. Upon seeing how much Lexie would give to have it so that Davey never ended up in gaol, Grace Littlewood takes her on to figure out how to use a watch she has discovered, which she believes can allow the user to travel in time. Lexie tries it a first time, and it is a pretty unpleasant experience, and she suggests maybe it isn’t a good idea to use it. Miss Littlewood reacts quite angrily to that, and Lexie wonders why, prompting this explanation. My WIPpet maths is 22 lines from my Scrivener file.

Lexie moved a little closer. “Why is it so important?” she asked. “This isn’t just about helping me, is it?”

Miss Littlewood sighed and sat down. “When I was younger, still at school… the was a girl there. Her name was Anna Radcliffe and she was the sweetest girl I’d ever met.” Her expression became wistful. “We fell in love, and -”

“You what? With a girl?”

Miss Littlewood looked up sharply. “I felt as strongly about Anna as you do about your David.” Lexie was taken aback by the sharpness in her tone.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve just never heard of it before.”

Miss Littlewood gave her a wry look. “It’s far more common than you think.” Lexie decided to take her word for it.

“What happened to Anna?”

“We had plans to run away at the end of the school year. We were going to go to Melbourne, or perhaps Brisbane. We hadn’t really decided. We just wanted to be far away from here, somewhere where no one knew us. But we were careless. Anna’s father discovered us one evening… he didn’t see much but it was enough. He told me I was never allowed to see his daughter again. When she tried coming after me a few nights later, he…” Miss Littlewood pressed her lips together.

“What did he do?”

“He sent her away. Had her locked up somewhere so awful that within a year she’d become ill and died. Can you imagine sending your daughter to a place where that would happen?” Lexie shook her head. “And I’m not even sure he cared.”

“I’m sorry.” Lexie couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“A year or two ago, I had a dream about the clock. And Anna was there, too. I somehow knew that if I could find that clock, I could find her again. I need to save her, Lexie. Do you understand that?” Her voice was barely above a whisper. Lexie nodded.

In reference to Lexie’s ignorance/naivety, bear in mind this is set 100-150 years ago (I haven’t set it in concrete, but I think 1880s…) and Lexie’s not got a huge range of life experience. I actually as I was posting this figured out the plot point that I have been stuck on with this one, so I will definitely be filing it away for post-NaNo continued work. Yay!

Anyway, it’s past my bedtime and I was tired before, so I should hurry this up. To join in on WIPpet Wednesday, simply post an excerpt from your WIP that somehow relates to the date and then link up here. Many thanks to K. L. Schwengel for hosting. And now, I am off to bed!

#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 and finally, a finished edit!

So after six weeks of me nagging him about it, Edy has completed the edits on A More Complicated Fairytale. I actually thought it was longer than that, but I just scrolled back through my blog posts and it was around mid-July when he started, so I guess I should take back some of my complaining. I’ve decided I’m not going to look at it until the weekend, when I can give it my full and undivided attention. But that’s pretty exciting.

For now, though, I’ll continue on with The Work Formerly Known As Unicorn Love, which I have tentatively retitled Love in a Time of Time Travel, which I like, because it basically sums up the two key aspects of the plot, but does it feel a bit clunky as a title? While I haven’t written a whole heap of new material, I did sit down on Sunday evening and type out the issues I need to figure out with the plot. My main couple are being uncooperative and refusing to reveal the exact nature of their relationship to me. I have no idea whether they were trying very hard to be “just friends” or whether they were a couple or if they’d even acknowledged their feelings for each other.

I had a grand plan this morning to get up early and do some writing. Except it was 6am and I could feel cramps coming on and it was cold and so after 213 words I went back to bed for another half an hour. I am, however, going to try and do the same thing tomorrow. 213 words each day is better than my recent track record of zero, and it would be good to get into this habit (even if the habit also includes the going back to bed again). We’re coming into spring in this part of the world, so hopefully in another month or so the weather will be warm enough that I won’t just want to snuggle down into the covers when the alarm goes off. (I say that now. Give it three months and I will be sleeping with only a thin sheet over me and the fan on and all the windows open and I’ll be wanting to know when the cooler weather is coming back.)

