Post NaNoWriMo Plans

Now that the frenzy of NaNoWriMo is over, most people like to breathe, take a step back, and then delve into revision everything that they've just spewed out over the course of November. For me, while Bracken may one day become his own novel, nanowrimo was more the process of understand Bracken's backstory so that I could more richly develop his character in Into the Flames. December is a busy month, and I'm feeling starved for some good reading, so here's my personal game plan for my writing:
Christmas and finishing a good book in December and looking for more good books to read
Easing into working on Into the Flames in January, filling in a few scenes
Forcing myself to finishing writing the extra scenes in February and March
And then printing out my story and really cracking down on that third draft in April and those sultry summer months.
Oh, and let's not forget those book reviews I should be writing for the Consortium. Know any good recently published Kindle books for under $10? Let me know and I'll read and review it. And hopefully my blog will be up soon (hint hint, Sean) so that I can start reviewing books on there as well. Wow, just writing all this down makes me feel so busy. I better get started reading!

-So many books, so little time.-

And it's official

NaNoWriMo: the home stretch

Well, friends, I've got 47182 words to my name this month, which means I have less than two days to crank out the remaining 2818. Impossible? I think not. The best part is, I'm in the last chapter of my novel. THe worst part? I changed a lot of characters these past few days and I'm not sure how I feel about the effort it'll take to go back and rewrite them. Bleh. But that's what writing is all about, isn't it? You're never going to figure out where the story is supposed to go or even how it's supposed to begin if you don't at least try to get it out there. I'm also really sad that my story ends on a depressing note. But if Bracken doesn't have a ton of disappointment in his life now, then how will he be able to find redemption in the next novel? And that's the story that I am really excited to finish writing. I was distracted from writing Into the Flames while I was thinking about Bracken's backstory, but now that I"ve written it this month, I can focus my full attention back on Rahab. Yay!
And congratulations and thanks to Aaron Pogue, Becca Campbell, Courtney Cantrell, and all my other friends who participated in NaNoWriMo and helped me stay on track this month. They were truly an inspiration for me.

week 4 of NaNoWriMo

My main character may have the power to see the future, but I sure don't. Here's some recent story developments that I totally didn't see coming:

The wallet that was empty and did not carry the mark of Superman
The Pact of the Pop-Tart
The Skirt in the girls' locker room that was not Analiese
Two trips to Dean Sanders's office (named after Sean)
The admiration of Bracken by the elusive and desirable female character as well as the formerly grumpy and undesirable leader of the surfer tribe


Now I should be coasting into the final acts of the drama with approximately 16k words left to write before midnight on 30 November. 33,623 and counting!

Week 3 of NaNoWriMo

Into week three and now only four thousand words behind. What with some new characters I didn't see coming, an interesting rivalry between the surfers and the basketball players (I'm siding with the surfers, of course), and Analiese's new boyfriend Mercer (I know, you can tell from the name he's a jerk), things are starting to shape up.
Even with all these developments, though, I'm tempted to start from the end and work my way backward. I know where I want to end up, and sometimes I'm afraid that my character's personalities will keep me from getting there. Well, I've got two more weeks to see what they can come up with before I take matters into my own hands.

week 2 of NaNoWriMo

I hate to admit it, but I'm not doing so hot this year. I'm a week behind in writing (I'd have to write 8k tonight to be on the right track, and that's not happening) and Bracken's not being the great character driving force that my plot needs right now. He kind of just letting things happen to him, and that's not cool. :( And if that's not bad enough, I'm behind on my reading at work. Anyway, I'm hoping that I can get some writing done tonight to jump start me into tomorrow social writing event.
Random thought: Harry Potter 7 Part I next week. I hope it's good. And now back to the grindstone.

