Update on Camp NaNo

Wait a minute...ok, so I know I haven't updated/posted in a while...but I swear that I wrote an entire post on the outcome of August Camp NaNo.

I quite distinctly remember announcing to the world (i.e. everyone I could get to listen) what had happened, and that included writing a very excited blog post.  I don't know where that post went, as it is not published or in drafts that I can see...

Hmph.

Well, this will not be nearly as exuberant as the original, since the excitement has worn off after a month.

But I won!  Just barely!  I reached 50k with approximately 30 seconds to spare, on August 31st, after writing for all available hours between 5:30 AM and 4 AM of September 1st.  Ashamedly, I moved my time zone back to give me the extra 4 hours - however, 4 hours is a small amount compared to the two weeks during which I wrote nothing.

On that single waking day (I've given up on defining days as midnight to midnight - a day is from when I get up to when I go to bed), I wrote a grand total of 37924 words.  I believe.  The camp stats are a little wonky right now so I can't check that exactly.  But it was a lot.

Granted, approximately 30k in, the quality of the story started going downhill, due to my severe lack of enough brainpower to work that fast.  I reached the limit of plot that I had thought about and gone beyond a few times already, so I was just picking something to happen, even if it wasn't something that I liked or wanted to happen.  By the end, the story was a disaster.  So if/when I do go back to finish it, I'll be scrapping the last 10k or so.  Majorly scrapping the last 1k (it was a hodgepodge of scene-y stuff just for word count, because I had less than an hour to finish and I didn't know what was happening next because I'd written myself into a corner). 

Still, I liked the story until I made the wrong choice and led myself into a corner.  Parts of it were even really good I thought.  Obviously not great, since it's a first draft, but they had the potential to be great.  So I wouldn't mind revisiting that.

Of course, the day after that I was exhausted, both physically and mentally (besides writing 38k words, I'd stayed up for over 24 hours).  So I didn't write after that.  And then school was in full swing, and I was immediately swamped in hw.  How fun.  Hopefully I'll have a chance to post and write more, even though it seems like my classes all collaborated to make sure I have an exam every week.  So now I'm off to study for the statistics exam!  :)

What's the largest number of words you've ever written in one day? 

Camp Woes

So as you may know, it is August 29th.  The August session of Camp NaNoWriMo is ending in two days.  I am at a grand total of almost 16k.  Or I will be in a few minutes.


.....yeah.  Besides that, school has started for me, and while it's been interesting so far (although we haven't covered much yet and not a ton has happened) I can tell that this semester is going to require a bit more time in terms of homework and such.  However, I am still going to attempt to finish 50k!

That's a far cry lower than what I had originally planned.  June Camp went really well, with me finishing off 50k in the first 11 days, so I figured I would shoot for 75k this August.  Obviously, that's unlikely to happen at this point.  I'm already well over 10k per day left to finish just the 50k.  This is a short post, but I felt like I should put something on here, since I've been neglecting my blog.  I'll write a proper post sometime soon-ish.  Probably after August is over and I've either won or failed miserably, since in the mean time, I will probably be writing in every spare minute.  TTFN, ta ta for now!

Road Block

So...it's been a long time since I posted.  I know.  I'm lazy and procrastinating and generally not very productive.  For instance, today I was supposed to mail a package, write some of my Camp NaNo, watch a history lecture, and probably a couple other things that I'm forgetting at the moment.  I succeeded in *drumroll please* mailing the package.

Yeah.

School starts in two weeks, and I'm kind of freaking out about it.  Not because of the school part, which I'm not fussed about either, but it's really not a big deal.  More because school starting up again means that the summer is gone, and I'm that much closer to graduating and all the other things that are seeming to happen ridiculously fast.

Oh yeah, I was supposed to pick out colleges.  Shoot.

I'm also not feeling particularly good about the things that I'm spending my day doing (marathon Pretty Little Liars?  Who, me?  My friend loaned the first season to me.).  That's not completely true.  I love watching Pretty Little Liars doing *cough* other things.  But I wish that I had enough time in the day to do other *cough-Pretty-Little-Liars-cough* things AND all the other things that I not only need to do, but also the things that I want to do.

Like write a novel.  Camp NaNo has been somewhat of a struggle for me this time.  I'm sort of consistently-ish writing most days, or at least thinking about it, but I haven't been able to really just dig down and write.  I think it's partly because my mind is drawing a blank on this story.  There's a road block telling me I need to figure out some technical things before I can really write.  So I'm probably going to go on to the other novel that was actually going to be for Camp (the current one was one that I wanted to finish from last month), and hopefully take a detour around the road block, so that when I do eventually come back to it, I will know what to do with the story.

Pshew.  There's a lot more stuff going on in my life right now, and while it is definitely fun, there's that impending sense of doom looming over me which takes away from the experience and is trying to get me to do all the things that I need to do that I don't really want to do and all the things that I do want to do, but somehow just don't have the drive to do.  Where's my drive?  Normally I'm so intense people can't stop me from doing things.  It's weird without it.  Is this how normal people feel?

Well, we all know normal is boring.  Maybe I should make my life more exciting.  Anyway, that's it for me for now.  Hopefully I'll have a better post for you sometime soon.  TTFN, ta ta for now. :)

Editing, otherwise known as Author Torture

So during Camp NaNoWriMo, I was asked about how I edit.  I had just finished my novel and was in the process of editing it during the later part of the month.  I figured other writers might be interested in hearing how I edit, since it could be either different from what you do or something that you've never tried before.  Anyway, I figured I'd give a general overview of how I go about editing.

First I go through and read my first draft (which, btw, is a terrible thing to make an author do) and make a little outline of what happened in each chapter, marking what the major problems were along the way.  Once I've gone through and fixed those problems, I'll read through again, crossing my fingers that it'll be better.  Only once I've finished the major problems (inconsistencies, any plot holes, strange character motives/reactions/developments, etc) will I go through more carefully and fix awkward things like dialogue or description or whatever. After that's fixed, I'll read through once more, polishing (i.e. Is that really the word I want there? etc.).

Obviously, the three phases I just laid out there take more than one try each.  For example, the novel that I'm currently editing (or was - I'm taking a break from it so I can look at it with fresh eyes again) received a pass where I fixed a bunch of inconsistencies in primarily changing character motives.  But at the end of that pass, I realized I wanted to change a certain character's motive again, so that required another pass at it.

As I edit, I often find other things that need to be fixed or changed, even after I've outlined the major problems I knew to begin with.  That's why I find editing to be rather torturous - even though you're fixing it, you keep finding parts that need more repair.  Eventually you get to a point where it all seems like it's falling apart, even though you've been editing like mad.  That's when I stop, let it sit for a while (a week, a month, whatever), and come back to it later.  I'll read through it once to get back in the story, and go on with editing.

Now that you know how I edit - how do you edit?  Does it differ from what I do?  I also know that some people love editing, and prefer it to writing the first draft.  That's not me, so I wonder why?  If you're one of those people, enlighten me please?

Motivation

Unfortunately, I'm not providing motivation today.  I'm looking for some myself.  With my novel done, I really need to edit.  I let it sit for a few days while I worked on finishing up my 50k for Camp (oh, did I mention I won?  Still so excited), but now I need to get back in and start editing.  I already know that's going to entail some more writing, because I kind of forgot half my characters from the beginning, then realized it and stuck them in again at the end, so there's a big chunk in the middle where they really are in desperate need of character development to get them to the point where they can act the way I made them act at the end and have it make sense after the way they acted in the beginning.

(I'm not entirely sure that last sentence made sense itself.  I mean behavior at first is inconsistent with behavior at end, and I need to add character development in the middle so that it flows.  There we go.)

Problem is I tend to be rather social when I write.  When actually writing (by that I mean putting the words down), I do word wars and sprints and Write or Die by Dr. Wicked to get the words down.  But I haven't had very much experience editing, so even though I know exactly what I need to do, I just can't seem to make myself actually DO it.

So, what do you do when you don't want to do something?  Any tips are appreciated.  :)

A novel? Finished? I must be dreaming.

Yes, you read that right.  And since it's been almost twenty four hours now, I'm fairly sure that I'm not dreaming.  Or at least, if I am, I'm perfectly happy to stay dreaming.  Allow me this fantasy!  Stop the voices!  They're following me!

Ok, perhaps I haven't had quite enough sleep.

