Preparing To Brew

Well, suffice to say that I’ve been busy for the day, and lets leave it at that.  Lots of thinking, lots of messy free-writing, and a bunch of ideas scattered in paragraphs where the events don’t necessarily connect directly.  Lots of spaces in between, meaning lots of details to fill in, things to describe, and many embarrassing misuses of grammar.

Just being able to write again though… I can’t quite describe the feeling.  I suppose the simplest way to describe it was that it felt nice.

Oh yes.

That aside, this was pretty much my usual weekend.  My sister dropped by as promised, and will be vegging around in the house until Tuesday.  She’s going to bring along our cousin to help clean her house once she heads back though.

I don’t want to set word count targets, but wouldn’t it be nice if I was able to type out a thousand words’ worth of fiction tomorrow evening?

A Step Forward… Or Trying

Yet another laid-back weekend for yours truly.  Normally I wouldn’t complain — I was able to relax after all — but there’s always this part of me who’s always nagging me to do something, I dunno, better with the free time than periods of laying about reading in bed intersped with gaming or watching anime on the desktop.  It’s a common sentiment, especially since the free time in question seems to be so hard-earned these days…

Just to make things clear, I would have loved spending most of my day just writing something, but the same old problems make themselves apparent before long.  While I have ideas, I have a hard time starting, or rather, starting in a way that I feel is right.  Then there’s the issue of momentum when I do get something going, and once I get that… You see what I mean.  It’s like a never-ending series of things that sooner would bring my efforts to a grinding halt.

An acquaintance told me that I worry too much, and how there really isn’t a right way to start things.  But it bothers me.

Or maybe I’m just afraid, deep down, that whatever I start might not be liked in the end by anyone other than myself.  Perhaps.

Anyway, there’s still a few hours to go before I turn in for the evening. Let’s see if I can squeeze something from this noggin’ of mine.

Day Off (part 2)

(Yeah, five hundred words at a time isn’t a lot, but it’s the average length of some of my longer journal entries.  Suffice to say that this story will take a while, but it likely won’t go over 10,000 words in the end)

-*-

Kurt  paused from typing on his laptop, and leaned back against his chair.  He took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes with one of his hands, then perched them back on his nose.  He squinted, and looked at the screen.  He leaned in, as if trying to find some detail on the the laptop’s LED monitor, but after a few moments he sighed.

He needed a break.

Kurt took a look at his wrist watch, and stood up.  He walked over to the window of his room, and raised its blinds.  It was already morning, he saw, though the sun still hadn’t quite risen over the horizon yet.  Sounds from the neighborhood drifted in, as the people that lived in it woke up and started to prepare for the day.

Kurt studied the view of the neighborhood for a bit longer, then turned towards the kitchen.

A brief look through the contents of the refrigerator yielded nothing promising.  Just leftovers from the previous night, and aside from the usual bottles of water, not even a single bottle of soda.  This latter detail made Kurt frown a bit, after he closed the door to the fridge.  So much for having a cup of cola to perk him up.

He leaned back against the kitchen counter, and rubbed his chin in contemplation.  He looked at the fruit bowl that sat in the middle of the dining table, and noted that it was empty.  He also glanced at the bread box, and saw that it was also empty.  

At length Kurt smiled to himself.  It looks like I’m going to have to go to the market anyway, he thought.  Might as well pick up a bottle or two for myself while I’m at it.

The smile still in place, he walked back in the direction of his room to get his wallet.  There he also put on his “outdoor shorts” and his trusty red windbreaker.  He double-checked that he had the house key with him, then put it in the inner pocket of his windbreaker along with his wallet.  Satisfied that he had everything that he needed, Kurt put on his favorite pair of sneakers, then walked out, the door locked securely behind him. 

-*-

Miyu, a large set of sunglasses perched on her nose, exited the rear entrance of the hotel.  It faced the parking lot, but at this hour it was virtually devoid of any vehicles, aside from the ones obviously used by the hotel.  And aside from the guard on duty at the exit to the lot, the place was virtually empty of people as well.  

The young woman sighed at this.  She was relieved that there were no paparazzi waiting for her, but at the same time she was bothered how she was expecting some to be there.  They were an unwelcome facet of her day job that she would rather not have, but it was still troubling to think that she had actually gotten used to their presence.

With her handbag cradled in one elbow, Miyu walked casually towards the car park exit.  A small frown came to her face, as she felt the hollow rumbling of her belly.  Of all the things she and her partner-for-the-night had done, dinner wasn’t one of them.  Talk about being caught up in the heat of the moment…  

She wondered if there was a fast food place close by that was open at that hour.  Surely there were some that were open twenty-four-seven… Right?

