A short rant and an incidental review.

Tonight, as I trolled the Stephen King forums, I saw a post lamenting SK's one-liner on Richard Laymon's The Woods Are Dark. The timing was interesting because I just read that particular book last week. It took me about forty-five minutes. I could not put it down.

The posters in this particular thread hated the book for the most part... not surprising if you've read it. It's an easy book to hate. No, the surprising part came towards the end of the thread... where a poster said, "After reading (the OP)'s take on Richard Laymon, I have no desire to read his books."

Did you try to read some sarcasm into that? You did, didn't you!? I certainly did. My mind rejects the thought that a person might actually dismiss not just a single title but every book the author put out in his lifetime... based on the opinion of one person on the internet...

(Cue creaking noises from the old gray matter.)

Now, if my mom told me not to- wait, no, that won't work, my mom hates horror... if my hypothetical horror-loving mother pooh-poohed a book, I might not bother with it. On the other hand, I might rush out and buy a copy purely because I might want to see the train wreck with my own eyes. And that's my mom.

It's one thing to stay away from a book or author because they aren't really your style... but when your style is clearly horror (King: master of), to cross an author off of your list because someone else didn't like one of his books? It has to have something going for it, doesn't it? It got a review from SK, didn't it? You don't have a review from SK, do you?

I did not hate The Woods Are Dark... it isn't a startlingly in-depth masterpiece, no. It's a sick, twisted, dark and capering little thing. Within the first couple of chapters, it had set rusty hooks into me. Parts of it disgusted, astonished and amazed me by turn. I immediately sent it off with my boyfriend to read. It is the quintessential train wreck, complete with corpses hanging from the windows and survivors screwing in the aisles, still waiting for the final hammer to fall. "Surprise, DEATH! Aaand... move on."

On another note, I finally made a little headway with the WIP... not as much as I would have liked, but I'm pleased with the quality (for now).

Grinding to a halt...

I haven't gotten much done lately. It seems like there's been a lot going on... and you know what that means; there hasn't been. I suppose it's a good problem to have, this thinking too much versus thinking too little.

My mind is flopping around with the rubbery consistency of over-cooked eggs. Excitable over-cooked eggs. We're beginning to need a traffic light up there. See? I got nothin'.

I did get a chance to run a few details by a psychologist today, though! He thinks that the psychological aspect will add to my readership quite a bit when/if I get to that point. He's about to start a book himself, it turns out.

Hard-to-write scenes.

I struggled today with the first of many hard-to-write scenes in this WIP. In this case I was trying to portray a child's utter terror at swimming slowly out of a drugged haze, and following his thoughts beginning with having no reason to believe that he isn't in his bed through to realizing that he is (alone?) in a strange, dark place... tied to a cheap chair.

There is some fun pant-wetting and a daddy issue that surfaces nearly the first thing... I love the scene for what it is, but it's a hard thing to write. Not only due to the gravity of the scene- who wants to fluff off something this serious and tragic?- but also to the squick factor. No one likes to see children face mortal terror. Unfortunately it's crucial to the progression of the story.

I am not a child-eater myself. Even my zombies prefer lean meat to fatty children. Can't have a fat zombie, can't runshamble fast enough.

The AlphaSmart 2000 is working beautifully. I'm in love! I discovered pretty early on (thank goodness) that removing the batteries dumps the work... oops. I only lost a little ground. I'd thought that removing the batteries between breaks would keep co-workers out of it. I suppose I'll have to get a lock. I also picked up a PS2 cord for it at Walmart for $15, so I did much better than the ~$20 +shipping that I would have paid on eBay.

Aah! So excited!

My AlphaSmart 2000 has arrived!

It's an older model (I assume, as it does not actually have a model- not the Neo or Dana) 2000... but I'm already in love with it. The screen is bright and clear, and there is no lag time between keys being stuck and words hitting the screen. It's also extremely lightweight. It has a couple of sticky places where tape has been pulled off, but those will come off... and oddly enough, a large gold and black "H" sticker on the back.

As such, I shall call him Horace.

The missing character bios have been partially regurgitated... it isn't as enjoyable the second time around. I'm changing a few things, tweaking character ages here and there. My old people were too young. I realized that the older woman I'd cast as my villain's wife was around my mother's age, which was not old enough... so she (and her husband) are ten years older now and more true to themselves.

I've also added a couple of goldfish as minor characters.

