NaNoWriMo this year

NaNoWriMo is this year is going to be interesting. I am hoping to get my first draft of a sword-and-sorcery series done. NaNo is normally just 50,000 words to win but I am going to be aiming for 100,000. So I will have to type twice is much for my personal win. The reason for that is I think that it is going to take about 100,000 words to tell the story. I am at a good start because I have done character worksheets for my two main character's but I need to finish the sheets for the villain and one of the main side character's who may turn into a main character. He's a fishy one. If I can get this written it is going to be the first in a five book story about on event. The event is big in the world and I have five different sets of character's that are trying to deal with it. I like them all but I think that I can get Maddox and Rilia's story out a little better. I have played with these character's myself and with my spouse. He is good with helping me when I get stuck on part of characterization and understands my personal language of screams, grunts, and other really non-verbal skills. I'm really good at the non-verbal stuff.
Edit: I meant to post this last week but it didn't happen. I am 16,011 words into my novel. I have so far done my daily word count of 4,000 per day and I'm hoping that I can make it!

So yeah....

So after a year of fighting with myself about this I have decided that I am going to try and be a professional writer. The reasons that I have fought with myself about this is because I like the sure thing. That is why I have a master's degree in Library and Information Sciences because that is supposed to be a sure thing. It has not turned out that way at all. I am employed in my field and I love where I work but I have not gotten anywhere with getting full time employment in my field. I have put out over 170 applications in the past year. I have not stopped applying for jobs. I have just stopped counting. So because I have the time to write I have decided to try it for real. I am story boarding a new sword and sorcery fantasy for NaNoWriMo this year. I really want something that I know will pay back my student loans but I just do not see that happening to me. So I will follow what I think is the call of the universe and pursue writing. Prayer for me or wish me good luck or whatever because I'm going to need it. Badly

So I'm back!

Well I have finished grad school and I passed my last term with all A's.
So I am going to get back to writing more than just book reviews. By September I want to have a short story that I started writing about a year and a half ago. Then I am going to give it to my spouse to beta read it. Then I need to start rereading his first novel to help edit. Wish me luck everyone! I hope that my self control is greater than my desire to be lazy. Or better yet the reason that I was having trouble writing was because I was so stressed and busy with grad school that now I am free everything will just come together.

What I have been writing

So it has been awhile since I have posted here. Up-date I am writing but nothing that I am going to publish either here or anywhere. Writing is more than just a dream or job with me. It is a way that I handle things. I have had some really good things happen to me in life like only two more classes until I graduate with my master degree and soon I hope to getting a job in my field. My writings for the past few weeks have been personal and helping me handle all of emotions from the past few weeks. Normally writing is used to help process negative emotions but I have to get all my feelings out be they good or bad. It is part of the Lupus I have to express myself or the Lupus will react. The body handles all emotions in the same way so when I have bad things like the deaths of some of dearest friends I write about. When I have something overwhelming good happen I write it out. In dealing with the deaths of my friends I wrote a ten page poem and I have things that I want to do with it. With good thing that happened this past week I write a four pages essay about it. So writing is my answer to all of my feelings good and bad. So sorry for no fun new stories for the past few weeks. I hope to have time and the desire to write some of the plot lines that I have running through my head for about the past two months. I will let you know as I get started with that. Thanks for reading!

Moving spider eggs

I had never seen one as big as that before. And that was saying something because I had been shipping ‘unusual’ things for about ten years now. I looked up at the client who was smiling at the giant ice spider egg the way a new mother looks at her baby. I was tempted to take off my bandana, that protected my third eye, and read his mind but decided against it. Anyone who looks at giant ice spiders, or at least their eggs, like that was head I had no business in.
“When can you guarantee delivery?” Mr. ‘Smith’ asked.
“Well I think that I can get to the over side of Neptune by tomorrow about nine in the morning.” I replied.

Mr. ‘Smith’ nodded, still smiling at the egg, as he signed my paperwork. He did not even notice the 25% mark-up I had added because it was a GIANT ICE SPIDER EGG. Even if I had pointed it out he would not have cared. After all no other shipper would touch it not just because it was a giant spider egg but mostly because you cannot just buy one from the net. But that was why he came to me and that was why I was in business. Import export business was a lucrative trade; if you stomach and/or live through your first job. Not the strangest thing that I have moved but definitely one of creepiest. I knew that I was going to be having dreams about this one for a while.
I put the egg in cold storage and locked the door. No way that thing was going to hatch while I was delivering it. The run was good. I got the thing out of my ship, signed for, and I was taking off when the first hairline cracks started showing on it. I was glad that I got paid up front. Ah the beauty of the modern age, credit sticks run through within twelve hours, and I had cleaned that 'Smith' out.

