DESK!

So I got my new desk!  Yeah, I know I was talking about it excitedly for a little bit (at least, I think so) but then I just didn't mention it for a while.  That was partly because I was finishing up the school term, partly because it's still not quite right--the chair needs to be shorter, and partly because I just got distracted by life, the universe, and other things.

I got it for ten dollars at the local DI (Deseret Industries thrift store.  It's the LDS version of Salvation Army :) ) and it's a drafting table.  I think part of the reason it was left there was because it's a little difficult to adjust the tabletop for drawing, but I wanted it mainly as a regular desk anyway so it's good enough for me.  :)  I've got lots of stuff piled on it and I need to clean up some of the junk that's piled up on the floor again--not as bad as it was, but I don't want it to get out of control again.

There's a silk cat I got from San Francisco China Town, Divergent (the book), my glasses, alarm clock, and pretty much everything except my computer because I'm typing on my bed.  I'm excited through, because I think I'll only need a little bit more time before I can restart on my superhero novel.  I'm also working on the synopsis for my nanowrimo project, and I've got several things planned for it already that's making me very excited.  I've already told you a little bit about it, and I'll definitely post more and more things as November gets closer.  Like a cover for it.  And the title.  Which I have yet to decide for sure.

Heeeeeeeeeeeeee! :)

So right now life is good.  College is going great, and I just got the books I need to catch up on the reading (mostly about Formalist and New Criticism)

I hope life is going well for you guys, too!  If you already have an idea for Nano this fall, tell me!  Tell me also if you haven't!  And most of all, good luck on your endeavors.  :)

Road Trip Wednesday!

Ah!  I totally forgot it was Wednesday!  Eheh!  *looks at clock*  Sorry for it being so late! 

So, um.  Yeah!

This week's topic: What's the best writing advice you've ever received?

I'd have to say that the best writing advice I've ever gotten was don't edit during the first draft.  If I don't do that, I've never gotten past the first chapter of a story.  I keep editing it and revising it until I start getting sick of it or feeling stuck.  I fully believe that's what's happened with Nobody's Hero. 

Sure, it's one thing when you suddenly realize that you sent your character off to the wrong part of the country, but when it comes to the sentences the paragraphs, if you accidentally typed in the wrong color of your hero's jacket... leave that alone until the later drafts.  That's what line editing is once you've got the meat of the story down for. 

So I'm going to go off and finish the reading for my Creative Writing class (it's a beginner one, since the switch to an English major was a recent decision).  Then... more plotting for Nanowrimo.  B)

Writiiiing!

Since I have to get up really early in the morning to test run the bus schedule (to see if I can get to my really early math class on time), I'm posting this blog a little bit early so that it's not forgotten.  :)

The first real thing that I have to say, is... that first story?  The superhero story?  I had to put it aside.  It's not trunked.  I haven't thrown it away never to pick it up again, but I've been working on it since about this time last year, haven't really let myself think much about another story, and like any soup that's been put on a stove to cook for too long, it's become a little burnt.

I've still got a clear idea of where I want it to go, but lately it's been seeming like some giant, unclimbable mountain, and I've also been trying to avoid writing on it even when I've gotten to scenes that I'd previously looked toward with relish. 

So I put it back in the fridge to chill.  And I'm going to allow myself to fully delve into another project.  With werewolves, and magic and storms, odd stores, and of course I'm going to add a little romance.  I'm not going to write a story without romance.  Nope!

Nanowrimo's only two months away.  Last year I started prepping for it about three months before it started.  I got through it *whoo!* and I'm wearing a WINNER! shirt right now!  I've also got that desk I was hoping for (pictures will come soon) and I'm taking a creative writing class this fall as part of my major.  I'm wondering if maybe she'll encourage us all to participate or if she'll even need to, since there's a large contingent of Wrimos in this part of Utah.

I'm excited.  Several of these ideas have been jumbling all incomplete in my mind for years now.  It was going through Erin Morgenstern's website and blog that got me inspired.  While I was reading the raving reviews it got me remembering all the vivid and beautiful scenery the words inspired in my imagination and I wanted to create something that had that flavor.

So I'm going to write a book about werewolves and magic, and throw everything that I love in a tale in it under the sun.  That includes trains.  Circuses may not make the cut, but those are pretty awesome too.

If it doesn't work, that's okay.  It's Nanowrimo.  But I'm going to make my characters walk through hell and have them see many wondrous and terrible things along the way.  What are your plans?  Are you doing Nanowrimo?  Do you have any questions about it? 

Road Trip Wednesday!

Today's Road Trip Wednesday had a pretty fun question.

What animal would your patronus be?

Well.  Goodness.  It took me a while to figure this one out.  I'm not really a psychology major, and since my favorite animal was always a cat I thought it would be some sort of feline (not a regular house cat, but nowhere as powerful and cliche as a panther or a leopard)

Then I thought some more.

