A Desire to Make Things Better

Early last week a girl I happened to be following on Tumblr posted a query to her followers asking if anyone would be willing to edit an essay she had written. I, as you might know, have quite a bit of experience with writing and editing (or at least more than the average internet user), and I instantly thought that I could do so easily. Instead of informing her, however, I kept quiet; she seemed to be a relatively popular user, and of her many followers I was a random nobody.

She reblogged the query again an hour later, at which point I realized that, despite my expectations, nobody had responded. Since I really wasn't doing anything that afternoon, I nervously sent her a message, which she responded to a few minutes later, and before long I had her essay in my email box ready to be looked over.

December Update

Now that NaNoWriMo is over, I should be back to regular updates this week! I already missed Monday, however, so we'll see how far that goes.

Regarding NaNoWriMo - I won! Again. This was my fourth year in a row winning, and my final word-count was somewhere around 100,211. In case you're wondering, that's about 139 single-spaced pages on my word processor, which might translate to about 350-400 pages in a paperback. It's very, very rough, with copious misspellings, grammatical errors, and plot points that I only remembered to add in halfway through, and are thus out of context.

I sort of feel like this has been my hardest NaNoWriMo yet, though I'm sure I've felt that every year. Still jobless, I doubled my word goal from 50k to 100k, and managed to work away at it pretty easily for the first week or so. During the second and third weeks, I remembered that a particular video game that I had been waiting for would be coming out before the end of the month, and in order to give me some days off to play it, I averaged about a thousand words extra every day.

Week One with Skyward Sword

I don't think I'm going to be blogging this entire game, but I definitely wanted to give you all my week one reactions, especially since, a) I've been waiting and saving over two years for this game, and b) I know quite a few people who haven't been able to play it yet, and have been asking me what I think. This'll be long, and I apologize in advance - but there are many pretty pictures to look at!

Bram Stoker's Dracula

According to my Tumblog, which I updated sometime right after starting the book, I spent a little over a month trying to read Bram Stoker's Dracula.

In the book's defense, I have also been working on NaNoWriMo, so I've had my mind on other things, but as I also had most of the month of October to try to read this extremely well known novel, I don't think this escuse really counts. As it turns out, Dracula really is just one of those stories it takes me an unnecessarily long time to wade through.

NaNoWriMo Music

One thing I like to do while I write is listen to good mood-setting music. This means something different depending on what I'm writing, but it helps me get into the feel of what I'm writing, and if others are home at the time, it helps block out whatever noise they're making.

My first year of NaNoWriMo, I listened almost exclusively to a Japanese band called Plastic Tree. Listening to English lyrics, I'd found, really distracted me (if I knew the song, I wanted to sing along, and if I didn't, I wanted to find out what the song was about, and either way lyrics always ended up in my writing), and since I was really into Japanese modern culture at the time, I found the Plastic Tree songs very helpful.

My novel in '08 was a period piece called Princess Kate about a king's daughter who was slowly discovering that she had a multiple personality disorder (the actual name for the condition is Dissociative Identity Disorder - DID - and that's where I got the URL for my blogs). Plastic Tree's music matched the tone of my novel because most of their recent stuff was softer, with a melancholic sound with some occasional heavier rock influences.

NaNoWriMo '11

Happy Halloween, dear readers! I hope everyone's having a great time dressing up, trick-or-treating, going to parties, or whatever it is you do to celebrate!

Halloween marks the last day of October, as you well know, and the last day before the writing craze NaNoWriMo begins. I don't mean to detract from Halloween here, but NaNoWriMo is a bit higher up on my list of priorities - and by 'a bit' I mean that I've been planning my novel for months, while I don't even have a Halloween costume this year (in case I need to go out, however, I can just grab my Hufflepuff scarf and say I'm studying charms and herbology).

HUFFLEPUFF.

Friday Comics: Philosophy

I intend on drawing 'Friday Comics' most weeks, and I promise this isn't a cop-out just to keep from having to write full blog posts (though it will be when November rolls around). I probably would have written a full post today, if this hadn't happened while I was drawing  last week's comic.

If this had happened, it would have been pay back for drawing a comic during his lecture.

Zelda's 25th

Look at that - I'm talking about video games again. Oh well.

I mentioned this in my E3 Coverage post, but this year marks Zelda's 25th Anniversary, 25 years since the first Zelda game was released in Japan by Nintendo. This is pretty exciting for me, as The Legend of Zelda is one of my favorite fiction series of all time.

