Just another writing blog

On the verge of 30k words, which isn’t bad considering we’re now half way through NaNoWriMo. Congrats to everyone who’s made it this far without going bonkers! Only another 15 days to go and we can edit to our hearts content!

In slightly related news, I think I’m going to be unplugging the internet cable during the day when I should be NaNo-ing or working or otherwise. The likes of Twitter and Facebook are proving too tempting and I find myself wasting hours on various websites, Youtube being one of the major culprits. Also, I find myself getting too worked up over the small things, such as seeing friends’ word counts grow while mine seems to stand still. I have to admit that I am growing more and more frustrated with my novel and the way it’s developing because it’s not how I envisioned how it would go when I first started. I wanted Mana, my main character, to be more melancholy and aloof, instead he’s a little too likeable and… well, nice. I suppose it makes him more real, but it means the start of the novel is kind of pointless now. This kind of thing should be put on hold until December, of course, but I can’t help it. My inner-editor keeps rearing her ugly head and slamming the door in her face just isn’t working anymore.

Also, I find myself getting frustrated at my internet friends. I deal with a lot of shit from a fair number of them because I loathe conflict, and really I just want to help them take their minds off whatever is going on in their lives. Unfortunately the same is never true if I’m in the crappy mood. I’m just being mardy during those moments. But I digress. I have been twittering, during the nano process because for me it’s sort of like a big support group, with people in similar positions to myself asking for advice, or people whom I can give advice to, or people who share blog posts about things they think will help. It’s great. Today, though, something happened that made me question whether I should stop doing that. Long story short, I saw a tweet from a follower that made me feel bad for tweeting so much.

Now, okay, it’s not the end of the world if someone’s annoyed I tweet so much because they can just unfollow me. I know that. I just felt… I dunno, like I should apologise for it. Sigh.

So yes. Distinct lack of internet for me. Although I can actually tweet from my phone so it won’t help on that front. Lol fail.

Progress; minimal.

I should be far more excited about the plotline I have moved on to but I just can’t seem to get the words out. Today I’ve managed a measly 200 words at the time I wrote this entry, which is just pathetic. I’m going to try and get some more out within the next hour but I dunno, if I can’t get much more done before my buffer runs out I’m going to have to resort to writing challenges, methinks. Or skipping scenes, which I never like doing. Rofl, I have found myself forgetting stupid stuff, like the guns I gave Mana, the names of characters and places, that kind of thing. Sob.

I guess the situation with my ear doesn’t help matters. Yes it is still blocked, though now, no doubt because of my using the eardrops, rather than feeling blocked it feels… gunged up. It’s marginally preferable to it feeling like something solid is stuck in there but it feels pretty gross when I sneeze or cough or yawn… going to see if I can get an appointment with the GP to get it syringed because this is driving me bonkers.

Right. Turning the internet off for a while so I can get some words out. Sigh.

Oops.

I pretty much did nothing on my nano today, because I was so shattered. Woke up this morning and went to collect my gorgeous new sunglasses, as well as order some normal everyday glasses – I pretty much got something like my current glasses but like, only half-rims – and then we went to look at hoovers and then went to Morrisons or, as I like to call it, Hell. I am not even joking. There were people coughing all over the fresh produce without using their hand, let alone a tissue, there were people who didn’t wash their hands before leaving the restroom, and there were screaming children. You try telling me that isn’t hell and I will slap you. But anyway, came home and had a nap. Still shattered now and I’ve been awake since about 5.

However, I have plans to start a new subplot now that I’ve killed some characters Mana, my main character, has left the town of Ninora. Next, he meets a mysterious yet mischevous Coyote and comes upon Aelbeck, a town at the edge of a forest where it is said there are man-eating wolves. I think I’m going to enjoy writing this one, but that’s kind of what I said about Ninora and I ended up hating it with the burning passion of a thousand suns. I didn’t have the chance to prepare many notes for this so hopefully that’ll keep my excitement for this arc alive.

So since I’ve managed to creep past my daily target of 1667 words I’ve decided to talk about something totally unrelated to NaNo… almost. You’ll see what I mean in a bit.

