Yearly Archives: 2014

Resolutions

So begins the new year.  It begins with a new journal, a new daily journal (which I’m still trying to think of what to do with it), and new resolutions.

Other than the typical “Lose weight, be more healthy, get on a budget, etc.” bullshit which fails by February, I plan on writing more.  To be productive.  To try and use my creativity for more than just a few select fans, but to put it out there.

First thing is, I’m going to write 800 words a day.  This includes diaries (in my journal, it’s 3 pages or 1 hour), my blog, and here.

I plan on blogging in 800 Words at least twice a week.

I plan on blogging here once a week.

Every day I will write something somewhere.  Hither and yon, a writer’s notebook, a journal, a diary – it doesn’t matter where, it has to be writing.  If I don’t do it at work, I’ll have to do it at home.  No news/tv/gaming until writing is done.

And finally…NO MORE NOTEBOOKS.

Pens, however, are another story…

Ever since NaNo.

Since finishing NaNo, I haven’t been writing much.  Firstly, I lost my diary in this abyss that is my house.  For three days I didn’t write anything.

Second, I was writing on 800 Words, but realized that I now have way too many characters to write about (over 30).  They all want their stories told, so they’re all being skimmed.  I don’t like that.  I need to concentrate on one or two.

I end up not playing them well online, either.  Firefighter, one of the more recent ones, is a character I want to explore more.  He has a past, has past lovers, is older than the teens, is a little skeeved by magic.  He considers himself a mutant but he’s more Science than a mutant, since the chemicals he found himself exposed to were what woke up his mutation.

Other characters exist, from Knight and Grim to new ones like Breathe and Heavy Metal.  It’s just that…I can’t seem to sit down and write a long piece.  I want to write a novel.  It gives me a purpose.  But I’m not even coming up with short pieces, never mind long ones.

The conscience wants to, but the mind is tired.  I can’t come up with things.  I need to either read more than writing books, watch more TV than the news.  But whenever I do watch TV (fiction), I consider it a waste of time because I’m not actually doing anything.  Yet, in Bird by Bird (or one of those books), the author says that when you do that, you are refilling the well.  Plowing through the George R. R. Martin books is a bad idea at the moment, because I’m stuck reading that one book, that one author – who’s really good, but not a master.  I want to read other books, but I notice I start them and I don’t finish them.  The only one I finished recently is Daywalker, and it was horrible.  I tried to read Called (note: both book covers look very much the same) but I couldn’t get past the fourth chapter.  I wanted to.  But it didn’t hold my interest.

Speaking of which, I have my friend, who is not my beta reader, plowing through the first 30 pages or so of Grimaulkin.  It might be that many pages; I gave her a handful and told her to read it.  Unfortunately, I’ve lost my beta reader due to depression.  My friend read the first page as I was in the kitchen, and she said, “Gee.  Nothing like starting in the middle.”  That’s how books start these days.  She likes old fashioned books like some others of her generation, but the people who are buying books – maybe not physical books, but things to read on their Kindle – are younger than me and her.  They want to get right in the thick of things.

Because of that, I have to write short.  I have to write in front of a green screen, like Gone Girl.  The big reason I stopped reading that story is because I was getting really sick of the vitriol of the husband.  Chapter after chapter, he talked about how evil his wife was.  And chapter after chapter, the wife steps in and talks about how good she is.  Both of them are yuppies that are full of themselves, and once their jobs are gone, are lost little piranhas, eating each other alive.  In Gone Girl, there is hardly any description.

Is this what people want in their fiction?  Why do I have to go by how the New Yorker people write their fiction, especially if I don’t like it myself?

Now Write! Sherry Ellis, ed.

This is a series of books that have exercises in them for writers.  I will admit, at first, I was skeptical, but some of the exercises I think I’ll be able to use.  I know this book I will be able to use.

A couple of the exercises I like are “The Collage” and “The Wedding Cake”.  I tried those and enjoyed them immensely.  I did have a writing notebook that I kept beside me where ever I had a table, but when NaNo started, I had just one notebook and kept that with me.  In that notebook I would have the summary of what I did the day before, so that if I had a chance to sit down and write in it, I could.  I plan on keeping that as my writing journal.

Anyway, back to the book.  Most of the articles are by teachers, or by people who have published books that I’ve never heard of.  I suppose it’s more for literary fiction than the kind of genre I read and write in (urban fantasy).  Regardless, pick up this book, and you will find that these exercises will help you with characterization and give you great ideas.  They might be junk, but at least they’re good ideas.

I can breathe!

After a huge jump on 11/11 (which I had off), I was able to catch up and I have now surpassed the par.  I’m at 44K words.

If I really wanted to, I suppose I could finish off the book now.  Part of me wants to do it.  Part of me wants to do what I usually do when my characters are 39 and some change in the game: just play alerts to get to 40, because then that’s the end.

But part of me wants to savor this like fine chocolate, wants to write this stuff right, even if it’s a first draft.  I right now am going to have about 2K words in a bar, 2K words for the climax, and 2K words for the aftermath.  That’s what I’m thinking and planning.

But as you all know, nothing goes as planned.  I still have a whole weekend to write.  But I have a feeling I’ll be finished with this before that weekend arrives.  And then I will have earned my t-shirt!

 

NaNo…almost not.

After a slow and depressing start (i.e. no words until Day 11), I’m caught up to par for the most part.

Today, day 16, 26, 237, 400 words short of goal.  I should get them done before I go to bed.

NaNoWriMo

One week to write.

I’m chomping at the bit.  I have an idea.  It sounds great, I have a few scenes in mind, but as for the characters, the details – it’s so hard not to start writing.  I know myself, that if I try and “plot”, that’s considered writing it out, and I won’t be as excited.

