this machine will not communicate

Things what I'm currently working on:

• A rewrite of a script I've been working on, in some form or another, for ten years, called "Flesh and Blood."  It was my primary script in grad school; my first year was the first draft, and then the second year, I did extensive workshops in two different classes.  It went through about four various iterations in those two years.  The protagonist went from being a mid-30s nurse to a late-20s cop.  From 2007-2010 I went through a few drafts on my own, finally settling on the protagonist being a senior in high school.  The central premise stayed the same, but the bulk of the story changed quite a bit.  I didn't do anything with it from 2010-2015.  Last year, the producer who optioned one of my other scripts gave "F&B" a read-through and liked it - modest budget, thrillers always sell - but felt it needed work.  So I did another re-write, sticking with the high school millieu but shifting to a more psychological, kind of "Hannibal" (TV) vibe.  My unofficial agent and manager (we're all working on developing stuff, but I haven't signed anything) were into it, but thought I'd gone too far in the psychological direction, needed to come back a bit and hit a few more of those thriller tropes.  So I'm doing another draft, this one almost a full rewrite in the first half, with more of the pages from the previous draft sticking around for the second half.  I'm shooting for getting through Act 2 at the least by the end of March, and I'm making really good time.  At this point, I've been working on it for so long that doing different drafts and iterations is easy-peasy.  I never feel like I'm killing any darlings because I've killed them all at one point or another.


• A new script idea, still in the outlining phase.  I'm not usually an outliner for a first draft, preferring to find the plot and learn who the characters are as I go.  What that means is that my first draft usually gets either tossed or extensively re-written.  When I'm just writing on my own, it's no big deal; now that I'm working with others with development, there's more pressure to not waste time and energy.  So I'm having a hard time going through a part of the process I usually never address until I've gone through the whole script - I sort of do the whole thing backwards.  I'm watching movies for structure paradigms, but I need to get my ass in gear.  I'm so much more interested right now in "F&B," it's hard to stop and work on something else.  My goal was to have the outline done today; I'm just at the end of Act 1.  So, this weekend, then!


• My novel, "The Orphan Queen."  Always and forever. I'm at 400k words now, so obviously it would never be published as a single novel (not that I ever worry about publishing, to be honest; it's not why I'm writing it).  But I know where the story ends, so I'm writing to that point, and I'll figure out the rest as I get there.  I started it in the summer of 2012, so coming up on four years.


• Trying to complete old B5 WIPs.  I'm almost done with the next chapter of Alma Mater, and I just started the next and hopefully last chapter of Cells (which as far as I can tell, exactly one person read chapter four, so this is clearly just for my benefit, haha).  Over the past month or so I actually re-read all my own B5 fanfic (is that really self-indulgent?) and I just super-miss the fandom as it was here in 2010-2012, and I hate that everything's moved to tumblr because tumblr's a pain in the ass.

In my last LJ post, I said I had started a new screenplay but it wouldn't be done in time for anything.  And that was true - I haven't written a single page since then, actually.  It's dead in the water at 30 or so pages; I'll have to sit down, actually write a fucking outline, and think about it.

But I did write a completely new, different screenplay!  I started like May 3, finished like May 30, just in time to submit to Austin Film Festival.  It was a comedy - I've never written a comedy before.  I didn't have an outline, a synopsis, even a log-line.  I just sat down one day and started writing.  On the whole, even if it's not the best thing I've ever written (and it's definitely not), it was just such a fun experience for a change, to have an idea and just go with it.  And it was heartening that I knew how to write a movie without having to actually write out all the technical framework first.  So quite fun.

Community was canceled.  I started watching in the beginning of S2, so I missed that first "will it be canceled or renewed?" crisis, but every season after that, I lived it.  S2, S3, S4, each time I was sure this was it, it was finished.  And then it would get renewed!  This year was the first time that I had been confident in renewal - the numbers were good, Sean Saves the World and The MJF Show tanked, #sixseasonsandamovie, etc.  I wasn't even worried!  And then.  And then...  So yeah, that was pretty devastating.  For the next two weeks, I would remember "Community got canceled" at the most random times and would literally get sad.

More work on the basement.  Closets framed in, sump pump framed in, a couple more walls.  We found a desk someone had put out for trash that just needs one drawer to be fixed up, new hardware, and a fresh coat of paint, so that's sitting in our basement waiting for my next big Project Day.

We also put in a garden!  It's doing really well so far, though I think we haven't harvested anything yet.  But having a yard feels more legit when there's a garden in it.

