Good Grief I write Poetry, no less!

 

Precious Things

How do you say goodbye to something you never thought would leave

How do you stop the grief you hoped you’d never feel again

How do you rebuild your life when everything seems to end

I don’t have the answers, but wish that I did

I don’t know the way to cope with what’s done

I don’t want my world to not have her in it

But I have to

But it’s hard

But it hurts like nothing has hurt before

Precious things can so easily be lost

(Written February 2008 after my Daughter moved out.)

Merry Month of May

It should be a Merry Month, given the news that my eldest is currently celebrating her Engagement Party right about now (just after 6pm on Saturday night, 17th May)….only one or two problems with that - I’m not there to toast the happy couple.

Why not? I hear you yell….well, shout anyway.

Because my eldest is 16, her future husband is 32, they’ve known each other for a little over five months, and been living together for just over two months.  Is this a relationship likely to prosper? I don’t think so. Is it a relationship I support or encourage? again…I don’t think so.  Am I cutting off my nose to spite my face? Probably….but I can’t help that.

The only bright spark in my complicated life is that this hasn’t apparently harmed my relationship with her. Don’t ask me how it hasn’t, but it hasn’t. Is this because she knows that it’s a fantasy? Unlikely….is it because she understands why I can’t condone or support this travesty of a relationship? again….unlikely….Does she love me more than him?  When she’s with me….yes….when she’s with him….no.

Who knows how it will all end….my daughter is celebrating her engagement tonight…..and I’m not with her. Right choice?  I don’t know…but it was the only choice I could make in good conscience.

I may not be able to stop her doing and behaving the way she is, but I have another daughter looking to me to give her moral guidance, and that is what decides my course.

I hope time proves it the right decision.

As for writing - I did manage to finish my latest Primeval, add another chapter to my poor PP languishing since last year, and started another Primeval. I’m also a judge for a RWNZ current comp.  But I’m not interested in reading anything mainstream, or writing anything that isn’t classed as fluff/fandom……I think I’m depressed.

or maybe there’s just not room for everything in my life at the moment.

I hope that changes……….soon.

Okay…….skipped a few months there…..

Yup….it’s April and the year is already four months in….did anyone notice?? Probably not.

Going on hiatus is a strange situation to be in. It’s Limbo….but I’ve still been writing…not on anything mainstream, but all in my Primeval fandom. I’ve even written poetry about my angst (practically unheard of in my writing career to date) and I even managed a couple of short stories, which I’ll confess is unusual for me as I don’t DO short stories, they always turn into epics.

In fact, with what’s been going on in my day-to-day life, I’ve chosen to absent myself from all things mainstream, including reading, and devote my spare time to losing myself in my fandom. I’ve become a regular poster on a forum, actively researching articles and snippets, while submerging myself in the characters, episodes - basically being a total fangirl.

Interestingly, this is an area that is completely unknown to the mainstream writers I know. Writing, to me, whether it’s for the genre of fanfiction, or catergory romance is all much the same. They both get an author stretching the boundaries of their imagination, they both involve intensive plotting and creative processes, they both require a good standard of literacy, competence in grammar and adequate punctuation. The bonus with fanfiction is the immediacy of the feedback from the people reading your creative efforts.

Of course, the point of writing something original and mainstream is to win the ultimate prize and become published - have your book showcased at a major(or minor) bookstore and actually get paid at the end of the day. Fanfiction will see you published, sometimes in several places all over the net, it will get you read by people from all around the world, but fanfiction will not give you an income of any size, shape or quantity.

It will give you an outlet for your frustration with whatever you’re dealing with in real life, it will act as a sop to your aspirations for your favourite characters/tv series/film, and it will give you an immediacy of reaction with none of the waiting for months to find out if your three chapters and a synopsis have been rejected for the umpteenth time.

It fills a need….and at this time in my life, with what is going on with my two girls, I have that need.

I should be writing my sequel……I should be chasing up my manuscript…….I should be concentrating on becoming a better writing and taking part in endless workshops and critique groups…I should be doing a great many things to improve myself as a writer.

I guess I’ll stay on hiatus a little longer, because “should” doesn’t make time disappear, doesn’t soften the hard edges of reality….and I need that right now.

I might even post some of my poetry, because I suprised even myself when I wrote it, never thinking I could. Maybe I should write more.

Time to end this rambling monologue….my fandom is beckoning and I have another chapter to complete before the day is out.

 

A Quote to Kick off the New Year

Hearing is one of the body’s five senses. But listening is an art. (Frank Tyger)

We all talk far too much sometimes. I have had to face an impossibly hard situation over the last few days. My eldest daughter has decided to launch herself into independance by making, what I consider, a gross misjudgement.  Based on very little more than a desire to escape what she knows, she has aligned herself with quite possibly the most unsuitable person imaginable to effect this escape. He’s sixteen years her senior, rides a Harley, is a truck driver and recently had a near death experience. He’s had brushes with the law, multiple piercings, tats by the arm load, a mohawk and wears a nazi shaped bike helmet. He looks like someone you really woudn’t want to meet in a narrow alley, as he would fill it just before he flattens you.  In all, an unpreposessing character and one you’d never want your precious daughter to know - ever.

