Bethanie's Brain

OK, I can tell from the way my face is breaking out that I am PMS-ing and it is, therefore, entirely possible that I am not being completely rational. That out of the way: WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?!!???!!!!!!!! Honestly. All I want to do is set up my freelance editing business and edit stuff that I want to edit. Is that so hard? It seems to be. Here's the sordid story: I'm trying to set up a contract with a company in a non-English speaking country and can't seem to get them to understand that while, yes, I have a degree in a certain social science, I do not really consider myself qualified to edit in that field because I have done nothing in it for the last FOURTEEN YEARS . Meanwhile, I have oodles and oodles of experience editing in certain areas of biomedical research, areas in which I have undertaken a great deal of training, formal and informal, but which apparently - because I have no piece of paper to declare me competent in that area - counts for nothin...

I thought the Character Clinic (CC101) Joely hosted over the weekend was fabulous! Even though I didn't win anything, I learned a ton about how to build characters and what I like about them - among many other things. And it's the "other things" that, for some reason, are really churning around in the ol' brain right now. Two interesting things occurred as a strangely direct result of CC101. One, I'm not prepared to discuss yet. It's still churning, and it ain't turned to butter yet... The other is the big one for me (a big pain in the ass, that is...): theme. Stories have themes. They just do. Any good story worth the paper or pixels it's printed on, anyway, has a theme, an overriding, overarching thread of wisdom that guides the ultimate outcome. That's how I define it for myself, anyway. I flat-out SUCK at theme in my own writing. There are reasons for this. First of all, I blame the fact that as a reader, I don't like to analyze. ...

OK, like I said several posts previous, yapping about how great my own characters are gives me the willies. But in the spirit of CC101, I will do it anyway. :D OK, I'm not really going to talk about how great they are, but I will tell you the story of how two of my characters came to be. First, let me introduce Fenn and Kesera, the two main characters from my very own Novel #1 (of spaghettified plot fame...). Fenn is Prince Charming with a tragic past and a drug problem. Kesera is a bi-racial damsel causing distress (to pretty much everyone around her). I like them a lot. They are very patient with me, thankfully, so perhaps someday, when I become capable of plotting my way out of wet paper bag, I will manage to get their story told. :) Anyway. The story of the way they came about as characters is sort of interesting (at least I think so), so I thought I'd share it. It goes like this: I saw this movie, King Arthur , which I absolutely hated almost every minute of (despite t...

I think my favorite thing about reading is being in a character's head. Nothing is quite like it. Movies, for instance, are great and I love them, but they can't ever come close to the experience of almost being someone else that you can have when you're reading a story in a well-written, really tight POV. My favorite example to give of this is Greg Keyes' Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series. It's a great, great series and an amazingly told story. Four books follow a handful of characters caught up in a battle between good and evil. In a nutshell: there are kings, queens, princesses, knights, demons, aliens, assassins, religious cults, magical creatures, and dangerous secrets as old as the world. (Yeah - it's awesome.) What I really love about it, though, is how the POV switches between the 4 or 5 main characters - a young, very headstrong princess; her mother, the queen; a knight in the queen's service; the "holter" in charge of the king's fo...

Yes, it's me again with yet another entry for the Character Clinic! I feel like I'm being totally obnoxious posting this much. Oh, well. :) This post is another in honor of Joely and her fabulous idea, because it was she who introduced me to all the wonderful characters in Lynn Veihl's Darkyn series. She held a contest, see, and I won a copy of Twilight Fall . Yaay! Winning is good, but being introduced to a fabulous series of books you never knew existed is even better. I liked them so much, I went out and bought them all, and now I am merrily foisting them on everyone I know. :D Anyway - the characters are what make this series so interesting and keeps me coming back. (That and the writing is really, really excellent, which pleases the editor side of my brain no end and is probably a topic for a whole other post, but whatever.) The characters are memorable, because they are so vividly portrayed -- each one has a very distinct personality. More to the point of my post...

Another entry for Joely's Character Clinic : These are my three favorite characters from the book "Wizard War" by Hugh Cook, which was published in the UK (and possibly Aus and NZ) as "The Wizards and the Warriors". Fabulous book, fabulous author, freakin' shame that it's out of print, in my opinion, and freakin' CRIMINAL that most of the rest of the books in the series Wizard War is part of never even got published in the US, because it's some of the best magic, world building, characters, and plot EVER and .... Erm, anyway.... back to the characters... Miphon. I love Miphon. And not just for his green eyes, I promise. Miphon is a wizard of the order of Nin, a weak-ish order of wizards in his world and "lives as as traveling healer with no fixed abode". He is often called a 'pox doctor' and regarded with something just above scorn by his colleagues (two other wizards of more powerful orders), but we instantly like him as soo...

