Below is a list of 100 things. Bold the ones you've done.

( Read more... )

I realize I haven't posted in a while. Between school (and a research paper or two coming due) and substituting and having to get dental work done (going into it I'm terrified enough to need anxiety pills, but after the first time I was very mellow, either from the anxiety medication or from the nitrous oxide, or a combination of the two, but either way I didn't get much done after that) I was a bit busy. Still, I managed to sit my butt down this (yesterday?) afternoon, and type right through until just recently, when I broke 50,000 and brought my story to a conclusion, of sorts. If I'm going to submit it I already know there's going to be plenty of areas that need work - such as the beginning - and the end - and all the parts in between - and the parts in between where I tell rather than showing because I wasn't sure what to show exactly and figured I probably should keep telling the story.

I'm not sure yet whether it's a story I want to try to refine and sell. Of course, I'm that shy about submitting all my work. I know I want to keep it stashed on my hard drive, if simply for nostalgia of having older works to look at, or for the belief that there could be bits worth taking out and making into something else.

The other interesting thing is that some of the characters have unexplored back-story that I could develop. I'm not sure I want to write any more modern-ish fantasy, particularly longer things, at least not at the moment. But there's material to suggest at least one prequel, as well as potential sequels (though I'd want to know more about Scotland before writing one of them. Preferably through a field trip, though I've never been outside the US before, and the first thing to do is to find a way to pay for the field trip...)

Anyway, it's got a "The End" stamp on it for now, and I've got a familiar cast of characters to whom I can return if I decide to do anything more with more modern fantasy, so those are both good things. Now it's off to check a couple more things, and then to bed!

I need to go to bed very soon (perhaps a couple of hours ago?), but while I was on my way to bed I got distracted by writing my novel. That's right, I sat at the computer to do a couple other quick things and without intending to do any more work on my novel today, but ended up getting sucked in to writing my novel - which is a change from the past few days of "I really should be writing my novel - oooh, Gilmore Girls. I really should be writing my novel - oooh, old episodes of House. I really should be writing my novel - no wait, got homework. I really should be writing my - no, too tired, beddy-bye time," and having to force myself to actually sit down and write. Hopefully this is a trend that will continue, though I'm worried that I won't have too much time this weekend. Saturday morning class, Saturday afternoon homework, Saturday evening to night birthday party and D&D, Sunday spending the day driving to and from my grandmother's house to visit and pick up a couple things with my dad - hopefully I'll sneak in some noveling, but oddly enough for me, my weekdays are much more productive than weekends, even if I do have work.

I haven't been doing the best job at keeping up with this, have I? Well, between working off and on, schoolwork, and having some kind of cold or something that made my thinking all fuzzy and me unable to concentrate on something for more than a minute or so, I've not been getting as much done with my novel as I'd like, and also had less time to come posting on here. Well, I think I'm mostly over the cold now (knocks on convenient wood, making the dogs bound up and go rushing to the door to see who's there), and since I don't have work today I can work on things.

Part of my difficulty might also be that I'm trying a couple new things with this NaNo. Last year, I jumped around between characters' heads, and sometimes I added in characters who were only around for a paragraph or so just to up the word count and shake things up a bit. This year I'm focusing mostly on a single character, Lina, and alternating between letters she's writing to her aunt who died when Lina was still a child and (more or less) limited third person as she wanders around campus and has conversations and adventures with her friends. Also, I'm not used to writing in a more modern sort of environment, which I think makes it more difficult for me. Last year, I would tend to get absorbed in the unfolding story, almost to be living it through the characters' eyes. This year, it's more like they're telling me about it and I'm watching from another place (which is odd, considering I'm more focused on a single character now), and sometimes they don't quite feel like talking.

However, in the good old Week Two tradition, the plot is beginning to assert itself and creep into the novel, and I'm hoping maybe that will help me be better able to get "into" the story a bit more and be able to type without constantly being tempted to check word count and wonder how much more I need to type to make my goal for the day.

So the site's not working, and I've got a bit of a cold or something, which makes it rather hard to concentrate on my novel for prolonged periods of time (however, I am 5732 words, and this is day three for me, which means I'm still ahead of where I need to be, so I'm not overly concerned). Anyway, since the NaNo site doesn't seem to be working, I thought I'd post on here instead.