One the other side of the coin, he is kind, generous, tidy, know how to cook and respectful, loves horses and has a lovable bulldog called Tyson. He knows who Sooty is and likes Star Wars, but doesn’t read books - traits you don’t expect from someone looking as he does and living the life he does. He says he’s clean of drugs/alcohol/gangs and violence, and only has one ‘vice’ - smoking. And he loves my daughter, or so he says.

My daughter says he makes her feel safe and well cared for, and she likes him. He hasn’t pressured her and she says this is the life she wants.  She’s past the age of consent, but not necessarily anywhere near the age of discretion, in my opinion, but not in hers.

I’ve have wept and railed and tried to come up with ways and means of undoing what’s been done. I have beat myself up and heaped guilt upon myself until I thought my heart would burst. Before she left three days ago I talked and talked about every possible aspect of the situation -my point of view, the very real likelihood of the down side of her decision, of my objections, of societies objections, of the position she’ll be in, in her own social network - all to no avail.

She feels happy and safe and this is what she wants.

All the talking and arguments in the world are not going to change how she feels right now, and more would quite possibly just push her away even further than she is already.

So, I’ve stopped talking and started to listen. Maybe that crack is the sound of my heart bleeding its pain into my chest, it certainly feels like it. And maybe this will ultimately turn out to be the worst possible decision she’s ever made in her young life - but she wants to make it, and at the end of the day she has to live with that decision.

I just wish it didn’t hurt so much.  I wish I could say I want it to fail, then she’d come home and we could be as we were a week ago, but I’m not so naive to think it will ever be the same. She’s chosen possibly the hardest route to becoming a grown up, but it has been her choice, and as painful as it is for me, I have to honour that choice. If I don’t, then all my fine words in the past were nothing more than the mealy canting of a hypocrite wanting to control and never let go.

They say, if you love something you must set it free - only then will it come back to you. I prayer fervently that it is true. My most precious possession is testing her wings, and all I can do is stand below, looking up, and be there to catch her if she falters. I’m done talking now.

I just wish I could stop crying.

(and I still haven’t heard back about my manuscript)

Season Greetings

 No rant, no quote, no wibbling on about nothing at all, just a short note to wish anyone and everyone a very Happy Christmas and a terrific New Year.   If you’d rather go PC - then Happy Holidays and a not-half-bad New year, but I prefer to remember the reason-for-the-season and stick with Merry Christmas and ‘wassail’ to the rest.

See you in 2008.

Oh, and no, I haven’t heard back about my manuscript…..yet. 

Quote of the Week

Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone. (G. B. Stern)

 The above quote struck a cord with me, as they do, because I had two wonderful feedbacks for my latest chapter posted on Fanfiction.net for my Primeval fanfiction,(Hard Light) which has proved harder to finish than a bowl of All Bran!!  I have been prevaricating like nobodies business, with the last chapters of two fanfics waiting in the wings.  But with feedback like those below, I feel both exhilerated and scared shitless.  But before I go on, these are what the kind fans had to say about the chapter, in what is proving to be another of my blasted epics.

“At the edge of my seat!
You really reveal the tension or affection between each character. Great job. Please update soon! It’s simply amazing.”

“Wow.  Wowowowow. This is going to get interesting…Update soon”

What makes these comments more pertinent than others, is because of the following :

the story has 99955 words, spread over 20 chapters, with only 36 reviews, and 3909 hits. 

These courageous readers have managed to stay with this mammoth story,(at already nearly 100,000 words =400pages) and still remain enthusiastic about it.  Now either they are just saying those nice remarks because they are having a really, really good day….or they think I’m a pretty okay writer.  I choose to believe the latter.  That brings me back to my former  comment - it is both exhilerating to read such comments, but also enough to scare me shitless.

I started the story :- a time travelling(through unstable anomalies), multiple realities nightmare of a story, with the same characters mixed up and thrown into different time zones and periods of history, all heading to a massive showdown, and all based on a six episode tv series which ends with “where’s claudia?” - with the view of writing a simple romance, and maybe a bit of an adventure. Now I’ve created a monster that demands I finish it, and finish it right.

The same with the other story  waiting for me to finish it - it deserves to be finished, and finished well. (another epic at 130,000words and 23 chapters.)

It’s all rather daunting, and all I can do is play endless stupid games on the computer and try not to think about them.

I don’t trust myself to finish them in the way they, and the fans, deserve them to be.

The curse of feedback. They like what I’ve done, and want more. I’m not sure I can deliver.

And yet, feedback is quite possibly the nicest thing a writer can ever receive. I’ve had more feedback for some stories, next to no feedback on others, but to get feedback on a story, that even confuses it’s creator, makes them extra special. 

