Just stuff.

Not sure if we are supposed to do a blog post today or not, so I'm just gonna talk about a lot of things.

First off, Camp Nanowrimo.  Lets just say I'm wayyyyyyy behind. No word count api for this, so you guys cant see just how far behind I am.  And I don't see myself catching up anytime soon, thanks too a variety of time consuming projects coming due. Which brings me to my next point.

Feature story.  Nothing better than stressful stuff, I can tell you that.  I've got my interviews done, but 8 pages is freaking me out, seeing as we haven't talked about feature stories in like a month.  Freaking out about this is a severe understatement.

Cap Court. Togas.  It's gonna be fun.

Wichita St v. Louisville That game.  I just can't.  I wanted Wichita to win so bad. They were up by 11 and then they just lost.  I can't even tell you how nerve racking that game was for me.  Also can we talk about how their mascot appears to be a bale of wheat?

Space I feel like I should mention something about space, but like my other interests, my life has been hijacked by school.  So space. It exists.  Please enjoy NASA's astronomy picture of the day, Saturn photobombing a picture of the moon.

I WON NANOWRIMO!

Huzzah! I did it!!! I won NaNoWriMo! I wrote 50k!  Its not a complete novel, not in the least.  There are parts I am definitely going to cut out, parts I am going add, I have a whole storyline to streamline. But editing is fun right?

It was hard.  There were days when I simply did not want to write, times when I did not have time to write, and time when homework got in the way. (evil homework) But I still did it, and managed to write more words on the last day than I had ever written.   I am surprised that I still like my story at the end of this.  I want to edit it because I want to make it a good story.    So for now, I am going to bask in my victory. 

So next year, I hope to do it again.  If I can find an idea I am really excited about, I am going to try to win NaNo again. And maybe, just maybe, I'll even finish it early.

 

Here is a lovely excerpt from my novel.  Remember it is a rough draft, so some sentences might be badly written.   Or if you don't want to read it, scroll to the bottom of this post for a song.

 

Jeza is the main character, Captain Murasa is the captain of a pirate ship, the Prince Regent is a jerk (but you might soon gather that)

 

The ship pulled into port.  Jeza scanned the dock.  The buildings were strung with bright red and purple streamers. The dock was very crowded, with rich and poor workers milling around dressed in loose but brightly colored clothes.  Men and women alike wore loose cotton pants, paired with a bright colored sash or long tunic.  Duhai was very different than the towns of Alemeir.  It was far warmer, and the houses were built out of yellow gray clay.  Jeza looked at all the different people when she stopped.  Down below, sticking out in the brightly dressed crowd, stood the Prince Regent, surrounded by courtiers and guards.  They were all dressed in the tight gray and gold uniform, looking rather uncomfortable in the hot sun.  She turned to Captain Murasa.  
“Look” She murmured.  She started to back towards Captain Murasa’s quarters, hoping they would not see her, but she had already been spotted.  The Prince and the courtiers began to push through the crowd towards the dock. Captain Murasa began to shout orders to try to turn the ship around, but they became cornered by two Alemeir royal ships. 
“There’s not much we can do,” He said, “We are surrounded. What do you want to do?”
“They are going to arrest me then? I can fight them off,” Jeza said, putting a hand on her sword. 
“You can’t fight them all alone, and neither can the rest of the crew,” he said sternly.  She seemed to still be considering it.  He grabbed her by the shoulders and looked her in the eye. “You can’t fight them Jeza, do you understand?”  Jeza nodded finally.
“Okay, take my swords.  I worked too hard to get them,” She said, handing them to him.  He handed her a small dagger, which she hid in her boot.
“Give me your gold; they can't arrest me on anything.”  Perhaps before she wouldn't have before but she knew Captain Murasa was a man of his word.  She slipped the small purse into his hand.  They pulled slowly into the port and the sailors began to unload the ship.  Jeza was the last off, Captain Murasa right behind her. 
“When you get down there, run.  Try to slip into the crowd, lose them,” He murmured.  The Prince tried to meet them on the ramp a glare on his face.  Clearly he did not want to be there.  Jeza cursed under her breath and began to back up slightly.  He made a quick step towards her but she slipped out of his reach, leaped over the ramp and dove into the water. It tasted foul but she began to swim as fast as she could towards another wooden dock farther down the harbor. 
Meanwhile, the Prince and his courtiers shoved through the crowd, but the majority of the crowd was going the other way.  They wanted to greet the new ship and trade.  Already some men were picking up bundles of cloth and crates.   Another group carried a type of bluish bamboo on their backs.  The Prince, frustrated, shoved one trader into the water.  Shouts of indignation rose around him as he continued to push forward.  The man clung to the floating bamboo bundle and shouted what was probably a very nasty word at the Prince. 
Jeza pulled herself up onto the wooden dock, soaking wet.  There was a very bad taste in her mouth.  At least she had lost the Prince.
“Hello Jezro,” the Prince said.  Jeza glanced up at him, from where she clung to the dock, half her body still in the foul water.  He was smiling wickedly, “I believe you have something that belongs to me.”

