*cheers on self*

Yesterday, it was freezing in my bedroom because of the wind from a cold front coming in through the open window that I sit in front of while I write. So I decided that I'd go write from bed for a little while. I was talking to sylvrilyn at the time and we decided to do a 30 minute word war to give us both the little kick in the pants we so desperately needed at that point in the day.

Well, between being cold, comfortable, somewhat groggy from not having been up long... among other things, very shortly after the war started, I fell asleep. My Dad woke me up about five minutes before the war was over and I had a chance to add a few more words and end the 30 minute war with the biggest fail of my writing life thus far: 159 words.

I know where my story is going, so I didn't read over those words until last night and now, I would like to share with you one of the reasons why being able to type without looking could quite possibly be a terrible, terrible thing:

April laughed and looked over at the table. “I’m purple, I messed up your perfect elephant ride party again, didn’t I?”

“It wouldn’t be up to me if the trunk caught fire,” Matt teased, patting her elbow gently with his toes. “Come together, right now. Over cake.” April hurried her way to the shining protoplasmic star, wiping her face with her hands as she walked. Matt leapt and pried* the room open and pulled out the chair from his pocket to sniff the head of the table. For her it was.

“Thanks,” April was a Magmar, sniffling and smiling up fire balls. “I really do hate you and your fertilized bullets, b t dubs.”

Oh, human subconscious... why are you so freaking hilarious? Also, runaway_tales people, can ANY of you see April ever spitting out a phrase like "b t dubs" rather than actually saying "by the way?" 'cos every time I try, I crack up a little bit. Or a lot.


I should make THAT my excerpt on the NaNo site, haha. Oh, and yes... those were some of the words that got tossed in the trash file last night, if you're wondering. They're easily the worst of the bunch. xD


*I honestly don't know what this word was supposed to be. I cleaned up the typos 'cos honestly, the typing was quite poor in that section, but a lot of it was repeated letters from my fingers moving too slowly and pressing the keys too long before moving. But this word originally said: plireiderd. I have no idea wtf that was supposed to be and "pried" is the only thing that even somewhat makes sense in this completely irrationally nonsensical blurb.

Oh, heaven forbid. I broke the cardinal rule of NaNoWriMo: I edited during the month of November. Oh Holy Jesus, I think that means I must be going to WriMo hell.

Or at least that's what the people who @replied to me on Twitter made it seem like. I've been tweeting about my progress since the beginning of the month, so when I hacked out the end of chapter four through to the end of chapter seven of Sunshowers on Bluebell Fields, I thought it was only appropriate that I tweet about that too. So I said: "Just deleted half of my #nanowrimo novel. Yes, on purpose. I can't write a bad novel... I'd rather not have words if they're all shitty ones." And I stand by this one hundred percent.

I've always thought locking up your inner editor for the month was the biggest waste of time and load of bullshit that Chris Baty ever encouraged for the WriMo participants. So now, not only has he encouraged and convinced complete and total idiots that they too can be a real, genuine author if they write shit about drunken zombies, killing everyone in their entire story arc just for the hell of it and starting over, or that by writing out entire songs / having characters that speak a foreign language so you can have every line of dialog questioned and then repeated before finally moving on... He's also convinced and entire army of illiterate people that ignoring punctuation, spelling, grammar, and syntax is perfectly okay.

I realize that not everyone writes bullshit novels for NaNo, and most of the people reading this don't ignore all of those things, nor are they illiterate, but for this post, we're focusing on that sect of idiots that I know we all know are out there.

Don't get me wrong, I love Chris Baty's brainchild that has become the massive thing that NaNo has, but I don't think it was intelligent to encourage some of the stupid things that have not only been deemed acceptable to do during this month, but they've become the norm... the standard for writing a NaNo Novel... and that is what I have a problem with. NaNo gives everyone that wins the idea that they could do this. One day, that could be their book sitting on the shelves of their bookstore. And the ones that write with No Plot? No Problem! in hand, clutching it to them like it was some sort of definitive holy word are a lot of the problem with why agents have to deal with so much SHIT before they find that one maybe-okay novel in their piles.