Miyu started to rummage through her handbag as she walked, but for some reason couldn’t find it.  She stopped just past the exit to the car park, and looked into her bag’s depths.  She squinted behind her sunglasses, but her eyes soon widened when she saw that her wallet, with its cash and credit cards, just wasn’t there.

She looked through her bag one more time just to be sure.

Nope, it really wasn’t there.  Everything else — her make-up, her lipstick, her traveler’s spellbook as well as the needed bags of components and foci — were though, which made its absence doubly annoying.

Did she leave it in the room?  she wondered.  No, she distinctly remembered not actually touching anything in her bag during the course of the evening.

Where then?

Miyu crossed her arms, and closed her eyes in thought.  She tried to retrace what she had been doing prior to going to the hotel.  What was it again?  She had used the waypoint magic she had learned during her last visit to escape from a particularly stressful session at the studio, and landed somewhere in the local red-light district.  There she hooked up with her beau-for-the night and…

Oh.

The image of her wallet, along with her cellphone, sitting on the top of the dressing-room table given to her, came rushing to Miyu’s mind.  She had left them there during the recording, but she had been so frustrated that she just left the studio in a huff, and had forgotten to retrieve them on the way out.

“Ah damnit,” Miyu muttered to herself, as her palm met her face in disappointment.  She wondered if it was too late to go back to the old man and mooch off him for the rest of the day.

Just as she was about to turn back towards the hotel, she heard someone call out to her.

“Oh hey.”  

Miyu turned in the direction of the voice, and saw the familiar, still-slightly overweight form of Kurt de Scela.  A plastic bag filled with what looked like fruits and plastic bottles of cola was carried in one hand, while a folded newspaper was cradled in his other arm.  

“Ah,” was all that Miyu could manage.

“I thought I was seeing things, but it  is you, isn’t it?” he said as he walked over. He looked at her, glanced at the hotel she was in the process of walking back to, then back at her, this time seemingly noting her outfit.  With its plunging neckline and its matching micro-mini, never mind the fact that it hugged her curves very closely, it wasn’t something that left much to the imagination.

“There’s an important reason for this,” Miyu started to explain, but stopped short when her stomach gave out a very audible growl.  Miyu blushed in embarrassment, while Kurt looked on, his face unreadable.

Neither of them spoke for nearly half a minute.

“Say, there’s a Jollibee branch just close by,” Kurt said finally, one finger scratching his cheek as he spoke.  ”I was feeling a little hungry myself, so… What’d you say?  Want to join me for breakfast?”

Miyu pursed her lips, and could only manage a nod of agreement in response.

Status Report: March 27

Eh, I am screwed, screwed, screwed.  There’s just no way around it.  Just… ugh.  Why, why can’t do anything decent?

I’ll be happy to get 10 pages on the rewrite.  Really.

Status Report: March 23

Not much development on my part, except for the fact that, if anything, I’m feeling so tired.  The rewrite is definitely getting to me, and I’m having serious issues in balancing my body’s need for sleep with the need to finish the darned rewrite already, so I could send it over to my friends for proofreading.

I suppose I could try and get by with sleeping later again.  We’ll just have to see.

Goal-Setting: March 22-26

Okay, I better lay some goals for the week.  From tonight until Saturday, I’ll try to finish as many pages as possible before ten in the evening (remember, I still have work in the morning).  I’ve already set aside one of my laptops for writing, and left it disconnected from the net, to minimize the distraction.  The fact that it doesn’t have any games helps too.

Let’s see how far I can go when I’m really motivated in a change.  I’ll check back in a few hours for a progress update.

Sage Guest

Today’s workshop session was very fun, as we had Dean Alfar (who is the Spec Fic writer in the Philippines) as our guest panelist, and he had a lot to share concerning his experiences as a writer of the genre.  To say that he’s passionate is an understatement, and dead serious about everything and anything related to speculative fiction, but he’s also quick to crack a bad joke (cue Butch Dalisay interpretations), as some of my classmates learned over the course of the review of their stories (I’ll never forget about the term ‘reverse virgin’ EVER AGAIN).  He’s also a massive comic book and gaming geek, but that’s no surprise really, as Speculative Fiction isn’t just limited to a single media type.

That said, Mr. Alfar also revealed that, while there seems to be a lot of openings for a prospective young writer of Speculative Fiction in the local literary scene, he also revealed that it’s not easy to break into the said scene as a Spec Fic writer, as one will probably be experiencing double the scrutiny of both critics and senior writers, who more often than not prefer the Realist mode of storytelling.  He also mentioned that it’s not enough to have fantastic elements in a story for it to be considered Spec Fic, but it also has to work as a fiction piece first and foremost.

