Yzabel's Writings

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minamzi did it and thus reminded me that I wanted to write such a recap post as well, so here goes.

( Was: November recap post )

Now that NaNo is over for me and that I know better where i'm heading with this story, I amended my list of tropes for Was. I bet I could add even more than that, but let's leave it at that for the time being (although I'll gladly take suggestions if you have any, because listing trops is just purdy fun):

The plot:
Red String of Fate (sort of): Some characters defintiely share a certain kind of special 'soul' bond.
There Are No Coincidences: No shit, Sherlock. What are the odds for two trains crashing and killing people in the exact same way (even though it's at a 20 years interval and in two different cities)?
The Heartless, in more than one way. "The woman in white" and "Dana" are nice examples. Lyle gets a case of this, too, although it's not exactly the same thing.
Deal With The Devil: Aristeles and Marek.
Hermetic Magic: Pentagrams, six-branches stars and summoning chants, oh my.
Immortality: We've got at least Aristeles and Marek here. And Ring, while technically not immortal, has slowed down her aging by giving up on her adult body.
Older Than They Look : See above, and add Lyle as well.
Urban Legends - Heart-catchers.
Abnormal Ammo: Caster shells (in 9 mm parabellum, though). To be used later on in the story.
Letter Motif: Done on purpose, of course. Starting with Mark/Markus/Marek, and then a few others that you've probably spotted as well (or that I haven't published yet, come to think of it).

Louisa Keynes:
Expecting Someone Taller - She's only 19 and moreover, most people expect a guy.
Mouthy Kid: Bravado is her way of not collapsing. And you haven't seen her facing Marek yet.
Do Not Call Me Paul: She doesn't like being called Louisa—too old-fashioned to her liking. That's why she tells everybody to just call her "Lou".
Reincarnation.
And Genetic memory.
Magitek: Tri-Edge @Venger laptop for the win! Complete with Magical Computer.
Techno Wizard: But of course.
Unusual User Interface: One of her most basic (and first) talents as a mage is to be able to connect to the Web from everywhere—without wireless access, Ethernet port or network card. Her own magic is her interface.

Lyle Karlowitz:
Artificial human: May be considered as The Undead as well, but that would kind of imply his having been alive once.
Never Found The Body - as well as Not Quite Dead.
Which goes hand in hand with Left For Dead.
Nigh Invulnerability: Yeah, he's that hard to hurt.
Who Wants To Live Forever: He partially fits this trope.
The Taxi: And it's one of those sleek English black cabs, too. (Note that the Driver of a Black Cab trope doesn't fit here.)
Super Strength: Just look at what happens near the crashed train.
Wall of Weapons: Don't check what's in his cab. No, really.
Rare Guns: For a reason unknown as of yet, he particularly treasures an original Czech Army CZ 75 model, much rarer (and of better quality) than the export version.

Marek "Zerstörer" Van Cartier:
How Many Times Must I Kill You? - Literally.
Healing Factor: That's why.
I Cannot Self Terminate: May happen at some point, but honestly, I haven't decided yet.
No One Could Survive That: He pretty much does survive. All the time.
Dissonant Serenity: Probably even more frightening in his case than if he were to turn Ax Crazy. And he smiles all the time, or almost. Freaky bastard.
Attending Your own Funeral - Because he's funny like that. I'll definitely put such a scene in if I get the opportunity.
Heroic Sociopath: Marek enjoys talking a lot and killing a lot. Especially killing a lot.
With Great¨Power Comes Great Insanity: Did you honestly think that guy was the poster-child for sanity?
Token Evil Teammate: Not technically a villain, in that he's not on the Heartless' side... but clearly not a nice guy either, in spite of his pleasant behaviour.
Crossed The Line Twice: Or three times. Or five. Or ten. Actually, he pretty much jumps rope with the line, then plays cat's cradle with it, then has it run over the earth a few times and ties it in a nice ribbon.
Evil Versus Evil: Marek or the Heartless... I wonder who's the worst?
Meaningful Name: Nickname, rather.
The Von Trope Family: Here with its Van- version. Meant to blur the trail as to his real identity (Dutch surname, German nickname, lives in Austria, born in England?).
FauxYay: Not sure, but the way he likes teasing Echoes kind of makes me think of that trope.
Gorn: When he uses his magic, there's sometimes collateral damage of the gory kind.
...Alright, there's often collateral damage.
Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Subverted in that there's actually no physical body to question, only a soul. Nevertheless, the soul has been ripped from its still living body, locked in a magical device shaped like a mirror, subjected to blood sorcery, and threatened by Marek to be erased from this world just like the body has been. Because we don't have much time on our hands, see.
Doom Magnet: "One thing was always certain with Zerstörer: everywhere he went, people ended up dying and things being destroyed." And he just doesn't care.