Owls.

See, for a long time now I've had a problem with OCD.  Not the sort where I have to make sure everything is in it's proper space, but I tend to over think things and worry about them to the point where it becomes self-destructive.  I'm smart, but sometimes that intelligence can get my mind into trouble.

An owl is smart.  An owl is supposed to be wise and all knowing.  But they represent that knowledge.  Their intelligence can be their downfall.  That, and they can defend themselves but that's hardly the first thing anyone thinks of when they hear the word 'owl'.

So yeah.  :)  I think mine would be an owl.  I'd totally kick dementor butt.

What would your guys' patronus be?

NOBODY'S HERO! O.O

So I really didn't have anything particularly planned out to post today.  When I realized this *coughatmidnightcough* I went back to YA Highway to see if there was anything ultra special amazing to take from past Road Trip Wednesdays, and saw last week's.  The prompt?  Post a line from your current WIP.

So I've already told you a little bit about my story.  It's about a superhero who's been put in a terrible situation by a mixture of bad decisions, who finds danger, romance, and fear along her journey to learn more about her beliefs and also to fight for those she loves.

I'm going to give you a taste of it tonight.  It's a bit more than a sentence, but it's definitely not the full chapter.  Keep in mind, this version is not in it's final state--it's still a rough draft--but it should give you a sense of the story and hopefully it'll make you want to read more of it.  ^^  The people in my writing class certainly liked it.  :)

Also, some of the characters swear in this excerpt.  Fair warning.


CHAPTER ONE (PARTIAL)

I tugged at the fabric covering my nose and mouth, blinking against the rain as it poured down my mask. I tried as hard as I could not to think of the guns strapped into the holsters on my legs while I walked across the gravel, or the daggers on my hips.

A tingle ran across my skin and I shivered, pausing at the corner of the warehouse. All around me people stood at their positions. Some were doing the same thing I was, walking around and keeping an eye on the dark, while others were perched on the rooftops, keeping an eye on everything from above in case we had intruders from that direction.

When the company decided I was ready for a trial run as a night guard, they decided tonight was the best time to test how well I’d been prepared by the superhuman trainers. The next shipment wouldn’t come in for another three days, but thieves could still try and do something.

I shouldn’t even be here.

I wasn’t ready yet.

I closed my eyes for a second and took another deep breath. My hands shoot, my breath caught in my throat, and even through the drumming rain I could hear the guards all around me as they strode around, boots snapping across the cement and stomping through gravel. I would be fine. Blackbourne Industries was one of the only companies who went out of their way to train people with special abilities, and they were the ones who’d taught me how to control my powers in the first place. I couldn’t doubt the quality of their instruction if they managed that.

A quick cry cut through the night and I stopped, my hand flying to the dagger on my right hip. I stood still, frozen, not daring to move or to breathe. My eyes were peeled for something out of the ordinary, anything that would give me a reason for my reaction. But the sound of the rain hitting the metal roofs of the warehouses must have been tricking my ears. There weren’t any further shouts, no orders filling my ear bud giving me directions to follow.

Nothing.

I probably looked like an idiot. Nobody was going to attack a warehouse before a shipment arrived.

My breath escaped out into the dark in giant white puffs, wreathing around my head before dissipating into the night air. I tried not to shiver as the cold brushed against my skin. Rain drowned out a lot of background noise, and it made me feel vulnerable, like one of my senses was cut off. The warehouses stood around me, piled on top of one another as if they were menacing figures just waiting to drag a person into the darkness. It didn’t help that a small orange light was placed over every door, creating even greater shadows around each corner. Neither did our uniforms. We were all dressed up in dark, almost black uniforms with faces covered up to the point where people couldn’t even see our eyes.

I shivered. Self consciously I tugged at the fabric covering my nose and mouth.

“Acid.” I jumped.

“What?”

“Damn it woman, stop fidgeting,” barked a commanding voice in my ear. The ear bud hummed with sudden activity. “Jesus. You practically scream newbie, Acid.”

“I am a newbie, sir,” I said, my shoulders relaxing automatically. It was Boss. He was the one they’d placed in charge of my instruction. Even though his power set didn’t exactly match up with mine, he had experience training up people with volatile abilities. If he had my back, things weren’t likely to go explode tonight.

“Get yourself together,” he said, sounding very exasperated. “Amazon’s at Warehouse 14-C on B-Pattern. Follow her and please try not to make an embarrassment of yourself.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, giving a mock solute before turning north.

Rain continued to pour in torrents from the sky, sliding down the rocks and metal walls and making the ground impossibly slick. The scent of wet dirt and asphalt permeated the air, making me wrinkle my nose as I strode over the gravel. Goosebumps rippled across my skin, and I had to resist the urge to shiver.

