Recent Progress for February

She's back! To write more personal stuff!

I haven't kept up with posting updates much thanks to a few factors. One of which was being sick the last few weeks. I lost a lot of time sleeping and being grumpy but managed to achieve a few things:

• Finished Writing Down The Bones by Natalie Goldberg and wrote a very short opinion on the book to work on my reviewing skills, and started Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.
• Got to page 80 of LBW. If the ideas keep flowing and I keep up two pages a day then I'll be making sweet progress. Actually I'd be happy with just a page a day or four pages a week.
• Low standards? Nope, I'm just a slow writer with trouble getting ideas. Goal: page 90 by March 5^th 
• Started my first weekly critique after a short break. By the way, I recommend Critique Circle, great place.
• Finished the paper revision I was doing of Serpenttongue. Now I'm plugging it in and making slight revisions as I go. Still finding spots lacking something uncertain, but there's always another go-through. I haven't set any goal other than be past chapter 25 by month's end.
• Still working on a new short story featuring my vampire. It's proving difficult to write. I just don't know the story. Goal: just work on it!

I have uber faith I can succeed, especially if I spend more days getting up at three like I did Thursday. I went back to sleep of course, but I figure why not use that time if I'm up anyway.

What are your goals for the rest of the month?

New Year's Eve / Make Up Your Mind Day

Hello, and happy New Year's Eve to those who celebrate it.

Today also happens to be Make Up Your Mind Day where you...make up your mind, obviously. I'm going to observe it by picking one of three short story ideas I started and working towards completion; I think it will be the short about a certain vampire anti-hero that I began freewriting a few months ago and never finished. Silly me tried to type it out first, and that's just not how my brain works.

It's the perfect day to set those resolutions too.

So happy Make-Up-Your-New-Year's-Eve-Mind-Day to you. Hope it's productive and fruitful.

Are You Ghoul, Revenant, or Zombie (Part II)

Welcome to part two of my rinky-dink series on what I've learned from brief research about ghouls, revenants and zombies. You can click here for the section on ghouls.

The Revenant

Having a revenant sounds cool, but Wikipedia defines it as a ghost or an animated corpse similar to a vampire* so not sold.

In some folklore, it's a person who returns to harass neighbors and family*. Nothing special, like another ghost there.

I do like the other definition it offers: a dead hero brought back by a wizard to go on some quest no one else would brave, under the wizard's control. It also referenced Jason (Friday the 13^th) as a revenant, and the protagonist of The Crow. Side fact: I have never actually seen that movie.

My experience with revenants has been through the Final Fantasy series, a stronger version of a zombie (causing life-drain when it attacked. Like a vampire, if I recall). They're mentioned as spreading disease among the living, which I could make use of.

I'm undecided on revenants.

*Taken from www.wikipedia.org

Are You Ghoul, Revenant, or Zombie? (Part I)

I wanted to write a short story, recycling the beginning of a novel idea I once played with, and realized the idea I had for the main character's disposition, I guess you'd call it, would do better with some kind of explanation or at least a reference to other monster types.

Originally, she was to be a zombie. However, my experience with zombies (and urge to do something a bit different) led me to find another species she fit into. My search led me to explore three: ghoul, revenant, and well, zombie.

The Ghoul

I considered using the ghoul based on their folkloric origin of undead creatures that feed on flesh. They actually originated from Arabian folklore as shape-shifting demons, most often appearing as hyenas, that led travelers into the desert or abandoned places to eat them.* It also eats the dead and takes the form of the person most recently eaten. I found the relation to a Jinn interesting, but while interesting, my story wouldn't take place in a desert, and I don’t require the shape-shifting.

Their depiction varies a lot in fiction, from the flesh-eating horrors of The Dresden Files (first encountered in Summer Knight. Little trivia from a fan), the slightly-stronger vampire-like creatures of Final Fantasy games, to even the unseen, ghostlike inhabitant of the Harry Potter world that lived in old homes (its name escapes me, but it lived in the Weasley's attic in book two).

It's an alternative to the mindlessness of a zombie, and possibly a bit more unique and different, however I'm not sure on a being that also shape-shifts. Not my plan.

It's back to the dictionary.

