Plants in Pots: The Story Thus Far

So this is what my container garden looked like in its prime, around early July of last year:

Basil, cilantro, and rosemary…

…Okra and spinach, jointly, just barely sprouting up.

And this is what it looked between last August and this past February:

Uh, yeah. Lord knows what was living in there.

I went on a three-week trip out of the country last summer, and that is essentially what I returned to. I figured I should throw in the all-purpose gloves and plan more thoroughly for next spring. Well, next spring is here!

I did manage to reap a bit of produce for all my hard work. Four okra pods.

Four!

I’ve spruced up the containers for this year, and added a couple more smaller ones. This year, one big container's got carrots, and the other one's got a Roma tomato plant in the center surrounded by spinach (don't know if that'll work. Alas, I've got to conserve space). The smaller containers hold basil, bell peppers, a second tomato plant I got for free (Early Girl variety), rosemary from last year, and thyme. The rosemary confounds me; it died, then sprouted again out of nowhere despite the fact that I did nothing to it. Now that I've transferred it to another pot and care for it, it decides to shrivel up and die. What?

When I get pics off my camera, I’ll be sure to put them up, not that there's a ton of activity going on in those pots thus far. The carrots are sprouting some, along with the bell peppers. The Early Girl plant seems to be doing the best, but that's probably because it was a started plant to begin with.

Anyway, here's to hoping that this experience continues to be fun and rewarding this year.

Fiction Update: Fic Overload/Delving into Ideas

Progress report time again.

So, I've got to admit, I'm a little overwhelmed. I'm finding myself really itching to finish some fics I started a while back. There are four I have in mind-- that's a lot of fiction to be working on all at once! I have a lot of unfinished work, and after going back to reread them, I've gotten completely excited about them all over again. They really deserve to be finished, if not just for the sake of finishing them. There are so many of them though, that I kind of don't know where to begin. All these fanfics, on top of a screenplay and a novel. I'm spreading myself a little too thin. You might be thinking, "Considering the trouble you have with sitting down and actually writing, why waste your time with fics when you could be working on career-building work?"

...That's a good question, actually.

Well here's why I do it, regardless of whether I should or not:
1) Actually finishing any work is really satisfying.
2) I want to write, gosh darn it. And somehow, when I'm writing fanfics, I manage to do that. I feel so much more capable and liberated when I'm playing in someone other writer's sandbox, as contradictory as that sounds.
3) My finished fanfics could very easily be adapted into something else. Grouped into a collection of short stories, maybe? Some of them are long enough to be novellas. So who knows?

I want it all. That's something I've learned about myself over the last couple of years. I want to do it all. This applies to me in a lot of situations, now that I think about it. In this case though, I want to write a novel, I want to write a screenplay, I want to write fanfics to share with close friends. I want it all, even though these things take time, effort.

You know something though? I don't see anything wrong with that.

So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to try to finish all my projects over the next, eh, I don't know. Six months, tarting tonight. Really. I mean it. Don't look at me like that, I mean it. I'll keep a running report right here. Here's the roster:

Fiction Update/A Brief History of My Writing Background

Perhaps the most exciting thing I’ve been doing in regards to my novel as of late is to actually think about it. Okay, I take that back. I think about writing SJL all. The friggin’. Time. What I really mean to say is now I’m actually sitting in front of a computer screen and words are actually forming. All together, now: Wooowwww!

I just realized that I haven’t really gotten into any of my history with my attempts at novel writing. I guess I’ll write an entry about it. Like to hear it? Here it goes.

The first time I set out to write a novel, I was about ten. It was a mystery novel featuring a kid detective. I still have it saved somewhere in my labyrinth of folders, one of the last remnants of my childhood works of fiction. I actually wrote a lot of stories about this girl and her friends, but this was the only one I was pushing toward novel length. I treasure it more than I could express. This is writing of mine from when writing was just an uncomplicated pleasure. I got about… *runs to check* 27,180 words and 144 pages in, double-spaced.

Then I got older, reread it, hated it, and stopped.

Okay, maybe “hated it” is a bit strong. “Outgrew it” might be more accurate. I still reread it for kicks. Most of it is amusing, but occasionally I surprise myself with a fairly interesting moment of descriptive language. I sit there and wonder, “How’d I learn to do that and when did I forget how?”

I found myself trying again when I was in middle school, around twelve. I gave up the formulaic mystery set up and aimed for an epic fantasy, chock full of some of the tastiest fantasy food groups: magic, a faraway kingdom with a corrupt royal family, a brave (and precognitive!) young female protagonist, a handsome prince, war, outlaws, badass evil-slaying swords, monsters, *throws arm over forehead and sways* oh, t’was a fantasy tale indeed. That one was 35,024 words and 107 pages long (smaller font?) double spaced, and nowhere near finished.

