First, The Eighth Sea is about 23,000 words. I think. It’s 45 MS word pages now. And it’s on hold. I hit a roadblock with it and I’m not sure where to go or if it’s really worth finishing. I don’t have the motivation and love for it that I did 2 years ago when I began to think about it and write it. So I’m putting it to the side.

Secondly, I’ve thought about one project very lightly and begun a second project. The first project is the story of two friends with eating disorders. I don’t know if I’m ready to write this right now, but it is something I am keeping in the back of my head.

The second project is tentatively titled The Cartographer’s Apprentice and involves two tweens, a quest, a mystery, an unkindness of ravens and two of those ravens talk. It’s very fun to build so far. I haven’t started writing yet.

I didn’t write for about three weeks. Between personal issues, and writer’s block, and moving back to university, it was very stressful and time consuming. But I am back now, and writing, thank god. I am trying to read blogs, stay inspired, learn more, and keep up my grades. Ha!

It’s bitterly cold today. One thing I notice is that now, when I experience something, I immediately think “I need an index card to write this down for future writing”. So my brain has become a filing cabinets of emotions and sensations.

Additionally, JK Rowling is Harvard’s commencement speaker. To go to my friends’ commencement, or crash the Harvard party? Oh the possibilities. I have a crush on that woman. I mean, in the way that I am rarely physically attracted to people and rather am attracted to intellect.

I found a neat book that had some good stuff in it…thought about buying it but will wait for my Xmas gift of a Borders gift certificate.

Greg Martin’s piece in it on the Treadmill Journal though was totally worthwhile.

The Treadmill Journal

 

This is a daily journal of your writing schedule and goals.  Each day you make seven entries:

1. The date and the time

2. How long you plan to work.

3. What you plan to work on for this day.

4. Time when you stop writing and total amount of time writing.

5. Answer the questions:   What did you actually end up doing?  How well did it go?

6. What you plan to work on tomorrow

7. When you plan to work tomorrow and for how long.

Sample Entry

1. Sept 15, 2005  8:30 am

2. Work until noon

3. Focus on rising action in Macular Degeneration

4. 12:15   Almost four hours

5. Sluggish until coffee kicked in, then pretty good characterization of Oscar.  Didn’t get to turning point.

6. More rising action tomorrow.  Must write turning point–as scene, not just a lame sketch.

7. Tomorrow: 5:30 to 9.

Rules:

• You can’t take three days off in a row.

• If you take two days off in a row, you ought to feel bad, not just about your habits and your lack of discipline, but about yourself as a person.

• You must log 18 hours of writing time a week.  This is an average of 3 hours a day six days a week.  (You can write more.)  Take a day off each week, if you must, but I don’t recommend it.  Why would you?  You’re supposed to love it.  You’ll love it more, the more you do it.  Wynton Marsalis didn’t take a day off practicing the trumpet for two years.  That’s why he’s Wynton Marsalis.

• Unplug the phone.  (Turn off cell, if you feel you must have one of those)

• No email.

• No diary-type notes.  Nothing about your cat’s urinary tract infection.

I can’t remember the book title, but I googled it and found his English class webpage where he teaches this. So here it is for citation reasons: http://www.unm.edu/~gmartin/523Sp2006/523SyllabiSp2006.htm

I have a writing journal, other than this one, so I’m going to try this exercise.

I wrote from 3:30 to 6:30 and completed 2,500 words for the Eighth Sea. I’m very happy with that…it’s rough but I am nearly done the chapter. I like the relationship between father and son, father’s best friend and the son much better this time around.

A week ago, or so, I thought about writing a prologue with Cale’s father in it…essentially explaining the beginnings of the Eighth Sea legend and how the map was made. I started to write it…I wrote like 200 words…and realized that this was an entirely different “voice” and that it wouldn’t match the rest of The Eighth Sea.

So I separated it. I put this with the legend that I wanted to write awhile ago called The Daughter of Madness.  I’m writing the beginning of the Eighth Sea legend, how myths began, the capturing of mortal minds, and a private war between the chief god and the chief goddess. It’s a little dark, a little comical, and a lot of fun to write.