But maybe I should back up now.  Yesterday I finished my novel - yeah, the one I've been doing for Camp.  I can't remember if I already posted this part or not, but I'm, or I was, rebelling for Camp and finishing a novel I'd already started.  30k added, and I'm done.  Which is great!


Except that now I have to edit.  If you did NaNoWriMo last November and won, you also got a CreateSpace code - it's for 5 free copies of your book.  That code expires at the end of June (that's this month, for people like me who lose track of entire months and maybe even years at a time).  I would really like to have this novel that I just finished, A) get a title, B) get edited, and C) become physical.  A whole five copies!  So awesome.

I still am planning on doing a short story to get me over 50k for the month, but I'm going to be editing and rewriting and revising and everything to frantically get this novel ready for my public humiliation.  I.e. showing the novel to my family and/maybe friends.  Scary.

Oh yeah, and I still need a cover...hmm.  Maybe I should look around and see if I can figure out how to use GIMP - or maybe I can edit a picture I have because it might be kind of perfect...we'll see.

Where do you get covers?  And how do you go about editing?  I'm pretty new to the whole "actually have something to edit" thing.  Tips for me?  As I go along I'll post what works for me to edit as well under the label Writing Tips.

Hoping I don't go mad from hard core writing...oh wait, I already am.

Camp NaNo?

So, I haven't posted in what seems like a really long time - I don't actually know how long it's been, but in any case, it feels like a lot has happened.

Camp NaNoWriMo started on Friday!  June 1st and I stayed up way too late to write.  I found out that I didn't actually want to start a new novel, so I'm rebelling this month and finishing a novel that I started last August during Camp last year.  Actually, I'd kind of expected to only need another 20k in this novel, but I've written almost 20k and it's nowhere near done.  Now I think there might be another 20k left.

My estimates could be very wrong though, since I don't use outlines when I write most of the time, so I don't actually know how the story is going to end.  But it's fun in any case.

Did you know that the Arabs attacked the Egyptian empire, and when the Egyptians fought back and held an impenetrable border, they ended their rule themselves?  They spent so much manpower and money and whatnot into keeping their borders safe that they didn't have enough people to farm and make food and trade and everything that made them rich to begin with.  And then when they didn't have money or food, their border broke and they were overtaken.

I just researched that.  Mostly because I've got a fantasy story that has people (vampires that aren't called vampires - they're Ilthibar) from the Egyptian era and I thought that the fall of the Egyptians might help me figure out how the "good guys" are going to defeat the "bad guys".  Well, there's actually only one bad guy, but he's so powerful that he almost counts as bad guys.  Anyway, I'm not going to say any more because not only do I suck at writing synopsises (synopsys?  Synposi?  I dunno.), but I also don't know what's going to happen in my novel yet.

So moving on.  Camp NaNoWriMo, as I mentioned, has begun.  It is day 5 - I haven't written anything today yet, but on the 3rd I wrote 10011 words from the time that I got up until I went to bed...which may have actually been quite late and past midnight.  Yesterday I wrote 6k, and today I'm hoping to write 7k, but if I don't get on that, it's not going to happen.

Actually, I almost didn't write 10k.  But just as I was about to go to bed (it was like, 3 AM) I realized I only had 600 more words before I'd reach 10k for the day.  I couldn't pass that up - I figured it be a lot easier to write 600 right then than to write another 9,400 words on another day.  So I got up from my inviting bed and wrote another 600 words, then went to bed happy. :)

Are you doing Camp NaNo, and if so, what has your writing endeavor brought you?  Great word count achievements?  Accidental history lessons?

10011 in one day

My *unedited* script!

So a while back (it might have been a long while...I'm not really sure) I posted the beginning to the script which I am still calling "Memory Script".  That post is here.  I recently realized I never actually showed you guys the rest of that script - oops.  So although I don't really have much to say, I thought I'd let you see that now.

If you have any criticisms or critiques or comments or anything at all, please let me know - no matter how trivial or important.  I will try to get to editing this, so any feedback would be helpful.  Anyway, hopefully you'll enjoy it!


Script!

Inspiration - or lack thereof

So right now I'm trying to finish a novel which I started ages and ages ago - this was actually my Camp NaNoWriMo novel from August of 2011.  While I made it over the 50k line there, I never actually managed to finish it.  Not because it wasn't any good, or I didn't want to, but because I have no idea how to bring it to a head.

Currently, I need to throw everybody together, but I can't figure out a logical way for that to happen.  I think it would help a lot if I knew how my "villain" was trying to destroy nearly the entire human population, but unfortunately, I'm missing a little in the master plan department.

I actually went back and read through the entire thing so far, and it's not nearly as bad as I expected.  I figured it would be a good idea, since it's been so long since I worked on this novel that I'd pretty much forgotten what was happening.  I know for sure that if I'd just tried to start writing without reading it again, I would have forgotten to bring back in two characters that I set up earlier.  But I'm still stuck on what actually happens next...

Not only that, but the furthest I've gotten on the ending is that good guys triumph over bad guys.  Inspiration is extremely lacking in this girl's brain.

Normally I come up with ideas while taking a very long, hot shower.  But I still haven't come up with anything that seems suitable.  So I have a very important and necessary question to ask - how do you find inspiration, and what do you do when you're stuck?

Projects

So right now, I'm juggling projects.  I don't normally do this.  It's quite strange.  Normally, I'll have one project that I work on, and then when it's finished, I move on to the next project.  Right now, I have three novels in the works.  Two have rough drafts, one is unfinished.  A couple weeks ago, I had two scripts on top of that.  This is so weird.

But really.  There's some good points and some bad points to having multiple projects, at least for me.  Because I'm such a happy person (:P) let's start with some good.

I do like how I can choose which project I want to work on.  If I ever just don't want to do one project, I can go to a different project and still be productive, even if it just isn't flowing with the first project.  For instance, if I want to edit rather than write, I can go to one of my completed novels, whereas if I want to write (by write I do mean rough draft, even though writing includes editing) I can go to my unfinished novel.  The con here is that there's potential for me to never go back to a project.  I might start and never finish.

The other side of this con isn't so much that I'll never finish, but it'll take me so long to get back to a project that I'll have forgotten how the story goes.  I've already committed this crime - my unfinished novel is from last August, and I just finished reading what I've already written so that I could remember what the heck is going on.  There's a ton that I'd forgotten.

The good part about going back to read is that I surprised myself - my very first draft of my very first novel was HORRID.  Worst thing I have ever read.  And that includes the excepts of very awful self-pubbed books I've seen.  (In no way am I bashing self publishing - it just happens to allow a lot of books that should never have been published to be published anyway.)  I suppose I might be slightly biased because it was my work as well, but anyway.  This currently unfinished project was much easier to read, and while it's definitely not polished or anything - since it is a first draft - it wasn't unsalvageable.

(Firefox and google are telling me that unsalvageable doesn't mean what I think it means - I mean the opposite of salvageable.  Gosh Google.)

Anyway, on a different note, June is coming up, and that means Camp NaNoWriMo!  If you didn't get the memo, it's changed months from last year, so instead of July and August, it's June and August now.  If you have no idea what I'm talking about, Camp NaNoWriMo is the same thing as NaNoWriMo except in summer (or I suppose it could be winter depending on where you are in the world - I get confused where exactly that is).  Also, CreateSpace codes expire at the end of June from NaNoWriMo 2011, so if you have a code but haven't used it yet...well, should probably get cracking - that's a reminder to me too.

I want to have my unfinished novel finished and at least partially edited by the beginning of Camp NaNo in June - let's see how much I can do in the next two weeks, shall we?

Do you usually have one or many projects at any given time?  (Notice there is no option for no projects, you lazy writer folk.  :D)

Why do you prefer your answer to previous question?

And are you doing Camp NaNoWriMo this year?

Update and Script Preview

Finals are over!  And grades are in - I got As (or Os for Harry Potter world, 4.0 GPA, Very High Achievement/High Distinction in Australia etc.) in all my classes, which is good, since I studied more during that week than I have in my entire life.  Even history went well, which is the one I was worried about.

Anyway, after finals, my grandma came to visit with my step-grandpa.  The Sunday after finals, we had a recital, which my mom ran because she's a music teacher.  It was held at a nursing home in town, which we've done before.  This time...it had a bit of a nasty twist to it.

