Funky Cat Studio

Current Mood: cheers

Its such a lovely, powerful song. It only took me an hourish to get down the first bit pretty well, thanks to Whitepaws who played right hand for me while I tried to wrap my brain around the little skip thing.

It was just the right amount of challenge I needed and is really fun to play!

I’ve been wanting to learn it for awhile, but had problems with it before. Its cool how things just click when they click, eh?

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been trying to became a better writer. I’ve been thinking up/writing stories my whole life, but never bothered with the “rules”. *shrug* I don’t know why. Probably because I’ve never strived at anything before until these past few years (ask me about my knitting). My spell checker says strived is not a word. Hmm.

I’ve found that these rules, thus far, are more like guidelines. These rules are constantly broken by published and unpublished author’s alike, a point that Fred pointed out and everyone has noticed at one point or another.

One of the most important things I learned a few years back is that there is a delicate balance involved in word usage. Use as few words as possible, make every word count. That’s the best way I can sum it up and I use it the best I can when I’m aiming for something nice… e.g. when I’m not doing National Novel Writing Month. I could do better at it though.

Which brings me to adverbs. I’m sure I was taught over and over again about adverbs in school, but like everything else taught in school, such things never stuck with me. Wikipedia has a page on adverbs I’m currently poking through. There’s also this page here which tells me why adverbs are bad.

Poking around on Absolute Write’s forums, I found some helpful threads of things to avoid in writing. I copied down what I found and saw Adverbs and -ly mentioned here and there. It wasn’t until just now, being reminded through Fred’s post, that I went and looked this up.

I don’t even have to look at my first rewrite of Rayna’s Story to know that I’m in for a long session of spankings. :-/

So yeah. Time for some re-training on my part. This is one of those things that I know will make my writing better. So… I’m going to start trying to leave those little buggers out now that I know why they’re bad…. see, I already knew the “use less words” idea, but I didn’t know about adverbs. This will help greatly. I mean… this will help a lot? :-p Yeah, this will take some getting used to…

So yeah, it’s coming together and sinking in…

*ETA* 474 ‘ly’s used in my 27,350 word 1st re-write. I’m going to spend a bit of time here and there and see how far I can reduce that number. I think that will help train me to not use adverbs.

Look look! Guess who loves me?

My mommy!

We were talking on the phone yesterday (Wednesday) whilst she was poking about Micheal’s. We agreed an her sending me some stuff to make her stuff and I’d keep the rest and she wanted to see me making stuff with good quality stuff.

So, much to my surprise, this is what was waiting for me TODAY!

(its a HUGE pic)

Basically, she got everything I would have got if I had had the money :-p she even got me a new tool set (old set was rusty) and A CRIMP TOOL! I’ve been wanting one of those for ages. And TONS of crimp beads.

Something a bit annoying though: Apparently there’s different sized crimping tools for the different sized crimp beads! WTF. This is fine as I have the bigger tool to use the bigger beads which will be perfect for necklaces, which was what we were planning on. I was thinking the little ones would be -perfect- for some neat earring designs. So theres 2 sizes, small and medium, for the other crimps. I’m not in a hurry for them though :)

Oh, and you wanna know HOW I found this out? Yeah, it was all on the INSIDE of the packaging for the crimp beads. NOT the outside. >.< Ah well :)

So, I’m going to make her some things, and get to play with what’s left over. W00t.

I even have a few pairs of those threader style earrings to play with. I’ve been curious about those.

I’m SO excited about making some more jewelry… she got me TONS of that chain that I like using that I haven’t seen for… many many months.

Other than that, I received the homemade paper I won in the OHOW thing!! I really can’t decide what I want to do with it… I’m sure I’ll figure it out. It’s lovely stuff. I’ll have to take a pic of it later.

Man… see, this is what happens when I get rid of a bunch of stuff… and have good people in my life.

One other thing about today… Whitepaws finished fixing my bike, so we took a short ride down to the store. It was a lovely day. On the way back we ran across some tools on the side of the road. looked like somebody’s tool box fell off the vehicle and it just spewed all over. So we packed it up and we’re going to poke around to find out whose missing their tools.

As for my writing… I finally got rid of GEO! Oy vey… I’m so glad he’s out of the way. He was just… in the way. Not needed. He’s been there from the start and fun to make fun of… but not needed.

*ETA*

Look what I got Saturday! lol

I’ve been writing for years. I’ve been writing since before I could form proper words on paper. Over the last couple years I’ve toyed with the idea of actually learning the ins and outs of proper writing. Despite what it may look like on my blog, I actually do pretty well with grammar when I want to. I score pretty high in those areas according to online testes such as this and that.

Problem is: I know what’s wrong in a sentence, but I don’t know -why-. Sure I can rewrite it and make it make sense, but I don’t know a fucking clause from dangling dingle-verb.

I’m trying to learn all the little things to keep things reading smooth and polished. The few things I have learned (which I don’t even remember anymore, they’ve become second nature) has helped out a lot.

Something else I’ve been working on (to a small extent) is leaving out unnecessary/inappropriate words. Such as ‘that’. I guess ‘seemed‘ is another one. Some of this stuff is utterly fascinating to me!

So there’s that stuff and POV, which I’ve been reading about today. Thanks to someone over at AbsoluteWrite, it seems that what I’m writing as far as POV is exactly the same way Robert Jordan did his Wheel of Time series. This makes me feel a bajillion times better about the whole POV thing, because I wasn’t sure how readable it was to others.

I think my strengths as a writer are my ideas (including characters, stories/plots, etc). I just think my ability to do them justice is… lacking. But I’ve improved! :-p

I just want it to be pristine, readable, enjoyable and make SENSE, mmkay? ^-^

Current Mood: annoyed & full & infuriated

Something that I think all writers need to look at is that little golden “rule”: Show, don’t tell.

I’m all for showing. It makes with the coolness. But then there was an article I read somewhere (I’m trying to find it, goddamnit!) from a popular author who said otherwise, and I could also see -his- point of view too.

I think Telling kind of goes hand in hand with a little thing I’m going to call Streaming. I was sitting here typing away. You know, it doesn’t have to be anywhere near readable because its called WRITING, not ANAL RETENTIVENESS, but I have been noticing more and more lately that I just end up on a tangent… Telling and not Showing.

Sure, I did some showing of what Rayna’s tribe was like, but then I ended up in this disjointed POV that was supposed to be Rayna’s and it was a heaping load of Streaming brains and Telling. Its more like notes than anything, and it just drives me nuts. I keep thinking that I should be actively writing, not taking fucking notes. I don’t need to take notes. I’m not in class. I’m living it all in my head.

Must Show! Must not Tell!

But it doesn’t have to be perfect on the first write. Not only does it have to be, it shouldn’t be.

So I think that’s a little something that really gets in the way of my writing. Sure, I can discover some new things that way about the world I’m writing in (yeah, I contradicted myself from earlier). I just can’t get over that little roadblock. I have the ideas, I’m just not happy with the way I put them down and put them together.