Tag Archives: original work

Update of Sorts

16 Friday May 2014

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It’s been… more than a long time since I’ve updated my blog. Granted, to be fair, it’s been more than a long time since I worked on anything original too. I was able to win NaNoWriMo last year, adding 50K words to my WIP, which helped me come closer to finishing it by a ton. It got my main character through two of her four tasks, and set her up for the third pretty well. And then the Holidays hit. Because of everything that goes on at my house for Holidays, I didn’t really allow myself time to write. And that is on me, no excuses that I was too busy, I just didn’t carve out the appropriate amount of time to let myself when I should have. Couple the Holidays with my 9-5 job that pays the bills from December to February due to a deadline that came due, and my writing suffered more than I wanted to.

February was the worst month though. I lost my father on February 5th unexpectedly. And it’s been hard, getting through, helping my Mom through. Trying to make sure everything goes as it needs to, or where it needs to. On top of that, we had a whole business (he had a self-owned business) to try and figure out, inventory, and get up and running in the wake of his absence. And truthfully, I’ve been low enough that trying to write original stuff has been really hard, trying to focus and keep going where I was. For the first month or so, I had a really hard time writing in past tense at all, and while some people might be saying then don’t write in past tense, my WIP – all 100+ pages already written – is in past tense. So it made working on it near impossible when I kept slipping into first person. And for a while I felt like everything I wrote period was coming out pretty crap.
Knowing myself, I knew that for the good of the novel, it was better to not touch it until I was in a more stable place. Because especially when low I can be one of those temperamental artists that turns around and just scraps everything in a fit if I’m not careful. I haven’t had a fit like that in a while, a long while, but that’s partially because I’ve learned from my past, learned the signs that it was coming on, and learned to put some space between me and whatever it is I’m working on to better keep things whole and ready for me when I come back from my low.

I think I’m about ready to start trying to finish my novel now though. To start working on original ideas again. I’ve been getting some new original ideas recently, ones that give me that small smile because they just scream ‘write me’ loudly and start creating their own main character so I can work on them. But, I’ve been trying to be good, to not start another project before I finish this novel. It’s been put off, re-drafted, re-written, too many times to put it on the side burner for a new idea after everything. And I really do want to get there, to feel that sigh of relief that the first draft can officially be called finished. Maybe start a new project while I give it some space before going back to edit it and have my trusty editor help to comb through it, make sure it’s as good as it can be. And I’m ready to get back into this blog, to writing even if it’s here to keep up being active again.

And thus starts week two…

12 Tuesday Nov 2013

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As many are aware, we’re currently in the flurries of National Novel Writing Month. Pens, keyboard, tablets. They’re all being exhausted as thousands of people across the world write vigorously to try and reach that 50,000 word goal. Or in some cases, surpass that 50,000 count goal.

And me? I’m completely caught up in the insanity. And so far, I’m doing good. Though, it is only a day or so into the second week. My over all goal is to write 2,000 words a day minimum in order to not only reach the 50,000 words this month, but hopefully surpass them and get my book as close to complete as possible.  With the goal to have my rough draft done by Christmas so that come the new year I can start to work on editing it after the Hols are over.

I have found that sometimes it’s a struggle to get my word count done depending on the kind of day I had, but I’ve been fighting harder over all to work through it and get things done. I will say, even with occasionally fighting, there’s a mighty great feeling to know that I’ve gotten my goal completed for the day and I go to bed a little more relaxed because of it.

Today I’ve taken a slight pause in time that could otherwise be spent writing to type up this and to work out the map of my fantasy land that my character will be traveling for the remainder of my novel. I wanted to have a visual that I could go back to and go okay, they should be reaching this forest soon, or this town soon.

Though, the fault lays down in naming everything, because the map starts to look barren when you only have your plot relevant locations on it. And then I have to start filing things in with forests, mountains, random towns to speckle the land.

So. On map creation. Question for the masses.
Do you meticulously plot out each location when you create your maps or do you just kind of toss things at the board and let the land kind of form itself the way it wants to?
Do you name everything you put on the map right away or do you let some towns or forests or lakes lay nameless until they are of importance or their name comes to you later?

Weekend Plans

05 Friday Jul 2013

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So about a mouth back to date I decided to restart, and for the most part reboot, my novel. And since then it got to about two thousand words before my life and the world kept me busy. And I’m well aware that these are excuses and not reasons. I should be able to find a couple hours in the day to sit down and crank out a thousand words. And I plan to do that starting roughly Sunday.

I’m back into the swing of going to my job and chiropractic visits, and I’ve dropped from three times a week to two times a week now, which will open up a little more of my afternoon until I get hired as full time at work. And the massive project that was getting a Newsletter is now finished and over, and I wanna say about 60% of the five page Newsletter was written by me. Never again. NEVER AGAIN. I will have help next time if I need to crack out a whip. But it’s done. It’s been emailed out. So now I can take a deep breath and focus on my novel.

To make up for the month behind-ness of everything, I’m planning to set my daily word count goal at two thousand words a day so that hopefully by August I can drop back down to one thousand a day, or keep up the two thousand pace and get the rough draft finished that much quicker. Goals, but I don’t want to burn myself out with them either.

There’s also the question of whether I should try to participate in NaNoWriMo this November, but I think part of that will depend on where I am in my WIP. Whether I’m far enough along that I can share headspace with a new WIP or whether I’m still far enough from the end that 50K in 30 days would do me some good. It’s all a matter of how hard I crack the whip on myself.

Later today and into tomorrow I’ll be heading off to the wilderness of Indiana. Camping. Partially to see how the campground is doing so we have an update for the fest I coordinate in August, and partially to see how my, and my parents, trailer has faired the flooding and storms out in the area. I’ll be printing out what I have of my WIP to get back into the headspace and see about writing a little more of it by hand while I’m out there. Means I’ll have to type it up later, but if it gets words on a page, I’m good with it.

Though I’m thinking of figuring out some prompts to get me back into writing original work and not fandom stuff too. Just to get the juices flowing better. Any suggestions? They’ll be posted when I answer them, if you give me some.

Feeling very…

24 Monday Jun 2013

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I’m not completely sure why, but I’ve been feeling very… wanting to write a dystopian set book. My small but currently growing library of novels and anthologies where this is the setting may be having a bad influence on my brain. I picked up Shards & Ashes from my shelf to start reading it the other day, which is a large contrast from Casting Spells that I’m currently reading.

And i should probably warn you now that this post might ramble. It’s Monday, and I should be running errands but the office I need to visit doesn’t open for another fifteen minutes.

Anywho, so I am in the mood to write/read dystopian settings and I’m not completely sure where the want to do either came from. It also leaves me wanting to crack the whip at a friend of mine that’s got a dystopian story in the works and I’m eager to read it as soon as possible.

My conflict with writing one is that I currently have a WIP and I really, really have goals to get it done and I don’t want to deviate from that to plot a new story, short or novel length. If I were in a slightly better place with my time, I might try to balance them but I don’t really have much time to bounce between two.

Brains. Why do they do this to us? Because seriously. I don’t need any more distractions or I’m gonna see the painful side of a whip as it’s cracked at me to keep working on my WIP.

I do know I’ll be jotting down the thoughts on this idea, so hopefully I can go back to it when either I have more time or after Christmas.