A writing post

I’ve been snorting all week over the Miss Snark blog. She’s a literary agent who tells it like it is, and even though she’s stopped posting on her blog, the archives are still good value. Poor lady, she actually gets submitted gems like:

TITLE is written in the spirit of such books as Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD, Milton’s PARADISE LOST and Dante’s INFERNO.

Gaa.

I’ve been reading some of the workshops from the Holly Lisle webpage too, and can’t recommend them enough. The workshop on creating conflict encouraged me to subject a few of my characters to the torture, and it’s really helped clarify some of my ideas.

I’ve also recently joined the kiwi writers forums. They seem like a nice bunch of lads over there.

I don’t know if this is interesting to anyone, but I’ve had a huge rethink on the story (too scary to call it a novel, though that’s what it is), and, twenty-five pages in, I’m scrapping most of what I’ve written, but at least I know what I want to do with the whole first chapter. I’ve kicked off the opening scene with a riot, instead of my protagonist waking up early and making a cup of tea. Yes, the riot scene does involve the tea-drinking character, though I have given her a good kick up the bum and she’s now more stroppy than the one in the first twenty-five pages. Hallelujah!

I’m writing with Scrivener, which I’m enjoying, in the way it allows me to write scenes separately if I like, rather than looking at everything in one blobby document. I think you could go a bit overboard with the planning though, and limit yourself to scenes you’ve already blocked out on the corkboard. That said, my first draft is actually being written in a notebook, so I’m trying to keep things fluid.

It’ll be interesting to see how it works when it comes time to edit. I think breaking a document up into bite sized scenes at least lets you focus on just one area, rather than getting overwhelmed by a huge document with hundreds of pages, that you have to scroll up and down in to find characters, names, places and scenes. Once I’ve finished my basic rough draft of this novel, I’m considering importing my NaNoWriMo novel, breaking it up, and having a bash at making it respectable.

We’ve got a lovely long weekend coming up - Anzac day’s tomorrow. Steve & I are going up the coast to show his house to someone who might be interested in buying. We’re also picking up the Hebel that’s going to make up the surround for the gas fire in the lounge. I have a game to review, that unfortunately from all accounts doesn’t sound incredible: Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters. And I’m going to try and finish that first chapter…

Turkey City Lexicon

Lovely list of things to avoid (and a few to aspire to), from sfwa.

Sims 3 First Look

Hey, so my ‘Sims 3 first look’ preview is up on NZGamer at the moment (here).

Tristan also is going to be interviewing some of the top Sims brass (including Rod Humble!) and asked if I had any questions for them. This is what I sent:

As shown in both sims city societies, and the glimpses we’ve seen of the sims 3 and spore, it appears that there is (and has been) a definite shift away from the number-crunching side of Sim gaming to a ‘fuzzier’ style of gameplay that puts greater emphasis on the communal,social experience. Has this been an intentional change of direction, or is our gameplay style just changing?

Along those same lines, do you see the paths for The Sims, Sim City and Spore games ever ultimately converging?

In previous interviews you’ve mentioned that with the large pool of personality types, players can come up with some interesting combinations that often result in unpredictable emergent behaviour in the neighbourhood. What are some of the stranger examples you’ve seen?

Since the entire neighbourhood will be running mostly without the direct influence of the player, can we expect the AI of other sim families to be more sensible so they can look after themselves (go to the toilet, or even to work) without intervention? To what degree will Sims on a player’s periphery (i.e. ones they’re not playing directly with) behave autonomously?

We’ve just heard that The Sims 2 has hit the 100 million mark! This is great news (Sims fans are going to take over the world someday), but do you find With so many fans, it becomes more difficult to to try and experiment with the model rather than just giving players whatever they want? We really can be pretty rabid at times.

We’ve noticed that a lot of features that came with Sims 2 expansion packs seem to appear in the base Sims 3 game, such as gardens and weather. Are these just artistic representations of the game, or will the base game really have all of this built in? Speaking of expansions, will The Sims 3 expansion pack model be the same as The Sims 1 and 2?

The Sims bodies and faces we’ve seen in screenshots look fantastic, and you wouldn’t believe (actually, you probably would) the number of people who are excited about being able to create fat sims! Unfortunately there didn’t seem to be any vampires, werewolves, zombies or plantsims among them. Will the Sims 3 be keeping any of our supernatural friends, or do you have some other surprise in store for us?

Rabid, fannish-type questions:

The realtime aspect of the game is also really exciting. Have you seen any unexpected ways of playing with this new feature? Would buildings such as hospitals and apartments be possible now?

Before The Sims 2 was released, a standalone Create-a-Sim was released. Will you be doing this for The Sims 3 as well?

Will The Sims 3 retain the standard ‘work’ model, or has this been revamped?

Will The Sims 3 see the return of Mark Mothersbaugh? (Please say yes.)

Will the Goth family return to the game?

I’m sure it’ll all be made more ‘flowy’ for interview purposes, but it could be a nice opportunity to find out more about the game and share with everyone. I’ll make sure to post the interview once it’s published.

Poetry

The craft of poetry, and different forms, here.

more Moleskines

at 43 folders.

