here comes mary, all dressed in black

[intertribal]

I have written/elaborated on an outline for the novel (yes, the same one I've been "working on" for the past 6 years).  It is 16 pages (9,700 words = 10% of the novel's projected word count) long.  I think my goal is to somehow write the novel by continuously elaborating on the outline?  I guess this puts to rest any idea that I might be a pantser instead of a plotter.  LOLOLOL.  Don't even tell me if this isn't going to work, all you people who have successfully written novels.  That's pretty much what I accomplished over university closedown.  I didn't do any work on short stories, people.  But good news is, the two short stories I spent autumn working on - "Absolute Zero" and "Infested" - both made it into the anthologies they were written for (Creature!  Thirty Years of Monster Stories, ed. Paul Tremblay and John Langan, and Bewere The Night, ed. Ekaterina Sedia).  Just got the acceptance for the latter story this afternoon before I headed out for New Year's, so I was already in a chipper state before I had the ouzo.

The Twilight Zone marathon has been on SyFy all day.  Saw "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street" earlier.  Still a great and necessary story about I-have-seen-the-enemy-and-it-is-us in my book, as trite/predictable as it may seem to modern audiences (clearly not so trite/predictable that we have learned not to repeat Maple Street's mistakes).  ETA: This episode reminded me somewhat of Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived In the Castle, particularly when the one guy's like, "Are we going to pick apart the idiosyncrasies of every man, woman, and child..."  But I will make a post specifically about We Have Always Lived In the Castle.

This year, like last year, I celebrated New Year's with the local Greek population.  But this year I not only broke a plate, but I participated in the women's folk dance!  Second time around I started getting the steps right.  Considering that last year I chickened out for fear of embarrassing myself, I for one am fairly proud.  Onward, to Namek2011!  Selamat Tahun Baru!

Comments

[lilpocketninja.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, I just ran across a link to this today and it's pretty much "expanding an outline until it's a novel."

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Make just one line for each scene. In one column, list the POV character. In another (wide) column, tell what happens.

Oh God, this is exactly what I did. Hahaha. I remember reading about the Snowflake Method a while ago, maybe it embedded itself in my subconscious.