WP Platinum Blog
Music : According to You – Orianthi
Mood: Distracted
As a treat for you today, I’ve decided to detail some information on the writings and workings of my first Nanowrimo and the novel that came out the other end.
I have been taking part of Nanowrimo since 2007. Like nearly everyone who does Nanowrimo, my first year was a failure, with me forgetting that I was going to do it until November 13 and then giving it up when I realized that I was already busy enough that I was sleeping less than 4 hours a night. I promised myself that the next year I’d do better, and when Nanowrimo came about in 2008, I cleared most of my calendar and decided that this year I would be a rebel and work on a previously existing novel that I had lying around. I finished the month with a novel, mostly finished, at 67,306 words for the month, and approximately 92,000 words total. I was ecstatic with my progress and actually had very high hopes of publishing that novel… until I actually sat down and read it, three months later. Then I realized that the brilliant story I had in my head hadn’t translated to what had gone onto the paper. I was missing an over-arcing plot, a villain, and my story was (all told) a collection of short stories about the characters. It was meant to be a romance novel, but when I read it, I realized that even that had been over-done, turning it into the only thing the novel was about.
Although I was discouraged, I decided that to look at it logically. Okay, so the story sucked, the plot was non-existent and I had no villain. Most people would have considered that a complete failure and I would have as well, if I had not decided to do something that most people don’t. I also looked to see what I did well.
That was when I realized that the characters that I’d come up with were engaging, entertaining, and all had their own voice. I decided that the novel itself may have been a failure, but in trying, I’d inadvertently discovered where I shined as a writer.
Like all novelists, it is my fervent hope that the writing that happened for that book never sees the light of day (I’d probably die of embarrassment). I also came to the decision that the characters still deserved their story, and that the best way to do this would be to rewrite the story during the next Nanowrimo. A silly idea? Perhaps. I decided that this year would not be quite so haphazard.
I continued to write different stories and work on a separate novel for the rest of that year, and kept those characters on the back burner. Two weeks before Nanowrimo started, I began to do some basic work for my story. I wrote up the over-arcing plot I thought I wanted, answered some basic questions for each of the main characters and came up with a set of villains.
I didn’t finish that novel during November, but I did succeed at Nanowrimo, ending the month with a few hundred words over 83,000. I planned to finish it in December, but predictably, I was exhausted and somewhat burned out. So, I put it to the side, and now, 7 months later, its Julnowrimo, and I’m determined to finish the book. I’ve gone over the stuff I wrote during Nano, and I have an idea of what I need to write to fill in the gaps.
I’m attacking it with a plan, and hopefully, I’ll succeed. What about you guys? If you’ve taken part in Nanowrimo, have you guys won? What was your word count? How well did your first novel turn out? Do you think it’s good enough to get published or will it take a tweaking and rewriting before you’ll be happy with it?
On a final note, I’m going to be gaming all weekend! So, you might want to expect my next blog to be about gaming in some way shape or form! It should be an awesome weekend!
Happy Canada Day!
Posted in Blogs on June 30th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 9 Comments »
Please feel free to leave comments about my writing, where you think the story may be going or any other thoughts that you had while reading it!
Today is a day of triumph… minor triumph, to be true, but still a triumph. A bit of history though, last year, my company was short workers for a while and in a desperate attempt to keep up with a work overload, I over-worked my tendons and developed the very sucky tendinitis. I needed a full 2 weeks off work, and even when I got back, I had another week and a half of easy duties that didn’t require me to use my hands to type. Nowadays I still have pain, but usually only if I’ve been over-working my hands on work stuff (Since if I can’t type, I don’t have either job, I make certain to try to take care of them).
For the last 2-3 days now, my hands have been killing me, and today they finally feel better enough to type. I am super pleased even though they are still a bit swollen. Basically the reason I’m so pleased though is so that I can blog to you guys. My mind has been racing through story ideas in the meantime (I have a new character history that I’m working on), but most of my planning has actually been in preparing for Julnowrimo.
Julnowrimo, a derivative of Nanowrimo, takes place in July and the challenge is the same as in November, with less rules. 50k words in 31 days (1612 words per day). You can write just about anything, so long as it is fiction (even if it’s not fiction based), but in general, even things like memoirs get the nod in Julno. This year I’ve decided to work on my novel from the last Nanowrimo and finish it up. To get this done, I’ve been writing up my plot in a three act format. When I finish that, I’m going to highlight all the scenes I’ve already written so that I know going into the month which scenes I need and where my plot is going. No guarantees that it’ll help me stay on track, but at least I’ll have a better idea starting out (what is it people say about having the best of intentions?). If you want to do it with me, I’m on the boards as Feytouched… If not, then please follow me on here, and I’ll try to post a daily (or near daily) word count, perhapfs talking about what I wrote that day.
