10-19-04 @ 9:45 am EDT

Only one person has been checking out Skew on Writing.com lately. :/ I'm not even sure who it is. I would go into a long whiny post now about how I wonder where everyone has gone and when they will be back but the people who do read this have been subjected to that more than enough times...

So I guess today I'll write about writing, again. Oh, joy. My writing entries are the least popular of any I post; isn't it ironic? That my whiny bitchy entries seem to get the MOST hits, despite them seemingly being unpopular with some people? (It's been a while, thank God, but I used to get a particular few users who only found time to comment on my journal whenever I was in a pissy mood. As if pissing at me would make me feel any less pissy. I used to ask them why they were so interested in butting into my business when I was pissy, yet never had a word to say when I was happy--kind of said volumes about their own state of mind, didn't it? But anyway. I don't expect this to get many hits as it is, so the fact that it's going to be about writing just means it will get even fewer. (Fewer than one is...zero. Hm. :/ )

Anyway...I've been using a lot of ink making hardcopies of my writing. Something I should have done, and kind of did, many times, long ago. This time I want to just print out nice copies and tuck them away into folders just in case of a crash. And it used up almost the entire $30+ black ink cartridge just to print out Manitou Island. Cripes. I think they put less ink in these things every time. We used to use the refill things that the cartridge manufacturers tell you NOT to use (yeah, have THEM spend $30+ every frigging time they want to print something new), but for some reason the last couple of times we did that, if you left it idle too long it would get all clogged. But I've used so much ink I can't stand the thought of shelling out for ANOTHER cartridge so soon after this one, which gave me a "low ink" warning right in the middle of printing out Horus (which is only the SECOND project I've been able to print out so far). So we got another refill kit and I really hope it'll go better this time. Maybe if I print constantly until it runs out again, so it has little time to clog? *cross fingers*

After Horus will likely come the three D Is For Damien novels, as they are completed works. Then my short stories, then longer unfinished works like Return To Manitou Island and The Ameni Chronicles. (No, I have not figured out why I properly italicize all my titles but for that one. It just seemed right to me. Shut up.) RTMI presents a bit of a delay problem because it has not been proofed, and I do not want to print anything that has not been proofed...which means I'll have to start proofing. -_- I've already done up to Part 7 or 8, I think, but I can do only one part a day, IF that, and this doesn't count my short unproofed stories...I don't even know which ones they are anymore. And the X-rated ones will be pure TORTURE since I can't read them aloud, even alone. (I have to read aloud to get through anything anymore, it seems. I've tried EVERYTHING to get over this damn reading compulsion and nothing works! I would give anything to just be able to read normally again. :*( ) But anyway...lots of printing to do, should I ever get everything proofed.

While printing Horus I started thinking about revision and rewriting. I used to be so proud of Horus. Even though the main character has always struck me as unbearably dull. Seriously--Horus is the ONLY guy in that story who I could never get "close" to. He is just so boring! He has no sense of humor to speak of, he never gets histrionic (even the fit he throws when talking to Thoth is a pretty understated one, as far as my written fits go), he's just...DULL! Fortunately none of the Kemetics who've looked at the story seem to notice or care, but it bugs the snot out of me. And now after having done Manitou Island at 380,000 words and in the midst of the Chronicles rewrite, with its excessive scenes of dialogue and exposition, I also find Horus very...spare. It's only about 70,000 words. I used to be proud of that. Until MI ruined it. And then TAC. I thought there was nothing much more I could do to improve that story, except for the horrible subplot involving the humans. (Pendua, Hekanakht, Hetepet--their subplot bugs me even more than Horus's personality. It never GOES anywhere!) Aside from fixing that, I thought the novel was as good as it could ever get.

Well, I could not even take second place in a novel contest with the thing...third place was what it got. I only hesitantly and grudgingly say that the first and second place probably deserved it, but I'm just so frustrated that my writing is never good enough on this site to win something REALLY impressive. (I didn't even get any REVIEWS or RATINGS from that contest, nor even a mention of why I took third place. It was just "Horus--third place." I (anonymously, I admit) brought up this complaint in a review of the contest in question and never got any reply. Sheesh, some contest. Thanks for helping me figure out what I did right and wrong with the thing!) And aside from a few little dinky contests which practically nobody entered, this third place was the BEST thing I have ever gotten on anything here. I can't count the awardicon on MI, as that was not part of a contest; and even the awardicon on "Sovereignty" was not technically from a competition. At the moment the only items of mine that I can recall ever winning first place in anything were my Damien profile (in a profile contest--which IMO does not count as storywriting!) and "Manabozho & The Maples" (in a contest which like five people entered...wow, such odds). So you can see now why I enter so few contests--it doesn't seem to matter how hard I try, I just can't impress anyone enough. And those are all items I've never put a huge amount of work into. My real pet projects are practically INELIGIBLE for anything due to their size and subject matter.

