innerslytherin | Entries tagged with nanowrimo

Oh look, here's my...completely not regular LJ update.

I'm doing NaNoWriMo again this year. Wrote 2030 words just after midnight this morning, and I'm going to try to get even more down shortly, because Tuesdays are my designed writing day during the week, and I have all the things going on at work this month, including meetings for a new strategic plan.

Ginny Weasley. OMG. This article on Tor.com just brought back all my Harry Potter fandom feels. It was like being transported back in time 13 years to my early days in the fandom. I just want to dive back into all that. I want my old Walpurgisnight RPG (my first HP RPG, where I played Ginny and Remus) back. I want to finish the Ginny/Remus fic I got stuck in. I want to reread all the fics.

Anyway. Go read the essay, if you're a Ginny fan. :)

Also, I published a new book. I was racing to get it out on Halloween, which was my self-imposed deadline, but I'm proud to say that the beta feedback for this novel has been the best so far, and I'm very pleased with it. Shades of Circle City is the first in a series (at least a trilogy so far) of urban fantasy/paranormal novels set in Indianapolis. The main character is Chloe Cole, an IMPD officer who sees ghosts. There's a werewolf state trooper, lots of alternate sexuality, and some gay subtext just for fun (because I have a couple of ships I sekritly hope people also ship, even though they're not canon). There's also a bisexual werewolf and a gay mechanic who are the stars of the next novel, which is my NaNo novel. :D

Shades of Circle City is the book I asked for feedback on the cover a while back. Here's what the cover ended up being:

( Cut to not kill your feed. )

So if you're intrigued, here's the Amazon link. I'm working on other online retailers too. :)

Let's see...I did my part today to avert the coming apocalypse. Early voting FTW. And yes #ImWithHer. I'm not sure it'll change the way Indiana goes, but I know a lot more people voting Dem this year who usually vote Rep, so hopefully the Mike-Pence-hatred (seriously, if you're not from Indiana, we hate Mike Pence. You don't want him as VP, take my word for it) will be enough to sway people. I see way more Trump signs than I would like, though. *sigh*

Current Mood: accomplished

Didn't write last night. I just didn't feel it, and I confess, with a comfortable lead, I let it slide. Today I wanted to get in a 10k day. So far I have...nothing.

I'm going to get something hot to drink, something healthy to eat, and swap my laundry from washer to dryer. Then I'm going to put on some kick-ass NaNoing music and get to work. NaNoWriMo sprints coming up at the top of the hour. :D

For now, I'm at 28,819 words. I want to be at 45,000 by the end of the week. I was going for a double-NaNo of 100k this year, though that's not looking 100% likely at this stage...but we'll see.

And now, off for some protein!

Current Mood: creative

Drat. I keep forgetting that I want to post here more often.

Let's see, what have I been up to?

This paycheck I actually had quite a bit left over after paying bills, so I ordered another box of contacts. That should get me through at least another six months, because I never follow the guidelines for how long to wear them. This is good because as much as I love my Obamacare plan, there's no vision or dental included in it, so I have a hard time scraping up the money for those visits. I haven't been to the dentist since 2011 because it's just too expensive. >.>

Speaking of Obamacare, I found out this week that my monthly premium is actually going down by quite a significant amount. An amount that will probably make the difference between going to the eye doctor next year or not going. So there's that.

I made my first ever campaign donation this year, to Bernie Sanders. It was only $10, but it's what I could manage. Right now, most of the "extra" income I have gets poured into my writing career, such as it is, so I'm trying not to do as much extraneous spending.

I'm doing NaNoWriMo, as usual. This year I'm using it to get a jumpstart on an epic fantasy story that I'm going to serialize on Patreon. It's called The Ghostwolf Cadets, and it centers on a group of teenagers who are drafted to a special academy where they'll be trained to become the emperor's black ops team. Of course, they all have their secrets, and some of those secrets could tear the team apart. I'm planning to fill it with lots of UST, including some slashy goodness, and in general I'm having a lot of fun with it. I've got it part-way plotted, and I've written 10k on it since November started. Haven't done tonight's writing yet, but I'm hoping to hit 20k by the end of my "weekend", which actually runs Sunday-Tuesday.

I'm stepping outside my comfort zone and going to a lecture in downtown Indy Monday night. Some of the activists who broke into the FBI offices in 1971 are going to be speaking on the FBI's COINTELPRO program, which was used against Martin Luther King, Jr., Black Panther activists, AIM activists, and more. I just finished an excellent (and infuriating) book called The Unquiet Grave: The FBI and the Struggle for the Soul of Indian Country by Steve Hendricks. I've had a heart for the Native American situation since seeing the miniseries of James Michener's Centennial as a young child, and the breathtaking amount of injustice and oppression that took place (and still takes place) on the Indian reservations really pisses me off. As it happens, COINTELPRO played a large part in the downward spiral of the American Indian Movement. So the lecture in Indy came along at just the right time to capture me.

