Descending Desire

2008-08-14T21:41:00.003-05:00

Something that I told my mom a few weeks ago has really been prodding the back of my mind, so I thought I would talk about it here because it's about writing. We were talking about how mature of a teenager I am, and I told my mom that she probably wouldn't think that if she knew every thought that went through my head all day. Because, let's face it. On the inside, I'm just as stupid and reckless as any other teenager. The only difference is that my priorities are a little different, but I still think LIKE a teenager, just not about the same things as most other 17-year-old girls. And plus when I have an impulse to do something, there's usually something that physically prevents me from doing it, or I'm just too much of a coward. (What does that tell you about my thoughts?) And I told my mom that there's a filter on my mouth that blocks about 96% of what I want to say. Like I told my ex-boyfriend, I have a lot to say, it's just that none of it can make it past the filter. It reminds me of the Mark Twain quote that says "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt." Or something like that. I don't remember the exact quote, but you get the gist of it. And I've been saying it forever, but if someone read all of the stories I've written (and maybe even got a commentary from me about what's to come in unfinished works), they could get a better idea of what I'm like than my best friends have. You would literally know me inside and out. Luckily for me, though, nobody's ever going to get the chance to do that. But my point is, I have a filter somewhere between my brain and my mouth (probably somewhere in the nasal region) that blocks 96% of what I want to say. That's a lot of things I never get to say. So in order to keep from going crazy, all of my thoughts get poured into my writing, where they can be fictionalized and metaphorized and covered up so I know they're there, but the stories can (for the most part) be shown to the public. It's interesting when you think about it, because I've always taken great pride in this part of me that makes me stand out from my peers (my being shy), and now I've found a way to connect that to my other favorite part of myself (my writing ability). Since I discovered that, my writing life has been booming. I didn't even really realize that until I just typed it here, but something in my writing gene has been eating its Wheaties lately, and I couldn't really figure out why. I thought it might be because school is starting next week and my brain loves coming up with new ways to torture me, but now I really get it. It's like the realization of why I have my writing gift. Of course, I could be all wrong, but it's a good theory. It makes sense.

Anyway, this whole thing led me to thinking about the Promise Series. Those books are basically a biography of my 8th grade and high school life, both from the perspective of who I am and who I wish I was. But it's a biography nonetheless, so there are a lot of people who are in my life that are in these books, in one form or another. And even though I changed their names and some things about them, if people who read it knew me well enough and knew who I hang/hung out with, they could know who everyone is. I'm talking friends, ex-boyfriends, parents, siblings (well, sibLING), people from work, random people in general who I meet--anyone is fair game. So I was just thinking, my whole life in some way or another--including how I see the world--is represented in these books, so what if someone I know reads it and is like, "Hey, so-and-so character must be me. Wait--what do you mean Lucy thinks I'm obnoxious? I should go yell at Nicole!" I wouldn't care, really, but it would still be interesting. That's why I write under a penname, though. That way if someone I didn't like in middle school (someone who can actually read, of course) picks up this book called Some Kind of Miracle by Daqu and sees that Alana didn't like a certain character, their mind won't immediately jump to me. It's just some food for thought, though.

Oh, and here's another thing. I discovered about halfway through writing the last paragraph that the anonymity of the internet (even though most people who would ever read this know exactly who I am) decreases my filter from 96% to 42%, so take it or leave it.

2008-07-25T11:40:00.005-05:00

Okay, first of all, I should mention that I never knew this in the several months that I've been keeping this blog, but I had a setting turned on that only allowed people who were signed in to comment, and that has now been turned off, so if anyone has something they want to say about my posts, they're welcome to. I'm sorry. I wasn't being snobby or anything, I just never realized that was the default setting.

Right now I'm on the second part of a two-part vacation, and it's going great. I woke up Wednesday at zero-dark-thirty in the morning and went to Miami, OK (pronounced My-Am-Uh, unlike in Florida). Don't get me wrong, I love the city, but the hotel I stayed in was awful. Because--here's the thing! It wasn't a hotel! It was a motel! This brings my times I've stayed in a motel up to a grand total of 2, and I've been miserable both times. Because the thing is, I hate bugs. No, that's not true. I *searches for thesaurus* despise, detest, loathe, bugs. They're awful. And I'm not one of those people who are scared of them, because let's face it, I'm about a hundred billion times bigger than the average bug, but they're just annoying. Very, very, very, very annoying. Especially the ones who feel the need to buzz around my head all day and are too chicken to accept my double-dog-dare to land. So I spent most of that afternoon/night making a tent with my bed covers, where I could write in peace. Which was great, except it was a million frickin degrees in that room. The whole experience taught me a valuable lesson, though. I've kind of been looking forward to living that whole starving-artist lifestyle, and I realized that maybe that isn't the best option for a girl who's spent almost her entire life in the suburbs, raised in a middle-class family. Is that going to stop me? Hell no. I'll move someplace where it's so cold that bugs can't live there, and if that doesn't work, just wear bug spray like it's lotion. :D