The point of all this rambling is….why can’t I put that much creative energy into an original manuscript?? Am I such a feedback junkie that I write fanfiction just for the sake of feedback?? Am I wasting my talent - will I go to the keyboard one day and not be able to write a word, because I’ve used up all my creative wellspring and produced nothing more than extensions of someone elses creation?? For what else is fanfiction but taking someone elses idea and running with it.

I think I’ll settle for being a feedback junky.  The alternative is to scary to contemplate.

I think I prevaricated again.

Maybe I should have gone with this quote instead:-

Self-trust is the first secret of success. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

And if you’ve made it this far…..you deserve a hug. I know I could use one right now.

Quote of the Week

If you are going through hell, keep going.
- Winston Churchill

 I know, I know, a bit late for All Hallows Eve, but I thought I’d post the quote, with accompanying picture.

Nothing new on the writing front, in fact, nothing new on the fanfiction front either. If I’m not careful, I’ll get a rep for being the starter of stories, but not the finisher. I still have one outstanding LOTG story to complete, one PP fanfic still needing it’s finishing chapter, and my current Primeval fanfic is on hiatus.  Why, I hear you ask?  Largely a huge dose of prevarication, but also, in part, from the intrusion of real life. I am finding, more and more, that if something major happens, as it did this last ten days, (my daughter dislocating her knee and me being nursemaid) it screws up my ability to focus and produce anything creative. On top of the angst with my daughter, is a more worrying situation with my ex - who has once again proven that leopards can’t change their spots - and is starting along the same path that led to the alienation of his eldest daughter, and will quite probably lead to his youngest going the same way.  In short, he can’t keep his fists to himself.

Add to all this,  my moral outrage in finding out the local Toyworld is marketing a toy that looks like a whaling ship, but in fact is designed to hunt sharks.  My complaint made page six of the Dominion Post, with a lovely technicolor photo of my two girls with the offensive toy front and center.  Support for my POV has been 100% positive, proving I’m not a hysteric, or an alarmist, but a concerned greeny who recognises a wolf(or in this case a whaler) in sharks clothing.

Lets hope the rest of the month is more productive, or I find a way to become less emotionaly attached to RL things going on around me, and better able to focus on what need to be done to get the writing finished.

Is it any wonder I’m having a hard time getting my head in the zone.

I think I’ll follow Winnie’s advice and just keep on going and hope for the best. 

Huge, huge news

Not that the news is about anything huge, just that, as far as I’m concerned, its the biggest news I’ve had for quite some time.

On friday, 12th October, I emailed my manuscript, in it’s entirety, to a publisher in the UK for consideration.

Yup, I was actually asked to submit, based on my synopsis and extract at the website I created, for my writing persona Louise Langton.

It took three days to do a final read through, and stitch the 26 chapters together into one manuscript, but I was glad to do another edit - I hadn’t looked at the manu for about a year, apart from the first three chapters when I had to submit them for competitions -so this was a big edit.

I was able to tone down some of the ‘purple prose’, remove a great deal of repetitive use of certain words (as) and other mistakes, and generally tidy up the flow, as well as tighten up some of the scenes. In all, a job well done and very necessary.

I make no claims to be an editor, but I’m certainly happier with the finished product now.  I can only hope the publisher is just as happy when they read it.

I won’t hear back from them until late November/early December, but that’s a pretty quick turnaround in anyone’s book. It may all come to nothing, and get no further than a read thru by them, then rejection. But hell, that’s more than I’ve managed to accomplish since I wrote it eighteen months ago!! So I’m happy as a pig in mud.

I may still decided to submit it for the Clendon next February, or not, depending on the outcome of this submission.

I think I’ll finish up my outstanding fanfictions just in case. 

 

Weekly Update

Updated information for my last two competition entries in 2007.

Otherwise, nothing profound this week, except I’m all alone with my children scattered around the country with the school holidays.

Mayhem in miniature

One of the most feared expressions in modern times is “The computer is down

~ Norman Augustine

And wasn’t he just spot on. Had a major hardrive-crashing virus infection just before the weekend. It corrupted any number of .exe files, and seeded itself into every damn thing. Nothing could shift it, when the scanners picked it up and deleted it, it popped right on up somewhere else.  In the end, I had to reformat my entire hardrive to get shot of the blasted thing (virtumonde is it’s handle).

The upshot of all that intense angst and labour was the loss of all my archived emails for the past eighteen months (running into the hundreds) plus my address book which  has survived being transported through about three different computers and upgrades in the past five or so years.

Now I’m back to scratch.

On a positive note, I had only that day uploaded my current WIP and  picture galleries to an external hardrive, which wasn’t infected. I would recommend, if you don’t have one already, to get one quick and use it to back up your downloaded programmes(to save the hassle of having to look for them all again), your writing files and your image folders. This has been a valuable lesson in that area and I can’t stress strongly enough how important backing up on a separate hardrive is.  This virus came out of the blue, and nothing I had, which was pretty good stuff, could either stop it or get rid of it.

A salutory lesson for me and others. If you don’t want to lose it…back it up on something that can be disconnected from whatever you use to get online.  It’s a jungle out there.