Today is November 1st. To the normal folk, it's just the day after Halloween in which we are all now suffering from an enormous sugar high.
To us writers, today was the start of National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo.
The goal is to start a fresh novel, write 50,000 words in just 30 days. The contest ends November 30th @ midnight. The thing is, you are in competition with yourself. Almost 160,000 contestants and the only person you have to beat to win is, well… You.
The other 159,000 writers doing this is your support group, aka cheerleaders.
Some say it is invigorating. Other’s daunting. Me, I wouldn’t know, I haven’t tried it yet.
I just found out about it last year. The problem is, every time November comes around, I am knee- shoulder-eyes deep in another project.
Currently I am in the revisions process of my latest WIP and it just wasn’t in the cards for me to try it out this year. But I am cheering from the sidelines for all of you who have signed up for NaNoWriMo and are writing away at this very moment.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Monday, September 6, 2010
"Dialogue"
Who would have thought that one of the most natural things we do in life is going to be what drives me mad as a writer.
Dialogue… Ugh!
The human is race is constantly speaking to one another, even if in the simplest fashion as a “Hi, how are you?”
So why is it that I seem to be having the most brutal time having two of my characters talk to each other? I stare at the computer screen just wishing that my Fairy Godmother will pop in and beat me over the head, hopefully knocking me unconscious, with her magic wand. Then use a little of that magic to write the dialogue for me.
Is that really too much to ask?
Well since it hasn’t happened yet, I have had to resort to finding assistance in other ways. I had a BPL meeting on Sunday, the first one I have been to in a month. Boy life gets busy. Anyways, so I brought my personal mountain size obstacle to the table for discussion and received some pretty sound advice.
Take a tape recorder and go to a few high school football games or go to the mall food court and people watch/listen to.
Luckily for me school has just started which means football games are just around the corner. I am going to tackle that one first to see what I can come up with and maybe, just maybe I can get out of going to the mall. Even saying that word gives me small goose pimples.
I just hope no one notices me carrying around a tape recorder, eavesdropping in on their conversations. That would definitely make for an awkward exchange in itself.
Dialogue… Ugh!
The human is race is constantly speaking to one another, even if in the simplest fashion as a “Hi, how are you?”
So why is it that I seem to be having the most brutal time having two of my characters talk to each other? I stare at the computer screen just wishing that my Fairy Godmother will pop in and beat me over the head, hopefully knocking me unconscious, with her magic wand. Then use a little of that magic to write the dialogue for me.
Is that really too much to ask?
Well since it hasn’t happened yet, I have had to resort to finding assistance in other ways. I had a BPL meeting on Sunday, the first one I have been to in a month. Boy life gets busy. Anyways, so I brought my personal mountain size obstacle to the table for discussion and received some pretty sound advice.
Take a tape recorder and go to a few high school football games or go to the mall food court and people watch/listen to.
Luckily for me school has just started which means football games are just around the corner. I am going to tackle that one first to see what I can come up with and maybe, just maybe I can get out of going to the mall. Even saying that word gives me small goose pimples.
I just hope no one notices me carrying around a tape recorder, eavesdropping in on their conversations. That would definitely make for an awkward exchange in itself.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Go Back!
It has been almost a month since my last post. And here I had promised myself to be more on top of my blog and writing. Am I allowed to be mad at myself for breaking my own promise?
Um, that would be a negative. People might think I am loony, well more so than normal.
My day to day life has been so hectic; it felt as though my head was spinning like in the Exorcist. But for the present time, the chaotic has reached a plateau and I have attempted to write again. Yay!
Except for one small, itty bitty problem…
I jumped all the way to the ending of my WIP. I am only 2/3rd’s done with this piece and I just skipped ahead. (oops!) Okay, well since I wrote the ending, technically I am now 3/4th’s done now… Right?
Anyways, I was lying in bed the other night and my thoughts were reeling trying to jump back into Mady’s life and it hit me square in the brain. I had the perfect ending twist to my story. It has been screaming at me from day one, why hadn’t I thought of it sooner?
All of the final scenes came to life and acted out in the exhausted movie screen of my mind. It all played out so perfectly in my head I had to get it out. I powered up my laptop and of course it took a sick day and shut back down on me. (Maybe I should look into replacing the darn thing.) So I went back to basics.
I grabbed a pen and my notebook then wrote until my wrist ached and I couldn’t form another legible word on the paper.
Then the next day, I was hit in the brain with another almost brilliant idea.
