NaNoWriMo Again :)

Every year I look forward to NaNoWriMo.

There’s just something amazingly productive about the pressure that’s put on that one time of year. I’m not entirely sure why the pressure is there when I really think about it. I mean, who am I letting down if I don’t finish? Just myself. But either way, I really love the rush of NaNoWriMo.

I’ve got myself up to writing about 2000 words an hour and about that much a night. I’ve more than half way finished and it’s not even half way through the month yet. If I can make it to 50k by the end of the month I’ll be very pleased with myself.

Really, when I think about it, what book is only 40k anymore, anyway? That, and with all the editing a book goes through there are a lot of words that get cut out and lost. I know I average about 10k. Things get added later and things get chopped later, but for now all I feel is the rush to the finish line.

After that I’ll worry about what stays, what goes, and what needs to be added in after the fact. I know the “must haves” for this book. I’ll worry about the rest later.

It brings me a strange comfort to know that the skeleton of my book – the bare basics, is amounting up to about 40k. I can add the rest in later.

Why No Pictures?

Well, I’m about forty percent finished the first draft of my new manuscript. I like where it’s going so far and I’m thinking about what I’m going to end up doing with this. I have so many stories in my head right now that it’s actually getting hard to focus on just one. I’ve started writing intros and making notes on other books, and then keeping focused on just one.

            The sad fact is that if I didn’t get distracted by every little thought that came into my mind (like this blog entry) my book would probably already be done. I just got a new job that should allow myself some more time, and a few other details got ironed out in my life. Some new wrinkles emerged, but you know – that’s life. I’m spending as much time as I can right now focusing on the positives and keeping myself busy.

            Speaking of positives, I’ve been enjoying the weather now that it’s started to cool down and I’ve been spending a lot of time with my son. A lot of people ask me why I don’t put pictures of him online, and there’s a very simple answer for that.

I don’t need to and it’s not safe.

There are too many creepers online and too many people who will take a picture of a child and use it to scam other people. Those pictures of kids you get in your email with the message something like; “my name is sally and I’m dying of cancer. If you forward this to 100 people AT&T will give my family $1”?

Yeah, that’s a real child. That picture is probably taken off someone’s facebook account. I’m not willing to have my son attached to something like that – or to the worse, more obvious things.

            I think people lose touch with the idea that the Internet is a very real place with real people who are both good and bad. I’ve met some amazingly helpful and good people online, and I’ve met some people who are the worse of the worst. We spend so much time telling our children to “be safe online!”

            Unfortunately, many adults don’t follow by the same rules that they expect their children to. Apparently if you’re over the age of 18 or 25 or 40 the big bads can’t get you or your family.

            I’d rather not take a risk. I love my son. He’s the most precious and amazing person I have in my life. I watch him grow up more every day. I watch him draw and learn and I listen to what he has to say about important topics (like Iron Man and monster trucks, oh yes) and I listen to the stories he tells me and to what he dreamt the night before. I couldn’t imagine anything bad ever happening to him.

            Remember, people. Play it safe online. Not just for yourselves, but for your children, friends, and family members too.

            This Public Announcement is brought to you by Elizabeth Darker. Enjoy <3

Word Count

Word count.

            It’s the plight of writers and a goal for authors. Something about the idea of a word count can either kill or make a novelist, I think. I know that when I first started writing the idea of writing 20,000 words was something to awe at. When I wrote my first “book” at just a little under 25k I thought it was amazing. Then came the awakening NaNoWriMo. 40,000 words in a month. Who could do that?

Not me.

At least, not my first try. The first time I joined NaNoWriMo I went in completely unprepared. No plot outline, no solid ideas. No idea of how I was going to write this and I attended no meetings. It was a bad idea, but, I learned from my mistakes and became a better writer for it.

Shortly after my second NaNoWriMo I started to look up word counts and what they meant. 20k or less was a short story, 20k – 40k was a novella, and anything over 40k was a novel. But, doing more research showed me that most publishers and agents want a manuscript at least 60,000 words long. That’s my first novel’s length added onto my NaNoWriMo novel. It seemed daunting at first, but I set my mind to it and started to hit 60k with my books. The Yellow Sun was my first novel to be published with 60,000 or so words.

It seems funny to look back and think about it. When I first started writing I had no idea what weight the word count of a book meant. It was all in pages. Then when I heard 20k wrote a story and added padding to it. When I did NaNoWriMo it was the first time I ever actively counted words, and I did it by hundreds. Every hundred words I would push myself to do another hundred. Of course, it didn’t take long to write one hundred words so it wasn’t a hard goal to meet each time.

With the novel I’m writing now, I’m looking at 1,000 word goals. For every thousand I write I do a quick glance, smile and write another thousand. For every three thousand I can take a breather, and for every five thousand I get a cookie and a pat on the head.

Oh, how times change!

Switched

            Okay, I know that I said that I normally don’t read within my genre anymore, but I took a chance on a book that I didn’t think I’d enjoy and now I’m in love with the series. I downloaded Switched about a month or so back, started to read the first chapter, and then had to move. I had initially downloaded it because I wanted some light reading material to keep me entertained through the process.

            Boy, was I wrong.