Not long before we got there (My mom and I go early to set up the equipment because there isn't a good piano at the home, so we bring our keyboard and amp), one of the residents had an accident.  It was supposedly all cleaned up, but...Let's just say that moving the tables involved me encountering some of the "stuff" that was(n't) cleaned up.  I.e. feces.  Not fun.  Fortunately, we weren't wearing our dress clothes yet.  When we went back to perform, I did not sit down or touch anything for the entire time.  ;)

On Monday we went to see the Avengers, since it was my brother's birthday - excellent dialogue, impressive special effects, not so great on the character development.  I won't say anymore lest I spoil it for someone.  But if you haven't seen it yet, don't waste your money (unless you have a lot to spend) and just wait for it online/DVD/Blue-ray/whatever else there is.

And now finally, as requested, here is part of my first script.  It isn't finished yet, so I may or may not be able to tell you what happens later - it depends on if I've written it yet or not.  This also has not been edited - feel free to tell me which parts need the most editing, or give me pointers on how to do it better.  This is my first screenplay, so I'm very open to critique/criticism.  I don't have a title for my script(s) yet, so I've been referring to this one as "Memory Script".  Descriptive, right?  Without further ado (well, maybe a little), the first twelve pages or so of "Memory Script"!

(Oh, and sorry for the rather long post - there's been a lot going on.)

Beginning of Memory Script

Script Frenzy Win!

It is April 30th!  It is also the end of Script Frenzy, sadly.  I won - currently I'm at 135 or so pages - but I plan to keep writing until the last minute.  My goal at this point is 150 pages and/or to finish one of my scripts.

I was planning to write this post when I actually won, but I validated during a write in and didn't want to take time out of writing to write this.  In addition, I haven't been able to post for the past week or so (easily) because my laptop had a slight encounter with a water balloon.  To be specific, the contents of the water balloon.

It is fine, after a week of drying, but it has once again reminded me to ALWAYS BACK UP.  I had 74 pages of script on my laptop, not backed up anywhere, and no way to get it back until my laptop dried out.  At that point, I panicked and nearly cried.

But my indomitable (and humble) fighting spirit reared its head and told me to buck up and not be a baby.  I started on a new script, typing frantically and making great strides each day, regardless of the limited access to a computer that I had.  I had almost reached the halfway point when a week was up and I could finally see the true damage to my laptop.

Fortunately, my laptop was fine and I was pleasantly treated to a nice page count boost with the pages I thought I might never see again.  But at this point, I was already prepared to write 20 pages a day for the last three days of April to finish my second script.  So I said to myself, "Why waste such a productive attitude?  After all, it's not often that I feel so determined to be productive."  And I answered myself, "What a good point.  I will keep writing like a madman - or madwoman."

