So last night and this morning, I powered through Chapter 2 and 3 of my book. And in the end, I have two made for the dumpster chapters. This is excellent. I should probably stop using garbage metaphors, since it might be discouraging. What's better? Frame work? Armatures. Got to make a skeleton before you can attach the muscle.
Mostly the story consists of the dialogue and some random thoughts of the main character as she speaks in first person. This was how I wanted the story to be told and now, I'm not so sure. It has it's limitations, mainly making the story disjointed and at this point incredibly short. But it does make for a good first draft and motivation to actually write this fucker-I mean masterpiece. I've been working on it for about six months and in two days I finally get the third chapter done and out of the way.
This is one of the hardest parts, mainly cause the first three chapters are the part of the story I didn't even have concepts for. I had random lines of dialogue and strangely conflicting notes, which are always discouraging. But now, I'm just going to have conflicting chapters! *cries* Overall, I'm proud of my accomplishments. I've got and outline, I've written three chapters and I'm about to start chapter 4, if I don't go to work on A Glimpse through the Curtains edits.
Anyway, that's my thoughts so far. I'll keep you guys you guys up to date with progress.
Peace and blessings
Eric Rawlinson
20110213
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Chapter 1: Discouragment
So, I've finished the a very very rough first chapter of my book. Not much sustenance on it at all, mostly dialogue which is how I roll to begin with. But I look at this as an accomplishment. Now I have a wired frame for the rest of the story, a head if you will. It needs work, but that is to be expected. Write for the trash, my mentor said. It doesn't matter what your first draft looks like, eighty percent of it will not exist when the final comes. It's true. I've been looking over the early drafts of Song for a Muse recently and I've found myself looking at a stranger. It was weird.
But the book is coming along slowly and hopefully I'll be able to write more once the headache goes away. I'll keep you guys updated.
Best wishes. Peace and blessings
Eric Rawlinson
20110212
But the book is coming along slowly and hopefully I'll be able to write more once the headache goes away. I'll keep you guys updated.
Best wishes. Peace and blessings
Eric Rawlinson
20110212
Thursday, February 10, 2011
In The Air Tonight
I sit at my desk, breathing in the energy of a lonely evening. I've accomplished so much today, yet I see the path grow longer still. I listen to the music that tears at my soul as it has so many times before and to the new ones that threaten to do the same for all eternity.
Can we pretend that the airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars? Cause I can use a wish right now. It's crawling through my skin, this feeling in the air tonight.
The blinking cursor hangs just above the body of the screen. Page 2/3. A job well done. A skeleton of a story with its organs strewn across the floor. It's missing some of its parts, they're in my head and my heart. And hopefully in my future. Relax, it's a metaphor.
It's night and soon I shall be in bed. But for now, I'm writing a blog, with a smile on my face and youtube in another tab, playing the random music that I've selected. I bounce to its beat and randomly write whatever pops in my head. God that bumble bee is big, I wonder what it's number is? See what I mean? It's a good day.
Why am I like this? I promised I wouldn't do anything like this. I would not go on tangents and pour my soul onto a page to let everyone see. Well right now, fuck it. Besides, I'm enjoying this.
Anyway, to make a little bit of sense, I've been writing and editing. Trying to get a little something done quickly. I feel if I get it done quickly, it'll be done and I can get it out of the way. I still have a half finished plot outline, but I could fill it in a little bit more with some of the concept dialogue that I've been doing. I'm also writing the first chapter so I can get the main character's voice in. I'm trying something I've never really tried before; first person, present tense. I'm trying to make it as loose as possible like stream of conscious sort of thing. I'm doing this for a couple of reasons. I want to show the character's development as gradual and subtle and because I'm lazy and I just want to write down the thoughts as quickly as possible :P.
But overall, I'm kind of optimistic with this project. We shall see how it goes. Thank you for putting up with this loose blog post, but I felt inspired.
Peace and blessings
Eric Rawlinson
20110210
Can we pretend that the airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars? Cause I can use a wish right now. It's crawling through my skin, this feeling in the air tonight.