Hm, this is getting whiny. Moving on. As I was saying I'm just so frustrated all the time that I work hard at this but it doesn't seem to show. It shows even less lately, too...P. is busy, but I seem to have lost the other two remaining readers of RTMI and so even though I have up to Part 76 written so far, I've stopped posting it, because it feels pointless. I'm getting discouraged on it. I feel like sharing the Island every day but there's nobody around so it's like I'm talking to myself. :( I hate having an interest nobody else has.

Well, to TRY AGAIN to get away from that stupid whining, I thought of how I've been rewriting TAC...these early chapters are just completely atrocious. SO awful. I'm GLAD they're private. Ugh. Yet when I wrote them they seemed good. Now they're not. (I wonder if a year or so from now, the REWRITES will be sucky! -_- ) It's the same with Horus. I considered picking up the writing of the prequel, Osiris, since the Kemetics expressed some interest in that and the sequel, Kingdom Of The Hawk, being written. (They've probably lost interest by now...) I have not been in much of a mood for any Kemetic writing in ages though. But by now it really seems like Horus could use a rewrite. I wrote that back in '98. It could use a WHOLE lot more detail and dialogue and whatever. I have no clue how I could fix the plot, aside from trying to fix the humans' subplot...I don't know, maybe it would come to me as I go along, like it is with TAC. In any case, Horus, which seemed so good when I first came online in 2000, could really stand to use a rewrite.

Then I thought of that horror of horrors, which I was proud of in HIGH SCHOOL but never after that...everything in the D4D series. -_- Ugh.

I still think Minot is PASSING okay. Although lately I've had serious thoughts of amending the problem with Kincaid (not to give it away, he has a condition which, if he really had in real life, would ensure his removal from the police force). I have NEVER entertained these thoughts before because when I write my characters, I tend to get VERY set on what I've created--I can revise stories--but not characters. What revision comes to my characters, comes because I just "discovered" they were not really that way at all. Not because I forcefully decided to change some part of them. Hell, I recently learned that my Detective Kristeva is a multiple, and I really had no idea he was, before then, though he must have been--he showed signs and everything. It's like I'm finding out these things about him just as HE'S finding them out--not like I'm creating them or writing them that way--they're just "happening." (He was damn good at hiding it, seeing as even *I* did not know until lately. O_o ) I just thought he was having some issues with his Shadow and stuff...*cough* Anyway...change in my characters comes about by natural evolution, not by forcible change or rewriting. Even the characters in the Chronicles haven't really changed in the rewrites, they've just gained more of a story. (Taka being the only big one I can think of at the moment. But that could be a WHOLE 'nother entry. I could blither about Kristeva himself for pages and maybe sometime I will. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.) Which is why changing Kincaid's condition, which I was so set on for so long, would be a HUGE step in my writing. But...I actually considered it, to make Minot more believable and less cringe inducing for me.

D4D and Lucifer? HORRIBLY cringe inducing. >_< Aside from the mythology they build for the characters involved, there is just about NOTHING I can be proud of in those novels anymore. I think I like to keep the unwritten ones unwritten simply because then I can't be ashamed of what crap they would probably turn out to be! I used to have such grand plans for this series. But I have not worked on it in AGES--even short stories dwindled out with "Missing Lives" and "Random Story 2." (I'm not counting "A Crack Of Light," because that's part of the Minot spinoffs, and I already explained why Minot is at least slightly better than its predecessors. And besides I still really like "A Crack Of Light." Go read it. At least you won't be entirely dumbed out by it like you would be by D4D or Lucifer. :P ) Well, I thought kind of, as I sat printing out Horus and watching the ink level dwindle, what if I should try to rewrite these two atrocious novels? Maybe then the huge series could unstall itself and continue. Face it, if ANYTHING in my port needs a rewrite more than anything else on God's green Earth...it is those two novels.

I thought about this for only a short time before I got really antsy and moved on to just mindlessly printing out Horus. Rewriting Lucifer and D4D...augh. And I thought TAC was time consuming. o_o;

Rewriting these two would entail a HUGE amount of revision and work. The characters? They would be the easiest part--since I already know my characters inside and out. It's the PLOT that is so simply HORRID! I worked on both novels for years and it shows in the way my writing style and plotting changes abruptly in midstream.

Speaking of midstream, time to wake up Ma...I'll continue this later on. Gar.


Okay...where was I? I hate getting interrupted, I completely lose track of where I was. >:/ Anyway. Rewriting the D4D stuff would be an even bigger undertaking than TAC because there's almost NOTHING in the plot that is salvageable as is. I mean, the basics have to remain, yeah, but EVERYTHING would need to be redone, whereas with TAC, it's just chunks of it, and new chunks. The TAC rewrite is more about adding than about changing what already exists (though that's happening too). So you can see this would take up a LOT of time and energy...

