Writing Quandaries

As I'm flailing around madly for some kind of dialogue between these two in their story, this is a conversation I imagine happening between Zara and Elf:

Elf:  Hey, I just got this metal, it's rare and it's metal, and it's in this metal holding bag!
Zara:  Wow.......that's, neat..... *trails off and glances away*

Zara:  Hey, I just found this moldy piece of paper with two words and one symbol on it, and I think if I stand on my head it might be a hidden clue to the origin of Ahn'Qiraj!
Elf: Um, that's fascinating......*whistles and watches the sky*

.......moments pass.......

Zara:  Hey, wanna go help me kill stuff?
Elf:  Sure!


*they ride off into the sunset*

COME ON GUYS FIND SOME COMMON GROUND HERE.

"That's a big dragon."  "Ayup."

Busy-ness

Well, there goes the time for the therapeutic writing :). This past month has been busy busy (of course). I've barely gotten any writing done (although I've done some storyline editing in my head! tiny progress!) and although I still have some older pictures to post, I have literally been kicking the same picture around in my head for over a MONTH waiting to get it down on paper. Then I finally managed to take my sketch book out on the porch with me and laid out a few basic lines while Seraphyna laid on her pillow and we watched the kids run around in the yard, massive storms started brewing and we had to quickly pack it in and make possible tornado plans. As much as I'm dreading a repeat of last summer, I am just in love with the weather and ambience this spring. The weather is a beautiful, energetic 67-82 degrees and everything is green and lush and growing. The warmest day so far, of course, was the day of Med Faire. Although we were all quite miserable and sporting a crimson sheen by the end of the day, the days since have been wonderful and mild. There is a lot of energy to the air, and a lot of storms.....including a very sudden tornado that devastated part of husband's hometown. None of his family or friends were injured, although a few lost part or all of a house. Although I could do without the swirling vortices of doom, the precipitation has been heavenly, especially as a contrast to last year's dry barren never-ending summer. I dare to hope that we may actually have a lighter summer this year.

I will have to put a separate post up with all the things I have going in the sewing department, but I will say I DID get our Med Faire costumes completed at about 5am the morning of (6 whole hours before our tentative leaving time!) and everyone looked great :). I am inordinately proud of Seraphyna's outfit, which was made with no pattern. I usually do not make outfits or costumes for babies and they are HARD to measure!! It's either too tight or it's so loose it falls off. It's like making something fit a floppy, gelatinous, grinning octopus. Her outfit was so perfect though: loose fitting and airy, but completely covering her limbs from the sun, and the elastic around the neck kept it from going everywhere.

Once again, I find myself merely one week before a sewing deadline, and I haven't even started yet. Rowan and Lachlan's birthday party is next Sunday, and I haven't even cut out their pajamas yet. It is my goal to make everyone a sewn item as part of their birthday gift, in fact I would like to make this a yearly tradition, but it really snuck up on me this time. For Rowan, he will have Star Wars print pajama pants with a coordinating shirt, and for Lachlan he will have alligators. He would probably prefer something with cars or trains, but his lovey is a gigantic stuffed alligator that we have named "Om", so Mark happened upon a piece of fabric with animals on it (including an alligator) and I have an alligator patch I'm going to put on a shirt to go with the pants I'm making out of the fabric.

Husband is still reeling from the tornadic activity from this weekend and is trying to nap it off, so it's just me tonight with Lachlan (Seraphyna, angel baby that she is, is already down for the night). I'm trying to make myself get started writing or drawing, and not get lost in ridiculous youtube all night. I have music from The Guild as my anthem tonight. They have a new one out that I love love and it keeps going through my head (i might be playing all three of their songs over and over........ahem). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFhgupR565Q is the video for their newest (NSFW lyrics). If Sir I-Have-to-Stand-on-Everything-You're-Doing wasn't up, I'd try and cut out pjs....but as it is, it will probably be computer time. Maybe I'll get ambitious and try and figure out the scanner so I can upload artwork. I need to figure out how to finish drawings so they don't all look like a scratchy mess. Well that concludes my blogtime tonight, at least according to Sir I-Have-to-Crawl-In-and-Out-of-Your-Lap-and-Give-You-a-Hug-a-Hundred-Times. /sigh.

Zara and Elf celebrate the Lunar Festival

Side note: I am working on some pictures and more exciting things to post: it's been a very busy birthday week for the husband and I. More soon!

EDIT: I uploaded a sketch to my deviantart. Be gentle.

Revving Up My Artsy Side

I drew a picture of a baby Night Elf. It didn't suck :). I am cautiously really excited about this. As soon as I get a little colour on it, I will scan it and share.

One of the ways I want to improve on myself this year is I really want to work on my writing and drawing. I am not the best artist, in fact usually I can't draw anything at all. But every now and then, I can turn out a good picture. I am hoping that if I just make myself sit down and work on it, I will get better at it. My mother is a really good artist: she and I have drastically different tastes (read: she made herself a huge fluffy coat out of realistic cat-print fleece. and wears it. IN PUBLIC) but I can't deny she has considerable artistic talent. She can draw, paint, design, work with colour or black and white, cartoon, etc.... I am limited to some black and white pencil drawings that I can occasionally add some coloured pencil too. And I am perfectly happy with this medium, if I can just get it to work with some reliability.

As far as writing, I consider myself a halfway decent writer. If I want to write something and make it sound a certain way, I can usually get it done. When I was in high school I had this huge notebook full of story ideas and sketches of characters that I usually never did anything with but I did have a few snippets here and there of longer pieces. One of my better pieces and ideas had a main character named Zarabethe, a name I felt I made up on my own (I've seen it other places since so it's obviously not a complete unique snowflake, but I was proud of it at the time). I like/liked the name so much I've used it as a re-occurring name throughout many projects I've done since, finally coalescing into my World of Warcraft main character, a night elf hunter. That is now the name's permanent home: as I've played the game and slowly developped storyline and personality of her, I will never be able to think of the name in any other way again. I still use it as a username or even a sort of "alter ego" (hence the title of this blog) but I will always think of my superlogical, OCPD, purple-skinned hunter with braided hair and her feline companion.

On that subject, the story I am working on right now is what you would I guess call fanfic: it's based in the WoW universe and is all about my character and the most important quest and journey of her lifetime. I'm not writing it to get published, I'm not writing it to submit to any fanfic websites, I'm just writing it for me. I don't have to please anyone or make anyone happy, and letting go of that is really helping to get me going creatively and write it the way *I* want it to turn out. This also means that I will write and re-write and re-write and re-write one little paragraph or even sentence until it is exactly perfect. This takes FOR-EV-ER. I have completed exactly two chapters in one year :). Now I am busy and I do have a few other things I do every day, but I really want to crack down and get this out of my head: this story is begging me to tell it. I also want to write it before I forget important details that are different in the game now than they used to be. As right now I'm a little stuck as far as the writing goes, I'm going to work on illustrating some scenes that are flitting around in my head, and hopefully jumpstart the writing again.

I was going to get into a little more on this subject, but Lachlan has just dumped the sock hamper all over the living room, so back to my motherly duties.