Tattoos

As you probably know, I currently have two tattoos ("Freedom is not Free" on my wrist and a tree on my ankle). I have long promised myself that when I published my first book, I would get a tattoo to represent my love of writing, which has been one of the only real constants in my life. So although I have not been published, I have been mulling over what design I wanted to get.

I'm leaning towards an old fashioned typewriter with a sheet of paper coming out of it. I want to get something written on the paper and I can't decide between "Once upon a time..." and "Nothing that happens to a writer, however happy, however tragic, is ever lost." The last one is probably too long though.

I also like tattoos that don't just stand alone but have some flowers around them or something like this picture. But I want to get some meaningful flowers, and I can't decide...I also like the placement of this one.

Any thoughts? Anyone have a writing tattoo already?

Short Stories and Organizing

So I'm still about halfway through "The Language of the Unheard" and while I'm wrapping that up, I've decided to try my hand at some short stories. I haven't written many short stories since high school, where I used to write them almost exclusively. I've heard they're a good way to get your foot in the door and if you get them published in a magazine, they might even make you a little cash!

So my first one is entitled "The Banks of Belronan" and it is a classic tragic romance about selkies, the mythical seal women of Ireland. I'm writing as a frame story with an old woman telling a tale she was told as a child. We'll see how it turns out.

I also finally organized all my little scribblings of story ideas and tidbits into Microsoft OneNote and I feel so much better now. I had to go through two notebooks, the notes section of my phone and countless random pieces of paper to find them all, but they're all sorted by type into the one program now. There's places for me to add more notes to them later on and pictures of things that inspired me etc. I am including an amazing picture of the Aurora Borialis that just keeps me in awe. Anyway, now I don't have to worry about losing things and when I want to find an idea for a story, I just have one place to look. In fact, the selkie story was one that I had thought of a while back and forgotten about until I did this.

Aaron is going camping with his brothers for a few days next week so I'll have to house to myself. I plan on eating lots of cheese-filled foods (he's lactose intolerant but I love cheese), doing a lot of writing, staying up ridiculously late, sleeping in, and watching plenty of chick flicks.

A question...

I've been thinking a lot about a particular question lately. If you were the only person left alive in the world, and there was no chance that anyone would ever read your writing, would it change how or how much you write?

Of course the pressure is on as writers to answer no. To say that we only write for the love of it, the we do it all for ourselves. But I think that if I am being entirely honest with myself, I would have to say that it would change in someways. I do write for myself, and I would never stop writing entirely. But a big reason of why I write is to share my thoughts and stories with other people. If I knew I would never be published or never make any money from it, it wouldn't change the way I wrote at all. I could still share my writing free over the Internet, or give it to family and friends. But if no one would ever read it, I don't know if I would really write novels the way I do now. I think I would keep a journal still, because that helps me sort through my thoughts and I might write a novel occasionally, but part of the fun of writing for me is figuring out what other people like to read in addition to what I like to write. It's honing my craft in a way that make others enjoy it more. If I was writing only for myself, I think I would lose so much of that it might not even be very much fun.

What about you? If no one would EVER read your writing, and you could know this for sure, would you still write the same way you do now?

Antagonist love...

I am rather falling in love with my antagonist. Yes, I realize this is a bad thing as she is a murderer and therefore supposed to be unlikable. But it all started when I found an AWESOME picture of her, looking just like I pictured her and then from here, she blossomed. At first, she was all bad...if she were a man she would have had a long black twirly sort of mustache, but then she started explaining her reasons for the murder to me. She was going to get fired for something that was only sort of her fault and if she got fired, she'd be evicted, and if she was evicted she'd lose custody of her son.

And the poor girl was abused as a child and she's a little bold and outspoken which can get her into trouble and I kind of just feel sorry for her. I almost like her better than my protagonist, who is sweet and is going to get herself some gumption by the end of the book (finally!) but in the mean time she's kind of boring. Alright, what's a girl to do? How do I make my protagonist more likable than my antagonist. I'm worried if I feel this way, everyone else will too.

