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NaNoWriMo Update

It’s day 4 of NaNoWriMo and it seems that many of my contacts on facebook are taking part.  This is my first year participating and I must say I’m enjoying it very much.  It is good discipline to make yourself write every day and even if you don’t reach the 50 k you’ll have pushed yourself and learned a little more of what you’re capable of.

I’m doing okay with it so far.  My total stands at just over 20 k and I’m on track to hit the 50 k on the 9th November.  My novel will be longer than that though; I like my novels to be between 80 – 100 k and it would be super awesome to finish the whole thing in the month.  I’ve completed 4 chapters so far and the real action has just begun.

The only difficulty I’m having is actually nothing to do with it being NaNoWriMo.  I’m having a problem making my protagonist nasty enough.  You see, my main guy is not nice, in fact he’s a bastard but I am finding it a real job to make him horrible enough.  I love writing nice guys and I find them easy and natural but this character is proving a challenge.  As with all my characters though, he is building himself in the way he wants to be and I’ve learned not to fight my characters when they dictate stuff.  I let them have the lead and they know I will listen to them.  I may argue sometimes but they always get their own way in the end.  Jake isn’t a nice guy but I’m finding he’s building himself into a different kind of not nice than I envisioned at the start.  His not niceness comes from his own ignorance rather than any real malice; he is so up his own ass that he just doesn’t see what a prick he is and how he pisses people off.  He is building himself into a far more sophisticated kind of not nice than I thought he would be and y’know what?  I like the guy.

Another thing I didn’t plan or envision when I began was how much sex there would be in this book.  I knew there would have to be some, seeing as how my character is a narcissistic megalomaniac celebrity, but even I’m surprised at how often he ‘whips it out.’  This is definitely going to be an 18+ novel.

I’ve also been formulating ideas for the cover art and have a brilliant idea, which I’m not going to tell you about.  The last time I shared a cover before it was published, some other asshole chick stole my idea and published 2 weeks before I was due to.  My cover art guy had to race around looking for a new idea.  Luckily we found one and it’s  actually better than the one I had planned to use so all ended well.  So I’m keeping this idea under wraps.  This book won’t be published until mid summer anyway so there’s no hurry.  I have the fourth and final volume in The Lilean Chronicles series coming out in the first week of December, then I have a second of my novella series to write so I can publish the first pair as a single volume in spring of 2013 and then it will be time for my NaNo project to come out in summer.  I also had a full plot idea fall right into my head the other night as I sat trawling through facebook, so I be getting on with writing that once my first novella pair is published.

So all is well on the writing front here.  I just wish people would buy the books so I can eat and pay a few bills..!

A milestone I didn’t want to reach

Something just happened that I’ve been dreading for years.  I knew it had to happen but somehow you always think that a miracle will occur and it’ll pass you by.  I’ve reached a milestone.  A milestone that all of us reach at some point; some earlier than others.  I’ve been lucky to get to 50 before reaching it; I’ve known people who had to deal with it years earlier than me.  It’s a milestone that not only brings anguish but questions.  I now have an important decision to make and I haven’t a clue what to do.

I found my very first grey hairs today..!

So now I have to decide – to dye or not to dye, that is the question.

The problem with dyeing is that grey hair takes colour in a very different way than naturally coloured hair.  My mother once decided to try a coloured mousse that advertised itself as ‘semi permanent – washes out in 6 washes’ and she went bright orange; I’m talking day glow here.  It didn’t wash out in 6 washes either and she had to go around in a headscarf for months until it faded and grew out and I teased her mecilessly.  In order to dye grey hair well, you need a salon do and they’re expensive.  There’s the roots problem, which entails a continuous expense that I don’t know I can guarantee to afford.  There’s also the hassle of it all; worrying about the roots and looking like a skunk if you let them grow out too much.  At least if you’re all grey it looks better than looking like a skunk with grown out roots.

If I choose not to dye, then I have to get used to looking like an old woman in a world where being young and beautiful is everything.  My problem is I’m neither young nor beautiful.  I’m 50 and physically ugly and being grey as well is going to be too much to bear.

I simply don’t know what to do.  I hate getting old.  It wouldn’t be so bad if I was beautiful to begin with.  Ugh, I wish I was dead…!

World building for fiction – when is enough, enough?