Community was renewed!  So I read the news, then I texted my friend, "YAHOO has picked up Community.  YAHOO.  Is this real?  It this a thing that is happening?  YAHOO."  Seriously, I had to read like three articles before I was convinced it was real and wasn't a prank or something.  I'm very excited, obviously, and glad to hear the budget will be the same; after my initial swoon of joy, I worried it would be all cheap and low-rent and such.  I know a lot of people have been disappointed with the show's last couple seasons (I mean, seriously, S4 was not good at all, really), but I wasn't ready for it to be over, and S5 was such a comeback, and like.  I'm happy.  :D

Worked a lot on The Orphan Queen.  I'm over 200,000 words now, and a lot of the random little details I stuck in here and there are finally paying off, which is so satisfying.  I guess you could say I do the George R.R. Martin style of writing when it comes to this novel, in that I plant a lot of things to sort of see what happens later on, knowing the rough end goal but not having a strict outline as such beyond that.  So when disparate threads come together, there's this wonderful click that just can't be recreated.  (Of course, that also means I sometimes go back and weed out things that didn't pan out, like some random love triangle-ish subplot runner that went nowhere.  But even that can be fun!)  It's turned into such a monstrously long novel, I just write and write and write and I make progress, of course, but the idea of ever finishing it seems very unattainable.

Someone plagiarized a wallpaper of mine.  That means I've made it in fandom, right?  They apologized and took their posts down, which is the best-case scenario, I guess, but it was still pretty frustrating, especially since I think they still don't quite understand why I was upset over the whole thing.  (Sadly, my overall reaction to the whole thing was being kind of sad that I don't really do graphics anymore.  I need to get back into that thing, even if it's just random icons here and there.)

I also had a falling out with some friends, but that kind of thing warrants a post of its own, I think, so suffice it to say I haven't been as social as usual.  I'm okay with how things have ultimately turned out, but that doesn't mean I'm sad when I think, "oh, normally I would ask so-and-so to come over, but that's not happening now, welp."  Such is life.

I thought it had only been a week or so since I posted last - time does fly.  I've actually been fairly productive this month.  I finally started a new screenplay, having not worked on anything screenplay-related since last June.  I started relearning a bit of French through Duolingo, which has been a fun little diversion thus far.  We'll see how long I stick with it once it gets actually tough.  (I was violently reminded of how finicky French is with articles, though, ugh.  After having not worrying about articles at all doing Latin all these years, it was a jolt.)

I need to get back working on The Orphan Queen.  I go through fallow periods with it, but even when I'm not actively writing, I am usually thinking about it.  I have a very clear sense of so much of what is to come, and I think one of the reasons I take breaks now and then is because I know how long it will take me to write all I have planned.  I think I end up feeling discouraged not at the amount of work, but that I can't just download the novel out of my brain.  I always worry that I'm going to lose something in the process - which is silly, because nine times out of ten I end up writing something I didn't expect, or dramatizing something in a different way than planned, and it's far better than what I had tumbling about in my head prior.

I could have sworn I'd posted sometime more recently, but I guess not.

Anywho!  My November final NaNoWriMo word count total was 31,000.  Which I was totally happy with, and is a good, sustainable monthly average for me.  I'm at around 13,000 thus far, which is actually pretty good considering how much time I've spent editing Part One.  Which is still going on, as I decided after reading through it that I needed one more chapter at the end.  Originally it was just going to be 3-4 pages, a character-based chapter rather than a plot-based one, more in the line of an epilogue than anything else.  It's about five times that length now, and I finally finished it yesterday.  So now I need to edit/polish that up, and maybe give a quick once-over to the last quarter or so of Part One.

But it's coming along!  I'm well-pleased.

About halfway done with Christmas shopping.  I don't understand how it, like, sneaks up on me each year.  I've got three stores to hit this weekend, and my goal is to get up early Saturday morning and get going, try to beat the crowds, if that's even possible the weekend before Christmas.  I decided to make gifts for my co-workers, and was planning to be done long before now, but I'll have to finish them up tonight.  Mini-pallet coasters! Though I made mine with popsicle sticks, cut to length and then glued together double or triple thickness.  A box of popsicle sticks is a lot cheaper than buying like actual wood.  A pretty easy craft, even for someone as relatively uncrafty as I am, but it took much longer than I was anticipating.

I finally saw Gravity yesterday.  I'm glad I got to see it on the big screen, and it was a really great movie, and Sandy did a wonderful job, but I guess my expectations were way higher, because I wasn't particularly wowed.  Beautiful, and science-y, and it's nice to see a clear, simple, straightforward story for a change, but it wasn't the technological oh-my-God marvel everyone had blown it up to be.  But still very good, and the clear winner this year for SFX.

Speaking of awards, I'm pretty happy thus far with how the award season is playing out.  I don't really have a favorite I want to win everything, except maybe Cate Blanchett for Actress, and that seems in the bag.  I haven't seen a lot of the major contenders yet, either because they haven't come out (American Hustle, Her), I don't really care (Wolf of Wall Street), or I'm not comfortable seeing it in the theater and will wait till DVD (12 Years a Slave).  I feel like the upcoming Oscar nominations won't have a huge amount of surprises, but this year that doesn't seem to be a bad thing. 