*Taken from www.wikipedia.org

photo credit: Earl - What I Saw 2.0 via photopin cc

Restless in October

Jerking, twitching.

Too restless.

Racing, spinning.

Too anxious.

Aching, burning.

Too much distraction.

Buzzing, whizzing,

Too many whispers,

And too much white page to fill.

Random, yes, but accurate. Halfway through October my trudging train of progress chugged right into a ditch that silly conductor me has been trying to trudge out of instead of stopping to reassess the cause.

I probably should have used the metaphor of an RC car with a dying battery trying to drive over a speed bump or something. Oh well.

I've still got no clue what caused it, all I know is whenever I sit to do any work on the novels or the short stories I get uncomfortable and anxious, jittery and-–well just see above. Maybe it's time for a new chair, one that actually began with cushion. Maybe I need to rearrange my desk and relocate it again.

(God I hope not. There's limited functional space in here as it is.)

Or perhaps I need to drop two projects and focus on fewer stories.

Possible, but this anxiety feels deeper somehow, and doesn't quite address the jitters (No, I don't drink coffee and haven't had a soda in over a month. Just not my thing.) Maybe I should think about breaking tasks down to amoeba-sized steps.

Step one: Divide writing tasks further to designate one day to one story until you get your head right. Must ponder this one.

So if I accept it's my workspace (it likely is; this chair was never meant to hold anyone for such long periods of time over two years of use), I must hunt out a replacement of ergonomic quality likely requiring self-assembly, not beyond $100 if that chair exists. Meanwhile, I've picked up a lap desk to work away from my flimsy assembly of kindling; it looks like it should suffice for short sessions on the couch or on my bed.

Does anyone have experience with a good ergonomic (or just very cushy) desk chair they're willing to recommend me? I think armrests might be nice, but they aren't the necessity.

Happy Halloween should you be one to celebrate it.

(I totally forgot to get myself candy pumpkins this year.)

August in Review

August is concluded. Pretty sure I completed most of my goals, or enough of them to be satisfied with myself considering three weeks of crushing frustration about writing and plotting.

I have discovered the timer is my friend. With the help of the yTimer program*, I've managed to get more done this month than in past attempts, and I'm only doing 30 minute intervals.

The reasons (in a bullet list!):

• Forces me to focus on one thing at a time, and not worry/consider/daydream about anything else because I have a limited amount of time to work before the obnoxious buzzing occurs.
• Allows me to focus on task at hand because I know that I only have to toil at it for 30 minutes before I can fly from my chair and forget about it for a while instead of staring at a page blankly until I nod off.
• I don't stare at a blank page until I doze off. Somehow, actually having a timer cut back on the frequency of dozing off at my desk, and proceeding irritation of trying to translate what I wrote down right before sleep struck. It wasn't cool in high school, and it isn't cool now.
• Hand-in-hand with the previous, the 30 minute timer buzzes before boredom swoops in and I start playing with fonts in the editor or embellishing letters and doodling in page margins.
• The short breaks between force me to get up and handle other tasks, like preparing for the next day of work, getting more water, or just stretching (which helps with that whole falling asleep issue – who knew?)

Don't ask me why I didn't take to this strategy sooner when I've read and printed so many articles about it already.

I still have the impression of time missing in my week. I've been using methods to track my hours, but still haven't found all those missing minutes. Maybe they never leave bed when I get up in the morning.

Writing

1.      Made it to the end of the first scene of the new short I'm working on. Haven't devoted much time to it.

• Sketched a brief outline for the short.

1.      Still struggling with outline for LBW, but stumbled across a blog, Do-It-Yourself MFA(DIYMFA), with helpful articles, and through playing around with a mind mapping app to make character sketches I surprised myself by finding more ideas for back story, and a few for the plot.

• I also played around with free form character interviews of two characters, and dug up some more back story.

Revision

1.      The short in revision is, well, still in revision. It's one of three stories I've ever done that began right in the middle of the action, and not before. It feels cheesy for that reason, but maybe it really isn't.

2.      ST is so close to being done its 2^nd revision. Goodness, it's been a chore. Call me Madame Treeslayer.

I'm working to take the advice of numerous writers and break writing tasks down to the smallest goals possible. I do it all the time with my daily chores, but never tried with writing. I'm thinking it might help.

