Perambulations in Verbiage

Posting here, because hey, it's mostly private these days. I can't stop crying today.

Six years ago, my husband acquired a fantastic license to do a role-playing game based in a friend's award winning fictional world. A world that I LOVE. A writer that I really admire, both as an author and a person.

Because he had other projects that he was working on that needed his attention first, my husband asked me to do the research, and write up the world descriptions, i.e. the bulk of the game book. Character and race types, regional descriptions, various in-world organizations. He had a strong concept for it that played exactly to my strengths, involving historical research, in-world knowledge, and strong descriptive writing skills.

That's me. Those are my skills. Supposedly.

I did the reading, made my notes. Slowly. There was nothing to stop me to from writing it all up. But other projects got pushed back, and we weren't going to publish any time soon, so I let the actual writing stall out. I thought about it all the time, but I didn't do it. Except for an embarrassingly tiny amount of sample pages. For six years. Just yesterday, as I posted here about cleaning my office and getting my writing desk cleared up, the FIRST thing I had on my agenda to write was this game. I was feeling excited about it, looking forward to the new year, when I was sure we would finally publish. I was looking forward to finally feeling like I had contributed something to the business. Something well done. Something that would help us financially. Something I had actually, finally created.

Then this morning, as if the universe had felt me thinking about it and decided to squash me like a bug, I got a call from my husband. The author is taking his license back. Because we've had it for six years, and he knows another game designer who is ready to do a game right away. They were even willing to give credit, and pay, for anything I had already done.

Except. Nothing. Sample pages and a book of handwritten notes. That's it. For six years. And now I've lost my chance. It's gone, and I'm the one who wasted it.

I have never felt more like a creative fraud than I do today.

Right, so here's a link to the story I mentioned earlier:

Jade Ghost Story


Also, here's an inspirational post on writing and fear of failure: Fail Better. by John Remy at Inkpunks

So, for my next trick.

Bloomers:



Ta Da!

Also, I wrote a short story this past weekend. By hand. Which still seems to be the key to fast, easy writing for me. I don't know why I ignore it. When I type, I often spend far too much time going back over things and editing as I write, instead of just getting the story out. So, more hand writing is in my future. Unfortunately, that means I do have to type it out to be able to show it to anyone else, so that's the goal for this week.

I just couldn't get this nursery rhyme verse out of my head, so I used it as a story prompt:

My Mother said I never should
Play with the gypsies in the wood;

Be seeing you.

It feels rather cliched to post this so soon after turning 40, but that also seems like a silly excuse to avoid writing about it...

I do not ask enough of myself for me. This is not about what I do or don't do for others - it is all about what I expect of myself, and honestly, I'm too easy on me.

I watch TV when I could be writing. I make lists of things I want to make when I could be creating the things themselves. I leave stuff sitting in piles when I know that I would be happier if I just dealt with it instead. I sit on the couch when I could be exercising.

This is not to say that just relaxing isn't okay sometimes. But it definitely isn't okay to 'veg-out' all the time. And leaving myself creatively unfulfilled because I'm too tired or too busy or someone else needs something from me or that show I like is on or I should be doing laundry and I can do that later...hurts.

Even my New Years resolutions for that past few years have reflected this - vague notions of stuff I'd like to do, with no concrete plans for accomplishing any of it, so I just let things drift by until I've forgotten about them. It isn't working, and it isn't helping.

So I'm changing tactics, and calling myself out in public.

My primary goal and my biggest challenge for 2011 is 52.

Fifty-two complete creations. One a week.

Since I have a lot of neglected creative interests, I'm not holding myself to a category - it can be jewelry or clothing or a short story or a novel or a handbag or a painting or something I'm not even considering right now. (It doesn't have to be new - if I finish a novel that I've been working on for years, I might even give myself a week off.)

They won't have to be perfect, but they will have to be things that pleased me to create - no "filler" projects just to hit my quota.

So. There it is - my challenge to myself. Starting around January 7th, 2011, I'll be posting my results here. It's an exercise for me, but if you're interested in seeing how it's going, you're welcome to check in.

Three different works in progress plus a blog entry, four different results...

















I suppose this implies both that I am what I read, and that I write like myself...

Two highly touted OFFICIAL SEQUELS have made the news recently.

Dracula: The Un-Dead is due to be released next October. It was written by Dacre Stoker, a *gasp* genuine descendent of Bram Stoker, and Ian Holt, a Dracula Historian. It largely appears to be Mr. Holt's idea, as the current Mr. Stoker was previously known for being an Olympic Pentathalon coach, and not a writer. But what really got to me was this quote from the article:

"Dacre Stoker delved into his ancestor's handwritten notes on the original Dracula novel to pen his sequel, Dracula: The Un-Dead - the original name for Dracula before an editor changed the title. The novel, out next October, draws on excised characters, existing character back-stories and plot threads that were cut from Stoker's original novel, first published 111 years ago."

Original notes or not, if these threads were cut from the novel, doesn't that indicate that the author discarded them? I thought that was part of the writing process - coming up with a lot of ideas and then streamlining them to create your story. I would actually be far more interested in seeing the notes themselves published in as complete a form as possible. (Unless they have been before, and I've just missed it?) At any rate, I just can't accept that this particular version of a Dracula sequel has any more literary legitimacy than any of the dozens of others that have been penned over the years, even with the Stoker family stamp of approval.


And then, a sequel to "The House at Pooh Corner" is due to be released later this year. An act which seems to be largely driven by money. The new author has plans to deal with an "older Christopher", as Milne "dropped hints in the 1928 book, which followed Winnie the Pooh (1924), that Christopher Robin was growing up." Isn't part of the point of the books that each child reading them gets to decide for themselves what happens as Christopher Robin grows up?

In "The House at Pooh Corner", A.A. Milne wrote this: "Wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing." Those seem like pretty telling last words on the subject.


Among many other works, H. Beam Piper wrote and published two novels in his "Little Fuzzy" series before committing suicide in 1964. Some years after his death, other authors (Fuzzy Bones (1981) by William Tuning and Golden Dream: A Fuzzy Odyssey (1982) by Ardath Mayhar) tried to fill in the gaps and "complete" the series, only to be totally contradicted by Piper's own third complete manuscript, which was discovered and published in 1984. In Tuning's case, I don't even think that he wrote a bad book - it's just that he was proven not to have written the book that Piper would have. Which is pretty much my entire point.


There are huge debates in the art world about whether or not paintings and other artworks can ever be "restored" to their original appearance as envisioned by the artist. But how many people have picked up da Vinci's notebooks, or Van Gogh's sketches, or Andy Warhol's scribbles, and claimed that they have now produced new works that should be regarded as the next in a series of paintings, just as the artist intended?

Seems a bit daft, really. Why should it be different for authors?