Anyway, I'm including my picture of her. Her name is Veronica "Ronnie" Bennett. Gotta love it.

Character Surveys or questionnaires

So many writers do "character surveys" of their main characters to get to know them better and really make them come to live. These surveys for those of you who are not familiar, ask a variety of question such as "What is their favorite color?" or "Do they have a birth mark?" or "What do they consider their greatest weakness to be?"

I have always hated these. I have tried to do them on a number of occasions, but I hated the experience and I never felt like knowing my character's favorite color really made them come to life. Some of the questions I could answer based on what I have planned out of my plot, for example, if my character just wants to make a lot of money so she won't turn out like her white trash mother who she is embarrassed by, then a question like "What is their greatest fear?" could make sense. I could answer that based on relevant information from the book. Someone who simply read my book could figure out that answer.

But the majority of the questions are completely irrelevant to the story I am writing and what my character had for breakfast doesn't seem to "round them out" at all. I am simply making up something, probably the first cereal that comes to mind, since what they had for breakfast simply doesn't tell me much about their character, at least for most people it doesn't. Of course, if someone has a butler preparing him eggs Benedict at six AM then that is relevant, but for your Average Joe, it is probably more indicative of what was in the cupboard or fridge when they got hungry.

HOWEVER, I am going to qualify this by saying that I have never been great at character development. Plots have always been my strong point and I take a plot and run with it. My characters go through harrowing adventures but their actual character seems a little soft or flat. Maybe this is because I am totally an introvert, and would spend my life in a cabin in the mountains by myself if I could. But whatever the reason, I am well aware that this is something I need to improve on in my writing. Twice now I have gotten rejections from agents regarding Finding Innisburg that said "Your premise is intriguing, but I didn't connect with the narrative as strongly as I had hoped." In my interpretation, this is agent-speak for "You have a good plot idea but your characters kind of suck."

So as I go into my yet-unnamed "zombie" novel (I put "zombie" in quotes because Aaron has informed me that I do not understand the concept of zombies, having not watched enough zombie movies, and thus my zombies are not TRUE zombies and I will piss off zombie lovers such as himself if I call them this. However, for lack of a better term, they shall remain "zombies" until further notice.), I want to develop my characters better and thus I have issued myself a challenge:

COMPLETE A FULL CHARACTER SURVEY FOR EACH OF MY EIGHT SUSPECTS AND MY MAIN PROTAGONIST

This will be like pulling teeth for me, but many, many writers who are much more experienced than I am swear by this method and I cannot discredit it without giving it a real, fair try. So I will answer every question no matter how unrelated to the story it is, and see if I "get to know" my characters any more. Wish me luck. I'll need it.

Also, I am interested in knowing if you writers out there use these, and if so, how effective they are for you. FEEDBACK TIME! :-)

Collecting things

I cannot for the life of me find the article now, but a few days back I was puttering around online and I found an article which was a step by step process of writing a novel. The writer of the article said that the first step was collecting ideas. She (I'm pretty sure it was a woman!) said that many writers were collectors as kids, never throwing things away and always wondering when something that they had might come in handy. She said that as adults, this translated into collecting ideas and inspiration for out books.

This really struck me as a brilliant thought. I was absolutely a collector as a kid and in some ways I still am. Much to the chagrin of my mother, I never wanted to throw anything away, be it a scrap of paper I scribbled in in second grade, or a little bolt that I might need some day. I have improved on that, but I still collect ideas, just as she said.

I have a space in the coffee table in our living room where I am constantly stashing things, mostly papers, that I don't want to throw away. Well, Aaron finally got fed up with it and made me clean it out and organize it yesterday. As I sorted through all sorts of stuff (which by the way were in layers like an archaeological dig, it was kind of cool...like a slice of my life over the past few months) I came across dozens of little scraps of paper, receipts, pieces torn off of larger paper pieces, note cards, anything that you can write on. These had ideas for future stories, quotes that caught my eye, thoughts about my current story, phrases of speech that I found especially exquisite. I always just jot them down on whatever is handy, during movies, while at work (I have probably hundreds written on Blockbuster receipt paper while I worked there). Anyway, the experience reminded me of the article about collecting and showed me that, yes, I am absolutely still a collector. Just a collector of thoughts and experiences.

