Seamon and Joy do not have many moments of tenderness together, but this is one of them. I am not sure whether it works the way I have it in mind, but the image is so very clear in my mind. I see them outlined in the grass next to the highway, against the blue sky, smiling. They look so beautiful together for that one moment. Afterwards it all goes to shit of course, but this moment – it is one of those moments you take a snapshot of and remember for the rest of your life. And I’m not sure whether it does for you what it does for me, but for me it’s a very stark reminder to what it feels like to be stupidly in love, so heavily that your heart might burst.

Ik kon opeens niet meer herinneren wat ik tegen hem had willen zeggen. Iets over teruggaan naar de auto misschien. Het boeide niet.
Onze blik duurde misschien maar enkele seconden, maar we keken elkaar aan en ik wilde hem weer kussen, weer seks met hem hebben, hem weer laten lachen. Ik was zo verdomde verliefd. Ik glimlachte uiteindelijk naar hem. “Kom op,” zei ik.
“Ja.” Hij nam mijn hand en gaf een kneepje, zo lief dat ik dacht dat mijn hart zou breken. “Laten we gaan.” 

<3

In other news, I got another music recommendation; it’s another from Kaneda. This one’s called “Forgive me first father (our blood shall feed the earth)”. I don’t know what they mean by the title because the song is instrumental, and it doesn’t  sound bloody at all. It sounds beautiful, almost ambient like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmXjsrg1Hls

This has scared the living daylight out of me in the past month or so, so the fact that I managed this makes me Very Fucking Pleased. It’s a good start of the new year, to say the least.

Yay!

On Sunday I did NOTHING. Well, I headdesked a few times while coming up on a new plotline for my novel. It terrifies me to write out, btw – It feels like tearing down a house of cards. I need to disconnect from the source material or at least tell myself that seperate storylines can co-exist so I can choose the best one, otherwise I’ll stay frozen and unable to edit forever, dammit!

So at least I thought of a new storyline. *takes a deep breath* I’m sure it’ll do the storyline a lot of good. People have been hinting that they like to see more of the Young Radicals and the issues of politics/discrimination against adepts. And I’d like Joy to reflect a bit more on the mess she’s made of her life.

So let’s see where we’ll end up here. At the very least, it’ll mean some heavy duty wordpadding. And that never hurts. As Scribblemoose put it: the only way to fail is not to write. She is a wise woman, I should listen to her.

Holy shit dude, ten times of Nanowrimo, that means over half a million words. Pretty wild if you ask me. If you would have told me this in October 2002 I probably would have laughed in your face. So yeah, let’s take a moment to contemplate the awesomeness of the achievement. *contemplates*

OK, moving on!

This year I feel like I kind of cheated. You see, I didn’t come up with a completely new plot this year, as I have all the other years. Honestly, I’ve just picked up and rewritten & translated my 2006 project, Through Crystal. I wanted to have the dutch first draft on paper as quickly as possible, so I can start editing, tinkering and fiddling with it to turn it into something that might one day (when the stars align and I shit rainbows) be publishable. If you’ve never read the story before… you’ll find mild spoilers here. So watch out.

It was an interesting experience. Writing the story was like diarrhea. Once I sat down for it, the crap just kept coming. (I crack myself up! )

I kept the old version next to it as a guide, mostly. I found that I took a lot from the old version, but that I edited and added a lot on certain places. The gist of it remains 80% the same though. While writing, I decided to get the damn thing written first, and THEN start the major overhaul. I had a few things that I wanted to stress upon (mostly Seamon’s psyche and Joy’s Stockholm Syndrome) and I managed to twist that into something workable. These people go through so much together that it’s hard to realize that the story takes place in the course of four days or something. Enough to develop Stockholm Syndrome, I learned today, by the way (!).

What I mostly noticed while writing is that Joy came out slightly more sympathetic and less of a ditzy slut. Well, she still is kind of a ditzy slut, but she knows it from herself and keeps yelling at herself ‘wtf are you doing? are you stupid or something?’ I need to slightly stress her self-destructive behaviour after a lifetime of having to be perfect and her need for someone who needs her (after a lifetime of being ignored). But for the rest I think she came out a lot better this time. At least this time around I didn’t want to strangle her and leave her dead in a ditch. I actually kind of felt for her this time. It helps that I’ve had some time to grow up in the meantime, myself, I think – and that I’ve taken some time last month to try and figure out why she acts the way she does in the story. It now makes a lot more sense.