NaNoWriMo update--meet Jamison, the chauffer

"The cars were still lined up in their pristine condition—a 2000 Cadillac Eldorado taking the place of the wrecked Porsche, but every other vehicle still the same. Mr. Jamison still lived above the garage and polished the cars each day without fail, even in the middle of winter. Mr. Jamison kept mostly to himself; sometimes his work seemed that of a ghost. Bracken wasn’t really sure what Jamison did in the free hours of the afternoon when he wasn’t polishing the cars, tending the lawn, or chauffering the Carnagies to elaborate dinner parties, but he often pictured the elderly Brit sitting in a leather wingback with a thick cigar and a selection of Shakespeare’s poems, tapping his polished shoe to the crooning tones of Rosemary Clooney."

First post during NaNoWriMo 2010

Well, fellow writers, November is now upon us, and the writing frenzy is begun. Last night's writing party was very successful (in my opinion). I managed to crank out 1500 words, although who knows how terrible they may sound now in the daylight. Since I know my characters pretty well (although, who of us, even me, can say that we will ever truly know Bracken Carnegie?), I'm not too worried about him driving my plot forward toward the stunning final scene. My main concern right now is coming up with a working title so that I can stop referring to it as Bracken. While it does describe the book pretty well, being the main character's name and all, I am not as a general rule very happy about such mundane book titles.
Books that I formerly had called after their main characters, for example, are now pleasantly dubbed Into the Flames, Jumpin' Jehosephat!, and The Letter to Santa. See how much more intriguing those sound, as opposed to, for instance, Jane Eyre, David Copperfield, or Emma? Now don't get me wrong, those are all delightful books, but the titles don't really tell you that much about them except that their main characters have very common names.
Leaving you with these thoughts to ponder, I shall bid you adieu and make my way back the creative recourses of my brain where Bracken awaits his next move.

Teaser Two!

One of my failed attempts to start this story. I got stuck here and realized that it was not going in the right direction.

Bracken Carnegie. Not much thought went into that name. Bracken, a type of fern. Also the name of my mother’s grandfather, who was a lord of something or other in England. Carnegie, my father’s surname, of course. Passed down from the unknown generations. We’re said to be cousins to the famous Andrew Carnegie, the steel guy, and that’s why we’re rich, but not as rich as he was. And that’s all there is. No middle name, no nicknames, nothing. Just Bracken Carnegie. My parents consistently told me that their expectation of me were very low. Everybody else in their family had already done everything impressive. All I had to do to make them happy was play the violin like an angel, attend Harvard or Oxford, and marry a Kennedy.
Harder than it sounds.

NaNoWriMo 2010 teaser

"She had told me, three months ago, that she could breathe underwater, and I had believed her. But now, waiting for her among the cattails, glancing at my watch every two seconds, I realized that I hadn’t, not really. Despite the years of repression, my hero instincts wanted to take over. My heels kept lifting off the ground, allowing me to peer into the murky brown water, wanting to save her. Needing to save her. She had done so much for me, and now, here I was, still standing helplessly by. She told me to trust her, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to protect her. Why didn’t she ever need protecting?"

This isn't going to make it into the final draft, because I decided that the time frame for the story is going to be restricted to before he met Rahab, but I did this as a little pre-writing to get into Bracken's head. (Also I decided to make the story 3rd person.) Only 42 days until NaNoWriMo...

NaNoWriMo 2010 goals

So I feel much better now that I've chosen what project to work on for November 2010. And what project is that, might you ask?
Bracken's novel! Something I've always wanted to write, but never really sure how to. I didn't know whether I should basically re-write Into the Flames from Bracken's perspective (chose not to do that as soon as Midnight Sun came around), write about his childhood, or about his relationship with Rahab after the events in Into the Flames. Well, I still am not completely sure of the answer to this, but I do know that I feel I have a very solid opening scene, set a few months before he meets Rahab. The craziness of NaNoWriMo will hopefully drive the plot along. I mean, it's not like I have nothing to work with, I basically know everything about Bracken's life, it's just deciding which part of his life to document, and in what way. First person, or third person? Retrospectively (since we all know what's going to happen) or from a more active stand-point? Any suggestions along these lines would be welcome. But I'm just glad I know who my specimen is going to be for this year! *sigh of relief*

Now excuse me while I go update my nano profile.

