Sunday, October 31, 2010

Waiting for Midnight

Well, Nanowrimo is only hours away.

I finished my fingerless gloves just minutes ago, I ended up having to sew them instead of knit (I was horrid at knitting gloves Dx). But here they are, they turned out nice:


 And I have my incentives in place so I'll finish my writing goals:



The PC game isn't a grand prize (though i wish I'd thought of that), I'll just get to play it at the end of the day if I get my writing in :)

My chapter-by chapter outline isn't done but the wipey board one is, the one that covers the major stuff:





My inspirational picture:


(lolz! I has no face!)
One day that'll be me signing my books!

My sticky note chain:


And everything else:


So all that's left to do is clean my room, and that shouldn't take to long!

So everything is ready for Nano! I'm going to relax and watch TV, play games, indulge in things that shall be forbidden come 12am. I hope everyone's prepared! Who else is going to write at the stroke of midnight tonight? Or if it's already November where you live have you started writing and how much have you done so far?

(I think I did too many photos, hope it didn't bug you but I was  in the mood to take pictures of everything)

Thursday, October 28, 2010

My Inner Critic and No More Reading

Has anyone read leofair's post on the inner critic? Well, that little bugger has just begun attacking me. I was looking at my wipey board outline and the inner critic suddenly appears and tells me: "No one's going to like that! That's a bunch of trash, why are you even working on it? You should just give up right now because everyone will think it's a stupid story!"

You see, this fell little voice has done many things to me in the past. It has gotten me to give up stories and ideas that were probably good, only allowed me to write a chapter or so before viciously attacking me and making me give up. It didn't attack me for most of last years Nanowrimo though because there was no time to concentrate on anything other than clicking the keys on the keyboard. But halfway through the month it did end up attacking me and I almost gave up, if it wasn't for my writing buddies I probably would have abandoned it and all of Nanowrimo. But now its attacking me before Nano has even started and I have to remind myself that it is a good idea and to ignore it's depressing words. The voice has left me alone for now but I'll just have to keep the uplifting thoughts in store for when it returns.

Does anyone else face the inner critic? What do you do to get rid of that foul little voice?

So is everyone else just to twitching in excitement for November to start? Twitching in horror? Is November coming too fast for some of you or not fast enough? I can't wait for November to get here, even if my outline is unfinished! Speaking of I've gotten to chapter ten on my outlines, but the complicated chapters are just coming up so we'll see how I deal with those. . .

Also what are some things you wont be able to do during Nano? (other than the general not able to clean/eat/sleep/etc.) I won't be able to read. I mean, I've got this pile of unread books that I've just gotten in the last month that I haven't even cracked open even though I've been dying to. Why you ask? Well, every time I read a book while trying to write something a large piece of that book makes it's way into my story. Whether it's the writing style or physical objects, they somehow sneak into my stories. You should see the poor idea I was writing when I was reading the Lord of the Rings! Poems and riddles were suddenly all over the place, you should see the poor bit of manuscript they made it into DX So I'm gonna have. . . at least 8 books that I'll want to read once November is over (don't let that number fool you, there is numerous more, those were just the ones I haven't started reading yet =O). So what are you distancing yourselves from this Nanowrimo for one reason or another?

Oh, one more thing. I'll be trying to post everyday during Nano to document my experience through it and I'll try to make things interesting for all you guys reading my blog.

Anyways, I'm off to knit some fingerless gloves, last year my hands were freezing cold while I was trying to type, too bad I didn't think about fingerless gloves last year :(

The "NaNo Mood"

Well I'm starting to get in the NaNo mood. I wasn't even aware I had one until today, seeing as this is only my second time around. But I suddenly got the urge to break out my fuzzy knitted scarf and soft faux fur hat that I seemed so fond of last year in November and just wear them around the house. Weird. I have actual writing totems that I didn't know I had. I'm wearing them right now as I type and am getting a tad nastolgic thinking about last year and excited about next month. Let me snap a picture of the items real quick. . .


