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Today I went to a workshop put on by the Queensland Writers Centre all about building believable sci-fi/fantasy worlds for stories. It was run by Sonny Whitelaw--author of a heap of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis novels that, I think, were also turned into episodes of the series.

It was really really good and gave me a lot of things to think about in regards to Wingbones and other manuscripts I'll hopefully write in the future.

She also gave me feedback on chapter 2 of Wingbones (we were able to email her ten pages of our manuscripts prior to te workshop to get good feedback) and she was really optimistic about it and said lots of really positive good things about it. That was really exciting to have a 'real' (ie, profitiable) sci-fi writer be supportive of my work. It made me smile like an idiot.

Really want exams and assignments to be other so I can just focus on getting Wingbones done....

Should probably update my journal again.

Life has been pretty boring the last couple months. A self-imposed boring, but boring nonetheless. Just been hammering away at uni, and wasteing time that I should be using to hammer away at uni.

I'm down to two exams and two assignments, then I only have one semester left and it's all over.

One assignment is all critical theory and stuff and going to be really hard... will probably be comparing Butler's Gender Troubles, Halls's something-or-other and Said's Orientalism... of nothing else, this course gives me some good wanky namedropping potential.

My other essay looks exciting. Its meant to be a research project that we develop ourselves out of the internship we've been doing. I was doing a journal called Media/Culture and I will proably be doing an essay on online copyright and Creative Commons and looking specifically at Nine Inch Nails and how Trent Reznor has been releasing all his latet albums under Creative Commons. Might be interesting.

I have also begun typing a second draft of Wingbones. This might seem odd as I was yet to finish the first draft, but I think the first third that I have written really needs to be better...stylisied before i continue. Get the foundations right then the rest should fall into place, is the belief. Plan is to hammer Wingbones over the holidays, get as close to a complete draft as possible.

That's really it for now. Wil update again in another few months, if anything exciting happens..or if it (more likely) doesnt.

So I may not have updated this journal for three months.... whoops, sorry about that.

Life is going well. Uni is alright... some really boring subjects with no use, some boring ones with lots of practical use, some interesting ones, and some interesting ones with practical use... so it all balances out to an average semester, I guess. My use of plurals in that sentece was horrible, by the way, as I'm only doing four subjects this semester.

Anyhow, in other news. Wingbones is now over halfway (I hope). It's up to 52,000 words, and I'm currently two thirds of the way through my second version of chapter eleven. Eleven! That's double digits, crazy stuff. I've also sketched a map of the city, Kaigali. One day I'll get Helen to scan it and I'll work out a digital version in photoshop.

I had a birthday about a month ago.

I quit deli and transferred to checkouts. Sounds bad but its a lot better and I only ahve to work two days a week to make enough to survive.

And that's the last three months.

This is a draft, I only wrote it today.. but I'm really excited about it. FInally, some action! So I thought I might go and post it.

 

 

 

 

 

A while ago (or, four posts ago because I'm shit at updating) I posted the prologue of the steam-punk novel I'm trying to write, Wingbones.

As of today, I've finished chapter 5 and am now looking for some feedback before I go on. Basically, I want to know if you read this much of it, would you pay to read the rest? Though I think if anyone was kind enough to read this much of it and if it ever actually got published, you may be owed one free copy. But still, woudl you pay for it if you had to?

If anyone is willing to read it for me, just comment and I'll email it to you. I'm sure I have everyone's email address anyhow. Am looking for any amount of feedback from a simple "That's great/good/bad/shit" to detailed, line-by-line nitpicking.

It's about 60pages (1.5line spacing, 12pt Times New Roman) or 20,084 words.

Thanks to anyone willing. :)

So flicked on ABC while eating lunch and the National Press Club was on. Some Liberal personal taling about why they lost the election, blame the unions blah blah blah.

He made a statement that the unions spent more on advertising in the past YEAR (30million, or something) than either Liberal or ALP did during the campaign.

.... ooh, a union spending more in a YEAR that Liberal spent in a month... wow... go political spin, go. SO how much did Liberal spend in the year? According to ABC's website... they were spending 100million on the advertising campains they were running in may, plus 34million on 'non-campain isues'. ANd thats not including campaign spending. Just the stuff taxpayers had to pay for.

Fucking losers, that's why you lost the election. Go to Iraq and die.

We got back from japan yesterday morning.

WIll write a big blog about it when i get around to it... or helen will and i will just link to hers.

Twas all awesome.

Found out during the trip that i somehow got 3 distinctions this semester... not sure how i did that.

Dentist today... big ugly hole on my tooth... then back to woolies :(

Got 38/50 for my Screenwriting assignment (the script). Which is -just- a 6 (distinction). My overall mark for the subject is 75%... which, also, is probably -just- scraping in at a 6 for the subject.

I'll be happy with that seeing screenwriting is my least favourite form of creative writing.

So I just retyped (again) the intro to my novel and am now confident enough to post it. It's still far from finished and still needs some ironing out but the idea is all there. Basically the entire story is in Third-Person Past Tense but the intro is First Person Present Tense. I have my reasons.

Oh, and I've just done a straight copy/paste from word and I'm too lazy to go through and do a proper reformat. Just ignore the yucky linespaces between paragraphs.

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Had to write a story for one of my japanese subjects based on a childhood memory. It's twice as long as it is meant to be, but here you go.

