Angel

okay, here's a few hundred words of what I've got done of the prologue so far:

Red Threads, Book 1: No Faith
Summary: Half a millennia ago the Elemental Beasts were born from the gradual concentration of four elements in the east, south, west, and north corners of the mortal realm. While magnificent, they were as impassive to mortal life as the natural disasters they embody, and were eventually ordered to be imprisoned in the underworld by the Jade Emperor of the immortals. As punishment, they were stripped of their immortality and condemned to numerous lifetimes of the very suffering they had caused.

Over the centuries, as the mortal realm slowly returned to peace and prosperity, the beasts and the terrors they wrought faded from the mortals’ memories， until they remained no more than a faraway legend.

Now, five hundred years later, their spirits have been reborn as five mortal beings, each struggling through their own trials of redemption, and each connected to the other by a red thread of fate. Caught on either side of the conflict between the rénlèi (humans) and yāojīng (nonhuman entities that can take on human form) will fate bring them together as friends, or enemies?

Moved to GuangZhou last week.

Went bicycling with Mom on the 大佛山 Park trails today and got caught in a typhoon DDD:

Got shelter in a small rest stop for a while (and got three humongous mosquito bites regardless) and went riding again when the rain lessened to a drizzle, but it started raining harder again and while we biked home in the downpour we got completely drenched. (We were gonna try and convince Jeff that it was "all the sweat from our lots and lots of bountiful exercise \8D/" but he saw thorough it right away >3>)

I usually loathe rain, but it actually felt great once it seemed inevitable. 爽 XD

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Got the outline for the first 5-6 chapters of my Chinese fantasy novel thing written down and the general plot for the whole story hashed out. Seeing as I grew up only knowing the bare minimums of Chinese mythology (ex. stuff in HongKong dramas, Monkey King stories, etc.) I've just decided to borrow names of the mythical figures (ex. Jade Emperor, Elder of the Moon, Hei and Bai Wu'chang) and make them my own characters.

Still, the naming and terminology I'm trying to use is giving me headaches because English is just too incompatible with the feel of Chinese culture (I'm only writing this in English because my Chinese literary skills suck).

Main problems are Western equivalents for words that have very different meanings in Chinese, examples:
- the Chinese dragon has a long body, a horned head with spiky manes, four short legs with claws, a fish's tail, and can fly without wings (I'm still kinda mad at the Harry Potter people for making the "Chinese Fireball" some sort of iguana with wings), dragons are also considered divine beasts, definitely not hunted (killing a dragon will probably end in your entire family executed by the immortals); the tiger is the king of beasts, not the lion (because it says "王/king" on its forehead D8)
- "Heaven" and "Hell" are not the same; "Heaven" in Chinese mythology is the palace of the immortals (I hesitate to use Gods because that word carries with it too much implications), there are no "angels" ('cause Chinese immortals don't need wings to fly, they ride clouds), and people don't go up when they die, they go down, to "Hell" (which has another set of inconvenient associations) which is basically the realm of the dead, spirits go there when they die and get judged for their good/bad deeds in life, the unworthy ones either get sent to the 18 Planes of Hell (to suffer mortal pains for their bad deeds) and the others are allowed to be reincarnated (after they drink a soup to forget their past lives)
- phrases like 妖精/yao'jing that can't be explained away with "demon" or "monster" or be called "special animals with powers in human form" for the whole novel...I find brackets are helpful in this case...

Thus, my writing is halting at best (as I try to figure out the word to describe something)...it took me three days to write 2 pages in Word.

( summary and notes )

I was bordering on insomnia ever since inspiration hit five days ago. Been writing and plotting non-stop. For some reason I am especially inspired right before I sleep. This has resulted in me keeping a notepad by my dresser so the second I think of something new, I can write it down right away instead of having it bother me all night and afraid I won't remember it in the morning.