The Big city is different from Home

I wasn’t naïve, there was no way she was a superhero. But she did wear her knickers on top of her tights. And I like that in a person. But then again it was my first day in the ‘big’ city. San Francisco was the big city to me. The second clue that she could be a superhero was the fact that she was flying. With big colorful wings. She was diving straight down at some poor guy who, as I watched him, was hiding behind a normal looking woman. The guy was in purple and black with a half-face mask. And he was laughing in what I think was a maniacal fashion. I could practically see the explanation marks at the end of the laugh. He had at least five. The flying woman stopped just above him and glared down. At least I think it was a glare because her face was covered in a full mask.
“Well Bird? What now?” Purple mask demanded up at her.
“Now you are going to unhand that woman and come with me.” She replied.
“And why would I do that?”
“Because if you don’t then I will pull you both up with me and you will drop like a stone.”
“Idle threats mean nothing to me.” He sneered.
“They are only idle if I won’t do them.”

At this she dropped the last ten feet and stood in front of Purple Mask. He snarled at her. Really, honest-to-God snarled. The normal woman screamed something like ‘Help me’ but I’m not too sure. Someone snickering near my ear made me turn. Another guy in a mask but this time he was not dressed in purple and black. He was in gray with a full grey mask and he was leaning against the building behind me. The winged woman whipped her head around to look at me. Or rather just passed me at the other guy. He was clearly a guy and a guy the winged one was not happy with. She lifted her hand starting to flip him off but stopped herself. She put her back to him and went back to Purple Mask.
“Oh Birdy don’t be that way.” Grey said from behind me.

‘Birdy’ was fighting with Purple Mask and the woman got free. I don’t know how it ended but man that woman sure at some wings on her.

Series

Series are what I would like to talk about today. Series, love them or hate them, are everywhere. They have not always been. In fact before the beginning of the 1900 century series were seen as something only weak readers would read. Series were seen by librarians as something that should be used get young children to read but then they must weaned off of series so that they could read ‘real’ books. I learned this in a course about the history of books in grad school and it floored me. Series are just something that are so ingrained into our reading habits at this point that the very thought that they were or are less than real books just does not compute.

Now I both love and hate series at the same time. I love a good series with interesting characters that grow over the course of the book, I love to see the complex threads of a plotline come together, to see the stray threads just waiting to be picked up and explored in a later book. A series can be one of the most wonderful things in the reading world that you can read or write. A series gives both the writer and the reader a stable world to work and read from. It helps the writer because they do not have to be building new worlds with every book but can learn all about the world, they can know what color the shadows are. There is just something comforting about a known world.

But series can be boring. Because the writer does not have to be doing something all the time, some writers cannot do it. A standalone novel can be a wonderful experience. It can take you to new different places, can make us examine ideas that we have never encountered before, to go to strange new worlds, and seek out the human in them. New worlds are where we learn the most about ourselves and all literature in the end is about what it means to be human. What is human is the eternal question and literature is just one of the ways that we try to answer it.

So go write a series and a standalone novel. Go see where you best answer the eternal question of being human. You should be writing.

New writing schedule

So this week I have decided to try and use my free time for writing time. So far I have not had good results. Maybe it is this week because I have had personal life; like my cat going to the vet and my sister maybe here about a month early and my mother needs help getting ready for her and the children. But this week’s lack of word count is disheartening. In addition to my normal work for grad school and I have to do well to make certain powerful people happy. So I have written some on a short story that I plotted out with character bios and everything about two years ago. I was writing it when I realized that I needed to have a prologue to explain some background information that is important to the story but never talked about in the story itself. So I went back to the beginning and started writing a prologue. That is all I have done on it. It is less than 500 words and I want the story to be about 5000.

Well I am going to continue to try with this new writing schedule. Maybe this is just a bad week or maybe it just feels bad because I am trying something new. About the writing itself I have high hopes for my piece. I am writing a science fiction story and when I get it done (God I hope) then I get to give it to my beta readers. I am very lucky in my readers because I have someone who knows me so well that when I make a mistake, like switching words I do that a lot, he knows exactly what I am trying to saying. By switching words I mean this- “She walked towards the car. The rain was just a plain rain but the car made it shiny.” My brain moves faster than my hands and it shows. Then I have a grammar friend who loves me but hates my grammar. It is cool he is very helpful and nice about it. Then I have a creative writing friend and a last someone who could be a professional reader.