As I mentioned in the previous post, I’m compiling a new page on this site which I call the Intergalactic Guidebook.  I decided a little while ago that it would be fun to create some kind of encyclopaedia of The Lilean Chronicles.  In it I would write a kind of mini wiki all about the worlds and peoples we meet in the series.  This is going to be a herculean task, as I’m finding out but it’s fun to do and I don’t mind it taking a while.  I’m uploading each page when it’s complete and will blog when there’s a new page for you all to peruse.

It’s called world building or rather in my case, galaxy building and I actually did this when I wrote the books.  I built the words, the galaxy as I wrote each volume of the series.  What I’m doing now is putting all that information together in one place, but I’m finding that something interesting is happening as I’m putting it all together.

I know the worlds contained within The Lilean Chronicles very well.  I spent a year writing with my characters and I know all about their worlds, their culture etc so writing it all down again for the guidebook is not hard.  What I’m finding though, is that I’m actually writing stuff I never wrote in the books.  There are things in the guidebook that you won’t read about in the series at all.  The back stories in the guidebook are way more comprehensive and complete than the information in the novels is.  This got me to wondering why I’m feeling the urge to go so much further with these back stories, when some of the information isn’t in the books.

The answer is simple really.  I love doing it.  World building is such huge fun and it’s a total pleasure to invent a whole world, a race of people, their beliefs and culture, even their diseases and sports.   I also feel that the fuller the back story is, the more believable the novel becomes.  When you can find out everything about the world a character comes from, it helps you identify with them more closely and understand them more deeply.  Besides, it’s interesting shit to read..!

So how much is too much?  Should I go so far as to include geological information about the composition of the land masses?  Should I document the changes to air purity over the past thousand years and cross reference this with a graph showing the increase in population perhaps?  Maybe I need to include a political history, complete with list of the last 10 years worth of import and export figures?

No, I think not.  For one thing, it would bore me rigid to write and therefore, probably bore readers too and secondly, it teeters on the edge of OCD.  Readers have enough imagination and sense to know that stuff isn’t necessary for a work of fiction.  Yes it would make it totally comprehensive but it wouldn’t add anything to the story as a whole.

I’d love to one day publish the Intergalactic Guidebook as an actual book to accompany the series but it would involve massive amounts of artwork and I don’t have the money to pay my hugely talented art guys enough to cover the time they would need to devote to such a project.  Who knows what the future holds though; I may win the lotto one day and then I’ll be emailing them..!

A Question of Beauty

Just what is physical beauty? Ask 100 people this question and you’ll get 100 different answers. They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder and this is one of the few oft quoted sayings that I truly believe to be true. Physical beauty follows trends in a similar way that clothing follows trends, although the physical beauty trends tend to last a lot longer than the clothing fashion trends do. In the past, to be thought of as beautiful, one had to be big. Thin women were thought of as symbolising an under nourished upbringing which meant they had no money. If you could afford to eat enough to be big, you were a good catch. In the same way at one time it was thought most unattractive to have a tanned complexion because it symbolised that you had probably spent a long time labouring in the fields, another sign of a lowly status in life. If you were pale, it showed you were rich enough not to have to toil out of doors. Many of the current trends are caused by celebrities and in our longing to be like them, we try to make our bodies look like theirs and so our opinions of what is beautiful, subtly change.
One of the current trends that has been slowly and quietly creeping its way into the top ten, is the issue of race. It is now accepted that it is most desirable to be, or appear to be, of mixed race. Mixed race people are thought of as the most beautiful and I have to admit that there is a sound physical reason for this. Every race has its own particular identity, things you can recognise as being of one race rather than another. They are generalisations of course but for instance the nose shape of the Jewish race, the eye shape of orientals and the nostrils of the black races. All of these and many others act as markers to tell us what race a person belongs to.

When two people from different races produce a child, that offspring will inherit traits from both partners and often the mixture results in a look that could never be achieved from either of the two parent races alone. This results in some stunningly beautiful people. Add to this is the current trend for a tanned complexion and you have the recipe for beauty and any combination of races will do the job, so long as one half is of black origins. Of course it’s not guaranteed to work, there is a famous actor of mixed race who has a twin that looks completely caucasian. I myself am technically mixed but I look completely caucasian. It’s just the luck of the draw.

In order to be accepted as even worthy of consideration, one has to be stick thin nowadays and the more bones poking out, the better. If you can play a tune on your ribcage, you’re streets ahead of anyone with a curvaceous body shape. This obsession with thinness has caused major problems for the younger generation of today, as we’re all well aware but even with this new awareness, we still don’t appear to be any nearer to changing this belief that thin is beautiful.

