Planning for July Camp NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo seriously needs to stop sneaking up on me. How is it already July? It feels like it was just yesterday that I was freaking out about not being prepared for the April session of Camp NaNoWriMo. Getting that reminder email about July was like a surprise bucket of water being dumped on me. Or a surprise dip in the lake courtesy of fellow campers, to keep with the theme.

I’m determined not to skip this session of camp like I did with the April one. So far I’ve participated in at least one session of Camp NaNo since it first started. I’ve always enjoyed the motivation to write that NaNoWriMo provides and having that more than once a year is such a treat. I’ll be disappointed in myself if I don’t take advantage of it.

That said, I don’t think I’ll be writing a new novel this time. I’ve been kind of slacking with my webserial and I feel as though the quality of the last few chapters reflects that. So one of the things I want to do during July is to really focus on that and build up a buffer of chapters so that I can dedicate time to polishing them before posting instead of rushing to finish an update the day it’s supposed to be out. Having a buffer would also give me a better sense of where the serial’s heading and how much story I have left to tell.

Story: 365 Shorts #20

This is from my “365 Days of Shorts” project. It’s shorter than I thought it was (probably due to my being bad at estimating word count while writing by hand). I don’t have any plans for these characters or their world at the moment; I’m pretty happy with it as a short, one-shot kind of thing.

Length: 451 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.
#19. “Say that you accept.”

Character Room Description – Cyn

Weekly updates on a set day have been working fine for my webserial, so I’ve set a goal for myself to keep a regular update schedule here. The plan is to post a story or writing exercise every Saturday and a more general/thoughtful piece on writing or things I notice about my own work every other Thursday. I made myself a nice printed calendar and everything.

Anyway, for today’s writing update, I adapted a writing exercise one of my Short Narratives professors back in college had us do. That exercise was to describe a character’s bedroom. Instead of a bedroom, I’ll be using this exercise to describe a character’s office space. More specifically, I’ll be using the character from the last two stories I posted, Cyn. She makes me smile every time I think about her and I imagine that she has a cubicle at the mystery place she works which is full of fun things.

Musing: My problem with endings

I have a problem ending things.

It’s something I’ve been aware of for a long time. I, like many people I know, went through a fanfiction writing phase during my younger years. I had several finished stories, but I definitely dragged my feet while writing them. The last one I was writing, I got it up to the last chapter (if I recall correctly) and then never finished it. I occasionally added to that last word doc during the years since, but never made actual progress. And don’t even get me started on my first fanfiction which I decided needed to be revised and then started posting the revised chapters as I wrote them. I abandoned it halfway through so there’s an abrupt and awkward story change from the last updated chapter to the next chapter, which is still the original.

I can’t argue that it’s simply because I lost interest in writing fanfiction since I have a similar pattern of leaving things unfinished in my NaNoWriMo projects. I have two NaNo novels that actually have their endings written.  Those two took me two rounds of NaNoWriMo each to finally finish. Besides those, I have two NaNo novels which are finished up to the last chapters and have been that way for months (almost a year in the older one’s case). 

Story: 365 Shorts #22

Another story from my “365 Days of Shorts” project (currently on hold) and the start of my attempt to keep a regular update schedule here. This is the follow-up to Story #21, posted earlier.

Length: 1,319 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.
#23. Oddly, she could feel no pain.

Story: 365 Shorts #21

This is one of the stories from my “365 Days of Shorts” project. I’m not going to be posting them in any particular order (hence starting with #21). Since I wound up really liking the white-haired character in this, I wrote a follow-up to this story that I’ll be posting at a later date. Edit: Follow-up now posted.

Length: 1,151 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.
#4: “Up already?”

Project: 365 Days of Shorts

When I started my major writing project for this year back in January, I intended to come up with a better name for it at some point before posting about it. I really should have known that the placeholder name would stick; that’s how placeholder names always work for me. Now I will forever call this project “365 Days of Shorts” or, for short, “365 Shorts”. I see this as a problem because I can’t read that name without thinking of this scene in the original Pokémon games:

(Screen from Pokémon Red/Blue, copyright Game Freak, Inc.)

But, no, my project is not to wear shorts every day for a year. I actually don’t share that NPC’s feelings on how comfortable and easy to wear they are.

My “365 Days of Shorts” project is to write a short piece of fiction every day for a full year. I can’t help but worry that this isn’t going to work out well, but I’m really determined to try. Mostly because I want to prove to myself that I can.

Story: Hazel’s

So, yes, it’s been a couple months since I last posted. Oops? I had reasons, but I’m not going to get into that. One thing I learned back when my younger self was heavily invested in writing multi-chapter fanfiction was that making excuses for long absences and/or promising to update more often was kind of pointless and never really fixed anything. What I will say is that I have a small stash of stories that I wrote during my blogging absence that I can use to make posting more often happen.

This one I started writing when I was looking for new sources of inspiration. It’s based off of the username of a friend of mine (hazelpan). I think it turned out a bit weirder/creepier/tastier(?) than I was expecting, but I’m happy with it. I’m hoping she’ll find it enjoyable too.

Story title: Hazel’s
Length: 1,332 words
Genre: Urban Fantasy, I guess?
Characters: Stacy, Unnamed baker

Musing: Character Naming Rehab

My name is Korina and I have a problem with naming characters. (Cue zombie-like welcome to the support group.)

It’s not that I find it difficult or tedious—in fact, I really enjoy trawling name sites and Scrivener’s built-in naming tool. If I were to let myself, I could spend hours compiling lists of names I like. Which is why I try to limit myself to only looking when I have a character to name. That way I wind up with a more focused list of candidate names. Then, I’ll choose one based on what “feels right” for the character.

Sounds good so far, right? I thought so too. What I’ve noticed within the past year, though, is that there are very specific types of names that I subconsciously gravitate towards. That didn’t strike me as something bad or even particularly unusual at first.

Then I got involved in writing my webserial. That’s when I noticed the problem: I broke the “One Steve Limit” rule and I didn’t realize it until it was too late to fix it.

Story: Christmas at Gate A7

Happy Holidays everyone!

My mom and I are having a pretty simple, relaxing Christmas at home with our rabbit. So relaxing I almost forgot to post the holiday story that I wrote yesterday. Part of this is loosely based off of something that happened while a friend was at an airport.

Story title: Christmas at Gate A7
Length: 1,008 words
Genre: Probably best described as “Slice of Life”
Characters: Richard