I WON!!

Ahh, so this is what winning feels like ... it's lovely!

In all fairness, I didn't have a job or school to mess with this month, so writing and juggling my "chores" wasn't all that difficult. Even though 50,000 words is still a lot. I think I owe it all to my excellent outline; with a good outline, the novel really does write itself.

Now on to editing ...

My novel :)

This is my novel as it stands right now ... or a graphic depiction of it. Neat, huh?
(obviously, these are just the most used words ...)

Yay!

see more pwn and owned pictures

Aaand I'm done.

I'm surprised that finishing not only 50,000 words, but also finishing the novel only took 17 days. I'm not going to pretend it's quality work just yet (first draft, you know), but it's a good, solid start. So as the month wears on, I'm going to go back over a few scenes and write them from different perspectives; later on when I do my editing, I'll have lots of stuff to choose from, maybe even push my word count up even further.

I'm also thinking about making this novel into a series ... I sort of got the Nancy Drew bug from it and think my characters would do well in other settings, handling other types of mysteries. We'll see.

WOOHOOO!!!!

I did it in 13 days! 50,025 as of night, and the thing is ... I still have outline left over, so I'm just gonna keep going until the month is finished and see how many words I can rack up.

Ooh... cramped fingers ...

Alright ... so the word count widget is a little slow.

I couldn't help it: I stayed up until midnight last night to get started right away. I got in 600 words then, and another 1600 just now. Things are going well!

The Fun Starts Tomorrow!

Alright, everyone, this is the moment I've been preparing for all month ... this is why I have a fifty page outline right now! Tomorrow is November 1st, the beginning of National Novel Writing Month. You can check out my profile here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/261768
Also, check my word count status at the right-hand of the screen!

Seriously, 50 pages in my outline. That's over 15,000 words! My question now is: will this next month be a glorious win (an easy 50,000)? or epic fail because I've already said everything in my outline?

Outline

About 8 days left until Novemeber, and I'm already off to a great start. My outline is over 10,000 words long, and I've got to say, I'm rather proud of it. I surprised myself with a few plot turns that I think will work really nicely in the end.

Coming Soon ....

Coming soon ...
Watch the word count widget the right to find out if I make my 50,000 word goal this November!

November Approaching

November's gonna be busy. I'll be starting Medical Assistant classes, and if I still have a job then, I'll be struggling just to finish my homework and have time to eat and sleep. Unfortunately, November's nanowrimo.org challenge that I've been looking forward since January might have to wait until next year. But if I have no job, it'll be a piece of cake (not that I would jeopardize a job opportunity!).

So school! I finally decided to go back and pursue something I never before gave thought to: nursing. Why? you ask. Because I needed a different avenue. Art hasn't worked for me since I was 16 and started working ... odds are pretty good that it won't turn around anytime soon. Yeah, I might sell a book, but how many years is that going to take? How successful will it be if it happens? But I won't give it up. I need something to dive into when work and the brain aneurysm-inducing news gets to me (sometimes ignorance IS bliss...). As Steven King wrote, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" ... since I don't go out drinking or whatever, (and the amount of comments on this blog proves that I don't have the patience to maintain too many friendships) this is my play.

On the plus side, I already know what I'll write about in November if I'm able: like the project I undertook in January, I'll once again revamp one of my old stories. This one is something I really enjoyed, but it never gelled propperly ... I'm hoping that with a few new twists and a little life experience I'll be able to salvage it.

And when will Awake be fit to read? Who knows.

Editing again

I may have written the complete text in a month, but it'll take me the rest of the year to edit it into something palatable for another human being to digest. But that's the point of the first draft: just get it onto the page and worry about it later.

What started out as a little over fifty-thousand words has dwindled down to just under forty-thousand. Where did my ten-thousand words go?? Apparently, some fluff got into my text, but I'm sure those ten-thousand will be back as I'm fleshing out stuff like "They all looked afraid" into something a bit more literary. I really can't wait to have some people read it, but it'll probably be a while before it's dressed enough to go out in public.

As I work on my project and do other things, it's so easy for me to liken novel writing to normal every-day things. Like cooking, for example. When I want to make something, I get out the recipe (the outline), drag all the ingredients out of the fridge (the initial scenes). Then, I get rid of the stuff I don't need (plastic bags, inedible greens -- editing). I measure, mix, arrange (polish), and cook. When the finished food product comes out of the oven, it looks nothing like the scattered ingredients on my counter, but those bags and bottles and smatterings of flour were necessary for the finished product.

Wanna read?

If you want to read some more stuff I've written, please check out my articles at Helium.com:
http://www.helium.com/users/371957

Pet Peeve #2

The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak

Well, it's pet peeve time again. I was really hoping I'd love this book -- after all, nothing makes me happier than reading about a place that isn't America. Any place. The first 2 chapters exceeded my expectations (with a subject like abortion, no less). I thought, "Fantastic! I've found a new favorite author!" No.

Problem #1: Limitless flashbacks

I enjoy a good flashback like the next person (my favorite show is Lost, for Heaven's sake -- and it's half flashback, half actual story), but when it takes away from the main story and is boring, I end up skipping paragraphs - nay, whole chapters at a time.
In addition to the flashbacks, every single character gets their own scenes/chapters, which sometimes is really good, but sometimes leaves me wondering when I'm gonna get back to the heroine. With a heavy sigh, I skip some more pages.

Problem #2: Needless wordiness

This author likes to refer to each character by his/her whole name almost every time she referrs to the character. It raised my suspicion that she was trying to reach a target word/letter count when in one paragraph, the name "Barsam Tchakhmakhchian" appeared like 10 times.
Aside from names, she likes to describe things and "remember" things, and describe the way so and so really liked a certain food, tries to get us emotionally involved in that food, and then in a glorious climax, prints the entire recipe in the text.