New category

Just a quick note - I’ve added a new blogroll category, called ‘Obsessions’. Everything there relates to my writing/notebook/planner fetish.

If you don’t understand… just look away!

Books, pens, writing

These photos are beautiful.

New Mac

Well, testing, testing, and all that jazz, cause I’m writing this on my new MacBook! Luckily, it only took a day or so to set up the wireless connectivity to the network (problems with the DNS settings, but they are all sorted now).

So far… well, the most I can say really is that it feels strange. Strange to be using a completely different OS for starters, but also interesting. Today I found downloadsquad, which has a whole lot of information on different applications, widgets and the rest, which was quite a big help to me, as I knew sort of what I wanted, but had no idea where to look.

Applications that, so far, seem quite cool and interesting include: MindNode, ecto (what I’m writing this with), CopyWrite, Scrivener, Journler, and photo drop. All very cool applications, though I’m really only just learning about them all. Which I decide to stick with will be another story.

Big Huge Labs

I’ve only just seen some of these apps today, but they look really great:

plot generator

Writer: the internet typewriter

Updated profile

I updated my profile tonight.

It’s cold. Steve’s in the hallway scraping wallpaper. I’m closed up in the study because the sound of ripping paper was driving me nuts.

I’ve been trying to write the first few sentences of a story that’s been going round and round in my head for at least a year. It keeps growing and developing, which I suppose is a good thing. But as it develops depth and momentum, it’s harder and harder to get purchase on its entry point.

I have something now but already things are different to the idea. Suddenly it’s summertime in the story, when all along it was meant to be winter.

Postcard from the past

I was just going through some old postcards when I found this one. It’s of Mt. St. Helens, in Washington, and was taken after the May 18, 1980 Volcanic Eruption. It’s from someone who I don’t remember at all; but it must have been a teacher. It was written in February of 1987, so I must have been ten at the time. Ten, ten. I think I was in fourth grade then. My teachers in fourth grade were Mr. Sherwood and Mrs. Brown. She can’t have been my teacher at the time. Did she teach at Lake Shore? It reads:

Dear Jessica,

Thank you so for writing me and telling me what stories and authors you like! There are some tricks to getting the story innards in one’s head: drawing a map of the whole story; walking through that map; having another character tell it other than the hero or heroine; and tell the story to lots & lots of friends! How wonderful of you to tell stories to your younger sister!

Your friend,
Mrs. Boryer

Anyway, I think that’s the name. It’s quite hard to make out as the ink’s a little smudged. It could read Boryer, Borner or perhaps Borver.

I can’t stop wondering about this woman: who she is; why she wrote such a friendly postcard to me; what I must have written to her in my initial letter.

It’s a cute postcard too; she’s written up the side, and drawn arrows to more text at the top of the card, and then she writes around to the other side again.

‘Your friend Mrs. Boryer.’ It’s mysterious. And yet she’s obviously taken my questions so seriously. I don’t know quite what to think. I’ve had this postcard for ages; it’s been in my pile of postcards I suppose since I received it. And yet I don’t remember the text on the back at all. Have I had some sort of blackout? Is my memory really that bad?

It’s disturbing and wonderful at the same time. Haunting too. I wish I could write her, find out who she is.

gaming xmas guide; grades; xmas shopping and the rest…

OK, first things first:

• the NZGamer christmas guide for gamers has just been posted. Talk about a pile under the christmas tree!
• I’m not going for anything electronic this year (uh, not that I do other years either, not really) - Steve and I have decided we’re going to make as many of our presents as possible. We’re going to give things like dukkah and spice mixes, homemade cookies (Snickerdoodles for Dad!), some of my pottery, knitted things (socks), and I’m sending my sis some of my homespun wool. Yeah, a real touchy-feely christmas for all, but it’s actually pretty fun.

In other news:

• I made soap! Yes, soap! I started off with this recipe here, but had to modify it when I realised we got home from our grocery shop and I’d forgotten to get the olive oil! Had to rush down to the dairy but they only had one 500 ml bottle. I increased the amount of coconut  and palm oils to make up for the lacking 500ml. In addition, I decreased the amount of lye used, as I double checked the quantities using the very great Majestic Mountain Sage Lye Calculator. Unfortunately, as MMS can’t send liquids overseas, I had to purchase my ingredients somewhere else - and did so through the very excellent Aromatics and More, for the oils (including fragrance oils), and I purchased the sodium hydroxide (lye) from Go Native. Both sites were very good to deal with - I recommend them wholeheartedly. I also changed the recipe a bit by splitting the batch into two after I reached trace, and gave each a different fragrance (using half the sweet almond oil and fragrance oil for each batch). So I have two trays of vanilla and green apple soaps all curing now in my kitchen. It’s going to be hard to wait for them to cure!
• I got an A for my research essay! I’m still waiting to find out about my final grade (as the honours mark incorporates the work you do in all your subjects, and is just one overall grade), but in a way I don’t care - I put in a lot of work into my essay and I’m really proud of it. That mark alone has made last year’s work all worthwile!

I WON!

Yeah!

what’s your naming style?

For some reason I keep coming back to this:

http://www.namenerds.com/uucn/namequiz.html

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For reference

Sparkjar has a good list of fiction contests here.

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