Which I hardly have right now, seeing as I'm busy with TAC and RTMI. >_<

Maybe someday I'll be able to approach it though. It would be nice to not be so ashamed of two of my earliest novels, especially seeing as they feature my all-time favorite and most-developed character of all.

Speaking of RTMI, I've started thinking of the sequel, Escape From Manitou Island, yet again, and just a day or so ago the opening sequence just popped into my head out of nowhere. Huh! I think I mentioned it somewhere earlier in Skew that the antagonist is going to be a big guy named Megissogwun (the Pearl Feather), who has ties to both Manabozho's and Geezhigo-Quae's pasts, as well as the past of the original Manitou Island (if you'll remember from RTMI (well...those two or three of you who've read it), the current Manitou Island is in fact the SECOND Manitou Island...the first was destroyed by a flood long ago). Ocryana reenters the story, and Charmian, now sixteen, starts training the young daughter of Silver Eagle Feather and Black Elk Horn, Winter Born, for the role of protector of the Island. I had absolutely no clue how to start the story, though. Then I started thinking on a throwaway line that appears in a (so-far not posted) chapter of RTMI in which Augwak the GeeBee chief is pissing and moaning over the loss of respect for the GeeBees which they have suffered since that damned fleshling Charmian came along and beat them back:

Augwak hopped up and down, brandishing the shard as if it were a teeny sword.

"At last! What I have always wanted!" he crowed. He lowered his fist and gnashed his teeth. "And finally that little brat will be GONE from my life forever!" He cackled wildly, flinging his arms in the air and dancing around for several moments before gathering himself with a cough and scuttling from the cavern and into a side tunnel. He loped down the passageway until he emerged into a small cave at the end. The floor was littered with bones; he made a face at them, then kicked a deer skull aside. His eyes focused on a human skull--coated with several layers of dust--and lit up, and he picked it up in his free hand. He stuck his long fingers through it and jiggled it back and forth as if it were a puppet.

"'Ohhh, don't eat me, don't eat me!'" he cried in a falsetto voice. "'I'm from the mainland! I'm too POWERFUL to be eaten by a GeeBee! I'm too smart, and clever, and pretty!'" He stopped talking and blinked, then scowled and tossed the skull away. "FEH! She is NONE of these things! And once I have all my old powers back, it will hardly matter WHAT she is, anyway!"

I just wrote it as it popped into my head...but right after I did, I had to pause and look back on what Augwak said. Now that was a VERY weird thing for him to say. O_o I'm starting to think there's more to Augwak's hatred of Charmian than I used to think. Like I said...I usually find these things out around the same time my characters do. *gives Augwak a strange look*

Well...that got me to thinking of Augwak's personality as he appears so far in the series. He's conniving, bitchy, unreliable, deceitful, greedy, cowardly, opportunistic...the list just goes on and on. Basically, there's very little in him that's good. When he DOES perform the rare good act, it's ALWAYS out of self-preservation or greed that he does it. (His assistance to Charmian at the end of MI? So he can spite Ocryana for stabbing him in the back--and besides, Charmian had hold of part of his spirit stone, so it wasn't in his best interests to attack her just yet.) So far in RTMI, he was the very first being to greet Charmian on her return to the Island--by trying to kill her. And then he tries to suck the spirit stone right out of her chest, something which, although I don't ever state it in the story, is much akin to spiritual rape. (It's invasive and excruciating enough to be, at least.) AND at the time of the scene above, he's just received something which he hopes will help him annihilate Charmian forever, so he can resume his place as the dreaded chief of the Wendigo GeeBees. (It took Charmian's knocking him around a bit to prove to the Islanders that the GeeBees are not quite as fearsome as they once were, and this pisses him off royally.) In the part I'm currently writing (77, I think), he's just gaining power and is ready to really whomp the Island a good one. But anyway. His little throwaway line about Charmian above got me thinking about the possibility of a good side, or at least of a weak side. And that was when the idea of having HIM be the first victim of Megissogwun's attack on the Island came to mind.

Suffice it to say that...being the Wendigo chief is great fun, and a wonderful position of fear and power, but when you've had the crap kicked out of you, and all your fellow GeeBees are looking at you like you're what's for dinner, it can be a rather humbling experience...especially when that damned annoying fleshling happens to show up again, and teaming up with her is the only way to keep from getting eaten by your former subordinates. (Yes, the GeeBees are rather...weird that way. Go Google "wendigo" or "windigo" and you should see what I mean. O_o )

Well anyway...I've been toying with the thought of typing that up as the "preview" to EFMI, although work on RTMI and TAC prevents me from doing so...though if I get stalled enough, which I seem to be doing a lot lately, I might get into it. Augwak has been such a snotty character, it would be nice to kick the crap out of him, and then give him an (almost) human side. Even if it is still in the interests of self-preservation. I think that over the course of a serial it could be shown that there's more to him than greed and opportunism. Maybe he could be almost decent for ten seconds. MAYBE.

(Since I typed this up there are now two hits to the most recent entries. Hm.)