I did manage to finish it

I finished the story. I still have to give it the once-over and email it but it is done: only time will tell if it is any good, though (or at least if Paul tells me that it is any good, since he is the editor). Something just does not feel complete about the story but there is a deadline, so...

Random Journal Entry

I managed to write one lone paragraph last night. How pathetic is that?
I'm tired. Way too tired for it to be normal. Terror has to go to the doctor's today so I can't sleep, and I'll probably have to go get some milk too. Maybe tomorrow.
I'm trying the compose mode for an experiment. I enjoy editing the .html way too much to make a habit of it, but playing with software is still fun.

Editing the Behemoth

          It's not actually a behemoth, but a short story. It's not even, technically speaking, a story yet, but rather a story outline.
          Yes, it's for the anthology. The pieces of this horror are slowly coalescing, I hope it's done mucking about by the revised deadline for submissions.
          The problem?
          It's more a conceptualized piece than anything else. THe original flash was done for the OWW's Love Scene challenge a couple of years ago. It was under 500 words and now I have to expand it and increase the word count. This, of course, means actually adding dialogue, deciding whose story it is (even though I know whose it is and what happens; by VP I mean someone who actually stays alive nad sane throughout the story)...
          It was so much simpler when I could ask myself "who undergoes the greatest change?". I know who does here, but since she's essentially lost her mind by the story's end and I'm not sure the author omniscient would work well for the end when I'd be in her head for the rest of the story, well...

The S.P.A.M Conspiracy (ranting -- sorry)

          After emptying the two-hundred odd pieces of mail in my various spam filters, I have come to the conclusion that it is part of the world wide conspiracy to drive folks like us from the Internet and force us back into our drear, mundane offline lives.
          Think about it. How high is your tolerance for advertisements like those for penis enlargers (especially if you're a woman and don't have the requisite "equipment", coupled with those from such -- are they people or sites? -- with monikers like monica69 and hotbabe47, especially if you're a heterosexual female. The dead giveaways for those are the subjects "I saw your photos online" when you have no photos online, most especially of the nature which they seem to imply.
          Assuming that it is a conspiracy, who's behind it? Several possibilities spring to mind.

1. The Greys. These extraterrestrials, so titled (by Whitley Streiber and perhaps others) because of their skin tones, can no longer kidnap and tag folks wo are either sleeping or camping, because everyone is too busy either checking their email or playing onlnie games for a mere alien abduction. A solitary writer or other offline person, OTOH, is prime for such abduction because there's no way to keep track of time under such circumstances (so long as you have auto backup of ducuments, of course). Nah, scratch that one. ;-)

2. President George W. Bush. He'd rather folks hang on his words than on the Internet disabusing them.

3. Alfred E. Neuman (Hey, you knew I'd have to bring MAD into it somehow, right?)

4. It's an Illuminati plot.

5. The Brain wants to use it to take over the world (just ask Pinky).

          Ah well. There are others but I need coffee right now.
          Spam. Maybe it stands for Some People are Meanies -- err, marketers?




Regards,
Elizabeth Anne Ensley.

Outlining

I'm treating the original flash as a story outline of sorts (from the one February OWW "love story" challenge) for the anthology and am expanding it as such: I hope I have it ready in time for the deadline. It's pretty beachy anyway, so it should fit.

          It's not finished yet. The book, i mean. So this year's NaNoEdMo might be a lost cause for me, apart from what I have managed to prune from my WIP. The story's not finished, I still have half the story to write. When I started NaNoWriMo I chose one character to write with, one VP to use -- but the story calls for at least two, since the action itself happens in two different locations.
          I need to go back to bed. *groan* Is the basket dry yet? Maybe I can finally make a pot of coffee.

836 Words and Counting

          I don't see how I'd be able to manage the other one (which needs a bit more work done in the thought/plot dept. IMO), but the current one (something I wrote a couple of years ago for a love scene challenge -- well, LOL).
          This does seem to be a pattern with me. Write a flash, wait a couple of years, then decide to change the VPC and end up writing something longer (and in the first case, very different) from the original work.
          I decided to work on this in the same order that I'm posting the writing prompts up to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/W_P -- today it's concentrating on the narrative alone, tomorrow the story gets rewritten entirely as dialogue, and then (for Wednesday) the idea is to try and splice the two of them together into a coherent whole.
          Since I use three characters in the last scene I think I'm going to revise the narrative to incldue all three characters throughout the story. I decided that I'm going to shoot for author omniescent and try to describe what's going on rather than get into anyone's head. For the story to work, this might be the best course of action -- which means I have to add a scene tomorrow with the dialogue about exactly when the ful moon is (it's basically a story about not following proper instructions, but it's a horror story, some gore, mostly the yuck factor). No mass murderers, decapitations or Monsters from Hell.
          Sometimes, the monsters are more inside of us and are born from neglect and ignorance.

Regards,
Elizabeth Anne Ensley.

NaNoEdMo Update

I managed five minutes last night and 35 minutes this morning (so far) of editing. Fun, right? Just think, though--I actually have shaving and food as plot points! *laugh* Me'ssa lil' rulebreaker, ne?

National Novel Editing Month

I managed to print out my novel, pre-editing. Thnk Ghu I had enough ink left in the cartridge (though it took all morning, the printer got persnickety on me, I kept having to go back and make sure the paper was actually being fed inot the printer). ;sigh; I also cut about 15k words from it when I found out that the whole beginning to a certain point had repeated iself. That's a heck of a way to start NaNoEdMo. at least I know I can easily make up for the lsot text with what I have to edit into it to make the story flwo better and increase plausibility within the context.

National Novel Editing Month

Okay, it's finally here: so when am I going to start? *sigh*

What do you think goes through a cat's mind?

        How does a cat view the world? How do you think a feral (as opposed to a domestic) cat would view the world, or vice vera? What do you think would be an appropriate obstacle for them to overcome?
        I don't know of a cat who ever used a can opener, but I remember a news program 20 years ago in Massachusetts where some fellow made a special seat to go over the toilet and then potty-trained his cat.
        There are other cats, like Mewling (rest his furry little soul) who by trial and error learned to open screen (and even cabinet) doors.
        Cats are as alien to us as any extraterrestrial creature. They're the same basic life form as us (mammals), but their society and civilization, even when shared with their human pets, are very different from homo sapiens.