Category Archives: Creative Writing

The art of dancing with words, weaving them together, and smithing them.

The Return of the Kitsune

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Direlda has returned to his den in an attempt to rescue his ramblings from the clutches of Jabber the Procrastinator.

Little does Direlda know that the MUNDANE EMPIRE has secretly begun construction on a new ironclad routine even more powerful than the first dreaded Class Schedule.

When completed, this ultimate program will spell certain doom for the small band of storytellers struggling to restore insanity to the Library…

What that tells you is true, from a certain point of view. :p

For today does mark the return of this kitsune to his den. :D   It has been a long while, but I have grown in my time wandering.  I am armed now with a cork board, index cards, pushpins, and pens and markers of various colours.  So I should be able to work out a system and hold myself to it.

Today also marks the completion of another orientation session for the Master in Library and Information Science program that I have started.  The Chair of the department said, “You’re all going to be librarians, but you’re not all going to work in a library” and that part of my job is to “make humanity more human.”  I think I’m going to like it here.

This program may also give me the tools needed to finally get my den looking the way I want it to.  Or at least give enough of a kick to the tail to send my scampering to the resources to teach myself how.  The Chair made a spontaneous example for how career paths change of a person who wanted to do storytelling ending up in web design.  And that has got me thinking on how to integrate the two.  Because I do want the appearance of my den to convey a story as much as my ramblings do.  Stories are everywhere.

Speaking of stories, I have a short story being published in the Rainfurrest 2014 convention anthology! Whooo! :D   One of my artist friends, NovaWuff, did an illustration to go along with it that should also be in the anthology.

My story is called Neural Enrichment.  Here is a blurb-in-progress:

After saving for months on his hagwon English teacher’s salary, John finally had enough to afford a cybernetic implant.  He had hoped that his new Rycorp implant would allow him to fully enjoy all that the Korean Technocracy had to offer.  Instead it turned him into an anthropomorphic fox and now bombards his mind with adverts.  John is desperate to shut the world out of his head and is willing to seize any opportunity to do so even if it risks what humanity he has left.

I don’t know the cost of the anthology, but I do know that all proceeds will be going towards a charity of sorts (I think it’s the Clouded Leopard Project, but it could be the Cougar Mountain Zoo).  I also don’t know the content of the other stories aside from all being cyberpunk, but I do know that the anthology I’m in has a content rating of G to PG-13.  Come the evening of September 25 I will be able to give you more information.

That is all the exciting news I have for you today!  But I will be around more now. :)

Count the shadows.

A Summer Shelter

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Wymond the Fox shifted on the stump as he finished cooking a trout over the coals.  “I can’t believe that Avalonian painter tried to adjust the way those elk were holding their heads.  I have enough to worry about without needing to save painters from their absurdities.”  He inspected the trout and decided it was ready.

As he was tearing into the cooked fish, Wymond heard the cracking of twigs and labored breathing.  He stamped out his fire.  Before Wymond could crawl into his shelter a portly man crashed through the underbrush.

“It better snow early this year,” Wymond muttered, “I can’t stand any more painters.”

The painter, oblivious to what Wymond was saying, began setting up an easel.  Wymond put on his best grimace.  The more frightening he looked in the paintings sold in Avalonia, the fewer painters would come looking for him; at least, that was his hope.

I Dropped the Ball and the Ball Won: Or How I Learned to Stop Rambling and Love the Distractions

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I tried to be on top of things this month.  There was so much I had intended to do… ^_^; :doh:

The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

(Robert Burns, To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough)

The schemes of this here fox are no different, it would seem.  Not all of my distractions were necessarily bad, though.  For instance, I spent a lot of time doing things with my wife, such as playing games and watching Castle, since she was still on vacation for the first week of January and then had a week of inservice.  And I’m glad I did.  It just means that I wasn’t spending that time working on what I had said I would write.

^_^;

I also need to devise a way to make my personal deadlines mean something.  Having a teacher, professor, colleague, or boss set a deadline ensures that I do all I can to make that deadline.  But when the deadline maker is myself…  You’ve seen what happens.  Now that I have a calendar again, perhaps I’ll get better at deadlines (since now they will have a physical existence).

I’ve also realized how integral having a hard copy is to my writing process.  For something like this rambling, which doesn’t represent much of an intellectual effort, I don’t need to look over a hard copy for editing and revising.  But for poems, stories, essays, and the like I do need a hard copy.  There’s just something about being able to feel my words with my fingers that helps me revise them.  And to be able to see multiple pages at once, something my netbook’s screen doesn’t really facilitate.  So let me rage here against my current lack of printing machinery! RAWR!!  >.<   In any case, I will be having my “essay” on story adaptations printed so that I can revise it to actually make sense and have an organization to it. (yay)

:creative:

All of which to say, yes, indeed, I dropped the ball here and let it bounce away.  Further away than it should have gone.  Over the fence and down the road that took me to the Lonely Mountain following the scent of Thorin and Company.  (You do also realize that there is a fox in The Lord of the Rings, right?)  But I’ve gone bounding after it.  And I should have what I promised to have for you last month by the end of this month.  Which, if you think about it, isn’t too far off…  And if George R.R. Martin can be long overdue on his books, then I can be somewhat overdue…?  Maybe…?  Oh, alright, I’ll make it my impossible task to improve on my timeliness when it comes to self-imposed deadlines.  I hope you’re happy, inner-critic.  Because if by the end of this year I haven’t improved, then I may just toss you out the window of your tower.

