ROW80 Update

Things are going really good! Actually better than good. I found something that totally makes world building easier.

I made a wiki about my world.

Yep, that's right. I wiki'd it.

I got the idea from the Wicked and Tricksy blog where they recommended tiddlywiki. And while I initially liked it I began to dislike the way it looked and worked and there was no way I could find to at least changed the color of the font. So I instead found Google Sites where you can make a pretty awesome wiki. And it's easy to link from one page to another and when you're writing you can instantly create a new page right from where your writing so you can link a word, even if there's no info on the page.

And every subject gets it's own page if you want it that way. And you can keep your wiki private to just yourself or share it with a handful of people you want to share it with. And it's free. That's always a plus ;)

So, it makes it so easy to keep all the information about your world, or even your plot, all in one organized place. No longer in journals where you have to endlessly flip through things and rediscover things you've forgotten. No more piling it in one or more computer documents. It's all in one place. In your world wiki! :D (If you can't tell, I absolutely love this thing :D)

And I've been keeping up with this August's Camp Nano, except for the first day, it sort of snuck up on me and I was all amped up about the pottermore thing. Well, scratch that, I'm still amped up about the pottermore thing :D

To find other ROW80 participants:

Breakthroughs! ROW80 Update 6/19

Hey look, I remembered this Sunday!

This week has been important for my book, I've gotten back to reading my how-to writing books that I had stopped reading for awhile and made two major breakthroughs on the plot! Breakthrough #1 has to do with the villain and I'm super excited about it because it gives him much more depth than he had before and because it's just the sort of emotionally confusing should-I-still-hate-him? thing that I love to read! Breakthrough #2 has to do with a part of MC's character arc which I'm so glad that I thought of it! I mean, that element was already in there but before I wasn't really giving it the attention it deserved. Now I know it's one of the huge things that will evolve my MC from who he is to who he will become. Exciting stuff!

At the moment, I'm focusing less on the writing and more on the planning, so I'm not reaching my daily wordcount goal, but I feel that the plotting is more necessary at this point than the writing is. I feel that I just need to work out a few more key things before I can start writing in earnest and actually know the plot lines and how the story will progress, not having to 'pants' a huge chunk of it.

Sometimes I like pantsing, but I've come to find out that when I'm truly serious I like to know where I'm going before I start.

So, all in all I think it's been a good week for me!

Oh. And it seems that the next check in on Wednesday will be the last for round two of A Round of Words in 80 Days. Round three will start on July 4th! That'll be my first real round, seeing as I joined in round two right in the middle of it. :p

Find other ROW80ers here!

My - Real - Map

Good news! I finally - finally! - have an official map for my world!

Drawing a map for the place you write about - a place that doesn't exist on earth - is really really hard, a lot harder than I had originally thought. The first map I posted on here, I thought that one was it. I had the whole entire world right there, and then I realised that the story wasn't going to happen over the entire world, and the map grew sour for my story. So I drew another one. Again, drawing the whole world and then choosing the specific place in the world the story would take place. Didn't work. I drew at least five maps before I gave up. And then, when thinking about my story one day, when thinking about the different countries and peoples, a map came to mind. I hardly even noticed that I was imagining the map of my world and it almost slipped away before I realized what I was seeing. This map was what I saw, and it's sticking. I can imagine the story taking place here, something that I wasn't able to do with all the others.

So, that's one thing taken care of :D

The map doesn't look more realistic like the first one I did, I colored it this way to make it look more map like, more like something you'd see in a book. I'll probably end up doing a satellite-esque one sometime though.

Does anyone else have this much trouble creating a map?

Secret Narnian Hour (Day 7)

Well, last night during the secret Narnian hour (the daylight savings 1 am-is-two-hours-long thing that most of America and some of Canada does) I wrote 2,000 words in only an hour and a half and I was so happy cause I thought I'd be able to write a bunch today.

WRONG!

Of course today was the day that my mom and dad finally decided to move our furniture and everything into the living room. So, I still have about 800 words to go to reach my usual 5,000 daily goal and I might write some more after that. And to think I was going to try and get 10k in today >:|

And also, my current overall word count is 34,961! I cannot believe I'm already nearly at 50k! And to think that last year I struggled to get to 50k! Anyway, I thought I would just put it out there what my real goal for this month is so I have more pressure to actually do it. My goal is 150,000 words this month and I aiming for Remnants, the book I'm writing right now to be about 75k long before I start on book 2. So, writing has been very productive this month!

I hope everyone else is having a productive month as well and for those who aren't I know you guys can do it! If I can you guys can too, all you have to do is the butt-in-chair strategy and then click away at the keys, or move that pen/pencil on the paper, even if it feels like one more word will kill you! ;)

Getting Tough (Day 3)

Well, I got to this post a bit too late but ah well.

In short, today was pretty brutal. It took everything I had to get those 5k out today and I think it's cause I'm getting to the middle. Even though I have it planned out it's still. . .hard to write for some reason. From the way things are going it doesn't look like things will be smooth until I get to the next major plot point which is about 4 or 5 chapters away. I'm already hitting the hard stuff! I was hoping that wouldn't happen until at least half-way in :(

On the bright side I now have a total of 15,227 words.

Anyway, there's been this article here in response to the anti-nanowrimo one that some of you might enjoy.

I think all the tea I've been drinking has kept me going today, and twitter of course :P

Well, that's all for now, sorry guys :| Maybe I'll have better luck tomorrow.

Making Progress (Day 1)

Well I have to say that I am doing waaaay better than last year so far. I have written five thousand words today, the first day of NaNoWriMo and I'm going to write just a bit more to finish the chapter. Another thing I'm loving is that I've written five thousand words consisting of only the prologue and first chapter, though when I go to edit I'll have to add in a very important part I forgot to write in the prologue (silly me, I should go write it in right now!). The next chapter is when the really interesting things start happening though. And guess what? My MC, Siron, got himself a friend! This is very good because in the outlines and stuff he didn't have a friend which, let's face it, is unrealistic when living in an orphanage. So that problem is fixed, which has also fixed some future problems I was worried about. The world is really coming to life as well, it's kinda a mixture of the things we're familiar with and the regular high fantasy stuff like no vehicles or technology, etc. I really like how it's going so far.

It took five cups of tea (two of which I chucked after one taste cause they did NOT taste good) one mini kitkat which I rewarded myself after making the NaNo daily goal, and all the word sprints and tweeting to keep me going so long, so thank you NaNoWordSprints and the other wrimos I follow on twitter!

I think I'm going to make five thousand my daily word goal so I can definitely finish my book and possibly start on the next one as well. That would be awesome! To get part of book two done this month!

And you know, despite all the writing, today has felt somehow normal. I didn't feel like I was rushing to get words in (which may be because I actually have an outline!) but it was nice. I'm sure it won't feel like this at the middle of the month.

I hope everyone is having success with their word counts! May the force be with you (the NaNo force that is :P).