Dorienne's Log

Pasted from my wordpress.com (since I’m not talented enough to create for two blogs right now):

One of the more fascinating things about writing a novel is crafting the personalities and voices of the many characters that appear on the page. What I find simultaneously enjoyable and frustrating is the physical act of creating dialogue that I could never even imagine myself saying.

In Damen, this comes about most often while writing Corey. Corey is crass, blunt and curses like the proverbial sailor, yet when I write dialogue, I often need to whisper the words back to myself to make sure they make sense, and when a character is so unlike myself that it’s rather sickening, I feel dirty even writing what he would say. That is to say, I used to feel dirty when writing Corey’s dialogue. I’ve now grown accustomed to it and can easily separate my own voice from Corey’s. Damen, however, is far different.

To make him a character all on his own, I gave him “life” by giving him small pieces of my own personality. Since Damen is not an autobiography, however, he is a completely different person with a voice and history all his own. I go to church often (not as often as I could and should, but we’re all Christ’s works-in-progress) and I try to thank God for all His gifts every day of my life. Damen, on the other hand, rests somewhere on the line between agnostic and plain atheist. So much has happened in his life that make him doubt that a creator could have any hand in the machinations of his world and the fact that he has had none of the religious reinforcement that many others his age would experience, has tainted him even further against God and all religion. And so, he when he swears (and when he’s still reeling in Corey’s influence, it’s very often), Damen will often use the Lord’s name in vain.

My mind and heart make great conflict over this. The mind says that words on a page are simply that and as long as I don’t go around screaming “Godd***t!” all the time, I remain clean. On the other hand, the heart that helped me walk out into the church aisle years ago, crying as I went to the altar to join the church, knows that it is wrong to use the Lord’s name in vain in any context. If I’m writing it, I’m saying it, even if I do skip over those words and phrases as I whisper dialogue back to myself and thus the battle continues.

This reminds of when my 16 century Brit-Lit class was studying “Faustus” and the effect of being an actor in the play during a time when folks were far more religious than they are now. The actor playing the titular character would have to call upon the devil to make Mephistophilis appear and whether one is acting or not, there is still that innate worry of “calling upon the devil.” While I have stopped blatantly swearing and using God’s name in vain years ago, the mere acting of writing such dialogue is difficult to the point that I go through four or five waves of typing and backspacing as I decide whether or not to have Damen think “Jesus Christ!” in a moment where he is clearly not praying. Even typing that last sentence used to get across my point gave me pause.

I can’t say that I’m completely indoctrinated as I have only come to the church in the last five years and had written off myself as an agnostic prior to that, but I must say, each time I’ve got a choice between staying true to my character and saying what I know to be wrong to say, I struggle…a lot.

I wrote 626 words tonight (his first extracurricular conversation about a novel since his father had passed) and when a moment called for Damen using God’s name in vain, somehow my heart took control and I’m glad I found a better way to say I wanted. That said, I’ve still a lot of Damen’s character to unleash and eventually, I’ll be pressed with the same battle again.

It’s done! It’s done! It’s finally done! It’s a good two weeks after I had intended on having it done and an hour and forty-three minutes outside of the final deadline I had given myself, but…IT’S DONE!

Flight, a novel is finally complete. It’s weird though…I think I was more excited as I wrote the very last section of it, than I was when I wrote “El Fin” and added a timestamp at the bottom of the book. It’s current, unedited state it stands at 371,393 words and 707 pages in M$ Word. It was completed Thursday September 27, 2007 at 1:43AM EST. Looking over it now, I see it’ll be a couple day’s worth of editing before it’s ready to be viewed by the world, but…I’ve done it. I finished a novel. How many people can say they’ve done that?

Edit (9/30/07): I completed my first “edit” of the book and feel that it is finally ready for others to read. The new word count is 372,036, but still 707 pages. 🙂

I was actually in a happy mood until about three minutes ago, during which time I had to go through pages and pages of spam on my blog. What is it with spammers? What is to be gained by spamming people? The comments go unread and nothing is accomplished. At least with viruses there is the satisfaction that you ruined an unsuspecting person’s machine or with phish, where there is some monetary gain to be had. Spam is just mind-boggling for me…anyway.

My English class is going well, eerily well, it feels. I think I had just grown so accustomed to performing poorly in my classes that I don’t know to feel after coming from an exam with a positive feeling. I have found a new love…well, love is a bit much, but oh well…for Shakespeare. Othello has me frightfully intrigued in every way possible. I have not liked a work this much since reading Fried Green Tomatoes at Whistle Stop Cafe for the first time, however, I feel a bit daunted over the aspect of having to go through some of his historical pieces. I see myself being extremely bored throughout, but I will try to approach the plays with an open mind. I mean, if he wrote them, there had to be some significant story to be told, so there is a possibility that I might just love them. Who knows?