And so I did.

~~~

On a not so fun note, I also have finals this week - I just finished my first one, calculus.  So yesterday I spent doing the entire semester (that was fun) and writing my script when I started to feel like banging my head against the wall.  Ah well.

Do you think if I slept with my textbooks under my pillow, I would learn it through osmosis?  *chemistry is tomorrow*

Grab Your Quill - Let's Write! Point of View

Point of view, or PoV, is the perspective that the story is told from. When a reader picks up a book, they are looking through a camera at the story. The location of this camera is their PoV. A couple definitions before the full discussion on PoV: First person uses "I". I did this, and I saw that. Second person (which is almost never used in fiction, and is really only used when writing how-to/self-help kind of things) uses "you". Third person, the most common for fiction, uses "he", "she", and "it". He looked out of the airplane window, trying to ignore the girl snoring next to him. The majority of fiction is classically told using third person, although recently, there has been a surge of first person books.

All the different points of view can pretty much be summed up into four types. The first of these is internal, main character. When a book/story uses an internal PoV, that means that the camera the reader is watching through is located in the head of one character. The reader sees what the character sees, hears what the character thinks, but unless that character is a mind reader, the reader can't tell what other characters are thinking. All internal PoV use first person, but this also limits what can be written to show the reader. First person anything is often hard to pull off well, even though there are more and more books in first person that are being published nowadays.
The second PoV is internal, secondary character. Again, the reader is being shown the story through a single character, but in this case, that character is not the main character, but rather a secondary character. Nice how the names of these PoVs correspond with what they are. I have yet to see this PoV succeed (that I remember), although I'm sure it can be done. In fiction writing at least, this PoV isn't used very much.

After internal PoVs, there are external PoVs. The two types of external PoV are limited narrator and omniscient narrator. Both use third person, and both place the "camera" in the world instead of in a character's head. The primary difference is how that camera is set up. In external, limited narrator, the camera is stuck. It's placed on a tripod somewhere and it can't see everything that's going on. In the classic good versus bad story, the camera is often stuck with the good side, preventing the reader from knowing what's happening with the bad side.

External, omniscient narrator. This one is a lot easier to understand if you know what omniscient means (I happen to like this word). Omniscient means "all-knowing". Contrary to limited narrator, in omniscient narrator, the camera is no longer stuck on a tripod on the ground, but rather flying around up in the sky where it can swivel in every direction and zoom in on anything at all. This might seem like it would be easier to write in, since then the author can show the reader anything that he/she deems necessary. However, sometimes it's better to keep the reader in the dark to make them keep reading.

There's only four of these PoVs I've talked about, but deciding which one to use can make or break a story. So how do you choose? There's a few questions you can ask. First, consider each choice of narrator individually. Beginning with the main character, for internal, main character, ask what the narrator (main character) will be able to know that other characters won't. Also consider what the reader can learn about the main character and the other characters from inside the main character's head. Finally, ask yourself if you can effectively write the story. This means considering if you can properly convey any emotions or tension necessary, as well as delivering the build up and the climax of the story in a way that will hook and keep the reader. Ask yourself these questions about all four PoVs (main character, secondary character, limited narrator, and omniscient narrator), then decide which one will be most beneficial for your story. Good luck!

What is your preferred PoV for your own writing and for reading?  What do you find easiest to write in?

Grab Your Quill - Let's Write! Mary Sue and Gary Stu

Once again, the writing advice that I've been writing for Shelfari - if you know me on there, you probably already know this.  If you don't, then this is for you.  :)



You’ve probably heard of them. Mary Sue and Gary Stu go hand in hand, as they walk down the perfectly picturesque avenue. Mary wears a perfect dress, is pretty, and happy, while Gary graciously courts her. Neither has a care in the world.

@#$%^&*&^%$#! Wake up! Why are you falling asleep? A novel has another 75,000 words of this to go. But have you ever actually read a book like this? I guarantee that no matter how perfect or idealistic a book may be, there is some flaw in your characters.

There’s a reason for this. Perfect characters, called Mary Sues and Gary Stus, are boring. The reader can’t relate to them, because nobody in the world is perfect. The term “Mary Sue” has also evolved to include overdone characters – like the princess oppressed who longs for freedom. Mary/Gary characters are clichéd.

To make a good story, both plot and character have to be original. Mary/Gary’s are the unoriginal characters. All good characters are believable – they aren’t perfect, and they make logical decisions and reactions. All characters that appeal to publishers (and any readers looking for fresh stories) are also different from any character that came before it.

There aren’t many tips for how to make a good character – I can’t tell you that your female lead should love raspberries and be terrified of lighting, because then it’s not your character. To make a new character, you have to make them. If you succeed, the character will come to life. Until you experience this, it probably won’t make any sense; I thought it was ridiculous until I started writing. I also tend to really love the characters that work, and get bored easily with the characters that don’t. If you are not successful, it will be hard to imagine your character’s reactions, and hard to force them to conform to your plot. (Of course, it might also be hard to force them to your plot because there’s a problem with your plot.) Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts to creating great characters. The only way to get better at creating and portraying characters is to write. Good luck!

Nearly Halfway

Well, as it's Script Frenzy and that's pretty much the only writing thing on my mind right now, this post is going to be about that.

We have just passed the first week, and I am nearly halfway to 100 pages, hovering at 43.  Unfortunately, I seem to have no motivation unless I'm writing with others.  I've been to two write ins online and one in person so far, each for about two hours, and wrote almost the entire time for them, but other than that, I haven't written at all.

My stats graph has great jumps and then a few days with a flat line and then a big jump and another few days.  And it's not from not updating.  Oh well.  Scripts seem to be much easier for me, since I go much quicker than when I try to write novels.  If this were NaNoWriMo, I would probably barely be reaching 10k right now.

I am really grateful for whoever made the Open Office template for screenplays and put it on the Writer's Resources on the ScriptFrenzy site - it's made this really easy.

Oh, I suppose you guys have no idea what my script is about.  (By the way, I'm thinking in this Brittish accent, since I've been watching House of Anubis for the past two days almost continuously, and now I can't seem to think in my usual American accent.  But that has nothing to do with scripts.)

So far, I have a girl - high school aged - who has lost her memory, in addition to her best friend, because her dad is a scientist who was working on a mind device.  The girl, Jasmine, unfortunately decided to sneak around the lab, and ended up unconscious.  When she woke, she had lost a week of her memory.  Her best friend also lost some memories so she wouldn't tell anyone.  When daddy tries to fix Jasmine, he screws up and her mind is terribly twisted.

I believe the story is going to be primarily about Jasmine finding out what happened to her, but I did have this idea floating around that I can't seem to quite remember all of, about a bad guy who would love to take advantage of Jasmine's compromised state to do something to daddy's work.  What exactly that might entail, I'm not sure yet.  But it sounds interesting.

Anyway, at the current point in time, best friend is in the hospital because she's having headaches (well, she's in the hospital because she fainted and got a concussion, but the headaches are the important part) - Jasmine will soon start to also have headaches as both her best friend and her own minds try to heal themselves.

This has been a rather long post, so I'll sign off for now.  Here's to another 57 pages!

If any of you are doing Script Frenzy, good luck!  And we should write together some time.  Probably more for my sake than yours.  ;)

But Why?

Ok, so today, I successfully completed my entire script!  It was ridiculous!  I started on the dot at midnight, wrote about 40 pages, then slept, got up, and wrote like a madwoman all day.   It was exhausting, but fun.

April Fool's!

I wish...but sadly, I'm only at 15 pages.  You may be going, oh, that's great!  But the problem is that now I'm stuck.  I have a mad scientist who's been playing with this high school girl's memories, but I don't know why or what mad scientist wants.  Help?

I need a motive, but I don't know where to get one.  What do you guys think?  Do you have any methods for figuring out motives?

Screnzy!

Script Frenzy, or Screnzy, is almost here! (If you haven't heard of it, check it out here.) I'm planning on doing it - which may be a disaster with all the school and stuff that I'm trying to not fall behind on. Yeah, forget about getting ahead to give myself lag time, just not falling behind would be good. :)

As far as my script goes, I know I want to write a feature length film. I do not know how that's formatted (I'll figure that out sometime in the first week though). I also do not know what this film is going to be about, where it's set, or...anything really. This'll be fun!

Sometimes I wonder if I'm insane. Other times I wonder if this is normal/should be normal, and everyone else is just lazy and lame. Oh well. If I am crazy, it's clearly too late to save me from the insanity. And if I'm not...well, then all the better for me. :)

I'm rambling a bit. Mostly because not only is it too late to save me from the crazies, but it's also nearly 2 AM. I just felt that I haven't posted in a while and I should post. I should apologize for the copious amounts of nothing that have been spewing from my blog as well. Did I mention I had rocky road ice cream today? It's been very warm.

All right, clearly I need to go to bed. Good night everybody - and are you planning to do Script Frenzy? If so, what kind of script are you doing?

How do you write?

I'm technically supposed to be writing a couple essays right now. One of them is a particularly important history paper. However, that's not the interesting part. (Despite the effect it may have on my grade.)

The interesting part is how I'm writing this paper. Normally, I'll have a general idea of where I want the essay to go, with my three main ideas/body paragraphs and the supporting points. Nothing is very fleshed out, but I sit down, and I begin from the beginning and go to the end. Then I fix things (or not, as the case may be). But this time, I created my thesis first, as usual, then found all my examples (stupid history) and extras besides. Examples and me do not mix well. Anyway, said examples have been organized into paragraphs, each with a unifying topic sentence, to form the extreme skeleton of the essay.

Now I'm going through, painstakingly, reorganizing as I go to figure out how to segue into each paragraph and which order my paragraphs should go in. (I'm not exactly sure how I know how to say "segue" but had no idea how to spell it...normally it's the other way around.) As I reorganize and shift things around, selecting my examples from the plethora that I have at my disposal, I'm also writing sections about each example, which I plan to stick directly into the essay. This piecewise writing is totally new to me, in both essay and novel writing.

So I'm curious - do you jump around when you write? Either in essays or between scenes in fiction? Or do you write straight through, from beginning to end? And why?

*gasp* The horror!

How many people like to be dramatic? Yes, raise your hands high and don't be ashamed of it. I, and pretty much everybody I know, likes to be dramatic at some point. Well that's brilliant (brilliant. Thanks Aussie friends for making me talk like you.) because I may have a job for you. This April, I'll be writing a movie. Yes, I know, I'm crazy. But, if said movie turns out to be animated or have significant CGI in it, I may need voices. Not for sure, but if it happens to turn out that way, then I'll put another post on here for anybody who reads this and might want to join.

Now, on to the actual Script Frenzy. Also put on by the Office of Letters and Light, like NaNoWriMo, this is a challenge to write 100 pages of script during April. (For those of you, like me, who have to do the little ditty every single time to figure out how many days there are in a month, that's 30 days.) These 100 pages can be anything, including but not limited to movies, shorts, comic books, graphic novels, web comics, tv scripts, radio scripts, etc. You can also do multiple scripts to reach 100 pages. Last year I wrote 6 comic book scripts.

But, and there is a but, last year, I thought this was great fun and relatively easy. I spent the first few days learning how to format (which was really important, because there's a lot of white space in scripts that makes it easier to reach 100 than if you just crammed everything onto one page like a novel). After formatting, it was fun and way easy to visualize how I wanted each succeeding panel to go. This was partly because I knew my main character like the back of my hand.

Blaze, a pyrokinetic, had already been created for a RP, so I knew her relatively well already. I pulled her out from my files (yes, I keep a basic log of all the characters I've RPed as), reworked her to make her a bit more optimistic (she was quite depressing before), and redid her past entirely (since we'd made that up on the fly in the RP, and I didn't want to copy the RP). In the spirit of not simply writing down in comic format the RP, I also entirely changed all the other characters - this was also because I didn't own the other characters from the RP.

In the end, I thought my comics were brilliant, and I'm afraid to go read them again to disillusion myself.

Well, this was a rather rambling post. I'm not sure I actually made any sort of point. Eh, hopefully it was semi-interesting anyway. Oh, and the title has pretty much nothing to do with the post; it was just the first thing I thought of when I thought of drama. :)

Do you ever ramble? And are you ever afraid to read your own work, for fear of spoiling its perfection? And most importantly, would you be interested in voicing a potential character?

Possible stories?

This is a little thing I started - I'm thinking that I might try making it into a story about a girl who has issues but then eventually finds her way to a successful and happy life. Whether or not I'll go through with that I don't know. I might just decide to kill her. That'd be simple. What do you think? Oh yeah, and I don't have a title as of now, so I just put Story of a Girl - that's an awful title, but whatever. I don't know enough about the story to know what it should be.

Story of a Girl

Now, I also need another story idea, although this time, it's not for a short story or novel. I'm doing Script Frenzy - and hopefully it'll turn out better than FAWM did (can't remember if I posted on the results of FAWM or not, but it was a resounding failure, with a total of 1 song and couple fragments). So, last year I wrote some comic book scripts, which I was actually quite proud of and found extremely fun to write. That time I had no idea what I was doing as far as writing a script for a comic goes - I spent the first few days of April trying to figure out how to format. I'll probably do a post on that.

Anyway, this year I think it'd be fun to do a play or movie script. Actually I think I'll do a movie script. Or perhaps both. We'll see how many pages it takes (Script Frenzy is 100 pages of script in April). But before I can start writing, I need a story. Last year was easy - I took my character from an RPG, reworked her, and then used her as the main character. This year, I don't really have any ideas yet.

Where do you get your ideas?

Life

All right, I have to apologize for not posting for what seems like ages. Life's been getting in the way, as it seems to like to do. However, it is almost spring break (one more week) so I'm hoping to do a lot more writing and such soon. I've started a bit of a story as well. Not quite sure where it's going to take me, but it's completely different from anything I've ever done before. It's more of a "in the character's head/life" kind of story, rather than a good vs. bad story like I've done before.

Oh yeah, and I have to come clean - I completely failed at 60k/60day, and FAWM. I didn't have the motivation for 60k/60day, probably because I feel like I already know what's going to happen, so why write it down? Plus, every time I tried, it was absolutely awful. I cringed. FAWM didn't happen, mostly because I like to record on the spot, which doesn't really happen in the practice rooms on campus. However, I did make the beginnings of a song that I quite like so far, and hopefully I will manage to finish that one. Anyway, that's all I have for now - can't wait until the end of the week!

Writer Fuel

Free food. That's the best part about the writing center on campus. Ok, so I can't actually say that for sure, since the free food is the only reason I've ever gone in there. For instance, last semester, they were having an open house with lemonade and cookies. I had no plans to actually make an appointment or anything, but I wanted lemonade and cookies - so I went in.

Today, and actually, all of this week, it's International Writing Centers Week or something like that, so they have free food just about every day this week. So Wednesday (today) was Waffles for Writers Wednesday.

In other words, I went in there and hung out, eating waffles with butter and blueberries and whipped cream (yes, there was syrup, but I didn't use it) and sort of writing on my laptop. Waffles were delicious. And I was quite excited to hear that they'd like to make it a monthly thing. xD Writing...well, I didn't get past a page of new stuff I don't think...and the quality of my writing degenerated the further I went. Oh well - that's what editing is for.

I plan to visit the writing center on Friday too - there's going to be chocolate fondue. In the morning there'll be donut holes, and in the afternoon, bananas and strawberries. Yum. (I'm a great fan of chocolate.) Perhaps I'll ask if they'll help me with editing my novel. Since I'm fairly sure anybody who's seen even a corner of it knows it's...well, it leaves a lot to be desired.

Although waffles and chocolate fondue is all well and good - not to mention delicious - it doesn't really make for the best writing food, since both require at least one hand. This alone is not a big deal. It's the fact that both have the potential to be rather messy. I prefer to avoid splattering chocolate, butter, and syrup on my laptop as I'm writing, and I can not stand typing with messy fingers. So for me, food that I have when I'm writing is usually finger-food that isn't messy. So dry food...say, granola. Trail mix. Not chips though, much as I like them, because they're greasy.

I know some people have food and/or drink that they habitually have whenever they sit down to write. I don't have that, although I enjoy food and drink - even though it slows me down. Are you like me, and generally don't have to have food/drink when you write, or do you need something (a cup of coffee, a piece of fruit, anything) when you write?

Grab Your Quill - Let's Write: Overall Structure

I know that some of you will have seen this on Shelfari, but for the rest of the people who view this blog, here is a bit I wrote on overall structure - these will come somewhere around monthly, and will probably be more continuous (maybe) than the other posts I do, which are just whatever I feel like writing at the time. Hope you enjoy!