I would like to end with a couple of quotes about writing that have been an inspiration to me since I was a young girl. I saw both of these quotes in book about writing and had them written in Sharpie on the inside of my "writing notebook" which I kept while I was in middle school and early high school before I had a computer.

"Inspiration only knocks. Some writers expect it to knock down the door and drag them out of bed."

This second one I'm not sure if I have the details write so you can correct me if I'm wrong:

"No experience, good or bad, is lost on a writer who can put it to use." That one especially has gotten me through some hard times in my life as it is very true. A writer who experiences only pleasant experiences will not be able to write as effectively about the difficult ones.

What, are you an actress?

So I spent a couple of hours yesterday dissecting my outline for North to the Klondike, with most of my focus on what I call the "internal story," i.e. the part of the story that deals with character development and what the character's motivations are. I laid out index cards for each scene and made sure that there were both internal and external things happening and now I feel much better about the book. Today I've been rewriting some of the scenes that I had written earlier and I think I have a better chance of seeing this book through to completion.

At the same time that I was reworking my book, I was making notes on some universal elements of story writing, at least my story writing, mostly with regard to the internal elements as related to the external. And the end result is that I really want to write a book on writing, or at least on my take with writing. Of course having never been published, I don't exactly posses the qualifications to write such a book, but I'm thinking of writing it anyway and then when it's finished, putting it on here in pieces. What do you think?

In addition, (see how many good things can come from taking a step back and planning instead of just foraging ahead?) I think I can use the notes I made yesterday to rework my old novel "Runaway Train" which I sort of gave up on after I realized the story has absolutely no backbone. But I think I can use my new method, which I am hereby dubbing "The Anna Method" to fill in the blanks in my story.

In a less writing related topic, it looks like I'm going to get into school this summer to begin my prerequisites for nursing school (assuming that I don't get an agent, find a publisher and get a million dollar advance between now and then) so I have exactly 33 days more of leisurely unemployment. I'm still hoping to finish North to the Klondike and maybe have a reworked outline for Runaway Train by then.

I also sent off my first snail mail queries today. Up until now, I've just been querying via email to the agents that accept email queries, but 94 queries later and I'm beginning to run out. So I mailed off four queries today to agents that do not accept email queries. I was at the post office sending them and the man behind the counter looked at what I was mailing and said, "What, are you an actress?" I'll admit, it felt good to say, "No, I'm a writer." But at the same time, I wanted to point at the addresses and say "LITERARY AGENT. Not TALENT AGENT." But oh well. I sent out nine more email queries last night and still no replies at all today. So far I've had responses from about 25% of my total queries so I still have a ways to go. Of course for many agents, no response just means no, so I might never hear from some of them.

Planning out 2011

So being the planner that I am, I made out a plan today for how I'm going to do all of my writing projects in the New Year.  The plan goes as follows:

By December 15th: Finish editing and printing out "Christmas at the Holiday Inn" for my friends and family

By January 31st: Finish editing Runaway Train, find and submit it to beta readers

By February 28th: Receive Runaway Train back from beta readers, make final changes and begin submitting to agents.  Also, finish writing and editing the short story "The Banks of Belronan."

By March 31st: Finish outline/research for Script Frenzy screenplay and submit "The Banks of Belronan" to a short story contest.

By April 30th: SCRIPT FRENZY 2011!!! Write screenplay.

By May 31st:  Finish outline for sequel to Runaway Train, currently titled Hand-me-down Mercury.

By June 30th: Finish editing "Finding Innisburg" and submit to beta readers

By August 31st: Write Hand-me-down Mercury and finish editing and begin submitting "Finding Innisburg" to agents.

By September 30th:  Finish rewrites on screenplay and find and submit to beta readers

By October 31st: Finish outline for sequel to Hand-me-down Mercury.

By November 30: NaNoWriMo 2011!!!! Finish Hand-me-down sequel.

