Survived...

[ellenmillion]

I drove into town today, and survived. The only incident I witnessed was far enough ahead of me not to change my patterns - a truck came out of an intersection too fast, swerved wider than they meant to, bounced off a snowbank, and went along their way. (A big white truck, rather like the one that last hit me, actually...)

But no major scares for me! My heartrate is back to normal, and while I feel sort of understandably hyperalert while driving, it's not a true panic state. It was good of me to get back into a car today, and I mailed a few things I needed to.

I finished reading the Upheaval through to the end...



And, it's not only not awful, I think I wrote something good. I cried, in a few places, and caught my breath in a few others, and there were no sections where I flipped pages just to get through it already... though there were several places where I left notes to myself indicating that I needed another scene here, or noting that I needed to set up these people earlier and a few bits like "insert something witty here." There's a subplot that I ran out of steam on, and it's just a series of 'add Afareiru's bit here once I figure out what that is.' He ties back in at the end, at least - there are just four or five middle scenes that need to happen. There's some poor old man who is a key figure in an escape scene who still has no name, and the cities are all still cityname1, cityname2, cityname3...

But I thought it was all generally in much worse shape than it actually is. There is a bit of a feeling towards the end that I knew where I was going and was in more of a rush to GET there than to finely craft the writing, but it can all pretty much be fixed in edits without major heartache or dismantling. I've re-written short stories that needed more structural work than I think this will require.

My biggest decision now is rating. It's a story about the end of a world - there is inescapable death. There is infidelity, betrayal, power struggles, rape, and a surprising amount of feel-good hope and optimism, at the end of it... I just need to decide how many harsh or sexy bits I actually want to show - and then decide if I'm even capable of writing a sex scene. I think I may be...

I'm not honestly sure how many of my beta-readers got through it - it was admittedly rough in a whole lot of places, and dumping 12 thousand words a week at them (while most of them were doing their own nanos!) on LJ is not the best way to present work. I'm also not sure if they'd agree with my (incredibly biased) assessment of its brilliance.

/blather.

Comments

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Cityname1, cityname2, etc. do make me wonder if it wouldn't have been better to use actual Earth city names and then do a search/replace later! By contrast, even a fictitious name can convey a sense of character just from the syllables:

Werkham - a short-spoken, no-nonsense sort of city. Germanic!
Irelieleille - melodious and Elven, you can just picture white marble buildings snuggled under arching trees
Mestra Tandarin - it's not just plain Tandarin, it has a *qualifier*! It must be distinctive in some way. Sort of the way New York is new and hot, and York is just plain old.

[jenny heidewald (from livejournal.com)]

"There's some poor old man who is a key figure in an escape scene who still has no name, and the cities are all still cityname1, cityname2, cityname3..."

*haha* I did that in mine, and after I figured out names (poepl and places) I kept forgetting who they were because I was so used to writing them like this: (EastGirl)
I printed mine out, what last year, to read it, never got around to it, and I ma not sure if I had written more to it...did I print that out this year or last year...????

I feel like my brain is fried all the time these days.. :\

RE:Sex scenes: I am sure you could do it, the question is do you want to? I know I could, but then my family would probably be reading my book or novel, and that might be embarassing. "Ummm, you get the PG version, not the R one..." *haha* :")

[ellenmillion.livejournal.com]

Lol! I'll send my parents a copy with all the dirty parts ripped out... :P

[jenny heidewald (from livejournal.com)]

*hahahaha!!!* I always have wondered how the famous writers deal with stuff like that. Not to mention artists who draw nekkid peoples. :)

[kelkyag]

Upheaval, woohoo!

I read the majority of it, though for a chunk of the middle of the month I was swamped with other stuff and not keeping up -- I missed a bunch of the attempt to prevent the end-of-the-world from happening. I enjoyed it; I don't have the perspective to say if it'd work for someone who didn't already have a lot of background on the world.

[ellenmillion.livejournal.com]

That's a question I have too! Once I get some scenes plugged in and resolve a few of the big question marks in the end section, I need to find a beta-reader who isn't as familiar with the world and see if it makes any sense at all to an outsider.