11-16-02 @ 12:44 pm EST

Skew has been consistently getting at least a few hits a day even though I haven't been writing in it. Yet the last entry has gained only one new read. So I'm not sure. Why are people continuously clicking on this thing and not checking it out? It makes little sense to me.

I still have a cold...only now it's moved to my throat. *sigh* I'd rather have a stuffed head than a phlegmy throat. I hope it will go away soon. I've been busy all night working on the D4D_A, finally putting up the Unfinished page.

http://www.geocities.com/d4d_archive/unfin.html

I typed up each D4D title page and linked them, but I have yet to put up the text of those that have any chapters. Then I have the True Believers stuff and Pippin. Hope it all fits. I'm thinking I'll most likely delete a lot of my Background Information or else consolidate some of it. The mini profiles are not needed and I will not be adding more. Dami's profile can be combined into one item. Maybe I can delete the separate BI folders and just put those items all into one, since the titles make it obvious what they apply to. I still DON'T want to get rid of my Kemet and MI short story folders as someone suggested, though. That makes them much easier to link to the folders for Horus and Manitou Island.

Okay. I thought it wouldn't be best for me to mention this in here, but why not. I don't know if they'll see it, but if they do, this is for them. Somebody asked permission to write a fanfic based on Manitou Island. Not to sound vain (because who would WANT to write fanfics based on my material?), but it's always been one of my guilty dreams that somebody would write a fanfic based on something of mine. :) So there's one good thing going for you. Manitou Island is probably also the fic of mine that it's easiest to manipulate to one's own ends--it deals with alternate realities and alternate timelines, so imagine the possibilities! Half of what's going on in the current serial is stuff I never planned on happening on the "real" Manitou Island, so there you go. A fanfic writer can literally go crazy with the options. X'aaru can be evil, Silver Eagle Feather can be a wuss, Stick can be a little boy, Moon Wolf can be a woman (hmmm...), Drake can become a Wendigo, who knows what you could do? And I can't rightly complain, because it's another timeline that has little or no bearing on my own. So everyone is happy. There's two things going for you. :)

Thirdly...I've always been a BIG, big fan of exploring alternate possibilities with known characters, and little-known characters. Have I mentioned in here before about somebody else's version of the myth of Horus and Set? In her version, Horus and Set, rather than being enemies, are gay lovers. (Well, I should say bi.) I DROOLED over that story because it was so DIFFERENT and unexpected. She took two characters I know well from my own writing, and made them something completely different. True, I didn't like that she made Osiris and Isis evil snots, but we can't like everything. ^_^ So what I'm saying is, there's nothing wrong with doing something completely against character with somebody, so long as it fits their character in THAT reality. I saw an idea for White Coyote that made me laugh out loud when I first read it--NOT because it was funny or silly, but because I hadn't expected it. I liked that. White Coyote, in my stories, is boring...I have yet to make anything of him. He's so boring I even forgot he was married!! If somebody can surprise me with one of my OWN characters, I'm going to like that.

Just as long as it happens in an alternate timeline. :) But that's a given, so it's no worry.

So that's three things going for you. And the fourth thing is this:

Brainstorming is an often silly and/or stupid process...if you were to write down the bare bones of some of the things I've written in MI, they'd sound incredibly goofy. Twins who communicate via their spirit forms before they are born? Wolf-demon siblings who are married? Spirits that take the form of glowing rocks? An island that makes people act weird? A guy being possessed by the spirit of a cannibal? Teleporting fog and a time-traveling French trapper? I mean, c'mon. Don't those ideas sound doofy when you look at them? Yet they're in the story...and nobody's complained about them so far, or at least, nobody's said they're stupid ideas.

Neither can I begin to tell you how many ATROCIOUS errors I'm betting are in that story. I cringe to think of it. I literally have to NOT think about it to avoid worrying over how stupid I might look. Each week when I now rush to put out a chapter, I feel dumb when they end. This week's (96) really disappointed me. I hated how it ended; it spent WAY too much time describing a Victorian house. BOOORING. And the ending was way too vague and abrupt. And that's just one chapter; in all the really emotional ones, e. g., when Shadow Water confronted Justin, I felt stupid with how they turned out on the page as opposed to how they had sounded in my head previously. They were so weak in comparison! There are only a very few scenes in the story that I feel I REALLY pulled off just the way I wanted them to go. Out of 325,000 words, that's not much to be proud of, and a lot to worry about looking stupid.

So if you're coming up with ideas...and some of them sound goofy...so what? They might only SOUND goofy, to you. Somebody else might think they're pretty interesting...like me...and some of them might only sound goofy in barebones format. Once they're written out and explained, they'll make a lot more sense and won't be so goofy sounding. I've never been good at brainstorming, but from what I've heard of it, you're supposed to come up with any ideas you can, no matter how silly they might seem. Don't worry about them; just put them down before you forget them, and then you can separate the wheat from the chaff. Sometimes it's the silliest-sounding ideas that make for the most interesting reading.

And you're likely to be judging your own work a LOT more harshly than others are...

Well, I'd like to end this all introspective-like, but I wanted to do something else before going offline...so tar. And hope this made sense, if you read it...