So, people who know me know that I love to draw, but that I tend to fall into art slumps quite frequently when I convince myself my art is crap. Rofl. With normal people this would motivate them to improve so that they can look at their art and be proud of their skill and not think ‘whatever I do will be crap anyway’. Because of this, I do not have my own art ’style’, so to speak, and am constantly changing in order to find a style that I am actually happy with. Currently I am happy with the chibi style that I developed and also the colouring styles that I use (there are two I flit between, cell shading and blending, both are funtiems ) but I don’t like my actual drawing style itself, the way I draw people or characters. I don’t think I ever have been, really. So yeah, that results in me flitting between styles.

But no, this isn’t a pity-party for me wah wah wah-ing about how I hate my art. No, siree. I have decided to do something about it for a change! SO HERE’S THE DEAL.

I haven’t worked out exactly how this is going to work yet, but what I’m thinking of doing is having a post at this blog asking people to post if they’re interested in getting free art from me – which could be anything from a sketch to a fully coloured picture with background or even a scene. If you like it you will be free to use this art for your book covers or for websites or whatever, I’d love it if you’d add a little “cover illustration by…” thinger somewhere if you do. <3 There are two catches, I will need to be inspired. So I'll probably ask y'all to post or e-mail me an excerpt from your book of a scene or maybe the basic premise if you don't have anything specific in mind (which is how I work best, really) and I'll choose my favourites.

Nothing will be out of bounds in terms of normal people, werewolves, vampires, aliens, whatever, but note this will be EXPERIMENTAL. IE, probably nothing like the stuff on my deviantart gallery.

Anyway, I’ll be mulling this over and will make an actual post for this if and when I reach that magical 50,000 word mark! Good luck everyone!

Progress and excerpts!

Well, we’re fast approaching the end of week 1 of NaNo and I’m pretty chuffed with my progress to date. Speaking of, I added a couple of the proper NaNo widgets to the sidebar to show my current progress which will automatically change to reflect my updated word count (16k woo!), which is far easier than having to dick around with the old widget that I was using where I had to manually imput not only my word count and the day number, but the hours I wrote and scenes I got through, JUST SO IT WOULD SHOW UP. So yeah, woo for easy!

Anyway, finally getting to the end of my first subplot, and will soon be starting on the next… obviously. I was beginning to hate the first one and seriously just wanted to use the “rocks fall, everyone dies” method of dealing with my ever-growing hatred, but I powered through. Thank God, because it gave me a hefty chunk of words to add to my wordcount, woo! I’ll probably just cut it all later and put it down to my ‘getting to know my main character’, so to speak.

One more thing, I recently added an excerpt to my nano profile so I figured I’d post what I added there, over here. ;D I was actually really happy with how I started the novel, and this is still my favourite scene from everything I’ve written so far. It’s probably more like a prologue than a chapter, and basically sets the relationship between Mana, the main character, and Shino, his travelling companion who also happens to be a talking chinchilla. Anyway, I’m going to add that to the page I’ve set up for this year’s nano which is located right here at this handy-dandy link!

Uh, I forgot to make a Day One post. Fail. Anyway, day one went quite well, actually. Managed to crank out about 4k words (most of which is utter shite, sob) and an currently working towards 8k by the time I roll into bed. This is made harder by the fact that I have a blocked ear. Again. So yeah, had to pilfer monies from Mum and wander down to the chemist to get some olive oil eardrops. It’s just an irritating distraction because I literally cannot hear out of the left side and I can FEEL it’s blocked and it’s ick.

Anyway, going to keep on truckin’. *thumbs up*

NaNoWriMo starts in about five and a half hours’ time. :O Getting excited! /pointless entry

I am so over trying to be prepared for NaNo. XD I mean, I haven’t finished any of the outlines for the subplots within my plots, and just have vague ideas about the direction I want them to go in but no matter how hard I try to get those thoughts onto paper (or GDoc) it just doesn’t happen. Talking to fellow NaNo-ers helps me to straighten things out in my head but I cannot seem to translate that into notes. It’s like my brain just refuses to put it simply because it wants to be ~creative~.

Oh well, two more days and I can get started! Rofl, watch my brain decide it doesn’t want to play at all anymore when Nivember 1st rolls on by.

So, it’s less than a week until NaNo starts. The main thing that terrifies me is my habit of editing as I go along instead of just cranking out a first draft while the creativity is flowing, and if anything is going to stop me from being a winner it’s my inner editor… pretty much me, myself and I. I’ve had plenty of advice from veterans about this and for my own benefit I’ma put em all here in a big-ass list.

