NaNoWriMo Site is Back!

This morning at around 1 am PST the NaNoWriMo site reset! It's got all sorts of neat widgets now and the new images to spread around the internet and now you can upload the profile for this year's novel, and I'm pretty darn excited! :D I've been waiting almost two weeks for this now, dangit. (Well technically I've been waiting all year, but I think it's pretty well agreed I'm obsessed with NaNoWriMo *cough*

So I've posted my novel and uploaded the description (which has changed a little bit and will probably change again before the 30C30D contest is up and running). And I've also requested some art that should hopefully come within the next day! (they promised they would, anywho)

And speaking of art, I've done some! Haven't posted much art lately so you've probably forgotten I can do that stuff, but here! It's of my MC, Alivia!

What? Oh shoot. That's Quorra, my little terror of a fuzzbucket. She has a slight obsession with standing/sitting/lying on paper. We're not entirely sure why. Waited one second for her to move (at which point she jumped to the chair in front of the desk...)

...and that's Alivia. Not quite finished, still need to pencil in the rest of the background and actually color the darn thing, but I'm pretty pleased so far. Have to decide whether or not she needs a shirt (she's not actually exposing anything...)

But yeah! I'll post an actual picture once it's finished, and once I've decided it's safe to scan a watercolor/ink painting! :3 See you soon, when I have more news to share! :D

FIRST POST OF OCTOBER! (first post in a while, too)

Yeah, sorry about that.  *cough* Forgive meh?

ANYWHO. Nanowrimo begins in just a little under a month! 8D Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh! I'm so excited! "Twenty thousand words and I'm feeling awesome!~"*

So what is Nano? I feel like maybe I've already covered this in a blog already. Hrmm. *checks* It seems I have, but it was in a blog post at the beginning of August. Two months ago. And it wasn't very much.

NaNoWriMo, also known as National Novel Writing Month. For a long time I thought 'Novel' was replaced with 'November' because that's the month it's based in and I was in high school and didn't even know there was a whole non-profit/program/website/LARGE GROUP OF PEOPLE surrounding the whole thing. Yeah, I was pretty oblivious. The goal is to write at least 50k words in one entire month.

I've been trying it since November, and last year I finally won! I was incredibly determined to get the discounts winners receive for completing the month (these discounts are donated by various writing groups/companies) and I got Scrivener for half off! Usually it's $40, but I got it for $20. :D I was also determined to finally win for once, and I wasn't going to let any of my usual hangups get in the way.

Writing that 50k not only helped me realize how utterly achievable writing a novel was, but that I might actually achieve my dream of publishing a real book. I want to have a modest apartment in a big city like Chicago, Boston, or even New York, and NaNoWriMo helped me see the light at the end of the tunnel. Then I realized that most novels were longer. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is 76,944 words long. The word count for The Hunger Games (first book) tends to vary depending on which blog you research. But they all agree that it's at least 76k.

So because I'm overconfident thanks to my success this last year, I decided to up the ante for this year.

I'm going to write 100k words during November.

WRITING EPICNESS WILL BE HAD.

SO... what am I writing? It has to do with people with special powers, a dystopian government, death, evil regimes, rebellion, LOVE...

It's called...

UNDESIRABLES

**

Alivia Chu was only sixteen when an Undesirable the DSR were chasing blew up the city block her parents were walking in. She never thought to question anything.

Four years later and she was in her second year at University. Her brother was a popular news anchor for the Regime, and she was doing well in her studies. She had dreams of becoming a DSR agent herself to stop the Undesirables and prevent what happened to her parents from happening to other people.

However, one sleepless night she discovers she can control fire. Now an Undesirable herself, she finds herself on the run, aided by a mysterious man and the people she's been raised her whole life to hate and fear. As she moves forward she's forced to question everything she has ever known, including her seemingly perfect brother, her beloved country, and the fate of their parents. And she will discover that she might have always been wrong on who were the good people and who were the bad...

* Nanowrimo Song by Kristina Horner
** Chinese style stock by michelle-long