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Prepping and Prompting

06 Friday Oct 2017

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So while I have been working away at trying to finish my short, and toiling away at trying to plan out my WIP details for the upcoming NaNo, I’ve also been scouring the internet looking for prompts to try and do a little bit of one shot, like 1k shorts to just get into the October spirit.

Because, after all, October isn’t just about being prepared for NaNo. It’s the start of Fall. It’s Halloween. It’s Dia de los Muertos. It’s Samhain. It’s the time of year where the veil between the living and the dead is the thinnest. It’s where we get to dress up and be someone else for a night, or all month. And it’s where, even for those of us who don’t normally write it, we writers might want to try to craft something that goes bump in the night.

I don’t know what it is, or why it is, but my scouring the internet came up short. Most of what I found were prompts about sharing your memories of different events or emotions tied to Halloween. And that’s just not what I wanted.

So, I crafted some of my own prompts. Originally I was thinking of a prompt a day kind of list, but when everything falls into place that’s a lot for someone like me who works 9-5 Monday through Friday. So I crafted one prompt every other day instead. If you’re not looking at a calendar to count, that’s sixteen prompts.

If you’re planning to fill any of the prompts, leave a comment down below with which one(s) you’re thinking of doing. As well, if you post it anywhere, I’d love to see it so go ahead and throw a link in the comment, or tweet me @MerisCorner because I’d love to see them all written out!

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October becomes Preptober

04 Wednesday Oct 2017

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So we’ve fallen into October. Or, well, I’ve fallen into October. I’m still working on a short, it’s bad, I know. But while I haven’t actually finished writing it I’ve outlined what I want to happen. I just need to focus a little more on getting it all done. Because it HAS to be done before November. Has to be. Ideally, I’d like it to be done by next week so I can really devote the rest of this month into planning out what I’m doing for November.

What’s November, you might ask? It’s National Novel Writing Month! Where you pledge to write 50,000 words in 30 days. Sounds like a lot? It kind of is, and I always succeed better when I have an outline for my novel, so I know where I’m supposed to be going.

I had briefly considered continuing the one from last year to get it done. I want to write that one and get it on paper. But there are still a few things I’m unsure of for it. So I’m going to sit on it for a little while longer to better work out some of it.

Instead I’ll be striving to do a completely new novel, and a completely new style for NaNo. My story is going to have a DnD inspired story within it. Which makes October even more important for prepping because I have double the world building and double the character creation for it. Each character is going to be playing a character within the story. There’ll be two plots, the plot of the game within the story and the plot that follows the main characters in their world. And the fantasy world within the game, and the world that the main characters live in when not gaming.

Have I confused you yet? Hopefully the answer is No.

If yes? Let me see if I can simplify it.

Basically the story will follow six people in a small Midwestern town. They’re in a gaming group together, and there will be a plot focused around them. As well, I am looking to develop their actual game, give life to the story that they’re playing out when they all meet up together on Friday nights, run the two stories within the same novel.

It’s something I’ve never done before, because it’s not like a lot of the gamer fiction where someone gets trapped in a game and becomes part of it and has to find their way to survive and potentially get out.

This will be a lot more to juggle. A Lot more to plan. Especially since fantasy settings involve a lot more as a whole as well.

Wish my luck with this journey down the rabbit hole, because I have no idea if it will end up being a great story or if it will be a cluster of not great. I’m hoping the first one.

If you are doing NaNo this year, are you dedicating October to being Preptober to get yourself set up? Are you pantsing it all the way? Let me know down in the comments!

Illness & Health

17 Thursday Aug 2017

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So, it’s been a while my lovely blog and lovely readers. Like a month, give or take a few days. I didn’t mean to be gone that long, honest. A lot of health stuff has been going on in my life that I hadn’t planned on or expected, isn’t that always the case though.

The timeline is fairly timely. But I’ll try to condense it to something shorter. We’ll see how well that goes, as I do love the words.

I can’t remember if I mentioned, my mom was diagnosed with pneumonia the weekend of July 4th. They thought it was bacterial, gave her antibiotics for it and sent her on her way. Fast forward to  July 24, and she ended up in the ER because her oncologist didn’t like the sounds of her lungs. They basically deemed her with viral pneumonia, which takes a hell of a lot longer to heal from and get over. And one of the side effects she’s dealing with is difficulty breathing. She can’t lay down because she can’t breath. She has to be careful eating because after eating she has issues breathing.

And I know it’s not me dealing with the health issue on that end, but it’s lead to a lot of stress and worry on my end because she’s my mom and I want her to be healthy and okay. She’s still dealing with the breathing issue, and coughing up phlegm and all too as I type this.