~~~

As a writer, I have no fear of writing long passages - I hope you won't be afraid of reading this one. A lot of you will probably already know this stuff, but I figured it would be best to start at the beginning for this writing corner. And where better to start than with structure? Enjoy. :)

Everybody knows that in any good story, there's a beginning, middle, and end. A good beginning will hook the reader, the middle will keep their interest and force them to keep turning pages as fast as they can, and an end will satisfy them while still leaving them wanting more. Some people describe the structure of a story through what's known as the 3 Act structure. This is basically three Acts, like in a play, with two Plot Points in-between the acts.

The first Act is the beginning of it all, and the first Plot Point is what I call the trigger point. Some people include backstory in the first Act, but if you're writing a more lengthy work, it's actually better to work this backstory into the later Acts as needed, rather than dumping it all at the beginning – that's called an info dump.

Info dumps are characteristically very boring because they take too long to get to the action. As numerous little kids have said, "When do we get to the good stuff?"

The first Plot Point, or the trigger point, is the point where something happens that causes the rest of the story. Perhaps this is your main character deciding he (or she) is going to take a vacation in Egypt, but then the plane crashes in the middle of the desert, where he/she is stranded. Fortunately for him, he encounters a tribe of desert dwellers, who, although they don't speak English, take care of him. Unfortunately for him, these same desert dwellers who are so kindly taking care of him are also under attack by another tribe – then your main character finds out they want to use him as barter.

This brings me to Act 2. Although the reasons behind your main character's decision to go to Egypt might be in Act 1, and his actual decision to go, or perhaps when his plane crashes, would be the trigger point, all the stuff I said after that are additional problems or conflicts. Act 2 comprises of all the conflict and problems that your main character encounters. These conflicts will escalate through Act 2 until the final crisis comes. This crisis is the second Plot Point, or the climax.

As a note, when escalating conflicts, you don't want to simply throw the same thing at your character over and over. Having one dinosaur attacking your character, and then having twelve dinosaurs attacking your character won't escalate the tension in your story (you want to build this to the climax) nearly as well as if the conflicts change each time so that your main character has to adapt.

The second Plot Point, or climax, is the final push in the story. This is where everything is on the line. This is the point where something happens and suddenly, there is hope again that everything will be all right. (The exception to this is if you're writing a tragedy, in which case you should just kill everybody off.)

Finally, we have Act 3. Because it is nearly impossible to hold a reader's attention for very long after you've finished with the great crisis that your poor main character had to suffer through, it is generally a good idea to wrap everything up and finish. If you're planning a sequel, or just want your reader to keep reading, you can also throw in a question that you don't answer, even though all the loose ends of the story are wrapped up.

There's a lot more about structure I could say, but hopefully this wasn't too boring, and it helps – look for more about each of these (the three Acts and the Plot Points) in the future!

Award!

First of all, thanks to Ella at Musings in Ink for giving me the Versatile Blogger Award! I was completely unaware there were awards like that. :) I'm also slightly amazed that anybody actually reads my blog. But anyway. Requirements for the award as follows!

Requirements

- Link to the blogger who gave you the award.

- Share 7 things about yourself.

- Pass the award to 15 bloggers recently discovered. (<--I can do this now!)

- Notify the blogger recipients.

So, I've completed the first requirement (thanks again Ella!) - 7 things about myself.

1. The first thing I thought of when I saw 7 things was the Miley Cyrus song, and I'm ashamed of myself. :)
2. The title of my blog, Normal is Boring, is a quote from my great-aunt. Who said it several years ago. Yes, I loved it, and hence it is up there in great big letters.
3. I have written *counts* three novels (ok, almost...two of them still need endings) and yet, none of them are fit for human consumption.
4. I just went to look up "consumption" because I thought, as I was writing the word, "Isn't that a disease?" (In case you were wondering, it is. Specifically progressive wasting away of the body, especially due to pulmonary tuberculosis. Don't ask me to define that...I'll just tell you it's something to do with lungs. But consumption does have another meaning, which is what I originally intended.)
   
5. I would love to be published - preferably a novel. Although I think traveling on a tour would be absolutely terrifying.
6. I believe my right arm is becoming/is stronger than my left arm, mostly due to the fact that I always lift my backpack with my right arm...and that thing is heavy!
7. I'm an incredible night owl. If I could, I would sleep from 6 or 7 AM to 7 PM, and then be awake for the rest of the night. Unfortunately, I have not been successful at getting the rest of the world to follow this. My plans for world domination have been stalled!

And now for my 15 blogs! Except...we'll just say this is 15.

Evergreena's Treehouse
Glittering Compositions
Living, Learning, Eating
Sweets Galore
The Writing Kind
Scribbles and Shorts

Woot woot! Off to let them know!

And Then and Then and Then...

And then I suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth! And then I came back. And then I complained about school and whatnot to some friends who kindly listened to me. And then...wait, are you falling asleep? That's not a very polite thing to do when somebody's telling you a story.

And yet, that is exactly what we all tend to do when somebody tells a story. Any good writer knows how, whether consciously or subconsciously, to show a story. Heck, any reader knows how to tell between a story that is told and a story that is shown - mainly because told stories are boring. From this comes the Golden Rule of writers:

Show, Don't Tell.

This is one of the most basic fundamentals of story telling, and yet, it is often the one that many people miss. I'm sure you all either remember being a kid who tells stories with "and then"s the whole way through, or have at least seen a kid who did this.

(You all? What am I, Texan? A Texan with a northern accent?)

When an author shows, rather than tells, the story, it is much more vibrant to the reader. For example:

The rain was cold.