Anyway, I should really get a move on as it’s now nearly 10pm. The bit I was going to share, I have just realised, still only exists in my notebook, which is in another room and I can’t be bothered getting up. So I’ll share a bit before it. While Lexie and David are kind of the heads of their street gang, Lexie is on the outs with everyone else after David is sent to gaol, so in this scene she’s trying to scrounge a few pennies to get herself something to eat. WIPpet math… it’s the third so three paragraphs. It’s too late in the evening to be complicated now.

“‘Scuse me, miss!” she called out, running slightly ahead of the woman and then turning and walking backwards so she could face her. “Spare any change?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t -”

“Out of our way!” The woman was cut off by the older man she was with. “Be gone with you!” He swung his cane in Lexie’s direction and she jumped to the side to avoid being hit.

That’s all for tonight. By next Wednesday, I’ll have hopefully typed up the following bit, which is where another main character is introduced. I nearly named this character after a Doctor Who companion, but thankfully Googled the name to see if it was familiar or if I was just imagining things, and promptly changed her surname.

To join in on WIPpet Wednesday, simply post an excerpt of your current WIP that somehow relates to the date, and then join us at the linky. Thanks to K. L. Schwengel for hosting. Since I am now nodding asleep on my bed’s foot-board, I shall head off and visit again when I am more awake. Love to all!

#WIPpet Wednesday – Daddy Issues

The five leads in ABCTV’s “ANZAC Girls”

Psst! This post got rather lengthy (like over 1000 words, lengthy!) so if you’re just here for the WIPpet, scroll down about halfway and you’ll find it! 🙂

So as part of the commemoration of the beginning of the First World War, the ABC has started showing a series called “ANZAC Girls” (that’s Australian and New Zealand Army Corps), which follows the stories of five women who enlist as nurses and operate in Cairo in 1915. A lot of the scenes in the wartime hospital in A More Complicated Fairytale are based on what I picked up when I was working at the Australian War Memorial, but I didn’t do a huge amount of secondary research, other than what I gleaned from reading the letters and papers that crossed my desk. What I have realised from watching the first episode of ANZAC Girls is that the hospital Cait works in, and that Felipe is admitted to, in AMCF is about the most sanitised wartime hospital in the history of ever. I’m pretty sure Cait never gets a drop of blood on her. So that’s something I plan on working in the near future.

In the meantime, though, I’ve been continuing on completing an outline for An Eventual Happily Ever After. Somehow I have managed this in spite of Superman being on TV on Saturday night and me realising that I am a fool to have never watched the Superman movies before and thusly downloading them and watching one a night (though I took a break last night, and I’m out tonight and tomorrow, so IV and the two newer ones will have to wait until the weekend). There are bits in my outline that aren’t great, and are sort of temporary “get-from-A-to-B”s, but at the moment I want to know how to get from A – Z and then I’ll figure out the nitty-gritty later. I’ll probably have to cut out one scene I really liked in the original NaNo draft, because I can’t see a way for them to logically get to the necessary location…

Actually! I take that back, I just took a break from writing this post, drew a rough map of the country in which most of the story takes place and the route Ginny and Peter will take through it, and it might still work. Which makes me happy. And drawing a map was a good idea, anyway.

Tangent: the pen I used to sketch said map is a LiveScribe Wifi Smartpen which not only writes what I tell it to, but also takes photos of it and converts it to a file it can sync to my Evernote account, and also records everything I say while I’m writing. Edy got it for me for my birthday because I’d been going on about it, and when I first got it, I was thinking, “Oh god, I just made my boyfriend spend an exorbitant amount of money on something that is really better suited to someone who’s going to lectures or meetings all the time and can make proper use of it!” and I was feeling rather guilty. But I just listened back to the audio of what I was saying while I was mapping and I actually think this might be a valuable plotting tool. Also I literally said “… and stowaway shenanigans can happen here” and then promptly forgot I said it until I heard it again, so there will probably be more amusing things like that. So basically have a pen and Dictaphone all rolled into one (the only real downside is it requires special paper printed at 600 dpi on a laser printer, so at the moment I’m being very conservative with the 50 page starter booklet).

