Uh...Whoops.

So one last thing about NaNoWriMo.org.

EVERYONE TAKE A MUTUAL SIGH FOR THE HORSE I KEEP HARASSING.

Yesterday, I went to a nanowrimo.org write-in event at the Grandville mall, more specifically, at the Barnes and Noble that resides there.

I donated roughly 30 books to the organization (Yay! Make room on my bookshelves for MORE BOOKS) and then got really crippling socially awkward.

Suddenly, I realized I was surrounded by wonderful people who have a heart, passion, and love for writing.

I was completely overwhelmed just by that fact and ended up sitting at a table by myself near others, but definitely by myself.

I had no idea what to say or how to engage such an interesting group in conversation.

I sat there, fiddled with my phone for about ten minutes and smiling at the conversations taking place around me before I went to the games section, purchased a game, left the store, and got an orange julius as a consolation prize at the nearby Dairy Queen, and left.

I'm glad I went. Next time, I will be better armed for conversation.

I would take a moment to defend myself here by admitting that I haven't been sleeping well lately, yadda yadda, but I don't like making excuses. I'd rather just own up to it, and move on.

So next year NaNoWriMo buddies, I will converse with you!

Maybe.

At least I'll take a victory ride on the carousel.

Fin

So, I'm not quite done with my story yet, but I wanted to 'win' National Novel Writing Month goodies from nanowrimo.org.

So I submitted my novel.

Here are my goodies!

I hope that everyone had a good November whether you wrote for it or not. I'm going to take a couple days to let my hands re-cooperate from the writing madness and maybe read a book or two.

Yay books!

Day 28

I've reached 52,314 words now.
I started to read a book though, and I'm already about ten pages into it.
...I COULDN'T HELP IT.

With the holidays fast approaching, as the world seems so keyed up for the month of December, I would like to say a few words.

I am grateful that I am able to live with access to a computer that has access to the internet so that I may post on this blog, reserve books at the library, and communicate with so many people.

I am grateful that I am able to travel to see good friends and share many memories with them.

I am grateful that I am loved.


Happy writing! :)

Day 27

It's official.

I hit over 50,000 words!

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WHOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ALL OF THE CHEERING AND CELEBRATORY NOISES!

...now I've just got to complete the story. :)

Happy writing!

Day 26

Uh, crap. Well, it's been a few days since I've updated so here is what has happened.

-I'm closing in on 50,000 words.
-I like Minecraft a lot. (CURSES! This should have happened AFTER November.)
-I'm going to try and break 50,000 words this morning actually.
-I'm awake in the morning now. (Where did the night go? I sleep during that now? Weird...)
-It's started to snow intermittently in Michigan (YAY!!!)


Because I am potentially finishing the 50,000 word mark today, I would love to say that I'm going to get a head start on the books that have been waiting for me.

BUT.

Even though I'll hit 50,000 words today, my story isn't done yet. So I'll probably continue to work on it for the rest of November and read for December.

Happy writing! :)

Day 22

I reached 41,203 words at like 5AM. Then I went to bed.

So I did that. Um.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!

And if you don't celebrate Thanksgiving, then okay. Happy Thursday!

I'd like to take a moment to be thankful for books, writing, words, and everything to do with the literary world. It's all amazing.

Happy writing! :)

Day 21

Today I'm going to be sneaking in some writing in between doing laundry, submitting job applications, playing with my puppy, and preparing for Thanksgiving dinner!

Deep breath. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Okay, I'm good.

Happy writing! :)

Day 20

I feel like I'm slowly giving myself a headache.

With words.
With writing so many words.

I broke 36,000 words today. My fingers hate me a bit. I'll probably write a bit more tonight, but I'm not going to push myself to. I have a day to get another 4,000 words in and I'm going to take advantage of it.

I hope everyone else is enjoying National Novel Writing Month. :)

On a side note, I've been playing a lot of Borderlands 2 (it's a video game) on the Xbox 360 to give myself breaks. It's been enjoyable.

