The Language of the Unheard

I more or less finished "North to the Klondike." It needs a bunch more work but the main story frame is out on paper. I started the 'zombie' story, "The Language of the Unheard" on Sunday and right now I am eight scenes and 10,000 words in. The extensive outlining that I did on notecards has really been helping me. I just went through and made one notecard for each scene and on that card I listed the plot points and details that needed to make it into each scene. Then as I go along, I'm still creating a lot of the story but I'm not missing anything important to the story. It's really helped me reveal my character's backstory (which is one of her main motivations for this story) a little at a time. And as I go into the five digit word counts, where I start to second guess myself, I know that I have a good plan ahead of me and if I just follow what I've laid out, the story will come together in the end. So far I feel really good about the story and if I can keep my words per scene up at this same level, I'll have the longest book I've ever written. I'm striving for at least 80,000 words but we'll see how that plays out. I have twenty more days until I start school for summer quarter so we'll see how far I can get by then. But even after school starts, I won't be working so I should still have some time to work on it.

Finishing up one project, and starting on another

Well I finished my last read-through of "Christmas at the Holiday Inn" to find the last minute little mistakes this morning.  Then I went over to Kinkos and got it printed up and put it into covers for my family for Christmas.  I'll be posting it here probably on Wednesday.  I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out, considering I had my first idea for it less than two weeks ago.

Now that that is finished, I start the somewhat daunting task of editing "Runaway Train."  The first problem is that the novel is only 40,000 words right now and I'd like it to end up at more like 60,000 words.  There's a lot I CAN add, but I'm interested in finding the best places to add some words.  I need to work on figuring out what the theme is and structure the book towards that end.  I know what the story is, but right now there are several underlying themes and I want to narrow that down to one main theme and work towards that with the book.  The start is a little slow so I want to fix that and get into the meat of the story right away.  Back story can be worked in later.  And of course there is spelling and grammar and punctuation to fix as well. 

I'm hoping to get it sent out to beta readers by the end of January so I've got my work cut out for me.  And, again, let me know if you'd like to be a beta reader for me.

Sore tongues and short stories

Well I don't have a whole lot to report on today but it is my day off so I thought I'd better give you all some sort of love today.

Yesterday I was at work and we got in these candies which look like popsicles but they are hard, sour candy on the outside, and soft taffy in the middle.  So I decided to try one out and I ate the whole thing.  Now the outside is rough from the sour stuff that they put on it, so it's like rubbing your tongue down sand paper, and you know how if you eat too much sour candy, the acid wears away at your tongue after a while.  So the combination of those two things meant that my tongue was just totally raw by the time I was done and extremely painful.  Aaron and I got Thai food last night from our favorite Thai restaurant on Capitol Hill, Jai Thai, and my dish had lime in it which was very good but the acid just killed my tongue and I finally had to stop less than halfway through my dinner and just eat the rice.  Even today my tongue is a bit sore, although better than it was.  But I learned my lesson.  No more sour popsicle candies for me! Although it was yummy, I have to say.  But not worth it.

As far as the short story, I'm having a really fun time writing it.  I love Christmas and I'm just making this story fun.  It doesn't have any super deep meaning and I'm not worried too much about tone or pacing or all of the stuff I'm usually concerned with in a longer piece.  I'm just plugging along at it, enjoying the atmosphere of snow and holidays and just having a lot of fun.  I started it yesterday after writing a rough outline the day before and I'm already at 4,784 words which isn't bad for two days of work.  I estimate it will be about ten thousand words by the time it's finished which puts me about halfway through.  We'll see how my estimate holds up at the end.  But I'm hoping that when I post it here for you to read, possibly as soon as next week, that you will all enjoy reading it as much as I am enjoying writing it.

Well, that's all from me.  Happy writing and happy holidays to you all!

Down to the wire...

There are exactly 3 days and 2 hours left in NaNoWriMo, and my current word count is 43,625 which leaves me with 6,375 words left to write in that time.  Last time I did NaNo, in 2008, I hit 75,000 words and finished my story by the end of the month and this time I'm pushing the limit of just completeing it.  But last time I also didn't have a boyfriend and now I live with mine so that takes up some of my novel writing time.  But also I've just been lazy.  No real excuse.  But I'm planning to hit 46,000 by the end of the night tonight so then I'll just have that last four thousand to do over the next three days.  Shouldn't be too hard.  Then the hard part will be forcing myself to finish the story, since it won't be over by 50,000 words, especially since my main female character just went and got herself bit by a poisonous snake in the middle of the Mexican jungle.  Which was totally NOT scripted, I'd like to point out.  A bit of improv on her part.

Alright, I'm off to put some apple turnovers in the oven and then crank out another thousand or so words before they are done, hopefully!

Happy noveling!

Novel Update

So after writing that last entry, I decided to be brave and take a look at my stats on the NaNo website, which I knew wouldn't be good since I have pretty much ignored my novel for almost a week.  Fortunatly I found that I was only about two thousand words behind schedule so I set to work to catch up.  As it stands now, I've written a total of 38,769 words, 2428 from today which puts me barelly back on schedule.  So I'm going to try to break 40,000 words before Aaron gets home from work to put myself ahead again.  Then tomorrow I'm off too, so that will leave me lots of time to get close to wrapping this thing up!