“Move to second post,” said Boss’s voice and I jumped. “Keep your eyes peeled.”

“Got it,” I said. I turned to my left and rounded the corner of the faded, beat-up building. I just hoped as I turned that I was no longer within ready sight of Boss from his vantage point.

“Just keep your eyes on the horizon, rookie. With any luck you’ll get to take down a homeless wreck tonight.

“You’re so nice,” I said sweetly, and stopped when a soft clang reached my ears. I narrowed my eyes.  A lump appeared in my throat.

It was nothing. I pushed my hand under my hood and scratched at my ear as I took a step forward. It was probably just a stray cat or one of the structures settling a little. The sound hadn’t even repeated itself—all I could hear was the rain drumming against my hood. But then I stopped again, sighed, and turned back around. I didn’t speak into my ear bud because if I reported to Boss and it turned out to be nothing, he’d tease me about it for years to come. And I was only going back there to reassure myself.

I pulled the gun out of my belt, just in case.

Despite my wishes, images popped into my head of all the possibilities it could be. The hobo Boss mentioned? Some drug dealer’s lackey come to scout the place? What if it was a freaking superhuman, desperate for some money? Blackbourne didn’t exactly produce methamphetamines, but there were some people who would die to get their hands on their shipments.

Stop it. I moved my right hand, spreading out my fingers and feeling the ache as the muscles stretched. I had to stop freaking myself out, or I’d be useless if anyone did try and attack us.

That was when I saw the water dripping on the bucket.

Clang.

Something crawled across the back of my neck, and I shivered. A small knot loosened in the pit of my stomach, and I lowered my gun to rest against my hip. There really was nothing. The drips falling on the bucket were large and fat, and each one echoed through the corridor so loudly it was no wonder I could hear it from the road. I released a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding in. Four more hours. I set my gun back in it’s holster. Only four more hours, then I could leave just as dawn was breaking. The gravel scrunched beneath my boots as I turned around.

I ducked as a fist flew past my head.

Road Trip Wednesday!

*le gasp* A blog post, not on Friday?  :O  How scandalous!

Actually, I've decided to start posting on Wednesdays as well, because I figure once a week probably just isn't quite good enough.  ^-^  I was recently perusing the archives on Veronica Roth's (now retired) blog*, and saw that when she first began writing it she took prompts and topics from this awesome blog called YA Highway!  Every Wednesday they post a new prompt or topic or quote and ask the readers to tweet, blog, and otherwise spread their thoughts across the internet. 

This week?  It was a simple question. 

What are you reading right now?

And that's a simple answer.  The Hunger Games.  The first one.  ^-^  It's my favorite.   A lot of people think it's a rip-off of a somewhat lesser known Japanese novel called Battle Royale.  The latter is darker, more gory and geared for an older audience--despite the ages of the main characters--but The Hunger Games is a lighter read and more geared, I think, for a wider range of readers.  I know when I was in high school I would've had a harder time with BR if I'd known it existed at that point.

Anyway, a lot of The Hunger Games makes sense, especially the parts where the two main characters had to put on a fake romance in order to draw more people in so that they could survive.  It would certainly happen if this scenario were to play out in real life.  A lot of 'reality' tv shows definitely have staged scenarios to draw in the audience (and in shows like Big Brother, it seems that if the audience loves you or you cause the right amount of drama, you have a better chance of staying 'alive' in the game longer *coughZachcough*)

She's also a strong, female character, and not like the helpless damsels in distress of fairy tales or old movies.  And flawed.  She messes up a lot, she doesn't see a lot of the truth until it's too late, but she also tries to do the right thing and stand up for herself, even in the face of great danger.  When she's put in a tough situation, she does her best even though she just wants to go home and live without any interference from the government (she didn't start out intending to begin a rebellion, after all).

Anyway, I've got to study (just a little more) before I go off to take the last test for my college math class, then the Final.  *shudders*  So wish me good luck!  And I wish you good luck in your endeavors, whether it be writing the next Bestseller or learning how to herd cats.  ^-^

Things That I (Should) Have Learned During NaNoWriMo

First of all, what is nanowrimo?  It’s a month long event—during November—where thousands of people across the world attempt to write 50,000 words before time runs out on the last day.  Some people are insane and write more than that—the most I’ve seen is 333,000, no lie—but others make their goal shorter, something they feel they can actually accomplish.

I won for the first time last year, and in doing so I learned several things, many of which I was too lazy to keep up on with my writing since then *cough*

The first thing?  I learned I have to have a plot.  A pre-determined one.  It can’t be too rigid or I’ll end up thoroughly hating it before I’ve even begun, but I’m not the kind of person who can just write with only the vague notion of an end-goal in mind.  Last October I wrote down most of an outline—all I needed for the 50k in one month—and it had me dancing with excitement in the back room of the sandwich shop I worked at, where (hopefully) nobody could see me.

