That Girl Has Love

I went to writer's group today. I'm quite enjoying it. Love the practice.

Today's prompt for the five minute warm up was 'complicated'. Here's my story:

“Is it really that hard to keep him in his cage?” Seth asked in annoyance, rubbing his temples as he tried to keep calm. 

“It’s more complicated than you think--” 

“He’s a zombie! A brainless, mindless zombie. How complicated can it be?” 

“Well… he’s a smart zombie…” 

Seth looked down at the talking head and pile of chewed on body parts. Well, at least he had another severed head to add to his collection. The down side to it, though, was that there was a zombie on the loose and not just any zombie but Marcus, Seth’s hungriest –and obviously most cunning- zombie. 

Seth groaned and in his frustration, sent the former keeper’s head flying with one swoop of his foot.

 Seth is a demonic ring master of his own circus of creatures. I love him. He's the main character of my NaNo this year. :)

Hmm... what else to write about...

The five words for the story that have to have all 5 words in it are:

• benefit
• Oktoberfest
• clumsy
• international
• felicity

Now, I challenge all you writers to not only write a story for the complicated prompt, but to write a story with the 5 words in it! Show me if you do it!

Laters!

Welcome to My Life

Hey people! This post won't be long, but I want to share it today!

I know most of you who actively read this do NaNo, so I suppose you can ignore this, unless you want to sign up for this...

It's a sponsorship for NaNo, a lot like what runner do for marathons. The money goes to the Office of Letters and Light to keep NaNo going and get writing programs into schools. It's a good investment if you ask me.

So what do you say? Sponsor me?

Candyman

I'm loving the Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies book. I suggest this book to all of you (yes, even you Gilbert) even if you don't write romance. It covers a lot of stuff in it that works for all writers, like what you can use for tax write offs as a writer. Now, I don't suggest buying it if you're not a romance writer, but I do suggest getting it from your local library and flipping through it.

Aside from that, I think I'm going to try getting into category romance (aka, series romance). At least to get into the publishing business. I can move up from there to regular long books. But series romance books aren't as long (typically between 50,000 and 100,000 words, more on the shorter side of that) and writer's publish more of them a year (like 5 or 6 sometimes). Sure, the books don't get the big advances regular novels get, but between the advances, the royalties, and the amount you end up publishing a year... it could look pretty nice. Also, i gives me practice on writing more words in my stories so I can build up to the length that a normal romance novel is (100,000 words plus) and I get my name out there (or at least things I can put on a query letter).

I'm going to need to do some research though, because in series romances, the publishing house wants a particular type of story to sell it in a bundle with other books like it; so I have to find the publishing houses and  find out about their series. Shouldn't be too hard though. It'll be fun.

And it works with 6 months 6 novels, writing a book each of the six months that's at least 50,000 words (though I'm hoping to aim for 75,000 words this NaNo).

Jeez, I'm using a lot of parenthesis.

Another thing I wanted to blog about was this post posted by the guy who made Write or Die: [The 48 Minute Rule]. Basically, you write for 48 minutes then take a 12 minute break. It gives your mind something more solid to hold on to rather than "I'm going to work for 3 hours today". He says that can get you into thinking "well, I need to do the dishes, and I'm hungry..." which leads to other distractions and so on. But if you're going for 48 minutes with a 12 minute break, you can look at your timer and say "hey, I've only got such an amount of time left until I've got a break, so it can wait." I want to try this when I get back to writing which will hopefully be soon >.<

So, has anyone else tried the 48 minute rule? How'd/s it work for you?

Laters!

Cold (But I'm Still Here)

My laptop is dead *cries!* That may possibly mean that I will not be able to do NaNo this year, which is DEVASTATING because I've been hyped up for it all year! Yes, I've got a family computer. But there in lies the problem. It's a family computer. I can't be hogging it all day. Not to mention the desk sits right next to the TV and I have two brothers who (1) want to use the computer and (2) are loud and annoying. This computer, while sitting here in the living room, is attached to the internet. Which means distractions for my poor brain and I can't have that. That's a HUGE reason why I do NaNo in the basement room (see [this post] for a view of my writing area); there's no net down there.


This week just isn't my week.


Thus ends my mini rant thing.


