Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Writing Vacation Rekindles the Muse

Wow. It's been so long since I've used my netbook, I nearly forgot where I had left it. Worlds of difference from before it broke and I practically lived on this thing. Always on it while watching TV, or brought it with me to use on work breaks, or stashed it to work on writing while visiting a friend's place - in case said friend and Hubby decided they'd rather Magic - or even hide in my own bedroom with it in order to get writing done.

I guess the change is in part that I have more things that I need to work on now than I did over a year ago. Mostly, though, I think it's just because the laptop isn't fully fixed yet. I'm still stuck with my power cord needing to be plugged in at all times and the netbook itself lags way more than it ever did before. So I can't do as much with it as I used to.

Still. Going a week without touching it, or even realizing that I haven't touched it until I go to use it this morning... woah.

I've been spending my much more relaxing November week away from writing. Hubby and I used a free DVD rental to finally watch X-Men: Days of Future Past. For me, it's the same as the first X-Men movie that came out back in 2000. It was marvelously inaccurate to the actual comic book canon, but still very entertaining.

I've spent a few days getting back in to replaying Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. The real drive there, I think, is both the fact that I've had sea shanties from Assassin's Creed: Black Flag stuck in my head - so, why not go with a LoZ "pirate" game - and also the fact that Hubby lent Spink his copy of The Wind Waker. Watching her play it made me want to start up the digital copy we got with our Legend of Zelda themed WiiU. I have to say, the biggest kick I've been getting out of it is that they updated the game so Link can take selfies with his pictobox now. I also like that I can move the gamepad around to scan above me when using the bow and arrows, rope, pictobox, or telescope. It's neat to look around Link by looking around my living room. Plus, it's so much fun that I can still play on the WiiU while Hubby is watching TV or playing on the XBox. LOOOOOVE being able to just play on the gamepad!

I've also gotten pretty far in my long list of crochet projects. I'm nearly done with a belated birthday gift I needed done before the end of the month. I have the Christmas gift for my niece about 75% of the way done already. Which, is insanely amazing considering her blanket was completed AT HER HOUSE on Christmas last year, and the matching pillow was finished two days after her first birthday. I'm also just starting up another family Christmas gift. I may actually get these all done on time!

That doesn't mean I HAVEN'T been working on my stories, however.

I'm still mentally developing Lottie. Although, I'm now wondering if I should do with her what I'm doing with the X-Future reboot. Sure, the whole thing will still be a White Wolf "Vampire: The Masquerade" fanfiction - I can't change it too much - but I'm debating keeping the main characters as the players of our LARP. I'm leaning more towards just taking certain aspects of the characters and rework them in to originals for the story. For instance, instead of taking Dan exactly as Ronoxym created him, I can use the element of Dan being a Brujah Seneschal - essentially a Vampiric Vice President - that Lottie wants to manipulate in to Prince - Vampiric President of a city.

For Victor I can just make a generic tough-guy punk; perhaps a former rock star from the late 80s/early 90s. Quarthix hasn't put much depth in to Victor yet - or at least, hasn't displayed much depth - and so he's easy enough to customize in to my own story version. The group from Albany were all NPCs, and so The Bard didn't exactly create well-rounded characters, which leaves me with another spot where I can sink my teeth in to new characterization. As much as I love Hubby's two characters, aside from maybe using both as ways to manipulate the Cobleskill group, I don't foresee a need for either of them. In fact, aside from maybe including Katelyn as someone that is just as suspicious of Lottie as Lottie is of her, I don't see a need for any of the actual LARP characters besides Dan and Victor.

So, I've been trying to rethink my cast of characters. I know that I want to include the following:
  • Lottie
  • Dan and Victor - in some shape or form
  • Flashbacks including Lottie's husband Cooper and her sire Minnie
  • The Tzimisce that killed Minnie; who is still nameless - and technically genderless - at this point
  • The Prince of Cobleskill; who is Prince Stone if I go by the LARP
  • Possibly Katelyn and The Gangrel
  • At least brief appearances by Molly, Hank, and Joe from the Albany group
  • Possibly Hubby's characters Aiden and Billy
Obviously the big "bad guy" would be the murderous Tzimisce, but I need conflicts other than that. I need antagonists to push the story forward. I still need a plot. I'll have to see where my brainstorms take me.

Lottie's tale isn't the only thing I've been thinking about lately, though. The other day I randomly realized that I still haven't watched Joss Whedon's take of Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing". I then wondered - no matter how much I love Joss Whedon's work and the cast he picked - could it possibly dethrone the near perfection of Kenneth Branagh's version. Further contemplation about my favorite Shakespearean play resparked my urge to turn it in to a Hey Arnold fanfiction. So, for the past couple of days I've been mentally plotting out how to go back to my original fandom and write a story loosely based on Much Ado About Nothing; since I still can't find a good way to do a straight retelling.

Thinking about Hey Arnold again also rekindled my desire to get back to my long-forgotten What Is Truly Meant To Be. I actually had a comment about the story over on DeviantArt the other day. Funny how I was re-inspired to start working on it the day before someone commented on the tale. Please note, no one has read/commented on WITMTB more-or-less since I last wrote a chapter for it; about a year or two ago.

Fair warning though, guys:
Due to the amount of cleaning and crafting I have to do before the end of the year, the amount of WRITING I'll be doing before January will most likely be minimal. But I'll keep harvesting these plot bunnies and placing them in cages until I have the time and room to let them develop and mature.

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