And if I'm frustrated about that, think of how the people sorting through that slush must feel.

But my anger stems from something else... From the fact that the second you mention that you've edited during NaNo, people immediately tell you that you're tearing angels' wings and causing them to fall, screaming, to their deaths with each line / sentence you delete.

Yeah, well, I say let them die.

Honestly, why should I waste my month writing 50,000 words that I will inevitably throw 40% of away in December when I can delete the crap now and keep writing with something better so when December rolls around, not only do I have 50k completed, it's a halfway decent novel that I'm not ashamed of? What's the difference when I delete it if it's all going in the trash anyway? Answer: there isn't one.

I can write 50k in a day and a half if I really put my mind to it. I'm not concerned with meeting the stupid deadline. I write novels because I like writing and I want to come out of things with another decent novel under my belt. I know my first draft won't be perfect [I mean, look at Sky of Dust. It was my NaNo 2007 and is on its 4th complete rewrite at the moment], but I don't want it to be complete rubbish either.

It's a waste of time and I don't have that sort of time to waste.



And before someone asks / assumes: The majority of the part I deleted wasn't from my insane sprint on Day One. It was everything from Day Two and about 1k between the end of Day One and the beginning of Day Three -- from the war I fell asleep in the middle of... Typing in your sleep makes things a little less coherent, as it turns out.

Yesterday, I got too tired to keep posting and poking at numbers... Especially after I realized the formula I'd used to calculate how many words you needed to write per hour was wrong. That made me sad. But that's okay... Now I know and I can tweak it a bit and perfect it for the next WriDay. [:

But, my last update was at noon, so here's my WC breakdown for the rest of the day. [Time = when post would have been made -- words written in that hour -- total WC for the day]

1p -- 2,101 -- 16,546
2p -- 1,088 -- 17,634
3p -- 2,248 -- 19,882
4p -- 3,095 -- 22,997
5p -- 0
6p -- 0
7p -- 0,519 -- 23,496
8p -- 0,376 -- 23,872
9p -- 2,991 -- 26,863
10p -- 0,571 -- 27,434
11p -- 0,333 -- 27,767
12a -- 0,671 -- 28,438

Not a bad effort, for sure. [:

Goal: 50,000 Words


Total So Far: 14,445
Words This Hour: 3,096
Average Words per Hour: 1,111


Words Left to Write: 35,555
Hours Left: 12
Words Needed per Hour: 1,624


Note: WOOOOO 3k HOUR!!! :D

Goal: 50,000 Words


Total So Far: 11,349
Words This Hour: 2,307
Average Words per Hour: 946


Words Left to Write: 38,651
Hours Left: 13
Words Needed per Hour: 1,950


Note: [:

Goal: 50,000 Words


Total So Far: 9,042
Words This Hour: 431 [shut up, it was time to eat]
Average Words per Hour: 822


Words Left to Write: 40,958
Hours Left: 14
Words Needed per Hour: 2,128


Note: going back through and adding in the details to at least the prologue now. The neighborhood needed a little bit of definition. Not everyone has my amazing LSB photo gallery close at hand while reading like I do.

Also -- spent time moving the actual writing into Word. LSB was giving me a significantly lower WC.

Goal: 50,000 Words


Total So Far: 8,611
Words This Hour: 1,221
Average Words per Hour: 861


Words Left to Write: 41,389
Hours Left: 15
Words Needed per Hour: 2,049


Note: Getting better! Too bad I'm going to have to break to eat soon... and everyone is going to start waking up and IMing me again. :/

Goal: 50,000 Words


Total So Far: 7,390
Words This Hour: 1,329
Average Words per Hour: 821


Words Left to Write: 42,610
Hours Left: 16
Words Needed per Hour: 2,072


Note: w00t! That was a 30 minute Write or Die session only. Yay!

5:00a update:

Goal: 50,000 Words


Total So Far: 6,061
Words This Hour: 153
Average Words per Hour: 1,010


Words Left to Write: 43,939
Hours Left: 20
Words Needed per Hour: 18,94



Note: This was about the time my internet and my stamina gave out for the night. But now I'm back with 17 hours left in the WriDay and the determination to win!