            As soon as I started to really read the book I couldn’t put it down. I finished the entire novel in less than 24 hours. At first, I wasn’t very fond of Wendy. She seemed like another Bella; spoiled, temperamental and ungrateful. It didn’t take long for the character to really gain depth though. The same goes for most of her characters and their first impressions on me. Finn seemed, well, lets face it – creepy. I almost put the book down when she let him into her room. I’ve had more than I can stand of Edward Cullin Syndrome (ECS, for you medical students out there) and thought it was going to be another one of those books.

            I’m glad I kept reading though, because things panned out pretty well. Everything was explained, and I liked that. I didn’t have any questions that went unanswered and the plot kept moving along smoothly, so I kept reading along.

            I have to say, I love Tove. He was by far my favorite character in the book so far. Willa is up in the top too. I actually think that Tove and Willa may play over Finn and Wendy for me. But that’s just me. It’s likely my love of Fiver from Watership Down that makes me love Tove so much. Fiver is one of my big inspirations for two of my characters that haven’t really been released to the public just yet.

            Now I’m wondering if Amanda Hocking ever read Watership Down.

            Hm.

            Well, my recommendation is to read the Trylle Trilogy – or at least the first book. Switched held my interest, the characters had depth and despite my hatred for books with open endings, I guess that I’ll have to deal. She’s got me counting the days until February and waiting for Torn.

            Only 165 days to go.

On Writing and Reading

            Lately, with the amount of reading and writing I’ve been doing I’ve noticed a few things that have changed about myself and my writing style, and a few things that just haven’t. I started thinking about it when I was reading a few blogs by other authors about getting into writing routines and how they go about it.

            First off, I read – a lot. Lately it’s been very far out of my genre. No vampires. No werewolves. I’ve been reading things like The Golden Compass, Watership Down, Black Beauty, Alice and Wonderland, It’s Not Just About the Hair, and a few text books about writing and publishing (hey, you can always benefit from that!).

The less I’ve been reading in the genre that I write, the more I’ve found myself wanting to write it. I pick up tidbits of inspiration from what I read and while I’ve never been afraid of plagiarizing anything unknowingly, I sometimes get so caught up in the “been there, done that” and stop writing entire manuscripts because they feel old or worn because someone else has done something somewhat like it.

The more I read outside the lines, the more easily I can write. I’m surprising myself with what I’m reading lately with no Internet and no television. I like it.

As far as my actual writing style and routine, they’ve been morphing quite a bit too. I’ve been working on dialog a lot. After reading my own writing and really listening to the way people talk, it dawned on me that the way I’m writing is too formal for how a person would actually speak. I wish someone would have pointed it out to me earlier. So, I’ve been working on that a lot.

My routine hasn’t changed much though. I’m kind of a nit picker when it comes to how and where I can write. My brain will shut down if things aren’t the way it needs them to be. It’s the difference of really being in “the zone” and a few hundred words vs. a few thousand.

As strange as it might sound, when the lights are out and I’m in a small, dark room facing westward or locked inside a bathroom sitting on the floor in the dark I can write around two thousand words in an hour, and that’s on the low end. I type like a maniac! If things are too hot, too stuffy, or I don’t have a glass of water with me or it’s too bright my word count decreases dramatically.

I guess that it’s really just a matter of focus. Well, speaking of focus, I should get back to writing. I want to churn out another three thousand words today other than this blog.

Toodles!

Lack of Internet

Sorry, again, for the long belated post.

With the lack of Internet at my house I've been mooching off my family's. They don't mind though, I'm sure they enjoy the extra company from time to time.

The road trip was traumatic. I'm just happy that it's done and over. Really, there wasn't anything of note that was overly positive to talk about, so I'll just skip it and move on to more positive things.

With things in the house settling in after the long trip, I've finally started to work on another book again. Nothing like a long trip to give you writer's block. But, like I said, I'm working on my next book and I'm hoping the first manuscript will be done by the end of the month.

On the bright side, while I haven't been writing I've been reading old books from my college writing classes. It's really reopening my eyes to the whole idea of how I write and where my weaknesses are (also, I had a friend point out just a few and really have been working on it since). I feel like this next book is going to come out stronger and overall better than the last. I'll give everyone more details once I'm well into the process of writing it.

Other than that, life is moving on as usual. I'm considering the idea of going back to college but that's another story all together. Until then!

On The Road

Well, I'm on the road!

Road trips are fun, right? Well, sometimes.

The GPS has been our biggest enemy on the trip, and I keep thinking that maybe it'd be better go just go with a map. For whatever reason, it keeps taking us in very large circles.

On the other hand, we did end up staying in a very nice hotel and got some very nice shots of the sky.  I'll upload them later when I have some spare time.

AJ seems like he's enjoying the trip so far, so that's a good thing. The rats... are on the fence.  They don't like the car, but they do like the breakfast at the hotel. Charlie got his hard boiled egg and Sam and Orion got their waffles. Everyone on that end is happy, and the hotel staff didn't have a problem with the rats even in a non-pet room. Yay for small animals!

I'm already missing my family a little bit back home. My dad, my brother, Jesse, Sarah, Heidi... everyone.  I'm going to have to call everyone later to let them know I'm thinking of them.

Well, we're getting ready to head out again, so I'll post again soon!