By December 31st: Finish last rewrites on screenplay and submit to agents and begin editing on Hand-me-down Mercury.

So that is the plan.  Yes, it is extremely ambitious and yes, probably out of my reach.  But on my 22nd birthday I gave myself three years to make it as a writer.  Three years to do what I really love with my life.  And  I don't want to get to my 25th birthday and feel like I didn't give it my best shot.  So I'm going all out.  If I can pull this year off like this, I will get to the end of 2011 with a total of two novels and a screenplay being submitted to agents and another two novels in various stages of editing.

Also, you'll notice that according to the plan, on two separate occasions, I will need beta readers for my novels.  I'm taking volunteers now if you'd like to help me prepare my novels for submission.  "Runaway Train" is a post-apocalyptic love story.  The theme is that even when everything changes in your life, sometimes, nothing really changes at all.  Right now, the main characters are in their early twenties but recently I've been contemplating the idea of possibly making it a young adult novel by putting the characters in their teens.  It might be an interesting change so I'm interested to see what people have to say about that.

"Finding Innisburg" is a mystery/thriller novel about a young man and his quest to find out why there is a classic American town in the middle of the Guatemalan jungle.  I'll be interested to know if it's gripping enough or if it rambles too much. 

If you would be interested in reading either of these and providing me with feedback regarding them, please shoot me an email at locachica1357ATyahoo.com.  Just let me know which one or both you are interested in and I'll be in touch. 

And of course, throughout 2011 I'll be updating you all on my progress as I try to make something of myself so STAY TUNED.

And now, for the second part of this increasingly long blog entry, there is a pineapple express going through Seattle right now and it is just DUMPING rain outside.  It's pretty remarkable.  (for those of you who don't know, a pineapple express is when warm, wet weather systems move up to the Pacific Northwest from Hawaii, bring lots and lots of rain and mild temperatures)  Also, I woke up this morning to find out that Santa had come during the night (a bit early, but I'm guessing he's trying to get a head start this year) and left two presents with my boyfriend's handwriting on the tags.  It was very cute and I'm excited to see what they are.  

Happy Holidays to you all, and good night!

The End

Well, Finding Innisburg is finished.  All the loose ends are wrapped up, all the appropriate people have gone to jail and the two main characters are getting married.  I typed "The End" very happily about five minutes ago and now am feeling very accomplished.

Am I happy with it? Yes.  I think the story came together well considering I started at the beginning 31 days ago.  It didn't go exactly like my outline, but it works pretty good.  I probably won't read over it or try to edit it for at least a month to put some distance between me and it but I'm satisfied.  With some editing and padding it won't be half bad.  It ended up at 51,079 words which isn't as long as I had hoped but my stories usually gain some words in the editing process, so I'll probably be fine.

Whats up next?  Well, since I haven't been able to come up with a brilliant Christmas story idea, I think I'll write up a short story about a selkie who falls in love with a man.  We'll see how that turns out.  But for right now I'm going to go toast up an English muffin and pour myself a glass of celebratory milk. :P

SURVIVAL KIT FOR STAYING UP ALL NIGHT or NOT ABOUT WRITING

The title pretty much says it all.  I have been talking, reading and breathing nothing except writing for a while now, so I decided its time for something new.  Something informative.  Something useful.  So here goes my SURVIVAL KIT FOR STAYING UP ALL NIGHT (subtitled: Getting by on Little or No Sleep)

First off, I'd like to say that I am an expert in this field.  I am way over-qualified to write this. (By the way, never trust anyone who says that they are an expert at anything.  The real experts don't have to say it.  But I do.)

SURVIVAL KIT FOR STAYING UP ALL NIGHT:

1. Toothbruth and toothpaste. I don't care where you are or what you are doing that is making you stay up so late, brush your teeth in the morning.  It will trick your brain into thinking that you are getting up, not staying up.  Besides, I've heard that this can also be good for your teeth.

2. Water.  Drink at least twice as much water as anything else.  This goes for the whole night.  If you drink two cups of coffee, drink four cups of water. Etc. It's also good for you, and being hydrated is important for making sure you feel the best that you can.