Height is one area of beauty that there doesn’t appear to be a definite majority viewpoint. Some men like petite women, some like statuesque ones. When asking women about height though, the vast majority of them will say their man should be taller than they are. I cannot imagine ever agreeing to go out with a man who is shorter than I am, it just wouldn’t happen no matter what the reward. I’ve never met a woman who has said that she’d be happy to date a man shorter than herself. I haven’t actually asked men, but I am confident enough to wager that most of them wouldn’t be too happy to date a woman who towers over them. It’s a question of male ego at the end of the day. A taller woman makes them feel less like the ‘king of the castle’.

There are some things that are so basic that they don’t need to be discussed at any length. Hygiene is one such area. No man or woman is attractive if they’re smelly or dirty. Without going into detail, I will just say that I did once know a woman who admitted that her husband found her most attractive if she didn’t wash too often! Some races have their own very unique traditions of beauty. Some pacific islanders cover their bodies in tattoos and scars and these are signs of status as well as beauty.

Of course 99% of all slaves to beauty are women and we put ourselves through all sorts of hell in the pursuit of acceptance and the affections of our chosen man. We spend our lives on permanent diets trying to achieve that stick thin quality that most men want these days. We survive on carrot sticks and cucumber slices in the hope that that hot guy in the office will ask us out on a date. When we find he’s already in a relationship with a woman who would make a bamboo cane look obese, we console ourselves with a family bag of Maltesers and a lardy cake. The next morning we feel guilty so out come the carrot sticks and cucumber slices again and the whole sorry cycle starts over. This weight/size issue is a strange one because I’ve met many men who have told me that they like curves on a woman and yet we all know it’s the bean sticks that men look at with approval. There are subtle racial differences to the weight/size preferences too. Many black and hispanic men like women with obvious hourglass figures – large breasts, tiny waists and round backsides. Just the sort of figure us caucasians find it hardest to achieve without surgery.

Women don’t seem to be as pernickety about weight/size as the men are. We women are happy to take a man with a bit of extra weight around the middle without it meaning we think any less of him. But then women are not as visually led as men are. A man sees you before he experiences you and his judgement of you will be formulated by what he’s seeing. A woman on the hand, experiences you without looking too closely first. Her judgement of you will be based on your character and behaviour first and looks second. If a man looks at you and likes what he sees, he will then decide whether to get to know you further or not. If he doesn’t like what he see’s then he will not bother to even ask himself whether he wants to get to know you better. That’s not a criticism, it’s just the way men are made.

Over the years I’ve done so much to try to make myself more acceptable physically. As with most women, I’ve dyed my hair, grown my hair, cut my hair, dieted, worn make up and clothing designed to accentuate my good points (whatever they are) and hide the bad (a bin bag would work here). Over the years my hair has been every colour, style and length imaginable and I’ve been fat and moderately slim and all places in between. All of the things that are wrong with me though, are those that cannot be changed. My racial look for instance. As I said before I’m technically mixed race but you’d never know by looking at me. I look caucasian and I’ve missed out on that lovely golden skinned, almond eyed look that would take me straight to the top of the looks chart. I don’t tan easily either and over the years I’ve spend many weeks in the agony of sunburn, only to suffer the itching of peeling skin for weeks afterwards and then find I’m just as white underneath it all as I was before.

Yes I can diet, and I am doing. I’ve lost a stone so far and very proud of my achievement. I still have 3 stone to go until I weigh what I regard as an ideal weight for my height. I’ve long since given up with my hair and now keep it in a short crop in it’s natural brunette. I’m not yet going grey but my hair is naturally very fine so all of the styles we women want, are out of my league. If I had money, and lots of it, I could achieve much more of the look I desire. I’m one of those women who is all for cosmetic surgery. But only if it’s done for yourself, rather than for someone else. I want to look a certain way because I want to look into the mirror and like what I see. I want to find myself attractive. If I won the lotto, I’d have loads of surgery.

I’m still hoping that one day fashion will dictate that the most beautiful women are pale, large around the middle, have over large round eyes and prominent chins and short fine hair. At the same time I still long to find my ideal man who is at least 5 feet 10, mixed race, very muscular and looks like he’s been carved out of a shithouse wall. The problem is of course that a man like that could have his pick of women and he wouldn’t look twice at me.

Oh well, guess I’d better get used to being an old maid.