Word Count today: 1,319

I decided to make the tattoos a big deal. And I also decided that if you were given something, a privilege, a status, that is embedded in your skin like ink, it can be taken away. Violently, but it can be taken away. And that would mean the end of a family and society and place of belonging. Risking treason against your clan must carry serious consequences. And I’ve found those consequences for a character now named Mallow. I thought it sounded appropriate.

For the record, I will always make links show up in a new window. I find it so annoying when links don’t do that.

Word count: 19,685

I am fascinated by memory. I believe places hold memories and that there is such a thing as collective memory.  I am Jewish and I believe that the Holocaust is ingrained as a cultural burden, as a memory all people raised Jewish carry with them. I think we comprehend the memory of the Shoah (our word for the Holocaust) with far more pressure (physical pressure sometimes) than others can/do. I am also fascinated by mother-child relationships and how children can adopt the burdens of their parents and specifically the mothers’ burdens. In tES I have given Zair a gift. The magic in tES is very different…there are no spells and there are few forms of physical magic. Magic cannot heal, bring back the dead, and can rarely kill. Zair’s gift is that he can sense/absorb some of the memories of those around him. This is also a burden, a double edged sword for him. Not all memories are good, not all are bad, but they can affect his first impression of a person and they can affect his later impressions. Someone whom he considered very good, very honest, etc, has memories which eventually are ‘leaked’ to Zair that prove otherwise.

I find this very fascinating to write and I hope it comes off as fascinating to read!

I am writing a prologue. But I don’t think I’m going to use it. It’s got a different feel to it, perhaps more dark, comical, deities and gods and goddesses bickering over a game, a little more Pratchett/Gaiman, perhaps.  Someone on AbsoluteWrite is beta reading it for me after I finish it tonight…my first beta torture? Hopefully it’ll go well and I won’t cry :p J/k.

And Cale with the accent on the e. I really need to figure out how to do that here. I’ve always known she’s an islander, dark skinned with her hair in braids/matted/dreds. She’s not traditionally beautiful. Zair doesn’t look at her and go “Wow. I’d do her” (for a lack of a more discrete way of putting this) even with what must be raging 16yr old boy hormones. But I just found two great things. 1. Pictures which were mysterious and fun and 2. an explanation for her tattoos!

Young Maori woma

n wearing a feather cloak

Young Maori woman wearing a feather cloak
Original albumen photograph, c 1900 (unmounted)
190 x 140 mm
Photographer: Arthur Iles (1870-1943), Rotorua
Titled in negative: Iles Photo Rotorua No. 58.
Good condition with creasing due to removal from an album page at some point (exaggerated by scan).

page at some point (exaggerated by

What a beautiful picture of this girl, don’t you agree? And the cloak is so interesting. So then I went a searching for Maori women…

straight from the website:

Mark of a Woman

The permanent blue stain on a Maori woman’s tattooed mouth symbolized female beauty among her people in New Zealand. The personal facial tattoo, or moko, communicated her lineage, social position, and marriage eligibility.

Photograph from Iles Photo/submitted by Chas J. Glidden, circa 1919
From 100 Best Vintage Photographs, 2004scan).

So, here, we have islander women, and there is a history of tattooing on islands  to do exactly what I wanted the tattoo to do (denote clan and lineage). I suppose I first got this idea because I love RPing (roleplaying) and writing Sea Folk/Atha’an Miere from Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series (i roleplay at ageofglory.net) But the facial tattoos…I had tattoos spiralling on the sides of her face but perhaps now I will cover her face. A daughter of the gods, after all…

There are a lot of factors this fall which have influenced my writing, for better or for worse.

One of those things is that my brother attempted suicide. Luckily, he contacted the University police who rushed him to the hospital. He was admitted to the psychiatric ward of the hospital, and he’s still with us today. I do not believe in God, but not a day goes by that I do not feel lucky that I still have my brother. We had known he was depressed for a long time, and I had personally taken the threat much more seriously than my parents. As far back as a year and a half before his attempt, I had blogged on my private blog that I was afraid that I knew how he would die.

I’ve always been fascinated with that idea. I fear death. I am not afraid to admit this. I am surrounded by people who do not fear death.

The girl with whom I am in love, and let’s just call her MG for my girl here, struggles with a great deal in her daily life and she does not fear death. One of my recurring nightmares is that I get a phone call from her roommate saying she’s been hospitalized and I need to come down to see her. Ironically, I did receive that phone call this past February. Luckily, it had nothing to do with a suicide attempt or her eating disorder. She survived, perhaps miraculously, and I am lucky in this regard too.