This is not nearly as effective, or image-inducing (no, you aren't supposed to slip hallucinatory drugs to your readers...just supposed to make them think you did) as:

The rain froze my skin.

Or:

I shivered, my body protesting the icy fingers that slid down my neck.

The second one here also uses personification, which is a way to create relatable, vivid imagery for your reader. (There are other tricks for this too, and I'll have another blog post on them some other time.)

As an author, it is your job to put me into your story so I can see it for my own eyes. I don't want a second hand account, seen through your eyes, I want to see it for myself. As a reader, you demand this from an author. Show, don't tell, and not only will your story be much more interesting, but everyone will be happy. :)

Strange Skies

Woot! I just did my first songskirmish of the year! By just, I mean today...it was a few hours ago.

For those of you who don't know, a songskirmish is when a bunch of FAWMers (i.e. people doing FAWM) set a time. At the appointed time, they all converge on the designated forum thread for the revealing of the title. This title is then used for a song that each person (individually) creates.

The catch? The song has to be written in under an hour.

It's super fun, and I encourage any of you that like to compose to attempt it sometime, even if you aren't doing FAWM. This time, the title was "Strange Skies". Since I'm slightly sick, I decided to make it instrumental. Not only that, but I kind of failed at doing it in under an hour - I spent about two hours working on it. I still don't think it's quite perfect yet. But in any case, check it out on Youtube - link below!

Strange Skies

FAWM

I've been utterly failing at 60k/60day. But regardless of that, I'm joining FAWM! What is FAWM you ask? FAWM stands for February Album Writing Month, and it's a challenge to write 14 songs during February. This year, since it's a leap year, the quota is 14 and a half songs. :)

In case you didn't figure it out, that's a song every two days. *eyes calendar* It's nearly the 4th. Number of songs I've produced? A grand total of *drumroll* zero.

This isn't to say I haven't had a good reason for it. It's midterms time, and I've got a cold, which makes it nearly impossible to sing well enough that I would dare listen to it myself, much less unleash it on the rest of the world. But really, those are just excuses. I can play other instruments...there's no reason I can't create an instrumental song.

Oh well. I've promised myself that as soon as I catch up on my homework, I'll spend a day and devote it to writing music. Phew.

Questions for you: What instrument(s) do you play, and would you do FAWM? The second one is really more me trying to get you to do it with me so I can get my butt kicked into action occasionally. ;)

*Snore*

I feel like I should post something, but I don't have much to say right now that won't take some time to put into coherent words. Actually, the only thing that I'm really capable of speaking about right now is history, since it's coming out of my ears.

Skip the following to avoid excessive complaining.

History is also why I'm so tired right now...since I got 3 hours of sleep in the last *checks clock and counts on fingers* 30 hours and counting. Completely my fault, since I fell prey to Procrastination over the week and ended up with 250+ pages of a book on the Nez Perce Indian War, 2 chapters from the textbook, and 10 of the documents from that time period that I hadn't read that needed to be read by the today at 11 AM. So I was up until 2 finishing the book, and then got up at 5:40...

But you don't really need to hear me complain. But here's a question for you - are you a night owl or a morning...I can't think of what we normally call morning people. Anyway. I'm a night owl, and I often get some of my best writing, especially poetry, done in the wee hours of the morning, right around 3-5 AM. Signing off for now, although I hope to have a tips post up later this week. Don't expect too much from me in the near future though, due to the large number of exams and whatnot that are creeping up on me. :)

Writerly Warriors

One of my favorite ways to make myself write is to get involved with a writing group. I use this term loosely, since I include just a couple people word-warring under the category "writing group". Today I met up with a couple people at a coffee shop.

One of the people had done NaNoWriMo with me (2011), and the other was a new person that she had brought. It was a bit small, but it was nice seeing each other again and catching up. We wrote for about an hour - she hand writes and I have no idea how she does it. My hand would cramp.

So as I typed away - rather slowly compared to my NaNo-speed - I finally made it past the final fight scene! I feel it was a bit anticlimactic though. It only took nearly 10,000 words to get through the freaking thing. Of course, I don't personally think I'm very good at fight scenes to begin with. But perhaps a more climactic moment will come soon, when I have my main character - but no, I shouldn't tell you. You'll have to wait until it's completed to read it for yourself.


As a side note, I have no idea why I titled this post Writerly Warriors. I thought it sounded cool, and I commend everybody who even attempts writing.

Do you have any writing groups you're part of? Do you like it or not, and how do you think it affects your writing?

Mushy - Ew!

Have you ever noticed how there's an awful lot of love poems? I think it's possible to categorize all love poems into three categories - wishing for love, in love, and breakups. What other categories can you categorize poetry into?

The following poem is just something that I spit out - I don't particularly like it. Oh well.

Empty
My heart is empty,
Because I can't breathe,
With that look in your eyes,
That says you hate me,
Even though you say you don't,
If I could have one wish,
I would wish for us to go back in time,
Back to the way we were when I didn't feel this way,
Back to the way it was when you said you loved me,
And I believed you,
I shelter my heart behind an iron wall,
Pretending that what you say doesn't matter,
Trying to convince myself that you weren't good enough for me,
But I still loved you,
And I still love you,
So I can't go on,
While my heart is empty.

Mommy, why is the sky blue?

Why? If you've spent any time at all with a toddler, you will probably be sick of this question to the point where just the sound of the word makes you ill. But it's a question that you should always be thinking of when creating a story. You may have heard this called "motive".

Motive is why characters do anything. It is also what makes the story believable. If you have a character that decides to randomly start fighting the guy passing by on the street, it is very strange. This lack of motive is why we don't have people just walk down the street and start fighting in real life, with the exception of drunks, but even then, there is a reason no matter how small.

Without motive, your characters are not believable, because they don't act in ways that you would expect of any being. This includes irrational beings, because even if someone is irrational, there will be some sort of twisted logic that makes sense in their mind which provides a logical (at least to their point of view) reason for what they do.

In addition to unbelievable characters, the entire story is then made unstable. If any plot points happen without a suitable motive, the entire story is destabilized and the reader won't be able to immerse themselves into it. Ideally, your reader will be able to completely imagine the story that you tell, because there are no flaws in it. I'll have several more posts on this I believe.

This is why it's really important to have a motive for all characters to have a motive. Large, very important motives will affect the main plot, and thus be more obvious if they aren't there or are flawed, but even the small motives are problems if they don't logically make sense. And if just one of these small motives is flawed, it casts doubt on all the other motives, large and small alike.

What motives do you find in your characters, and what motives do you notice the most? A couple common ones are revenge and love – what else have you seen?

Contest News

Well, I know I already did a post today, but I just got home, and had mail! I'd entered a poetry contest over at Creative Communication (www.poeticpower.com) which someone (can't remember who, if you know who you are, tell me and thank you!) told me about. And what d'ya know, they want to publish my poem in their collection of the top poems! I'm still in the running for the prizes, but I'm gonna be published! :D Here's the poem that I entered.

Oh yeah, and it's slightly shorter than what it originally was (I wrote it a couple years ago and just pulled it out for this), since it had to be under 21 lines...I looked through my considerable collection of poetry and could not find a single good one under 21. So this one was shortened a few lines. I kind of doubt I'll get a prize, since I don't actually think this is a very good poem, but it's cool that they picked it to be published!

Voices

The voices tell me,
To try and fail,
To try and succeed,
They talk to me,
They whisper to me,
They force me,
To do things,
So I suppose I am grateful to the voices,
For making me do anything,
But I wish they would go away,
Let me live my own life,
Without the voices in my head,
I could be just me,
Not me and the voices,
With the voices in my head,
Talking,
Babbling,
I'm not crazy,
I'm not hearing things,
My mind is sane,
But for the voices in my head.

The White Cross

A few months ago, I was searching around for writing contests to enter. I did enter a few - not really expecting to win anything, but I figured it would be good practice to write something based on a prompt given. What's some of the best contests you have found, and have you ever won anything?

This is a short story written for a contest - I like it. What do you think?

The White Cross

Posting and Poetry

All right, I feel like I should have more regular posts. I did good at this the first week, 'cause I didn't have school, but now that school's started up again, I don't really have time to create good tip posts except for the weekends. So I've decided (just now, actually) to have tip posts on the weekend, and during the week, I'll do either samples of my writing, samples of other people's writing, or random things that catch my attention.

