Done!

Just a short post this time to say that I have just finished my second draft (or first proper full draft, depending how you look at it) of Inter Vivos! Woop!
Sure, the last couple of paragraphs are a bit shit, but that'll all be fixed in round 3: Editing. Roll on December 1st for that one!
So this leaves me free to write my new story for NaNoWriMo. Very excited.
Still no story for Hallowe'en though, unless I can come up with something later tonight.
Anyway, I'm too happy to stay now, so I'm off to Morrisons. Woop again!

A World Of My Own

I'm taking a break right now from writing what will hopefully be the last chapter (or at least the last part) of Inter Vivos. All I can say is "urgh!".
I've been working on Inter Vivos since November 2006. Not exclusively, mind you. This year I have pulled my finger out and tried to make a go of things, tried to get the story into shape and all that. And now I'm on the last chapter, and you'd think it'd be easy sailings, but no. Now I have to invent a whole political system for my new society. And I know diddly-squat about politics. It's sort of fun to make up your own system of government, but the problem is that I'm fundamentally lazy. And there's a voice in my head going "but it's the end! You shouldn't have to work anymore!" But I do, and so that's what I'm here doing. Urgh indeed.
It takes so much discipline to write something of novel length. And I know that once this last chapter is finished, the manuscript as a whole still won't be completely. I have to go back over it and check it for consistency and tone. I already know there are passages that will need to be reworded or corrected, either because I was having a bad day that day, or because a character changed slightly during the course of the novel.
But, the positive side is at least most of the "hard work" will be done before NaNoWriMo. November will be a month of experimentation, spitting out a whole new novel to worry about in years to come. Then December will be time to re-read IV and note down what needs changing, and then January 2010 - well, that's when the "hard work" starts again.
And I still haven't even thought of what I can write for my hallowe'en story. Well, I have a vague idea, set on a different planet (or our planet millions of years in the future) but I'm not sure how that will fit with the hallowe'en topic. I could always add zombie-vampires to it, I suppose.
Right, break over. Back to work. (I'm such a slave driver...)

Good Female Roles in Stories

My life is completely boring right now. At the weekend I did nothing but watch series 4 of How I Met Your Mother and play The Sims 2. Hardly worth telling the internet about, but I feel like I must update regularly or else what's the point?

Tonight I'm off to the library to try to finish Inter Vivos. I just want to write something where the plot of the story isn't "girl trying to get boy to like her". I do enjoy romantic comedy, but I've been getting a little bit annoyed that most films with a female protagonist tend to be about relationships. Now, Alien is an obvious example of a film with a strong heroine who doesn't spend the entire film wondering whether her crush will ask her out, but that part was famously written for a man before Sigourney Weaver was cast. Is that telling? Can anyone suggest some good non-horror movies that aren't about women bitching about men (or their lesbian crushes)?

Anyway, my heroine Nox is more concerned with the fact that she's murdered folk, rather than trying to win the heart of some handsome prince, so that's alright then.

Monster Story

Hello all. How've you been? I've been feeling pretty tired of late, so haven't been up to much. Been watching Men In Trees on Virgin on Demand, which I'm really enjoying. A less sexy Sex and the City, with some nice characterisation even if I can predict not only the plot but also some of the dialogue (which I'm finding kinda comforting - weird?).

I finished a new short story last week, and I'm just putting the finishing touches to it. Well, I say "new" - I actually started it last November during Damien's writing class, and have only just gotten around to completing it. It's currently called "The Eye That Came To Work", though the more I type that, the less I like it. Still, I think I'll be sending it off shortly to see if I can find a home for it in one of the e-zines. Fingers crossed.

As per usual, Scary Duck's condensed movie made me chuckle. This one's The Hobbit/LOTR: http://scaryduck.blogspot.com/search/label/Condensed%20films

Inter Vivos is still ongoing. Going to head off to the library tonight to do some more. Must work on The Maiden not being a very bad pantomime villain. Think it'll help though when I have a completed first draft, so I can look at her role the whole way through, and decide what to do with her. Gotta stop her monologuing - that's for certain.

Hallowe'en is coming up, and I'm having a Mary Shelley party, where we all have to write a horror story to read to the group. I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to write. Hannah said she'd do a comic, which sounds excellent. If only my drawings didn't look like those of a five year olds...

She-Wolf

Quickie just to share this:

This bit in The Guardian made me chortle: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/oct/05/shakira-she-wolf

I guess it helps if you've seen the video it's talking about, which is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aEW_Z5Va5s

Banshees for NaNoWriMo

Thankfully, the busy period is over with at work now, and so I can finally get back to concentrating on my writing.

I am still working away at Inter Vivos - going to go and do some more once I've finished this blog post - and I'm still waiting to hear from a couple of magazines where I've submitted work, so it's quite busy at the moment, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed all goes well.

It's almost NaNoWriMo time, and so I thought I'd blog a little bit about this year's project, although I don't have everything planned out yet. I have mentioned it before in bits and pieces, but thought I'd try to expand a little bit on what I've already told you, so you have more of an idea what I'm on about.

Right, so this year, my story is about a banshee named Caoimhe (pronounced Kee-va), and a fresher called Tom. Tom starts university and instantly goes about forming himself a band. He's talented and convinced he's going to be a rock star. He's quite big-headed, with that arrogance that comes from being 18, fairly attractive, and the best thing from his little local sixth form. So anyway, he's playing his first gig at some pub and is drawn to bar maid Caoimhe, who looks like a model - 6 foot tall, skinny, with long white-blonde hair (see picture above for how I see her), who happens to also be enrolled at the university reading mathematics. Turns out that not only is Caoimhe the only one he's ever met who isn't instantly into his music (and him), but she's also a banshee - born several centuries earlier, she and her "sisters" are charged with the task of escorting the ancestors of the ancient noble families of Ireland to the underworld when they die. Drawn almost magnetically to a place whenever someone with noble blood is marked with a "halo", the banshee doesn't know until it is too late whom that person is. Some of the sisters, such as Caoimhe, play detective to try to find the person to protect them from death (if they are able to) as a way to save those whom they are eternally bound from suffering and misery. So Tom becomes attrached to Caoimhe, and follows her about until he witnesses her at "work", and is eventually drawn into her world as she tries to track down her latest halo, who also happens to be enrolled at Tom's new university.

So that's the jumble that's in my head at the moment. Will hopefully have it in some sort of semblance of a plot before November 1st.