So! After all that, I suppose you are expecting a WIPpet. I am going to cheat slightly with my WIPpet math week, because I was typing this up on Tuesday night, which was the 12th of August, so I’m giving you 12 paragraphs. 😛 They’re kind of lengthy (though under 500 words all together), feel free to skim. This is the scene I was going to share last week. Tension between Prince Felipe and his father is hinted at towards the end of AMCF, but I expanded on it here. Felipe and Cait are supposed to be dining with the guests who attended their youngest daughter’s Naming Day ceremony. However, having just learned that Ginny has gone missing, they’re somewhat preoccupied.

It was when his friend reached the door that he noticed his father standing in the doorway. The King’s arms were crossed and he was frowning.

“Father,” Prince Felipe said, suddenly becoming less confident. Cait took his hand under the table. While he was known to argue with the King on many occasions, sometimes he still came across as a little boy in trouble when his father frowned at him.

“I have a roomful of guests wondering why their hosts are not at lunch. Would you care to explain?”

“Father, Cait’s sister has gone missing. No one has seen her since the end of the Naming Ceremony. Surely finding her is more important than a lunch held so that some nobles and diplomats can fuss over a baby who would much rather be left alone to sleep?”

King Gilles pressed his lips together tightly. “I would have thought that perhaps the prince would make an appearance, if not his wife.”

Felipe looked like he was about to keep arguing, so Cait intervened. “Perhaps you should discuss the issue with your father outside, rather than in front of everyone?” The last thing she wanted was for the King and Prince to have one of their many arguments in front of a roomful of the prince’s knights.

Prince Felipe nodded, and stood up. As he moved out of the room, King Gilles joined him.

“You can’t just decide you’re not going to turn up to an important function, Felipe!” the King admonished him in a low voice. “You have certain obligations!”

“My obligations are to my family, first and foremost!”

“That’s very noble of you, but as the Crown Prince, you have just as much duty to your position as to your family. You are expected out there.”

“I will go and meet those guests once I am certain that I have done all I can to ensure that Ginny is found. Once my men are out combing the city, then I will make my appearance.”

For a moment, the King and the Prince just stared at each other in the hallway, before Prince Felipe turned on his heel and made his way back into the meeting room. King Gilles was left to angrily make his way back to the banquet hall and try and placate his son’s guests until Felipe hopefully turned up.

Please join us for WIPpet Wednesday! All you need to do is post an excerpt from your WIP that somehow relates to the date, and then join up with us here. Thanks to K. L. Schwengel for hosting. 🙂 I’m going to head off now to continue working. See you all soon! 🙂

#WIPpet Wednesday – Royal Life

I’m slowly getting my writing mojo back! After two weeks of not writing at all, I wrote a 1011-word scene yesterday, and then started going through it An Eventual Happily Ever After from the beginning today, as well as slowly nutting out a plan. I’ve also been reading over what I wrote of it in last year’s NaNo. There are some parts I’ll be able to keep, though changes I’m making in the early part of it will mean that some later parts will have to be changed. So yay! My plan is to work on AEHEA for a while, since that’s what I’ve already got a decent chunk of material on, and also where the inspiration seems to be lying at the moment. I’ll return to Unicorn Love at a later date.

One thing I have noticed while working on AEHEA is that it’s really obvious that I’ve spent a lot of time with Cait and Felipe before, but that Ginny and Peter are new. So I’m going to try doing some exercises with them, character interviews and the like, to get into their brains properly.

There was this other bit that I really wanted to share for WIPpet Wednesday, but I couldn’t for the life of me make the math work (next week is the 13th, though, and I think I can make it work for the 13th). Instead, I have this little piece, which is six lines long in my Word document. Ginny has been missing for about a week now, and Cait is getting more and more worried (yes, this is AMCF Cait; Ginny is her sister).

Cait, for her part, had interviewed some of people they thought might be able to give them information, but she spent a lot of time trying to carry on with her usual royal duties. She was growing increasingly worried that Ginny had gotten herself into some sort of trouble and that they weren’t going to see her again, and she couldn’t even remember the last occasion when she’d spent time with Ginny just as her sister. She didn’t like to think that royal life had affected her that much, but there wasn’t much evidence against it.

