Blog to Disney: Day 8: It Was Just Lovely

I had an amazing last day. I mean, as slightly freaking out last days go, it was fantastic. I watched Sherlock and a few episodes of Stargate Atlantis (all of which were brilliant and wonderfully done and ahhhhhhh nerd freak out. 


I had a dinner picnic in the park with Sigur Ros on my iPod, which was really nice and calming.  Mum helped me with a last minute pack. Then we got Flushed Away, had popcorn and caramel milk. It was kind of delightful. I leave in seven hours, but I'm weirdly...serene? I suppose is the correct word. 


See you all on the other side. 

Blog to Disney: Day 7: Slightly Bitter

So, I forgot to blog yesterday. Sorry, lovelies. I was backing up my computer and deleting things until 3am and time just got away from me. Today, I hung out with the lovely Katherine and Manar, which was a delight. 


I want to actually talk about something today. 
As of late, a number of my friends have either been getting more interested in the objects of their affection or have potential significant others. Either way, lots of cute romancey things have been in my skype recently. 


I'm not sure how I feel about this. While I'm very very happy for these unnamed persons, I have been gaining affection for a certain individual. 


I am about 95% sure if I asked, I would get - however politely - denied. Mostly, I'm just a bit irked at my situation. A lot of it is the fact that I'm kind of bitter and wish that I didn't always fall for people that would likely never develop an interest in me. 


I seem to always meet someone and I appear to be so easy to talk to, that I automatically put in the friend zone. 


Maybe I'm being bitter. Maybe I'm not being hopeful enough. 
Maybe I just have to deal with the fact that most of my friends don't want long distance relationships. 

Blog to Disney: Day 5: COOKIES.

I just realized that I hadn't blogged. WHOOPSIE. 


I started Stargate Atlantis today. Beth, Melody, and Polly flipped a shit. It was adorable. This show is a beautiful thing. I am currently almost done with 1x4. I'm making cookies now. COOKIES ARE DELICIOUS.  

Blog to Disney: Day 4: Freak Out

I had kind of my first huge freak out today. 12 hours previously, I realized how soon I was leaving. My mum mentioned it (excited) and then I started crying. My main reason was I didn't know how to fit all of my luggage. 


I played piano and finally calmed down. I went out to dinner with my mum, got a freaking giant thing of luggage. 

It reminds me of Rupert Giles.

Then I packed all of my things and now I'm much more calmed down. Impatience will soon come. And now I need to publish this so that I still published this on Friday.

Blog to Disney: Day 3: Writing

AGES ago, (read: a month) Elisa told me I should do a sort of Thoughts From Places style vlog of how I go through my writing process. I decided I'm going to do that now, but in blog form.


Generally, this starts with a tiny nugget of an idea. For my most recent NaNoWriMo, I took the concept of everyone wanting to live in a time different from the one they're in. 


From here, I decided I wanted to do something in the French Revolution. I knew I wanted the lead character to basically be a female lesbian Sherlock Holmes and wanted to show class differences as well. 


When I start a new story, generally, I don't know a whole lot about it. I also prefer hard copy research materials as opposed to most writers, as you can find whatever you want online, so this ends up with the librarians getting to know me pretty well. It'd been ages since I'd done any research on the French Revolution and knew squat on detective stories so I got: 

• The Perfect Murder by David Lehman 
• This gave background on how murders go about, and how it appears in literature. 
• The Gay Detective Novel by Judith A Markowitz 
• This was unexpectedly VERY useful. I was looking for generic detective novel cliches and I found this! Not only did it give information on the gay detective novel cliches and how issues get into the basic detective novel, but also a complete history of the genre, starting all the way back from Poe. 
• The Peasantry in the French Revolution by PM Jones, published by Cambridge
• This really helped give a full perspective of just how giant the class gap was between the aristocracy and the farmers and even between the farmers themselves.
• Daily Life During The French Revolution by James M Anderson
• This kind of just gave an idea of just what the French did to entertain themselves and what possible job venues were available, what the social norms were, etc. 
• A Very Short Introduction: The French Revolution by William Doyle, published by Oxford
• While I knew the basics, I definitely needed a refresher, so this was a fantastic way to go about it. 

From there, I read through the books, taking a sort of self made course on whatever I'm writing on. I write notes on the specific books, in Scrivener, separated by books and subject. Very similar to the route I take when studying for class, just I make everything up myself. 

Research tab. This often gets to look creepier when I'm tackling more morbid topics. 

Like serial killers. Or sacrifice.

My mum is a painter and I've always been around during her research process, so a lot of that has rubbed off on me. She prefers hard copy research materials, getting dozens of pictures to use as a reference point, later getting it into a full painting sketch. 


I basically translate her method to writing. 


From here, I make my basic character sketches. For an example, I'll start with my female protagonist. I am a HUGE fan of names and I can spend hours just on that. I very rarely just let a name come to me, as I nearly always prefer for a person's name to mean something.  


I generally use either this site, this, this, or this for names.


For example, my protagonist is Elizabeth Marguerite Garnier. 


