Excerpt from my GS fanfic novel.

Only the most disturbing werewolf design, ever.

Look at the arms. They're almost human.

 
I've decided to put up an excerpt from my novel, Ginger Snaps: The Feral Bond. The novel is fan fiction based on the Ginger Snaps films.  First I'll give you a spoiler warning: if you haven't seen those films but intend to, stop reading here.

Writing faster.

I have got a better process for writing now, and I'm finishing the epilogue of my fan fiction novel, Ginger Snaps: The Feral Bond. I think I might make record time for the chapter.

I tried to defy the stereotypes and cliches both in werewolf stories and with female characters. It's a fantasy story, but the girls in this, whether from GS or from my imagination, originate in the real world. I didn't avoid their sexuality or appearance, but I think I avoided sexualizing them. There are some male characters, but the female characters drive the plot, and human or semi-beast, they do some remarkable things. It has many characters, and a lot of them are flawed but have a moment of heroism.

Letting Ideas Go.

Writers are often asked, "Where do you get your ideas?"

My answer:  that's how you know you're a writer; you can't stop the ideas. You have to write them down or it will depress you. Why? I don't really know. My guess is it's because your curiosity is then never satisfied, or that you never get to know the character you had in mind.

Unfortunately, those ideas usually come out like a puzzle with half the pieces missing, or (even worse) Swiss cheese. You've got to create the story, rewrite it and edit it to make it worthwhile. Your principal challenges are to put the ideas into words, and to fill in what's missing. 

I have this short story I'm writing, and I planned on finishing it in 5,000 words. As I've been outlining it by a modified form of the Randy Ingermanson's Snowflake Method, I realized halfway through that the story was becoming a novel. That's not where I want to go with this. (I must mention that Ingermanson developed the Snowflake specifically for writing novels. I did say I've modified it. I'll write more about the method in the future.)

This means I must go through and eliminate characters and plot elements. At least I'm culling it before I actually write the story, which in theory is faster, or perhaps saves you a lot of trouble. I know the story's there, I just have to figure out what is most important about it.

I didn't do anything like that in my fanfic novel, Ginger Snaps: The Feral Bond. No, I went with whatever idea excited me. As a result, the plot takes some strange turns, and has a lot of weird details. For example, werewolves have a super-human sense of smell, and they will try to form packs. So, how are the packs organized? By smell, of course. A werewolf is subordinate to the one that infected him, and in fact, feel a obligatory compulsion to follow their sires'. This dominance is communicated to their brains directly by smell.

There are a whole bunch of details like this. However, now that I'm on the last chapter of GSTFB, I'm now confident of coming up with ideas, and now I have to be concerned about telling a story as efficiently as possible. So, I'm not so desperate to hold on to all the ideas I get.

However, I don't actually throw them away, either. I could always recycle them into another story.

Toothaches and Speeches

I have a toothache, so I went to the dentist today on an emergency, and for $85 she gave me a referral to somebody who actually does the root canal for $570 and then somebody else who does the crown for more than that. Plus, I have to wait for another ten days to go in for the appointment.

I need not ask if something is wrong with this medical system. Everyone agrees that there is something wrong with this, except for the wealthiest people for whom $570 is barely more than a 20th of a Mitt Romney impulse wager. Of course, given the US political divisions now, Repubs will say the costs and long waits are because the government won't get out of the way of the medical industry so it can be more efficient and less wasteful, even if no other country does it that way and every last industrialized country has a better, cheaper medical system than ours, and they don't have nearly the blind faith in the magic of the free market. 

Otherwise, we hear, and many believe it's because those damn patients complain frivolously to the courts, when studies show that more than 100,000 patients die of preventable accidents in hospitals every year. That doesn't indicate complaints about our medical system are usually frivolous.

The dearth of affordable dental care in this country is appalling. Even when I had company paid insurance, by a first-rate corporation, it covered dental pitifully. But dental has been known to be expensive and poorly insured for years. Add to that the pain involved, and many people in the purported premier nation of the industrialized world are going about with medieval teeth.

No functional society would run a medical system like this. No healthy society would even debate doing medicine as a free enterprise endeavor. I think Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley and the Cold War ruined this country and made it insane.

I know I've been terrible about this blog for a writer. Other things just take precedent right now, such writing fiction. That's my highest priority. Like helping other writers, particularly in my writing group. I'm trying to post in here more often, especially since, ultimately, I want to sell my writing and, therefore, I have to be known.