This is about the shortest WIPpet Wednesday post I’ve written in a long time, but it’s now early Thursday morning (I was trying to post just before I went to bed and then my Internet wasn’t being co-operative) so I should finish this off quickly. To join in, post an excerpt from your WIP that somehow relates to the date, and link up with us here. Goodnight all!

Today’s #ROW80 and #WIPpet Wednesday

So I was all, “I probably won’t do a ROW80 update on this first Wednesday of the round, because mine is a weekly goal, and it’s unlikely I will have made a huge amount of progress in two days.”

Which would usually be true, except then I finished editing my two chapters for the week on Monday night. So that was pretty awesome. It helps that the first of these two chapters was one I had already written a fair amount of the new material for, anyway, and the second didn’t require many changes, so it was mostly just copying and pasting from the previous draft and making little edits here and there.

(Last night I then proceeded to write one sentence, before being invited up to my neighbour’s house to run Crucible lines [she is also in the production]. Except we ran no lines whatsoever in the two and a half hours I was up there, and just talked about what we’re reading and the upcoming Jane Austen Festival and how one year we’ll be organised enough to actually attend, and things like that.)

Most of the drastic changes between drafts do take place earlier on in the story, and apart from a few little things to do with the order of certain events, much from where I’m up to through to the end will remain pretty much how it is. There are a few spots where I’ve

I’ve also decided on the subject matter for either August Camp NaNoWriMo or official NaNoWriMo, (depending on what month it is when I am finally done with AMCF) so I’m doing some preliminary research on that to try to figure out an actual plot. Which is weird because I never do research (well, not at the outset), but I’m really set on this topic and the reading is really fun. Sorry my vagueness, I want to keep it to myself for a little while yet.

Anyway, today being Wednesday also means WIPpet Wednesday. I am going with something short today because I’ve spent way too long trying to figure out what to post. As for my WIPpet math, I added up all the digits of today’s date and got 20, and then I subtracted 1 because… that’s how many words there are in my excerpt. So ner. Or I guess I could just add up all the digits except for the 1. Whatever. Last week, quite a few of you admired Cait’s forthrightness towards Prince Felipe. This is another example of that, though in this scene, she’s dealing with one of the doctors in the war hospital who is rude to her on a number of occasions.

“Most people here realise that the nurses deserve as much respect as you; perhaps you should do the same.”

The ROW80 linky for today can be found here, and I encourage you to and cheer on some other writers. 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 this linky. Many thanks to K. L. Schwengel for hosting. And speaking of Kathi, I have a review of her latest novel, Emergence, scheduled for this Friday, so keep an eye out for that. I’m going to head off now, visit some blogs and then do some more writing. Catch you all later! 😀

#WIPpet Wednesday and #ROW80 Update – In which we get a little bit meta

Hello! It’s Wednesday and I’m so determined for my WIPpet Wednesday post to go up on time this week that I started writing it last night. Since I posted late and missed the linky, some of you might have missed the news that I figured out a lot of stuff in Operation: Nutcracker and have been working on it again! There is still a lot that needs working out, but I feel like I’m getting somewhere with it again and it’s been really exciting visiting Max and Clara again. Though I did have a moment while I had my Nutcracker on Ice DVD on (my neighbours were blaring techno all weekend, so I figured blaring Tchaikovsky back at them was only fair) and I realised I kept referring to the Nutcracker Prince in that as Max. So that’s a thing.

Anyway, for this week’s WIPpet, I have four lines (2 + 2 for the 22nd of January). I didn’t even actually think about what I was writing when I wrote this, and it wasn’t until I sat back and read it and went, “Wait…”

“So now everyone is waiting for their long lost Prince to return home and save them,” Clara summarised, though Max heard the skepticism still in her voice. “I can’t decide whether your life is the plot of a fantasy novel or a Disney movie.”

“Disney movie, definitely,” Max declared seriously.

Silly Max. If only you knew.

