A Healthy Dose of PMS ~#

[Psychotic Maniacal Sanity]

~Tuesday 20th April, 2010.

Now playing: Nine Movie Cast - Take It All

You want my glove, are you enthralled? You want to see it slip away and watch it fall?

I've sent the files for both my interior of GaL and the front cover to createspace.com to check. After that the proof should be ready to go. No doubt there will still be some silly errors, but I'm willing to risk that in order to focus on other stuff. I want to do something new, or something creative at least. Editing seems to have sucked all creativity out of my life. I've not written anything since I finished the novel, and I'm dying to get started again, even if it's only a few words a day.

If I'm to work on the trilogy novel, it will mean a LOT of re-reading, so I'm beginning to think it might be better to work on the stand-alone novel. However, that's what drew me to GaL, so it seems like I'm starting to put off Roboto. It's not that I don't want to finish it, I think it just comes with too much baggage - if I want to write it well, I need to read something like 260k worth of writing, and that will take time. I'll have to create timeliness, plot sketches and work on it seriously. I just don't have that kind of time in my schedule right now. Maybe I'll do the research stuff over the summer, meaning I'll be able to just start writing it in the autumn.

In any case, GaL is done with. Completely. Finally. I need to do revision for my exams and reading for my lecture tomorrow, but after that I might settle down with some tea or a hot chocolate and get planning the new novel.

I'll post a synopsis later, probably. Keep checking back!!

Oh, we know it´s your show so take it all.

 

[DesertRoseFallen]

Ooo definitely post it! And good luck with this new novel, I love the excitement that surrounds planning one, let alone writing it. Sure you will do well!

 

[Psychotic Maniacal Sanity]

I do love that honeymoon period where you're first planning a novel, getting new ideas all the time and just getting a feel for your characters. It's quite heavily influenced by the amount of the TV show Dead Like Me I was watching before Easter, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Without that kind of inspiration I usually fall flat. I love having something to obssess with at the same time as my writing, or else it feels like something is lacking...

Anyway, I'll get that synopsis posted in my next post, after I've written down a vague plot. I'm just working on my characters at the moment. =D  

[DesertRoseFallen]

Haha I know, usually its the best part of the novel! I adore planning so much, whereas I used to hate it so much! Glad to see it going alright!

 

[Psychotic Maniacal Sanity]

Alrighty, so here's the basic idea:

Daisy Fisher's life is thrown into chaos when her younger sister is murdered. Erin was always a loose cannon, even as a teenager, and Daisy fears that there is something to her death that is being kept from her. Even the circumstances surrounding the whole afair are pretty mysterious, and the police aren't much help.

Now, saddled with Erin's teenage daughter Vanessa, Daisy is trying to cope with the loss of her sister, hold down a job, and deal with her a*****e of a boyfriend Kyle. It isn't until she finds an old piece of mail in her sister's house that things begin to piece together - and by then, it's too late.

Before she knows what's even happening, Daisy is dead and now the latest resident in a place called Valhailen. Unfinished business? She's got oodles of it. Common sense? Probably not. And now Vanessa is in danger, and apparently it's Daisy's job to rescue her. Pity she was never very good at that kind of thing...

Et voila. =3 Do you think it sounds interesting?  

[DesertRoseFallen]

The idea sounds fantastic! I love a big crime mystery! So is Daisy in some sort of other plane, being dead? And she has to help spiritually?

 

[Psychotic Maniacal Sanity]

Yep! That's pretty much how it works. She's allowed to go back (with a chaperone or two), and she's pretty much alive again for the time she's there - only she looks different and can't go by her old name, for obvious reasons. Also, she's not supposed to have any contact with her family, so she'll have to decide between breaking the rules and risking being stranded on Earth in a kind of limbo, and doing things by the book but possibly getting her niece in trouble. XD

There's also a gang involved, you see. Vanessa will tell some of the story, I think...

I just can't decide whether to write in first or third person. Part of me thinks that Daisy's narrative will work better in first person, but at the same time I think it's time to write in third person again, and Vanessa works better in third person. gonk

Any ideas? Haha.  

[DesertRoseFallen]

Do a third person loose? You can always flick between the two? Though, I usually do a fixed third person haha.

However, this sounds brilliant! You'll have to give me sneak peaks *wink, wink*.

 

[Psychotic Maniacal Sanity]

I posed the question on Facebook, and the response I got was simply "Do them both!" Now, since this is coming from my writer friends, I'm slightly less inclined to write it off as bad advice. Do you think it would be silly to switch between first and third person? I mean, since Daisy is narrating, the switches to third person could be seen as just extensions of her narration, which might be quite cool...

I've never seen a novel done in this way, but one of my friends assures me he's seen a quite popular novel split between the two POV's and he said it worked really well. Bah. Decisions, decisions!! This is one of the main reasons I've not started writing yet, lmao.

Of course I'll post a little here and there. I hope you enjoy it!  

[DesertRoseFallen]

I think it would appeal to some people and would be a good experiment. I, for one, would get too confused haha but then again, I haven't seen anything like it. So...I say if you want to, do it!

And I wish I had more writer friends. I have none in real life xD

 

[Psychotic Maniacal Sanity]

I met a bunch of people through going to my local NaNoWriMo group, and we still stay in touch, and then there are the people on my creative writing course at uni. They're cool too. XP

I think I'll give it a go, and just make sure that the chapters are clearly labelled, so it's easy for people to tell what's going on? If after the first Vanessa chapter I don't like her in third person, I might just switch to first. As much as I'd love to write a novel in third person, I just don't think that Daisy's sense of humour, and the idea of the afterlife would come through as effectively in third person...  

[Racheling]

Tough decision. I usually write in third, but right now I'm trying first. It can be hard not to get overly chatty in first, sometimes. I've read books that alternate between first and third, and one of them really threw me off because of the way it was done. But anything can work. Maybe you could ask your friend what book it was that he thought did it well and check it out?

But there's nothing wrong with giving it a try and seeing how it goes!  

[DesertRoseFallen]

Cor so lucky! My characters have my dry, sarcastic sense of humour...I find it hard to write anything else haha. I suppose that is bad, but I don't find any other type of humour...funny. Good luck with the switching though!

 

[Psychotic Maniacal Sanity]

I hope (it could change!) that Daisy has a sort of subtle, dry sense of humour. It's actually similar to my sense of humour, but normally I don't write humour very well at all, so this is an experiment really.

The more I think about it, the more I'm tempted to just go with first person. Since I'm not starting writing yet anyway, I guess I'll just keep thinking about it. Maybe my brain will come to it's own conclusion eventually without my conscious help. xd

I do have a first line though. I've had it since I knew I wanted to write this novel:

"After death people no longer judge you by how you lived your life. Instead all they care about is the way that you died."

What do you guys think? Interesting enough that you'd want to read more? =O  

[DesertRoseFallen]

That is a very good line. Tell you what, the best line I have ever read was, "I wasn't there when I died." James Herbert, Nobody True, brilliant book. It kind of sounds a bit like your book but very different? He suffers from OBE's (Out of Body Experiences) and someone kills him whilst having one.