So there they are in all their glory!

Another tradition I think I'm developing is buying a whole album of soundtrack songs to listen to will writing my novel. Last year I got the twilight score and soundtrack (but don't worry, no vampire made their way into my story), and later into the month the Avatar score. I've been getting the urge to get a soundtrack for a week or so now and today I finally did! I got the soundtrack to Assassin's Creed II. Despite it being a video game soundtrack it is very good and very movie soundtrack-esque sounding, more of a score than anything else. The songs on the album had more of the feel I was leaning towards and many of the songs have a thoughtful emotional edge that I'm loving, I can't wait to write to this soundtrack!

What do you guys listen to while writing? Does anyone else buy songs especially for their books? And does anyone else have certain items they use or have near them during Nanowrimo?

And guess what everyone!? I actually got some outlining done today! I've outlined up to chapter four and, believe it or not, I filled a gaping plot-hole up while outlining the prologue/chapter one! It was amazing! I had been worrying about this for awhile cause whether I could fill this plot-hole or not would decide whether Aurenna, a woman who lives in Siron's (the MC) head, would remain or be thrown out and I am rather fond of her. But now she's staying cause that worry has gone and a lot of other things have come up that could potentially fill up other plot-holes I have, so hurray! And to think I got all this from outling only four chapters! Imagine what I'll get from all the rest :D

Only 3 more days till Nano, I hope everyone is having the good luck I've happened to catch (compare this attitude to yesterday's (yes I just totally linked myself :P))

Have fun!!

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

My Very First Idea

I can't believe it's a measly 5 days before NaNo. I am sooo not prepared in the least, though hopefully that wont be too much a problem cause last year I had nothing but a vague idea. . . Anyway, I finally sat down today to redo my wipey-board outline to incorporate the new stuff and did that in probably 15 minutes. After this post (or maybe tomorrow) I'll start doing brief chapter by chapter outlines. I only have five more days so I better get going!

On a side note I finished my PC :D (*This is a writing blog!!!*) D:

I hope everyone else is doing good. (Actually, no I don't! I hope your suffering just as much as I am!! >=O) <.< >.> . . . Just kidding :D

Sometimes I wonder how I ever started writing. I mean, I used to hate it and I wasn't good at it either. I had a problem getting my thoughts on paper, seriously you should see some of the stuff I wrote for school >.< But then I read this book when I was about 12. Eragon by Christopher Paolini. I really liked how it was about a dragon rider and it was really awesome and I admit I started daydreaming about having my own dragon and having my own adventure, but isn't that how many ideas come about? So, miraculously, I started writing about this idea. I made this character named Esmerda, later changed to Arza, drew out a map. The country was called Alashia. Alashia consisted of Jokasee Swamp, The Lake of Fire (desert, with a valcano), Zera Plains, Eyrie Forest and Gright (in the north). There were also four separate countries the Phanle Mountains, Sirjang (Sirjang was the country of the water dragons), Tostite Jungle and Erthite which were both of the elves.

While I tried my best to make it all my own, of course there were many similarities between my first story idea and Eragon. There was the dragon riding thing, the elf thing, the tyrant king (Arza's brother was drafted into the army against his will and stuff), even the map is similar, especially with the placement of the mountains XD But the plot was very different besides involving dragon riding and magic. Arza had a grand destiny involving the dragons and I believe she was going to defeat the king (the memory of this story is fuzzy. Though I wrote many things down I didn't write everything). I think some kind of ancient sword was involved in the grand destiny making thing. And her dragon was gold, a sign of who she would become as there had only been 3 gold dragons in history, each of them and their 'magicians' (or riders, but hey I was trying to not copy Eragon :P) doing really grand things in history.