Also, I had been working on a blog post earlier and when I went into it, I knew what my point was. Half way through, I forgot what my point was. It sucked.

Playas Gon' Play

I like this song, but I hate using it for a title. Oh well, that's the song that was on!

Today I went to my first ever writer's group! I like it, it was fun.  It's the oldest writing group in the area actually (since 2001), and the only one I could find that met every week.

 First, we did a 5 minute quick write on the prompt they give us. The prompt today was 'carry on' and I'm actually happy with my story. Here it is:

Michael fell back against the wall, clutching at his shoulder. Blood gushed between his fingers, soaking into his trench coat. He loved that trench coat and he hoped to be buried in it. Though it needed to be dry cleaned first. 

The thought brought a frown to his face. He couldn’t just die there. He needed to get back to Zachary. The boy would be lost if Michael didn’t show up at the office and seeing that the office was his apartment… well that would just be odd. 

He pushed himself up off the ground and stumbled down the hall. He’d made his hit, but they’d heard him coming. There was a small fight but Michael had won. He always won. Though if he died now… 

“It wouldn’t be a win…” he muttered. He needed to keep walking, keep breathing. If not for his reputation, then for Zachary. 

Blood dripped off his hand as he fought to keep conscious. He wanted to lay down, to just take a nap, but he knew it’s be a nap he’d never wake from.

So, just as a note, Michael is a hit man (that's obvious) and Zachary is a guy only a couple years younger than him that he's training to be a hit man. Zachary is also Michael's lover, though Mikey doesn't like to admit to it.

We talk about NaNo and the people had never heard of it. They seem interested in it though and they took down the website. If they do it, that would be awesome! Though my roommate and I were by far the youngest ones there, though that's not necessarily the worst thing that could have happened.

One of the guys in the group read part of this story he's working on, a few of the people left early, then we talked about movies, then we all left. All in all, it was fun.

We've got (optional) homework, which I want to do. We came up with 5 random words and we have to work these five words in to a story. The words are

• privilege
• frankly
• pressure
• blue cheese (this was my word. I was hungry at the time, can you tell? I don't like blue cheese btw)
• blank (my roommate came up with this one)

Also, they told us about a writing contest that I want to find and check out. It's a three minute story, so it has to be really short so it can be read in three minutes, and it has to start with "Some people swore that the house was haunted" and end with "Nothing was ever the same again after that." Here the [link]. I want to try it out, see if I can't do it. Could be fun. If you want to try it out, you'd better hurry! Deadline is the 26th. :)

Hmm... I think that's all I've got to say for today.

I challenge everyone who's read this post to make a story with those five words and write a short story with all five in it. If you do and post it, link me to it, ya? It'll be fun!

Laters!

PS, Mikey is my character and Zack is my best friend's character, it's all for rp and we love them :)

Full Forever

I like to roam the NaNo boards and when I see that someone has a link to their blog in their signature on there, I click on it and check it out, cause I'm always looking to see how other people do it, how popular they are, if they're interesting to me and if I want to follow them. So there I was wandering around the Adopt a Romantic Line thread on the NaNo boards and I came across a person who had the link to their blog (which was called 'my silly blog about writing and everyday life' and I had to click on it, just because it was 'silly'). So, as I do, I began reading the posts (and I'll get around to reading all of them) and the second post is what sold me on the whole blog.

Here's the [link] to it.

It makes a lot of sense. And I found myself guilty of it, to an extent. I will get onto that thought pattern then I try to squash it down. Like when I decided to make a blog. I wanted it to become popular, for people to want me to post daily about stuff they could probably care less about. I wanted people to love my writing through this. But as I was searching through other writing blogs, I noticed that hardly none of them have any comments on them or have barely any followers. So I decided that that didn't matter. What will matter is when (if) I get popular and as part of the deal I have to have a blog. This is my blog. I'll be ahead of the game! Go me!

Her post links to a post Nathan Bransford made, and I like what she had to say about it. Bransford's post is nice, but what got me on hers was this:

It's like we define our success based on how many followers we have on Twitter, or how many hits we get on our material, and if we get X number of followers and Y number of people pay attention to our online presence, then tada! We're successful. But it shouldn't be that way.