The Amazing, Versatile Semi-Colon!

A few months ago, when my mom was boasting about how smart all her children were, I turned to her and proudly said, "My favorite punctuation mark is the semi-colon."

My mom looked back at me and said, "Never, ever, say that in public."

Sorry, mom; I'm obviously still in my rebellious phase.

National Short Story Month

Happy wedding day! May is National Short Story Month! Or maybe April is. It's a bit complicated - let me explain.

November is [Inter]National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short). It has been so for years (since 1999, to be exact) and was started up by a guy named Chris Baty who wanted to write a novel in a month just to see if he could do it. It's centered around the non-profit website (though they do have a shop and accept donations, etc.) which encourages people to, in the month of November, write a 50k word novel (approx. 1667 words a day). It's meant to get people to start writing, so at the end of the month they can start editing a work they may otherwise have never written.

Since NaNoWriMo got started, several spin-off 'Writing Month's have popped up, including Script Frenzy, Blogging Month, July Novel Writing Month, February Album Writing Month, Poetry Writing Month, and others. One of these spin-offs was National Short Story Month, or NaShoStoMo, a lesser known-about idea that someone, somewhere, started.

It originally was held in May, among the maybe-100 people who knew about it. The idea was to write one short story a day, of at least 200 words (which, if you didn't know, is about two good paragraphs). By the end of the month, participants would have 31 new short stories ready to edit, adjust, and send off to magazines or contests or whatever.

It wasn't well known, so it didn't really catch on with anyone, until this last March a popular blogger found out and posted an article urging his readers to participate. Since he posted it in late March, however, everyone got the idea (himself included, I believe) that NaShoStoMo would be in April. He had maybe 100 good followers, who decided to join him in the Short Story-Writing mission, which about double the amount of NaShoStoMo participants. They used Twitter to communicate and report their successes (#NaShoStoMo).

That's where I came in. Though I don't have a Twitter account, one of my brothers does, and he called me earlier this month asking if I'd ever heard of this. I hadn't, and I did some research to see what was going on. The idea seemed wonderful to me, especially since I really enjoy writing short stories, and haven't written enough. I was confused, however, with the conflicting dates in the past, and eventually found out the reason.

It turns out, April is also Script Frenzy (100-page script in a month) and National Poetry Month (poem-a-day). If NaShoStoMo catches on as an April activity, that'll make three semi-major writing challenges in one month, a little more than a single month can handle, in my opinion. So, in an effort to [hopefully] increase its popularity and push it back into May, I've decided to join in. Of course I'm also joining to increase my skill, but I'll be blogging about it regularly and trying to get the word out.

As far as I can see, the only other writing challenges in May are an alternate NaNoWriMo and National Crime Writing Month (NaCriWriMo?), neither of which should conflict with NaShoStoMo since alternate 'NaNoWriMo's can be done any month, and Crime writers might not be interested in short stories anyways.

So wish me luck in May! I've got a few ideas already, plus a 'writing kit' from Writer's Digest I was given months ago to give me inspiration. I don't plan on posting my short stories online, since I'll want to get them entered in contests or published, but I will let you know how I'm doing, and ask for encouragement. I'll see you in May!

My NaNoWriMo Stats

This is my current condition in NaNoWriMo.

This year, my personal word-count goal is 100k. The default goal is 50k, but because I have no job, no life, no money, only four classes at the local community college, and still living at home, I felt I owed it to myself and my parents to write an extra 50k in my spare time.

By publishing my stats in a locale where everyone can see, I hope to increase the likelihood of encouragement, and retribution and mockery if I fail. Consider this my signed permission to mock me if I fail, please.

Literary Genre Selection

As you all should know, November marks the start of National Novel Writing Month - 30 days and nights of literary abandon. The goal is to write a 50.000 word novel before December, without editing or slowing.

This will be my 3rd year participating. In 2008, I completed a novel titled "Princess Kate," inspired by a dream I had dreamt a while earlier. It took place in an alternate-world I already created for a fantasy story, but Princess Kate ended up with no fantasy elements, despite my intention to include magic. In 2009, I wrote about 60% of a novel titled "The Burden of Proof," a modern-day courtroom drama inspired by a Japanese drama I had watched earlier that year. I reached the 50K goal, both times, but the second story had more going on that couldn't be covered in a 120-page book.

