Tag Archives: original fiction

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!

New Writing Prompts on the Horizon

15 Thursday Jun 2017

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So, I was at the bookstore the other day with my best friend and I happened upon this book just sitting on a shelf staring at me. I get distracted by shiny, and I don’t mean shiny like pretty but shiny like actual shiny. The writing on this book was all shiny reflective gold and I kind of loved it. The title of the book also caught me, no lie.

Write the Story – yes, the image that probably dragged you in here to read my blog post.

It’s this mostly empty book, with a prompt and ten items that you should be including in your writing when filling the prompt.

I’m excited to try to use this to help me better at writing. Because these can be used just for exercises to get me a little more back in the writing spirit. I think it will be fun to see what crazy interesting things will come from these prompts.

Maybe I’ll even share them here. Or at least pieces of them. We’ll see.

I’m hoping to start working on doing these prompts maybe once a week in July. I know they’re not really meant to be all that long, the book only gives you a page each prompt, but I never know how long my short prompts are going to be until I’m writing it and it’s coming to a close. After all, my current WIP was originally planned for 30,000 and it’s going on 50,000 words. We shall see.

What do you use to inspire you? Let me know in the comments below.

Gettin’ Hot in Here

06 Tuesday Jun 2017

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 So, my weekends plans had me out and about this past weekend. I drove down to St. Louis, MO and had a wonderful time out in Tower Grove Park. If you live in the area and never been, I suggest it. If you’re visiting St. Louis and want a nice place to eat lunch all picnic in the park, I suggest it for that too. The park is absolutely beautiful.

Though, even more so when it’s packed for several blocks with vendors selling books, clothes, hand made soaps, jewelry, and the like. And even better when some of those vendors sell these amazing Kebabs and frozen lemonade.

I didn’t come home with a lot of items, except for a tarot reading and dream pouch from a beautiful and amazing woman, everything I bought was food. And only one of those food items came home with me. Normally I’m all over getting the cute things to hang in windows, or a book from one of the local authors that sells their books there. But this year I was really trying to scale back. I’m trying to take cleaning my house seriously, and for better or worse that includes not bringing stuff home from a big show like this.

The frozen lemonade though. Kept me running. This whole weekend was 100+ degrees. Thankfully a tree was kind enough to share it’s branches with me and keep me shaded for most of the day. What sun I received, that made me look like an angry lobster on Sunday, has already faded into a tan color. Being very pale (ancestors were Swedish, German, Polish, and Irish) it’s super weird to have a little color on me right now.

Between the heat and the activities, and the driving, I wasn’t able to write at all while I was away. And yesterday was writing fail. I came back from a four day weekend to find that basically everything was going wrong and the office I work for was sinking without me. Great for job security, not so great for being able to get a little writing in before hours, during lunch, and after hours. Coupled with my new mattress arriving, I was basically zonked out after I was able to lug it up to my room and get it all unwrapped and then sheet-ed. I’m hoping for a little more success with getting words on a page tonight after I get home. And while for you, my lovely readers, this counts as words on a page, I’m not counting it towards words on a page myself because it’s not words towards my WIP. So time to buckle down when I get home.

Granted, a lot of times I like to use my laptop and write from bed. The last couple months have been a little more difficult doing that because my mattress was uncomfortable and crap, so this new mattress should lead to more writing at night before I crash too. Here’s hoping anyway.

Until next time, let me know how your weekend went. Did you get a lot done? Did you relax due to the high heats? Leave me a comment below!

Updates and Cleaning

01 Thursday Jun 2017

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So, with family obligations – birthday party things Memorial Day weekend – I wasn’t able to get a lot of writing done before the end of the month. Which means that WIP isn’t all that finished. I was able to get a few words done on it though. Slowly. Very slowly. Though, sadly, I’m not going to be able to get too much writing done this weekend either.

I have a Picnic in the Park event that I’m headed down to tomorrow, one state over from me so tomorrow is travel day.

