Inner Monologue

For the month of December I'm supposed to be taking a break from writing. I feel a little empty about it with all things considered, I've gotten into the habit of just tapping away at a document whenever I can that I feel strange not working on anything.

So instead I'm looking over the two books that I pushed out over the past two months. I decided to start with Gale since I seem to be in the swing of things. Well its going okay enough...but the more I look at this book the more I realize I wrote something completely heart-wrenching.

The basic idea of the book is to show how the villain became what he is, and ORIGINALLY the idea was that the biggest cause was the relationships Gale had with Marley and Mary, and how somehow it became warped into something with Adam...now looking at it, I think it was really Ritz. How awful.

It had been raining, something that I had long since shrugged off. I could not catch any illness from the rain, it was merely the smallest of hindrances, but Renée came out of her small apartment with an umbrella as if I were about to fall over.

“Monsieur DeWinter, you will catch your death!” She rushed over to me with the umbrella, coughing on her own the entire way over to me in the downpour.

“If only.” I said slowly. She smiled at me, and I could not help but smile back, happy that she seemed to have either forgiven me or forgotten entirely about our conversation the night prior. Either way, I was glad that she was not cross with me. “I am melting,” I managed.

“I can see that.” She took my arm and began to pull me towards her door.

“Not in the physical sense.”

It's sweet, adorable, Gale's been shut off from most everything up until this point in his life and now he's slowly experiencing emotions and is wonderfully unaware of how to show them or relay them to others. So Ritz saves him, right? Gives him a new lease on life, right?

I'm bordering more now on the idea that Ritz damned him. With all the running around the world the two do in trying to stay away from Marley and Mary, Gale ends up becoming even more twisted. So I now look at this story as something awful and tragic, how Gale and Ritz become hardened and manipulative.

I knew this was going to happen, I don't think I ever saw the story THIS way though.

When I wrote Bastian a year ago I didn't mean for my characters to become this complex...I think that's why I didn't care much for it then.

Over 11k and still going up, I'm weighing the best way to go about a book like this. I don't think I've ever read a book written from the perspective of the villain where they didn't repent or die by the end.

( Belladonna )

In the meantime I press on with NaNoWriMo, I'm a few days ahead, but I don't want to fall behind at all. The trouble is that with what I'm writing I'm having to be very picky with my word choice to make sure that everything falls into plan.

Today was lovely though, and it's not over yet. Robbie left to go further south to see friends and I spent the day with Samm. I have eaten so much sushi down here I'm happier than a kitty.

In other news KiKi is beautiful and her tail is as fluffy as she is wide, I almost want to steal her.

I get an absolutely hilarious picture in my head of poor Adam on hands and knees in an alley, begging like his life depends on it for Marley to show SOME sort of couth.

It is by no means finished, but it is in the right tone, which is going to be essential to this book.

( A bit from NaNoWriMo )

Posted on DA, just wanted to keep it here for references.

Suddenly "Y" strap suspenders are attractive.

One of the things I like the most about writing childhood Kamen and Artemis is that it requires me to do a lot of research. Matches, the curses Kamen uses (I teetered on him using the word "bollocks" but decided that he wouldn't use it in front of Artemis), hatpins, and suspenders (American term) vs. braces (the British term that would have been used in that period).

The game sardines, its like hide and seek but one person hides while the others seek, then as people find the hider they join them, so after a while the hiding place becomes painfully obvious. The last person to find the hider has to hide in the next round. I don't know for certain how far this game dates back to, but my research dates it back to at least 1700's, then again, it's my story and I can say what I want really.

Also, anyone remember that episode of South Park where Tom Cruise, R Kelly, and John Travolta are in the closet? Yeah I totally watched that a few times while writing this.

Something else also interesting. This was pushed out in a few short days from scratch and with a very vague idea, it's referenced only once in the trilogy by Kamen in Book 2, but it still manages to just fall short of 5,000 words. This is why NaNoWriMo was so easy for me to get through I guess.

( Short Story: Of Closets )

I've been a little down lately. A lot of memories have made their way back to me; some bad, some bittersweet. To make things worse, I can't really work on Artemis like this, my nightmares would get worse. I'm officially to parts that are gruesome enough to be against LiveStream Policy. The events seem only slightly bitter at first, but then I get to thinking about what is going on in the story right now and I feel sick.

I remember the melody of the song from my dream a few months back now. The words are still a blur. And if I've had another dream since the last, I honestly couldn't say, but Robbie tells me I've woken up screaming and crying in the middle of the night a lot lately. I still can't really decipher the last one, but I'm still firm in my resolution to seek help if I get another one that wakes me up like that. I've still got the name of the woman in Pickerington that someone at work recommended. I can't even look at the Tiffany's at Easton without feeling sick. And Swavaroski is another story entirely.

Other than the nightmares, things are okay. I'm going over Ritzko a few times, mostly because when I changed it to first person certain places before my decision don't sound like Bastian. Its just not gritty enough, just needs more ebonics and rough language. Once that is done its going to a few other people for final proofing, then off to be published. It makes me proud, just looking at the giant stack of papers and thinking "I wrote that in less than 10 days and it kicks ass".

There's a large snowpocalypse hitting the midwest right now, and the water dmg is at an all-time high. Of course the landlord wouldn't listen last spring when I told them about it, I expect to get an earful once I tell them "well, it got worse", of course in all the time that my parents have had their house, I don't recall my landlords ever doing any work on this house. So I'm fairly certain the roof is much overdue.

But I'm sleepy now and since its five in the morning I suppose I could check the school closings to see if Samm is free today...closed, yup. Time for me to crash and rest up for later.

Someone is going to hate the way I ended Ritzko, but in my defense it was always meant to be this way...or rather this was the better of two endings. I am not about to get into the delusion that vampires are sparkly nice creatures. Ritz is my proof of that. I know it doesn't fall into the story, but a part of me really does wish it could have been different.

But, this is the way Samm wanted it to end.

Why do I get such a kick out of the way Bastian talks to Ms. Helen?

( Ritzko Excerpt )

Having the ending of Ritzko already written is killing me.

I'm off work for a few days, and I'm hoping to push out at least 10k in three days. Shouldn't be too different from pushing out 20k in 4.

( Excerpt from Ritzko )

Makes me laugh. So. Hard. When I write a chapter with her in it. I completely based a character after an ex-co-worker, AND kept the name, because the name is too perfect when you think about it.

She's deaf in my story though. Hilarity ensues.

( Ritzko )

I looked back over my LiveStream and was slightly weirded out by it. I noticed that when I write its a little more than obvious that I don't use much structure. I have my major points I want to hit sitting in little brackets at the end of the chapter and as I hit them I delete them. But I start typing something and then I'll go back and change it, I do this quite often. And I do it most of the time before the sentence is actually finished, meaning I'm literally typing whatever pops into my head and then going back to fix it as I read over it.

I'm probably going to use my free day off (this sunday) to splurge write Artemis until my brains fall out because I WON'T touch ANY of it during the month of November. I want to make sure my full attention is on this project and with this in mind I won't do any artwork/writing/modeling for Artemis. LiveStream once I wake on sunday (I work the night before) until NaNoWriMo officially starts at midnight. I want to prove to myselft that I can push out a good novel in a short amount of time.

*whimper*

( One of the more squishy things. )