I study peace and conflict resolution…I am constantly reading about genocide, war, mass atrocities, rape as a victimization tool, rape as a method of genocide, infanticide, human rights abuses, etc. I have PTSD from the places I’ve visited, and things I have witnessed. Death is all around me.

But what would happen if you knew how you would die? For something outside of your control? What if your death was predicted in detail centuries before you were born? Or one day you were told you would surely die the next day? People always ask these questions, but seriously. Think about it. What would you do? It’d be nice to say that you’d do everything you didn’t do before but that’s not feasible. It’s not possible. Would you sit down and cry? Would you go out for a run and try to outrun Death? Would you tell anyone?

I gave my fear of death to Cale. She’s caught between immortality and mortality, and she has chosen immortality because she fears death. She’s chosen to chase immortality. In doing this, she lost her childhood. She lost out on friendship. She is myopic, narrow-minded, cruel, cold, calculating. Zair’s death has been predicted but he does not fear it. His father does not either and perhaps Zair was raised this way. But is it the way we were raised or is it hardwired into us?

When I was twelve or thirteen, I asked my dad what the afterlife is like. He said that no one could tell us and I said I’d really like to know, if only for a few seconds, because I thought it was interesting. He was quiet for a long time, and then answered something about how I shouldn’t want that, and that everyone dies eventually and we’d find out then. I stopped asking.

Another thing that affects my writing is that in the past two years, I have adjusted my views on sexuality. I see sexuality as being fluid: you are attracted to whom you are attracted and that should be enough. Sexual organs don’t matter and really only complicate matters when it comes to labeling. For that reason, I consider myself bisexual because I don’t want to limit myself. Currently, I’m in love with a girl and yes, she knows. I was never good at keeping secrets. But I still check out guys on the street, and would consider dating members of both sexes and genders. As it stands, I’ve been in love with this girl for two years, and only recently have been more than open about my feelings towards her. I am very thankful because though she still sees us as just friends, this has not come between us. We love each other, as friends first, and that’s the most important thing. She is the most amazing wonderful beautiful young woman I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. She is not my Muse, but she’s ever supporting of my writing. She’s the only person to read both of the prequels to this novel and lists my first novel as one of her favorite stories on her MySpace page. She makes me smile when I thought I could not, and the feeling I have every time we talk–I wish I could bottle that. I attempt to capture this in my writing but I’ve found it nearly impossible. Every person should have a chance to feel like this though.

Three more things that I can think of:

1. I have synaesthesia. In specific, I have touch => pain syn and word => physical sensation syn. This means that certain textures are absolutely unbearable to me. Fleece, velvet, the ceiling of cars, bananas, eggs that are not scrambled, the center of hardboiled eggs, rice pudding, things like that. It’s hard to explain but they’re absolutely revolting. I can’t stand it. Additionally, certain words evoke certain physical sensations. Not all words have a feeling but for instance, “peace” feels like water on my feet. It sounds like I just created a mnemonic device right? “piece” creates the same feeling. The word “world” feels like pressure on my chest but so does “word” because I often hear those words the same. The word “sharp” tastes like metal, while words with zz sounds like fuzzy or buzz make my ears hurt. Some people have delightful syns such as seeing colors with words or seeing colors with sounds. I have pain syns essentially and its not so fun. In my writing, this often manifests itself because one of my minor characters has syn.

2. Wow, I forgot the middle thing. Hm. Okay well I’ll put number 3 here and hope I remember the next one. And I forget number 3. So I guess “I have a bad memory” goes into this. OH! I remember. I do not believe in ghosts but I do believe that places can hold memories. I’ve stood on mass grave sites and genocide sites and I swear you can still hear people screaming and hear gunshots and smell the blood. I also believe that societies have collective memory and chose whether to accept that or not. And I believe memories are a burden. Burdens are not necessarily bad.

3. I still can’t remember. Oops. I think it had something to do with disordered eating. Yes, I believe that was it. MG has an eating disorder. I call it one of her demons and it’s absolutely terrible. It tears me apart to see this controlling her life, but I have to walk every step next to her. I do not have an eating disorder, but I do occasionally have disordered eating. I revel when I am able to skip a meal, and I find immense satisfaction from the sensation of hunger. I believe the only thing keeping me from having a fullblown eating disorder is the fact that I’m terribly lazy. I have no work ethic. Having an eating disorder requires work and I can’t find it to put in that work. But if MG is having a bad day, or I am, it might come up here. It certainly does in my writing.