On my end, it’s not just the stress and worry that I’m dealing with.

I ended up with a concussion.

Yes, you read that right. The same day my mom was in the ER, I was in the ER for a work related injury to check out my head. How, you might ask? I was rearranging the cords for a faculty member of mine, and moved too fast under the desk and hit myself well. On a solid steel desk. Three hours later, with a splitting migraine and this rash and undeniable need to cry my heart out for absolutely no reason, found me filing out a work incident report and headed to the ER because the nurse that saw me didn’t like how unfocused and unbalanced I was after some rest time.

Between mom and I we were in the ER until almost midnight. And doctor’s orders for me were to stay off anything I needed my eyes for for the next two days, and to limit my computer use, tv watching, and reading for the next couple months because brain injuries take longer to heal.

Over all, I’ve been getting migraines – a health issue I’ve dealt with since I was fifteen – more frequently and in increasingly hard to fight through the pain and actually do things. I don’t say that lightly either, because as I type this I’m having to focus doubly hard because I have one currently. My office doesn’t help, because I’m under fluorescent lights all day and they only aggravate it more.  But sadly, as someone whose desk is the front desk of a department, I can’t just shut the door and turn out the lights to make myself feel better during business hours.

So yes, the reason I haven’t really been active, blog writing, WIP writing, Review writing, and twitter posting is less to do with motivation recently and more to do with the fact that I’m having trouble sitting at a computer for too long before my brain starts to feel like it’s melting. I’m hoping my brain will get on healing faster, I have words to write and characters to boss around. But it’s not something I can rush either. It takes the time it takes. (Can you tell Patience has never been one of my strong traits?)

I hope that you, my dear readers, are doing well.

Life & Booktubeathon 2017

19 Wednesday Jul 2017

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Don’t think I forgot about you, my valued and lovely readers. I most certainly did not. I know it’s been a little over a week since I last posted on here, and there is definitely a shame on me for that, I do have a reason. I was sick. I ended up with a cold of some kind on the 3rd. I pushed through it and seemed to be getting better until I ended up with sharp pain in my ears. An Urgent Care trip, if you’ve been following my Twitter you probably saw this already, diagnosed me with a mild ear infection on the left and a serious ear infection on the right. And I’m always lethargic when on antibiotics. So between meds and healing, things just didn’t go well for me. On top of that, my mother, who I dragged into Urgent Care with me, was diagnosed with pneumonia. So I’ve been keeping a close eye on her. She, this last weekend, also ended up having her shoulder seize up, and we still haven’t been able to get the muscle to unlock so we’re trying to manage her pain as we can. But, all the health problems have meant, sadly, that no words have been typed and stored and added to the word count.

Camp NaNoWriMo really isn’t fairing well for my poor little novel. But, health is more important than words, right? Right.

I am hoping to get some time to write in. I am going to be pretty stuck at home this weekend. We’re having a contractor come in to redo the bathroom floors. Subfloor is shot, so I’m taking the ability to replace the tile in there and everything. But it means lazying about so if he needs anything I’m around. Here’s hoping that words can be done while he works.

Also, as the title suggests, I have another goal. Booktube-a-thon is next week. And I’m thinking of following lots of booktubers and readers in reading books! What is booktube-a-thon? It’s a readathon held by a booktuber over on Youtube. You can find out all about this year’s event by watching this video! The goal is to read as much as possible during the week long event. Comic books, graphic novels, audio books, ebooks, print copies, if it’s a book of some kind, it’s fair game to count.

I’m still working out my TBR list for this event, but I’m definitely interested in participating. Any suggestions on some good books? Make sure to leave them in the comments below!

To Camp!

23 Friday Jun 2017

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I’m going camping in July!

Well. Not camping in the traditional sense. At least, not until August – at which points there will be tents and bugs, and a lot of sun.

No, July’s camping is much more virtual. I’m going to be participating in Camp NaNoWriMo. 30 days of cabinmates, forums of other writers, and me finishing this work in progress I have been wanting to finish.

A friend of mine suggested that we both participate. Me, so I can finish my current WIP, and her so she can finally really dig into a book that’s been floating around her head for like two years now.

Now, some of you are probably going, ‘what’s NaNoWriMo?’ and others, who may know about the main NaNoWriMo may be going ‘Camp NaNoWriMo? Did you make this up?’