There are so many things I want to do with this life and there simply does not seem to be enough time. I want to write, design websites for every show and book I’ve ever loved, play my sims, write and publish sims stories on my sites, learn to play piano, play the piano, plant trees, knit sweaters, play ddr, go running, write in my blog, implement flash on my church website, be at church, know the Bible, learn some aspects about the Torah, organize all my videos, rip all my shows and movies to my computer, make YouTube videos, watch videos, make up with old friends, contact even older ones, make new friends, be an inspiration to someone somewhere at sometime…

Sigh. There’s just so much to do and there’s no time to do it. That’s the depressing part.

Flight is officially a monster of a book. At 337 pages and more than 177K words, I am wondering just how big it will get. This “part” of the book is moving along in weird spurts of inspiration. I’ll be in the moment and write like crazy and then I get to a point where I just want to scrap the whole thing like I did today with a poem I was attempting to write. I was going on and on about being black instead of an African American and I, quite literally, dragged my pen across the paper and groaned about how ignorant I was sounding. I know what I want to say, and there are times when I think I can communicate those words best through, but I just can’t seem to cut it when it comes to poetry. It sometimes seems like the harder I try, the worst it all sounds. I can hear myself struggling as I re-read the crap…but the fanfic is going as well as it can.

Adventures in Vegetarianism #7
Five months into this, I am still going strong. There are days when it seems almost like second nature, as if I’ve always been living this way. Then, there are others, when all I want to do chow down on chili dogs or grinders, but those days are few and far between. The main thing, however, is that being a full-fledged vegetarian is accomplishing the goal I have set out to do. Slowly, but surely, I have managed to shed ten pounds. Not a huge improvement seeing as how I’ve got so far to go, but the fact is, the scale is going down instead of up for the first time since I was fifteen. I plan on taking my measurements again in another week to see if I’ve made any improvements, but I am astounded how I can eat what I want and just exclude meat, and still get the same results I want. Someone once told me that losing the meat caused the pounds to come off, but I did not believe it as they were wearing a PETA shirt at the time, but now, I do wonder.

What I like about being a vegetarian is the change in me. I feel better and people tell me I look better, too. All in all, I feel like a healthier person and my mother has now dropped meat from her diet. At this rate, PETA might stop eating meat altogether, however, nothing will make me give up cheese. I won’t eat the animal, but cheese, all kinds, is a special treat for me and nothing could make me drop. My body withstands it even through violent lactose intolerance, and yet I still keep going. Oh well. I suppose I should not say what I will and will not do because three years ago, I knew I would never be pro-life and I knew I would never understand why people gave ten percent of their livelihood to the church and so on. God only knows what I’ll know tomorrow.

And, speaking of my Almighty, a year after winning from the church, I finally got my piano. I am so excited by it, I could just scream. There are five broken keys, but I don’t play anywhere near well-enough for those to matter for a bit. I am just so excited to have one that’s all mine and I practice upon until the wee hours of the night. I just love the idea of either getting lessons for it or simply teaching myself how to play. I told my mother that this could be my birthday present because it is simply outstanding. I know I will have years of fun and (to be a bit melodramatic) peace with this instrument and it gets me excited again just thinking about the fact that it sits downstairs waiting for me.

Piggy-backing off of my YouTube milestone, I’ve hit a far more important one; two actually. This Tuesday past, I wrote my first 100,000 words in my novel Flight. Always the obsessive-compulsive writer, I actually narrowed down the 100,000th word…it was “felt” :). The second writing milestone was writing 200 pages worth of text. While the page count isn’t all that important because depending on how paragraphs flow and much of one page is simple dialogue, the hundred-thousand words most definitely is. Having no idea how big a book any word count would be, I compare everything to JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix as it is the only book that, for some reason, I’ve remembered its word count. OOTP is about 225,000 and the book is about 900 pages in the US, so I figure that I’ve written about nearly 400 pages, if Flight was ever a published novel. The idea of it just makes me laugh because I’m 400 pages into it and I’m only about a third of the way through the book. I know this thing is just going to be a beast.

The length of this book has got me thinking, though. I may end up being one of those Stephen King-ish, long-winded writers since the notes themselves for the novels are getting longer and longer. I guess I just have a lot to say, but I’m excited overall to see what others have to think about this, my first novel. My dream is that years from now, when I look back on my work, I’ll think to myself, “All the Newberrys notwithstanding, Flight was my first novel and therefore, will always be thought of as my greatest work.”

**Sigh***
Finally! Back where I belong and everything’s falling into place. For the first time in months, my outlook does not look so bleak. I’m doing what I should be doing and at the end of this quarter, I’ll be taking a long-awaited and long-deserved break. Of course, I’ll still be working, but at least I won’t be working and in school at the same time for a week.