Sirka‘s also been given a loving treatment in this story. It’s not quite fair of course. When I wrote TC for the first time, she was just crazy. Now that I’ve written it for the second time, I’ve sat with her through the trials of Shards and Geboorterecht as well. I know her so well by now. She shines the brightest of all my characters. She’s majorly failing in every single way. She’s a goddamn junkie who flips near the end, but she’s honestly been doing her very fucking best with the tools she’s been given. And yeah, she has issues. Guilt, addiction. She is impulsive and passionate and in that regard, a LOT like her brother. But she means well, and I think that through the short diary entries that I’ve been adding throughout the chapters this is coming out a lot better this time. So I’m pleased with that addition.

Valeria has softened a little bit with the rewrite. Because Joy comes out a bit stronger, Valeria is less of a stereotype and I feel that it fits her a lot better. A lot of her strong language has left with the translation from English to Dutch as well, which is funny… because her language has grown only more colourful in Dutch. There’s no language that curses better than Dutch, and Valeria is relishing in the experience. As she would, of course. But yeah, she’s more of a survivor than a badass army person, and I think I like her slightly better this way. Her words are now also better expressing her agenda throughout the story. On the re-read, her storyline will come out better. So that bit had a bit of a polish as well. Things I like about Valeria: how badly she takes care of her body (drinking, drugs, energy drinks, not sleeping enough) – this is because of the trauma she’s lived through and the explosion and the headaches she has now. Her body betrayed her, so she’s betraying it right back. She’s reckless, impulsive, not afraid to die. She lives in borrowed time and if her body dies underneath her now, so be it. I don’t even think she knows that about herself – she is onwards and forwards, never looking back, but never really looking forward, either. Damned with the consequences, she’s a short-term kind of person.

Seamon still needs some work, but that’s okay. He’s still Joy’s beautiful boy (which translates really sucky btw, meh!) but I want to focus a little bit more on his anger issues. Less exposition, more anger issues and stress on the things he lived through with the betrayal and prison and everything. I also want to focus a little on how all the anger fizzles out once he meets Sirka again. I’m not quite sure how I can do that without giving him a POV though. I’ll have to ponder on it a little more. And WHY does he latch onto Joy? Is she really just an easy lay, or does he really feel something for her? Does he love the fact that she’s infatuated with him, despite who he is? I fear that in the beginning, this is definitely the case. He hasn’t seen very many friendly faces over the past few years. And after two years… well… Joy IS an attractive girl.

And then, last but not least: the language. It was very interesting to write this story in Dutch. Surely enough, it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I’m currently reading through what I’ve written (I’m about halfway) and edited out the most horrible of anglicisms and grammar errors, and it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. The story still flows comparably similar to the English version, especially when it comes down to the dialogues. My characters are definite potty mouths, though. The language has become a lot more colourful in the Dutch version of the story, hehe. (I adored putting in phrases like “het zal me aan mijn reet roesten”, “kleine etter”, and words like “ranzig”)

I was also very happy to be able to keep some lines which I thought worked really well in English. Some of them even worked a bit better in Dutch (the ones about voodoo and the bubblebath and fucking a state secret still stand! Whoo!). One or two lines which I adored ended up on the cutting room floor, unfortunately. (Rest In Peace, “burning down the highway skyline”) Nothing to be done about that.

I thought it would be worse though, so even in that regard I’m still pretty pleased.

So what’s next?

• Edit the snot out of the current version so it’s readable at least
• Get some poor sods to read the damn thing and give me some plot pointers (I really need some plot pointers)
• Holly Lisle’s One Pass Revision Method
• Edit the snot out of that, as well
• ???
• Profit, hopefully!

Honestly though, I don’t know. I’ve never written something publishable before.

I’ll give it my best shot, though!

I’m very pleased as you can imagine. At this point I have about 13K still happening in the original version, so I think I’m going to end up with 65K eventually.
I’ll just stick to that later. For now it’s time to be really fucking pleased with myself. *nods*

You’ll find what I’ve written HERE.