First and foremost, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It was started way back when, and it’s when a bunch of us (thousands of us) writers get together for the month of November with the solid idea of writing 50,000 words in a month – ideally it’s towards a novel but some use it to rewrite novels, or do a compilation of short stores, etc. You can find more information at their website: nanowrimo.org

Camp NaNoWriMo is run by the same people who run the original NaNoWriMo. They created Camp NaNoWriMo because they had enough people going ‘but guys, I have finals in November, and we have this whole Thanksgiving Holiday because I live in the states where I have to be social with family! I can’t hole up for a month to write!’ And such, Camp NaNoWriMo was born. Camp is held twice a year, in April and in July. Unlike NaNoWriMo the Original, you can set your own word count for the month. Which makes it the perfect session to finish an already started project, verses trying to write one from start to finish.

And instead of regions that you’re broken into when participating in NaNoWriMo, Camp splits you into cabins of people and there’s a community discussion area where you can chit chat and encourage each other while the month gets going.

Find Camp NaNoWriMo at their website: campnanowrimo.org

Over all, it should be fun. And by the end of it, I should be able to go ‘It’s Finished!’. At least, that’s the plan!

Are you planning to participate in Camp NaNoWriMo? Let me know down in the comments below!

Novella becomes Novel…? Maybe?

25 Thursday May 2017

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So, last post I was calling one of my WIPs a novella. And then I took the time to actually look at it. And, hefty job, print it out at 100 pages printed from Word. Word was also kind enough to let me know that my WIP is currently 48,000 words approximately.

48,000 words.

Can I still call it a novella at this point?

I mean, no one would call The Great Gatsby a novella, and it’s roughly 50,000 words. And my WIP should be about that range when I finish.

When I started it, I didn’t expect it to be much longer than maybe 30,000 words or so. That total would put it firmly in the novella category, and I never really paid too much mind to the word count while I was working on it. I never noticed when I passed the 30K mark, and then the 40K mark.

Of course, this thing needs a heavy revision after I finish it, but really, I guess I should start calling it a novel? It’s kind of crazy to me that my tiny idea turned itself into a full fledged novel.

When do you consider a work a novel, instead of a novella?

Prepping and Thinking and Writing and Winning

13 Thursday Oct 2016

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elethwyn Two weeks, give or take a few days. That’s all we have until National Novel Writing Month is upon us. Two weeks to get my notes all in order. And truthfully, my notes are currently ‘kingdom 1’  ‘ruled by king – who has three children’. It’s not a lot to go on yet. I think the biggest help my friend gave me was to not dwell too hard on names of things, places and people just yet. To work out the world, the laws, the governing bodies first. Work out the landscape some, which thanks to a map maker I have a map! so I at least know the layout of the world, the potential resources for each kingdom.

But, you know. Go me for choosing to create an entirely new fantasy world three weeks before NaNo to start with. Ambition, thy name is Meri and she holds a mighty pen. Don’t think about the fact that I have way too much on my plate going on.

What, might you ask, do I have on my plate?

  • Well, for starters there’s work that runs from 8am – 6pm during the week. Now, I work a 9-5 job, but I get into work at 8, and I’m usually working by 8:30. And I don’t usually get dragged away from work until about 5/5:30pm, which puts me at home between 6/7 pending if there’s any last minute shopping that needs to be done before I get home. This takes up a good chunk of my time in general.
  • I have a Non-Profit Newsletter to finish revising, and a couple articles for it that I need to poke some people into giving me, because it’s technically due out the 15th (that’s two days folks).
  • I have a house that is in desperate need for some cleaning, and lets face it we write better in a clean environment too.
  • I took it upon myself to take a business class this semester in the hopes of maybe learning a little about business and the art of learning, though while I am learning nothing so far can help me because it’s mostly focused on globally done business not small business.
  • My health has been up and down with my iron deficiancy and my back being a cronic source of pain. Both have been slowly clearing up as I try to balance though. I take too little iron in a week and I’m exhasuted from the moment I get out of bed, but I take too much and it screws with my heart and causes chest pains. And my back, well, I invested in one of those back massagers that you put on a chair, lean back and just fall asleep while it works the stress and knots away with rollers and heat. And I have to say, that has made a world of difference in how I’m sleeping and waking up all on its own. May not be cheap, but it’s doing a damn fine job.

It’s a lot, to be sure. And I’m trying to work through it some and carve out plotting time. Because that plotting time will slowly turn to November’s writing time. And I want to make sure that I have a little of it throughout each and every day.

Not to mention, my mom and I are considering just bucking off for a week near the end of November, beginning of December to just get away from the world after Thanksgiving. Just take some time for ourselves and relax a little so we can de-stress before the new year starts.