Problem #3: Head-hopping

In my effort to write a really good novel, I've done some research on various "rules" to keep my composition from sucking. One of these rules is that in a single scene, the writer should stick with one character's point of view so that the reader doen't get confused about who's doing what or who's thinking what. This writer looooooves to break that rule. At one moment, we're following one character, following her moves, her thoughts, and all of a sudden, we're in someone else's head. Someone else is moving and thinking. For a look at "the rules", click here: http://writing-world.com/fiction/headhop.shtml

Pet Peeve #4: The violating twist (spoilers ahead)

I'm all for a good WTF twist at the end, but utter reader (and character) violation is too much. The author did not set up for it in any way, leaving me to have to re-read the offending scene (oh yes, it was incest! DETAILED INCEST!) 1. because there had been too much wordy description/flashbacks and I had been skimming, and 2. because I was hoping my evening hadn't been ruined by what I thought I just read ... but it was. I was so frustrated that I wanted to open my high-rise window and let the stinking thing fly ... but littering also irritates me, so I shoved it violently back on the shelf. It will take a ride with me on my next trip to the used bookstore.

I'm developing a new pet peeve ...

Currently Reading:

Reality TV Bites by Shane Bolks

I've decided to branch out and read some stuff I normally wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole, such as the above listed book. Chick-lit/Romance has never really been my thing, and I avoid reality TV like the plague (most of the time). I'll say this right now: this book isn't badly written. Light, yes. Shallow, yes. But sometimes we need something that's "just entertaining", and for that, it does its job. However, one thing I'm having difficulty wrapping my head around is the abundance of brand names (especially the uber designer ones).
For example: (a spur of the moment composition by me, not a quote)

She picked up the phone and chipped her OPI Passionly-Passion
nail polish. "Oh dammit!" she said into the phone.
"Sorry?"
"I mean, hello?" she covered her eyes, careful not to touch the
Maybeline as she tapped her Prada heels on the linoleum.

Is it just me, or does it seem a LOT like a bunch of product placement? An elaborate commercial? I understand saving time by saying "the Volkswagon Beetle" rather than describing the car in painful detail -- but it's a shortcut, am I right? It seems as though if I'm not familier with the product itself (like So and So's Dashing line at Boss), I almost need to look it up in order to get the picture the author is trying to paint - a hinderance instead of a help. And what about the people 50 years from now who might read the book? A certain super-cool very specific cell phone 1) isn't going to be cool anymore and 2) there's the possibility that NO ONE will know what it is.

Also, isn't it supposed to be up to the reader to imagine the scene? That's why a lot of writers don't over-describe their characters because if I think "Josh" should look like Adrien Brody, but you think "Josh" should look like your friend Tom ... if it doesn't have a real place in the story, describing "Josh"'s stringy black hair and lean features over and over is going to mess with your baby-faced, blonde version you've picked out. Sometimes specific descriptions are important to the situation or the character, but it ought to be obvious. A character's nickname is "Red" because she has red hair. Someone has a lot of scars because he was in a house fire 5 years ago. Another person is of Eskimo decent and looks Asian, so when he orders lunch at the Yummy Panda Buffet restaurant down the street, the waiter speaks to him in Chinese, and that annoys him. Stuff like that.

While we're at it: cuss words (not a problem in Reality TV Bites, but a pet peeve nonetheless). When anyone says (or writes) ANY word way too much, it's irritating. Another example? I'm glad you asked:

"I waited for the bus for over an hour. The bus was supposed to run on the
bus' schedule of 15 minutes. Busses are usually punctual, but this bus
kept me waiting. When I turned my head, the bus came and I missed the bus
and I had to wait for another bus. That bus was also a little late because
the bus didn't stick to the bus schedule."

Ok? It's like that with gratuitous use of the F word. ANY word. So please, all you Hollywood screenplay writers, that guy who shouts on the street corner outside my bedroom window, and Chatty Chatterson on the cell phone across the aisle from me: USE SOME OTHER WORDS!

Rant over.

Word count for January: 50,231!!!

When I first heard about nanowrimo.org's project for getting writers to compose a 50,000 word novel in a single month, I thought it would be impossible. My longest work had barely reached 40,000, and that was after working on it for a year (and consequently scrapping the whole thing).

But after reading the website and seeing how many people actually accomplished their goals, I worked it out that reaching 50,000 words in a month meant writing 1667 words a day. Piece of cake. So instead of waiting until November when the website holds their competition, I decided to start right away with the month of January (call it a new year's resolution). Some days I wrote far more than my goal, some days I couldn't get to it at all - but on January 31st, my last day, I had only 600 words to go.

I liken a first draft to a globule of clay: you want to create a beautiful sculpture, so you first build the armature (the outline/notes), then you cover the whole thing in clay in the generic shape you eventually want it to be in (the first draft). By then, it doesn't look like what you want it to be - definitely not something you want to show to anyone else! But then you edit out the clumps that don't do anything for the story, and you gently and painstakingly sculpt everything that remains into your final product.

My stories go through a "test audience" before I start sending it for publication (usually on my 3rd draft - then I polish it once more after they read it and incorporate any good ideas they give me). Anyone interested in being a test subject for this latest one, let me know.

Happy New Year to Me!!

My first publishing experience has come back to grant me yet another: The editor of Tiny Lights emailed me this morning and offered me a place in her latest print edition of the magazine! Of course, I'm way too excited about it - it'll be my first to be published on actual paper. So go ahead and subscribe to it to be sure you don't miss my lovely entry ;) Also, if you missed it the first time, here's my story on the website: A Similar Fate.