Hmm...I should probably decide what my goals for September will be too.

*yTimer by Spacejock software. Free to download and use. I am a fan of his yWriter program, which is how I found the timer.

End of the Month Update

Goodbye July, and hello August. Yet another month has come and gone already.

I tried hard, but my birthday was not to be resisted. It bowled me over, leaving an achy 27 year old me in its wake. I would have let this atrocity go without complaint, except the cheesecake I brought for my birthday was beyond mediocre, and there are some things I just can't let go.

Turns out I did not accomplish my writing goals for the month, because of personal oversight, as is usually the case.

Fireworks, Flame-grills, and Fantastic Fabrications

July, here again, hot and heavy. Tomorrow will bring fireworks and smoking grills, and my least-favorite question to be asked, “What are you doing for your birthday?” That question never gets easier to answer.


I do have plans to get a fair amount of writing and revision done during this yucky month.

Techno-Fail

June was a month of epic failure for me. The spontaneous, ironic, computer kind of failure. More than once I imagined smacking a few people over the head with my dead net-book.

Darn thing didn't even live long enough for me to give it a stupid name, reflect on the stupidity, then rename it.

Reflection on Another's Post

"If a flawed novel entertains, it has done its job."

That is my biggest takeaway from the June 27th post over at The Business Rusch (Yes, I'm late, I've had a bad week of techno-failure that's kept me busy). Don't get me wrong, it's a good post, that line was the emotional face-slap for me. The whole post deals with the idea of perfection.

My Latest News And A Double-Whammy

Mother Nature definitely got the best of me today. Not only was it disgustingly hot and humid, but pollen was rampant. Frankly, I'm surprised I haven't sneezed out chunks of brain or melted into gooey writer-remains. I did not escape drowsiness and the infernal itching caused by pollen. Both make it difficult to get any writing done.

After a three day break from writing (for day long errands away from home) it's back to the plotting and catching up. I'm still working on the unnamed short story I had originally planned to finish by the end of March. I'm only a few pages from completion, at least, while revision of Little Bit Hexed is moving along and giving less hassle than I assumed it would. At the other end of that spectrum is my fantasy novel, where I can't seem to shape rough draft ideas into well rounded forms due to a missing thought in the middle.

Little Bit Witch is crawling forward. Ideas I previously gripped firmly in my mind wriggled free while I was distracted and I still haven't found most of them. Sneaky little jerks.
Tomorrow starts a new day of tasks needing to be done, starting with work on Little Bit Witch.

Here's to productivity.

And no more itchiness.

Smartphone and Me

Dear Smartphone, can't you see,
Your lies, they're just too much for me.
You boast of your capacity,
But yet, everywhere, I see "No Compatibility."
Perhaps you and Productivity were never meant to be?

-Thoughts from a worn-out worker.

At Last

Hello again, how have you been? So much has changed since my wholly unintended disappearance, I have a lot of catching up to do, learning Blogger's new features included.


Considering all the sites I use to keep up with, and the habits I'd settled into prior is fairly shocking; I had never noticed everything I was doing while I was doing it all, but I also had daily Internet access and oodles (great word, by the way) of time. That, however, has been altered indefinitely.

Why Yes, I AM Still Alive...And I've Done Stuff Too.

Hello, hello, been awhile of silence but I'm back-hopefully for more than three bad posts. Life kind of crept up on me, reenacting the shower scene from Psycho. I didn't die, but it halted things for some time. I've caught up, mostly: gotten used to the busy mornings, the afternoon exercises, the strange disappearance of that block of time between morning and evening. It's ironic that right after I created and printed a schedule for myself, everything kind of back-flipped, so I have to analyze my days again.

So, on April 17th, 2010 I attended a festival with my sister, the Black Heritage Festival at University of Baltimore. There were vendors and performances-mostly vendors-and it was a nice taste of what she and I are in for.
I mention the festival because our table happened to be right across from the table of an author who also runs a publishing house (J.M. Benjamin, A New Quality Publishing). He made conversation with us, gave me a little info about writing a synopsis (or at least something to tell people on the street when they ask what I'm writing) as soon as possible, and told me to try submitting work to them to see where I'm at. I made my first connection, woo!