But that nightmare did end, and now I'm in Kansas City. Currently I'm at the hotel pool, watching my dad float around. Kansas City is awesome. It's one of my favorite cities. Actually the reason I'm here is to tour UMKC, and I think that unless something happens and I'm granted a full scholarship to my dream college, I'm going there. It's an awesome school.

Another good thing about going on vacation is that I get a lot of writing done. Vacations with my dad and I tend to involve a lot of time with me and my laptop, between driving to wherever we're going (usually a 4-6 hour drive) and me staying in the hotel room for about 96% of the trip. On this trip I got a little more of the Promise Series written, and I'm hoping to get a little more done on the way home. And I also wrote a little bit of a story that will most likely never develop into a full novel, but it's fun to write little scenes of it here and there.

As a final note, I'm having second thoughts on the Black Diamond series. I feel like the whole thing, in addition to being an awesome story, is a little too forced. Another author may be able to pull it off, but with my writing style, I don't know if I can. I'm not giving up on it quite yet, but I'm seriously considering it. If I'm going to write this story, I need to take an entirely different approach to it. Or another thing I could do is just take all of my favorite things from the series and stick them in other novels. I know one sub-plot that the still-unnamed sequel to Desiring Truth has been bugging me and bugging me about borrowing, and if I give it to Truth and Dave then Aqua and Pyro can't have it. It's too awesome for two stories to have it. It's also vital to the Black Diamond series, though, so if I do give that sub-plot to Dave and Truth then the Black Diamond series falls apart. So I'm just going to do some soul-searching for awhile, and keep my invisible blog-readers in suspense. But hey. I'm a writer. Cliff-hangers are what I do best!

**Daqu**

2008-07-10T14:13:00.002-05:00

I'm in a kind of calm serenity in my life. Even though I'm going through a huge transition period in my life right now, my writing life has never looked better. I finished Desiring Truth, minus the epilogue that still needs to be written. But for all intents and purposes, the story is complete. And I'm really happy about that and sad at the same time. Because this is a story that I've essentially poured my heart and soul into, and it's been so much fun to write. There was never a time when I was like, "Ugh. Just write anything to get the words down." I had a LOT of fun writing this book. But now I have a new book to get all excited about. The working title is Beloved until I can think of a better one, if I do. But the basic idea of the story is a 17-or 18-year-old girl who is a very devout Christian, and then things start happening where the choices she makes and the things that happen to her just go against Christianity's teachings in as many ways as I can think of, but she's still determined to remain a Christian. The thing I'm most looking forward to in this story is doing all the research for it. I'm very excited about my newest project, though. Even though my rebound-book track record is not the greatest (50%, actually), I'm really hoping for this one!

2008-05-18T22:33:00.000-05:00

I just spent pretty much all night on the NaNoWriMo forums (completely ignoring homework, of course!), and I feel like there are a number of things that I've said over and over again, because these things help prove almost every point when it comes to my writing style.

First, I'm a serious writer. I'm not the kind of writer who would ever randomly have ninjas attacking her main character on the street. When I'm stuck for a plot, I sit back and think about it; I don't go off on random tangents. ONE TIME during NaNoWriMo last year I took Susabelle's suggestion and gave my character a random, mysterious illness, but let's face it. The story would never have made it past 15,000 words if I hadn't, and most of my stories include random and mysterious illnesses anyway, so it wasn't that far of a jump. And I did it in a very serious way.

Second, yes, I edit while I write, and I do read over the draft. Reading over the draft while I'm writing it just helps me get into the mood for the story, plus there are just some scenes I write that are incredibly too awesome to not be read at any given opportunity. And yes, I do edit. No formal double-spacing-red-pen editing, but if I don't, I end up with sentences that I remember made so much sense when I wrote them, but a few months later when I go back, I don't have a clue where they came from. I remember quite clearly at a write-in for NaNo last year, my mind was focused on eating while writing a descriptive scene, and actually mentioned that my character's fingers tasted good. Imagine going back and reading that six months later.