Other than that, I haven’t been doing much actual this week, but neither have I been gaming. I have my writing office nearly finished (it’s a horrible mess right now) so it should be available for next month.
I’ve also been setting up (although I haven’t made use of it yet) is my Dragon Naturally Speaking program. It’s one of those awesome “talk-to-type” programs which should make next month a breeze, even if my hands start seriously hurting. It will also really help me get used to using it, which should make November easier as well.
I’ve only used it a few times, but it seems pretty good. The only words it gets wrong on a usual basis are my fantasy words and fantasy names (strangely, words like “Seirei” or “Khorevash” aren’t in its English database). It’s even prepared for this eventuality though, and Dragon comes with a correction/addition program. If it types in the wrong word, you tell it the word you want to correct and it asks you to type (or spell) the correct word and say it. Then it asks you to repeat the new word memorizing how the word is pronounced and spelled by you. Great program, and I can’t wait to start using it more often.
What do you guys use to write with? Do you? What tech toys do you have on your comps to make things easier for you?
I should have the next part of Dual Melodies – Chapter 1 up tomorrow. Keep an eye out for it!
Posted in Blogs on June 25th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 5 Comments »
One of the major Pagan holidays is Litha, also known by the title Summer Solstice. Many Pagans celebrate this day, and I am no exception. Tomorrow, me and my husband will head outside to the circle stones that we placed in our back yard, and meditate on the coming blessings and lazy rewards of the season.
So this message is actually just a quiet blessing/prayer from me to you (whatever your religion), May Blessings of the Season shine upon you and yours!
Blessed Litha!
Posted in Pagan on June 20th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 12 Comments »
Please feel free to comment about my review here!
Did you agree with my assessment? Did you think I was totally off the mark? What about the music itself? Tell me what you thought about the band!
So, the last few days I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather… not actually sick, but a bit tired, a bit dizzy and certainly not able to concentrate like I normally am. The usual stuff that doesn’t actually stop you, just makes everything ten times harder to do. Especially things that you have to keep a modicrum of attention on. Today, my drop was very noticible, mostly in gaming unfortunately.
Dungeons & Dragons (tabletop roleplaying) isn’t horribly confusing, but our game does have a lot of characters to remember, along with other world knowledge. I know that I need to read up on the world we’re in again, so that I can remember all of the small world bits (rulers, the name of my characters homeland, ect.), but today it would have been nice to just remember the small things. Like my mission… or what my mission means.
My character is a blunt-as-all-hell earth genasi (re: half human/half elemental). Female, of human stock, but she was raised among the dwarves by her human father. Long story short, she’s a hard woman to please and although she’s confident about her abilities, she is hopeless when people skills are required. Her sense of humor is macabre and can be confusing at times, and people tend to think she’s joking when she not, and serious when she’s joking. All this means that she tends to feel alienated from those around her, and she has serious issues with self-confidence.
Fun character, but last night was horrible. Her mission was to arrest this guy. The official orders were “We need to arrest him and then interrogate him on a few things…”. Okay well, what does he look like? (A half breed dwarf and answer only slightly more precise than saying ‘you know, the elf with the bow’). What are his skills? (We don’t know.) What are we arresting him for? (We need to question him/interrogate him on stuff) When did he arrive in the city? (sometime over the last few months and 3weeks). My character decides that the guys obviously want him brought in for questioning, since they obviously don’t have enough information to arrest him for anything, and they are actually hoping to get him to admit guilt while holding him. For a criminal, 24 hours of questioning is a pain, but easily do-able. Me and my captain find him in disguise but he escapes. Later, the coin I had tossed him to pay for a drink gets dropped at my feet. After work I head to the bar he told me to look for him in, and find him waiting for me. We chat, and the guy is intriguing. Interesting, Intelligent, not afraid of a fight, and seems to find my character attractive. We start talking, and I eventually convince him to turn himself in. Apparently I’m throwing this guy to the wolves, and my captain and sergeant don’t just want info, they want to really throw the book at him.
