NaNoWriMo 2008......DONE!

Mission Accomplished.........hehe.....

I did it, finishing with the following stats.

11.30.08
NaNoWriMo 2008 Stats!!!

* No. of Dutch Bros Lattes? : 28 (I am officially sick of egg nog lattes)
* No of words? : 50,907
* Now what? I haven't touched it in a week. I'm taking a break to write something else, then I'll move on to editing!

Princesses are the new Vampires/Demons/Faeries/Wizards......

I am banking on this big time. Although it doesn't really matter to me, I would write about Princesses anyway because I *heart* them!

Cool Princess Books to read, and re-read:

1. Princess Bride, by William Goldman
2. Princess Academy, by by Shannon Hale
3. Any of the Philippa Gregory books on the Bolyn family.
4. Catherine Meyer Princess Books
5. Gail Carson Levine Books (including Ella Enchanted)
6. Sleeping Beauty, Grimm's version
7. Cinderella, Grimm's version
8. What am I missing.......I know there are more.....

Reviewer X

I found the coolest blog! It is a consolidation of writer's who blog + publishing info and commentary from the highly coveted Gen Y voice. If you are a YA writer, you must check them out!

Serial confessions of a writer.....Ch 1-8 of The Birthright.

I've done a bad, bad thing.....

Upon reflection, it appears that I've killed a lot of people.

It needed to be done, of course. There was really no way around it.

In posting Chapters 1-8, I'll have explicitly killed off 5 sub characters and an additional 6 implied characters.

Thing is, its only the beginning.......

NaNoWriMo 2008......Over half way there!

I haven't posted anything new because I've been too busy writing!! That is a good sign, but I'm writing a bunch of crap. I should be at 30k words by end of night tonight, and I'm wasting time writing on this bloody blog that no one reads.....PLUS, I totally got a fun new idea to write about and wanted SO BADLY to cheat on this manuscript.....

11.19.08
NaNoWriMo 2008 Stats!!!

* No. of Dutch Bros Lattes? : 18
* No of pages? : 165
* No of words? : 31,203
* No of times I thought this is a bad idea? : Every day this week......!

NaNoWriMo 08 Status Update.....

11.05.08
NaNoWriMo 2008 Stats!!!

* No. of Dutch Bros Lattes? : 7 (this number is about to skyrocket now that egg nog latte's are back!)
* No of pages? : 90
* No of words? : 16,000
* No of times I thought this is a bad idea? : I started to fall behind this week. Not technically, of course, but for me, I wasn't keeping up at the same rate. But I'm moving into the strech of week where I have more time to write so I'm pushing for 25K words by Wednesday!

NaNoWriMo 08 Stats update...

It is day 5 of NaNoWriMo 08, I have a bit of ADD about it all. Checking the news, election coverage, I'm really getting into the Wizard Heir right now. Then, of course, there is the small matter of day-to-day life. Pretty much I'm happy to do anything that distracts me from writing. I even went grocery shopping, so yeah, I'm looking for reasons not to write.

BUT, I'm still making progress!

11.05.08
NaNoWriMo 2008 Stats!!!

* No. of Dutch Bros Lattes? : 3
* No of pages? : 70
* No of words? : 12,681
* No of times I thought this is a bad idea? : Briefly on Monday, after I told everyone I knew what I was doing, and then instantly worried I would look like a jackass when I inevitably fail. But I'm still pumped!

Vote now

Vote. Now. Go do it real fast before dinner. Its easy to say things are already decided in your state and because of the electoral college your vote doesn't count. Do it anyway.

I won't have any patience for your inevitable future complaints unless you do. :)

Vote.

NaNoWriMo 2008......this is my year!

I've never tried NaNoWriMo 2008, never even attempted. Never even thought I'd try to delude myself into thinking I could. 2008 is my year! The goal is a 50,000 word novel by Nov 30. Well, its Nov 1 and I totally forgot to register and now the NaNoWriMo server keeps timing out....apparently I'm not the only one.....

For NaNoWriMo 2008 I'm writing the sequel to The Birthright called The Prophecy. So here's my stats:

11.01.08
NaNoWriMo 2008 Stats!!!

* No. of Dutch Bros Lattes? : 1
* No of pages? : 47
* No of words? : 7,664
* No of times I thought this is a bad idea? : None so far, day one is ignorantly blissful!

The Birthright, A novel....

Ok here goes, note that in the right hand navigation (--->) is a new link. The Birthright, is my WIP novel where I'm posting chapters as they come through the critique process of my writer's group. In November, I'm writing the sequel, The Prophecy for NaNoWriMo 08!

Check it out! Please feel free to leave all comments regarding my brilliance. Oh, and constructive feedback is also most appreciated!

Writing muses.....

I love princesses. I seriously do. I can't even tell you how many times I dressed as a princess for Halloween. Its probably easier if I tell you how many I didn't.

I just find it very intriguing, the notion of self sacrifice there is in being born royal. Sure, there are the pitfalls of power mongering, the public scrutiny and then there is the small matter of always having to worry about being assassinated. But in general, that people were born into the burden of placing personal preference second to public expectation, or worse, not having any freedom to explore personal preference is, to me, fascinating.

So when I write, I write about princesses. BUT, in storytelling, there are two very opposite spectrum's of princess. On the one hand, you have the stereotypical rebellious princess syndrome (you know the type, and unfortunately, this is my favorite type no matter how clique'!) and on the other, there is victim princess syndrome. In the middle is the *yawn* reluctant princess syndrome. Three very unlikeable princess characters. What to do?

So the question is, what are the top 5 character trait's YOU'D want to see in a socially conscience princess with mad warrior ninja skills and a PhD in Poly Sci and Econ??

Does a story start at the begining? Crafting Chapter 1

Here's a question for all you writers. When you are starting your novel, short story, whatever.....do you start with chapter 1?

I don't. Its far too intimidating try to find that clever opening paragraph (or clever opening sentence for that matter!!) I generally stare at the blank word doc in front of me for a few minutes, hours, days, then snap out of it and flip to writing the part of the story that attracted me to the storyline in the first place...

But eventually, you have to go back to chapter 1 and write it. If you're lucky, you've been inspired and now an opening pitch just comes to you. That never happens to me. So in my research, I stumbled upon agent Nathan Bransford's post about opening with dialogue. Basically, his input was, if its great, compelling opening dialogue then great, it works. However, if its not, it can do a lot to set a negative tone that you can't easily recover from. Plus, if your dialogue is confusing without the explanation of context, then your readers brows are already furrowed. Not a great way to start.

So after reading this + the user comments, the first thing I did was go to chapter one and cross out my first sentence.....back to work!

Because hey, its all about me, right?

Well here goes, a rare delve into self indulgence.

For those of you who know me, you are likely rolling your eyes now. But its true, my other blog is all about the kids and what we do as a family. No commentary. Not because there is nothing interesting that happens to us, again, those of you who know me can assure you that's not true!!! But because I really do hate to talk about myself. It feels so narcissistic.

So for me, this is an exercise in growth, the element of growth being the ability to make public the things that I write. And then of course, try very hard not to alienate everyone I know in the process. That is actually a really tall order.