Let's see, what else is going on... I'm going to be up in Fort Wayne next weekend for the Allen County Public Library Author Fair. I'm speaking on a panel called "DIY: Successful Self-Publishing" with a few other indie authors.

The kitties are all doing well. Eustace weighed in at 15.1 pounds a couple weeks ago, so he is on a diet and Not Happy About It. But he's also lost over half a pound since starting the diet, so at least it's going well in that regard. Eowyn and Eustace still aren't getting along, but for the most part they just leave each other alone. Strider's fine with them both and likes to play tag with them.

How's everyone here?

Current Mood: productive
Current Music: Born to Be Wild (Epic Trailer Version) - J2 featuring Blu Holliday

Wow, hi LJ! *dusts off blog* How is everyone doing? I have been focused so much on work and novel and SWC blog that I have been almost entirely absent here.

I love my job. Every single day I go to work and feel like I have made a difference to my coworkers and employer, and that I have given an excellent experience to our visitors. I don't think there's any way I wouldn't like a job where the mission statement was to "celebrate and renew belief in the power of the individual spirit to affect American history and culture." And one of these days, I'll even finish reading Ben-Hur.

About three weeks ago I swore off Facebook until the election was over. Too much vitriol from either side of the aisle, and frankly I was tired of losing respect for people I had always liked. Tonight I took a cool quiz at www.isidewith.com and, to no great surprise, learned that I side 76% with Barack Obama. (What surprised me more was that I actually agreed with Mitt Romney about...well, um, anything.) The website had sharing links, so I took a deep breath, bit the bullet and outed myself on Facebook as someone who's voting Democrat this year.

Of course, now I'm too cowardly to go read my friends feed, with its three lonely liberals. Ah, the loneliness of being a moderate. You may get to poke fun at both ends of the political spectrum, but you also have twice the number of people pissed off at you. *G*

Because of a request one of my beta-readers made, I've been spending my writing time this week working on an episode in the backstory of five characters. It's not something that will appear in the novel, except as each of those five people remember it from their various POVs. But the more I work on it, the more I love it, and I'm gaining all sorts of new understanding of these characters I've been living with for...um...over 22 years now. Well, most of them. Poor Ranulf, he didn't show up until draft 3, I think. *G* Anyway, it's fun.

I'm not doing NaNoWriMo this year. I made a miserable attempt at Camp NaNo this summer, which consisted of me signing up for it and promptly refusing to write for nearly two weeks straight. That led to some consideration of my novel-writing process, and I decided that, while NaNoWriMo is awesomely fun, I have learned all that it has to teach me at the present, and I really want to concentrate on finishing my current novel revision. So I'm setting NaNo aside for 2012. I may go back to it in future years, but not this year. NaNo taught me how to plot a novel, and NaNo gave me characters like Zeva and Edmund and Fithian, and I will forever be grateful that I discovered NaNoWriMo. But this year, it isn't in the cards.

In other news, still looking for a second part-time job. Retail and waitressing are out, unfortunately, because as much as I love my job, it requires a lot of energy for someone who is an introvert. I think adding a second job that requires too much interaction with the general public would make me a wreck. And in the meantime, I'm squeaking by financially. I had to borrow $10 from my dad until payday on Friday, but since that $10 is going to keep his and mom's cell phones working along with my own, I think that's okay. And one of these days I'll get around to selling my Gaiam balance ball chair and that Boonton ware I inherited from Gedna and have no use for.

A while ago Eowyn brought me a present, in the form of a not-quite-dead mouse. I'm not afraid of mice, but I don't particularly want them in my bed, so I carried her back downstairs (mouse firmly in her jaws) and put her in a large box. She proceeded to kill the mouse and jump out of the box, leaving the mouse behind to feed me, I guess. I think she's getting the hang of this hunting thing. :)

Current Mood: crazy
Crossposts: http://innerslytherin.livejournal.com/1137284.html http://innerslytherin.insanejournal.com/925442.html

Just signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo. No idea why, except that, hey, I wrote 32K last month, so I ought to be able to write 50K this month, right? Especially since my goal is to finish the original novel revision by August 30.

Let's hope, anyway.