I also have a stack of books waiting for me to read through when December 1st hits. I'll probably have a long sleep after my novel is complete, but I will write the book reviews! :)

Happy writing!



PS Today's word that I fell in love with "WHOORRBLEIST" which is made up, and present in my novel. YAY! Ridiculous progress is good progress!

Day 19

I swear I'm not dead. It's hard to believe right?

I haven't written anything for National Novel Writing Month for too long now, but I'm not giving up the 'fight' yet. I've had some personal time to reflect on a lot of things that have happened to me and a couple of close friends in the past few days as well as handling the situations that have presented themselves. I would share more, but it would be inappropriate to share about the situation due to the sensitive nature of it. Let's just say everything got real REALLY fast.

I apologize to my readers for the neglect I have shown my blog.

As a way to make up for it, I'm going to post a book review every day for the first week of December. So December 1st through December 7th I will read a book each day and post about it.

I'll also strive to figure out how to include the cover of the book on the blog post. (Exhilarating isn't it?)

Thank you for your patience. I will be posting later about how many words I manage to write tonight. I'm shooting to hit 40,000 words by Day 22. That leaves me with 10,000 words in eight days. Something much more manageable than this hurdling, 3 day race.

Happy writing! :)

Day 15

Today, I'm taking a break from writing.

If I were an on time writer, I would have reached 25,000 words today. But I'm over 25,000 words so I'm taking a break today. Tomorrow I will resume.

Today I am basking in the companionship of a friend I have not seen in too long. We'll probably make an IHOP trip in the middle of the night, like thieves stealing moments of memories.

Yeah...I went there. ;)

Happy writing!

Day 14

I broke 25,000 words last night. YAY!!!!!!

I'm probably going to go do some grocery shopping or something so I can get delicious soup. Mmmm...soup.

So today I would like to take a moment to talk about Graphic Novels.

If you've ever met me in real life, you probably know I love Batman. I want to clarify that for everyone who doesn't know me; I'm not a fanatic. I own a lot of Batman movies, Batman The Animated Series, and Batman Beyond (as well as Justice League), I have a few posters that are in storage currently, but I definitely love things outside of Batman. I do have an eerie knowledge of the Batman universe, but I can hold a conversation without talking about Batman. Actually, Batman hardly comes up anymore. Meh.

Moving on.

I love, LOVE LOVE LOVE, the book series Fables by Bill Willingham. There are a lot of different artists involved so I'm going to go with the author. Here's an amazon link that will take you to the basics. I have the entire Fables series in my book collection and am planning on buying the next in the series as soon as it comes out.

Now Fables is a re-imagining of fairy tales and how they all interact with each other. Here's the amazon summary: "When a savage creature known only as the Adversary conquered the fabled lands of legends and fairy tales, all of the infamous inhabitants of folklore were forced into exile. Disguised among the "mundys," their name for normal citizens of modern-day New York, these magical characters created their own secret society that they call Fabletown. From their exclusive luxury apartment buildings on Manhattan's Upper West Side, these creatures of legend must fight for their survival in the new world." 

Hopefully that didn't screw up my formatting. Uh, whatever.

So basically, Fables live forever and they have different levels of immortality. The more legendary your fable, say Snow White, the more likely you are to recover from a mortal wound (such as being stabbed in the kidney or whatever). But if you are a lesser known fable, then you'll live until you get some serious wound. Now I really like the amazon summary since it gives a basis of what the series is about. But I would like to add that most of the characters from fables have changed; they're usually not happy, kind, caring, and glowing with warmth and good cheer. They've been re-imagined into more realistic people. There are also Fables that come up that I'd never encountered before so I would do research on them and it was fascinating. Anyways, the art of the graphic novels is superb and if you have any interest in fables, graphic novels, or good literature; read Fables. The series is ongoing and has a spin off series as well (Jack of Fables) and I'm a collector of it.

I will probably re-visit this series when I get my hands on the next book as it is too good to leave alone.