While I won’t get much, if any writing done though, it will still be a beautiful time. There are some workshops I’m looking to attend at the event, and I get to see a friend I haven’t seen in like a year. So pretty excited about that too.

And who knows. Maybe I’ll be able to find some more inspiration for new stories. Though, I’m not sure I need TOO much more inspiration, before I finish projects.

Which brings me to the cleaning part of this. I’ve been trying to clean up some. Spring cleaning and what not in the house. And I ended up finding three different starts to stories.

Three.

I’m adding them to my idea binder so that I can hopefully work on them later. All in told I think I have like five or six starts to stories sitting and waiting for me to finish, and a myriad more in a journal that are currently merely concepts that need to be seriously flushed out. Soon, my pretties, soon.

And if you’re wondering where I get the flower pictures I put in my blog posts, I take them. I dabble in photography, and flowers are my favorite subject. Most tend to be taken in my own garden, or the gardens of friends and family.

Cheers everyone. I hope your first weekend in June is bright, beautiful, and full of inspiration!

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?

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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Days After NaNoWriMo

08 Tuesday Dec 2015

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writing

So, we’ve had a whole week since NaNoWrimo finished. Usually it’s a time of celebration for finishing word counts – which I totally did! – and getting into the groove of editing.

But, I always am amazed sometimes at my family. During the month of November, because I’m participating in NaNoWrimo and I’m pretty vocal about it to anyone that will listen, I’m given slack on things like house chores, or the want to wander off after household duties are taken care of because ‘she’s writing’. But any month other than November, and it’s always the ‘oh no, you need to help with this or that, or oh no, we need to be shopping or socializing’.

My biggest problem is, I’m not just a once a month writer. Yes, I put a little more heavy handed emphasis on my writing in November because I’m trying to get 50,000 words in 30 days, but that’s not where my writing lives and dies either. I’m an aspiring writing. I still have a novel to finish because the conclusion didn’t wrap up during November. I also have a short I’m looking to publish once I finish it as well – because my brain had to come up with an entirely different story set in the last week of November but I think it’ll do well as a couple shorts.

Not to mention, I have to edit the novel I finished last year, the one that’s been re-plotted twice, rewritten three times, and took two NaNoWriMo’s to finish. That novel. It’s only in first draft form. Still needs a LOT of work, and if I’m going to get to it anytime soon, I need to be able to sit down and finish this novel – and short.

I will blame my brain occasionally for things, because as soon as I start to wrap something up, it rolls into a sandbox and starts to design new characters and plots. Which, I’m not exactly complaining about, I swear. My cup runith over when it comes to plots and characters. It’s just the timing. I’m about four chapters from finishing my current WIP novel, and now I have this new plot to run with in short stories that’s wanting to distract me. And it’s not just sitting down and jotting the plots out to look at later. No, if I don’t run with the plot right this second, write down where it leads me – through usually a minimum of four pages typed – then I can’t have the brain power to work on said older project. Because my brain prioritizes like that.

If I’m being honest with myself, and you my lovely readers, I actually have five WIPs that are currently in various stages of Draft 1, and one WIP that’s drafted and on the editing board. My High Fantasy novel needs edits. My Cozy Mystery novel needs me to wrap it up now that I’ve run through the mystery climax. My Horror Short Anthology needs a LOT more attention, as that has five to six stories in it. My Modern Mythos short needs me to hammer out the plot so it’s more coherent, and will run for a few books at least. My Space story is patiently waiting for me to just focus and continue. (All of those were in the works before NaNo – though it’s the Cozy Mystery that got written during NaNo) And now I have this I’m not even sure what to name it short that I’m guessing will run for three to five books if I’m careful and don’t run myself into corners.

Six projects I find myself wading through after NaNoWriMo. And not a lick of give from family now that the month is over. I get that I don’t make as much noise during the year about my writing to them, because at the end of the day it’s still just me toiling around with my words and my worlds. But, it’s not any less important for me to do either.