Ewan "Echoes" Carlisle:
Techno Wizard: After all, he's the other Technomage of the story. Formerly The Playful Hacker.
Alien Lunch: He eats weird stuff quite regularly. Actually, he even enjoys it.
Bunny Ears Lawyer: He's got his quirks. Quite a few.
Hacker Cave: His apartment. You haven't seen all the rooms yet.
Rapid Fire Typing: On his laptop and his Blackberry as well.
Beware The Nice Ones: He might look a harmless geek who eats weird stuff and sits like L, but he's actually had the guts to put a gun against Marek's head.
Click Hello: See above. He points his gun at Marek, who's forcefully making Ring shut up by choking her with one hand. With added Dramatic Gun Cock.

Other chars:
Creepy Child: Ring, due to her appearance. Amanda Devereux, because she stole a child's body to put her soul in. The original soul never saw the body back, by the way. Thanks to whom? *glares at Marek*
I Know Your True Name: Lou and Lyle... later.
From Nobody To Nightmare The Heartless/woman in white—whose name I shall soon disclose in an upcoming episode.
Even Evil Has Standards: Aristeles.
Power Trio: Ring, Echoes and Zerstörer.
Magical Database: GED's, kind of.
Code Name: Pretty much everybody in the Anima Mundi. Even Aristeles is referred to as "King Archon" (except by Marek, but then, these two are on First Name Basis anyway).

Word count: 46,104/50,000.

Dear Marek,

I know you're just a sick bastard who happens to wield an old and very dirty kind of magic, and that it has kind of made you a little, uhm, batshit insane. I know you've got a somewhat weird sense of humour and takes pleasure in teasing your teammates, especially that poor Echoes, who hasn't done anything to you and would just want to be left alone. But please, could you refrain from trying to choke Ring, even if it's just for her to shut up and not to actually get rid of her? Yes? Because, you see, I'm starting to wonder what kind of monster I've created.

So, two things:
- Stop teasing Echoes. You're sending off eerie vibes when you do that. No, really. *shudders*
- STOP. KILLING. JUDAS RING!

Thank you,

The Author.

Word count: 38,019/50,000.
I'm at 1k/day rather than the official daily word count, but the nice buffer I've managed to build up makes it so that even then, I'm still on the right track.

In the episodes I've been working on so far:
- Echoes gets a slap on the wrist. Sort of.
- Marek is being his psychopathic self. To Hannah's dismay. But hey, it didn't involve anything that wasn't already dead.
- At last, the mastermind behind all that crap makes an appearance.

And because this piece of dialogue made me smile:
Echoes: “I didn't feel you fold space to climb here.”
Marek: “That would be because I took the stairs.”

Word count: 30,443/50,000

I wanted to reach 30k today, and after having cranked out classes plans for a good half day (interspersed with stuff such as having lunch, going to the tattoo shop to have my dragon checked and buying some groceries), I took the evening to write. So here it is: my NaNovel, reaching 30k. Of course, it's still in the installment part only, as usual with my writing... although I've already managed to add elements that shed light on what happened to some of the protagonists.

I've realized (after 9 chapters, it'd be high time...) that I'm working with flashbacks A LOT in this story. Normally, I'm no fan of flashbacks, not after watching too many anime series where the same flashbacks are repeated three times to fill in episodes. But since mine only appear once and serve a purpose to further the story, I guess they're alright.

So, in a nutshell (that, too, is a cliche expression, isn't it?):

• The main antagonist has finally appeared, but not as a bad guy... yet.
• "Against the flow of time, we are trying to wake up the dead": Louis Valdemar has been taunting the Anima Mundi with that, and the Anima Mundi isn't happy. Codename: Dead Song Spell. And now, I too know why the hunters were after him. Yeah... Here too it was high time I, the author, finally got to know what's propelling her story.
• I think Lyle is somewhat falling in love with Lou. Somewhat. Of course, he's just so awkward in his relationships with other human beings that it's both cute and pitiful. And he didn't find anything better than a H1N1 leaflet to write down his phone number. Huhuh. (In his defense, they were at the University College London Hospital.)
• Lou kicks ass with Matter/Entropy spells. You go, girl.