(If you have a piece of work that you want shown on my blog, um...contact me in some way. A comment below, email, message through this blog thing...I don't know how that works actually. Anyway.)

Before I get to the thing I'm sharing, I have one more thing. You've noticed the ads on here. If they're in the way - tell me, and I'll move them! They are where they are because I thought that would be the least obtrusive. ;) Thanks!

And now that that bit of awkwardness is over, here is a poem that I wrote a while ago - around last fall I believe. Tell me what you think!



Would You?

A smile flashes across her face,
She lights up the room with her sparkle,
But a black film taints the light,
Pretending to be happy, she
Cries
Deep inside where no one can see,
Her tears are falling,
And no one sees,
the light that once existed,
Vanish from her eyes.

If someone knew,
Could they help?
Would a confiding soul be able to save the
-------sparkle,
Rekindle the flame,
Heat the forge of life,
In her,
Where the tears extinguish the flicker,
If someone could see inside,
Would her light still flare?

But No one knows,
No one knew,
And now she is lost, drowned
In the tears,
That she hid so well,
An actor born, an actor gone,
The facade perfection to a flaw,
And no one knows,
Because no one knew,
If there was a someone,
-------to help,
Would you?

Tick Tock Goes the Clock

Since my last post was kind of long, I'm going to try to make this one shorter, since I can't imagine you'd want to read a novel in one of these posts. (Actually, I don't know - do you prefer long or short posts?) So, jumping right in...

Time Management. That wasn't correct capitalization. I'm sorry. But I'm not going to change it because that would require me to move the mouse and click. (It's late - I will ramble, and hence this being short might not actually happen.)

In any case, time management is something that I'm generally not very good at, as evidenced by the fact that it is currently 1:00 AM exactly. Not anymore, now it's 1:01 AM.

Even though I'm not very good at time management, I've gotten a lot better in the recent past. (That sounds kind of weird...not sure why.) The reason for this improvement? I had to fit more stuff into the same amount of time.

Everybody only gets 24 hours a day, no matter who they are, how hard they work, or how much money they have. But some people use that time wisely, and others let it slip by without much thought at all.

Of course, if we had unlimited time, we'd be able to do everything and anything we wanted to, but I wonder if we would. Would we simply waste away, thinking that eventually we'd get to the really important stuff? Or would we be super productive? I think personally, I'd be the first.

I work best under pressure - really, I only work under pressure. Some of the things that I'm most proud of came because I was under pressure. In other words, I had a deadline I had to meet. Whether for you that's writing a novel, turning in homework, earning money to pay the rent, or whatever, I believe that it is pressure, or deadlines, that make us do anything. (This sort of ties in with Procrastination.)

Now, I really only have one thing that I can suggest, since I'm not very good at time management myself. But that is prioritize. You've probably heard this before. But I'm going to say it again. Prioritize. Take everything that you do on a daily basis, that you want to do, and that you need to do, and write it down. Or if you have a stunning memory, don't. But pick out the ones that ABSOLUTELY need to get done RIGHT NOW. Those are your top priority. This would be that fifteen page essay that you haven't done anything on that's due tomorrow.

Next, pick out the ones that need to get done, but maybe aren't quite so time sensitive. For instance, personal hygiene. No, I'm just kidding. Maybe. If it's only for that one day when you're writing 15 pages, then yes. Otherwise, probably not. But anyway.

Continue categorizing the things that you need/want to do, right down to the ones that you really want to do, but really don't need to do. Now here's the trick. Normally you'd think that I'd say, "Ok, now your top priority needs to get done first, so do all those, and then you can get to the fun stuff." But that never lasts (unless you have that iron, super power will that I mentioned in my post about Procrastination).

No, what I find works the best is to then figure out which of your "want to do" things take the least amount of time/a manageable amount of time. And then do a NEED TO DO RIGHT NOW thing, switch to a "want to do" thing, then back to a NEED TO DO RIGHT NOW thing, and back to a "want to do" thing, and so on. That way, you don't burn yourself out with the NEED TO DO list, and not be able to keep it up.

That's probably not the best option when you have a ton of NEED TO DO RIGHT NOW things, but hopefully those days are few and far between, because then you can power through for a day or two, catch up, and get back to doing things that you want to do. Because what is the point of living a life where you don't do anything you want to do? Everybody needs some fun in their life. :)

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I don't actually think that ended up being shorter at all. Oh well. Anybody else have tips for managing time well? I'd love to hear them.

Under the Spell of Procrastination

As probably about half of the people who will see this post already know, I spent part of the day writing (yeah, you know 'cause you were doing it with me xD). In the afternoon, I did some word wars with a few people, all writing something or other. And lo and behold, in ten minutes I could produce about 250 words on average. I'm not too thrilled with this rate - back during NaNoWriMo and whenever I've done any similar challenge previously, I've been able to crank out at least 400 in 10 minutes, although it's usually closer to 500, with the occasional 600s when it's really going well.

(Personally, I think that "going good" looks better due to the alliteration, even if it isn't grammatically correct. But that's beside the point.)

Unfortunately, even at this snail's pace, I wrote more today than I have in a long time. Which, on the one hand, is good, since I'm writing again, but on the other hand, it's bad because it shows just how even more bad I have been. This failure to write has absolutely nothing to do with my desire (or lack thereof) to write, but everything to do with Procrastination.

Yes, that word was worthy of being bolded and capitalized.

I think anybody who isn't Superman or at least in possession of a Superman will knows the beast that is Procrastination all too well. If you happen to be one of those rare people that has never procrastinated, I commend you and will tell you not to read the rest of this post lest you also be captured by the beast.

Now that I have done my superhero duty in saving that poor person from being devoured by Procrastination, I will go on to help the rest of us, who have already been attacked once, to fight back.

Procrastination is rather addicting. Once you start procrastinating, you find more and more things that really aren't very productive in any way whatsoever, which makes it easier and easier to start procrastinating in the future. For instance, the person that I saved up there by telling them not to read on has never spent time on MLIA or FML or anything of the sort. There was once a time when I had not either. Unfortunately, Procrastination hunted me down and I succumbed to the lure. So now I know about MLIA and FML and various other sites that I can *waste* use time on to procrastinate. In the future, though I may fight back against Procrastination, it will be harder for me since I now know more places where I can go to procrastinate.

(Another side note: I still have a hard time saying waste time or kill time after reading The Phantom Tollbooth for the first time. If you haven't read it, finish reading this post and then go read that book.)

However, though there are many sites that you can go to that are frequent feeding areas for Procrastination (he/she visits them often to make sure his/her prey is obeying him/her), there are also sites that you can go to that are prime fighting arenas. Though this post is rather long already, I'm going to go on with those sites and other ways to keep yourself writing.

Number 1! My personal favorite, is Write Or Die. (Links to sites mentioned will be at the end of the post.) This site (created by Dr. Wicked) has a web app. It's essentially a text box that you write in - but! If you slow down (i.e. don't type), the background starts turning red in gradually darkening shades. If you don't type for long enough, it turns completely red and starts playing some awful noise to remind you. Oh, and there's a pause button in case you need to go to the bathroom in the middle of your time - but to fight Procrastination even more, you can't go to any other tabs while WoD is on pause.

Personally, I find that the noise isn't that bad - the most useful part is the shades of pink to red. Usually by the time it gets to the second or third shade, I'm sufficiently reminded to start writing again. Because that's how Procrastination starts: first you stop doing what you're doing, even if you don't realize it, and then before you know it, you're surfing the web under the spell of Procrastination.

Number 2! I don't particularly like this one, since I don't find that it fights Procrastination enough. But I know many other people like it so I'm putting it here anyway. Written Kitten! For every 100 words (number of words variable), you get a new, cute, adorable picture of a kitten on your screen! This one's more of a positive reinforcement site - perhaps that says something about me. I prefer the "do or die" sentiment than the "good job, here's a carrot" sentiment.

I suppose the carrot comes from the carrot and the stick saying, but I think that a piece of chocolate would work better than a carrot. Of course, the saying was talking about a donkey, not me.

Number 3! Moving on from the sites, these next two require another person to join you. Team work! Sort of the opposite of divide and conquer. Anyway, word wars! If you don't know what a word war is, it's when a group of people (group being more than one) decide to start writing at a certain time, for a certain period of time, and when the time is up, whoever has written the most words wins. Main point is to add a little competition to try to inspire faster production than Procrastination would otherwise allow.

