Category Archives: Writing

NaNo 2015: Midseason Update

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Apparently skipping all normal NaNo rituals results in it not really feeling like NaNo. The magic just disappears, or never appears, it’s like a regular day with all the regular annoyances and distractions.

  • I didn’t stay up till midnight and write a few lines before I went to bed.
  • I didn’t complete my outline.
  • I didn’t have a title, series title, universe title.
  • I didn’t create a temporary cover.
  • I didn’t have an opening line so I was stuck at the start line.

All told it was not the best start to the month. However, I dutifully started writing the prologue and I reached the 50k pace for the day (1667 words) before the prologue was finished. That I hoped boded well for the length of the rest of the story but only time would tell on that front.

I finished the prologue and I was feeling good. However, I’m familiar with the emotional highs and lows of writing a first draft. I knew that high wasn’t going to last, the same as I know the inevitable lows will end. It’s a rollercoaster journey every single time.

What is somewhat miraculous is throughout the whole process, while there are parts of the draft I dislike, I don’t loathe anything AND I still absolutely love the idea. That’s new, usually I wind up hating everything and want to kill it with fire. Perhaps it’s just a matter of time. We’ll see how I feel when I reach those immortal words – ‘The End’.

Word of warning about this post. I wrote it in 5 separate updates over the course of the beginning of the month. Therefore I can’t vouch for how understandable it is, think of it as a live blog almost of the writing process.

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All NaNo-Eve

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The 31st might be Halloween which is important to some people. However, for me it’s important because it’s NaNo-Eve, the day before NaNoWriMo begins again. I know it’s not the 31st yet, I may do another post before then, or maybe I’ll do a mid month post. Last year I forgot to do a pre-NaNo post so I did one on day ten, that could work for this year too.

Anyway, last year I wrote a NaNo retrospective, as I often do, and I listed some goals for myself.

The Writing Plan
– To write a minimum of 1000 words, five days a week.
– To finish Book Two by the end of January
– As a bonus work through the flash fiction course
– Make plan for February at the end of January, probably in my new house.

How did that work out for me?

Well consistency has gone out of the window completely. Forget that, even when I was writing it wasn’t on a regular day to day basis. The first draft of book two has been completed – this month. Yup, I didn’t finish that until October. I also haven’t touched the flash fiction course.

All told those goals didn’t happen. Ok, so what did happen?

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A Writer’s Interview: Part Three

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This is the third and final part of the ‘Writer’s Interview series’ of posts. It’s been interesting for me to answer them, even if it’s not been quite so interesting for anyone to read them.

I fully admit that writing these last couple of posts has been pure procrastination. I want to write my novel but I’m having real trouble focusing, it’s incredibly frustrating. It reminds me actually of this t-shirt I would quite like from Red Bubble. It’s titled ‘life as a writer’ and the front of the shirt says 45% procrastination, 30% coffee, 15% self-loathing and 5% writing. Obviously the person that created it was a writer, and not a mathematician, as that only adds up to 95%.

Anyway, on with the last questions, then I’ll have no more excuses about not working on the novel. Except who am I kidding? There’s always excuses, I suspect I’ll get up and start cleaning in a minute, that’s the last bastion of desperation. This really does puzzle me considering I like writing, it’s not like I hate it and want to avoid it. Oh well, I suppose if nothing else I’ll have a blog post written and a clean place to live.

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A Writer’s Interview: Part Two

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Yesterday I answered eleven questions in response to my friends blog post, where they did the same. Today, I’m answering another eleven questions, my friend will be doing the same but I don’t have a link just yet.

I’m supposed to be working on fiction right now, writing more of the sequel to my finished book. However, I admit I’m struggling a bit at the moment. Confession time, at the weekend I actually made myself a star chart. I know it’s juvenile but I figured a bit of positive reinforcement never hurt anyone. I don’t think I’m going to get a star for my work time today.

That being said I’m writing this blog post, rather than doing something unproductive like those facebook games. I figured if I wasn’t going to write fiction, then this is the next best thing. It’s at least forcing me to focus on something to do with the written word.

Anyway, this is part two of the interview, there will be a third and final part posted tomorrow or after that.

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A Writer’s Interview: Part One

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This blog post was inspired by a friend of mine. I don’t know how to do a trackback, or pingback, or whatever it is that marks a blog post as a response. However, they are going to be doing a series of blog posts answering questions from a writer interview. I thought I would join them in answering those same questions. You can find their post here.