Third, I have multiple WIP at a time. I usually keep up a steady stream of 15-20 stories that I'm actively working on, and that doesn't include the multiple books in the Promise series, the Black Diamond series, the Clandephyte series, and a couple more. And I never have any of the slightest bit of trouble keeping their plots straight or anything like that. These characters and these stories all feel so real to me, that I don't even feel like I'm making them up. I just feel like I'm telling somebody's story. I really feel that my body was built to be a writer, and part of that is the ability to keep multiple plots and characters straight (all in my head) with all the effort it takes to roll over in bed on Monday morning. In a way, though, my having multiple WIP sort of reminds me of a person I know who (by the way, makes a lot of money) was in debt, and when this person got married, their new spouse paid off all the debt as a wedding present. And after that (I'm not sure exactly how long. Weeks? Months?) the person just slid right back into debt. My mom calls it just being comfortable owing people money. I think I'm just comfortable having multiple novels that I feel a pressing need to finish, sometimes to the point that I don't know where to start and end up writing nothing. It works for me, though.

So basically, after talking about these things all night on the NaNo boards, I've come to a conclusion that kind of stopped me in my tracks, even though I've known it all along. Here it is:

I take writing way too seriously, considering that I don't get paid for it.

Is that going to stop me? No. Never in a million years. Writing is me. Is is a linking verb, meaning a state of being. I am writing. It's who I am, how I define myself. When people ask me about myself, the first thing I tell them is that I'm a writer. So, yeah, maybe I do take it too seriously, but I also have a LOT of fun doing it, and that's what's really important to me. Plus it's good practice for when I am getting paid for it and am a New York Times Bestselling author. But for now, I'm going to keep letting writing fill up the entire essence of my being. (Wow. If that's not New Agey, I don't know what is!)

Thanks for stopping by!

2008-05-14T20:46:00.000-05:00

Yes, I am very aware that I haven't posted on here in almost a month. But, honestly, my writing life has been in a kind of rut lately. I always have the Promise series, but I have mixed feelings about that. I know the whole story in my head, so I'm reluctant to write it down because I'm afraid I'll screw it up.

But I have four more days of school. I swear, these last few weeks have been the longest in my life. I finally turned in my research paper for my expository writing class, so that's one less thing I have to worry about, but I still have a TON of German homework and geometry homework that I need to have done by tomorrow. Morning. I swear, my teachers really need to realize that we only have four more days of school and they need to stop pushing us. I just keep tell myself that if I take it one day at a time and don't fail anything, I'll be fine. I'll let you know how that goes ;)

So, last night I was randomly thinking and avoiding homework, and I got to thinking about me being a total spoiled brat and owning two laptops. Tamara (the Gateway) and Bob (the mac). I bought Tamara in January so that I could put all my novels and such on a computer that wasn't for school. And that worked out really well, minus a certain event in March that we don't talk about. But I don't think Tamara ever really recovered from that. She's just had one problem after another, it seems. And she's just so delicate. Because of the way she's built, she doesn't automatically sleep when you close her. This means that if you close her and pick her up wrong (this has happened) she'll shut down. It also means that battery life can go dead if you forget to put her to sleep. And I've also had random programs open. But Bob is such a normal laptop. He's so...sturdy, for lack of a better word. I've never had any problems with him at all. So somewhere in all of this I decided that I was going to start using Bob full time again, which pretty much means that I wasted $650 on Tamara. I don't really feel like buying her was a waste, but it kind of was. Like, I feel like buying her was stupid, but it was one of those lessons that I had to learn for myself. But then I didn't know what to do with her. Like, what do you do with just a spare laptop lying around? My boyfriend thinks I should just keep her for a spare backup, and I think he's right. There's two weeks over the summer that I have to give Bob back to school for updates and hard drive-wiping, so then I can just use Tamara.

Also, I really have no idea what to write. I really want to just stick with the Promise series, and that's not a problem. I can just keep writing it. And if inspiration strikes and I decide there's another novel I want to write, there's no law saying I can't write it. I had a write-in tonight, and next year's NaNo came up as a topic. I guess I hadn't really given it much thought, but assuming I don't write it over the summer, I think The Number Five would make a great NaNoWriMo novel.