Elisabeth means "love of god," Marguerite, "pearlesque," and Garnier, "gather of grain." She comes from the aristocracy, so Elisabeth was not a rare name. Honestly, it's harder to find a name that doesn't mean something relating to god and still fitting into popular names then. 


Figuring out what a character's name means helps a lot with me figuring out just what they're like. In this case, it helps me realize she never fit her name and is constantly trying to escape her past. She looks pretty average for the time, but she is always armed, a pistol or musket in her skirts or attached to her boots. She was a single child, so she was her daddy's baby girl and loved her more than anything. Originally, her family was full of farmers. She accepts being part of the aristocracy and hates her family's roots. 


This is honestly the deepest my metapors get and it's mainly just so I can figure out who my characters are. A lot of people might say "Oh, she's got brown eyes, just like the earth and she can't escape it!" I write just to mess with fictional people because I find it fun. Not because I want a deeper metaphor beneath the surface. 


Now that I've got the basics down, I'll start trying to find pictures of what she looks like online, getting a character sketch down. This is a step a lot of people don't do, generally just listing "brown hair, five foot five, curly, brown eyes." I also get a lot of clothing of the time, or what the individual's style would be, so I have different options.


For Elisabeth, I'd search "french revolution style," "18th century shoes/gowns," "corsets," "aristocratic fashion," such like that. 

This is the character sketch that I finished with on Elisabeth.  

I repeat the character process for all of my main characters, in this case, five others; her ex-girlfriend, a maid, a sassy metrosexual best friend, and a girl from present day (21st century). In some cases, one of the characters is not necessarily human. In this case, I have war filed under characters, as it is such a big issue in the story, where I have pictures of muskets, swords, guillotines, and war scene paintings. 

From here, I then get pictures of the different scenes that I imagine I'll use. In this case, I have pictures of everything from castles, apartments, city streets, all the way down to farmer cottages. 

Now that I've got a full array of a setting finally set into place, I'll start on my outline. It's a very rough outline, just hitting the most main points, basically saying "This happens at Point A, and this happens at Point B," leaving myself to connect the dots when I start writing. 

From here, I'll get a rough outline ready and then get a good writing setup. Generally what I do, as I've got the magical beauty of Scrivener, is half the top screen my manuscript, the bottom my character sketches, and as a pop out tab, the outline. Oftentimes, I don't need the outline for a time, so I close that until I need it, which helps making my screen less cluttered.

Scrivener is my love.

From here, I try and write a set amount of words a day, usually with the aid of a site blocker. I use SelfControl, but there are a lot of options there. It's really hard for me to get anything done without food, so I've generally got a snack and cup of cocoa or coffee. While a lot of people do a set time to write, I rarely do, except at the very beginning of a project, when I'm most excited about a story. I prefer to write at coffee shops or the library, but more often than not, I just end up writing in my room. I go a little crazy if it's too quiet, so I've always got some sort of music, although generally not as focused on the words, or at the least, not English, like Sigur Ros or the soundtrack from Notre Dame de Paris. A lot of the time, I use music to get into the mood of the story. For chasing scenes, I tend to listen to a lot of Kansas, Zeppelin, or AC/DC. For a more laid back feel, I'll go for Mumford & Sons, early Tom Waits, Greg Holden, or Dan Mangan. 

Blueberries and cocoa. 

My desk is usually less cluttered.

While I don't claim to be a legitimate writer in the least, this is how I generally go about it. 

And that's basically the gist of how I write! 

Until tomorrow, 

Laurel 

Blog to Disney: Day 2: I forgot how to blog.

I wrote a song about hobbit meals this morning. This is my background. 

I talked to Tianna about how anti-gay folks are idiots. She made a really great video about it earlier.


Also, I keep doing more 50s retro makeup (similar to Audrey Hepburn) as of late. I think imma keep doing this. It's a lot easier to deal with. 


In closing, I don't know what else to say, so have this picture of Quasimodo from the original French cast of Notre Dame de Paris because I have a lot of feelings and really need to rewatch it. 

Also, I finished the most recent episode of Sherlock, as I hadn't done so yet. So great. Although I still kinda hate Russell Tovey.

Blog to Disney: Day 1: Reading

So, as per suggestion from the lovely, inimitable Elisa, I am blogging until I leave for Disney, which will be (crazy) early on the 18th. 


I've been reading a lot lately. A few nights ago, I read Tolkein for an hour on blogTV. Tonight, I packed a lunchbox dinner, grabbed my stuffed Grover, collection of Lord of the Rings, The Raw Shark Texts, and headed to the park to read for a bit. I got about 30 pages into TRST. I've gotten up to where Tom Bombadil and Goldberry are Crazy Super Mysterious in LOTR. 


My conspiracy obsessed brain goes mental right about now because I WANNA KNOW 
MORE. I really like conspiracy theories.


Ahem. 
I have not acquired The Fault In Our Stars, unlike most of my friends, as I am po', but I hope to either borrow from a friend before I leave or visit a bookstore and read it in one go. (I'm awful.) 


I've really missed reading for pleasure! I've not done a whole lot of that since starting university, but I guess, now that I won't really be doing a whole lot of school things, I just don't have an excuse for it. 


I haven't done this whole blogging thing in a while. Hopefully this made at least a little bit of sense.