omigod, another VDO dream!

Yikes, I had another dream about being with Vincent D'Onofrio/Bobby Goren last night! It seemed to be the latter, as he had the Goren 'look' but it's all a bit vague so it's hard to tell. I can't remember the details, but we seemed to have been at some kind of club, and had stayed out all night and had dossed down together somewhere. In the same bed, I think, but alas I can't remember anything more intense than a bit of kissing and cuddling... I think we might have been at my parents house, and I was younger than I am now, because I remember getting a ticking off for having a man round! There were more confusing bits that are hard to dredge up... Bobby might have been involved with someone else, but was trying to break up with them, and also there was one fleeting bit where he might have been naked... and possibly wrestling with someone, like in the film Women In Love... but as I say, it's all pretty vague. Unfortunately, in respect of the naked bit!!!

what I've been doing this morning....

Have been having my roots done! The excellent Anne has been round to do away with the inch of mud brown [and grey]...

new excerpt!

Go here!!!

still feeling...

... cheered by the supportive comments everyone left when I had my latest little confidence crisis a couple of posts ago! That's the beauty of online friends, they can always manage to knock some sense into me in the nicest possible way.

Haven't achieved a mega amount today, although I have walked up into little town to the post and made a start on IllMet for the day... before lunch, which is a miracle! Was wondering how to tackle the next bit... how to get them together... but it suddenly seems quite simple. Lois just has to take the bull by the horns, so to speak, and tell Robin she's dreamt about him, and take it from there! No biggie... [well, actually, there is a biggie, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more...] After all, the guy is sitting there in the buff and one thing does tend to lead to another! LOL

I suppose when I've got a decent sized chunk of this thing done, and polished it a bit, I should think about posting a bit of it over at Portia's Prose... Anybody fancy that?

Words done so far today: 321

[Good job I'm not doing NaNoWriMo, innit? I'd soon get drummed out of the programme!]

better

Well, thanks to all the wonderful people who've commented on my previous post, I'm now feeling a tad better about myself. I've flicked through that old book, and I don't see anything that's too close to something that's in the later book... I'm sure there are similarities in terms of tone and the shapes of certain scenes... but I don't think there's anything that's exactly the same. Phew!

I haven't got much done today though... I've felt tired, and confused, and unable to focus. I've dotted around online a bit, and tried to fend off another migraine, and written a tiny bit of a thing that might become part of a friend's magazine feature. So at least that's something achieved. I've even, just now, managed to do a bit of IllMet... just a few hundred words... but at least I'm staying in touch with it. It doesn't feel too special at the moment, but it's only a first draft, and first drafts are made to be polished and improved on...

In all this kerfuffle about similar scenes in my books, I completely lost sight of other comments... ie. that Suite Seventeen is 'more of a real novel and emotionally satisfying...' So that's got to be good, hasn't it?

Words done so far today: 478

F*&%! S£$%!

Life had to come back and bite me a big one in the butt, didn't it?

Was riding high in my dream, on Anais's comment and the achievements of yesterday, and naturally that means that everything has to go wrong today. It's 10.30am, I'm not dressed and I'm in such a state of high anxiety that I could burst into tears at any second and have already had such a major yelling fit with myself that the cats are cowering. Basically...

• I foolishly misunderstood some instructions given to me, and a minor disaster nearly happened. Fortunately, I think I've been able to catch the error and someone is dealing with it...
• Worse, it seems that I am subconsciously rewriting scenes from my earlier books. My agent has just read an older book of mine, and wonders if I lifted a scene straight out of it to put in a more recent one... Now I swear on my cats' lives that I haven't done such a thing. I wouldn't dream of it... but it's very possible that I have written quite a similar scene without even realising it. Which is very, very depressing, as it just goes to show how very limited I am in the ideas department. I feel quite cast down about this now...

Writers out there... has anything like the above happened to you? Have you inadvertently written a similar scene in two different books?

Or is it just me who's a useless ageing hack who's run out of ideas and who should just pack it in? :(

a good day... and night...

Now yesterday was a better day...

First of all, I managed to do 1.2K of IllMet, and managed to get as far as a quite filmic scene that I've had in my mind for what must be years now, ever since Robin morphed from my previous fantasy hero [Spike] into my current one [Bobby Goren]... The way I've written it now is probably v. different from the way I had it planned originally, but I think it's worked, it was fun to write, and it's moving me on v. nicely with the plot. Maybe we'll finally get to some horizontal action where the heroine is actually awake now!!!