I know I haven’t blogged in ages. I was ill for a couple of months, since then I’ve struggled to catch up and get back into a normal routine. I did want to write a review of Avengers: Age of Ultron, possibly still will even though it was some time ago that I saw the film. I also had a post in the works about the Marvel Heroes achievement system, another about all the Swtor news, both the expansion and the 12x story boost in action.

Given circumstances I know better than to make any promises about when, or if, these blog posts will make it live. However, those posts along with the rest of the writer interview series, will appear at some point.

On with the interview.

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November NaNo Retrospective

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I’ve done NaNo seven times now, Camp NaNo a couple of times, you would think that whatever lessons there were to be learned, I would have learnt them by now. However, after each November I learn new things, or I relearn lessons that obviously didn’t stick the first time.

This November I set myself some stretch goals, as November was going to be the start of a brand new year. I wanted to do things better, to take a positive step towards a possible future. It was a lot of pressure to put on one month but as I’ve said before NaNo has ceased to be a challenge in some respects. I need to ask more of it, in order to continue to get the same out. It is definitely still my favourite time of year but that doesn’t mean the sense of accomplishment remains the same. I’ve reached 50k several times now and as I said I wanted more.

So how did it go?

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NaNo 2014: Day Ten Update

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It’s November which means it’s time for NaNoWriMo. Usually I post about it before the month, and then I do a post in December about how it went. In October I should have posted about what my goals for the month were. I will do that now with a look at the first ten days.

This year I decided that NaNo was going to be the start of a brand new year. 2014 sucked for a lot of real life reasons, it was a complete write-off in so many respects. I love NaNo, I’ve likened it to a holiday and it is without doubt my favourite time of year. Starting off a new year, or launching my new intentions in November rather than January just made sense.

NaNo’s official goal is to write 50k within November. I wanted to go beyond that this year, to use the magic of NaNo to get a jump start on my future plans. With that in mind I set myself some additional goals:
– 12.5k on Day One
– 25k by end of Day Three
– 50k by end of Day Seven
– 100k by the end of the month
– Two finished first drafts
– Write something, however little, every day to get into the habit of consistency.

This is how it went:

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Failed the challenge

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I missed three days of updates but I do have an excuse. Monday I had a family crisis, Tuesday looked at a house and yesterday bought a house, it’s been a hell of a week.

However, small retrospective on what I learned in the last two weeks of attempting the challenge.
1) It is really hard to think of enough topics that are interesting enough to cover as blog posts. I like to say something and not just ramble, I probably did just ramble on occasion anyway but never mind.
2) It is possible barring crazy life altering days, case in point, to find time to write everyday. If I had been a little more diligent and prepared then I would have had time to write even then. I spent the vast majority of yesterday pacing up and down so much I got blisters – literally. Waiting to hear if the offer was accepted was incredibly nerve-wracking. My phone was out of battery, I didn’t have my laptop with me, I obviously wasn’t home. Concentrating would have been hard but it might have made the time go faster.
3) Miniposts or short posts are nothing to be ashamed about, so long as obviously they aren’t the only posts that ever get written. Sometimes there’s not enough time to write a full in-depth post, sometimes the brain won’t cooperate and think of a topic for a long post, sometimes that’s all I can do and that is enough. I wrote that day, it wasn’t much but I sat down and tried. Other days the posts will be on the long side of regular, so it evens out. Far better to write a small amount than nothing at all.

Looking at what I learned I don’t think the challenge was a failure, sure I failed to complete it but much like NaNo, I took something else from trying, it was a success in another way.

In other news I got a library card as intended on Tuesday, ready for my book challenge in January. Although my friend told me to sign up to GoodReads, I discovered then that I have 9 unread books on my shelves, exactly how that happened I don’t know. I should probably start with those books before I check random books out of the library. Maybe I should do a challenge warm-up, going from no reading to a book a week might be tough. Perhaps I should start reading now, and just say find time for a chapter a day. Even though my focus is going to be as much on writing as possible, that should be pretty easy, knock it out in a few minutes before I go to sleep, it’s definitely worth considering.

Another friend of mine teases me often about Warcraft. To be honest a lot of his objections in regards to how much it costs, the subscription, the long content droughts etc. I share and have ranted about on this blog more than once. It’s probably a bit like doughnuts or another sugary item, it’s bad for you but that doesn’t stop you from liking it, you may also hate yourself slightly for succumbing but do it anyway, just the way it is. Anyway, the Warlords pre-patch dropped yesterday and there’s some new things to do and explore. I decided, back when I decided I would resub and try Warlords out, that I wouldn’t do so until a week before release so I wouldn’t waste any sub time. I am tempted to resub now, I’m a very impatient person, but for a change my resolve is staying firm. I have a lot of other stuff to do, the pre-launch stuff won’t take long and plus waiting means all the bugs will be fixed, and a big patch like this brings a lot of bugs.