Well, I have caught up on my flist through November 1st.  I didn't comment on everything because that would take me all day, but I have read it.  Oof.  I was just talking to a coworker about social media, and I'm like, I don't feel that I'm measurably more busy this year than I was last year or the year before, but for some reason I just never have time these days.  But I'm going to start making time, by God.

I am too lazy to get a 2013 NaNo icon, but yes, I am doing NaNo this year.  I'm actually just adding 50k to The Orphan Queen, which I started back in the summer of 2011.  I finished Part One just before November started; now, Part One is almost 130,000 words, so it's actually a whole book?  But I'm just going to write the whole thing before I worry about books vs. parts and the idea of a series and all that jazz.  Right now, I'm stunningly in love with the whole thing, and it's going exactly as I want it to go, and I love all my characters and think I'm brilliant, &c.  This is often what happens when I'm in the groove on writing, and it's kind of funny to me, because I think it's just my brain psyching itself up to spend all this mental energy on this one thing.  Like I justify it to myself.  "Yep, spending a couple hours again today writing, doing it on my break and at lunch and secretly in the back, but it's okay, because I am a genius!"  IDK.

Really, though, I'm very excited about it.  I feel like maybe after Part One gets a spit and a polish after November, I'd like to have some beta readers take a look at it, but I'm afraid if I get negative feedback it would throw a wrench in the works as far as bustling ahead on the rest goes.  We'll see, I don't know!

We replaced the light in in our bathroom with a light-slash-fan, which is quite nice as we didn't have a bathroom fan before and showers were steamy.  We also replaced the light sconce thing above the sink.  (The old one got all rusty because of aforementioned lack of fan.)  It was a two-day project, and I use the pronoun "we" a bit freely, as I don't know anything about wiring, and there's only so much room in the bathroom, so I wasn't very hands-on myself.  Dad spent a lot of time in the attic replacing wiring and getting everything set up, and we bought him a cake to thank him.  :)  So improvements continue, slowly.  My sister did tear down the remaining nasty half-rotten, moldy walls in the basement, so that was fun!  Baby steps, baby steps.

Still tinkering with my two features, trying to finish up this dumb sitcom pilot I'm writing (no seriously, it's dumb, I don't know why I'm bothering), getting ready to do a quick-and-dirty rewrite of my drama pilot from last year, and pondering writing a Hannibal spec.  AFF deadline is next Saturday, and as always I'm finding myself trying to do too much with too little time, but what the hell.

I signed up for het_bigbang!  I'm writing Jaime/Brienne this year, because while I have lots of John/Delenn fic ideas, none of them would support a 25k-word story, so.  Plus I'm not really finding the J/B fic I personally want to read, so that means I have to write it myself, right?

My sister and I are doing a very serious diet/fitness regimen, so right now I'm hungry and my legs hurt.  Whee!

Will reply to things tomorrow!  Trying to finish this script!  Holy shit holy shit holy shit!  Writing like the WIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNDDDD!!!

(I should have requested a vacation day when I saw how things were going, but I didn't.  And I'm like incapable of calling in sick when I'm not actually sick - probably because I have a hard time calling in sick even when I am actually sick.  BUT I WILL MAKE THIS WORK.)

I finished about 8pm on the 30th.  What with NaNo, work, and a big freelance project I finished this past weekend, I ended up taking a bit of a computer sabbatical.  (I was starting to have back pain from sitting at a computer for pretty much the entire day for two weeks, heh.)  I'm not even at my act one break point from my outline, so I'm not really sure what the structure of this novel is going to end up being, but I'm just going to keep writing and see where I end up. 

Have started working on a new screenplay idea that I'm very excited about.  Doing some research first because it's a period piece, and I like to let the story itself percolate for a bit before I get started; let my subconscious mind do some of the heavy-lifting.  And then I have two screenplays from last year to revise, and maybe a new TV pilot, if I have the time.  (Hahahaha.) 

Anyway, my life is terribly boring right now.  What with work, second work, and writing, my fandom presence is basically nonexistent these days.  I'm not in any active landcomms anymore, and I haven't written fic in months.  Which means this online social sphere is essentially dead.  This is something I'm very sad about, to be honest, but there's not much to be done about it.  Sometimes I think I'd like to drop the second job, but the money is very useful, especially as it's becoming clear that we're probably going to need to buy a new washing machine.  (Sigh.)  Ah well.

I think I'm taking way too long on the set-up of this novel.  But I don't know what I'd cut?  I think I'm just such a meandering writer when it comes to prose sometimes; definitely something I need to work on.



( Chapter Two: III )

I bet you guys are sick of seeing these posts on your flist!






( Chapter Two: I )