 





What did I win you ask? Bragging rights.  Pride.  Yeah they should really give out actual prizes.  $50,000 dollars would be good, delivered within the next 30 days.  Please enjoy this song of my victory. Also check out Emily's blog! She won too!

NaNoWriting: Start to Finish or ADHD Madness?

Ok, so there are probably a million ways to write a novel.   I am going to focus on two.
Way One: Write that novel from start to finish, from beginning to end, getting that whole plot arc there on the page in the correct order.  (this probably is what some 'planners' do for nanowrimo).  The problem with this is that you could have writers block and be stuck unable to move forward.  If you have it planned out though, this might be a whole lot easier.

Way Two: My way.  Throw every single idea onto the page whenever it suits you.  Write that scene from the middle first? Sure.  I pretty much end up writing a few main scenes here and there when the idea strikes me, then just fill in the blanks later. (pantsing ftw) I am terrified of having to edit it and go in and write the boring parts in between the interesting bits.  The problem with this is that you end up with these chunks that just have endless space in between them.  (it is like actual space! chunks of matter with huge gaps of emptiness in between)

I suppose it really does not matter how you write the novel, but that you write it at all.  Right now I am avoiding writing, so I am procrastinating on my nano by blogging about my nano.  Now that I think about it, that probably is not the best idea.

Happy Thanksgiving/ Black Friday!

One more thing:
I did it! I am over halfway to 50k! 25,000+ words! Whoohooo!  (Yep, I have about 7 days left.  Yeah, I am around 11k words behind.  But that is unimportant!)

NaNoWriMo

 

NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, occurs during the month of November.  Essentially, a bunch of insane people, who like to call themselves writers (yes, I am one of the insane) decide each November that it would be a good idea to write 50,000 words in 30 days.  A novel written in a month.  Did I mention it is insane?

 

Synopsis of my novel (which doesn't really describe it because my plot is only half done, so this is just a taste):

My novel is about this girl who finds a door in a tree, opens it, and finds herself in another world, which is kind of medieval, with lots of magic.  And first she's convinced she's gone insane, but eventually she just goes with it.  She becomes a gryphon rider, fights pirates and befriends a boy named Niccolo, all while trying to thwart (thwart, great word) the plans of the ambitious Prince Regent, who wants Jeza's gryphon as his own. 

 

This is my second NaNoWriMo.  Last year I was recruited by Natalie and Emily, with whom I then recruited Maddie.   My novel last year did not go very well.  I wrote 10,205 words.  But then again, it was a success. I had never written that much before.  I tested the NaNo waters and got a feel for it.  (I suppose doing NaNoWriMo makes you want to put 'NaNo' in front of anything NaNoWriMo related.  This is a NaNo Post, and this is a NaNo side bar.  Or is it a NaNo NaNo side bar? NaNo-ception. Like I said, insanity)  This year I am keeping pretty close to the writing par of 1,667 words per day. Well sort of.   I am writing a consistant amount each day, more or less. 

 

I, unlike Emily, am a partial pantser.  For this novel, I already had 6k words written (not counting them in my official wordcount though).  The story was in my head.  But I don't plan out each chapter, or character.  Thats what I like about not planning it all.  It gives your characters room to grow and become individuals.  It allows their role in the story to completely change.  Last year, one of my background characters suddenly became this manipulating mastermind. (ok that seems random, but pretty much she drives several of the characters insane and kills two of them, which is only revealed later in the book)  I did not plan that, but somehow it worked. This year, I have this character who was only meant to be in one part of the book, but sometimes it made sense for him to just pop up, and now he is essentially the main supporting character.  Pantsing is fun, because one idea leads to another and another and then all of a sudden you have a story.  Pantsing is also stressful, because you suddenly feel like you have no more good ideas. 

 

And yes, NaNoWriMo is insanely hard.  But this year, I have the feeling that I really can do this.  I'll have a day where I write next to nothing, and then magically the next day I write 2,500 words.  I've written more words in the last 19 days than I have in the whole 30 days of last years NaNo.  The best part is, it doesn't matter if it is good writing, not now.  For this novel, I kind of get what people say when its just the story being told through them.  Of course I am thinking it all up, but then when I am writing suddenly it becomes just like telling a story, not trying to make the words beautiful, just solely getting the story across.  Thats kind of the point of NaNo. Forcing you to write until you get into a flow and then it becomes (sorta) easy.

 

And yes, there are those moments when I feel like giving up.  I am kind of going through one right now, thanks to a lovely thing called writers block.  But then I look at it, and realize I've written 60+ pages of writing (which believe me just blows my mind), and I realize I just can't give up.  I've made it too far.  

Keep an eye on the Word Count Widget over there to watch my word count steadyily increase-->

P.S. I might post another blog post next week NaNoWriMo related.