Category Archives: Update

Is this really happening?

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Here’s the new chapter: 3-VI

Wait, what? Didn’t I just post a chapter five days ago?

I have no idea how this happened. I was tweaking a few things, then I got caught up in it and decided to go all out and have it posted by the end of the night. Since I finished SWW so long ago I don’t really remember how I felt or what I was thinking when I wrote these last few chapters. But this one is one of my favorite chapters in the story and I feel like that means I probably worked pretty hard on it.

Editing this reminded me how (in my opinion, anyway) I got pretty comfortable with transitions between dialogue and description and back. That’s something I’ve been working on with the new writing I’ve been doing since January. I wouldn’t say that the way my chapters were coming together was bad but it wasn’t until two weeks ago that I finished a chapter and could look it over and say the flow was seamless. Since then I feel like I’m getting back on track.

If you’re reading, thank you.

3-V

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Teenagers. Teenagers teenagers teenagers.

That’s what I remind myself when I’m looking at Sitting, Waiting, Wishing. What I’m currently working on right now involves characters that are in their early 20s, so shifting back to 17 to edit SWW has been a bit challenging. I stare at the dialogue and say things to myself like, “would she really say that?” and “is that how he would word it?” Because what Dusty and Kyle and Evan say…I don’t think they would say that if they were older. But they’re not. They’re teenagers. They are a certain way.

Now with all that said, I am writing this post to tell you that I updated SWW! You can read the new chapter by clicking on the link at the bottom of this post. I got to experience the pains of editing a chapter again. The way I edit is to read the chapter from top to bottom, then bottom to top at least four times. So 8 times in total at the very least. I can’t remember when it was that I learned reading your writing from bottom to top is the best way to edit, but I’ve done it probably since I was 16. The logic behind it is that the story doesn’t make sense when you read it from bottom to top, so it’s much easier to pinpoint mistakes.

I also got to see the form to upload a chapter to my own site for the first time in a few years. It was only vaguely familiar. And to think that four years ago I used to see it every few weeks. Nothing but nostalgia. It definitely brought me back.

I decided not to touch the layout for now. The footer has the wrong copyright year (2009!) but I’m just going to leave it until I start posting my new story. The layouts on the site have always had visual clues or nods to whatever the current story I was posting. If I changed it now, I’d just give it away. Also, I know that right now pointing your browser to afterglare.com redirects to this blog page and not the main site. I think I’m going to leave it that way until the new story, too.

The next chapter of SWW is one of my favorites of the whole story. It’s also lengthier than the chapter I just posted. I hope to do it justice once it is edited. I’m only half a week late from when I expected to post this chapter, so if I say I’m going to try and get the next chapter out in the next two weeks, maybe I’ll post it in three weeks? ;]

Here’s the new chapter: 3-V

Ocean Karma

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Today I spent some time revising the next two chapters of Sitting, Waiting, Wishing. I realize that no one reads this, but I’m pretty happy about it considering that that’s more work than I’ve done since I finished writing it a couple of years ago. I also just turned on the song, “Sitting, Waiting, Wishing” by Jack Johnson, which I haven’t heard in a very long time, and I remember why I chose that as the title for the final version of this story.

It feels strange to be working on something that I wrote such a long time ago and pretty much just left untouched. I almost feel like it is someone else’s work as I go through it. But the storyteller in me is actually excited. I don’t know how I feel about Dusty taking me back to high school, but I do like going back to seventeen. I’m not sure if getting these two chapters by the end of the week is feasible. I’ll try.

Progress

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Since the beginning of January I’ve been doing a lot of writing. And I do mean a lot. I’ve written nearly every single day between the hours of 1 AM and 6 AM. The story I started writing is one that’s been brewing in my mind for at least two years without ever actualizing because of life’s commitments. There was also the fact that I knew who I wanted my characters to be — I knew their names, their histories, and their present lives, but I could never figure out what the conflict in the story would be. You can’t have a story that’s just peaches and cream, right? A story without conflict isn’t a story.