1. Keep on writin’

Sounds stupid at face value, I know, it’s a writing challenge durrhurr you’re going to write. However I hear that a lot of people just let the enormity of the challenge get to them, there is an inevitable wall that some people just can’t get over and the only way to get through it is to get through it. Since with NaNo it’s about quantity, not quality, go on for pages about your character’s socks if you have to just KEEP WRITING.

2. Write every day and Power through the first week

So 50,000 words in 30 days works out to 1,667 words a day, and if you keep to that number you’ll totally get to 50k but obviously nothing is that easy; not everyone can do nothing but write for 30 days and there’s the small matter of Thanksgiving in the US. I’ve been told that aiming for 2k a day should be okay, or to make up for the lost days on another day but that seems a little risky to me. A few of the more prolific writers taking part (ie, published authors) suggest that for the first week ignore the “1,667 words a day” limit and try to do as much as possible while the idea is still fresh in your mind. Then again, this is from people who do like, 200k in a month.

3. Have an outline

I’m not sold on this to be honest. A few friends write off-the-cuff and let the story take them, so to speak. Obviously it’s a good idea to have at least a general outline of the novel you’re writing, like a blurb, but I don’t think a step by step walk through the whole thing is strictly necessary… says the girl who’s actually done that this year. Ohohoho~ I guess it depends on the writer, really, some feel like it allows them to continue smoothly without moments wondering where the story should go next, and some feel that it restricts them and stunts their ~creativity~. I’m giving an outline a go just to see whether it’s a help or hindrance, I may abandon it after I begin, who knows.

4. The internet is your enemy

One of my favourites, I must admit. Mainly because the internet will be my greatest nemesis. I’m lucky that right now my wireless hates me and I can just unplug a cable to be free of THE INTERNETS. If you need to google anything just write it somewhere to research later.

5. Have keyboard-friendly snacks to hand

*Snort*

6. Also, caffeine, by IV if necessary

;D And how!

7. Don’t let others’ attitudes affect you

A good point I think. One of the people whose advice I read is a prolific author, and often gets to 50k within the first week. Of course, this means that when she posts in the forum or people see her word count they get a little grizzly because their word counts aren’t as high or their project isn’t going as well as they had hoped or anticipated. These people will blame those with high word counts for their quitting, saying that these people “ruin NaNo”. This, of course, is utter bollocks. It should not matter what other people’s word counts are since it has nothing to do with your own project, don’t let pride get the better of you. Also, the reverse is true, don’t be disheartened by someone who has a high word count, just try and get your own up.

8. Turn off your inner editor

Yeah, see, I’ve just gone back and edited half this post. This does not bode well. Since I use MSWord I will be turning off that annoying squigly red line so it cannot taunt me as I type, but it’s going to be so tempting to go back and change some stuff here and there…

Most of all, HAVE FUN

:’D

Hee, first post!

So, I’ve decided to recreate my old blog here at Tamayorihime.com, mostly in preparation for the upcoming immensity that is NaNoWriMo. For those of you not familiar with the project it’s a writing challenge that pretty much dares you to write 50,000 words during the month of November. I’ve been sat on the sidelines as friends tried it out and have decided to give it a go, myself. God knows why, I do remember the rediculous amounts of stress and caffeine that was involved with the NaNo experience…

It’s not just the taking part that’s a new experience for me, though, the concept of planning ahead is mostly alien to me since whenever I write little stories it’s more of an off-the-cuff affair, writing as and when the inspiration strikes, so to speak. It’s a fun way to write, but it sometimes leaves me twiddling my thumbs wondering where to take a plot next and with 50,000 words to write in 30 days (probably less as I have other shiz to do, man) I can hardly afford to do that. My problem is going to come from keeping the writing momentum up, because when I flop I stop. (HURRHURRHURR)

HOWEVER. I do actually have an idea, which is surprising since ideas and me? Not down with the haps. Not ever. I suppose that would be because this is an idea that’s been rattling around in my head for a while now, and I’ve been itching for an excuse to do something with it, and now’s my opportunity! I won’t write too much about it now because honestly I haven’t pinned down the outline enough to be comfortable doing so, but as I write I shall post exerpts, stresses and hilarious typos that are bound to happen when trying to power through an inevitably rough first draft…

Stay tuned for moar stresses and the like from me. Sob.