I feel like this over-bearing weight is every-so-lightly lifting off my shoulders day by day, and I really do think that everything will be all right. I attribute 90% of this to going to church this week and making it to Sunday School on time. Everyone was so surprised to see me there, not racing in just before consecration. I start teaching on my own this Sunday and I’m really excited about it. I hope it’s not boring for everybody. I suppose if it doesn’t work out, they’ll either move me somewhere else or fire me altogether, but I’m hoping I don’t let anyone down on this. There’s a Wednesday night service tomorrow and I really can’t wait. I’m half mad since I didn’t get to put my tithes in on Sunday because I completely forgot about it. Usually I just have Mother throw it in for me, but she was busy with her own things and wasn’t there. I’ll have to find someone I trust to put it in on days when she can’t be there.

The written word is in the air and it’s loving me! I’ve been writing everyday and I feel like the well of words just keeps flowing. I’ve never been this in tune with a piece before. I feel like since I’ve completely laid out the plot, writing the details is all the more exciting. I love looking back on my old work and see how I’ve progressed as a writer. I wish this book was 100% my original with all my own characters and such, but all I can keep saying to myself is that this is just my way of proving to myself that I can write; that I can create and stay on target. God Lord! The day I actually finish it, I’ll be singing from the rooftops. I sort of want to delve into some of my other works, but I know I mustn’t. I must stick to this and finish it out; must keep the ADHD at bay! It’s what always kills me in the end. I finally have an idea on what must be done with A Ten-Minute Speech and I’m so excited to start, really start, writing the Luka books, I could just burst into flame. It’s all I want to do and all I want to think about. Sometime last week I found myself daydreaming about my own characters. My characters! That never happens and I keep wondering what it really means. With this fanfic novel, I’ve finally conquered my PC-writing demons. For years, I haven’t been able to writing creatively on a computer, forcing me write everything longhand and spend the next year deciphering my longhand as I type the entire thing. It’s a good thing that I’ve learned this now, because I’ve realized I have the tendency to be quite verbose. I’ve only just finished the first chapter of Flight and the book’s 10,928 words and 20 M$ Word pages. I’m wondering just how long it’ll take me to break my goal of 100K. The first chapter’s just on one day and there’s nineteen days in the first part of the book. I doubt every day will be 11K long, but still…my writing just gets flowery and I while I try my hardest not to ramble, I can’t help but delve into the characters a bit more. I don’t want to just write an episode; I want to create something unique that reads like an actual book and could be taken seriously, were it not actually fanfiction.

So, Dreamgirls…Yay! Jennifer Hudson won her Oscar and I feel oddly proud of her. I guess I just love seeing black women win Oscars, but anyway I’m horribly addicted to the Dreamgirls’ soundtrack. Of course, I’m playing One Night Only to death, but honestly, it’s the reason I bought the darn CD and I’m going to play it until my iPod breaks. I’m also slowly beginning to fall for Beyonce’s Listen, which I really don’t think was worthy of the Oscar nod, but whatever. One Night Only (Hudson’s version, of course), was a far better song, but maybe that’s just me. I’m probably not the most objective person to consider the two songs since One Night Only is currently stuck in my head, but so on and so forth…Obsessions: just the writing and One Night Only. SVU’s even starting to subside, but I think it may have more to do with my not wanting to be unduly influenced by the show as I write. I still need like a crackhead, but I missed last week’s new episode and I haven’t had a break down…yet. Thank goodness for USA network. Keeping SVU fanatics in good health, around the globe.

Adventures in Vegetarianism #2
I’ve been a full-fledged vegetarian now for more than a week and the Wendy’s #6 Spicy Chicken cravings have subsided substantially. I spoke with another vegetarian in one of my classes and she told me I’d probably start feeling weak after a bit, but I’ll stick it out a bit longer before taking a multi-vitamin, especially after that nonsense on the BBC news about vitamins actually shaving off the years instead of adding to them. Oh well. I suppose we’ll all go when we do. But, I’m really enjoying this not-eating-meat thing. Tonight, I made a grilled cheese sandwich with olive oil instead of butter. I’m well on my way to becoming a vegan…except for the fact that I love cheese and yogurt and would sooner cut of my own foot and feed it to my enemies than give up cheese and yogurt. But, the point is, I’m not eating any meat. I wish I could say that I give a crap about cows and pigs and such, but I honestly can’t make myself really care about animals. I just don’t want to like the taste of them anymore and I want to just live healthier. I just can’t see any positives to eating meat, especially since I read something about average humans eating something like six times the amount of animal meat we need to survive. That just seems utterly crazy to me.
Anyway, I haven’t lost any weight to this vegetarian diet, but that’s probably due to the fact that I polished off this entire macaroni and cheese dish by myself as I practiced for the pot luck we’re having at work this Friday. It’ll be Dorienne’s time to shine! I also randomly made a bunch of cookies and frosted them myself. I don’t know where the crazy cravings come from, but they are bizarre. But, cheers to me for not even wanting to eat any meat! And a special cheers to me for at least trying to get back on eating like a normal person should…