Entry Number One in Joely's Character Clinic : Well, since I think Joely is so clever for thinking this Charcter Clinic thing up, I thought I'd start off with one of her own characters! Hah! Gregar. Ah, Gregar... where to start? Well, I'll start with where you can find him: Gregar is a character in Joely Sue Burkhart 's book The Rose of Shanhasson . (Go on! Go get it! You'll be glad you did, I promise!) I always love a conflicted character (as you'll discover in coming posts...) and Gregar is definitely that. He is driven. He has a mission and a duty, and he is honor-bound to fulfill them. However, in his secret heart of hearts lurks an undeniable need that conflicts so deeply with all that honor, that Gregar would pretty much rather die than allow himself to have it. Excellent stuff. And oh my, let's not forget: he's dead sexy and dark and wickedly dangerous -- in other words, three of my favorite things! :D In all honesty, though, what really mak...

(This one's a rambler, guys, sorry. This is what happens to Bethanie when she is subjected to all work and no play...) I've been meaning to post about ebooks - at length - forever. Of course, my life is such a vortex of unending activity, I have yet to really get around to it. And since I'm in the middle of cooking supper, I don't really have time now either, but I must put in a plug, because I'm so... oh, I don't know, giddy , I guess, over my latest discovery/acquisition/experience. :-D Here's the story: I've had a Palm OS PDA for years and years and years. I've upgraded from a Handspring to a color Handspring to a Tungsten E and - finally, a year or so ago - to a Treo. I love them - love them, love them, love them . I mean, I'm practically evangelical about them. Really. Don't get me started on how great they are unless you have 30 or 40 minutes for me to show you mine and all the wicked nifty things it can do. Including my all-time fa...

OK, it's been a scandalouly long time since I've posted ANYTHING here... terrible! I have excuses - dozens, in fact - but I'm sick of dealing with them to the point of not wanting to re-hash them here, even if it means missing out on bitching about something. :D Anyway, I've been working on some posts that are scheduled for next weekend for Joely's Character Clinic , and it's been interesting - and educational - picking apart why I like certain characters so much. There are some striking similarities, especially when it comes to male characters, heh-heh... :) When it comes to my OWN characters, however, the brain gets all shy and tongue-tied and won't cough up anything. Weird. I suspect this stems from my rather vast insecurities about my own writing -- it seems presumptuous, at the very least, to expound on what makes my own characters so great and/or what clever tricks I use to add depth to them and make them memorable, when not only have I published no...

Tuition & Fees: $600. Required Book & Lab Manual: $335. Assorted Notebooks, Pens & Binders: $25. Going to Class at 4AM in My Pajamas: Prrrrriceless! .

...so I can walk off it, 'cuz I could really use a dip in the drink today. It's been a helluva week. It started with a list of 5 papers to edit, submit and/or do something! with (as-soon-as-possible, thank-you-please), which soon grew to 7, then 8, then 10 , which is as many as I normally deal with in a month. Add to that another massive data entry project (which apparently counts as editing, don't ask me why...) and -- drum roll, please! -- a page proof! I knew it! I just knew there would be a page proof this week, since I'm insanely busy. There's always a page proof when I'm insanely busy. Never on a slow week. What fun would that be, anyway? And then, there are the pirates. I got frustrated with them for going full-blown novel on me, when all I wanted was a short story, so I fussed, pouted, and was generally very grumpy until they agreed to tone it down. And then I tried to cram them into a 500-word flash piece. That sorta worked, because I actually FIN...

So I’ve already used up 3500 words of my 5000-word limit on the pirate story. That’s good, in a way, because I’ve written a whole bunch in the last few days and I don’t hate it and I love the characters, but… I love the damn characters and – totally fucking predictably - they’re taking me WAY deeper into their adventures and lives than I have room or any business being in a short story. I mean, I could write 5000 words worth of just backstory ! Seriously, if I manage to tell the story they’re wanting me to tell in less than 20,000 words, I will find a fucking plank and walk off it. Gah! Part of the problem with me writing short stories, I think, is that I don’t read nearly enough of them on a regular basis. I just don’t have a good enough sense of how they’re put together to successfully put one together myself. I’m making an effort to correct that, but … well, there are only so many minutes here and there in a day during which I am not required to be doing something else. *exas...

It is not pretty. It is not even "right" most likely. But for now, I don't care. It's done! It's done! IT'S DONE!!! I can move on. I can do something else now! I've started a pirate story... ??!? I know: pirates - WTF, but cool! I'm hoping to cram it into 5000 words and submit it to Membra Disjecta for their March issue. I'll let ya know how that goes... (Short stories are definitely not one of my strengths as a writer ...) .