Word count: 20,089/50,000.
YES, I did it: I reached 20k! It's a wonder that I managed to write, but it seems that "sick" + "tons of work to do" = "at last, writing comes to me more easily than in times of calm". Don't ask. Don't ever ask.

If you play nice, tomorrow I'll post episode 4.

Word count: 17,750/50,000.

I don't know how I've managed to function today, but I prepared some class plans, documents to go with them, and wrote earlier on in the afternoon. Might as well do something vaguely useful even if I don't have the full use of my brain. Or of my lungs, for that matter. I'm glad that I've got some padding put aside regarding my word count, because something tells me I'm soon going to collapse in exhaustion, either tomorrow or the day after. :/

Episode 4 is done, episode 5 is half-written, and so far, we've got:
* A corpse who's missing a heart
* A heartless woman who's picking other heartless people
* Two sick fucks playing chess in a castle near Vienna
* A train wreck between Tottenham Court Road and Goodge Street.
* Something lurking in the tunnels.
* A magical wreck at Saint Pancras, with collateral damage amongst the mortals.

I still don't know where the heck I'm heading with all that. But some day, I definitely need to ruin the Gherkin, too.

Word count: 13,109/50,000.

I wanted to make it a writing evening tonight, but now that my laryngitis o' doom is receding, it looks like I'm in the process of catching ye olde common cold on top of it. So I'm just going to head to bed with a good book, and get back to writing later on. I'm too tired anyway.

Also, episose 4 is written, but I'm not done with episode 3 yet (as usual, I'm not writing in the right order, which is fitting for a story like Was anyway, I guess), so I'll post new excerpts later on only.

I couldn't sleep last night (ooh yes, baby, I'm going to be a real flower tomorrow at school!), I thought it'd be useless to stay in bed if it was to toss and turn for two hours anyway, so I got up again and had some fun with a doll maker, much like I had started doing back for my first NaNo in 2005. Here are some of the characters that have appeared or are supposed to appear in Was. Since I used a doll maker, some things are missing (hair, make-up or jewelry details), but it's alright, I think. If you want more detailed descriptions, you can always read the chapters I post here (hint, hint). 

( Pictures under the cut )

Word count: 11,348/50,000. You can see that still being on holidays, I've had more time than usual to write. In the coming weeks, I think, however, that my big writing dumps will be on the week-ends only.

Here's the music I've been writing to (so far) when it comes to Was. Some of these songs are associated to specific characters, some others are meant to be listened to for a specific kind of atmosphere, and some are just here because I like writing to them in general.

Click here to display the playlist. (To display the title, do a right-click, then selet "Back" twice .)

( And here are the titles )

Word count: 7,140/50,000.

Enough for today—or, if I happen to still write something later on tonight, I'll lump it with tomorrow's word count.

My writing was pretty much hectic, stacked between work sessions (aye, I haven't prepared all the stuff I need for my classes yet!). I've been working on "episode" 2, which is probably half-done by now. That's the one where Lou steps into the light. I'm not sure yet who'll be in episode 3—Marek or Lyle? I'll think about that later on this week. Right now, I'm too tired.

Since there was a thread about TV tropes on the NaNo forums and I had fun with that last week, here's a short list of tropes I've combined for Was so far. (I'm aware there are many more than that, but contrary to what one may think, I don't spend my life on this website either. ;))

So. My original intent was to randomly load some twenty tropes or so, and use them all at some point in my NaNovel. But so far, I can already see a few tropes that I'm going to use no matter what.

The plot:
Red String of Fate (sort of)
There Are No Coincidences
The Heartless, in more than one way.
Deal With The Devil
Hermetic Magic
Immortality.
Older Than They Look - See above.
Urban Legends - The Heart Thief.
Who Wants To Live Forever.

Louisa Keynes:
Expecting Someone Taller - She's only 19 and moreover, most people expect a guy.
Mouthy Kid.
Reincarnation.
And Genetic memory.
Magitek.

Lyle Karlowitz:
The Undead - or is it Artificial human?
Never Found The Body.
As well as Not Quite Dead.
Which goes hand in hand with Left For Dead.
Ax Crazy - And he's pretty much The Butcher, too.
Healing Factor.