Now, I’m not going to complain… it’s roleplaying after all, and mis-communications happen in real life all the time. However, now my character is in a quandary. Considering that she finds herself attracted to him, she wouldn’t have convinced him to turn himself in had she realized that they wanted him for more than a 24 hr ‘Where were you the night of the thirteenth?’ line of questioning. I don’t think she’d even consider breaking him out of jail until every other option had been chased. Most likely she would try to convince her bosses on leniency (my character convinced him to turn himself in after all. She was off duty, so she may not be listed as the arresting officer. On the other hand, it looks better on the books if she was, since that explains why she was chasing it on her off-time.). My question is now all motivation. Would she care that much about a guy she just met? Even one who intrigued her? If she does, what level would she go to for him? Would she post bail and tell him to stay hidden while she pulls some strings and gets him out? Could she afford bail, even if she wanted to? How about begging leniency from the courts, bribing the proper officials and then waiting for him to get out and handing him her own club to beat her with? What about allowing him to tie her up and letting him do naughty things to her (hey, it’s been quite a while for the character… she can dream of ‘fun’ punishments, right?) Even if he was forgiving enough to date her afterward (unlikely for a criminal), how far would she be willing to take a ‘fun’ punishment with her self-confidence issues?
This, in a nutshell, is why I love playing role playing games! There is nothing else in the world that allows such a simple situation to be played in, experienced, and the human condition delved into in quite the same way. For example, my life is actually quite boring. The closest thing I’ve ever had to “criminal” boyfriend is the time an ex of mine got pulled in for questioning because he’d been seen with a guy known for petty theft. The idea of her being so shy is also a factor, and since I’m a more outgoing person normally, I have to stop and think about what a shyer person would do in the same situation. It’s an exercise in imaginative situations and character motivations, as well as helping with little things like dialog and character interactions. On the other hand, I do experience the guilt in this sort of situation… I mean, come on. A guy she’s attracted to is in jail because of her!
On the non-gaming front, I do have one bit of news worth talking about. Today I signed up for a literary convention here in Canada happening in October. The SiWC (Surrey International Writers Conference) is a literary convention, and should be a heck of a lot of fun. They didn’t seem to have any interviews available with people who specifically work in the Dark Fantasy genre, but I was able to set up a ten minute meeting with Susan Chang from Tor Books and a 15 minute meeting with CC (Chris) Humphreys to discuss my novel.
CC (Chris) Humphreys writes Dark Historial Fiction and the Blue Pencil event is 15 minutes where he will work with me on defining my promise, fixing up those three pages and working at least a bit on presentation. Speaking with editor Susan Chang will be brilliant as well, giving me the change to pimp my own story, and then to get information on how to improve my pitch, suggestions on who may be interested in my genres and (if she’s interested in my book) showing her my three pages to three chapters of work. It should be awesome and I can’t wait to go.
Happening in October, this literary conference has some incredible courses available, some incredible names as instructors and should really help me improve as a writer. I’d suggest anyone interested in improving as a writer should think about attending! I’ll definately let you all know my other thoughts after I’ve actually gone to it.
What do you guys think? About my game or my trip? Have a similar situation? I’d love to have you share a comment!
Posted in Blogs on June 17th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 6 Comments »
This is a forum to discuss the newest release of the story. As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the story, and answer any questions that you may have…
Posted in Short Stories on June 12th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 5 Comments »
This area is dedicated to comments about the first Chapter (Part1) of Dual Melodies. Questions and comments are encouraged!
Posted in Short Stories on June 11th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 7 Comments »
Yesterday as my husband was driving me to work, I heard about the worst movie ever on the “ready to be produced” list… Apparently, unwilling to stop at ruining Alice in Wonderland for everyone, Tim Burton has said that one of the projects he’s looking at is the Disney Classic, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Apparently he wants to make some changes to it, and honestly, while changes to an old idea can revitalize it, the changes proposed turn my stomach.
Apparently the ‘honourable’ Tim Burton has decided that the problem with an old story like Snow White isn’t the pretty, stupid girl, the evil wicked stepmother or the prince once again stepping out to save a woman too dumb to know that she is a D-I-D (Damsel-In-Distress). It’s that there are no dragons in it (why is it always a dragon? Are Hollywood roads today filled with dirty men on the streets holding signs saying “Have Dragon, Will Travel”?) and that there are dwarfs. Let’s focus on that for a moment now, shall we? Tim Burton has no problem producing a kid’s show about Necrophilia, (Corpse Bride, anyone), but he does have a problem with Midgets?
Seriously though, Tim Burton has gone on record as saying he wants Burglars instead of Dwarves. Hmm, Men in black outfits doing impossible high rise dexterous moves… I going to go out on a limb here and suggest that what Tim Burton is thinking of isn’t a burglar. Not a burglar, you say? What else could be thinking of? Well, what other popular ‘criminal’ character type dresses in black, operates best in the darkness and has few qualms about other people’s property and doesn’t tend to hold society’s morals in high regard? Yep, I think you know what I’m talking about. Tim Burton wants to do “Snow White and the Seven Ninja”. I can only imagine that he used his rolodex of popular and over-used ideas to come up with this one.