Last day of National Novel Writing Month

Finishing word count: 50,043.
I feel like singing that "You did it" song from My Fair Lady.
I'd like to say that this would not have been possible without the constant encouragement of many family members and a few friends. And let us not forget Sean's persistent encouragement in the form of shoving me awake and thrusting my laptop in my face every time I felt like giving up. He's really annoying like that, but it seemed like it worked. I think I would have ended the month at around 20k without him.
And I still have soooo much more that I want to say in my novel. I feel like I have so much yet to learn about my characters and where they're going in life, and how they're going to change from who they were just a few short weeks ago. *sniff* they're growing up so fast!

*muah* *muah* good night all, and thanks for following along with me during nanowrimo 2009!

Getting complicated

I'm beginning to fear that my character bank is getting to big. And by that, I mean, too many interesting characters, from too many diverse countries and histories. I can't believe that my readers will be able to keep up with them all! And yet, each one is important in his own way. I mean, there's the bad king, and his minions, the good prince with his friends and followers who are trying to reestablish him as king, the other two allied Kings who are debating on how to help Phillip, and just all the other minor minor characters whom they fun in to on their travels. How can I possibly cull? as soon as I breath life into any of these characters, large or small, they become their own people, and it would be murder for me to cut them out of the story, to keep their little voices from being heard.
ah me, what a terrible life we authors lead, deciding who lives and who dies.

november crazy

The key to NaNoWriMo, which I think they tried to tell me when I signed up, but never really sunk in until today, is that you have to just keep spewing it out, no matter how bad it is. Normally I would think of a better way to say-- "He looked down at his hands to make sure he was still invisible--he was." I wouldn't ignore the fact that I just used a dash two sentences ago. I would avoid at all costs using "desperate" three times in one paragraph, and using words like "alright" and "nonetheless". But these are not normal circumstances, my friends. Desperate times, desperate measures. If I have to just keep writing the bad screen play and wait for the artistic descriptions to come in December, then so be it. I will get caught up on my writing! I will further my plot along with terrible dialogue! I will go forth into the tempest which is......NANOWRIMO!!!!!!!

Quote of the Day:
the pen is mightier than the sword.
--wiki it.

NaNo update

Well let's just say that I'm not doing too well. I'm already 1000 words behind my personal goal and this story is starting to get old. I'm ready to work on something else! Hopefully I'm just overreacting and only reluctant to work on this story because it's the second chapter and I need to get to the more interesting parts.
In other news, I am working three days in a row and the Mustang Chamber of Commerce while my boss is at a convention. I'm hoping to be able to find many things to do in the office while she is gone. Lately my duties have been getting done quickly and I find myself searching for things after lunch time.
and since that is all my life consists of right now (nanowrimo and work), I must end my blog here.

And the topic for November is...

So I spontaneously decided to jump on the band wagon and participate in NaNoWriMo this year. (Click here if you don't know what that is.) I'm very nervous about this because not only have I only finished about three stories in my life, all of them have been worthless and very short. I've never written more than 20,000 words in a story, and even when I was on a roll it took me all summer to get that far. It's a good thing I don't have any school work to do, because other than work, I'm going to be writing a lot. Hopefully this will be a good exercise in accomplishment.
The reason I didn't sign up for it a long time ago was becuase I knew that there is no way I could write 50,000 words in a month, much less a year. But then I told myself, I guess I will never know until I try. So here's just another reason to put off "Into the Flames," because it's almost done so I can't use it for NaNoWriMo. Instead, I have chosen "The City of Orphans," a tale from the fantastical land of Pocatello. Which, in case you were wondering, was named after a random city in Idaho that I found while perusing my states puzzle when I was younger.
And so, into the melee!