• Mood: calm

Who I am and where I'm going.

BlogAThon Breakdown
Because I'm obsessive like that.

Worlds
Shayara: 34 storybits
Not-Shayara: 12 Storybits (Church, Uhrwerk, Baklava, Fiction, Crow, Puzzle, Metallic, Forbidden, Phoenix, Twilight, Ondine, Yes). Damn. I counted wrong. Because "Yes" isn't in my little book where I counted stuff. And there's less than there ought to be. I've missed stuff. Oy.


Characters

Alanna: 5 - Ritual, Twelve, Shatter, Shudder, Shiver; offstage in Closet, Tea, and Perfect.

Bram: 1 - Tea.

Capri: 5 - Tangle, Butterfly, Blue, Luna, Cowboy; offstage in Closet and Coupling.

Donna: 5 storybits - Tea, Scimitar, Illuminated, Anxiously, Confusion.

Fenris: 3 - Butterfly, Revolution, Coupling; offstage in Yellow.

Halloran: 3 - Blue, Coupling, Cowboy.

Jeramie: 3 - Tea, Twelve, Shatter; offstage in Closet.

Jessamyn: 2 - Yellow, Butterfly.

Johnathan: 5 - Onomatopoeia, Silence, Aliiive!!!, Fraught, Miserable.

Julia: 6 - Tangle, Silence, Closet, Revolution, Confusion, Shiver; offstage in Anxiously.

Katrianna: 2 - Hairbrush, Perfect.

Kieran: 4 - Anxiously, Luna, Coupling, Cowboy; offstage in Closet.

Lyric: 3 - Silence, Bliss, Miserable (also as Lily).

Napalm: 7 - Onomatopoeia, Scimitar, Silence, Aliiive!!!, Bliss, Fraught, Miserable.

Ryan: 3 - Closet, Shudder, Coupling.

Sara & Joseph: 3 - Sleep, Fingernails, Cowboy (Joseph only).

Tessa: 3 - Scimitar, Silence, Aliiive!!!; offstage in Perfect.

Victor: 1 - Cowboy.

Shayara itself: 4 - Frosty, Elsewhere, Ocean, Idyllic.

I'm just fascinated with figuring out what comes out of my head when I'm not thinking about it, when I'm just writing the first thing that comes to mind. I already knew that Napalm's voice comes easiest. :)

I spent last night inserting page breaks, editing typos, and adding creator commentary. Note: typos are the only thing I'm editing. The upfuckedness of what spills out of my brain on hour 23 of no sleep is the point of this.

With the creator commentary, this is a 70-page Word document.

At lunch, I'm going to neaten it up, make sure every "chapter" starts on the right-hand page, red-pencil any typos I didn't catch on the computer screen, and then it'll be ready for sponsors.

Obviously, the next thing I have to do is compile a list of sponsors... to e-mail this to, and to determine who gets what incentives. I know swisscheesed was only doing illustrations for donations of $10 and up; moniqueleigh has offered to do tatting and earrings, and I get to determine which donation level gets 'em, so I have to see if the $25 and up level would be too many people for her.

Everyone who sponsored me, no mattered what the amount, gets the documents with storybits + commentary, and the original short story. Don't know what that'll be. I may expand Ondine. I dunno. Some of my mental real estate is now occupied with non-Shayara stuff.



Writing in general
As for Shayara stuff, I'm going to crack down on myself and get linear. I keep discovering new things about the characters as I write them. The story expands every day. It's past time to start writing it as a novel.

After the rape, I had seven years of writer's block... when I emerged, this is what I was doing, writing in fits and starts. Now that I've really committed to it in the past few months, I've been turning out better work.

Most importantly - I've been turning out story.

I'm a writer. Time to act like one. The only reason I'm not published is because I've never submitted anything for publication. Puzzle is derivative, but I like Ondine and could expand Yes (which you guys keep calling Wings).

Ain't no reason not to, save a fear of success.

This is where my energy will be going.


Shift
volta said I run my journal more like a community than a personal journal, and that is true, has become true. Because I really like you guys and what you have to say.

What I need to do for myself now is to downshift. To write this stuff for me alone. No pirates vs. ninjas or Haim vs. Feldman polls. :)

You may like it. You may not. But it's got to be about me... the soon-to-be Mrs. Lipkin. Elayna's mom. The girl in this icon, curled up in a chair and just writing. Rather than LJ-Famous Shadesong.

Because I don't like some of the stuff that comes with being LJ-Famous Shadesong. And it's my life, and I've chosen not to take part in that... I have much more important things to be doing, and this causes me to lose sight of some of them.

So this is who you're going to get now. To use a drastically simplified viewpoint: Mrs. Lipkin, not Shadesong.

Contrary to popular belief, the numbers don't matter to me. The only way they matter is that it's an egoboost to see that so many of you enjoy my writing style.

But I wonder how many of you are only interested in LJ-Famous Shadesong, and not also in me. I suspect that the ratio is dramatic.

And that's fine.

I'm not going away. I'm just shifting focus.

If you decide to leave, that's fine. You've got a free pass out of here, baby.

If you decide to stay, that is, of course, also fine.

But I gotta be me. And I gotta draw a line. And this is it.

Love,
the future Mrs. S. Lipkin
Mrs. Elayna's mom
'song
...me.