:evil:

Time after Time

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There’s this thing I often do – no, I’m not talking about falling off the internet – that is probably borne of my hyperactive imagination.  I like to come up with my own lyrics for songs.  So since it is the advent season, and you’ve probably heard the original quite a bit now, I present you with: Home Starbase.

I’m dreaming of my home starbase
Just like the one in sector three
Where the viewports glisten
and computers listen
To hear requests for tea.

I’m dreaming of my home starbase
With every sector that I roam
May your ships be sturdy and chrome
And may all your starbases be home.

I actually just finished that today, though the original idea for it came back in high school… I don’t know why I never finished it then – too busy playing outside, I guess.

Since part of the reason why I have been offline for so long was because I was back at that home starbase, it made sense to put up this song.  Of course, it’s no longer like it was back then, and despite traveling back in time, I couldn’t quite get to it like it was.  Over the years things have been changing – carpeting replaced with wood, lawn replaced with a dry riverbed, incomplete model railroad diorama donated to local model railroading club, conversion of my old room to a work room, and so on.  While there I had the pleasure of going through my late grandmother’s stamp collection.  It is over 120,000 stamps in size due to the fact that she liked to buy sheets of the same stamp (she had several sheets of Scott #1371, plus at least 20 first day covers of that stamp), so it was good that I assisted my parents instead of spending a lot of time online.

I was also a groomsman for a friend’s wedding.  That was a lot of fun, especially since we all wore superhero t-shirts under our orange button-down dress-shirts.  One of my friends looked like Robert Downing Jr’s Iron Man.

His superhero t-shirt was black with the power core on it.

Yeah, I did a double-take more than once.  The groom was Batman, and the other two groomsmen were Superman and the Green Lantern.  As for me, I was Star Fox.  Not quite the superhero you were expecting, right? :p

Then there were two Thanksgiving dinners and temporally re-adjusting.  Which brings me to just recently.  More happened, but not all of it is really interesting.  Though maybe I’ll tell you about the great hunt for sweetened condensed milk some time.

And, of course, let’s not forget about October, when:

My characters are in my ears are in my eyes
There among the novel writing tries
I sit and meanwhile with my characters

Yeah, I’ll work on fleshing that one out.  But it captures how my characters sort of get into my head.  And because my head was so filled, there was no time to go online.  Or something like that.  Just recently I posted a map I made to deviantArt.  You can find it here.  Hope you enjoy the peak at the world I’ve been creating! :creative:

Until next time, I leave you with this:

Then you say — go silly —
I bound behind —
The second paw unwinds

If you’re lost you can read — and you will find me
Time after time
If you hug I will pounce you — I’ll be writing
Time after time

Quest Completed: Write Second Novel in 30 Days

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So I did it! :D

I wrote the first draft of my second novel!  It sits at 51,449 words.  Now to set it aside for a while and work on revising my first novel… :creative:

I decided to do it this way because it would mean that I would have a better idea of the world, the characters, and where things were heading.  What I really need to figure out, though, is how many books long the story arc will be.  Will this be a trilogy or will it go on longer?  Or maybe this will be a trilogy and then I’ll write other stories dealing with the world afterwards.  I’m not really sure.  I think this is because of how massive the ideas I had back in high school were for the world that morphed into this one.  I will have to figure out how much exploration we will have into this world.  Perhaps it will be several novels and then many short stories.  In any case, it’s something I need to think more on.

Writing the ending for this one was rather hard.  I won’t say why because that would spoil things, since to explain the why I would have to give details and then those details would give away several things that I don’t want given away. :p   The ending also needs work, but that will be made easier once I figure out whether this is the second of three or of many.

Right now I’m taking a break from writing. (No you’re not!)  Fine, I’m taking a break from writing novels and scripts.  It’ll probably be only for a few days, but just long enough for me to recuperate.  So maybe I’ll get around to drawing and posting what I end up drawing.  Still, my characters are in my ears, are in my eyes, here among the novel writing tries.

Hmmm…. I suppose I should mention that I’ll be in the States for a few weeks so that I may be a groomsman at the wedding of one of my good friends (who happens to have been one of my groomsmen).  I’m rather excited to be a part of that! :D   And not so excited to be away from my lovely wife for several weeks. T.T

Since I’ve basically been cloistered here in my apartment this month writing, I don’t really have much else of note to write about.  So until next time!

Blessings and peace!
~Direlda

NaNoWriMo in October?