There is this one scene that I have now caused a fork in Mady’s road. The only problem is… I already went left and right now my brain is screaming Go back! Take a right instead!
So what do I do? Do I leave it how it is written and trudge through as is and make drastic changes later. Do I go back and reroute her decision on that one night causing a six chapter rewrite up to the present (where I left off before jumping ahead to the very end.). Or option three, leave it as is?
Oh decisions, decisions.
Um, that would be a negative. People might think I am loony, well more so than normal.
My day to day life has been so hectic; it felt as though my head was spinning like in the Exorcist. But for the present time, the chaotic has reached a plateau and I have attempted to write again. Yay!
Except for one small, itty bitty problem…
I jumped all the way to the ending of my WIP. I am only 2/3rd’s done with this piece and I just skipped ahead. (oops!) Okay, well since I wrote the ending, technically I am now 3/4th’s done now… Right?
Anyways, I was lying in bed the other night and my thoughts were reeling trying to jump back into Mady’s life and it hit me square in the brain. I had the perfect ending twist to my story. It has been screaming at me from day one, why hadn’t I thought of it sooner?
All of the final scenes came to life and acted out in the exhausted movie screen of my mind. It all played out so perfectly in my head I had to get it out. I powered up my laptop and of course it took a sick day and shut back down on me. (Maybe I should look into replacing the darn thing.) So I went back to basics.
I grabbed a pen and my notebook then wrote until my wrist ached and I couldn’t form another legible word on the paper.
Then the next day, I was hit in the brain with another almost brilliant idea.
There is this one scene that I have now caused a fork in Mady’s road. The only problem is… I already went left and right now my brain is screaming Go back! Take a right instead!
So what do I do? Do I leave it how it is written and trudge through as is and make drastic changes later. Do I go back and reroute her decision on that one night causing a six chapter rewrite up to the present (where I left off before jumping ahead to the very end.). Or option three, leave it as is?
Oh decisions, decisions.
Monday, July 12, 2010
A Parody
I am a member of an Author’s online writer’s workshop. Every so often she gives us challenges and assignments to keep us on our toes in our writing and try pushing us to do more than we normally would.
Well the newest challenge starts today. We are to step out of our comfort zone; i.e. writing, reading, read something we normally wouldn’t or write something we wouldn’t normally. Then for the next five weeks, write 500 words a day, five days a week.
I think I can handle this challenge, it seems manageable enough for me. I hope.
I started off by getting a book that is definitely out of my norm. It's a Parody of a popular Young Adult series. When I picked it up and read the back I knew it was going to be silly, that is the whole point right? But I assumed it would be a funny stupid.
This book is not a funny stupid. It is, by far, a ridiculous stupid. 151 pages of absolutely painful ludicrous words, and I am only 77 pages into it. The price of this book is $13.95 and I am just thankful that I borrowed it instead of spending actual money on this absurd waste of a tree. Poor tree. I would be pissed if I would have even wasted Monopoly money on this thing.
I get that Parody’s are meant to be mocking. But being a published item, it should have at least been edited to a better degree. Missing punctuation, ill grammar, sentences that jump to and fro that make you go what the heck just happened?
Okay, Okay, enough gripping about it, sorry. So my first shot of stepping out of my box was a failure, but I will not let it deter me in continuing out of my comfort area.
Now I’m off to my 500 words, till next time.
Well the newest challenge starts today. We are to step out of our comfort zone; i.e. writing, reading, read something we normally wouldn’t or write something we wouldn’t normally. Then for the next five weeks, write 500 words a day, five days a week.
I think I can handle this challenge, it seems manageable enough for me. I hope.
I started off by getting a book that is definitely out of my norm. It's a Parody of a popular Young Adult series. When I picked it up and read the back I knew it was going to be silly, that is the whole point right? But I assumed it would be a funny stupid.
This book is not a funny stupid. It is, by far, a ridiculous stupid. 151 pages of absolutely painful ludicrous words, and I am only 77 pages into it. The price of this book is $13.95 and I am just thankful that I borrowed it instead of spending actual money on this absurd waste of a tree. Poor tree. I would be pissed if I would have even wasted Monopoly money on this thing.
I get that Parody’s are meant to be mocking. But being a published item, it should have at least been edited to a better degree. Missing punctuation, ill grammar, sentences that jump to and fro that make you go what the heck just happened?
Okay, Okay, enough gripping about it, sorry. So my first shot of stepping out of my box was a failure, but I will not let it deter me in continuing out of my comfort area.
Now I’m off to my 500 words, till next time.
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