The blinking cursor hangs just above the body of the screen. Page 2/3. A job well done. A skeleton of a story with its organs strewn across the floor. It's missing some of its parts, they're in my head and my heart. And hopefully in my future. Relax, it's a metaphor.
It's night and soon I shall be in bed. But for now, I'm writing a blog, with a smile on my face and youtube in another tab, playing the random music that I've selected. I bounce to its beat and randomly write whatever pops in my head. God that bumble bee is big, I wonder what it's number is? See what I mean? It's a good day.
Why am I like this? I promised I wouldn't do anything like this. I would not go on tangents and pour my soul onto a page to let everyone see. Well right now, fuck it. Besides, I'm enjoying this.
Anyway, to make a little bit of sense, I've been writing and editing. Trying to get a little something done quickly. I feel if I get it done quickly, it'll be done and I can get it out of the way. I still have a half finished plot outline, but I could fill it in a little bit more with some of the concept dialogue that I've been doing. I'm also writing the first chapter so I can get the main character's voice in. I'm trying something I've never really tried before; first person, present tense. I'm trying to make it as loose as possible like stream of conscious sort of thing. I'm doing this for a couple of reasons. I want to show the character's development as gradual and subtle and because I'm lazy and I just want to write down the thoughts as quickly as possible :P.
But overall, I'm kind of optimistic with this project. We shall see how it goes. Thank you for putting up with this loose blog post, but I felt inspired.
Peace and blessings
Eric Rawlinson
20110210
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Plot Outline
I think it's time for a novel, or to at least seriously pursue the novel. And now that I have an idea as to how I want to do it, I think its time to stop beating around the bush and find out if this is the right way to go about it.
So the way that I usually write is to create a series of notes, store them in separate files under the working titles name, number it and forget it. Like my novel My Red Eyed Girl, my notes are under files called 'Red Eyed Girl Concepts 001' and so on. Usually this doesn't help and I have list upon list of concept pages for all kinds of novels, most of which I'll never get around to, at least in the foreseeable future. So I'm going to approach the new novel a little differently with a plot outline.
A friend of mine suggested it last night, though a little indirectly. She asked me if I wrote everything down before hand and worked from there or let it flow. I guess I sort of wrote down when I was inspired but never actually got the chance to get around to putting the inspirations together. So I thought hey, why not make a rough draft about a page long summarizing everything that I want to happen in the book first and then write it out. That way I could write the individual scenes, which is basically what the book is, little interconnecting themes, then put them all together, then edit them out for tone and flow later. Then I'd have the book I desperately want to write. So simple, why didn't I think about it before?
So that's what I'm doing and already I can see where my troubles with this book is. While I've thought about it a lot, it isn't finished. I don't have enough scenes or character development yet to connect the rising action to the climax and as is, my character's development is incomplete. But I'll work on that. If I can have this concept page done, I'll feel like I've accomplished much.
I'll give you updates as to how this is working out for me as I go along, but so far this has helped out a lot and I recommend it to anyone who wants to write their book. But for now, I'm off to write. Talk to you soon.
Peace and blessings
Eric Rawlinson
20110209
So the way that I usually write is to create a series of notes, store them in separate files under the working titles name, number it and forget it. Like my novel My Red Eyed Girl, my notes are under files called 'Red Eyed Girl Concepts 001' and so on. Usually this doesn't help and I have list upon list of concept pages for all kinds of novels, most of which I'll never get around to, at least in the foreseeable future. So I'm going to approach the new novel a little differently with a plot outline.
A friend of mine suggested it last night, though a little indirectly. She asked me if I wrote everything down before hand and worked from there or let it flow. I guess I sort of wrote down when I was inspired but never actually got the chance to get around to putting the inspirations together. So I thought hey, why not make a rough draft about a page long summarizing everything that I want to happen in the book first and then write it out. That way I could write the individual scenes, which is basically what the book is, little interconnecting themes, then put them all together, then edit them out for tone and flow later. Then I'd have the book I desperately want to write. So simple, why didn't I think about it before?
So that's what I'm doing and already I can see where my troubles with this book is. While I've thought about it a lot, it isn't finished. I don't have enough scenes or character development yet to connect the rising action to the climax and as is, my character's development is incomplete. But I'll work on that. If I can have this concept page done, I'll feel like I've accomplished much.