Going back to when I started writing and posting stuff at 14, I don’t think I’ve ever began a story without knowing beforehand what conflict was going to arise. But I’ve had the writing itch for a while, ever since I graduated from university so I just decided to do it. On January 1st I put the pen to the paper and just went for it. So I started writing again and I realized that there was something I forgot in my long absense: you run into unexpected ideas. Halfway through writing the third chapter I had a grand moment of epiphany. The conflict came to me. It seems dumb now that I let myself sit on this idea for so long. All I had to do was start. And that seems so obvious now.

In my last blog/update in June, I noted that above all I have to write for myself. I have every intention of doing that with this story. I don’t think I really have much of a choice. I doubt that I still have an audience and even if I did, I’m not sure how interested they would be in reading this. That’s fine with me though. I am determined to finish writing this and have something complete again.

The writing kick I’m on may have been unintentionally encouraged by someone who recently read everything I have up on the site. Lana and Kieran are my favorite, I Could Have Lied is the one I’m most proud of, and Sitting, Waiting, Wishing is…still not completely posted. The person who read told me that SWW is actually her favorite and to please finish posting it. I know I’ve been saying for years that I’m going to get around to editing those last few chapters and finish posting it, but this time I mean it for real. Before she started reading, I’d actually decided that I was going to just take that story down. But then I went on the site and read all the chapters of SWW that are posted and realized, wow, I actually like the story. I guess even though I pay little to no attention to the site, there’s a reason I can’t let go of it after all this time. It’d be an accomplishment for me to see that story finally completed on the site.

I think I’ll be forever undecided on whether or not I should copy edit all of Lana and Kieran’s story. Before I started writing this post I was reading the chapters I have on the blog that have already been copy edited and I couldn’t help but think how cute they are. Is it wrong to think your own characters are completely adorable? I’m torn as to whether I should do the edit overhaul, or if it’s been too long and I should just leave everything be. I want the writing of all three stories to be to a standard that doesn’t make me cringe. It’s mostly Part One that I have a problem with, but there are spots in Part Two and Part Three I would like to fix, too. So I don’t know. But I’ll keep it on the backburner for the time being. It’s way more important for me to keep going with what I’m writing now.

Way back when, I made a couple of big site updates annually on March 12th, because it was the “anniversary” of the site opening all the way back in 2005. I will post at least a chapter of SWW and the new story on that day. Because I can and because I have to do this for myself. Maybe even a new layout!

Dirt Doesn’t Travel

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Daphne Loves Derby – Hidden Track (Dirt Doesn’t Travel)

I just posted Chapter Four of Part One. Lana sees Tainted Fate play for the same time. I’ve always had a vision of that scene: what the venue looks like, the crowd, the way the band sounds. This song came out a few years after the very first version of that chapter was written but it’s always felt to me like the right representation of what I imagined.

If the embed isn’t working, you can click here for the media post.

Writing About Writing

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I really hope I can stick with this. I miss writing. I miss my site. It may be silly, but after all these years, I still think about my characters and the stories I created for them. I know how young I was when I finished those stories. But I also know how much work I put into them.

What I’ve learned in the years that I haven’t been writing is that no story is ever actually finalized. I completed 5 stories but they’ll never be totally done. The original version of Destiny Part One was completed in like 2004. But I knew I wasn’t done with it. I revised it for another complete version in 2005, and I began an ambitious project of “issuing” it in 2008. Stories have to be completed but they’re never really finished. Even print copies of books, even the one that everyone loves, even the kind that get turned into movies…they’re not finished. Bestseller or not, there’s always something the author can find that they would have made even slightly different.

I hope that when I’m 35 I won’t think of these characters anymore. But it’s going to be a while before they’re gone. They stay with me. Their stories are complete but they aren’t final. I’ll keep tweaking Lana and Kieran’s story, making small changes here and there. I hope I get to the point where I can do that for all my stories. And, of course, I want to write a new story. I actually have a few pages worth of unrelated scenes. I’d love to be able to fill in the huge gaps in between.

First I’m going to post Sitting, Waiting, Wishing. I completed it over two years ago but I never did finish posting it on the old site. There are a few remaining chapters that have never been online. I really want to use this often, whether it be for posting/reposting chapters or writing about what inspires me, and writing about…well…writing.

No matter what, above all, I write for myself. But I do hope, if you’ve come this far, that you’ll join me and keep reading.