I will have one hour at work, which will give me 500/750 words.  Then the rest at home.  Hours.

YA trends (so I see)

Benet.  His name is Benet.

That out of the way, I did a little perusal of the YA stacks in my local independent bookstore.

  • Most of the writers seem to be in their 20’s.
  • They’re mostly women.
  • They write about girls being outcasts and their boyfriends being outcasts too.
  • The packaging on these books are beautiful and thoughtful.
  • They’re trade paperback for first novels, hardcover if they’re in a series.

I picked up one book that just looked really good to me, one book that is similar to what I’m writing (by Sherilyn Kenyon, who Jake Logan would be right next to), and another about Grim in his later years.  I also got Writer’s Digest, Poets and Writers.

There was one book there that amazed me.  It was a pink hardcover and had a Satanic symbol on it.  It caught my eye in its simplicity, and though I probably wouldn’t have read the story, I decided I wanted a cover like that – but in purple.  Or rainbow.  (Ha!)

The difference between YA and paranormal adult is the age of the protagonist.  That’s it.  The 16 year olds get into just as much mature trouble as the 30 year olds.

I decided to write Grim in 1997 (He would have been born in 1972 or 3).  As long as I place him in some sort of modern time, I think he will be timeless.

 

Works in Progress

I’ve been patterning my brand on an anti-social, starving writer.  He doesn’t like to do social things, but gets pissed off when he’s not invited to them.

Okay, so he’s like Dan in Dan Vs. (This show, for the first fifteen minutes, is hilarious.  After that, it gets cartoony stupid, but guys would like it.)  My kid turned me onto this show.

I think I’m going to have to change his attitude, especially if he’s going to sell any books.

I finished up Scrivnering (is that a verb?  If “Google” is a verb, then yes it is!) up my novel from 1997 about the Taurin (changed to Torin due to World of Warcraft, thank you).  I’ve also Scrivnered up Grim’s rewrite.  I have ten very painful and concise chapters.  I’m trying to put Grim into one novel instead of three, and I’m almost sure I can do it.  Right now in the rewrite I have him going home, and then he gets chased out of there, goes to Salem, meets Barrett – oh, shit, I forgot his name!  We’ll call him Barrett, screw it.  After he meets Barrett, gathers up his zombie army and attacks the Academy to become (spoiler) the First Archmage in over 200 years.

I’ve only so far written that he meets Barrett … damn, what is his name?  Barrett is the guy from West Wing.  I’m going to have to look it up in my old stories.

I no longer have access to my blog at work, so any updates will be after work or on the weekends.  This puts a big cramp on NaNoWriMo.  I will have to escape my desk during lunch hour in order to write, or bring my iPad and try typing on that – but it’s so slow and I lost my Bluetooth keyboard.

I’m looking at my old novel that I wrote a long time ago that I printed out, and I think I’m going to take some time this weekend and scan it to a flash drive.  I’m not sure what novel it is.  I guess I’ll find out when I do it!  I think it’s Hunter’s Realm‘s second draft, which I Scrivnered.

Now, about NaNoWriMo.  It’s going to be about one of my characters that I play online, Sidewinder.  However, I have to pull him out of the context of the game, and figure out something other than his history.  There has to be a purpose to the story, a mystery maybe.  Finding his parents is old and overused.  That could be a subplot.  It’s through Sidewinder’s POV, and takes place in the early 60’s, during a traveling freak show.  Like Ripley’s Believe It Or Not but much, much smaller and with a few fakes.

As always, the plot needs to be about something the main character wants.  Yes, he wants to find his parents.  But there has to be more.  The story can’t turn on just that.

So, Muses, if you could chew on that and come back to me with something, I’d greatly appreciate it.

A brand

I’ve just started a new blog, and I plan to make it daily.

characterquest.tumblr.com

Was going to put it on Blogger, but nobody goes there anymore.

It’s my offering to the writing community.  Questions about character.  Just one question, not a stupid list.  Do all your characters or just one.

Hey, I gotta put my name out there somewhere.

Should I brand it?  “characterquest” sounds like a great name for a brand.  Or has it been done?

It’s on twitter, unfortunately.  And when I google it, it’s a Christian development group. HAHAHA!

Sorry.

I just registered my pseudonym “Jake Logan”.  He’s on twitter, faceook, and yahoo.  He’s going to direct the character quest, I think.

 

Character books

I am a hoarder and a collector.  I have found out that I have way too many composition books (and it takes a lot for me to NOT buy them, especially this time of year when they’re on sale).  I use composition books for my writing journals.  There’s too many pages in them to last one a month, so sometimes I have two months in there.  I try and write my 3 pages in there daily, but sometimes I don’t.

I also now collect small college-ruled comp books – and now small “fat notebooks”.  These are for character explorations.  I always feel guilty using a regular notebook for character stories because I don’t think I have enough information to put in there.  These smaller books don’t make me feel as guilty, and I can carry them around with me.

The problem is, I can’t come up with the questions in the same order all the time.  Like some times I want to write about demographics, other times about their motivations, other times about their relationships.  Rubicon, I’m itching to write out his college years, but I’m still stuck on his “motivations”.

Most of these characters, also, are possible throw-aways – in other words, for work only in game and stories that I write, but nothing major.  Like I haven’t done one for Nybbas yet, and he’s a very important character in Grim’s novel.  Or Pathfinder.  Or Ritter.  Nybbas has a lot of dark secrets that I have in the back of my mind – he and Grim are too much alike.

I’m still trying to make Grim a “pawn” but a pawn that breaks out of the mold.  I know it’s been done, and I don’t plan on being very subtle about it – my character, after all, is not subtle.

This should be for a YA audience.