there was a young woman from boobville ...

Le sigh.

( 30 Days Of Writing )

Do you write romantic relationships? How do you do with those, and how “far” are you willing to go in your writing? ;)

Oh, God, yes. I quite like writing romance of all stripes. I haven't written poly yet, but I've written straight, gay, lesbian, a bit of an open marriage, you name it. The thing with never having been in a genuinely serious relationship and being a virgin, and then writing sex and romance is that eventually you just sort of get over your unease about writing something you've never done before, because, hey, you're writing a lot of things you've never done before.

But, yeah, I don't mind going far, depending on the couple. That said, I do like to focus more on the action itself than on the, you know, action just because I've recently been all about writing (or attempting to write) stories with kick-ass women in the lead, and one of my least favorite things about reading other people's stories with kick-ass women in the lead is the bit where they're pursued by two or more incredibly hot guys and OH NOES HOWEVER WILL I CHOOSE?!

Heroine Addiction is kinda the epitome of that, in that the book (and any sequels, of which I've already started plotting out the first) will probably focus mostly on the case or adventure or whatever, and the romances for Vera will be there ... just not, you know, THERE. And the entire focus being on the romance won't happen for very long if it does happen because, seriously, when you have to rescue the city or escape a villain's trap or fight a bad guy, stopping to have an argument with your ex-girlfriend just bugs me. It can wait until AFTER the world's been saved, as far as I'm concerned.

*

A few other things:

-- I threw down an idea for what could possibly end up a YA novel about a gay teenager. We'll see. Considering what trouble I've had lately getting anything started, this might be as dead in the water as the rest of my ideas.

-- I didn't get any editing done yesterday, as I am a lazy assbutt.

-- Happy Fourth of July! Or, if you're me, Happy Free Vacation Day In Which I Can Hopefully Avoid Too Many Flag-Waving Orgasmically-Nationalist Douchebags! (That won't work. I have to go to Wegmans in two and a half hours for orientation stuff so I'm bound to see someone being an all-American asshole. Uh, did I ever mention I'm not a big fan of the Fourth of July? Do I really have to celebrate? Can't I have just have a second Halloween instead every year?)

-- I just wanted to apologize if I'm not being all that entertaining lately. After all of the overtime I've done in the past couple of weeks and how tired I've been when I get home and how hard I've been trying to write only to fail miserably since I started the overtime ... yeah, I'm not really much for entertaining at the moment.

-- Oh, did I mention that I'm planning to hit DC on Labor Day weekend? "Planning" being the operative word, as I may not be able to get the extra vacation days for that weekend that I'd like considering how soon it is, so I may have to go the weekend after. But since I'll be starting at Wegmans shortly and there should be more overtime to be had at my full-time job, I should be able to afford to use my first paycheck in September to take a road trip down to the city for the weekend. And my brother's planning on coming with -- the only thing he asked was that we stop at the National Aquarium on the way down, which I am more than happy to do. Yay, road trip! FINALLY. I need a vacation so badly, you have NO idea.

( 30 Days Of Writing )

12. In what story did you feel you did the best job of worldbuilding? Any side-notes on it you'd like to share?

I'd have to say the Books of Boggs, if only because it's been so long since I started writing it that it's got the most work put into it. Granted, I haven't touched it in months, but with all of the plotting and the characters and details and mythology that have to be worked out to make the whole thing hang right, I really feel like that's my favorite in terms of how the worldbuilding has worked out.

*

Ugh, two more days of overtime. I feel as though my brain is fried, mostly because rather than keeping us in the section we work in (which is working with returned mail), they've had us on the phones for one of the plans for two weeks straight now. And there's more where that came from, because from what I hear we may be staying on the phones until next Wednesday.

It's not too bad, really, or at least it isn't when it's busy, because time flies when you're talking to people on the phone. It also makes the day go faster if you can just put on your headphones and listen to music while working the mail, but you can't listen to music if you're available to make calls.

Cue me going absolutely stir-crazy the past two weeks every time I have to make myself available for phone calls.

I'm trying to be hopeful that the overtime will keep going, though -- the mail department is too busy taking phone calls to do a lot of our work, so we'll probably be playing catch-up for the rest of the month -- and hopefully I'll hear back from Wegmans as soon as the hiring lady gets back from vacation.

What's this mean for me? OH, MY GOD, GET ME TO A QUIET PLACE AND SUPPLY ME WITH A WORD PROCESSING PROGRAM OF SOME SORT. I want to write, damn it. It's hard to try and cram it in during a fifteen-minute break, especially considering sitting in the cafeteria means a couple of my co-workers take me sitting alone as their cue to sit with me, and going out to sit at the picnic tables means walking halfway around the building, thereby using up a good chunk of my free time. I'm getting all whiny and foot-stompy about the whole thing, seriously. *pouts*

*

I skipped the second half of SYTYCD -- why not wait until I can see the whole thing in one sitting? -- so I could watch Top Chef and Work of Art. I'm liking Work of Art way more than I thought I would, which I suppose means I need to go back and watch the rest of it. (EDIT: "I feel relieved ... relaxed ... and a little sleepy." *dies laughing*)

Oh, and speaking of reality shows that have me by the short hairs, PROJECT RUNWAY IS BACK ON JULY 29TH. No, there is no way I'm not capitalizing that. Tim and Heidi back on my TV! Aaaaand all is right with my world. :D

( 30 Days Of Writing )

9. How do you get ideas for your characters? Describe the process of creating them.

( This got very, VERY long. )

But, yeah. Character development! Woohoo!