Now I'm off to get groceries and then to write.

Happy writing! :)

Day 13

One of the most challenging parts of writing for me is a proper way to transition the passing of time. I struggle sometimes with being like "Well that day was interesting, NOW ONTO A MONTH LATER HURR HURR HURR". Yeah.

So when I was reading in September and October, I tried to pay more attention as to how authors incorporated the length of time in their books. I've tried a few of their tricks, but ultimately it gets a little awkward in my stories. I feel like I'm constantly zooming in and zooming out with the passing of time and monitoring of situations.

Then again there's a lot happening in my story.

So the goal for today is to hit 25,000 words as I went a little haywire while trying to accomplish it last night. I had to delete some of what I wrote since I reread it today and discovered it was mostly nonsense towards the end. I'm currently at 22,798 words.

I'm also used to writing action scenes in my writing, but this is more of a 'character' story rather than an 'intense' story, so I've been writing a little side story to get the action scenes out of my system. I'm not doing double duty, I've just dabbled in about 4,000 words in a separate document of visual scenes.

I've also used the document to dabble with what people can conceptualize if I just say 'Flying monkeys' versus actually describing them 'Those brown monkeys had feathery bird wings sprouting from their back; in a moment of awe I watched a few take off from the trees and fly as if it were more natural than breathing.' Those kind of shenanigans. Also, I'm blogging on here too.

SO MANY WORDS.

Yes. I might bake again today. Mmmm...baking.

Day 12

I'm up writing. I think I might call it good for the night and resume in the morning.

21,153 words at the moment. Okay, maybe I'll go to bed after this paragraph.

Happy writing! :)

Edit: I tinkered with playing minecraft today as a reward for the ridiculous amount of words I wrote last night. I'll be writing a bit more tonight and hope to break 24,000 words within the next two hours.

Happy writing all! :)

Day 11

So, currently I'm at 20,015 words on the dot. I did some major editing over the past couple days as I realized I had to cut out a chunk of my story in order for it to go on. I know it could have waited until I was actually able to edit the novel, but, for the sake of my mental well being and comfort in writing, I cut out the 'tumor' so to speak.

So that's that.

I'll probably be up writing for the next couple hours, but by the time I call it a night, it will be Day 12. So I thought I should hurry and get this post in. :)

Thoughts on National Novel Writing Month at the moment would include 'URMAGAWD WHY AM I DOING THIS', to 'delight', to 'I really hope this is something worth editing', and finally, 'CRAP CRAP, that character TOTALLY wouldn't say that. Uh. SOCKS. I'll put socks there for now and catch it in the editing dang it!'

Yeah. November....November is interesting.

In other news, I watched Collateral today which was kind of neat.

Then I watched Chain Reaction. Which was kind of boring. It was trying to be all OH MY GOD SCIENCE but really, it was OH MY GOD CHASE KEANU REEVES FOR 4/5 OF THIS MOVIE. ...DO WE NEED ANYTHING ELSE? OH SCIENCE? UH, MAKE BUBBLE CHAMBER, SAY HYDROGEN A LOT. SWEET. BACK TO CHASING KEANU REEVES. OH OH, BLOW THINGS UP.

Yeah. So I'm going to go write now. :)

Happy writing!

Day 10

A brief, brief word about Day 9.

On Day 9, I didn't write one word. Not a single one. I'm not overly concerned though as I know I built a slight buffer so if I needed a day, I could take a day.

On Day 10, I am going to be playing some Dungeons and Dragons later (WHAT WHAT!) and then probably writing more tonight as well. I'm about to write RIGHT NOW. Thrilling isn't it? :)

Random trivia from today: Papa Murphy's pizza. I had it for lunch. DELICIOUS. It's not something you can buy in the freezer aisle, it's a restaurant that preps the pizza so all you have to do it take it home and bake it. Not hard. Deliciously easy and a delightful tasty experience.

Happy writing!