I like that. It not only makes me feel less crazy for thinking that way, but makes me feel better for trying to squash it down.

I guess, a bit reason I'm posting this, and what she said, is because one of the first thoughts that went through my head was how my dad seems to be viewing it that way, in a sense. He sends me texts about how many hits his blog has gotten. I knew he wants it to be a popular blog but... I wonder how bad that could turn out if it doesn't take off. I don't know, just the way I see it.

I'm happy to just be actually keeping up with this and having the few people who look at it, look at it.

OK, so this wasn't so much about writing  directly, but who cares? It's my blog. This clicked in my brain and I wanted to share it. Now go read her post cause it sounds SO much better than mine!

Laters!

Toxicity

So, I want NaNo to start. Really bad. I need to be working on other things, but all I've got on the mind is NaNo. And a plot line that isn't even for NaNo. It'll be for one of the months next year when I'm writing. I'll have to pick a month. All in all, this distraction is giving me a mild case of writer's block >.< Not good when I have paying customers to make happy!

I also can't wait for all the writing to be done next year. It shall be great. I doubt all of the 6 novels will come out any good, but hopefully at least one of them will! I have faith!!

And now, the reason for this post.

On the NaNo boards, there's a thread about posting pictures of where you write. So many people have such pretty areas! Mine... looks like a prison. I've posted these pictures on the thread already (and had people say it looks like a prison), but I decided to share it here as well. :)

The door to the writing area. We (being me and my roommate) write in our building's community room. This is the door. Ain't it lovely?

This is the window on the door. I have a smiley face on there cause people like to look in and it's annoying. There's actually more paper there now, seeing as I took this picture last October or something.

This is a view through the window. The table isn't set up right in this picture, but you see that table with the chairs? That's where we sit. The room is all white and looks a lot like a padded cell.

This is a shot through the window. The chairs are set up right in this one. I sit in the one by the wall and my roommate sits in the chair facing the wall behind my chair. My view is a lovely white wall and a black couch, as well as the door.

So that is where I write. Despite it's bareness and how friggin COLD it gets down there, it's great for focusing on writing. There's no net connection to distract me. Yey!

Also, I wanted to share this next picture. It's going to be my desktop background during NaNo cause it's awesome!

Ain't it awesome! I love it more for what it says on it than the picture, but it all works together so well. There's more NaNo/writing related wallpapers [here]. Go check them out, they're great.

Oh! Something I forgot Check out [Write or Die]. It's awesome. I want to get the desktop version so I can use it in the room I write in and not need to be hooked up to the net for it to work. Go look! Now! >:D

All right, that's all I've got to say for now. Laters!

With Arms Wide Open

I got my a new book, The Writing Diet. I've moved from reading the Blogging book, to the Romance Novel book, and now to this one. Cause I want to read this one. I'm about half way through it or so. It's interesting, actually, and I'm going to give it a try. Then I'll go back to The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Your Romance Novel then back to the Blogging book. Because I want to have the Romance book done before NaNo so I can use what I learn in it for my NaNo. Or at least I'm going to read the parts about writing a romance novel then go back to the publishing parts when I need them. I think, though, that I'll check out some more books on writing romance novels before I go back to the blogging book. Really, writing a book is a little more important than making this blog well known in the 'blogosphere' or whatever the book called it. But I'll get back to it eventually.

In other news, I have yet to figure out a way to make Miwordy work for next year without burning myself out. I'm slowly working on novel ideas (*gigglesnort*) for all six novels of next year. This'll be fun! Yey!

I haven't done any writing recently. That makes me sad. But I have done reading. So I guess that makes up for it.

I still owe people stories in my shop of Gaia, dang it. I need to get back to work!

Well, that' all I can think of to write here, so, Laters!

Sold My Soul

So, my dad started a writing blog over on wordpress (look at the Blogs I Read for The Book of Writing, that's his blog). His first post was about why he writes and that got me to wanting to write a post about why I write.

Now I was thinking at first, after reading his post, that I was quite the odd ball with my reasonings for why I write. My dad's reason for writing is because one of his teachers read The Hobbit to his class and he fell in love with the written word via that. And I've heard a lot of people say they got into writing because they read a book that inspired them, or they had a teacher who read to them and inspired them to write.

