killing off characters

..is freaking hard. Originally, Kimber was just going to get a little glimpse of Cal, right as he died. But then the kid started talking, and now he's sweet and I don't want to kill him!

I made the mistake of telling Tom this as I was writing last night.
"The character you're killing off... who are they closest to?"
I thought about this for a moment. "Probably his sister."
"Have her be the one to kill him."
"WHAT!?"

...for dramatic purposes, he is, as usual, entirely correct. But I can't do that!!! It was going to be hard enough to let this poor little child die of some disease. But... to have that guilt cling to little Evelyn, would be a nice, if horribly sad, touch. Even if she just *thinks* she killed him, some coincidence or another. But... I still haven't thought of any way she could influence his death. I have no idea. We'll see if I can polish off this scene tonight... or if I'm going to weasel my way out of finishing it for another day. ^^;;

semi-autobiographical

All my characters are, to some extent or another. I can write their interests as well as I can, because I share them - I love that moment during photo development, where suddenly a blank white page shifts and grows shades and an image appears like a ghost. I love bringing out the thousand gradations of color in a scene when drawing it, bringing to the fore the pinks in green leaves, the yellows in gray stones.

But this is my new favorite observation - about myself, as well as Kimber:

I'm an awful judge of any measurement that's bigger than my sketchbooks.


So true it's ridiculous. I hate it when directions tell you something is 100 feet, 200 feet, away. I have no idea what that looks like. Everything I do, I visualize how it would fit against an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper. I was trying to visualize the 5" diameter given for a clematis flower - they vary, I know, and I have a hunch some variaties can get like 10" across or something insane, and I spread my fingers apart against the short edge of a sheet of paper. I also have a good idea of 11", 17", and 18", 24", 36". Fifteen feet, not so much.

what happens when you're not paying attention...

Writing this whole historical society meeting section, I didn't plan the characters ahead of time. At all. Mary is vaguely related to a character I thought this story was going to have (though it turned out not to), but the other two just wandered in and started talking, breaking up the monologue.

And it wasn't until just now, as I was trying to wrap up the scene, that I wrote:
      “I think that's about it,” Mary says, tapping her fingers thoughtfully on the table. “Anything else you two want to add?”
      John and Susan

And then burst out laughing. JOHN AND SUSAN are my freaking relatives, that live in a little town not far from here. They pop into the store now and again. Susan's the sister of one of my grandparents (I always forget which side of the family is which). I had no idea, until this very moment, that I had unconsciously named my characters after them. The characters, I should note, were never intended to resemble them, though it occurs to me now that the Susan in my head looks a smidge like the Susan I'm related to.

omfg I am not going to be able to finish that sentence as it stands. I can't put the names together or I won't stop giggling. DAMN YOU SYNAPSES! Fire in ways that are HELPFUL!

note about the name

I FINALLY NAMED MY MC!!!! I was wondering when that was going to happen. But when she walked into the psychics, I realized, holy crap she'll have to give her name. She doesn't have a name!!! ahhhhhh!1!!

So I brought up the list of five or six names that I was considering. Kimber really was the one I liked best all along (yes because of Jem), and it didn't seem to jar with the character in my head. But then I realized I needed a last name. DOOOOOM! I was going to snag something out of my own family history, but the few I could think of offhand didn't suit, and the one I like, I think I used in something else recently.

The site I got the rankings of first names by birth year doesn't do last names. But it gave me the idea of pulling up some kind of census. A google for "North Carolina census" eventually led me to a site with all sorts of things I didn't need. I started going off some random military listing from the 1800s, but then I found an actual listing of all the surnames in the state in... 1880 or so. Only, you know, a century earlier than my story... but her family lives in the state, so it's reasonable that some ancestor was there in 1880.

One of the first names that caught my eye was "Benton"... which is Kimber from Jem's last name. Couldn't do it, though it sounds so nice. I eventually came back to Bennette though, because, well, it really did sound good, as well as plausible, I think there was someone in my school with Bennet for a last name. Decided to change the spelling a bit though, that "e" on the end was too much.


BUT, the real reason I wanted to make a post about her name. I am NOT having the psychic constantly calling her by name in order to remind myself what her name is. (I've been test-running the name in my head for a few days, though the final decision wasn't made until yesterday.) Nor is it in celebration of her finally having a name, or to hit you over the head with it, now that it's finally in here. I promise, it's only because that's the way this woman talks - I'm sure you've run into that sort of person too, intent on making a good business-like impression, calling you by name to make you more comfortable or make your experience more personal or whatever their reason is.

(Personally, it always makes me feel really, really awkward. But I have a reclusive streak, so maybe it's just me.)

confession

Guess who needs to stop making fun of people for joining Team Edward (*gags*)?

Maaaybe the girl who continually writes pale slender young-looking old-souled impossibly pretty men, who probably did sparkle back when they were still angels. Fallen angels are pretty darn close to vampires, especially the way I write them.

And then I go and fall in love with them, even while I'm terrified of the things they sometimes do.

...this was not intended to be a Phisto story, but, OH LOOK, THERE THEY ARE.



*loves them anyway*

random actions

I love it when characters go running off and doing silly things for basically no reason. Yesterday, my main character suddenly felt terrified and ran away from the garden. Today, because a good song came up on her (i.e., my) iPod, she decided to take off for a sprint all around the garden, laughing and singing all the way. It's actually making me smile.


...when stuck writing, some people fall back on quoting books, or movies, or having characters sing "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall". While I pride myself on never having gotten *quite* that desperate... my characters do tend to listen to music. A lot. This year's character has a music collector for a father, which means she has a good knowledge base lurking in her head. That paired with listening to music as I write (which I basically always do), means LOTS OF FREE WORDS WOOOOOO!

^~_~^

words

"Thwapped" and "scootch" are words. So sorry spellcheck, throw all the angry squiggly red lines at me you want.

spelling and an illustration

I could not for the life of me figure out how to spell "tetanus" earlier. I was writing on my dinner break at work, so I had no internet (I'll never remember to ask the boss for the wifi password, and anyway, the lack of distraction is a REALLY good thing), and I couldn't google it to get suggestions, and eeeeevery variation I could think of was still too far off-base for OpenOffice to figure out.

And, just now, I spelled "rambunctious" just fine and dandy on the first try. I and O and U all properly in their places.


I wiki'd around a bit about wrought iron fences, because I decided I wanted one. (...I wonder when that happened? I had something else in mind for the girl to find, and what happens? She finds a fence. I have no idea how.) I used a loooot of really elaborate ironwork in last year's NaNo, and I'd found some really stunning references. But I wanted to see if I could get an idea of a) how long ago the stuff was used, and b) how well it would hold up. Turns out ironwork goes back to a least 2000 BC. Good times. (The really elaborate decorative stuff came in starting in medieval times, hardcore around the 1500s.) How well it holds up... most of the things from 2000 BC have rusted away, but things in Europe have been in place a few centuries easily. Apparently there's a LOT of variation in iron, especially the farther back you go, since the whole process of working with it has had an awful lot of variables.

But the real result of my wiki wanderings? was this picture:



...that's pretty much the most incredible fence I have ever seen. Just the style of it, all swirls and things, not a trace of a straight line, just this vast organic motif... that is absolutely stunning. I'm in so much love. So, the fence my (still unnamed) main character has found, is pretty darn similar to this one. A bit smaller, and a bit more detailed, but, pretty much this one. <333