On the need for backups...

I just lost all of the in-depth character profiles I'd done to date. Thanks, laptop. You're a gem.

Right after that happened, though, I saw a thread on AW about tools of writing... and someone mentioned having gotten an AlphaSmart 2000. I hadn't heard of them, and when I checked them out on eBay I found one used for $20. I have made it mine. Most of the writing that I do at work is longhand... which can be problematic if my hands are playing up that day. Laptops are forbidden at my workplace, but this should be allowed... it doesn't have enough memory to store massive blocks of text, but I can dump the work onto my PC/into yWriter4 each night.

Procrastination.

It feels like I spent all day thinking about the WIP... but without really coming to any new conclusions or writing anything down. Frustrating.

In other news, if you see movement over this way in the morning, it's safe to assume Ranch's refrigerate after opening note is a friendly suggestion rather than a rule.

Author Advocate Defense Fund

Sorry about the multiple postings, but I wanted to post a little about the Author Advocate Defense Fund.

I'll post Dawno's comments from AW. She has said it so much better than I can. You can also check out her blog for more information.

Dear fellow AW members,

On September 20, 2007 Barbara Bauer filed suit in New Jersey against a list of defendants, including several of our AW colleagues. Defending oneself against a lawsuit is expensive, and many of the author advocates being sued could use help to pay the many legal costs involved, which are adding up over these past 9 months.

I've set up a PayPal site where you can donate to help these writers with their legal fees. Any amount is welcome. Any fees assessed by PayPal will be covered, so your full donation goes to the legal defense fund. All funds will be disbursed directly to the defendant's attorneys in equal shares.

I hope you will click the link in my signature and donate today.

If you wish to put a similar link in your blog or on your website, please PM me with your email address and I'll send you the full HTML to put the donation button on your site.

You can also add a donation link to your signature, again, just PM me for the URL.

Thank you for your help!

Dawno

I give up with the friggin' link already! You'd think I had no HTML knowledge at all. You can donate via Dawno's blog (she has a functioning button), the AADF link, or you can just donate directly to authoradvocatedonations@gmail.com through Paypal.

Warm and fuzzies!

I argue with myself from time to time over the nuances of the process. Particularly because I spend such a large block of time on character development. The actual writing seems to fly by. It's the preparing to write that brings me to linger. I'm not one to use outlines, but I have to have most of the characters completely fleshed out and the dark corners of the plot illuminated before I start to write.

That's not to say that characters don't surprise me, or that I don't occasionally fall for the old vortex-hidden-by-rug move while everyone laughs... I enjoy the little surprises that writing brings when three-dimensional characters are involved. They will refuse to do what you want, sticking to their own agendas and changing your opinions of them... or refuse to die when that was the really fun part of the whole damn plot! (It's okay, Boppo the clown is in holding until he's ready to die properly. I'm playing a lot of The Wiggles for him, I heard that might sway him to my side.)

But no matter how long it takes, I really love my personal little process. I get little warm and fuzzies in the pit of my stomach, or occasionally my bowel depending on the time of day, when my characters begin to take on their own voices. It feels good to suss out the little details of their lives preceding the story, to be able to ask them questions and have them answer in ways that hadn't made it fully out of my subconscious until moment.

Exploring plot makes me feel the same way. There are trap doors at every corner for the first little while, and I don't mind that... the first step's a doozy and there's always a monster at the end of the drop, but we're generally on good terms. Sometimes there are secret doorways, rickety bridges across black spots in the plot. On the other side, things that might have seemed unrelated before fall into one another perfectly, explaining away the holes and traps. The monsters don't eat as well, but hungry monsters make more stories!

It's hard for me to decide that it's enough and start hacking away at that blank page.

Aaaand go!

Some stolid little creature inside me is already leaving pinch-marks over the time that this blog is going to take away from "real" writing. Another distraction? Another excuse? Really? You would think that she'd spend less time complaining and more time cleaning up in there. My small intestine is a real mess. Slob!

Nevertheless, I'm excited.

There will always be spill-over for me. Little bits of prose... squeals over progress... less-than-polite mumblings when a dismembered arm falls into the road and blocks my way. (It's a small path, lions and vicious pygmy goats on each side, you understand.)

This is the place for the spill. The over-share. The, "Oh my god, does she ever talk about anything but her stupid book." As boring as those things can be, I hope that someday, some of you will read along.