Since NaNoWriMo, I’ve worked on the Cozy Mystery a little, but not as much as I’d like. That and the random short that butted in are my two priorities to wrap up so I can hand them over for edits while I work on other things. At least once they’re done and off to my trusted editors, I can rest easier knowing I only have four WIPs running then.

How many WIPs do you have on your plate? Leave the answer down in the comments.

New November, New Challenge

03 Tuesday Nov 2015

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tea It’s that time of year again. Where the world narrows down to one mug of caffeine of choice (coffee, tea, coke, all three mixed together?) and the words on a page, and how fast you can get them down for the next 30 days. Or, while I type this three days into the event, 27 days now.

That’s right. It’s NaNoWriMo. Or, for those that don’t know the lingo yet, National Novel Writing Month. 30 Days, 50,000 Words.

A challenge I have accepted for the last nine years.

And for the first seven of those years, I was a complete and total Pantser. Which, for me and my writing style, may be why those first seven years I really failed at finishing my 50,000 words.

What’s a Pantser you might ask? It’s someone that starts NaNo with little to no plan and just writes by the seat of their pants. Usually they have characters, maybe a semblance of an outline, but they let the characters drive the word count and just run with everything that happens. It’s a well used way of writing for some people out there.

I have found, through trial and serious error, that it’s really not my cup of tea for writing. If I don’t have a general outline to keep me on task, my characters will usually run themselves right into a brick wall, and I’ll spend the rest of my November trying to find a way to write them out of it. Which doesn’t do much for the actual word count itself because I find myself having to back track and edit in order to fix everything.

While I don’t like everything planned out to a T, I do need a serious outline in order to make sure I don’t end up at a dead end in the story. Something I can periodically check and look at in order to go yes, I am on the right track this morning. Or, no, I need to curve my kids to head toward where I need them now, because this section is taking far too long.

The last two years I was able not only complete NaNoWriMo with my 50,000 word count, but it also meant that I was able to finish a novel I had been working on for quite a long time. The novel went through two serious outline and plot revisions before it came out into a rough draft that’s currently on my editing desk.

This year I’m starting a new novel, and I’m really hoping that I can achieve both finishing NaNoWriMo and my novel at the same time.

So how about you, dear readers? Are you a Pantser, flying where the words take you? Or are you a Planner, keeping your kids on a loose leash to make sure you get where you need to go? Leave a comment and let me know!

Old Projects, New Eyes

18 Tuesday Jun 2013

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It’s hard sometimes to look back and go ‘well hell. I was supposed to be done with that by now.’ And yet that’s what I ended up doing this last week while I was on vacation visiting my best friend. I’ve been trying to write a novel for the last four years, and every year I always let life or other things get in the way of finishing. I don’t set it as a priority, and that’s my main problem. Though the major secondary problem is that I haven’t been setting time aside to write.

I got a new job a couple months ago and that had completely side tracked me as well, but that’s an excuse. And not a very good one. Though that’s also neither here nor there.

After talking to my friend, and realizing that I had written 30,000 words and the story didn’t go anywhere, or do anything. And staring at this large piece of work that’s been sitting for what feels like forever, it felt like a chore to try and work on it. Like I was tied down and chained to keep it because it’s what I have to show for the last four years. But it made me want to work on it even less for that too, because I wasn’t sure how to salvage it with how backed into a corner the main character was now.

So, with the encouragement of my friend, I scrapped all of it but the treatment and outline. We reworked some of story so it will hopefully flow a little better too as I write it. And we’ve set up goals for me to meet, the  main being a minimum of 667 words a day, but 1,000 if I can get it there. My goal as a whole is to have the rough draft done by Christmas. That starting in 2014 I can do revisions and edits and have it finished before this time next year.

It might not seem like a lot, or a strict deadline, but I have issues trying to follow most deadlines, and I will be doing my best to keep up with all of my goals. And hopefully I will update with better progress as the year gets closer to closing.