Also, on the subject of meta, I found out a thing the other day and it kind of broke my brain a little. The actress who plays Cait in my dream AMCF cast was in a workshop for a musical version of the movie Ever After: A Cinderella Story. Which might seem like not too major a thing, until I add that the character of Prince Felipe is very, very inspired by the character of Prince Henry in that very movie. So I had a bit of a moment then, though now that I’ve written it down, it’s probably not as mind-blowing for anyone else as it was for me. 😛

As for writing goals, well, I wrote about a page and a half of Operation Sugarplum on my breaks at work on Monday. When added up, said breaks work out at about an hour. Today I took my print out of the current version of AMCF in with me and have really started working on the edits and the Post-It-Noting. I have green ones for where entire scenes need to be moved or changed, orange ones for timeline-related stuff because I’m reasonably sure my timeline isn’t entirely straight, and pink ones for random little changes, including spelling/grammar/”is this even a sentence?!” issues. Though a lot of those are just being written straight in, in pink pen. So that’s my two hours for the week up already, and I plan on doing more editing this evening if I have some time.

I’ve also met my blogging schedule for the last couple of weeks, so that’s pretty awesome.

If you would like to join in on WIPpet Wednesday, simply post an excerpt from your current WIP that somehow correlates to the date (we encourage creativity with the dates) and then link up with us here and check out others’ offerings. As always, thanks to K. L. Schwengel for hosting us. 🙂 If you are more into the A Round of Words in 80 Days, check it out here.

On that note, I’m going to sign off and go back to drinking the tea I bought from the actual Twinings shop in London and listening to an album of the St Paul’s Cathedral Choir singing Christmas carols and pretending I’m back there for the Christmas concert I attended. Catch you all later. 🙂

#ROW80 Round 1, 2014

So the new round of A Round of Words in 80 Days began on Monday, but I only just got home, so I’m hopping in now. In 2014, my goal is to get A More Complicated Fairytale to a point where I am happy to publish it. Based on the feedback I have gotten from betas, I want to write one more version, and then get onto proof-reading and such.

For the moment, I will make my usual “write for an hour two nights a week” writing goal, though once I know what the hours of my new job are, I might be able to add a bit more to that.

My blogging schedule will be thus:

Monday – Mirth and Music Monday
Wednesday – WIPpet Wednesday and ROW80 Check-in
Every Second Friday – Book review

So apart from blatantly stealing the idea of a book review series from Ink and Papyrus, I am aiming to read as many of the unread books on my shelves and my Kindle as possible this year and perhaps a required schedule will keep me on the ball. I don’t tend to bother finishing books I don’t enjoy, but I do want to look at what I’m reading critically and be able to discuss what I’ve enjoyed or not versus others. I’ve  got two written and another one started already so I’m well on my way to creating a good buffer, as long as I keep it up.

I do have other goals that I’ve set for myself for 2014, but they’re not really ones I feel the need to share on here.

Onto WIPpet Wednesday. For those who have not heard of it before, WW is where a group of writers come together to share excerpts from their current WIPs. The only requirement is that they somehow correlate to the date. Then join us at this linky and see what others have on offer. Following on from last week’s post, today I have another excerpt in which Prince Felipe is being insistent and Cait would rather like to bang his head against a wall. In last week’s post, she was being told that His Royal Highness insists on her presence at the ball that night. This next part takes place at said ball.

“Cait, isn’t it?” he said when he reached her.

“Yes, your Highness. Short for Caitlin.”

“May I have this dance, Cait?”

“Your Highness, I’m not really one for dancing, I really think…”

“Nonsense, I insist.” He held out his arm and Cait was left with no choice but to take it. He led her right to the centre of the ballroom and then other couples filled in the space around them. The musicians began playing a waltz, and Cait tensed as Prince Felipe put one hand on her waist.

This post has been in the making for about 24 hours, so I’m going to leave it there. I probably won’t see you until Monday, as my parents are driving back to Canberra on Friday and I’ll be getting myself settled back in before heading back to work. I’ll try and get to a few of your posts, though, when I can. (I said that last week, and then only got to about three blogs, but I’ll see how I go!)

#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!