I'll give you updates as to how this is working out for me as I go along, but so far this has helped out a lot and I recommend it to anyone who wants to write their book. But for now, I'm off to write. Talk to you soon.
Peace and blessings
Eric Rawlinson
20110209
Monday, February 7, 2011
Feedback
So I've been passing around my short stories to some people who said they were interested and slowly I've been getting feedback. It has been very exciting to see what others might think of my work. And for the most part, the feedback/editing process has been going well and all of the feedback has been very positive. Strangely though, I find that the overall themes of the stories urks people.
I guess that's the point, seeing as at the base of it that's what I was trying to do. I'm trying to show a situation where an ordinary person experience an extra-ordinary event and how it can affect them. And also, I've been showing how a person can reject the opportunities those events can give. I'm trying to break the trend of hero novels so I might be stepping on metaphorical toes as to how we expect a story to progress. Still, it's still a bit of a surprise. I've actually had people argue with me about how my characters should act. And argue with me they should I say because on the most part, I agree with them. My characters are closed minded, are cowards, are mindless and will react accordingly.
I remember the first time I explained one of my story ideas with someone. It was with my cousin, and I told her about a story with a man and a vampire. The man asks a vampire to kill him because he is sick of life. The vampire agrees, but only if the human performs a task for her. Through the task, the human realizes that life is worth living and that he doesn't want to die. And just as the vampire goes to kill, he wakes up. He's not dead, but it was not a dream as the vampire left him a token of her appreciation. My cousin was like, but that's not fair. He should have been made a vampire and try to fight for his humanity. It was quite the experience and one that has been repeated often since with many other critics of mine. The story shouldn't stop their. The characters should fight, they should continue, they should do this, they should do that, they shouldn't ignore what happened. They shouldn't misinterpret the lesson. They should behave like a proper hero.
And what do I say? Yes. They should. But they don't. What do you think about that? How does that make you feel?
Hopefully I'll get more feedback and maybe get an idea about who my greater audience shall be. Until then, this is exciting.
Peace and blessings
Eric Rawlinson
20110207
I guess that's the point, seeing as at the base of it that's what I was trying to do. I'm trying to show a situation where an ordinary person experience an extra-ordinary event and how it can affect them. And also, I've been showing how a person can reject the opportunities those events can give. I'm trying to break the trend of hero novels so I might be stepping on metaphorical toes as to how we expect a story to progress. Still, it's still a bit of a surprise. I've actually had people argue with me about how my characters should act. And argue with me they should I say because on the most part, I agree with them. My characters are closed minded, are cowards, are mindless and will react accordingly.
I remember the first time I explained one of my story ideas with someone. It was with my cousin, and I told her about a story with a man and a vampire. The man asks a vampire to kill him because he is sick of life. The vampire agrees, but only if the human performs a task for her. Through the task, the human realizes that life is worth living and that he doesn't want to die. And just as the vampire goes to kill, he wakes up. He's not dead, but it was not a dream as the vampire left him a token of her appreciation. My cousin was like, but that's not fair. He should have been made a vampire and try to fight for his humanity. It was quite the experience and one that has been repeated often since with many other critics of mine. The story shouldn't stop their. The characters should fight, they should continue, they should do this, they should do that, they shouldn't ignore what happened. They shouldn't misinterpret the lesson. They should behave like a proper hero.
And what do I say? Yes. They should. But they don't. What do you think about that? How does that make you feel?
Hopefully I'll get more feedback and maybe get an idea about who my greater audience shall be. Until then, this is exciting.
Peace and blessings
Eric Rawlinson
20110207
Saturday, February 5, 2011
What a week
I know I want this blog to be about writing and not my personal problems, but I've discovered that one can greatly effect the other. And while I won't go too deeply into what's been bothering me, because that would be long and boring and have me come across as a complainer. But I will talk about how I've felt this week.