I'm impaired by my sleep being so fragged up. For years I've tried, but I can't seem to predict with any accuracy when I'll be ready to fall asleep, or really, when I'll wake up. Back when I had a "real" job I would force my body to wake up. However, I wasn't awake. I would make incredible errors and my mood would be uncontrolled, from concussions, I think. Now at least I can write whenever it suits me during the day. I just have to make sure I do it and not surf the Internet for hours.

On Wednesday, January 18th, I gave a speech at the local artists guild. The first time I've done any public speaking "in two decades" is what I said. Actually, that time was in front of a classroom. It was probably the first time I did any public speaking since the 80s, and that time I bombed. This time, I didn't. I killed them.

The talk was on plotting and outlining in fiction, and specifically, I presented Randy Ingermanson's "snowflake method" as a possible solution. I spent a week preparing for it, and it paid off. I put some humor into it. For the most part, the humor worked, but I shouldn't go on the club circuit yet. It was a good audience, who wanted to learn.

Other members of the panel did their part and were as well prepared. We were all surprised and pleased about the workshop overall. I thought it would be less coherent, less successful than it was, because it didn't seem like we were very coordinated in our prep, but the prep worked for me and my three cohorts. It went very smoothly, and members of the audience told us they were never bored.

A woman came up to me afterward and said she felt she had been inspired to write. Another woman, part of our writers' group, said she went right home and wrote. I am so gratified that we did such a good job.

However, I sacrificed a full week of work writing and preparing this speech. I don't know how I could have done this if I had a real job. Truth is, I couldn't have. I work so damn slow. It has always been a problem. I don't know if it's from years of depression, concussion or side-effects from medication, I'm generally too slow for any employer to tolerate now. Not to mention the fact that I work nervously making sure I'm not fucking something up.

No, I'm doing the job I should be doing. The one I'm perfect for, and I can't do much else.

You better heed this critique: I worked enough to make it.

I'm going to my writers' group meeting tonight. They're supposed to critique the second chapter of my novel. I look forward to what they have to suggest and say. This chapter is . . . a little racy in a horror-story disturbing way. So, I'm a little insecure about presenting it.

There's another story being critiqued. I sat down to start with it last night thinking that it would only be a few hours, and I didn't finish with it until an hour ago. Yep. Missed a whole day of my writing to do it, but it would be worth it if I help the guy.

It looks like I'm not going to starve while writing after all. I've been granted disability. So, now writing is my full time job.

More novel after three months

First, I'll be able to treat writing as my full-time job now, I got my disability. This also means that I can be less stressed with my free time.

In September I said I was taking time off to finish the novel. Then, I think I had 102,000 words written and had 33,000 to go, at most. Now I have 142,000 words written with 58,000 to go, at most. As you'll notice, that's a slight net loss. Comical, I know, the finish line that runs away from you. I can't wait for work to finally reduce my workload.

The problem isn't that I don't know how to end it. I've always had the scenes very well thought out (with a few changes). The problem is, I didn't know everything that came between, and with any scene I write I have a sworn duty to make it as interesting as possible, so they tend to take on a life of their own. It looks like I know just about everything that follows-- just about, and everything that could possibly be set up for it has been. So, I think 200,000 words, (or 660 pages) will do it. I wrote down a list of scenes and it looks like I'm finally safe in saying exactly where it will end. Considering I'm now able to write 8 hours a day, finally, I could conceivably get this done in 11 weeks.

So, what is this novel about? It's about a girl who's found unconscious in the snow with cut scars and needle marks all over her arms and is presumed to be a junky, but it turns out she's a werewolf.

If it sounds familiar to you, then you are familiar with Ginger Snaps: Unleashed. My novel is an alternate sequel to the movie Ginger Snaps. I started it as a practice exercise to prove to myself that I can write a book, and Ginger Snaps did inspire me that much. It wasn't that long before that I decided I wanted a bit more attention for it, so I've been posting it on fanfiction.net.

Why I loved the movie Ginger Snaps this much is a question for a different post. I'm going to post an analysis of the movie on youtube. As soon as I can figure out how to edit, but suffice to say, I really loved the characters. The theme is about devotion, the meaning of it, and its failures. As I said, though, it's better left to its own post. It has a subtext in its directing, and that's more dimensions than you find with almost any Hollywood movie now.

That all being said, Ginger Snaps is not my whole life, and even though I'm committing time writing a practice novel based on it, I just want the novel to be finished so I could go on to a project that I am going to sell.

Though it does feel good to finally write while getting paid. I'm not going to be able to retire, so it looks like this is my job for the rest of my life, which makes me happy, finally.

Update 12/26/10 01:40 a.m. Correction, it actually looks like it may run 210,000 words, or about 700 pages.