I did something I have never really considered before on Tuesday. I always read people's suggestions on other places you can go to write and thought "yeah, that sounds good" with a noncommittal nod to myself, but for whatever reason it occurred to me to spend my free day there. I didn't get many pages, but the atmosphere was a nice change; with nothing in the environment to distract me it was a bit easier to get coherent lines on the page.
It was a nice experience for me...or maybe it was the hot chocolate. I learned two things: I need to be in the library writing more often, and Seattle's Best makes very sugary hot cocoa, or sugary vanilla, or sugary hazelnut, I threw both in so I'm still narrowing down the suspects.
It hadn't occurred to me until a few days prior that the notebook was nearly full, and I was but two chapters away from the ending...and that I'd wasted most of the month being lazy instead of working toward my goal of finishing before May.
I did the same thing in February, and March. Pattern?
I think I've made some good progress. There's a frame, but the door is still under construction...and someone painted the bottom half puce instead of white. I'm not an expert painter, but I can fix it.

Lifewise, I'm just a bit anxious about May 1st, when I participate in the NAMIWalks event: a 2.5 mile walk through a park in support of NAMI (I'm lazy, so I'm just going to post the link to NAMI's website for more information- www.NAMI.org). It'll keep NAMI functioning, which I'm all for.
It'll be 2.5 miles of me getting to know my teammates better and get a lot of thinking done. And if my sister says it's cool, I might take her camera to take pictures of the park. Should be nice.

There's my updates for the past two months, and now I have to get work done.

This is going to be harder than I thought...

It's February 26th, 2010.
Ask me if my novel I was going to finish this month is done yet.

I had some good momentum when I first started writing it, then that gradually died down to a full stop, then it picked up again in spurts of 1k a day every day, then became 1k every two days...this week I only managed a total of 3k.

But I guess as long as I'm moving, I'm good.

I won't be able to finish the first draft at this pace (obviously), I'm now looking to March since I'm over 80k words - finally. I want to get it completed so I can bask in the glorious light of having completed something, but also because I want to work on another WIP that I started two pages of before deciding I didn't need to divide my time up like that and just focus on one WIP at a time. Scenes from this one have been leaping into my head like fleas on a dog. (Please don't ask me why that simile was the first thing I thought of.) I should be writing them down...but I think I've officially run out of empty notebooks.

I know what I'll be buying next month.

I am rather proud of my 3k for the week. It's small, but it's the most writing I've done in the time span of a week for quite some time. And it's not only at the doctor's office waiting for my turn, but also everyday at a regular time that I've scheduled. (Why did I ever leave the wonderful world of time management?)

So, if I had a glass of wine, or even just a bottle of juice, I would give cheers to everyone for what they have accomplished in February, and encourage them to keep going, because there's nothing like passing that finish line...or writing/editing that final paragraph.

End of the Month Update

Well, I failed. I couldn't manage 50,000 words in one month.

In my defense, life hit hard and I started in the middle of the month.

I end January having written 16,000 words, bringing my novel's total to 73,000. I'm not so disappointed in myself for not making it, since I got some fairly good stuff written and I'm moving along in the story (A life-changing piece of information learned, oh no!). I would like to say February will be the month I finish this thing, as I shouldn't have that much longer to go, but I won't make it a definite; anything can happen in the next month, like, I don't know, me having to get a job to pay off some bills and finding myself too mentally drained at the end of each day to concentrate on words for a novel. Just putting it out there.

Nightmarish employment aside, I'm looking to February with a positive attitude. This novel will get done (the first novel I've completed in years, first novel over 60,000 words) by the end of the month, and then I can let it sit awhile before I get to do revisions...yay.

The Bane of My Novel Completion

It's 5:19pm, and I've written maybe one hundred words of my novel (oh yeah, I'm so reaching that goal of 50k by the end of the month). I want to finish this novel, I really do, maybe I'll be alone on this, but I believe it has potential...and I like Taryn, and Satche. I'm undecided on Mars and Lady Cherie.

Anyway, my low word count wouldn't bother me so much if I didn't have other ideas vying for my attention. It's like having my nephew in my ear all day going "auntie, auntie, auntie," which he does whenever there isn't a game controller in his hands. But the ideas just buzz around in my head going "write me, write me, write me!" And they sound so much more appealing than fighting through the bog that is the middle of my novel (it's been too long since the four had to fight so I think I'll give them some exercise. Other than that, got nothin'). And not all of them are new ideas; most are just parts to the other WIP's I've put a hold on.