OH! I remember some stuff now! The king is actually a dragon named Zochi that is out to defeat all the other dragons. I had a whole back story for him and everything (even back then I was into the evil characters :D). He was an asonjee dragon, their natures inherently good but the 'evil' dragons, the sirzers and batine, got a hold of him at a young age and 'contaminated' him with black magic and everything to turn him against his own race. It worked but Zochi wasn't fond of any race of dragon other than himself, and he was an abomination so to speak. The reason the evil dragons did this was to get revenge on the asonjee's due to a battle, and the asonjee race is the most powerful of dragons. So that was a brief description of his back story.

So that was how I started writing and my very first idea! I'm much better at writing now and my ideas waaaaay more original :D I hope I didn't bore you with that story :P

Now I gotta try to get myself to outline some more. I wish you guys luck in your writing endevors!

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Dragons

Well, I have to say I was on the fence about putting dragons in the Chronicles. Mostly it's because, no matter how much I may like dragons, they seem cliche to me. Plus they just didn't seem to fit into the chronicles. If I were to have dragons I knew they would be a entirely sentient race, not animals, not something to ride on (in fact, a human riding a dragon is about the lowest of the low for my dragons).

So, still undecided I've been vaguely thinking about them from time to time and then I had the perfect idea: Mages and dragons have a mild rivalry going on between them, namely who is superior than the other. This idea just grew and grew bringing with it history and how dragons came into existence, the scuffles between the mages and dragons and now, they fit perfectly. In fact, I already have dragon a character (though unfortunately he shouldn't make an appearance until book 2) and it was really him who said, "Yes, us dragons do exist," with an eerie smile on his face. His name is Oris and here's a simple drawing of him:

 (Click for larger version)

Probably not the best but it catches him. He's not the nicest dragon and is rather frightening at times.  As you see my dragons do have hair, as well as tusks and horns. They don't look very much like giant lizards anymore but more on the mammal side. I think that actually may have been why they didn't seem to fit into my world because I was imagining the stereotypical dragon with all the scales and the long snakish neck and the fire breath and everything but once Oris came into my head that all went away and I knew that they would be looking a bit different.

So, now I got some new things to outline in Remnants cause I'm sure there will be dragons! This will be great, having this added diversity. Quite honestly I can't wait till I get to book two so I can write about Oris!

I hope everyone is having a good time with their NaNo stories! And if you haven't already, click the NaNo Bloggers image at the top of the sidebar to get a list of blogging wrimos and to add your blog if you will also be blogging for NaNo.

Good Luck!

Sunday, October 17, 2010

So Very Busy

Wow, I have been so busy! Running around town getting DBA's and stuff, visiting grandparents until midnight, trying to perfect business cards at 3am and then spending all day working the Young Living booth at the wellness expo, I'm just tired!

I was going to post the day before yesterday but didn't have time, but, see. . . I met Scott Westerfeld. I did, and it was awesome. I got there two hours before the signing was supposed to start (this is because attending Stephenie Meyer's signing closer to the right time was a nightmare) and Scott Westerfeld was there - with his wife Justine Larbelestier! - and I got to meet them and shake hands with them! This may not sound too special to some of you but it felt like meeting a celebrity to me. Anyway, they left very soon after that to eat and I waited for the signing to start and slowly people started to trickle in. Scott Westerfeld's presentation was awesome, with all the history that inspired his Leviathan idea and some stuff on his Uglies trilogy. I now wish I had already read the Leviathan series but I just haven't because of everything else I'm trying to read, but now I'm going to get started on them! Anyway then we got the books signed, I also had his Midnighters series which he signed and my mom brought the Uglies for his to sign. She also had me sit next to him and get a picture, kinda embarrassing for me but awesome! I can't wait to print it and hang it on my wall by my desk, that'll be great inspiration :D

Other than that, I haven't had time to outline at all since my plot breakthrough awhile ago and I have to get started with that again because November is almost here! I'm so nervous and excited about it and I have to get back into my story cause I feel a bit detached from it now, having not thought about it very much for the last few days :(

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Plot Breakthrough!

LATE POST!!