I'm honestly not even sure if anyone actually reads this blog because no one ever comments, but if they do, is it weird to just hear me talk about all these stories that you've never read and have no idea what they're about?

2008-03-22T23:10:00.000-05:00

I seriously feel like my writing life is going through a major push & pull stage. Usually I only get like this after I finish a story, but let's face it -- I haven't finished anything since NaNoWriMo. But now there are a million different stories that I 3/4 of the way want to write (okay, maybe not a MILLION), and it doesn't help that my boredom of the last couple of days has been cured by obsessive banner making, and they all seem to be for these brilliant stories. I don't know. We'll just have to see what happens. Right now I really want to concentrate on three main stories: a novel called Earth Song, an old reawakened project called The Tire Swing, and a completely new idea that I've been playing around with for months that I'm thinking should be some kind of companion to my novel Shadow's Call called The Six. It's really great.

And on the brighter side of things, Easter is tomorrow, and I just had another amazing date with my boyfriend. We played Halo 3 for, like, 2 hours. There's nothing like spending 2 hours just randomly shooting at your boyfriend :)

Peace out!

2008-03-06T07:12:00.001-06:00

So, while I thought that Tamara was going to be gone, I started writing another novel in a notebook with an actual blue pen. I haven't done that since...sixth grade? I got my own very own computer for the first time for Christmas in 6th grade, and I haven't written a novel in a notebook since. The novel started off being a metaphor for my religious life, but now I don't even know what it is. A great novel with awesome characters? But now I'm so engrossed in it that even though I technically do have Tamara back, I have no desire to write Some Kind of Miracle. Which...I never had any desire to write it in the first place. Maybe it really wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if I just didn't write it. Alana and Lucy don't really need fallible evidence of their friendship. I don't know. We'll just have to see how things go. For right now, I'm just going to keep writing my new story and editing Burnt Flowers Fallen, which, by the way, is coming along fantastically.

2008-02-18T09:52:00.000-06:00

I'll admit, I had a strange day yesterday. To start things off, I was sick all day. So I was already miserable, right? Well my mom, my brother, and I decided that we were going to try another church that was highly recommended by friends of ours, so because our pastor was out of town this weekend, the three of us and another friend of ours, Mark, headed off to this other church. And let me tell you, it sucked. After sitting there for two hours of a too-passionate pastor (I never actually believed that was possible before; I guess I haven't seen it all with PJ.) talk about how the church needs to keep up with the young ones (aka. "my generation"), we left early and went to lunch. Seriously, you couldn't PAY me enough to go back to that church. I think I'll stick with South Side, thank you very much. It's small, people actually know each other, no veins pop out, and there's no annoying lady behind me the whole time saying, "Amen, Alleiluia" like a broken record.

So then after that, we went to lunch, which was equally as bad. (This day does have a relevance to writing, I promise.) We went to some noodle place, and I ended up getting spaghetti. It wasn't that good. Overall, the day was not looking very promising. But then everything started changing. I got home and I read this absolutely incredible book by Sarah Dessen called Just Listen. I highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for an absolutely amazing novel. And I guess the novel really inspired me or something, because I was just on this frenzy all night long. I got, like, 10 pieces of paper and three colors of permenant marker: red, green, and blue. On two of the pieces of paper, I wrote All Daqu, All The Way! in green and blue and thumbtacked them to two different walls, to just remind me that there's no need to change something that's already working. That's kind of been my theme since I had my "daqu revelation," so I now have two signs in my room to remind me of that. Then on one of the papers, I wrote the passion quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer from the season 2 episode, Passion. I would put it on here if I wasn't so lazy and not running on about 4 hours of sleep. (I'll get to that part of the story later.) And then on the other pieces of paper, I wrote (in green) a few quotes from my quotes masterlist, where I keep all of the cool quotes that I see in different places. I really felt like I was on a roll.