Agents of Shield 2.03 will now be available for me to watch, so there may be a post about that later when I get a chance to watch it. I love that show but if I get more free time later, and my brains still working, I have NaNo Prep to do.

End note – how can it only be Thursday? It feels like a month since last Friday, that’s just crazy but then it has been one hell of a week.

Minipost – NaNo Site Relaunch

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It’s Sunday, which technically means that the site relaunched on schedule. They said last week that it would be this week, the fact that it was anticipated and intended for the beginning of the week is immaterial, it made the week – barely.

Launching on a Sunday was unanticipated but on the surface not much is new. The homepage has had a slight re-jig, there’s still no countdown which is disappointing but it does look very nice. The forums are a different story, they didn’t do a hard wipe this year. They kept all threads that had been posted in since August 1st, so there’s a lot of old threads knocking around. Personally I don’t like it, they don’t have that clean, fresh start empty feeling. It’s messy and that bothers me. Thankfully the only part of the forum I really use is the Beyond 50k area and that was almost completely wiped. I’ll just stay there where it’s comfortable.

Anyway what the site launch mainly brought was the ability to officially sign up for this years NaNo. Creation of 2014 novel profiles, the donor halo for this year etc. all become active. This always gives me such a burst of enthusiasm. I rather predictably spent the day logged into OA chat, refreshing the forum and planning my novel. I managed to get pretty much all the background ironed out, so I understand the world and how it works, which given that it revolves around time travel took a while. I also needed to get a consistent backstory because it’s going to set up a series. The revelations about the past won’t all be told in this first book but I need to know them, so I don’t contradict myself later.

I was reminded of the importance of knowing where things will go, and hidden connections, when I watched NCIS tonight. It was the first episode Yankee White and it was the first introduction of Agent Fornell. He was just the FBI representative in this episode and likely intended to be nothing more. However, they must have liked the actor or they just brought him back, as they do with secondary characters, to ground the world so he was the FBI representative many times. Then they decided to give him more of a backstory, and they made him and Gibbs share an ex-wife. That’s where the episode Yankee White hits an issue, as Fornell didn’t recognize Gibbs and had no idea he was NCIS in this episode. However, at a later appearance they’ve been friends for years. Gibbs warned him away from marrying his ex-wife, Fornell didn’t listen but I suppose that at least saved Gibbs the alimony. It means Yankee White doesn’t fit into the continuity, it’s been retconned and the fact that it’s inconsistent is never mentioned or explained, it likely only bothers someone like me.

However, I don’t want to make a mistake like that in my books. I don’t like logic errors, inconsistencies or the unexplained. As it’s a series I need to decide as much of the world as I can now, as once I’m committed I won’t be able to change it later. Details matter, it has to be right.

I now have a title for my book and the series – Singularity, Book One of The Nexus series. Naturally it’s subject to change but it works for now and it’s about time I had a title. Usually I find titles easy enough to find but this one was trouble. I haven’t written my synopsis yet for the NaNo site but then I haven’t got book one’s plot nailed down yet.

As always because I spend time on the Beyond 50k section I’m tempted to pledge to do more than 50k. Considering I barely scraped 50k last year, even contemplating it is stupid. Not to mention we sold the house last week, so I’m helping look for a new place to live, and then there will be all the house move type chores to do. I just wanted to acknowledge the temptation to make an unreasonable, unattainable goal. I’m good at that, jumping in with both feet at the deep end, naturally sinking as I didn’t even test the water temperature first. We’ll see how the month progresses, if I have an amazing month, then maybe Beyond 50k will happen on it’s own. It never has yet but there has to be a first time for everything. There’s still a lot of planning to do but it’s not halfway through October, there’s still time.

19 days to go and counting.

Agents of Shield Wishlist

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I could have entitled this post “I have no idea what to write” as I really struggled to think of anything at all. In fact I didn’t think of anything, I did what any sensible person would do when they are really stuck, I asked my friend. Who is probably getting a little fed up of having to help me think of blog topics, and it’s only day 11, this is serious.

Anyway, they suggested writing about what I hoped would happen in this season, season two, of Agents of Shield. I am completely spoiler free for this show, not by choice but just because I don’t know anywhere that gives out spoilers. I have seen the first two episodes and I have no idea what’s coming up next.

So what do I hope will happen this season? I better put it under a cut just in case.

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