First, I want to share fun links with the rest of you. Need motivation for NaNo? Try http://chaoticshiny.com/nanom.php (which generates sentences such as "If you write 1787 more words today your parents will inexplicably send you money" and "If you write 612 words in a row France will surrender." There's also other fun generators on the site, especially if you're doing something high fantasy/D&D oriented. For a more general bunch of generators, try http://www.seventhsanctum.com/index.php


In other news, I also miss the Dares thread of the forums. Luckily, I saved the dares I made (mostly in the fantasy thread) last year, and I made up a few more dares, so I've got a few dares below the cut if anyone's interested.


( I dare you to try one of my dares from last year... )

( ...or one of the ones I just made up now )

I hope everyone's having fun with NaNo so far - and best of luck as the month continues!

An urban fantasy in which a group of students combine forces to protect the guardian spirits of Wakewater University from being demolished by the administration.

Only a few more hours 'til November - part of me wants to stay up and start even though I've got an early Saturday class. The more sensible part of me wants to wake up early and possibly bring my laptop in to class so I can type when I get there early and have the option of going somewhere like Panera Bread afterwards to hang out and type.

I've decided to go with Wakewater University as my story, even though I don't really have most of the main characters yet. It's urban fantasy, which I haven't done much of, set on a college campus. ( Read more... )

November is almost here - huzzah!

I think I'm pretty sure it's going to be Wakewater University or Expedition to the Ruins of Calenth that I end up writing for NaNo '08. The drawback to Wakewater is that I'm not very much used to having characters from the "real world," particularly those that hang around for more than a short story, but most of the central cast would be (relatively) normal university students, while I already have a very familiar cast for Calenth. On the other hand, Wakewater's something different, and I think I have a better overarching idea set up for that one. So I guess it's going to come down to whether I can muster myself a cast of decent characters for Wakewater before November 1st.

I don't usually do cover sorts of things for my works, in fact I think the closest I came was considering making an icon for Healer's Wage back in '06, but today I was playing around with the GIMP and made up covers of a sort. If I get ambitious and decide they aren't entirely too embarrassing, I might put them up in LJ's picture gallery later.

Now all I have to do is look for some compelling characters, and decide if I'm going to be writing in the third person or trying something new with first person, perhaps even in letter or journal format (and a character who is both perceptive and "chatty," at least to paper)

So, as we're all getting ready for NaNo and I'm being very indecisive, but I thought I would post a couple ideas that I've been tossing around in case anyone is interested. Some are sketchier than others, and I'm not even sure I'll end up going with one of the following, but at the moment they're the ones that have occured to me and been jotted down for this year's NaNo.

( Cut for length, and for rambling-ness )

I've been getting ready for November - tossing around various potential plotlines and characters (I don't know yet what I'm doing beyond that it will be some type of fantasy. High fantasy, political fantasy, satirical fantasy, epic fantasy, modern fantasy, light fantasy, space fantasy - probably not the last one, although I've been known to use space in my shorter pieces. I'm almost tempted to write a novel based off of Spore, following the development of a certain species and having each chapter be almost a short story sort of thing focused on a member of that species' next generation - though I don't think I'm actually going to do that.

I will say that I'm somewhat impressed that there is a new posting method on LJ; I didn't notice until I created this new accout and started posting this entry. Maybe I won't have to write entries that I'm planning to post at some point in HTML anymore....

I do need to upload a userpic - that's the next order of business. That and finding people on the NaNo forums to add. And maybe actually figuring out how the LJ pictures feature works so I can share  the NaNo desktop I made without having to bother with PhotoBucket or a similar site.

Anyhow, for the moment this entry will serve the purpose of taking up space so that I don't have to see the instructions on how to set up my LiveJournal when I look at my main page. Incidentally, LJ, there are 387 people interested in "fluffy bunnies," not 272 as you claim (no, I'm not usually quite as neurotic as that makes me seem; I was just curious as to whether they'd managed to include a self-updating number on the default welcome entry, which would have been kinda cool).