So this is where the writing part comes in. For the longest time now, I've been trying to think of a good story that I could write that kind of really follows a character through life. Keep writing a good, long series about them to the point where I feel like I know the character more than I know my best friends. Really give myself a chance to get invested in their story. I tried doing that with a girl named Alana Gardener, first, when I was in 8th grade. That didn't work out. I tried writing about 5 girls who all go to boarding school, and that didn't work, either. Then I tried Alana again, and I thought it was really successful. But looking back on it, I really screwed up a lot of her story. And there was also a big character, Lucy Parker, who was missing from Alana's story. I tried to put her in in the form of Alana's boyfriend, Jay, then her eventual friend, Alyssa, whom she meets in her junior year of high school. Lucy, too, had an interesting story that was just begging to be told. So I eventually worked out the story so that I could write almost a two-part series. Starting with a book about how Alana and Lucy came to being friends when they were in 8th grade, then a book for each of them for each year of high school. For instance, a book about Alana's freshman year, a book about Lucy's freshman year, a book on Alana's sophomore year, etc. In total, the series would turn out to be 13 books. That is quite a big project. So naturally I wanted to take the easy way out and write all of these other stories that are floating around my head. Alana and Lucy will still be there when I'm in college, I told myself.

Well, yes, but here's the thing: Alana and Lucy feel real to me. I really feel like I could pick up my cell phone right now and call them. In some ways, they are two of the greatest characters I've ever created. And I've created some damn good characters, if I do say so myself. Their story has everything that I want in my next project. Great characters, a long enough and good enough story that I can really get invested in them, a great plot, and the epic aspect of it. And the fact that at its core, no matter what else is going on in the lives of these two girls, the central theme of the story is still two girls who are both very anti-social who found comfort in each other and became inseparable best friends. Their experiences (especially Lucy's) are based on my own, and I love writing Alana because I can love her and hate her so much at the same time because she possesses the one quality that I really wish that I had that I don't: she's absolutely brilliant. I'm very smart, but people can't always see that in my grades, mostly because I write too much when I should be studying or doing homework. But Alana doesn't. She's pretty much effortlessly brilliant, but she has enough flaws that she still seems real.

Man. I could go on forever about how wonderful these characters are. And not just because they're so perfect, either. They've just been formulating in my mind for so long that they're just so real. I've had multiple dreams about them, and even used the dreams in the stories. And that's really what I've been searching for in a story, and honestly, I've been telling myself over and over again for the past several weeks that I shouldn't try to change what's already so perfect, because the second try is never as good as the original. So until farther notice, I'm pretty much only going to be writing about Alana and Lucy. The story originally started when I was probably about halfway through eighth grade and now I'm about halfway done with tenth grade, so that's a full two years that this story has been in my mind, and it never, ever had a name until last night, when I finally decided that yes, this series really needs and actual name. I've just literally been calling it The. I know what it means, so anywhere on my computer that I'm talking about The, I'm talking about Alana and Lucy. Last night I named it the "Promise" series. The name fits well, if you really think about it.

I'm still planning on doing the monthlong novel thing in the spirit of NaNoWriMo, and to keep me practicing. There are a friggin 13 books in this series. They don't even have to be written in order, because I just know the story that well. My next monthlong novel plan is coming up in March, then maybe one in May, most definitely one in July, and then, of course, November. (And, in case I didn't mention it, my monthlong novel plan is my way of attempting to combat that annoying binge-and-purge writing style that I described earlier. It's where you basically write a novel in a month, or at least 50,000 words of a novel.) I might throw in a couple more, too, depending on how I feel. But it doesn't really matter anymore. I'm going to keep writing about Alana and Lucy, no matter what.

So, anyway, the reason that I stayed up until 3:30 this morning was because there was a scene in Alana's senior year book that I really wanted to write, but since I thought I was giving up the series, I didn't bother to convert the documents back to MS Word when I finally got it for my computer. (Long story.) So I did that, so that had to have taken at least an hour. Then I wrote the scene and completely screwed it up. I'm definitely going to have to rewrite it. It was supposed to be a heartwarming scene between Alana and her boyfriend, and then they ended up fighting over something they are not allowed to even talk about at all. But at least I wrote it. And I just wasn't tired. So I went to sleep around 3:30, and I still woke up at, like, 7. I hate my body.

Okay, and I have one final note. (I know this is getting awfully long.) It's about Equilibrium. I have my writing group on Saturday, and I really don't know what I'm going to do. I just have no idea what to do with the story. I'm pretty much at a dead end, no matter what I do with it. It's just like little fragments of a story that I think once had a lot of potential, but now it just...doesn't. I either need to give it up or take a long break from it, because it is just plain not working. I just feel like I did everything I could to save it, and yet I couldn't. Kind of like my ex-boyfriend. Hm. But now that I have Alana and Lucy to write, I just really don't see how I can make Equilibrium work. Which really makes me sad, but I just can't. You cannot force a story that really doesn't want to be written.

Okay. I'm really done now.

xx daqu