The second thing was that yesterday evening I was touched and awed to read a truly heartwarming comment left by a reader and prepublished writer called Anais, on my Myspace Profile. My ebook Lessons and Lovers really struck a chord with her, and she was kind enough to post a long comment expressing her enjoyment in the book. She also posted about it on the Romantic Times message boards too, which was totally brilliant of her. It really warms my heart when somebody likes my writing enough to take the trouble to express their feelings. Even though I've been writing since the dinosaurs roamed, because I'm crap a promo, I probably don't get as many reviews and plaudits as a lot of authors who've come to prominence recently. So the ones I do get mean the absolute world to me - because a lot of the time, I have the most terrible doubts about the quality of my writing and storytelling and what have you... I might rabbit on with enthusiasm in my blog about my characters, but just because they seem alive and wonderful in my head, that doesn't mean my feelings about them necessarily translate onto the page in a form that others can enjoy... so when I hear that I got it right for a reader, I always feel totally over the moon!

So, many thanks, Anais! You made my day!

And that's only the start of it... I had a Vincent D'Onofrio dream, didn't I?

It went like this... I was on holiday somewhere, and Vin was working in the same town/city/whatever. I was in this big building, and upstairs, he was having a row with his agent about some film role or something, and I saw him storm out into the street. Obviously, seeing my hero, I followed [eek, I'm a stalker!] and though I was able to keep him in sight for a while, I lost him eventually and was rather disappointed. Anyway, I was standing under what I think was a bus shelter, and suddenly Vin jumped down from the roof of it and said 'Hello!' [this was actually inspired by my filmic moment in IllMet, I think...] He seemed v. pleased to see me for some reason, and took me by the arm and led me back to the building, where he was now about to do a scene in a hospital drama. I think I hung around there talking to him for a while, but eventually I had to go, and he grabbed me in his arms and gave me a very thorough kiss! He was holding me v. close and I was left in no doubt that I'd made a big impression on him!!! After that, we parted, but there seemed to be some intimation that we'd meet again... and then I woke up, alas.

Now if I could dream the next installment of this little saga tonight, I'd be a very, very happy person indeed!

virtuous... moi?

I am being very good today, and I have held off making my first web post of the day until I'd done 1K words of my WIP! Considering my pathetic record over the weekend, I thought it was the least I could do... Trouble is, now I've done a K, it's like a license to prat about for the rest of the day. A true professional, or just someone hungry to succeed, would now proceed to do a few more K... but me, I'll probably rest and watch some NCIS or just have a sleep.

Anyway, at least I've managed to get Robin and Lois to actually meet at last... Up until now, it's either been her 'dreaming' about him or him keeping her under his surveillance... while he's in another form. Now, finally, they're meeting and they're both human and real... well, at least for the moment, in Robin's case. The next thing is, now I've managed to get them together at last, I've got to get them into some kind of hot, rumpo type action situation... tee hee...

Words done so far today: 1297

disturbing... but also v. good!!!

http://www.myheritage.com

A disturbing result in that I look like as many men as women... but look who clocks in at #9!!!

irresponsible Saturday

I am bad. For two days, I've done virtually no writing. Friday, well, I suppose I have an excuse as I did have a busy day doing some much needed housework, and I did manage a hundred or so words... But yesterday, I was freaking useless! I managed to send a few emails that were needed, but most of the day I spent mucking about with my MySpace Profile and making silly slideshows and playing with various other web widgets and squidgets. I suppose this is both the blessing and the curse of broadband. It makes 'playing about' so much easier, because back when I was on dialup, the slow connection speed made most of the nice toys virtually unusable. But now I can give full reign to my procrastination skills and fondness for displacement activities. Damn!

Today, in the UK, we have an 'extra hour' due to the clocks being set back an hour for winter. I'm trying not to waste the extra time, and I have indeed done a tiny bit of writing so far, but I've got the worrying niggle of a gathering headache at the moment and I'm hoping it's not one of the dreaded migraines...

I'm quite pleased with the little chunk I've just written though. I was at a point, in a scene, where I didn't know what to do, but I've found a way to get through it, and can now move on to a more interesting section... And the thing with a novella is that you really do bash through it quite quickly, it being so short! I've done about 30% already! Novellas are quite a special craft, and you have to work hard to 'get it all in' in such a short wordcount [25K in this case] but I can see why so many authors like writing them. There's potential for feeling a sense of achievement in a relatively short space of time. And when you've got the attention span of a fruit fly, like me, that is a very good thing!

Words done so far today: 804

look wot I made!

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

for Non-Working Monkey

Photographs of a garden... allegedly.

Non-Working Monkey's Garden