NaNoWriMo: Day #7 - Stalling and downers

NaNoWriMo has... stalled a bit for me. That’s really the only way I can describe it. I’m making sure I write daily, don’t get me wrong but it feels like the words are forced and I hate the story. No, actually it doesn’t feel like I hate the story. I actually hate the story. I don’t know why as I was really jazzed about it last week, I got loads of writing done, hitting 13,000 by the end of the first weekend. I think that may be the problem though, I’ve burnt out before I’ve barely begun. I’m trying to balance working 5/6 hours a day with an hour’s travelling time each day, the need for at least 8 hours sleep and writing an word count goal of 3000+ words a day. It’s too much. I can’t do it right now, not when I hate the story and would rather be doing other things.

I knew the story wasn’t quite right, particularly once I started adding all the dares. Some of them, are cool and have helped develop the plot some more, some are just fun inserts to right. If I’m brutally honest though I think they’re making the story suck. Suck so much that I think I’ll just leave them out from here onwards. Apart from the ones that really appeal to me. Despite feeling all this though I’ve kept going and this feeling of hatred towards that story is slowly creeping over me. I don’t want to hate the story, it actually seems like quite a good one but all these dares that I’ve added have just made it seem silly. The only answer is to take out the dares.

It probably doesn’t help that I’m getting all these ideas for The Darkling Watch, how I’m going to edit it and then a bunch of ideas for the o.S.a.M rework and other novels set in that world. I jot them down with the intent of coming back to them later but really all I want to do is write them now. I’m actually thinking about being a bit of a rebel, using The Death of Yggdrasill as practice and warm up each day before I start editing or rewriting The Darkling Watch. But I’m not ready to do that. I know The Darkling Watch isn’t finished in the first round of read-throughs. It’s not properly planned out. So there isn’t much I can really do except for hit each day’s word-goal and keep writing but ignore the silly parts of the story.

Maybe it is hormones, maybe it’s burn out or maybe it’s a completely other reason that I don’t know about. All I do know is that I refuse to let myself burn out or hate my novel, hate any of my novels. SO I’m just going to write the bare minimum I want to write until this weird mood lifts or I hit 50k. Whichever comes first.

Keep Writing.

A Very Late RoW80 Check-In

I’m a little late posting this, I know, I know. I’m very bad. Real life caught up with me in the form of vodka. A lot of vodka. But it’s alright. I needed it. I needed to unwind and relax and spend a day doing nothing involving my novels or my blog or my comic. Every day, no matter how minor it is, I end up doing something involving them. Except for Sunday. Instead I spent it lying in a nest of quilts on my living room floor watching Grey’s Anatomy. Yeah, that was my hangover day and it freaking rocked!

Now though it’s over. I had my first day at work (an unpaid work placement) and I’m tired. I’m so very tired. But I want to make this post. I’m driven to make this post. I suppose it’s truly become a habit for me. All day at work I was thinking about what to say, what to talk about. I’m going to start with my progress on RoW80.

Work on o.S.a.M once a week  -  I actually did some of this last week. I wrote a few detailed scene outlines of the first chapter. I may not have gotten loads done but I got enough done to be happy with it.

Edit The Darkling Watch – I did quite well with this one as well. I managed to separate out 3 more chapters and made notes on what I need to expand with them. I’m happy with it. While I may be taking a break from editing during NaNo I’m not going to stop thinking about it, working out how I’m going to attack it again once my placement is up and figuring out where my plot needs to go to get two books out of it.

Write The Feral Diaries – I was a bit disappointed with this last week. I got nothing done. And when I say nothing I mean diddly squat. I wrote one entry and that was it. Not good. I won’t lie, it bothers me a little but that’s just because I feel like I let myself down and disappointed myself. I am putting this to one side as well while I take part in NaNo.

Post twice a week – I did good with this one. I know I did. I managed to blog about NaNo and about my crazy organisation thing. I’m planning to do the same this week, even with NaNo starting properly and the fact I’m going to be working full time. I can’t guarantee that my posts will always be readable or that they’ll make normal person sense but I will try. I have to. I already know what I’m going to be posting about. I hate to admit it but it will be mostly about NaNo.

Plan/Write NaNo – My planning went really well last week. I got my entire plot twisted out, the first few chapters detailed in scenes and I’m tracking which dares I use where. I have lists again. I really like lists. I’ve even decided how I’m going to manage to write and work at the same time, a new experience for me. That will come on Wednesday, Halloween. I won’t be taking part in the midnight kick off like so many of my fellow NaNoers will be, simply because I’m useless without 8 hours sleep.

For now though I’m going to work on my outline a little more, get changed into my PJs and snuggle into my comfy bed for a good nights sleep. Look out for my post all about NaNoWriMo on Wednesday.

Keep Writing!

RoW80 Check In

So it’s another week down and yet more failures on my part. Except... I’m not classing them as failures. I may not have done as much editing or writing as I planned to but I’ve been doing things related, however distantly, to my goals.

I didn’t write any new entries for The Feral Diaries but I did do the long promised blog post about it yesterday. And I received some positive feedback about it. I also did some planning about the storylines and figured out a rough idea of what happens when. So although I didn’t meet the specific goal of writing and editing I made progress, even if it was in a different direction than I planned.