NaNo and other writing projects update!

So I'd been getting a bit discouraged lately by my novel, not because it's bad, because I don't think it's that bad, not because my word count is low, which it isn't, but because I'm not sure I have enough story left.  Although 50,000 words is the requirement for NaNoWriMo, it is a bit low for an acutal novel, and I was hoping that I would have enough story to fill out 80,000 or more words.  As it stands, I think this book will end up around 60,000.  So I was a little disappointed that I wasn't going to be able to write a book of the length that I wanted, but I was doing some research online today and it looks like mystery novels, which mine could be considered, usually fall more in the range of 60,000 to 80,000, which is much more attainable to me at this point.  So I feel a little better, and I also know that there are parts of my novel which could be fleshed out a bit, although I hate doing that.  I prefer the action to the detail and tend to jump from action to action in my writing.  Mostly because that is the way I like to read; I hate reading boring filler scenes.  If something exciting isn't happening, I usually get bored.

So right now I am at 35,195 words, with plans to add a few thousand more before the day is over.  My characters escaped from jail and are now trying to figure out the next step in their plans.  I still have almost half the month left, so at the rate I'm going, I'll be done in time to spend the rest of the month outlining my next book, which I think will be a sequal to Runaway Train, which I need to finish editing and begin submitting to agents.

So my current projects or soon-to-be projects are:

1. Runaway Train.  Possibly young adult survival adventure romance which stands at 40,277 words and needs some more editing and adding before it is ready to submit to agents.

2. Finding Innisburg.  Currently at 35,195 words, needs to be finished, edited and submitted to agents.                                                                                                                                                                       
 3. As yet unnamed short story.  Probably will be an Old West rendition of Much Ado about Nothing, with no comic spoofiness to it and delving deeply into the characters of the original Shakespeare.

4. As yet unnamed sequals to Runaway Train.  Before I started, I planned a whole trilogy so I have rough outlines for two more books.

5. Unnamed screenplay.  Probably about a girl who embezzles a bunch of money from her work with no forethought and runs away to Guatemala just because she felt impulsive.  Will be writing that for Script Frenzy in April.

So that's what I'll be working on for probably another year or so.  Hows your life?

2:56AM Update

Yes, I'm still awake.  Just hit 26,000 words and starting to feel a little tired.  But at least I am way out in front on my word count, over 6,000 words higher than where I need to be to be on track.  So that is a nice feeling. 

Happy Noveling!

2:05AM Update!

Well, as you can see from the title, it's 2:05AM and I just passed the 25,000 word mark! Halfway there and it feels great! The NaNo website has these cool stats for number people like me, so according to mine, I have to write 1389 words per day to finish on time, and on average I've written 2085 words per day and at that rate I will finish on November 23.  That's a whole week ahead! This is the first time that I've been scheduled to finish earlier than November 25.  Two years ago I hit 75,000 words and finished my novel on November 25, so the goal is to beat that this year. 

Well, more stretching exercises for me and then on to 26,000!

1:10 AM update!

Not that anyone probably cares, but I promised updates, so here they are.  It's 1:10 AM. I got home from Aaron's store about quarter to midnight, stopped at the store to pick up some novel food in the form of Pringles, 5-Hour Energy, G2 Gatorade, Cherry Dr. Pepper and Red Vines, and then got to work on the novel.  So as it stands now, I'm at 24,084 words and going to push on towards 25,000 here in a minute after I do some stretching and breathing exercises to keep me from being too sore tomorrow.  I'm feeling good, the novel is coming well, I'm right in the midst of the suspense of my novel and the story is so creepy that I'm getting scared just writing it. 

Onward to 25,000!

Script Frenzy and All Nighters

A quick blog entry, and then I'm going to work on my novel.  For reals.

Two things I wanted to share with you, dear readers.  The first is that I am planning on staying up all night to work on my novel/do other things unrelated to working on my novel.  Aaron has inventory at work tonight; he left about two hours ago and won't be home until 6 or 7 AM probably.  So being the supportive girlfriend that I am, I'm going to attempt to stay up for as much of that as I can, puttering away on my trusty laptop, so that I can sleep in with him tomorrow.  Not that sleeping in is usually a problem for me.  So as I embark on my own Night of Writing Dangerously, my word count stands at 22,660 and at bare minimum, I would like to hit the halfway point of 25,000.

The second thing I wanted to tell you about is that I am seriously considering doing Script Frenzy in April.  For those of you who do not know what this is, it is a sister operation of sorts of NaNoWriMo and is for writing screenplays, plays, TV scripts etc.  I have never participated in Script Frenzy but I've recently become intriegued by the idea of writing a screenplay.  I have a couple of ideas that wouldn't work great in a novel but I think would make a great movie.  So I'm bouncing that idea around in my head.  We'll see.

Well, Aaron just called and he forgot something here that he needs for inventory, so I'm going to run that down to him.  Then I'll start on the nightly word count when I get home.