Goal: 50,000 Words


Total So Far: 5,908
Words This Hour: 778
Average Words per Hour: 1,182


Words Left to Write: 44,092
Hours Left: 21
Words Needed per Hour: 1,818


Note: I ended up fighting with my internet through a large chunk of this hour. ]:

Goal: 50,000 Words


Total So Far: 5,130
Words This Hour: 1,089
Average Words per Hour: 1,283


Words Left to Write: 44,870
Hours Left: 22
Words Needed per Hour: 1,892


Note: 5k! :D

Goal: 50,000 Words


Total So Far: 4,042
Words This Hour: 847 [oh, yuck]
Average Words per Hour: 1,347


Words Left to Write: 4,5959
Hours Left: 22
Words Needed per Hour: 1,823


Note: I really need to get my average up... and not chat most of the hour, haha.

Goal: 50,000 Words


Total So Far: 3,195
Words This Hour: 1,758
Average Words per Hour: 1,598


Words Left to Write: 46,805
Hours Left: 23
Words Needed per Hour: 1,896


Note: Slightly better hour... hopefully there won't be any more random researching that needs to be done this next hour. Already have the prologue and the first chapter finished in Sunshowers... though!

Chapter Two is from April's POV. <3

Goal: 50,000 Words


Total So Far: 1,437
Words This Hour: 1,437
Average Words per Hour: 1,437


Words Left to Write: 48,563
Hours Left: 24
Words Needed per Hour: 1,964


Note: Got off to a bit of a slow start, but I don't mind too much. Getting ready to do an hour long war in WriYeBuddies now, soooo, next hour WILL be better. [:

As my readers, you all are already well-aware that I'm quite insane when it comes to writing... Especially during the months of July and November [would be August, too, if I wasn't so busy keeping forums running perfectly and organizing my half of the important AugNo official crap that I do, but that's beside the point]. A lot of times, I'm accused of cheating or making up my numbers, so in my own defense, I've often offered to email out my current document.

Not a single person has accepted to see it.

My theory of why not? They don't want to be given hard evidence to prove them wrong. They want to keep on keeping on with whatever false sense of security it gives them to "know" [read: think] I'm just a liar, sitting behind my computer screen and laughing at everyone who's fallen for my little game of make believe.

I can't say that I blame them, 'cos I certainly don't like to be wrong about things, but sometimes, you really just need to accept that you aren't right about everything.

And sometimes, there really are people that are better than you at something.

This July, I had planned to write my way back to #1 on the JulNo charts... something I hadn't done since 2006. I won't lie; when Kateness joined the site, I was worried. I've never pushed myself hard enough to achieve the pure insanity that she does [and I say that in the most awe-struck and respective way]. But, the way I figure, the reason I hadn't done it wasn't because I couldn't... It was because I hadn't had a reason to. So, I embraced Kateness' participation and set my JulNo 2009 goal at 500k... with the underlying reason still the be #1.

I won and was [and still am] damn proud of it. I wrote 210k [yeah, no where near 500k, hush] and of the bits I've edited thus far [~100k-150k of it], I've only completely thrown out 1,802 words. [Lesson I learned from my creative writing professor in college -- don't ever really delete things... just throw them in an unwanted file. Look over it later; there might be something salvageable there that you didn't immediately recognize.] Sure, 35k of that month came from a random zombie fic [Boarded In] that I likely won't ever do anything with... except maybe offer it as a free downloadable e-book on my website sometime next year, but I did get some great things that month, including what is now my favorite scene in Static Lightning Skies.

Mostly, this disjointed rant is directed at the people who think that [a] if you write more than them, you must be lying / cheating and [b] if you write more than them, you must write the shittiest prose ever seen by mankind.

And, unfortunately, in trying to become more active on the NaNo forums this year, I've met my first real... interesting WriMo who gives the rest of us a bad name. He "wrote" 2.5 mil last November by pilfering words from other sources around the web and plugging them into generators and mixing them around to make them "his own." Clearly, you can tell that I have a bit of a distaste for that and don't consider his methods to be genuine. But, you know what? To each their own... And if it makes him enjoy NaNo more, than so be it. I don't consider his win to be a win, personally, and most certainly do not respect him as I do other word-count powerhouses, but whatever makes him happy, you know?