I don't fall into any of those categories.

So I asked my roommate why she writes (because she's a writer too :) ) and her reason was just because she came up with a story over a few years time and wanted to put it down on paper. I didn't feel so weird after that.

I started writing because of a homework assignment.

In kindergarten.

My kindergarten teacher gave us an assignment to write a story. I don't remember what the parameters were or any of that but I came up with the story and told it to  my mom and she wrote it for me 'cause, come on, it was kindergarten and my story had a lot of big words in it, or something like that, haha. But anyways, I came up with a story about a cat who was friends with all of the other animals but the dog. My mom still has that story too. It lacked a plot and didn't really have an real ending of sorts. But I fell in love with telling stories, coming up with all this stuff was awesome. And after that I became a writer.

I never wrote anything substantial growing up because I never really had my niche, my genre, my special writing place. I loved to come up with stories, oh yes I did, but I cold never really come up with anything more than a paragraph. In middle school and high school I wrote some awesome short stories but nothing big. I wanted to be a published author! I wanted to have my book sitting on the shelf next to Anne Rice!

Sure, I tried to write loads of stories in high school (It should be known now that I call my manuscripts 'stories' rather than novels or MS's because it works so much better for me that way *shrug*). I had one that was about a high school loser who was always picked on by the football team start killing the football team one by one. That was until I showed it to my therapist and she asked if I was suicidal and depressed. (It was a fanfiction for Elijah Wood. My best friend had said she was fed up with all Elijah Wood fan fiction being love stories. So I decided to write one where he was a murderer. When I told the therapist this, she asked my if my best friend was depressed, homicidal and suicidal. *eye roll*) That stopped my want to write that story. Then I started on Temporarily Insane, a story that takes place in a mental institution. I had too many characters and then never could finish it. I loved that plot line though.


Before I go any farther, I had one friend in high school who I would always go over to her house and when I was there, we would write stories together. The full length manuscripts I wrote with her were, until 2008, the only full length manuscripts I had ever written. And those were co-authored.


Well now, there comes 2008! I found out about NaNoWriMo a week before it started and talked my roommate into doing it with me. And we won! It was awesome!


As of now, I have 2 (mostly) completed novels. By 'mostly' I mean they need to be cleaned up. And the second one will probably never see the light of day, but I hope to all high heaven that the first one does! Because it's awesome and I'm evil that way. (Long story behind that >.>)


Well, anyways, that there is why I write. And my journey up until now-ish. Hope I wasn't too boring there.


Laters!


PS I'm thinking about putting music on my blog. Not sure yet though.

Something

Why yes, that is a song title, not just me being really, really lame, lol.

So, this isn't about writing, but I've started working on one of my cosplays for Anime Expo next year! Well, not putting it together yet, but I've printed up a picture of the vest and I'm deciding what I can use for the pieces of it. It'll be AWESOME!

On to writing news now:

You know what I hate? Plot bunnies. Don't know what a plot bunny is? Well it's a term I stole from the NaNo boards and basically, it's when you have a plot, and then another plot pops up, and another, and another, and each plot is called a plot bunny cause they multiply like rabbits. It's evil. I keep getting plot ideas popping up and I don't know whether I should write them down or let them sit and stew in my brain until they either fade away or work themselves out. Or maybe even turn them into an rp storyline. My options are endless. And it's not like I can work these plot lines into my NaNo story because, well, they just don't mesh.

I can't wait for NaNo. I love NaNo. I want to write my story, though I'm scared it won't stretch! I'm shooting for 75,000 words this year. Last year I shot for 100,000 words and fell short and burned out horribly. So this  year I thought I'd only go up 25,000 words then next year I can try again for 100,000 words. Not all too sure on that though because I want to try the 6 Novels, 6 Months challenge. Basically, you write a novel every other month. It should be fun. I need the practice. On top of the 6 Novel, 6 Month challenge, I want to do WriYe and Milwordy. WriYe, from what I understand, is you set a certain word goal for the year and write all year long to reach that goal, doesn't matter what you write. Milwordy is when you write one million words in a years time. So they all work together!

Only problem is trying to get to a million words in one year.

Maybe I should rethink milwordy and just do the 6 novel, 6 month and WriYe challenge and save milwordy for another year.