And what exactly is the problem with dwarves anyway? It’s not like we’re taking about the Travelocity-type Garden Gnomes here. We’re talking about Tough as Nails Dwarves. Perhaps the two words just don’t fit together in his vocabulary. I mean, come on… edgy and dwarf? How could you even work with a ridiculous idea like that right?
I can only assume that Tim Burton has never heard of the Roleplaying game, Shadowrun.
For those of you who don’t know, Shadowrun is an edgy futuristic role-playing game set in the 2050’s and on. In it, Science has continued to advance and move forward at it’s current breakneck pace, but Magic also returned to the world, creating new magical problems as well. Magic isn’t the be all/end all, but neither is Science, leaving the two sitting snug while their respective proponents to growl that “mine is better than yours”. Humanity has branched off into 5 major races. Human, Elf, Dwarf, Orc and Troll. And trust me, the Dwarfs in this game are about as likely to sing and whistle while they work as any other New Yorker. What they are likely to do is to fill you full of holes if you call them “Little People”. Here is a Shadowrun dwarf.
Dwarf Street Sam
Does this scream “cuddle” to you? No. In fact, I see a shorter than average man, who’s honestly led a hard life dealing with constant racism and has finally had enough.
Personally, I’d take out the mining, perhaps making them a retired mercenary company living in the woods. It may be a cliché way to change it, but if they insist on making them battle a dragon, at least then it would explain why they know how to fight. On a final note to Mr. Burton before I put this topic aside… Johnny Depp may be a fine actor and wonderful at playing delightfully insane yet suave characters, but if I have to sit through an hour and a half of him playing Dopey, I will be severely disappointed.
On a secondary note, I came to a conclusion about the Twilight book series yesterday as well. My husband commented that Bella was a stalker… Having read the first two books (and not hearing anything different from fans of the other two), Bella does not have the traits of a stalker. Edward, on the other hand, does (what else can you say about the behavior of watching somebody from outside their bedroom window and then creeping in after they’re asleep and cuddling with them until a few minutes before they wake up, leaving the person to wake up to their alarm?). Bella, if I had to name her psychosis and obsession would probably be best fit by Stockholm Syndrome, which is a condition seen in terrorist situations, where the victim becomes emotionally attached to one of their tormentors. This feeling can lead to dependency on the object of their obsession and feelings similar to love.
I have to admit, I may not be a fan of Mrs. Meyers books, but she does know how to make her characters have a creepy, “2-Dimensional, psych-case” feel to them.
Posted in Blogs on June 8th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 4 Comments »
Third times the charm, is what they say, so I’m going to see if its true.
This week was very nice for relaxation, but not very good for writing. See, as much as I would like it to be, Writing is still just a hobby for me, meaning that I do it in addition to my day job. Usually, I find time to write on my breaks at work, lugging my laptop from home with me. Whenever I’m not exhausted from work (and it’s not November) I write/edit in the evenings as well. I have all of the additional commitments of other people as well. Friends to visit, and I play in a few different role-playing games (which everyone knows is a time-waster of epic proportions, no matter how fun it is to do) and I actually went on a date with my husband to go see a movie at the cheap theatre (FYI – Do not go to see Clash of the Titans if you have more than a passing interest in Greek and Roman Mythology. It will drive you mad…). As well, I’m trying to plan a trip for October as well which is a going to be fun all to itself.
So, not much time for writing or posting, as you can probably imagine. Nevertheless, the week has been wonderful for the art of writing, if not writing itself. You see, I suddenly realized that the chapter I was going to post up of a book that I am going to posting online, was the wrong first chapter. It’s a wonderful chapter for character building, but doesn’t have a really good opening page or line. So, all of my editing for the past week has been somewhat wasted, and I am editing a different thing to put online instead. I should have a two to three page opening partial of a chapter up tomorrow at the latest.
Oh, a word of warning… When I’m posting my chapters, I think that I’m going to post them in 2-3 pieces per chapter so that its not too much to read all at once. Let me know what you think about this way of posting the chapters. Let me know if it’s a good amount to read through or if you’d rather have all the chapter at once.
Oh, and on a side note, I realized that sometimes our minds will hear one thing, and immediately translate it to something else. It’s the same reason most women will hear you ask if they want to eat, and they’ll take it as a personal affront to their weight (to take an oft joked about example). For me, it’s being told that I can’t do everything that I want to. My mind always translates this to “You’re lazy… and if you weren’t lazy, you could do all of it.” Definitely a weird sort of thing to realize. Anybody else have this type of experience? What words does your mind translate or add qualifiers to?
Posted in Blogs on June 3rd, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 4 Comments »