The second thing I was fully determined to apply to my writing that month was not to go back and edit.  Even typos.  The first day nearly killed me because my OCD was screaming at me to go back and fix the comma I accidentally added at the end of the second sentence.  Now, I’m not saying you can’t go back and fix that, but if you’re in your first draft and realize that ten or twenty of your pages isn’t quite working and you need to alter the point of view just a tiny little bit… forget about it.  You’ll never get too far if you keep editing the same scene over and over again.  The little punctuation mistake really bothered me, but it did teach me a great lesson about moving on.  I pushed forward, resolved to ignore it, forget it, and push past it.  I actually exceeded the daily word count that day (the minimum you want to reach if you want to meet the 50k by the end of the month), much to my excitement.

The third thing I learned was part of the reason I exceeded that word count.  I went to the Nanowrimo Kick-Off party my local writers community/group put together.  It was awesome.  I learned about Moon Moon the Wolf, somebody bought me a smoothie at the café we gathered at, and I ended that day with 400 words more than I needed.  It was the thought of disappointing those people that helped me keep my resolve not to give up when I got behind a few times during those four weeks.  I even stayed up until two in the morning once, typing out the last sentence with my eyes closed and trying not to fall asleep at a dresser that was serving as my de facto desk at the time. 

Fourth?  I gave up the notion that I was going to write Shakespeare.  The fifty thousand words I wrote in November was never going to be worth publishing—even if it was a complete story—but it helped me a lot.  I fleshed out characters that needed more depth to them, I learned that the character I wanted my MC to fall for was not actually what she wanted at all (she needed someone a little bit less Captain America/Boy Scout type and a bit more of a recovered Winter Soldier kind of guy), and it forced me to create characters that just plain and simply needed to exist—though they got a lot more depth to them as well.

I’m not perfect.  I’m still working on following all of these lessons and applying these guidelines.   

But eventually I will get there.  I will finish my novel, and you will see it sitting on the bookshelf someday, and if all goes well, you’ll see it sitting on the bestseller list and it’ll get optioned to be made into a movie (that would be so epic).  

So try to apply these lessons, and hopefully I’ll see you sitting at the publishing finish line.  :)

To Have a Plan

So it occured to me a couple week ago after reading Susan Dennard's (author of the Something Strange and Deadly series) blog that when it comes to writing, people are absolutely sunk without a plan.

I'm not necessarily talking about pantsing stories versus plotting them out, though it certainly does factor into it on some level.  I'm talking more about goals and ideas.

In her blog, Mrs. Dennard mentioned that up until recently she believed herself to be a pantser, someone who writes their stories with nothing plotted out ahead of when she writes it.  Then she remembered her notebooks--she takes pictures of them occasionally, but she fills her notebooks with tidbits of story and notes and will often fill out more than one.  So while she definitely doesn't plot her books step by step of the way, she doesn't really set out with no idea, either.

I had a similar revelation, too.

See, I'd tried being an official plotter, but by the time I was finished writing down my outline I was thoroughly sick of my story and didn't want to touch it with a ten-foot pole.  See, there was no surprise left, and when I'm writing, I like to discover what the characters are going to do, what their reactions will be.  So I left it alone.

Then when I focused on another story, I started putting down notes about the characters--building character sheets of stuff I needed to know/didn't want to forget, and I even broke down and wrote another outline.  I learned my lesson from the first one though, and made it vague enough that I could deviate from it a little bit if I felt I needed to.

I won Nanowrimo that year, too.

Then somebody asked me after I explained some detail I'd written down from one of my multiple novel ideas if I was a plotter.  I paused for a second and realized--after thinking about all the stuff I'd put in my hard-won discounted Scrivener program (the discount was one of the prizes for winning Nano)--that with all of the notes and the plot outline and everything that I was at least somewhat of a plotter.  I was definitely by no means the pantser of writing that I was back in high school.

Plotting?  Pantsing?  I'm not sure if anyone is really completely one or the other.  After all, how can you write a story without at least an idea of how it's going to go, or end.  Even most dungeon masters have an idea of adventures the players are going to go on in games of Dungeons and Dragons.

So yeah.  I don't completely believe in one or the other.  I think what everyone needs to do is find their happy balance, their medium.  Otherwise?  Writing just ain't going to happen.

As for my life?  I'm going to be getting a desk today or tomorrow.  I finally cleared out half of the junk in my room and now the floor is sparkly clean and shining (as much as brown carpet can shine, anyway).  Hopefully that will inspire me to get out of the new pit my superhero novel has dumped me into with a tricky metaphor I can't figure how to get around being cliche.  Still the first chapter, too.  *sigh*

Next week I'll be discussing lessons I've learned (and not learned) from Nanowrimo, as well as what the heck that funny word is.  Have fun writing!