Or early, depending on your perspective ;) I was up really late at a meeting earlier and only got back an hour and a half ago, a couple of us stayed talking for a long time, it was nice :)

Anyway, I have just thought of something for the Chronicles! It just hit me out of the blue and I am so glad I thought of it now instead of halfway into November because this thing I thought of will completely influence most of my world! It will influence the magic, the society, the history, absolutely everything! And I think it's a very original idea that I haven't seen used before (though who am I to know? I have just barely begun perusing the fantasy genre for books having found lately that YA is getting very flat and childish to me) and I think that I can do a very good job implementing it into my world because this thing I just thought of is also - to a certain extent - part of my own life :DD I have actually been thinking that I should start to live the way they might just for fun XD
Sorry I can't tell you anything else cause I'm being shy and paranoid :[ but it is a very good world building point and is already adding extra plot and conflict and scenes are already popping up in my head! This will be great!!!
Sorry for being so excited about this, I just think it is a major break through for my story, plus I am a bit tired and I usually get easily excitable at night :D And I just thought of something good to add but forgot. . . dang it.

Anyway there's this contest thing that Tahereh is doing where you could win 100 dollars for books!! All you have to do is follow her and leave a comment with your favorite title of a novel and your in! Thought you guys should know so you can go enter in!!

Anyway, just thought I should share this stuff before I forgot tomorrow or something. Have good dreams!

Saturday, October 9, 2010

History and Magic

I have finally - finally - done a bit of outlining and planning and stuff :D Yesterday I outlined another chapter or two and I started to further develop my magic and I'm trying to learn just what it can and can't do, creating the rules and structure and all that. I have to say that I particularly enjoy doing that type of thing, thinking about the way things should be with the magic and the world. I've also created a legend that has, for a long time, become a children's bedtime story, and it will be relevant to the story so I didn't make that just for fun. . . But it was fun.

So today I think I'm going to continue with the magic development and start to figure out the things about the remnants that have been on my mind for awhile now. The remnants have a very interesting history that I can't wait to dig into, that will be fun :D I wonder how much of their history will actually make it into the book though. . .

I think it's kinda funny how we will develop all this interesting history and magic rules and things about their world and tons upon tons of other things that probably won't even make it into the book. Even though we know that there's no way a bunch of this stuff will get into the books we write it anyway. Like I was just talking about the remnants history up there? Well very little of what I discover about it will probably make it into the book and I know this yet I will figure it all out anyway. Then I got Siron's mothers past and her family that I have to figure out and lots of her history will get into the book yet I'm not as interested in figuring all that out as I am about the remnants.

How many of you guys bother about making a history for your world? Or how much do you figure out about their magic rules and boundaries? And how are your outlines going, if you're outlining at all?

Thursday, October 7, 2010

How Much to Share?

I am sad to say I haven't done any more outlining yet :'( This is due to getting new parts for my PC, reading and just general laziness. But I have made a (unneeded) wordcount checklist :D I will start on the outline immediately though! For real! I mean it this time. . .uh. . .

Anyway! I don't really have anything in particular to blog about today but I do have a question: How much of your story are you willing to share, both to someone you know and on the internet? Do you only say so much about it or are you somewhat paranoid about sharing too much?

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Reminiscing and My Synopsis

So let's reminisce for a moment.