3. Breakfast. Eat it.  Food will make you feel better and give you more energy.

4. Speaking of energy: 5-Hour energy is amazing.  No sugar, very few calories and it tastes ok too.  It's better than sugar filled energy drinks.  You will thank me at noon.

5. Visine.  Or similar eye drops.  Its amazing how much better you feel when your eyes aren't blurry and they don't itch and they aren't red and puffy.  One drop of an eye drop in each eye will do wonders for you.

6. Tylonol.  Or pain killer of choice.  You don't have to take it, but keep it on hand in case you feel a headache coming on. 

Now of course nothing replaces real sleep, but with these six simple things, you can almost pretend like you did sleep.  They really work wonders if you go with all six of them.  I promise.

Some thoughts...

First off, an apology for the lack of creativity in the title. No excuse.

So the novel has been sitting on my hard drive for almost two days without any love from me, its beloved author.  Generally my only problem in writing comes from not knowing what to write next, but these days I know what to write, I know how to write it, I just don't want to.  Someone smack me upside the head, please.

As a slight excuse to the writing gods, I offer up the fact that I have worked 17 of the last 24 hours with three hours of sleep in there somewhere.  It's been pretty hectic.

On a different creative front, however, I have finished reading two books on screenwriting, and am slowly coming up with a plot to let me try my hand at screenwriting.  I think it will be a challenge for me in the sense that I write from a very emotional place, and screenwriting is a much more visual art form.  I am looking forward to how this new medium will challenge me and improve or change my novel-writing skills.  One of the books I have is entitled How Not to Write a Screenplay and the author points out some obvious mistakes that apparently novice screenwriters make.  Several of them are eye-opening to me regarding writing in general, particularly those dealing with overwriting and not leaving things to the readers imagination.  In a screenplay, obviously, this is derived from the fact that the director and actors will be interpreting the descriptions in their own way, but I think it has some correlations in standard prose writing as well.  It has been a fascinating and eye-opening journey through that book.

Often times I have wondered or pondered the difference between a thriller and a mystery.  Obviously some works fall distinctly on one side or the other of this line but often I've noticed some middle ground that seems a bit ambiguous.  The author of How Not to Write a Screenplay (forgive me, I'm too lazy right now to get up and grab the book to find out  his name) defines the difference as follows.  He says that in a thriller, the audience (or reader) knows what the hero or heroine is trying to find out.  Thus, they know who the bad guy is, where the bomb is, or who has the child before the protagonist finds out for him or herself.  In a mystery, the main character solves the problem or mystery before the reader does, and then reveals it to the reader or audience in some way.  I don't know how much this difference is accepted in literary circles, but it made a lot of sense to me and drew an interesting line between the way an audience or reader connects with the main character.  Given this definition, the audience would be protective or worried for the main character in a thriller, but in a mystery, they would identify with him or her more along the journey, and come out with more respect perhaps.  Just an interesting thought for me.

Other than that, I am discovering reading over this entry that I am highly contemplative on no sleep and too much caffeine.  And so, adieu. Parting is such sweet sorrow.

Writing as a career?

For about two years now, I have had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I dropped out of college at 20 because I didn’t want to take out student loans if I didn’t know what I was going to use my degree for. Since then, I have been working at Blockbuster trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. My parents are getting anxious.

Well last night, the answer seemed to hit me. Ever since I was a very small child, I wanted to be an author. It wasn’t until I was a teenager and realized that being an author is not a sure source of income, that I tried to choose a different career path. Well last night I decided that I should just go for it. I’m 22 years old, I have quite a bit of life ahead of me before I have to become responsible, so if I want to become a published author, I should just try now. So I gave myself a deadline of three years, which puts me at 25. If, by my 25th birthday, I have still not made any headway towards becoming a full-time writer, then I will put my writing aside and find something responsible to do.

In the meantime, however, this is the plan. Write on my blog on a much more regular basis. If you guys enjoy reading my blog, I’d very much appreciate it if you would share it with your family and friends. This way I can establish a readership base. Second on the plan is to write at least two novels a year, revise them and seriously start querying agents. Thirdly, I will write some short stories and attempt to win contests with them and get them published to get some credentials under my belt.