Then I got older, reread it, was embarrassed by my writing, and stopped.

And that made all the difference.

I had dramatically changed as a person and a writer by that point. By fourteen, I realized that I’d been writing it like a twelve year old. Which is understandable, considering the fact that I had at the time been, well, twelve. But at fourteen? *Pshaw* No. No, no, no. Wouldn’t tolerate it. And I don’t think I ever recovered from the shock of hearing my own writer’s voice for the first time. I think it sort of traumatized me, like I couldn’t trust myself with my own words, I couldn’t trust that I wasn’t making myself out to be… unskilled? Immature? I don’t know where to pinpoint that fear. It’s a scar I still bear today, as I sit around wondering all the time if my writing is simply good enough.

I told myself I’d come back to it when I was older, that I’d give my epic fantasy series another shot once I figured I was old enough to wield that kind of behemoth. I still haven’t gotten around to it, but that of course is due to two reasons: 1) I obviously have other projects on my plate, and 2) J.K. Rowling. She kind of had the fantasy thing on lock.

I’ve pretty much been thinking about my current endeavor since I was sixteen, and really working to write it since I was seventeen. I already know what you’re thinking. “Hm, well that sounds like a recipe for disaster. I mean, I’m sure you’ve changed by leaps and bounds from when you were seventeen.” I guess so. Still, this story has remained largely the same, and I don’t know if there’s a surefire way to tell if that’s a good thing or not.

For some reason, this project has been the hardest thing I’ve ever put my mind to-- other than your typical math class, but that’s another story *cue lame ass rim shot*. With my previous attempt, I discovered the humbling truth: that absolutely anything I’ve written at any given time is susceptible to being completely, tragically flawed. It might be due to lack of skill (which I may or may not be able to help), or it might be a manifestation of my naivete (which I could never help on my own accord). Either way, it’s possible, and I worry about it even as I type this sentence.

What about your fanfiction, you ask? Well actually, maybe you don’t ask that at all, but it’s something worth mentioning. For one reason or another, my fanfics are some of my most complete work. Strange, but true. I think it might be because the pressure’s off when I’m writing fics—it doesn’t have to be anything, it doesn’t have to be finished by any particular point in time, or at all if I so choose. I play around with chronology and get creative with the way I present information to the reader. I have fun with my interpretation of an already established character, or real life person. I incorporate real life places and events. It’s a really relaxing way to write. One of them, as I’ve mentioned, is even novel-length already.

It seems kind of a waste to just write them and leave them to sit aimlessly on my computer, so I’ve done some thinking about what I might do with them once I have a hefty-enough number of them. I might collect them, rework some surnames here or there (to remove the fandomy elements), and treat them as a collection of short stories. Or since they’re so long, treat them as individual novellas. I’m not really sure what I might do with them, but I’ll type along, and I’ll find out soon enough.

Fiction Update

Made wonderful progress on "Looking Glass", the fic I post on an MJ fanboard I frequent (actually, it's one of very few I visit these days, and the only one I post at). I posted chapter five, which finally takes a look at the life of one of the three main characters (Brynne, the one caught between her fiance and closest friend).

It took me a little over three months to get that chapter up. At first, I just wasn't working on it. For some reason, it wasn't flowing as freely as the first four chapters (which I wrote and posted immediately between October and December-- a turnover rate that's rare for me). Now that I look back that chapter, I can see why-- it's massive! There is so much information and time covered in that chapter that I think to myself, "no wonder I was so reluctant to dive in right away, and no wonder it took me so long to finish once I got started."

Next chapters are only going to get more complex, so I hope this slowdown isn't permanent. Months spent between each chapter would be a total pain. Though, I'm pretty sure most of the remaining chapters won't be quite as long.

In other writing news, I'm working on developing a new idea for a novel. I know that's strange since I'm still working on my other novel, but this feels like a great idea-- it came from a dream. A coherent one, of course. I'm also wondering if it might make a better screenplay, but I haven't really decided where I'm going with that.

I don't really know why, but my camera doesn't seem to like cooperating with iPhoto. I tried to add some recently taken photos and things didn't quite work out the way I planned. This is actually a completely separate issue from the previous one I was having with iPhoto. I guess I just have to chalk it up the age of this computer. It's a dinosaur! ...Great, hope I didn't jinx anything... Anyway, I'm going to try the upload again and see if things work better.