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National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo is a most wonderful event that I was introduced to a few years ago.  It is held annually in November.  The goal of this is event is to see if you can write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days!  The first time I tried it, I didn’t make it because of circumstances that arose (a late start among them).  The second time, I managed to meet the goal! :D

Because I will be participating in a friend’s wedding in November, I realized that it would be rather hard to write a novel around all of that.  So I decided to write my NaNoWriMo novel for thirty days in October (well, two of the days were at the end of September due to travel plans at the end of October, but it’s basically October).

So I won’t really be around too much this month.  Sorry about that!  Lord willing I will have a second novel to work on editing and revising by the end of October 28th!

According to MS Word, my current word count is 11,924 words.  While I’m a little ahead of where I need to be today, I haven’t done much writing today, so I really need to get back to it! :creative:   Cheers!

Reminiscing, Part 1

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It has been a while, hasn’t it? As the school year winds down and I find myself with more time, I realize that I haven’t kept up on my rambling. I’ve also been reflecting on my past. It’s something I often do in my “sessions of sweet silent thought” (Shakespeare’s sonnet 30). I suppose I am drawn this time to remembering things past due to the fact that I will once more be unemployed. :(

You see, while my wonderful wife has been hired for another year at the school we’ve been working at here in Korea, I was not. To be honest, I’m not surprised. My classroom management skills are seriously lacking – a fact that has not been improved by hands-on experience – and I don’t have (and haven’t had) the time to observe other teachers. The only surprise was that I was never told by the person who decided not to hire me again why I wasn’t, especially considering the fact that he had never observed me teaching. So I’m left wondering if parent complaints, which have never really been relayed to me (and would be skewed by the fact that the parents only hear through the students and get a very lopsided picture… >.> ), played a major role in the decision and left to figure out by myself what I need to improve on. At least the person who observed me sat down with me the following week and explained why he thought I wasn’t asked back. That was the first face-to-face meeting I had on the subject. >.< A word to the wise: sit down and spend some time explaining why you aren't re-hiring someone - even 5 minutes could work wonders at preventing bitterness in your employees. The school is blessed by the fact that rather than saying, "to hell with you for how you treated me," and slacking off, I have redoubled my efforts to finish the library inventorying so that whoever they saddle with that responsibility won't have to worry about trying to figure out how I was doing things. As you can probably tell, I am still bitter about the manner in which I wasn't hired back. I don't mind that I wasn't hired again, but the way... And it's been about a month. >.>

In any case, trying to figure out what I will be doing for work next year has got me thinking back on what I have done.

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The Nearer Your Destination…

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…the more you slip-slide away. (there’s a song with those lyrics, but I can’t remember the details abut it) I feel this way about my den, for it seems the closer I get to finishing the re-imagining, the farther I get from actually being finished. And this feeling of sliding down a scree slope comes up with my novel (I need to do more revising than I have), with my re-inventorying of the school’s library, with taking Korean fencing 검도 (keomdo), and with staying in contact with all my various friends and family who are several time zones away. I don’t want to be distant and yet I seem to be sliding down the slope.

Perhaps if I managed to juggle my time better, I could get everything done in a reasonable manner, but… I’m distractable and there isn’t much outside incentive for most of these. The library project is closest to completion because it’s my job and I want to finish with what we currently have before all the new books arrive. z.z I’ve come to realize that my self-motivation can only take me so far, especially when I have no definite timeline to work with.

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On the Eve of School

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Winter holiday is ending.  School starts on January 12th (so tomorrow).  It’s a new semester and I have new responsibilities!  You see, since three of the four students in my ESL class tested into regular class and the school has more than one ESL teacher, it was decided that I would move to more of a librarian.  In addition to my librarian duties, I will also be the Warden of the Infirmary, the Online class Proctor, as well as teach a creative writing class! ^^

I was going to say something about my adventures yesterday evening at the GOMTV studio, but I think I will hold off on that for this weekend.  I need to be getting to bed… ^_^;

Also, I’m going to be doing a little bit about SOPA and PIPA that are floating around in the US Congress this weekend because researching them is the primary cause I haven’t been writing about my adventures.  So expect more from me this weekend!

Blessings and peace!
~Direlda

Vulpine News

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About the video:

I present you with the first broadcast of Vulpine News. Hear me talk to you about NaNoWriMo and read a poem off a tissue box by William Wordsworth (as opposed to William Wadsworth [an actual person; Wadsworth is also the middle name of a different poet], as I misspoke… I probably would have apprenticed Frederick to a pirate…). There is also a short reading from my NaNoWriMo novel – the only peek the public will get at the actual text of the novel at this stage in revisions.

This is also my way of trying to make up for not rambling on here for the last month or so. Now that I am considerably less busy, I should be back to a more regular rambling schedule. Also be on the lookout for more broadcasts of Vulpine News!

In other news, I had a lot of fun last night at the Christmas party the church I’m attending threw.  They had a banquet and I surprised the English service pastor by how much food I piled on my plate! :D   Naturally, I finished it all and enjoyed chatting with a teacher/editor and with some friends from university who are teaching at a hagwon not too far away.  Before the banquet was a variety of performances, including Taekwondo and traditional Korean music.  All-in-all a good time! ^^

Blessings!
~Direlda