Edit: 19,048 words at 4:49PM. Taking a break to play some D&D. I'll be writing more tonight! :)

Day 8

A brief update before the magic of writing!

Today I visited a friend and had a lot of nostalgia happen. She also gifted me with bunches of books.

When National Novel Writing Month is over, I have a small horde of books just waiting for me to read and review. Excited? I AM!

I'm going to take my lovely puppy Lily for a walk and then I'll be writing. It should prove to be a little easier today since it'll be dealing with the aftermath of last chapter. Reaction chapters. FUN. :)

Happy writing!

Edit: I reached 18,102 words today. I might write a tiny bit more tonight, but probably not a lot. I've got to keep up the energy for tomorrow! :)

Another book series from my collection: Twilight Series by Stephanie Meyer.

I know about half of my audience probably just GROANED and went WHY or squealed with delight.

Here is my stance on Twilight. It's poorly written, Bella is the character of 'pants' (meaning anyone can be the pants), and there's not a whole lot of interesting things that happen in the book. AND YET, I'm still a sucker for it. I can't stand the movies, I can't stand discussing the books, I can't stand to even go near the 'Team Edward/Team Jake' stuff. I just can't. I don't want to talk about it.

So, in other words, while I wouldn't recommend the Twilight series, I still own it as one of my guilty pleasure reads.

Happy writing!

Day 7

So today I'm having a bit of a hard time writing due to the graphic/emotional nature of what's happening in my story so far.

One way I find it easy to motivate myself is through baking! So today I made these:
Sugar Cookie Recipe
Cream Cheese Frosting

I modified the sugar cookie recipe slightly so I put in 1 3/4 cup of powdered sugar and 3/4 of a teaspoon of almond extract. I also never wait for the cookies to be done chilling, I bake them as soon as my dough is mixed thoroughly. With the cream cheese frosting, I dyed it light blue so I could make fun designs on the top with white icing.

Still hovering at 13,406 words as I prewrite this scene a bit more before I plug it into my story.

I find that it's better to motivate myself by baking as it reminds me that not only can I create something pretty, I can create something tasty too! Creativity isn't limited to the written word; so why should I?

I'll probably cook something with pumpkin in it tomorrow that's healthier than cookies. Maybe I'll post about it. ;)

Happy writing!

Edit: Here's a picture of the cookies from my phone camera (quality may be poor). The beauty of decorating cookies is that no matter what's on top, they'll still be tasty. :)

Edit: I have reached 15,718 words. Today was rough, but a necessary experience for my character to go through. Oy vey.

Day 6

I voted!

No, I will not ever share who I voted for or what I voted on because I do not invite political conversations. I do invite people to vote as I believe it's important to participate in democracy.

END POLITICAL SPIEL.

I've reached 13,406 words. Hopefully, I'll keep going strong. :)

Happy writing!

Day 5

YAY! I was just writing a bit and happened to glance down to discover that I've hit over 10,000 words! The word count is currently 10,061, but still! YAY! So I've successfully met my goal! I still have a long ways to go before the novel is over, and I will be sure to update this again later tonight. I was just so excited that I had to share right now. :)

Happy writing!

Edit.

I would also like to remind everyone who lives in the US to vote tomorrow. I don't care who you vote for, where you stand on the issues, etc.

I just hope that you would vote.

Edit: Day 5, 3:42PM: 10,883 words.

11,260 words. So not that much more, but still every bit counts.

Don't forget to vote if you live in the US!

Edit: Day 5, 11:53PM: 11,260 words.

Day 4

The night is still young, and I've managed to get myself to 9,138 words. I'll be continuing to write just a little bit more tonight, but I had quite a fulfilling day today.

I was in attendance at a housewarming party today that was very fun, lively, and used up a bunch of my energy. I think I'll be a bit lucky if I'm up past midnight tonight. If I write anymore, I probably won't update this post since I'll just save, collapse, and go to bed.

Another book from my personal shelf: Eragon by Christopher Paolini.