I’m working on my third novel, a manuscript tentatively titled “The Eighth Sea”. It deals in a world with which I am very familiar–I’ve been writing in this world for 8 years, though I really only began to discover it, and intrude upon the privacy of its citizens two years ago. The World doesn’t have a name that I know of, though I am sure it has a name. If there’s one thing I am sure of, it is that everything has a name, even that which is unknown.

I deal mostly in a country called Falor (FAH-lore). In terms of worldbuilding, I suppose I don’t know as much as I should. I venture through my own creation as though I am a visitor from Ellion, Falor’s southern neighbor. Culturally, Ellion is quite different. A strong current, known for whipping up storms, cuts Ellion off from major sea faring trade routes and a huge mountain range splits Ellion and Falor. The Ellions developed quite differently than Falorans. Falorans consider themselves very cultured, perhaps even highbrowed. It is a matriarchal society, likely stemming from the fact that the trading economy takes away the men in the family for months at a time. In fact, the Queen is the ruler of the country while the King, if there is one, is more of a figurehead. Only a nobleborn can be King though the Queen may marry whom she wishes. In my timeline, the Queen (Analei) was murdered about 15 years before this story takes place. She was a young Queen, with few living relatives, and she had just borne a son by her husband, Lord Alexander ‘The Falcon’ Sarjio. This leaves Falor in a dilemma, as its been almost eight hundred years of continually monarchy with a female heir. There are prophesies warning against male heirs, saying that they will bring down the monarchy and lead Falor to ruin. Falor, in tES as I will abbreviate the novel in progress, is recovering from decades of war. There’s not much farther it can fall.

In my novel, the prince-heir overhears critical information while wandering in disguise around the harbor outside his palace. The captain of the ship spots him and orders her (yes, her) henchmen to find the eavesdropper. They find him, kidnap him and take him back to the ship. The prince-heir, Zair, is held prisoner then with a crew of men and their slightly diabolical and arguably insane captain. The Captain’s name is Cale with an accent over the e (Kah-lay) but I haven’t figured out how to make that symbol yet. She is born of a mortal woman out of an immortal…a god by the name of Dakkan (accent over the second a but I haven’t figured out how to do that, pronounce his name Dah-kan). She is not purely mortal, nor immortal. She can be killed in two ways and those are laid out in the story. She , however, is on the search for immortality. There exists in legends a sea called the Eighth Sea that is ‘frozen in time’. Those who reach it first will be granted immortality and the ability to sail all over the world, accumulate wealth, and while they will feel as though they sail around the world, they’ve never really left the Eighth Sea. They will never come in contact with anyone they met or knew before they reached the sea. Only one ship may reach the Sea and in all these years, no one has reached it . But Cale has a map. She bargained with her father and won a map. This does not guarantee she makes it, but it does give her better chances.

During the course of sailing to the Eighth Sea, Cale and Zair strike up an unusual friendship. This is where I am now. Well, sorta. I’ve been writing in very bizarre scraps of scenes and piecing it together as I’ve gone. I’m fascinated by their friendship and I’m not in complete control. I wanted it a certain way, but the Zair inside my head keeps pushing it a different way (he’s so like his father, the Falcon, a character whom I’ve written for years and truly love). I know what happens for the rest of the book, but I don’t want to give it away and the details are changing.

Right now, the first three chapters have to be rewritten. I changed the way Zair ends up with Cale. So I’ll need to write that (this will be the 10th draft of the first three chapters…this story used to be called Heir and it was not based at sea). And then I want to begin to piece together these scenes of friendship into something coherent. Those are my writing goals for the next three weeks. I am aiming for 10 to 15 pages of work. I measure on MS Word by single spaced, normal margins, size 12 Times New Roman.

My problem? I’m a third year university student in the States and I have a massive research project this semester. Whew. Too much writing. I am working on tES as often as possible but I cannot guarantee that I will get a ton of writing done before the end of the semester (Dec 10th). I’m trying to set reasonable writing goals for this reason. Reasonable means attainable right?