NaNoWriMo Eve 2013

Happy Halloween and NaNoWriMo Eve! I love this holiday, even though I can’t eat as much candy as I used to (I’m always amazed by how many things have gelatin in them when they don’t seem like they should). The candy and sweet treats aren’t the important parts of this holiday for me anymore. Now, it’s all about the excuse to have fun dressing up in costume.

I spent a few hours in Starbucks today to get some writing done for my serial before the November madness starts. I wore a little costume dress with a tutu, orange and black striped tights, and a little hat thing with a veil. I felt a bit awkward when I first got in, since I’m the only patron dressed up, but seeing the baristas enjoying the holiday made me more comfortable. One girl dressed up with taped up nerd glasses, a bowtie, and Smartees candies attached to her pants. The clever costume really made me smile. Another barista, this one wearing cat ears, joked around with a patron about whether or not he wanted a “Caramel Meowcchiato”. Everyone had a laugh at that.

Which leads me to my planning for NaNoWriMo this year. I have a very general outline for how my novel’s going to go, two named main characters (only one of which has a physical description), and a Scrivener project set up. That’s about it, but I’m not that worried about not having much planning done. After failing at both Camp NaNos this year, I’m determined to win main NaNoWriMo and my best chance at that is to go back to what I know works for me: pantsing it.

I’m not going to take myself and my novel too seriously this November. I’m just going to have fun with it and make myself laugh. I definitely could use that mood boost for the end of the year. The story should definitely present me with plenty of opportunities for humor. Maybe I’ll write a summary for my NaNo profile. Maybe I’ll just fill everything in with placeholders or ridiculous joke text. Either way, the important part is that I’m looking forward to starting.

I’m also hoping to keep my enthusiasm up by arranging weekly gchat sessions with a friend of mine from college. She’s been a member for years and I want to help make this the year for her first win. Feeling  like I have someone counting on me has always helped to motivate me in the past.

Most importantly, that’s going to make it more fun. Fun is my best shot at reaching that word goal next month. Which is why I’m glad that Halloween comes right before the start of NaNoWriMo. If there’s one thing that Halloween is good at reminding me to do, it’s to have fun with life.

To anyone else also attempting NaNoWriMo this November, good luck and I hope you have fun!

Musing: The problem of free time

I’ve been thinking a lot about college lately. Mostly because I’m trying to cut down the amount of stuff I have from those years. (Do I really need those class notes and homework packets from my second year? Answer: probably not.) There’s nothing like looking at things that I wrote and doodled on years ago to bring back my memories of a class.

One of the classes I was looking at work from was one of the ones I disliked more than any other core class in my major. Some of that was the material itself, but a lot of it was the professor and his deadlines. Or lack thereof. His “deadlines” for our weekly problem sets were ridiculously flexible. The only real deadline we had was that everything had to be in by the final exam (and even that seemed to have some flexibility to it). I hated that.

Story: An Unusual Inheritance

Well, been a bit of a lazy August these past couple weeks. I’m going away for the last week of the month (I can’t believe how soon that is!) so I’ll do my best to keep up with the posting schedule until then. When I get back, I’m going to focus on making sure posts stay more regular. I might change Saturday story updates to just weekend story updates, since that’s basically how I’ve been treating them.

Anyway, this story was inspired by the latest session of my Dungeons & Dragons group from college (we play online now since all of us have scattered around after graduation). Adding in a variation of the puzzle we had to solve to get the reward seemed like it’d get too long, so I skipped it. The important part was the reward itself, anyway. I just really like the idea of creepy pets and I hope we get to keep it in our game, haha.

Title: An Unusual Inheritance
Length: 1,263 words
Characters: Unnamed

Story: 365 Shorts #17

Ok, here’s a second story to make up for last weekend’s missed post.

This is another short “Surprise! End of the world” type one-shots. I seem to remember writing a lot of these. The idea of some sudden supernatural disaster occurring in an urban setting is just so appealing to me. It’s also the plot of a few of my favorite video games (all the games in the Devil Survivor series). Maybe this says something about me, haha.

I think I’m going to go back and see what else I can tag with “surprise monsters”.