Most are quite familiar with the Eragon series, but I have a confession, I did not read beyond the second book and do not own any other than Eragon. I was quite fond of Eragon when I first came across it when he had published it indepently. I read it many, many times. But as he got picked up by a publishing company, I grew worried about his continuing the series. After I read the second book, I stopped reading as I didn't want to lose any more of the world that I had first fallen in love with in Eragon.

So I still have Eragon on my shelves and from time to time I will pick it up and reread it as I still love the first book for it's many merits.

Happy writing!

Day 3

Last night I went to bed after getting up to 7,804 words. Tonight, I embark again to increase the number and to continue the story.

It's a challenging story as I've decided to write the story from a teenager's perspective and to also intertwine trauma throughout the aspects of her life. I feel that I've read many a young adult novel about this, but I don't think any of them have captured a particular kind of person. I would like to showcase that person.

A random book from my personal shelf: All of my friends are dead. by Avery Monsen & Jory John. It was given to me by a couple of very dear friends and I feel that it is a perfect fit amidst all of my classics and young adult fiction books. It's good to have something simply fun.

Happy writing!

Day 2

I've been slacking on updating but I feel the need to explain myself. A lot of my writing happens in the 'prime' hours of the night. Meaning, roughly between 12am-4am zone. Last night I was on the phone with a couple friends and did not get much writing in, but I have managed to get myself to 6,043 words in the past hour or so. I will be writing more tonight, technically on Day 3, but eh.

My tentative plans are to shoot for 10,000 words every 5 days, with the reasoning that it's okay if I fall a little short. Primarily, I'm trying to ensure that I'll hit 50,000 words by the end of November.

I would like to take a brief break to talk about a book series from my personal collection.

Percy Jackson.

Now, if those two words made you cringe in horror because of a terrible movie that was released some years ago, I assure you the books are much better.

So I own the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series by Rick Riordan. I'm also currently trying to collect the next series that still is in the greek world; I gave his egyptian god books a try, but they were not to my taste.

Anywho.

The main reason I like the Percy Jackson books is because they make the Greek Mythologies come alive again (even if they're not entirely accurate-it's mythology anyways so who's to say how many times the story's changed anyhow?) in a very modern way. Yes, there is some teenage angst. Yes, there is a coming of age story. Yes, there is a prophecy (IT'S GREEK MYTHOLOGY, THERE'S GOT TO BE A PROPHECY *imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger saying that, much funnier*).

But it's good.

...that is all.

Happy writing!

Day 1

So for NaNoWriMo, I am most likely going to make one post a day (try to) and edit it throughout the day as I will be writing at all weird hours of the day (when I'm awake and near my laptop with nothing getting in the way; HUZZAH!).

I will try to time stamp when I finish an entry in this format.

Edit: Day 1, 3:33AM: 3,207 words.

So far so good. I'm straying a little bit from how I imagined the opening as I realized I needed to incorporate elements of the later story into elements of the now story to make sure the picture is complete. Also, at some point during daylight hours today I'll be going to the library to return some books. Maybe later I'll pull something from my personal book shelf and explain why I love it enough to own it; every book I own I've read at least five times. BECAUSE I LOVE THEM.

Let the NaNoWriMo chaos thrive!

Edit: Day 1, 3:36AM: 3,207 words.

I've had a weird day. I've done laundry, battled with headaches, and been going through my belongings to sort out what I want to donate or what I want to keep. I tend to clean a lot during November; it helps calm the clutter of words that builds up in my mind.

My characters are developing well enough, and I'm managing to stick with the plot line I've outlined. So far so good. I am struggling a little bit to ensure that the different voices of my characters are unique enough to be easily distinguishable from the others. The problem is I like to make everyone wordy. Some of my characters are much more quiet than I am. It makes it a bit more challenging.

Happy Writing!

Edit: Day 1, 7:17PM: 5,002 words.

I made pumpkin bread. Did some laundry. Attended to some not novel world things.

Edit: Day 1, 9:01PM: 5,002 words.