But at the end of the day, yeah. I have six kingdoms to work out for my WIP. I have all six families, as well as how they rule their kingdom, I still haven’t settled on if it’s purely human or if there are other races, magic, ect. There’s still a LOT of planning I need to think about, work out, and get back into everything. Get that creative juice flowing. But I have faith in myself. I’ve come this far, and dedicated my time to it. And I am nothing if not stubborn enough to push through, if only because I said I would and could!

On the plus side, I’ve dedicated an entire notebook to planning out this world, from people to rules to kingdoms. And I have no doubt in my mind that it will be full, if not spilling into a second notebook come completion.

How is your NaNo prep going? Are you still in serious planning mode? Are you outlined and set and ready to go for everything come Nov. 1st already?

Life – Forever Tired & NaNo Prep

03 Monday Oct 2016

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jax with yarn

Hello wide world of readers, I hope that your day, your week, is going well so far. Though, it is only Monday.

I wish I had exciting news about why I’ve been so missing, but in reality it’s fairly boring. With everything going on, coupled with a re-emerging issue with low iron, I’ve pretty much had no energy to do much of anything but sleep after I get home from work. Which, means that there’s also very little time for writing, editing, and plotting out new books. I keep hoping things will change, who knows, as I try to take iron to supplement the problem, maybe I’ll find it a little easier to try and get more work done. I can, as ever, hope.

And I’m sure you’re asking, well what about weekends? That would be a good question. Weekends have been fairly busy doing stuff for a non-for-profit organization that I’m part of. This last weekend, as we transitioned into October was the first free weekend I’ve had in a long while, and I spent Saturday DnD’ing with a group of friends to blow off some steam and have fun – we ended the night watching Deadpool, and Sunday ended up being a mass cleaning day. The always sleeping or out of the house hasn’t just affected my writing but also the cleanliness of my house, so I’m now trying to fix that some and create a better writing environment for myself.

Which does kind of bring me to my, hopefully, exciting news, which is that I’m going to dedicate my November to writing and participate in a new year of NaNoWriMo!

I’m thinking of doing a set of shorts, possible. Though I have a friend that’s been wanting to co-author a book with me, so if we can get that planned out and it works we may try to write that together for NaNo instead. I really need to dig into the edits for my two previous novels, but that will hopefully come in December, when I’ve gotten back into the writing habit and working habit, and with more iron in my system hopefully giving me more energy over all.

Wish me luck!

Are you participating in NaNo? Leave a note and let me know in the comments!

2016 – Revitalizing and Refocusing

03 Sunday Jan 2016

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Hi everyone. If you’ve been around, or deduced by the handle of this blog, my name is Meri. If you’re new to my blog, welcome! If you’re returning, welcome back!

This blog was originally started back in 2013, as a way to keep up with thoughts, ideas, and things that came to me while writing, but also where I could review books as I read them and give my honest opinion on them.  And for the most part, that is what’s happened here on this blog, but at a very sporadic and nearly chaotic schedule.

To give a little background, I’m an aspiring author who is trying to make a living at writing. The catch is that, naturally, I have a life away from the computer. I have pets, a house to take care of, as well as a mother with cancer that I’m looking after – she’s strong, and doing well but I want and need to be there for her. And, as if that wasn’t enough, I have a full 9-5 job that takes up most of my time during the week, so most of the house things take up my weekend.

Every time I mark off that I’m going to buckle down, really get writing, and commit to doing better at this blog, life tends to throw me curve balls. But, with this new year I am putting my foot down and saying no more. I will find the time, I will put in the focus, and I will get posts done. Because I want to commit to this, I want to grow my online presence not just as a blogger but as an author. It’s not just good enough to put books and shorts up on Amazon, which I’m still working to get on a decent schedule as well.

sleeping kitten

My New Resolutions for this Blog are:

  • To post regularly (two or three times a week)
  • To read more books, there by writing more reviews
  • Update on my WIPs more – because as a writer I’m working on my WIPs more.

What are your resolutions for the New Year? Leave them in the comments!

New Year, Interesting Start

03 Sunday Jan 2016

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Happy New Year 2016 Quotes Happy New Year, Everyone!

The end of 2015 went out in one of the most challenging ways possible. And, truth be told, I’m fairly glad that it’s over and that we’re starting a new, fabulous new year.

The long of my last week of 2015 under the reader’s cut. If you want to skip it, the end is, I’m glad 2015 is over, I’m glad to have my internet back, and I am excited to start 2016! Stay tuned in the next few days for my goals and hopes post!

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