In writing Princess Kate, I was surprised by how hard it was to keep the story moving. I had the basic plot outline in my head, and I knew what I wanted characters to do at certain points in the book, but there was so much space and time between those points that I had not accounted for (My initial idea for the book could could be easily fleshed out in about 20 pages). For Burden of Proof, I decided to flesh out the entire story ahead of time, doing everything but putting words on paper until November hit. It was fun both times, but the experience definitely changed, not having to make up subplot as I went.

For this year, I have decided to dive in without a specific story-goal. I plan to come up with a cast of characters, character-goals, and an overall plot before-hand, but I wont know how the story ends until it does. This is a bit daring, but I'm hoping it my increase the story's realism, or something that.

Anyway, step one is to come up with a genre/setting for the story. After a bit of research and serious consideration, I have compiled a list of possible genre/settings, and I want YOU, dear reader, and probably friend, to help me pick one. The list is as follows:

Steampunk - a sub-genre of the sci-fi genre, Steampunk is a mix of industrial-age, steam-powered technology and futuristic science fiction. It's pretty fun, a period-piece sci-fi. Notable examples include the manga/anime Fullmetal Alchemist, the novel/animated movie Howl's Moving Castle (and some other works by Miyazaki), and most works by Jules Verne, which I consider steampunk even though he wasn't attempting it. My Halloween costume this year is Steampunk, so it would make sense to continue the theme; however I'm also wary of this choice because Steampunk has grown in popularity lately, almost becoming a fad, and I don't want to write what everyone else writes.
Fantasy Alternate World - is a fantasy sub-genre, specifically taking place in another world or universe. Notable examples include the His Dark Materiel's trilogy, the Oz books, and the Chronicles of Narnia. This genre crosses over with Period Fantasy and Modern fantasy, and, as seen in all three of my examples, sometimes includes the ability to cross between the real world and the fantasy world. I could do this pretty easily, as I already have a fantasy alternate world to work with, along with fantasy magic rules.
Realistic Alternate World - is essentially what Princess Kate could be defined as, since it took place not on earth but had no fantasy or sci-fi elements. I can't find any notable examples, however, besides possibly the Series of Unfortunate Events, because most alt. world stories employ fantasy elements. I've done this before, which means it's both easy for me to do and doesn't provide new experience. As mentioned before, I have an alternate world ready to use.
Period Fantasy - includes any fantasy taking place in a period-piece timeline, taking place on earth or not. Notable examples include the Lord of the Rings books (and others by Tolkien), the Eragon trilogy, and pretty much every ancient, classic writings, starting from Beowulf (though, at the time, they probably would have been considered modern). This is where we get epic fantasies from, and most video games (Zelda, anyone? Most Final fantasy?) so it would definitely be fun to write. Though I've often wanted to, I don't think I've ever written anything to fit this genre, so it would be something new to experience. I'd also have to decide whether to use an alternate world or find a time from earth.
Modern Fantasy - is a bit self explanatory. Also known as Urban Fiction. Notable examples include the Lightning Thief (and series), the Harry Potter books (I think... they never really get into when, exactly, they take place, and the alternate world sections of the books seem a bit period), and a number of movies, such as Stranger than Fiction or the Sorcerer's Apprentice. It's an interesting genre, as you have to balance the modern realistic aspect with the fantasy, unrealistic aspect without being too cheesy. It would be a fun challenge if I chose this genre, and most likely I would have it take place on earth, instead of using an alternate world.
Modern Realistic Fiction - is also pretty self explanatory. There are no notable examples, other than every other movie released in the last decade, and most adult fiction books today. Most works under this genre are either mystery, romance, or life dramas, so I would have to choose which kind of story I wanted to tell if I chose this genre/setting, along with where I wanted to tell it (on earth, of course, but where on earth?) Last year's novel technically falls under this genre, too.
Futuristic Sci-Fi - is last of certainly not least. Notable examples include the Ender's Game series, the Hunger Games trilogy, and a number of movies, such as I Robot or Star Wars (and Firefly!) I love writing in this genre, even if I feel I'm not particularly inclined to the movies or books. I don't really have a world set up for a sci-fi story already, though it wouldn't be that hard to expand something I'd already written. This is kind of neither an alternate world or earth setting, as it could be far enough into the future that there are little similarities to modern day.

After I choose a setting/genre, I begin work on creating a plot and cast of characters.