On the NaNoing side of things, I am at 14,549 words!

Wish me luck!

The Final Countdown!

Well it is officially one week until NaNoWriMo starts! I am more than ready for it to begin and already have figured out where I am going to be at midnight on Halloween. I'll be at the local pizza place, which is open late, with my laptop and a slice of pizza and at the stroke of midnight I will furiously type out the first 1,667 words (the daily quota for NaNoWriMo) before bed. Now I'll probably have to work the following morning at nine o'clock or so, so I may not be the happiest camper in the world, but it's all worth it in pursuit of literary mediocrity.

On a somewhat side note, I came up with an idea for a fabulous short story which I will probably write after NaNo. Now I am taking a sort of risk, I suppose, by putting my idea out here, so NO TOUCHY TOUCHY! HANDS OFF MY IDEA!

Anyway, now that that official admonition has been issued, the idea is to write an Old West rendition of the Shakespeare play Much Ado about Nothing. It's my favorite of all of his plays and I feel it could be perfectly set on a cattle ranch in Montana. The only thing I have to figure out is if I can actually get it published/enter it in contests, or if it is plagiarism since it's a rendition of a separate work. I know Shakespeare is public property or whatever the legal terms is, but since I didn't come up with the idea myself, is it still ok? I think it is, since books like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies basically do the same thing. But I'll have to look into that some more. Either way, it would be fun to write.

NOTE: After doing a big more research on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, it appears that that book has Jane Austin credited as co-author. I wonder if that makes it ok?

Outline complete!

So many apologies for the lack of blog posts lately. I have no excuse other than that I've just been doing other things.

So I finished my outline for NaNoWriMo. It's quite exciting because I had experienced some moments of doubt as I wasn't sure I was going to be able to figure out the novel. But I've got a plot, a sub-plot and I'm working on planning out some more fun, well-rounded characters. Since that's mostly what I've been working on, I thought I'd fill you in on the details of how I plan a novel.

1. It starts with an idea. One beautiful, shining nugget of an idea. It will pop into my head randomly and I will immediately get very excited and start running around like a chicken with it's head cut off.

2. As soon as I get the idea, more ideas start to come. I start to see some characters in my head that could work, and I begin to feel a tone for the book coming on. At this point I am euphoric and nothing could ever bring me down.

3. Now I decide to write. This could be the same day that I get the idea, or months or even years later. I'll begin by writing a short synopsis of the idea, sort of summing up the main points. Then I slowly begin to tease out the details.

4. I do a bullet list of an outline, listing points that I want to make, scenes that I want to include and characters that I want to introduce. Then I put the list more or less in chronological order. This is where the hard part comes in. Once I have part of my idea down, I begin to realize that there are huge holes or gaps in the story, where the characters jump from J to P without stopping at K, L, M, N or O first. This is frustrating because often I have no idea what these letters are going to be. But often I find that if I just let my brain work over these problems during my day to day activities, as long as I keep them in the back of my mind, the solutions usually slowly come to me, one day at a time.

5. This is also an exciting time because great, perfect ideas will come to and eventually the book really seems to be coming together. Now I take my rough bullet list and turn it into an actual, beautiful outline, with Roman numerals and everything. I fill the list in and put things where they go. It is usually at this point that I find my plot holes, and realize (in the case of this novel) that one character can not be hero, villain, and be killed, so I will need a few more characters.

6. Once the outline is done, I go back through all my notes and miscellaneous questions and comments to myself and make sure that I haven't forgotten anything that I wanted to include.

7. At this point I usually begin writing the book itself, but in the case of this particular novel, I still have over 17 days until NaNo starts so now I'll have to content myself with possibly picking up a few more subplots, and creating some more characters.

So it's quite a relief to have the outline done, because now I know that the book can be pulled off, it's like planning a trip for months and finally getting your vacation approved at work, making your hotel reservations and booking the flight. It's all coming together now and I think it's really doable. I have my road map and now I'm ready for the trip to begin!

