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12/07/2002 Entry: "Starting anew"

So here I am with a snazzy new weblog...which looks exactly like the old weblog, except that now it has comments and an updated links list. One of these days I'll actually get around to redesigning this thing. Probably not this weekend, though, unless I actually manage to catch up on all the email I need to do tomorrow.

Anyway, I'm now one short scene from the end of S&S 16. I might have been farther along, but Seishirou has been resistant. Can't blame him, really, considering that he's currently experiencing something unfamiliar and rather unpleasant. Wow, am I glad that I left off writing S&S for a year with chapter 15, which is only mildly ambivalent and has a good full stop to it.

It's funny, in the odd and inexplicable but rather freakily cool sense--I did take almost a year's vacation from S&S, and the bits I'd written most recently were Subaru PoV (from the next Drift, which I'm probably going to try to go back to after the first draft of 16 is done), but this chapter is all Seishirou PoV, and when I went to work on it, *bam,* the voice was just there, exactly as it's always been, that same absolutely smug and self-absorbed at-length pondering with some Subaru-molestation on the side. *laughs* I don't know, maybe it's just that I've been semi-blocked for so long, but I was kind of expecting to have to find or reclaim that voice. I didn't think that I would just slip back into it, or that it would slip back into me. Whichever. In any case, I'm highly grateful.

Kris, do you remember our conversation after the Writer's Con? The one taking off from the question that was asked about things that are particularly featured in different authors' works (the way certain authors linger over descriptions of food, for instance, or swordplay, or, in Shanti's case, costumes and dancing)? I think I finally figured out what my "Thing" might be--it's mental-spiritual states. Telepathy. Dream sequences. Mystical psychic bonding. Shamanic union. Magical workings. Occasionally insanity. Expand it to include moments of profound realization and that's, um, pretty much everything I've written. (I don't really seem to do "slice of life" stories, or stories that turn primarily around events. "Return," maybe. Oh, and of course "X Rocky.") In retrospect, duh--I mean, the reason I put my three long WK fics on hold (aside from the fact that they were interfering with "Sakura") was that they were all more or less the same thing: Omi undergoes some transformation, acquires extraordinary mental powers and/or charisma, and forms a mystical, soul-sharing bond with the other three. And then the sex.

My secondary "Thing" is probably shape-shifting--a character is either tranformed into another type of creature or acquires the ability to change his form. This one doesn't turn up so much in the things I've written, but it's everywhere in my daydream storylines. (Some day, when I have nothing better to do, I'll post a list of all the things I've turned the WK guys into.) I don't think that the music thing we were talking about is actually a "Thing"--for those who weren't part of this conversation, it's that a large number of my stories have their genesis in a specific song. That's a part of the process of writing for me, but it isn't something that's intrinsic to the fic itself; nor is is something that the readers are necessarily aware of as they read.

(These might actually be more general kinds of "Thing"s than we were discussing at the Con, but I still can't think of anything more specific that I dwell upon. Certainly not clothes. ^^ Nature imagery? Qualities of light? *shrugs*)

While I'm engaged in my limited social blogging--look, I finally linked to you! Will wonders never cease. ^_^ And I *want* to see that picture of Haku one of these days.

So I spent most of today catching up on the almost two years' worth of Animerica Extras that I'd accumulated. Eep. I hadn't realized I'd fallen that far behind. I have to say that I really like Chicago. I might actually pick up the graphic novels of that one. (I like basically everything in AExtra, really, though I have trouble following Marionette Generation, so it often doesn't hold my interest.) Tomorrow's mission is to do email, as mentioned--and maybe write, if I have time and brain cell left. *crosses fingers*

Oh, and the Writer's Con *was* very cool, even if it was mildly traumatic to be sitting on the panel with Jane Yolen (aka "America's Storyteller") and Hal Clement, Grand Master of Science Fiction. *ack!* "Me? Uh...I write fanfiction." *hides* No, actually, I was mainly there in my capacity as an editor, not as a fangirl, although I did end up kind of taking over the Fandom panel on Sunday. It was fun, though. (Except for the freezing rain. Why must there *always* be freezing rain when I drive up to Massachusetts for Writer's Cons?) And I'd forgotten just how much we see of Tom Cruise's silky bishounen thighs in "Legend"! And the pounds and pounds of glitter! And the cherry tree! Okay, I'll stop now. Anyway, thanks again to all at Bellatrix for inviting me. *waves*

And now I must perform the dance of going to bed.