As someone who seems to be groping around in the dark more often than not when it comes to writing, the session was both eye-opening, and sobering.  For example, do you know that Mr. Alfar and a his friends, all of whom are spec fic writers themselves, average about a single short story every fifteen days, after which they get together and give critiques of the drafts they came up with?  That’s a blistering pace, and something I don’t think I could ever hope to achieve.

Today’s given me a lot to think about, to say the least.

Now for other topics… My download of Dawn of War 2: Retribution finished as expected, and it’s not surprising that I started playing it as soon as I got home from class.  It’s the primary reason why I’m this late in making my daily journal post.  Obviously I played the Space Marine campaign first, and six-odd hours later I was done.  I found it funny how the conclusion of the campaign dovetailed quite nicely with that old White Dwarf article printed many years ago…

Ah, I better finish this before the night gets any latter.  I have more to share, but that would have to wait for tomorrow,  guess.

Nothing Scarier

Another day, yet another afternoon and evening without anything creative to show for it.  One would have thought that, in the eight-odd hours that I’ve been awake since I got home from work, I’d have been able to write something…but no.  I’m starting to fear that my problem isn’t the lack of talent, but motivation. And for someone who wants to be a writer (in some fashion), there’s nothing scarier than the thought that the only reason why one couldn’t write anything is because one doesn’t want to to begin with.

That, or I’m easily distracted.

I’m betting on the latter, actually. With the sheer amount of stuff I have in my computer, it’d be surprising if my attention doesn’t stray to a game I have in one of my numerous hard drives.  Or to an episode of an anime show I just downloaded.  Or to a PDF of a book supplement of a game system or franchise I follow (Deathwatch RPG, I’m looking at you).  Or suddenly getting the urge to browse Pixiv for all the art I’d never be able to emulate.

The reasons go on and on, it’s kind of pathetic.

Maybe I should follow the advice of some of my friends, and take all of my (word processor-reliant) writing to my laptops, to keep the distractions to the bare minimum.  Although they do have games in them, I won’t be able to play them because of the fact that they’re MMOs, and I just happen to lack the extra LAN cables to connect them to my household network.

Thinking about it now, that definitely sounds like a good idea.

Not a Kick to the Head

I just got back from my Fiction Workshop class and admit that it’s really not as bad as I’d thought it would be. Compared to the Fiction Techniques class during the previous term, it’s relatively more relaxed as there aren’t as many deadlines to worry about, but the ones that are part of the curriculum still worry me a little.  To be specific, everyone in the class is expected to write and submit two short stories, of about fifteen to twenty pages each in length, over the course of the term, and present them for proof-reading and critiquing by the rest of the class. While that’s not as bad in of itself, there’s the caveat at the end that the two stories must be of print-level quality (meaning you can submit this to a publishing editor and have a good chance of it actually getting published).

The thing is, how do you decide whether or not your work is ready for such a think?  It’s a little too subjective, if you ask me.

Anyway, the deadline for the first short story is two weeks away, so I’m going to have to write two pages a day at least, then have some of my net acquaintances proof-read, then cobble together a rewrite (if needed) before submitting two copies (written under a pseudonym) for the class to critique. It’s not going to be easy, but if I don’t procrastinate maybe, just maybe, I can actually make something in time that isn’t garbage.

This does mean though that I won’t be able to join in as many future SCCSAV viewings as I’d like (as I mentioned in my previous post, viewing Gundam 00′s movie was quite the experience with all the bloggers I watched it with), but what can one do? Sacrifices have to be made so I could maintain my grade average.

Flowing Sands

It’s Tuesday already, but despite what I said yesterday evening I’m making very slow progress on the revisions of my previously-submitted exercises for Fiction Techniques.  That said, with the sheer amount of caffeine running through my system at the moment, I’ll be sure to finish something tonight… Though it still begs to be seen if the end product will make any sense to me when I wake up tomorrow morning.

Distractions aside this is good progress for me, and I think I can really give full attention to the 3 Story ideas tomorrow once I get back from work.  After that it’s all about the journal.  It’s not exactly going as planned, but it’s better than I’d ever expected (remember, I’m one of the bigger slackers around).  At least I’m not cramming everything into the last day like I normally do, and actually have a whole week to work with.

That’s not to say that I’m not feeling the pressure.  It’s all coming down the line, after all, what with the last day of classes this Saturday.

P.S. I was actually writing this post when our area was hit by a brief brown-out.  Thank goodness WordPress saved the draft automatically.