Or: NaNo - I Hate It When That Happens I just realized I took a bit of a wrong turn in my final climax/battle-to-the-death scene. A wrong turn that is going to cost me 1200 words that I spent the last, like, 3 or 4 days writing. Yeah. 1200 words totally wasted. God damn it, but that SUCKS . I think I'll go do something fun now. Like laundry or swabbing the kitchen. Gah! .

OK, I have swallowed my horror at not finishing the story in December and set a new goal of 85K words to reach the hallowed ground know as “The End” . That will add a little over 5000 new words. Which should be PLENTY , dammit. I’ve got a pretty tight deadline for this – January 12th. That’s when my online Anatomy & Physiology class starts, and since I’ve been out of college for a shocking 14 years (*faints*), I think it’s going to take some adjustment to get used to that kind of brain activity and I doubt I’ll be up for writing much (at least, for a few weeks). Anyway, if I reach The End before the 85K mark, I’ll go back and work on some of the new scenes I’ll have to add when I edit. If I’m still not to The End at 85K, I’m just gonna throw a big, fat hissy fit. .

Well, I think I failed to complete even one of my 2008 goals, which is both depressing and surprising. I really thought they were good, achievable goals. Apparently not. And now that I look back at them, I get the sense that they aren't as concrete as I thought they were when I made them. I mean, I said things like "complete and submit one short story", which is good as far as it goes, but still vague. WHICH stort story? Submit WHERE? Another goal was to complete an edit of either NaNo 2005 or NaNo 2006 - WHICH ONE? I needed to be that specific. I also didn't set deadlines. I now see that as a real weakness in my plan. Deadlines get my ass in gear. Without them, I don't do much. That in mind, this year I have made an effort to be really, really, really freakin' specific. 1. Complete the kestlebird story. A kestlebird is a mythical creature in my fantasy universe and I have had a bunch of ideas kicking around and one story started. But not completed...

So we drove home from Florida yesterday and are safely back in Itty-Bitty City once again, where it is considerably colder than the shorts-and-T-shirt temps we had became used to. Sad, that, but one cannot vacation forever when one is not independently wealthy, which - sadder still - we are not. The trip went well (no one puked!), but I wrote NOTHING. Instead of working on my own novel, I spent my non-driving hours reading some (truly dreadful) "stock" romance novels (I got them for free and I believe it to be an essential part of my writer education to read other fiction genres (and I learned a lot - mostly about what NOT to do - but more about that later)), regardless of whether or not they actually interest me (and let's just say "stock" romance is, erm... not my first choice). Anyway. The point of this post is to lay out in public the fact that I have not yet completed my December goal of 22,500 words and the phrase "The End" typed at the bottom o...

Still making progress, but slogging along. Christmas, Florida, and family are NOT conducive to writing. Like, at all. I wrote all of 29 words before the kids woke up yesterday, and then it was non-stop Everything Else all day long. Tennis, shopping, Bananagrams ( great game!), and movies (Wall-e, which is effing brilliant) - oh, yes, and eating, let's not forget eating - took up the rest of the day. This morning I managed to get just over 1000 words, so all is not lost, but I wanted to be DONE by now! Arrrgh! At least, the story is where it is supposed to be. Two more scenes and That's. It. Until it's time to edit and probably add another 20K... OK, I think I'll go quietly insane now... .

Hello from sunny - but cool - Florida! Yes, we're here! We made it! And with only two bouts of car sickness (thank you, Ms. Baby) and a minimum of 'are-we-there-yets' (thank you whoever invented portable DVD players). It was one long, long day, but whatever. It's over and I went swimming yesterday. Progress on NaNo 2008 creeps along. I wrote NOTHING in the car at all, though I did get some really sticky plot problems worked out. I don't know why, but driving always helps immensely in that area. Terry Brooks mentions this in his book on writing, and I doubt it would work for everyone (not everyone actually likes driving), but there's something about having a particular proportion of my brain occupied with a task like that that frees the rest of the brain for more interesting things. So, yippee for that! It's hard to find time to write here, though. The kids want to play. My sisters and my mom want to shop and talk and eat and drink coffee ALL DAY. I thi...

Thanks to Soleil's blog, I found a nifty little word counter thing-a-ma-bob! The Angel and the Assassin 72,022 / 80,000 (89.0%) This is cool, because it shows what I did before (the gray area) and the progress I'm making on 'phase II', so to speak. Very cool! And I think if you click on it, you can get one too! :-D EDIT: Ooo, weird... does it look all broke up to you? It seems to be fine in my sidebar, but here in the actual post, it's ... been julienned! Ack! .