How I handle all this outside help? Well I do it in stages. I do not send my work out to a new beta until I have read and worked with all notes from the previous beta. I talk with my betas about their notes and why they felt that way about it. I listen to them when they are talking about their notes and I do not interrupt them while they are doing it. My betas are giving me something wonderful and I do my best to respect them when they are helping me become a better writer. Well hopefully I will have a better word count for you next week. Thanks for reading and see you next time.

Personal Inspiration Part Three

For the last two weeks I have talked about how music and video games have and do inspire me in my writing. but I have yet to talk about my first source of inspiration: Art. Now that may seem obvious to some of you that Art would be inspiring for written work but what do you (or me or anyone for that matter) think is Art? Well I cannot help you with that because like good writing is subjective. What I find beautiful and inspiring you may think is trash and should never be seen ever again. The why of that is brain science and again I cannot help you but Google can. So go search that out and if you want back to me about it.

Back to the topic of Art and Inspiration; I remember the first piece of Art that inspired me. Well sort of. I was very young but I remember seeing a poster with the sun setting behind a mountain and top of the mountain was a unicorn. When I was five unicorns were pretty inspiring as an adult I find dragons much more so but I was a five-year-old girl so please do not judge me too hard. I just heard the story in my head about the unicorn climbing the hill for some reason or another; I do not remember why. But I do remember that being the first time that I just had to tell me story. My older sister was the one to hear and being almost ten years my senior was not impressed with a five-year-old tale but I told her nonetheless.

Now for art to entertain or inspire me I go to DeviantArt Link here- http://www.deviantart.com/. There I have met, followed, and even talked with some wonderful artists. Go there and just search for anything and there will be some art depicting it. I have some groups that I go to just to look at the pretty pictures but I always find something inspiring or something to help lift me up. Art is more than just pictures. They are emotions, memories, lies, and truth. Art is something that we all make every day whether we know it or not. Now just a warning about DA, there is a lot of pictures/painting/general art at depict sex, sex acts, or just generally sexual in nature. So if you have young eyes in the house, are young eyes yourself, or just do not care to see that type of thing beware. DA has those in abundance.

I think that I am done with Personal Inspiration. I have talked about music, games, other writers, and now just straight up Art. I hope that you have enjoyed this journey with me. On a different note I am submitting my piece ‘The Wanderer” to a flash fiction contest so wish me luck. Until next week dear reader, adieu.

Dreams and goals

Today’s post is about me coming clean. I am lazy. I have not written anything but what I have had to write for Grad school for the past few months. I am not telling you this to get sympathy from any of my readers. I think it is time for me to be honest about it. I do not really know why I have had so much trouble writing these past months. I have had plenty of free time; I have not been pulling into a video game or an MMO like I have before. I think that it all comes down to self-discipline. Every successful writer that I know of has great amounts of self-discipline. They make the writing a top priority in their lives. I have talked with authors and other writers; and they all have pretty much the same story. In order to be a successful writer they make time, they make the writing everything for themselves, but that leaves me with the question. How?

How do I do that same thing in my life? So far I have not found a how. I think about writing, I think about what stories I want to get done but I have done nothing towards getting them written, editing, or anything towards being published. I am beginning to think that I like the dream of being a writer but for some reason I am not willing to anything to making less than a dream and more of a goal. The difference between a dream and a goal is a plan and I have no plan for becoming a published author. Especially sense I want to be a ‘mainstream’ author. I have problems with that word because I am a Science Fiction and Fantasy dreamer and ‘mainstream’ look down on us dreamers. I written about how Science Fiction and mainstream interact but in one of my grad school classes I wrote about Science Fiction and Society. The word ‘mainstream’ is not even in the language until 1964, by in the language I mean it was not in the Oxford English Dictionary until then. Science Fiction as a literary concept is over 100 years old. I have the position that Science Fiction has an important role in and for society.

But that is not what this post is about. This post is about how I have no real drive to make my dreams into reality. I do not know if I am just scared because to have dream be real mean that they change. Reality is never like a dream, reality is hard and scary, and things do not always work out; either for the best or for you. In the past year I have done a lot of research about publishing, publishers, copyright laws, author’s rights, and just getting published. I know that it is hard, I know that there are so many very talented people all trying for the same thing and maybe that is just it. Growing up I was told that no matter how good at something I was there will always be someone who is better at it. Maybe I just have not worked that out. The reason I think that is my problem is that I have a lot of self-discipline in so many other areas of life. I am in graduate school, I take care of myself( and I have Lupus and fibromyalgia so that is not easy at times), I am married and have been with the same guy for ten years now, and I have two blogs that I post for on a weekly basis. I have self-discipline or I would not have all the really good things in my life. I think that I am just afraid. Now I just do not know what to do with it. I know that this post has to resolution but it is honest. Thanks for reading always and see you next week.