Things to think about, things to think about.

You know what's hard to do? Find schools offering a BFA in Creative Writing via online. Sure, I can find MFA programs, but you have to already have a BFA in the subject to get into it! Like I've mentioned before, I've found two schools, one I'm more interested in getting into than the other. This is just more stuff to think about.

In other news, I missed the writing group I wanted to go to today. Totally forgot. But it meets weekly and I can just go to it next week. I've even set an alarm in my phone to remind me about it next week.

Still reading Blogging for Dummies. Why yes, I am a slow reader. And easily distracted.

I think that's it for today. Laters!

PS
[WriYe Site]
[Milwordy Site]
[6 Novels, 6 Months Site]
[NaNoWriMo Site]
List of [Timed Writing Contests] With Links

Big, Blonde, and Beautiful

Oh yeah, that's the song that's playing right now. I think I may start putting the song that's playing as the topic of my posts, at least until I have something to write about that deserves the title heading, like "OMG I GOT ACCEPTED BY AN AGENT!!!" and one day, oh yes, one day it will state that! Moowahahahahahahahaha!!

Evil laughter is so much fun, hehe.

Anyhows, I'm a slow reader. I wish I was a faster reader but I'm not. Insert big ol' sad face here. I'm seriously not very far in Blogging for Dummies cause I suck like that, but oh well, I'll get through it before I have to return it to the library. I got The Complete Idioit's Guide to Getting your Romance Published (which yesterday I called writing a romance novel or something like that) in the mail today. I want to read it, but if I start in on it, I'll never finish the blogging one. I need to get reading!!!

In other news, I have't written anything but this blog in a few days. I need to get on that. But my excuse is that I've been searching for schools to major in Creative Writing. It's not as easy as it should be because I don't do good having to go to a campus so I'm looking for online schools. I have two now one that I found a while ago, but I want to have back ups in case I don't get in to one. I'm thinking of taking creative writing at one of them and professional writing at the other when I'm done with creative writing. Oh yeah, I'm an over achiever, I suppose, haha.

I'm still trying to decide exactly what I want to do, other than be a published author. Either college professor for creative writing or a book editor for a publishing company. Still deciding.

Hmm...

My goals for writing: have a book on the banned book list and have a book in the school curriculum. Far fetched? Only that second one, I'm sure.

Anyways, that's all I can think of for this. Laters!

The First Song On the Album

Hello all of you out there! *waves to all the crickets*

So, I've decided to start a blog. I was going to do this over at wordpress but omg, it's hard to understand everything! Very complex, I don't like it. This is nice and organized. <3

I will be filling this with whatever writing stuff I can come up with, as well as whatever comes to mind as I'm writing this thing out.

Let's see... I'm editing a manuscript from 2 years ago that I wrote for NaNo because I love it. I'm hoping to get it cleaned up and published. It's a paranormal romance about a notorious Angel killer and how his plan to have power in the End of Days blows up in his face.

Ha! That was my story sentence... thing. I read (most of) Writing Fiction for Dummies, at least the parts about  getting published and they suggested you make one of those, and that was mine. How does it sound? Would you read it?

Other than that, I'm doing writing commissions for people on Gaia, getting paid in Gaia gold to write stories. It's fun but time consuming. This is all to keep me entertained until this years NaNo. Can't tell you too much about that one though.

Oh, if you don't know what NaNoWriMo is, go to nanowrimo.org. It's a 'contest' to write at least 50,000 words before the end of the month. It's loads of fun.

I've got quite the list of books to read, too. All of them are nonfiction too; well, not all of them but the ones I'm reading first are. Right now I'm reading Blogging for Dummies, then I've got The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Romance, The Writing Diet, The Everything Guide to Writing a Romance Novel, and Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies. Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Then after those I've got a slew of romance novels that I'm borrowing from a friend to read. So I'll be kept busy!

I want to really read up on the romance genre and see what others say about it cause really, I only recently started reading romance, but my brain kept wanting to write it, so I have been. Call me a romantic! But that's why I have all those books up there about writing romance.

Don't think I don't know how to write, I've been writing since I was a wee one, it's just a natural talent. It'll kick ass when I get published.

Ok, I think that's all I've got for now. Laters!