Marek Van Cartier:
How Many Times Must I Kill You? - Literally.
I Cannot Self Terminate - At some point, probably.
No One Could Survive That - He pretty much does survive. All the time.
Dissonant Serenity - Probably even more frightening in his case than if he were to turn Ax Crazy.
Attending Your own Funeral - Because he's funny like that.
Heroic Sociopath.

Other chars:
Beware The Nice Ones (Echoes)
Creepy Child (Ring)
I Know Your True Name (Ludwig & Heylel).
From Nobody To Nightmare The Heartless.

So I can haz banner for my sig on the NaNo forums.

Simple stuff, but right now, I don't feel like doing something complex, nor do I have enough time to draw a whole banner out of the blue.

Points for whoever can guess where I snatched the tag line from.

Before heading back to school for my Friday afternoon class, here's the synopsis/teasing bit I wrote for my NaNo this year:

Edinburgh, October 1654. In the wake of the Civil Wars, Aristeles is looking for a man with the power to repel and destroy. He plans on offering him immortality in exchange for his help. Dreams of glory, a wish for living, hopes for a better world: the road to Hell is definitely paved with the best of intentions.

Warsaw, April 1943. As the Nazi troops march into the ghetto to raze it, Rabbi Steiner weaves faith and magic to create a Golem that will protect his people. However, fire and death claim the wise man as their own that night, leaving his creature roaming free. Feeling that this is the chance of his life, young mage Ludvig Czieslowski invokes a True Name to bind the raging Golem. Yet what is the price of giving a name to that which was never meant to have one?

Paris, February 1989. On a cold winter night, on the Austerlitz Bridge, Moira is fighting a woman the likes of which she has never seen, and for the first time in her life, she is aware that she is going to die. Falling into the dark and murky waters of the Seine river, her last thought is that nobody will remember her. And her heart screams in despair.

Bristol, May 2008. A-level student Louisa Keynes wakes up in a white hospital room, after a car crash left her in a coma for ten months, only to find out that something else has changed. Her nights plagued by weird dreams, a strange power burning in her, her e-mail account filled with mysterious messages telling her to go to London, she finally drops her original project of applying to Oxford and, against her family's wishes, aims for London College instead. Lou wants to learn the truth; until then, she just cannot give it a rest.

London, December 2009. In a dark Aldgate alley, sys-op Echoes and blood sorceress Ring discover a corpse whose death was all but natural. At St Pancras, Marek Van Cartier is about to wreak havoc, a sweet smile on his lips. Standing on the platform at Tottenham Court Road tube station, Lyle Karlowitz is staring at a heartless woman, feeling the urge to kill again. And Louisa Keynes is riding the Northern Line, wondering how just a few months were enough to reduce her family to shambles.

A new year is nearing. What was and what is shall now meet.

Let's get this out of the way, and let's do it publicly, so that I'll feel more compelled to keep my word and won't be tempted:

I won't be participating in NaNoWriMo this year.

Truth be told, I'll have no time to devote to writing in the next ten months or so. I'm studying for a national competitive exam, and this in itself, combined with my job and classes to attend, means a lot of things to do. Since I have less time than other people to prepare for it (I have to devote ~25h/week to my job and commuting), I have to push my scheduling skills to the maximum, therefore I can't be bothered with even more deadlines (NaNo, finishing a short story for a call to submissions, beta-reading, etc.).

I can't say I won't write one single word of fiction until next summer, because I'll probably do here and there, but for the time being, writing has to be put on the back burner. I have to get my priorities straight, and this competitive exam is very important for me, even more important than getting published 'someday'.

So. No NaNo for me in 2008, and if you see me tempted all the same, please smack me with a shovel.

 Word count: 14,175/50,5000. I'm not late anymore, even if I'm only ahead by a slight margin! And I've wrapped up chapter 6, too.

Okay... So Ari ended up almost throwing a dagger through one of her 'colleagues' at the Guild. WTF. And it appears that Taellan *is* in contact with Agas for some secret affair all the thieves are now gossiping about. I don't know what affair yet, but I guess I'll find out. Someday. The beauty of NaNo and of characters taking on a life of their own, I suppose...

Speaking of chapter 6... I think my chapters are quite short (2,000 words on average), but I have no idea if this is a good or a bad thing. They may end up longer than that when I add some description padding, though (I tend to jump to dialogue straight away, and probably not giving enough descriptions). Therefore, I'm not going to worry about this too much right now. Maybe it's just me liking them short, too. Liking that I can read a few pages between two chores, so that I can close the book without being left panting in the middle of a chapter.