Length: 503 words
Prompt: Pick a novel and take the first line off of every page to use as a prompt.
Novel used: The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow by Fuyumi Ono.
#17. “There is no time to explain.”

Story: 365 Shorts #9

I felt a bit too under the weather to do much of anything that required thought last weekend. I’m going to try and post a second thing tonight to make up for it and try to keep a habit from forming.

This is the ninth story I wrote for my “365 Days of Shorts” project. I think this was about the time in the project that I started making an effort to name the characters and to use names I wouldn’t normally pick. Not much else to say about this one, except that I apparently like the idea of creepy things happening in places that serve delicious coffee and baked goods.

Length: 980 words
Prompt: Pick a novel and take the first line off of every page to use as a prompt.
Novel used: The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow by Fuyumi Ono.
#16. “Okay, pal, who are you?”

Story: 365 Shorts #4

A little late with this week’s story update. After two hours of exercise followed by a few hours of socializing at a luncheon, I was too exhausted to do much yesterday. I blame the socializing, mostly. I always need quite a bit of recharge time after parties.

Anyway, this is the fourth story I wrote for my “365 Days of Shorts” project. It was originally a bit longer in the middle, but I cut out a few paragraphs that didn’t seem to add anything to the story. It actually feels like I took out more than I did, because of how much more I like it now.

Length: 793 words
Prompt: Pick a novel and take the first line off of every page to use as a prompt.
Novel used: The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow by Fuyumi Ono.
#46. It was coming from her leg.

Story: 365 Shorts #1

The first story I wrote for my “365 Days of Shorts” project. I’ve always loved reading and watching things about cryptozoology and I’ve felt a kind of possessive pride for this particular cryptid ever since I first saw cartoon images of it as a child attending the Puerto Rican Day Parade in NYC. I might do more with these characters later; I haven’t decided yet.

Length: 894 words
Prompt: Pick a novel and take the first line off of every page to use as a prompt.
Novel used: The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow by Fuyumi Ono.
#53. “Are you gone?!”

July Camp Project 2 and Lazy World Building

So far my July Camp projects are not going as well as I hoped, but I refuse to give up. There’s still more than half the month left for me to get this NaNo party started for realsies and I know that I’m capable of busting out word count like crazy in the time left. I’m feeling a bit better about it now that I actually updated my word count (thank goodness for being able to edit the count by day!).

This week I’ve been thinking about Project 2, the editing project, which I’m continuing to drag my feet on. Part of that is due to the fact that when I open that Scrivener project it reminds me of how much has to change.

Story: Catching Fireflies

I’ve been noticing a lot more fireflies out and about this summer than I remember there being last summer. I’ve always found watching them to be soothing, so I wanted to do a little thing as a tribute to them. (As a side note, I apparently have two songs on my mp3 player titled “Fireflies”. I listened to them both on repeat while writing this.)

I’m using the main couple from my webserial again. I tried to include enough backstory and species information as necessary for anyone who hasn’t read the serial. For more detailed information, feel free to check the World page of the webserial and the pages linked from it. Last week’s story was pre-serial and this one’s about a thousand years post-serial. It also includes Risa and Zane’s future daughter. I guess that’s kind of a spoiler, but nothing that should ruin the serial for anyone.

Length: 1,436 words
Characters: Risa, Zane, Ridley
Prompt: Fireflies.

Uncomfortable Conversation – Risa and Zane

For today’s story update (whatever the calendar says, I’m still going to consider it Saturday until I go to sleep), I thought I’d do a little exercise to build my excitement for these characters again. They’re the main couple from my webserial and also two of the main characters in the novel that I’m going to be editing during July’s Camp NaNoWriMo. I actually really like them, but I think I’ve spent too much time with them the past few years so I’m less interested in writing them than I want to be.

This scene takes place before the start of the webserial, but some weeks after the start of the novel. I don’t think it’s necessary to have read the webserial or any outside information about these two and their story before reading this. Certain things will make more sense if you have, sure, but I think it can stand on its own well enough.

Length: 1,072 words
Characters: Risa, Zane
Prompt: Write a scene in which a character has to have an uncomfortable conversation. (Source: http://writingprompts.tumblr.com/post/53280081730/753-uncomfortable-conversations)