I HAVE ACHIEVED GROCERIES. \o/

I've also achieved the chocolates for work, since that's the way things go in our row at work. I have the chocolates and snacks, the girl next to me has the microwave meals and whatnot, and the lady on the other side of her has the condiments and the plastic utensils. We're basically the grocery store for our department. (And speaking of the chocolates, they had my maple walnut chocolates! The good ones with the sugar, as opposed to the nasty abominations unto the Lord that are the sugar-free versions. Ew.)

Above all else, I have fat-free vanilla ice cream and I bought cones. Ice cream cones for everybody meeeee!

I did end up missing the STYTCD results, though, but I spoiled myself on the TWoP forums and ( spoilers )

And I didn't finish watching Top Chef from last night, which I've heard I need to because the judges table is awesome, but I did end up catching Work Of Art beforehand and ... um, I may have to go back and watch from the beginning. Maybe. I wasn't all that intrigued by the premise when I first saw the commercials, but watching this week's episode is making me think twice about missing it. (They were doing book covers for classic novels and there were some real winners there, and I mean that both seriously and sarcastically.)

*

Oh, hey, and how about that writing meme?

( 30 Days Of Writing )

6. Where are you most comfortable writing? At what time of day? Computer or good ol' pen and paper?

It all depends on my mood, really. Sometimes I like to write in the morning before I go to work by pounding out words on my laptop, and sometimes I like scribbling down stories outside during my breaks at work, and sometimes I stay up late at night because that's the only free time I have or because I have to get the idea out of my head before I go to sleep and possibly forgot all about it.

A few things are guaranteed to spur my creativity, though. If I go to the cafe, I have to sit in one of the booths closer to the front, and I have to have one of the soups before I can get anything done because their soups are awesome. If I go to Panera, I need to sit in one of the seats by the fireplace and I have to have soup there, too. And it helps to have soda. Pepsi, preferably, and Cheetos if they're handy, but I'll settle for dried apples or pumpkin seeds or Wheat Thins or pocorn. I definitely need a drink, though. I can be a total cliche in the winter, though, because my favorite thing to do in the wintertime is to have a day off where I know I won't be going anywhere, curl up in my furry butterfly chair with my electric blanket and a big cup of hot tea, and just type and type and type until my fingers fall off.

Oh, and I can't write in silence. I have to have music playing (I'll get into that more tomorrow, apparently, looking at tomorrow's question), but if I'm deep enough into something that I won't be easily distracted I'll put on a video in another window and let that play. It's usually something I've watched a billion times, though, to keep me from losing my focus. YouTube comes in handy for that. The usual suspects the last few months have been Air Crash Investigations (I can spot when actors have played two entirely different people on different episodes, is that bad?), A Night To Remember, Never Mind The Buzzcocks episodes, Top Gear, Stranded! The Andes Plane Crash Survivors, Alive, Earthquake, and the "Space Mutiny" and "Riding With Death" episodes of MST3K.

( 30 Days Of Writing )

3. How do you come up with names, for characters (and for places if you're writing about fictional places)?

Well, when it comes to characters I usually just go with the most fitting first name that pops into my head and work from there. I have this thing for girls or women with little-old-lady names, so sometimes I'll bend over backwards to find a way to give a younger modern-day woman a name like Dorothy or Sally or, say, Vera. It's just a lot of playing around with things until I get the name that sounds just right and clicks into place.

*

I am working twelve-hour days for the next couple of days -- yay for overtime! -- and worked one hell of a twelve-hour day today -- boo for spending the vast majority of it taking phone calls! -- so I'm probably not going to be around much, so if I don't really respond to much or don't poke my head in for anything other than memeing, that would be why.

Urgh, need a nap.

I know everybody's posting the 30 days of TV meme, which I keep meaning to start before getting distracted by shiny objects or whatever, but I spotted this one and had to dig in.

( 30 Days of Writing )

1. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you've worked with and why.

I would probably have to say the Books of Boggs 'verse, with the Heroine Addiction 'verse coming a very close second.

I realized today that I haven't looked at the Books of Boggs in a while. Uh, maybe months? But I think I just have a great big soft spot for it. Way before The Office ever started, I wanted to do something set in the Scranton area because, hey, they never set anything here and I like it here. And the thing is that I sort of went with the dreamy imaginative kid in me that used to pretend there were dragons hiding in the woods or that the big creepy mansion ten minutes away from where I grew up was where some evil wizard lived. Yes, I've always been this dorky.

In any event, it's the "let's pretend there's a unicorn around every corner" version of the "I want to write about where I live, damn it" urge. Plus, I get to be snarky, because Sean is basically entirely composed of snark, whereas Vera's a bit less jokey. And I get to be as ridiculous as I want.