Bring it on, November!

(Comic used with permission from Debbie Ridpath Ohi at http://www.inkygirl.com)

28 days 'til NaNo

So since we're on the final month before NaNoWriMo, I figured maybe I need to start working out the details, or some of them, of my book. Some people write with no structure, some people write with every detail planned in advance, and I am somewhere in the middle. I have to plan enough that when I get to the difficult to write scenes, I know where I'm going with it, where I need to get to, and this lets me push through to the next important part. With no structure, or not enough structure, I get to this point and either go way off track, changing the entire direction of my book, or give up, because I can't figure out how to get where I want my book to end up.

But, on the flipside, I don't stick to a plan religiously. My outlines usually involve a four or five word heading summing up each chapter or so, with fifteen or so chapters per novel. Within each heading are two or three one or two word bullet points reminding me what to include within that subject. But while I'm writing, I'll usually think of more things to put in and include those, and also realize that some things no longer work or make sense, and leave those out. I also rewrite the outline while I'm working on the book, adding things in later in the book that I'll need to put in based on what I'm currently writing.

This novel is somewhat of a new challenge for me in a couple of ways. This will be my third novel over all and about my four-billionth story, so I have some precedence to work on. But this will be my first time writing a first person story from the perspective of a man. Also, when I'm coming up with ideas for books, I generally come up with some details, or specific story ideas that I want to include and then build a book around it. With this one, I came up with a very general idea, and and working on the specifics at the moment, which is somewhat backwards from my usual. So it is somewhat difficult for me, but also exciting.

I'm also working on creating some very dynamic characters for this story, since I think character sympathy is going to be very important for the movement of the story. Characters are always my weak point and I find it hard to avoid stereotypes when creating characters.

Another challenge/opportunity that I'm taking is that I'm creating this book as though the basis for the story was a national/international story, well known, and now the main person involved is writing the book from his perspective. So that's a bit different from just a regular novel. But I'm excited and am trying to work out some of the middle filler to get me from A to B. I'll keep you posted!

National Novel Writing Month

I know I've mentioned NaNoWriMo a couple of times recently so I thought I should mention it a bit further. NaNoWriMo is an abbreviation for NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth. It is held annually in November, and hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world participate by attempting to write a 50,000 word, semi-coherent novel from 12:01 AM on November 1st, until 11:59 PM on November 30th. The idea is to simply get your ideas on paper, and accept that the first draft will be bad whether you spend thirty days, or thirty years on it. Editing comes later.

Participants chat online at http://www.nanowrimo.com/ and discuss everything from grammar issues to favorite novel-writing snacks. In addition, local groups will meet up for "write-ins" at local coffee shops and libraries, where they work on their novels, chat, and have various contests for highest word count, etc. NaNoWriMo is all about the word counts. NaNoers have a million ways to boost their word count, from the fair (long stories told by one character to another) to the slightly unfair, but still doable (having a character with twelve middle names, which are all used every time they are spoken to, or having a character quote long passages of Scripture)

I participated for the first time in 2008, writing, and finishing, a 75,000 word novel based on my personal experience with online dating and the stigma that I felt from family and friends. In 2009, I was too busy and didn't participate but I'm going to go for it again in 2010. Every year, various regions (as small as a city or as large as a country) compete for highest total word count among everyone in their region. Seattle has consistently won, year after year.

This year, my novel is going to be a mystery/thriller novel about a young photojournalist who stumbles upon a village deep in the jungles of Venezuela where the people are living just as if they are in a 1950's New England village. He must attempt to find out the sinister scheme behind their disappearance from 1953 Pennsylvania and their re-appearance in 2010 Venezuela. Along the way he gains friends and a girlfriend, and possibly finds out some dark secrets in his family's history.

So starting in October I need to begin constructing an outline for it (outlining etc before November is fair game, as long as you don't start any actual writing) to be ready in time for November 1st. Then in November I need to average over 1600 words a day to "win" NaNoWriMo by completing my novel.

There's still time to sign up if anyone is interested. It's free and just for fun. Check out http://www.nanowrimo.com/ for more information.