• Tanessa and Brandon's life on the run
• Just what, exactly, Hope and Loki find in the city
• Nicole's introduction to the secret world around ours
• Getting Mia and Noah to the snowy kingdom in the mountains
  

The biggest one of all, however, is the Urban Fantasy. That one screams at me, and it screams "I don't want to just be a short story, make me into a novel too!" I don't think I'd have enough of a plot to make a whole novel out of it, but that one certainly interests me.

All because I picked up that UF short story collection at the library in October.

Octavia and Natalia both insist on having more than a short story, and I like what they're saying, but they're getting in the way of finishing Serpenttongue. I would really like to avoid putting it on hold to explore another idea. I've done that already, more than once. I want to buckle down and get one finished!

But as the fight gets tougher that UF starts to look better.

I guess I could work on both...ugh, that's going to take quite a lot of time, but it might make the ideas shut up for awhile.

Winded...and Story Progress

Whew. It's been two days of writing a minimum of 1,700 words and has taken FOREVER to get through. Methinks I need to do a little more planning, which means I'll be carrying around that notebook in my purse and putting every spare second tomorrow at work in thinking about my story and where I want it to go next. I mean, I have a general idea of where they're going next, but just what is going to happen along the way, and what will happen when they get where they're going.

On the plus side, I did something I liked: I created a bit of tension and conflict between the Main Character and a Secondary Character. They're having a bit of a power-struggle. The Main Character is losing, and it's going to take a toll on her mentally...somehow. The tricky part will be continuing the struggle, dragging it out and making good use of it.

Here's hoping I figure something out tomorrow.

[Insert month] Wri Mo

It's January 9th, nine days into the month of January (obviously) and I've hardly written much in my novel. I finished up what I thought was both an interesting and difficult chapter and then spent the past two days fooling around online (must not get addicted to AW, must not get addicted to AW...). I haven't had the desire to write anything else, which clashes with my whole finishing a novel this year goal.

A fellow blogger suggested I try JaNoWriMo, which is basically NaNoWriMo in January. It's funny how quickly I buckled down and decided to continue working hard on my novel after agreeing to take part. All I need, apparently, is a deadline, a goal to shoot for. I wouldn't say I'm one who works well under pressure, but not having anything to strive for just makes a lazy Charlene, and Charlene hates being lazy, productivity is her focus.

Now, looking at the novel not from the perspective of "oh I have 50k words to write still" but from the outlook of "I have to write 1,700 words today that relate to what I wrote yesterday in some way" makes me sigh in relief. Yes, finishing this novel might be possible...as I said before, if I managed 50k of a novel in November, I can certainly manage 50k this month and quite possibly every month.

And on that note, I need to start writing, because I've already missed eight days of writing and that's around 15k to write!

Do you find daily goals (words, paragraphs, pages) keep you moving even through the difficult parts?

So it's the New Year...

I'm not a big believer of New Year's Resolutions, or the whole "new year, new you" idea, but I DID make that promise to my doctor to worry less about what others think of me...

Okay, I guess you can call this a resolution. I want to finish a novel this year. I have roughly four (Serpenttongue, Wanted, Devil's Hand, untitled urban fantasy), but would like to finish at least one of them, and lately, my time has been with Serpenttongue...don't know why, it just has.

(OR it could be because Wanted requires a lot of thought and research, Devil's Hand is dark and takes me some thought to keep up the tone, and the Untitled is still in the "what is this story about?" phase).

When I was nine, back when I wrote the Out of Reality series, I managed to finish 50k novels in a matter of weeks (I think). There were at that point three or four of them. If it were for NaNoWriMo standards it would have been three or four months. Not bad, young me, not bad at all.

So what happened to older me?

I got in my way (look to previous post). I started thinking all my work was no good and too boring and all of that which slowed me down...well that and the depression of course. But I want to finish a novel that is greater than 60k for my own satisfaction (okay and yes, I will revise and submit to agents too). I think it would make me feel better to finally complete something.

So, here's to that goal that's looming over me.

Any writing resolutions/goals for the New Year?