And now, as I was saying on my other LJ... Time to wrap up those written exercises for my Japanese language class... *sets herself back to work*

Silly me forgot to mention this here. Even though time constraits will prevent me from updating this blog a lot (but most of you do also read my othr LJ anyway, so between the two, there probably will be some updates), I am still going to attempt NaNoWriMo this year. Don't place high hopes in me, I'm doing it for the fun, and I'm very well aware I won't be able to 'win' or complete my novel, but... I hope that this will give me back my writing groove, and help me remember how it used to be exciting. My project, at least, is a defined one, not something that isn't serious, and I will finish it, proof-read it and all these things. I'm simply using NaNo this year as a starting point, so to say.

So--see you on the NaNo website/forums. I'm still Yzabel there, anyway. :)

From now on, I'm going to post and date back a long series of entries here and then. Don't be surprised to find out that there was much more to read on this LJ!

This LJ originated from http://yzabel.wordpress.com, which I had planned to be my "writing blog", different from the Y Logs in that it was aimed at keeping tabs on my progress regarding NaNoWriMo in 2005. Since I've started the present LJ, though, it's feeling weirder and weirder to keep two blogs updated with almost the same content. I know that my WP blog had the merit of being public, and therefore able to reach a wider audience, but I didn't want to post full NaNovels or other writings publicly on it. Using passworded posts wasn't an option either (a password can be shared, I don't have much control on that), and I preferred the option of locked entries and of "allowing" or not people to have access to them. Sure, this limits it to LJ users only. On the other hand, if someone can't be bothered to take 30 seconds to register an account and simply use it to read this journal, are they really that interested in my writings? Not 100% sure about that, right?

Keep in mind, this is mainly because I am NOT sure yet of what I will try to get published later on, and I'd hate shooting myself in the foot by giving away "first print rights" without even having had the opportunity to try yet. I'm no that concerned about theft. Mostly, it's all about FPR. And in that case, either I just never show my writing to anyone, or I have to wrap it within privacy means, so to say. Seeing a half novel ending up on Google archiving service wouldn't exactly be a nice thing!

So, right now, I'm still going to maintain both blogs, but I'll be porting all the old entries on the WP here, for archiving purposes. For the time being, I'm not removing the "Friends Only" tag, though. I'm still a little too paranoid for that.

I'm supposed to be working on an analysis of poem 670 by Emily Dickinson this morning, so I won't be dilly-dalling here much more longer, but upon checking my WordPress blog, I remembered a bit I had posted there in October 2005, and I think it may be interesting to have it here again.

So, welcome to you, traveller of the web, who has added me to your friends, or is just swinging by, and/or who I'll likely add back in not too long. In case locked LJs tend to irk you, I hope the following paragraphs will help you understand my decision to not make all my writings and planning notes public.

(From the WP blog in 2005):

Zette on the NaNoWriMo forums [note: in 2005, not sure if anything like this has been posted again this year] has put up an interesting post that may be very useful to those who plan on publishing their NaNovel online (whether in a blog or on a regular website):

For many of you this will have no bearing at all on your work or what you do with it. If you are writing fanfiction, or not in the least bit interested in a writing career, then you can post anywhere you like and not worry about it.

However, others who even remotely think they might later want sell their NaNo novel (or anything else they’ve written) to a publisher, need to know that posting the story on an open site on the Internet is the same as publishing it. You have thrown away your First Print Rights, which are the ones that the publishers want.

Many people put their stories up on sites in the mistaken belief that if they aren’t paid for them, they aren’t published. This isn’t true. Anything that is in a position where it can be read by the public is considered published. This includes posting on your website, LiveJournal, Blog, or any site where just anyone passing through can read the work. It doesn’t matter how many people actually read the story, either.

Sites that are safe, however, are ones in which the reader needs a password in order to get to the story. Most writers’ sites with critique groups are set up in this way. ‘Friends Only’ LiveJournals are also safe because the owner has full control over who sees the posts.

There was much more to it, and the rest of the post was just as worth the read as this extract. There’s a difference between copyright and First Print rights, and Zette explained it fairly well.

Again, this year, I’m not sure yet whether I’ll ever “do something” with my NaNovel. However, my needs of sharing my words is often strong enough to compromise my efforts, hence my decision to lock all of this in this journal.