Now, naturally, there are people who are going to think this is how all of us do it and I'm honestly glad that I'm not going for a more insane goal [yeah, I know, the point that 200k becomes "not insane" is probably a sign that my sanity is... well, gone] because I don't want to have to deal with all of the stupid accusations that I'm operating on the same procedures as this fellow. And, uh, well, that offends me.

The closest I come to this crap is fanfic... and even that's different because I've slaved over every word of that probably even MORE than I do with the words in my own worlds because I don't want to break canon and disrespect whoever originally created the world. In my eyes, that's the difference.

I work hard at being a writer. No, I don't consider myself a "professional author," even though I've had things published -- both traditionally AND self-published, so don't even pull that card on me, you self-publishing haters. It's not my main source of income and I'm not doing book tours or giving reviews of books before they come out... So I don't feel like a "professional," whatever that means. But I am a writer. And my words are mine... and I'd like to keep them that way, so this method of producing material aggravates me.

But, even something like this, doesn't aggravate me nearly as much as people claiming that writing 50k in a single day / a million words in a month is straight up impossible. Because it's not. At all. I hate when people think that just because they can't / haven't done something, no one else can either. In fact, it makes me almost want to write a million words in a month on something like etherpad or google wave where people can come in and watch me type live, just to prove them wrong. But I won't.

However, on Sunday, November 01, I do plan to write 50k in 24 hours. Why? Well, because I'm going for 200k this NaNo and I'm also working intermittently and tentatively moving on 20 November. If I want to make my goal -- which I do -- I need to get ahead while I can. I know how my life is going to go the next few months [okay, no, I really don't... there's so much up in the air right now that it's actually hard to say what's even going to be happening tomorrow, but that's beside the point] and I know what I need / want to accomplish with my WriMo experience.

Although I say that, it still hurts when I get PMs accusing me of lying [of which I've already received one this year... and I'm only going for 200k!!], cheating, or telling me that the things I and my friends do is / are impossible... Meh. It's disheartening.

And reminds me every year why I hate the NaNo forums and the stupidity that resides there so much. I prefer my WriYe and JulNo/ AugNo friends any day.


[also -- this is hella disjointed. I swear my novels don't read like this!]

For NaNo each year, I give myself a reward for hitting 50k. This year, I'm shooting for 200k... and I still plan on giving myself a reward every time I hit 50k. So, I thought I would post my rewards here...


050,000 Words: Alter the Ending [new Dashboard Confessional album that comes out on 10 November]
100,000 Words: Wii Fit Plus
150,000 Words: NaNo Hoodie
200,000 Words: iPhone


For each additional 100k, I can allow myself to spend $50 shopping for non-necessities [ie - clothes, shoes, books on amazon.com, pogo gems, etc].

And, on the super off-chance that I actually make my lofty goal of 500k, I get to go spend a weekend in California or something crazy like that.

On the flip side, for every 1k that I miss my goal, I have to donate $1 to the Office of Letters and Light [on top of the $10 that I'll be donating sometime during the month].


What are your rewards?

still the genius of hi_falootin



Short post today to say that every second of the day that I spend planning for SBF using Liquid Story Binder, I fall more and more and more in love with the program. Seriously, if I met the creator of this, I might look at him like I would look at John Green if he were standing in front of me. Okay, that's definitely an exaggeration 'cos, I mean, John Green?! Nothing beats that... except AJ McLean. But, in all seriousness, this program has made my life so much easier in regards to keeping everything that has to do with my massively giant series of books.

Honestly, I wish I'd had this program three years ago when I first started recording things for SoD and then building upon that to create this massive universe that the LTA Series has become. I'm finally able to put everything into one really small program [srsly, it's smaller than some of the songs I've downloaded] and have one window up and running. It's pretty great.