Also, I'm signed up as a sponsored camper, so if I raise $50 in donations I get a nifty pen, and if I raise $100 in donations I get a nifty poster. So if y'all are so inclined to sponsor me, please click below.

http://www.stayclassy.org/fundraise?fcid=206981

Current Mood: crazy
Current Music: Reeve Carney - Rise Above 1 (feat. Bono and The Edge)
Crossposts: http://innerslytherin.livejournal.com/1134559.html http://innerslytherin.insanejournal.com/923199.html

Some of my favorite writing links, just in time for NaNoWriMo:

Outline Your Novel in 30 Minutes - This has a lot of useful questions to get to know your characters. I've used this several times.
Sketch a Novel in an Hour - Very similar to the first, which it's based on.
My index card method of plotting - with examples from one of my earlier NaNoWriMo novels. :)
The Snowflake Method - I haven't used this before, but it looks good for visual people.
Novel in 30 Days worksheets - Lots of worksheets to develop character, scene, plot, and more. Based on Victoria Lynn Schmidt's Book in a Month. I haven't used these extensively, but they look useful.
First Draft in 30 Days - From the book by Karen S. Wiesner. I don't follow this method 100%, but I love this book, and I love the worksheets. This year I've worked with it extensively during October to plot my novel, and I feel like I have a better handle on my idea going into November than I ever have. She has a few of the worksheets available online, but I bought a copy of the book and typed the worksheets into Word to make them easier for me to work with. I will say that I've been using this method for the past three years, and this is the first year I've fully embraced it.
How to Prep for NaNoWriMo - Advice from Jennifer Blanchard, who runs one of my favorite blogs Procrastinating Writers.
Procrastinating Writers' 5 NaNoWriMo Posts You Don't Want to Miss - Links to 5 useful articles about NaNo. One of them is the article I linked above.

And a very useful (and fun) tool I acquired several years ago and use every year: NaNoWriMo Report Card - this is the download link for an incredible spreadsheet. Originally Created by Eric Benson - Edited for 2004 by Rebecca Waterhouse. I just keep updating the year, and if I want a word count other than 50000 as my goal, I do a CTRL+H to replace 50000 with whatever word count I want (I'm aiming for 80000 this year).

Current Mood: bouncy

Some of my favorite writing links, just in time for NaNoWriMo:

Outline Your Novel in 30 Minutes - This has a lot of useful questions to get to know your characters. I've used this several times.
Sketch a Novel in an Hour - Very similar to the first, which it's based on.
My index card method of plotting - with examples from one of my earlier NaNoWriMo novels. :)
The Snowflake Method - I haven't used this before, but it looks good for visual people.
Novel in 30 Days worksheets - Lots of worksheets to develop character, scene, plot, and more. Based on Victoria Lynn Schmidt's Book in a Month. I haven't used these extensively, but they look useful.
First Draft in 30 Days - From the book by Karen S. Wiesner. I don't follow this method 100%, but I love this book, and I love the worksheets. This year I've worked with it extensively during October to plot my novel, and I feel like I have a better handle on my idea going into November than I ever have. She has a few of the worksheets available online, but I bought a copy of the book and typed the worksheets into Word to make them easier for me to work with. I will say that I've been using this method for the past three years, and this is the first year I've fully embraced it.
How to Prep for NaNoWriMo - Advice from Jennifer Blanchard, who runs one of my favorite blogs Procrastinating Writers.
Procrastinating Writers' 5 NaNoWriMo Posts You Don't Want to Miss - Links to 5 useful articles about NaNo. One of them is the article I linked above.

Current Mood: bouncy

So on a writing-related note rather than a job-related one: I'm looking for music that makes you think of dwarves. I'm returning to epic fantasy for NaNoWriMo, and I'm writing mostly about dwarves. Still working on world-building, but I can tell you they are a sophisticated people, not simply ale-soaked axe-smiters. They're hardy folk, and largely a warrior society, but that's not all they are. Three of my main characters are warriors; two are in war bands, one is forbidden to carry arms but has learned to do so anyway.

I'm not particularly looking for Celtic-type music. I'm actually going more with the "drums in the deep" angle. I did find a great Taiko album that drew on Anglo-Saxon roots, and that was the addition to my soundtrack that excited me most. Anything that sounds like mines or tunnels or earthquakes or unshakeable stone... (that reminds me, I ought to have "Only the Earth Endures" on there...) I've got things from various soundtracks - nothing super evocative, such as the Rosenman theme for Moria or even the Moria pieces we hear in Shore's FOTR score. But I took things from game soundtracks like Dragon Age: Origins and Dungeon Siege II.

( Here's my playlist so far: )

Any links to YouTube videos, song suggestions, score suggestions, etc., would be very appreciated! :D