It was a small bit less than a year ago that Justine Larbalestier, an authors blog whom I followed, started posting tips for this strange thing called NaNoWriMo. I never got to read on her blog what, exactly, NaNoWriMo was cause I hadn't visited her site for a week or so. She was on tip #7 I believe when I finally decided to google this strange NaNoWriMo. What I discovered was the wonderful thing that is National Novel Writing Month! As I read about the website and the challenge it immediately appealed to me, and I thought that I just had to join this, I had too! So after joining I tried to decide what I would write, finally choosing Dk27, an old sci fi/fantasy idea I had. I didn't start writing until the next day though and that day I wrote somewhere around 800 words before I decided I could not write this story any longer; it just wasn't working! So I abandoned that idea and looked through my journal for something else to write, deciding on an idea I had just discovered a week or so earlier, having to do with angels. But, being disappointed with that day I didn't write until the next day. So the next day, I wrote a lot knowing that I needed to pass up the measly 800 words from the day before! (I was also embarrassed that I gave up on my story and didn't tell anyone. This is what gave me the motivation to pass up DK27's word count) And I made over one thousand words that day! And then I just kept going and going - but don't be mistaken, there was a place in the middle where I very nearly gave up because I fully believed that I could not do it and that my story was stuck anyway. . . But due to the inspiring words of one of my writing buddies I kept on and eventually made it to the end at 50,028 words! I was so proud of that book (named Angels)!

(Whew, that was long)

And so here I am back to do it again! It really is addicting I suppose, despite all the stress and headaches and the freaking out cause of writers block. The sense of excitement and happiness you have when your writing that scene that you couldn't wait to write, or the adrenaline rush when that perfect idea just hits you out of nowhere - that all makes up for it. And then when you get to the end of that 50,000 and know that you actually did it, that just makes it all worth it. Even if your not done with the book yet, even if you still have 10, 20, or even 50 thousand more words to go, it was still worth it.

That's why I'm back!

I've also finally filled out my novel info on NaNo, but I'll post the synopsis here for everyone, I've been dying to get this out. I still think it needs some work, but I'll fix that later when the book is more. . . well, known to me.

Synopsis: The Chronicle of Siron - Book I - Remnants

Siron is an orphan in the small country of Dimor having no knowledge of either of his parents or anything else far beyond the borders of the small orphanage. But he knows there's something different about him, and not only because of the woman Aurenna who lives inside his head but something else. . . something he can feel in his very soul. And lately he has been hearing whispers. . . Telling him things. . .

But not too long after he can hear these whispers a man finds him. Damen. He says he's a master mage, and that Siron is a mage as well, and together they leave the orphanage and the small country behind to journey to the Islands so that Siron can be made Damen's apprentice. But the whispers are following Siron and are chasing him in black shadowy forms. They say they need him, that Siron has what they need, that they will give in return whatever he might wish. Power. . . Knowledge. . . The world. . .

And Siron is beginning to believe it.

Friday, October 1, 2010

NaNo Plot Bunnies!!!

Today is the day. . .

The day that NaNoWriMo will be reborn!!!

Mwahahahahahahah!

Haha :P Anyways. . . I'll probably be hanging around the site until it's wiped! This is my second year doing NaNo and the first year I wasn't around for the wipe so this is exciting! Last year I didn't even have time to plot, jumping in head first on the 8th of November! But this year shall be different. I am already starting my outline and as I outline my story is evolving as new plot bunnies emerge to better enrich (distract) my story. Just yesterday as I was outlining chapter 1 I thought of some things like: Maybe the remnants will have already contacted Siron before Damen got to him? And this would also give a reason as to how Damen decided to look in that country and find Siron instead of just chance. . . And then the prologue too, should that come from the mothers perspective? The enemies perspective? Third person omniscient? The whole story is going to be third person limited so maybe I should do omniscient for the prologue. . . And then just last night another idea came up for the remnants and their history! So many things, and I'm sure this is only the beginning. . .

If you guys have heard of Scott Westerfeld and have read his books, you should know that he's doing a book tour this month! I'm hoping to go to one and bring a lug of his books with me! He's the author of the Uglies series which was pretty good and his new Leviathan series. If you haven't heard of him you should check out his books! He write mostly sci fi I believe. . .

Oh, one more thing! StickyNoteStories has started a NaNoWriMo blog chain! Just click this icon Photobucket and it'll take you to the blog chain where you can link your blog and find other wrimos! If you join in the chain be sure to post this icon in your NaNo post so other wrimos can join in! :D

I'm going back to the forums now! Weeee :DD