The only thing it's lacking that I've discovered thus far is a program to create a map, but since I don't plan on writing any other novels that need maps, so that's not a big deal... and I would love if the playlist feature had support for .m4a files, since that's what the majority of my music is in now, but that's also a minor thing, since I almost always have iTunes running anyway.

So, yeah. OctoOctober is going fabulously. Today I moved my SBF outline from Word into LSB and started working on a very convoluted family tree for the series as a whole. Matt and Vic both have their pictures added into their character profiles and now I just need to fill in the information for them [+April] and the characters are done. I even added the images for Island Gardens and Greenwich into LBF and think I'm going to make location dossiers tomorrow.

Though, I have a dilemma. University of Greenwich and where April / Matt live in Island Gardens aren't very far away. It's literally right across the Thames -- one stop on the DLR -- and if April walked really, really freaking slow [like, crawling on the sidewalk, slow] a 5 minute walk from the house to the station and from the station to the school. I had originally planned to put her in student housing / have her rent a room from someone nearby, but the more I think about it, the more sense it would make for her to stay home. It doesn't effect the plot very much at all, but it's one of those details that need to be worked out, you know?

That said: POLL!

Poll #1468008 Housing
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 9

Where should April live in school?

And... I think that's about it for me today. [:

definitely hi_falootin's gorge image!


So, here it is, 06 October and I'm just now getting around to making my first official post about OctoOctober. Slackermancer-Erin to the extreme this month, it seems.

Since there aren't a lot of people who know what OctoOctober is, uh... well, in its most basic form, it's NaNo Prep, 'cos really, there's not a lot of "our people" that do anything other than NaNo Prep in October, so thus, OctoOctober was born.

I've -- to keep with the theme -- made eight goals this month:

1. Write 80,000 Words [00,000 / 80,000]
2. Finish detailed outline for Sunshowers in Bluebell Fields
3. Write character sheets for the 3 main characters
4. Edit chapters 7-10 of Sky of Dust
5. Write chapter 9b [and maybe even add 9c?] of Sky of Dust
6. Find and populate a map of Island Gardens for SBF
7. Collect and upload all photos of IG for SBF
8. Write [ie - write, edit, and post] 10 RaTs [00 / 10]


And haven't really accomplished much of anything yet. I've got ~10k written so far, but I don't know an exact amount 'cos I'm terrible about totaling things like that.

I am, however, making slow and steady progress on the SBF outline. It has 15 sections [one to go with each of the Iced Tea prompts that I'll be using to write the novel] and the basic outline is done -- I was good and did that in London -- so now I'm just going back through and adding detail so I actually have some semblance of plot in the outline, as opposed to just random ideas the somehow have to connect to each other like I started with. I might post it here when I'm finished, but probably not. I'm weird about sharing stuff like that with anyone.

But I'll post the order I'll be using the Iced Tea prompts in?
( Whenever I see #10, I think of the Gherkin* and giggle )


And other than that? I haven't done too much.

Well, that's a lie. I downloaded Liquid Story Binder and have been playing around with that A LOT the last few days. So, I have started on April's character sheet. Sadly, I can't find a suitable stock model for Matt and that's been putting me off of working on his character profile. I just found the perfect one for him and Vic, so hooray! I can get to work on those shortly.

Holy crap, and as though I needed more good luck, my Dad just came home, which means that I can go get the new BSB CD and actually settle in and get to work seriously! Made of win!

I might have posted RaTs this month already, but I'm not entirely sure. I'll have to check on that one, haha.

Anyway, off to get dressed now. [:




* While I was in London, I took in a lot of the city within the first 48 hours of landing from the most stressful flights I've ever had. One of the few things that I will always remember, however, is the pickle building [you should be able to figure out which one I'm talking about, I hope?]. And I will forever giggle at it.

RaTs Chronological Listing for Sunshowers in Bluebell Fields Posts.

Links are all members locked, but feel free to join runaway_tales just to read, if you're interested.


Note: These are in sections because I'm planning on writing the majority of the novel using the 15 Iced Tea prompts, all in brownies [5k or longer]. Eventually, they will be divided into chapters.



Last Update: 02 October 2009
Total: 4 Tales
( Complete Listing back HERE! )