(Of course, fluent google-translation included :p)

Spontaneously bought a Nintendo DS with the new Zelda and Mario64 yesterday. :)

It was a good choice... zomg so fun :D

I canjust change the language setting to japanese and say i'm still studying n_n

(why I love Underworld so much)

I want you to be the way I want you to be

and when you’re not it hurts me

like

shredded tape something sticky

for

security

wrapped tight

around a metal box to imitate

security

there’s a blue sky over me

but the fear is on me

 

in a place where ball games are strictly forbidden

luxury two bedroom departments

overlook the trafficlights next to the rails

it’s a hot day

it’s a

it’s a hot day

a lazy day for some

but I’m bringing from the inside all these things

I see a wall

I know’s gonna fall down

maybe hurt somebody

after it’s been

tagged

a flyer posted

it’s a rushed job

it looks good for long enough

knock em out and sell em

move on it’s a

fast buck

and the race is on

to get in get out

get what you want get out

it’s the short term

the long term can look out for itself

unless you happen to be living here

I gotta stop

people are squinting to block out the sun

complaining or sucking it up

praying for rain the next minute for a sun-scorched earth

what’s it worth

enough is never enough

let’s have a little ?moment?

put the world to rest

sit back and watch it all slide by

it’s the view from a train

pay somebody else to drive

see the suits

passing the suits

sunning themselves on the steps of the supermarkets

and I think of you and I’m alone like this

burning from the inside

 

I found a new door I didn’t know where it went

I went through I came out in this shopping mall where

boys wear England shirts

and Westham shirts

and Isenham shirts

and the boys from Dagenham where jackets

called Harlem

grinning at the door of the

handsomest sex-shop

it’s St George’s day

and all the old people smile

the young people look hungry

looking for a new door

I’m in the sun at the back of the shops

where the purple wheelie-bins

are pushed up against the doors that say

fire-exit

the smell of grease

there’s a broken glass thing under my feet

the boys stop for a smoke in the sun

and watch girls cross from the job centre

to the station

a drunk stands in the door of a pub

a bunch of peasticks in one hand

a Cheery carrier-bag hanging in the other

hanging in the other

girls in England shirts read the papers

and giggle at the table in a café

offering home-made dinners

it’s good food

but your clothes come out smelling of grease

I got my back to the rail at the end of the alley

by the bypass

you might just see me

scratching all these things

inking it out

deliver us from temptation

and doubt there is an abandoned trolley

called safe and radio one and on and on and on and on

and on and on and on and on

and another

England shirt out in the sun

spring falls in pink

on the blacktop and cracks

black and yellow tape covers the scene of a break-in

and every time I think of you

I get my peace back

people are squinting to block out the sun

complaining or sucking it up

praying for rain the next minute for a sun-scorched earth

what’s it worth

enough is never enough

let’s have a little ?moment?

put the world to rest

sit back and watch it all slide by

it’s the view from a train

pay somebody else to drive

see the suits

passing the suits

sunning themselves on the steps of the supermarkets

and I think of you and I’m alone like this

burning from the inside

"Climb down out of your brain, poet. You're tangled in the cobwebs of your dreams. Welcome to the land of your body, with all its guilt, with all its ecstasy."

My script is currently 2235 words long.

The word limit is 2500 - 3000... with a 10% leniance either way.

That's close enough for me n_n

*sleeps*

Hopefulyl when you read the title of this post, you envisioned huge trains going to war.... not warts raining from the sky.

Otherwise i may have a very confused tutor marking my script on friday....

As my script has stalled and I'm sick of writing out the same list of kanji characters over and over, I decided I would try to write a story. I've had several images stuck in my head for a few days and I was curious to see what would happen if i just stuck them all inthe same, weird, random, story.

_

my stupid script is arrogantly refusing to write itself.

My head feels so crammed full of stories at the moment that I think it is going to explode. Which is a good thing, I think, because it means I have a lot of stuff to write. But I'm scared a chapter of Wingbones (my novel)  or a character of Derailed (my script for uni) will just fall out of my ear and I'll lose it and that chapter or that character will be lost forever to everyone.

Logic says to just write down everything in my head.. but it doesn't work like that. It has to boil away for a set amount of time in my head first. Kinda like boiling an egg: if i take the ideas out too early, i won't realise its too early until its too lat to put them back in and i just get gooey idea-yolk all over the page.

So, point is, I have an outline of how I want to end Wingbones in my head.... which is good seeing as how im 13,000 wods into it, I should begine to have an idea of where it is going. I have also spent this morning writing the first draft of my film script (first 10pages-ish due next friday) and the more I write, the more it solidifies in my head and the more ideas I have, and those ideas are fighting with the Wingbones ideas! Aargh!

Also got my Between Blinking short story to retype with an extra 1000 words to become more Brisbane-y for a competition. And I havent writen a fan-fic yet this week, but I still have time.

Oh, and the 1000-character childhood memory narrative to write IN JAPANESE in two weeks... but that won't be too hard. It just sounds daunting.

In under four hours I have my job interview at the ABC Shop... how exciting. I'm nervous, but not rediculously (go spelling) so. Like, I'm going for this job because I want it, not because I need it, so I should be able to stay calm and controlled in the interview, which will probably work in my favour.

Will let you all know how it goes tonight :)

Enough ranting, back to work.

Helen informed me on thursday that the ABC Shop in the city opposite Oxfam had a sign up looking or retail staff and I thought f-yeah, I'm over woolies... time to leave. Si U threw together a resume and cover letter and handed it in friday afternoon.

This morning, Monday, i got a phone call and I have an interview on wednesday at 3.30 :D. It soudned really promising, the manager lady laughed on the phone and sounded quite the reassurance. SHe said they were interviewing a few people on that day but still...tis exciting. THe idea of working somewhere that isn't woolworths is daunting....