As some of you might know, I have been diagnosed with Bipolar-Depression. It means I have lengths in which I feel depressed and days where I can feel manic or overstimulated. I've been controlling this with medication and mindfulness exercises. And for a while, I've been getting better. But when a relapse hits you hard, it makes everything so much worse. You KNOW you're depressed and you KNOW you're being manic. You know you're behavior is not good and it feels like you're inside a cage, trying to behave properly but not knowing how cause you forgot everything. It sucks the big one through a tiny straw.
So now I feel a lot better about myself and how I think today, but I still worry about what I'm going to do when that happens again? Where do I go? Who can I turn to? What will I write in those days? I've been editing for sure and started some projects this week, but I'd write a page and give up. It sucked. But I'm getting better now. I can feel it.
So now I have to make promises again. I got to start small by getting some of the things out of the way. Exercise sounds like a good one. I can do that. And yoga. Stop the relapses from coming back. I think that's what I'm going to do.
Thank you to everyone who's helped me so far and good luck.
Peace and blessings
Eric Rawlinson
20110205
As some of you might know, I have been diagnosed with Bipolar-Depression. It means I have lengths in which I feel depressed and days where I can feel manic or overstimulated. I've been controlling this with medication and mindfulness exercises. And for a while, I've been getting better. But when a relapse hits you hard, it makes everything so much worse. You KNOW you're depressed and you KNOW you're being manic. You know you're behavior is not good and it feels like you're inside a cage, trying to behave properly but not knowing how cause you forgot everything. It sucks the big one through a tiny straw.
So now I feel a lot better about myself and how I think today, but I still worry about what I'm going to do when that happens again? Where do I go? Who can I turn to? What will I write in those days? I've been editing for sure and started some projects this week, but I'd write a page and give up. It sucked. But I'm getting better now. I can feel it.
So now I have to make promises again. I got to start small by getting some of the things out of the way. Exercise sounds like a good one. I can do that. And yoga. Stop the relapses from coming back. I think that's what I'm going to do.
Thank you to everyone who's helped me so far and good luck.
Peace and blessings
Eric Rawlinson
20110205
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Writing, sickness and depression
I've always had a big rule. Never write when I'm depressed or sick. Despite this rule, I always, ALWAYS break it. I just love writing that much, but honestly I don't like what I write when I'm depressed.
So I'm depressed for the fourth day in a row, so yay. But I promised to write in here every other day. And since I didn't write then, I'll write now, because the chances of me not writing in the blog ever again if I don't is actually pretty high. It's how it works.
I'm not sure how many times I've started writing this blog post about this subject. About being in a rut and being depressed and not being able to write. Probably a dozen times. Some of the times I've tried to be analytical, sometimes I'm just complaining, and now it seems I'm just stating it. I'm in a rut, I'm depressed and I'm not sure if I'm able to write. Well, that's not completely true. I've been writing as I always have been, and I write down little notes, but that's nothing new or exciting.
But I will tell you something that is. I'm starting to get my work together for publication! Hooray! I wrote seven short stories last year, making it a grand total of eight short stories all together. I've been giving them around to people to read and hopefully edit and criticize. Hooray!
And so that's all I have today. I've written in my blog, now it's time to eat and sleep.
Peace and blessings
Eric Rawlinson
20110202
So I'm depressed for the fourth day in a row, so yay. But I promised to write in here every other day. And since I didn't write then, I'll write now, because the chances of me not writing in the blog ever again if I don't is actually pretty high. It's how it works.
I'm not sure how many times I've started writing this blog post about this subject. About being in a rut and being depressed and not being able to write. Probably a dozen times. Some of the times I've tried to be analytical, sometimes I'm just complaining, and now it seems I'm just stating it. I'm in a rut, I'm depressed and I'm not sure if I'm able to write. Well, that's not completely true. I've been writing as I always have been, and I write down little notes, but that's nothing new or exciting.
But I will tell you something that is. I'm starting to get my work together for publication! Hooray! I wrote seven short stories last year, making it a grand total of eight short stories all together. I've been giving them around to people to read and hopefully edit and criticize. Hooray!
And so that's all I have today. I've written in my blog, now it's time to eat and sleep.
Peace and blessings
Eric Rawlinson
20110202
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