I really like word wars because I'm competitive, and it gets me to the point where I can say, "Ok, at such and such time, I'm going to write as fast as I can for this amount of time, now GO." Short attention span works for me. Usually I and whoever I'm doing it with will do 10 or 15 minute spurts, with around 5 minutes in between.

Number 4! Word sprints. I don't use these very much myself. But they are similar to word wars - you need 2+ people. Set a word goal, and write as fast as you can, starting at the same time as the other person, until you reach that goal. Then see who got to the "finish line" first. Sometimes I'll throw one of these in with the word wars just to change things up, but I prefer the word wars due to the fact that I don't have to keep track of the number of words. It's really helpful to have a program that automatically tells you how many words you have as you're writing for word sprints, so that you don't waste time checking your word count.

What are your favorite ways to procrastinate? And when you don't want to procrastinate, how do you stop the beast? (answer the last one especially - I need more help in that area. The first area I'm doing just fine in.)


Write Or Die: http://writeordie.com/
Besides the web app, which is free, you can also get an app for Ipad and/or Desktop, which cost 10 dollars each, but well worth it.

Written Kitten: http://writtenkitten.net/

Happy Birthday

Hello everyone! As you might have guessed from the title, it's my birthday today. I'm 17! I don't really have any special birthday plans though. :) I stayed up until about 2 last night, and didn't get up until 2 this...afternoon I guess is more accurate than morning. Then my brother gave me the card he made - pretty hilarious.

Dear Helen,
You know all that stuff about you being born with a younger sibling, being born from a short woman and a tall, strong father? That's a boatload of rubbish. Want to know your real past? Come to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Just kidding. Everything above is rubbish. Below.... not so much.
Happy Birthday Helen! Have some money.

hehehe. Anyway, I'm going to be writing today (60days/60k, I've been neglecting you), and then later going out for dinner. :) I'll probably have another update later.

What would be your ideal birthday?

Random Ranting

Well, I don't really have anything specific to write about today - I was planning on doing another couple writing tips posts, but those haven't happened yet. So instead, I'm going to fairly randomly blurt out some things in the hopes of making this post at least sort of fun.

So today I got to use my credit card for the first time - super exciting, right? But what did I use it on? Textbooks. *headdesk* Although I did buy trail mix as well so that I could have something to celebrate with.

Then later in the day, after I'd gotten back home, I was humming a song. This is a fairly common occurrence for me, so long as I'm at home or where no one can hear me. Otherwise I feel too self conscious to hum. Anyways, I didn't know what song I was humming - also fairly common. I'll frequently hum/sing songs that I don't know what they are. Just little snippets, a couple phrases from a part of the song I particularly liked and hence, has stuck in my head. So there was nothing at all unusual about this.

In any case, I was humming, and I thought, "You know, I kind of like this song, I wonder what it is?" Then I realized it was my song.

...

I suppose it's a good thing that I liked my song, although I'm not sure how greatly it speaks about the actual song that I didn't remember it was mine. xD (By the way, if you'd like to listen to this song, well, you can't. At least not yet. Although within the next week I promise I'll have finished writing and recording it and it'll be up on my Youtube channel, FlipFlyFall.)

And now, since I don't have anything else remotely funny to blurt about (I think that should be an official verb, blurt. I mean, rant is now a verb or maybe it always was, but this isn't really a rant, and it's not just a normal blog post...it's a blurt. I guess that's a noun. Anyway.), here is a "humor poem", which I wrote as my entry to a humor poetry contest. (I don't normally write things like this...but one of the past winners of the contest had written complete gibberish, so I figured I could give it a shot.)


An Alphabet Is Fine

A terrible terrible flompatromp!

A terrible hullabaloo!
A pflluh and a splat and a cloppity clop,
And fly away – Balloon!

Baby go wahh,

Buh buh buh ba ba ba bloop!
Be serious please,
Bah bippity boppity – Bah Humbug!

Cookity cockity clue,
Clip clop go the shoes,
Co Co Co Caw!
Kee Kee Kee Kraw!
Lop a-dally doo

Oh, an alphabet is fine,
For a very short time,
P-R-S-T-V-X-Y
Who cares any more!
Do you?

Day 3 of 60days/60k

All right, it's time to come out and admit it. I'm behind. Shall I list all the things that have made my word count soar to the ground? Well, I'm going to anyway, so whatever you're thinking now doesn't really matter. (This is your cue to skip if you don't want to read my woes.)

So first of all, I don't know what's wrong with me, but after a month break from the wonderful writerly abandon that is NaNoWriMo, I'm having a really hard time just writing. There's no flow to the words that I'm sticking up on the screen, and I'm finding that I have to force myself to write even a hundred words. During November, a hundred was nothing. Easy peasy. (With the exception of at 5 am, having written 10k already that day, and knowing that you have to get up again in another three hours.) Now though, it's like that rushing river of words that I had in November has hit a drought.

A side note: Down to the last drop. Actually, when I said the river thing, I thought "down to a trickle", but then I figured drop would sound better than trickle since it starts with a d, and then I thought that would make a nice title. Too bad writing novels isn't that easy.

The second thing that's decided to hinder my word count is my brain. Even in the thick of NaNo, when my story and everything was fresh, I was having a hard time keeping everything straight. Now, it's worse. Who's who, who likes who, what are so and so's powers (which I'm not sure I knew to begin with), what's this person's vendetta, why do they do that, who's fighting who, etc. I don't want to go back and read it all, because A) that would take too long, and B) it's going to suck, as first drafts always do. But I have had to go back and skim over some parts just so that I could come anywhere close to having a coherent story.

Hopefully I'll catch my brain back up, and this story will actually come out. I'm now a bit worried about the other novel I need to finish - which I haven't touched since last August.

On a random note, I noticed, as I skimmed through my novel trying to figure out my own plot, that I have a tendency to add random "e"s to the ends of my characters' names. I have absolutely no reason to do so, and yet, I've found it several times. The last letters aren't even near "e", so it's not typos. Completely random. I have no idea why.

I'm sure you're bored by now, and this post is getting rather long. There was really nothing of worth in this post, besides me complaining/ranting about how I'm having problems (not that that's anything new). Apologies for that. But to make up for it, I'm planning on writing a blog post about inspiration - perhaps that will make me inspired too.

Titles

Titles. Kind of strange that my first post on any sort of writing craft is about something that usually comes at the end of the creating process. I'll start with novel titles, but the basic principles are the same no matter what you're titling.

Ideally, a title should grab the reader's attention. But you probably already knew that. It's actually more important to think of that as creating almost a cliff hanger with the title. Your title shouldn't give away the entire story, because even if it's a great story, your reader won't be inclined to read it if they already know what happens.

For example, if I titled a book "Great Adventures of Survival: Involving a Dragon that Burns the Hero, Who Then Must Be Saved by the Princess", it wouldn't be nearly as attractive to me as a reader as a title like "A Fiery Rescue".

Now, I'm not saying that the first one is really something that you'd title your book, since it's a bit of an exaggeration, or that the second is really that great (I just made those up). But having a more concise title that doesn't give it all away will make someone who just sees the title more likely to read it.

You can pull title ideas from anywhere really. I've taken titles for my novels or short stories anywhere from a small icon in the story to a major section. Titles can come from a particular message or icon that keeps popping up in the story, or from something that happens in the story, or from the theme of the story.

I mentioned that titles are usually produced at the end of the creative process. I think that's probably because that's when you know your story the best - when it's all finished. Especially with a novel, there are so many things that you'll find out along the way, about your characters, your world, and your plot, that it's easier to look back and pick out something iconic that would make a good title.

I'm a rebel though, and I often pick a title before I even start writing. It doesn't necessarily mean I'll keep that title, but sometimes it's the title that gives me the inspiration for the story, and so it's the very first thing that gets put down on paper for the story.

Where do you get your titles? For titles that I come up with before the story, I'll usually be thinking about something when I come across a particularly catchy phrase. For instance, yesterday I was making a (delicious) sundae, when I thought "Sweet Sin". Sure, it was in regards to ice cream, but then my mind caught hold of the idea and spun off to interpreting it as a vengeful murder.

Here's a challenge. Come up with your own interpretation of Sweet Sin, and if you like it enough, write something following that interpretation. I would write a short story about that murder if it were me - and now that I'm writing this blog post, I'll have to. :)