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?
Showing posts with label Progress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Progress. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
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!
.....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!
Monday, August 13, 2012
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 lovewatching 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. :)
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
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. :)
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
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. :)
(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. :)
Saturday, June 9, 2012
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.
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.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
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
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
Monday, May 28, 2012
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!
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!
Friday, May 25, 2012
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?
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?
Saturday, May 19, 2012
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?
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?
Monday, April 30, 2012
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*
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*
Sunday, April 8, 2012
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. ;)
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. ;)
Sunday, April 1, 2012
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?
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?
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
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.
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.
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