The same is true of Darkling Watch. I’ve done very little editing of it. Barely any of my read-through in fact but the stuff I did do on Monday led to three whole chapters being separated. That’s quite a lot for only three hours work. And I had Jeremy Kyle on in the background, which surprisingly helped with the arguements. Not to mention that I started roughly planning the novel about one of my favourite characters in the book. I plan on plotting that one out properly next year in fact and may share something about it at a later date.

I didn’t do anything related to o.S.a.M this week but I’m not actually bothered by that fact. It’s a series of short story web-comics connected by one long theme. I’m still trying to think of a new name for it as Of Swords And Magic does, as a friend told me, sound like a dissertation title for fantasy literature. I’m thinking something to do with curses. It still needs work. Anywho, the reason I’m not too bothered is that with the new storylines roughly plotted out for the most part I’ve got to let them settle. I need them to come together in my head, not just on the paper. For a good three or four months the story was one direction, not a direction I was really happy with, but it was a certain way. Now that I’ve started again from scratch with a bunch of different genres I’m happier with it. I’ve still got to get used to it in my head.

As for NaNoWriMo... well. It’s going splendidly. I’ve got a rough idea of my characters, the events and a couple of the subplots. The subplots aren’t as clear as the primary plotline but they’re getting there. I’ve also stepped a bit away from the Young Adult genre and into the realms of the completely ridiculous. I spent too much time in the Dares thread of the NaNoWriMo forums and so I’ve got a bunch of small events that I’m planning to put in to the story somewhere. The outlines right now are so rough that I can. For instance I’ve got a very basic scene of someone telling my MCs what’s happening. I don’t know how, I don’t know what’s said or what the characters are all doing. Thanks to the dares though I can expand on it a little, make it funnier. Maybe it won’t work and I’ll have to take those weird sections out but who cares! I’ll have fun doing it. Last year I took NaNoWriMo very seriously, not including any dares or experiencing much of the fun of NaNo that people talk about. Now though, with one whole novel under my belt and another one well on its way to reaching the editing stage I feel happy enough in my abilities to put weird events in and make them work. Who knows, maybe I’ll have a hit on my hands.

And finally, the last goal of blogging more than once a week about topics other than RoW...I nailed it. Not only did I write the promised posts about The Darkling Watch and The Feral Diaries but I also did one more than intended, specifically the Liebster Award entry. I’m still trying to figure out how to get that badge on the site incidentally. I want to put it in one of my sidebars, along with a NaNoWriMo badge/link and a RoW80 badge/link but I don’t have a clue. If you know how let me know.

So it’s been a successful week for me. Not as productive on the writing front as I’d hoped and I didn’t exactly reach my specific goals but I did work around each other them and that makes me happy. Now though I return to my NaNo planning and trawling the NaNo Dare thread for more insanity to put in my novels.

Keep writing!

Finally I give the low-down on The Darkling Watch

At last it’s the long awaited, long promised post about The Darkling Watch. The entry that I’ve been promising for a while, many, many weeks in fact. I’m struggling to think about where to start. I suppose at the beginning is the best place to start.

The Darkling Watch is part of a series. The series itself focuses on the beings known as the Darklings. The Darklings is the collective name for the supernatural beings that live within our worlds, the vampires, werewolves, shape-shifters and witches, staying hidden from human eyes. The Watch is the police force of this world, comprised of different Darklings and their human helpers who call themselves the Admin. The Darkling Watch is actually probably the end book(s) given that I’ve now reworked the ending (more on that later) and it’s not completely happy. I’ve got other novels vaguely planned that feature characters from this part of the series but they come before the novel starts. So basically I’m working from the back to the beginning. I think. The Darkling Watch is about a girl who is killed, basically at the very beginning, but who is brought back to life and thrown into the world of the Darklings. It’s slowly revealed that what happens to Nadia (our Main Character) wasn’t an accident but that a deranged god has been pulling her strings for many years. Who? Loki, the prankster god of Norse mythology, with a twist. Why? To bring about Ragnarok and end the world.

This novel was a NaNo novel, written for NaNoWriMo, and I only decided to take part about halfway through October. The planning was rushed, the characters were only vaguely described and I had no idea about chapters or anything like that. I had written before but I’d never managed to finish an entire novel. I managed to plan about halfway through, making detailed notes on scenes etc. After that things got a little foggy and I only had vague outlines for each scene. So after I hit the end of my detailed notes I started pantsing. That led to some interesting developments to say the least. Something about writing late at night leads to weird things happening in my mind. Granted, some of these developments were pretty awesome and I couldn’t have thought of them while I was just sat there thinking and planning. It has led to things being quite complicated and the completed novel now needs a lot of work.

The biggest piece of work I’m having to do, before I even think about editing phrasing of sentences and fixing all the little details, is reading through the novel and separating it up into chapters. As I’ve gone through I’ve spotted missing scenes and the fact is that these have made the story even bigger. So it’s ended up with me having to split the manuscript into two, possibly three separate books. I don’t actually have a problem with this, it gives me a chance to explore my characters and their emotions more, building on things that are only briefly touched up but need more attention to them. To put it shortly, the editing I’m doing is making it even bigger. And I like it. Much of my writing right now, as it stands is mostly telling, not showing as writers are encouraged to do. Not worrying about making the novel bigger means I get to hone these skills and get my characters showing how they feel, focusing on emotions and thoughts rather than just ‘he felt sad’, ‘she wanted to kiss his mouth’ and so on. Also I need to add in a timeline in my notes. Right now everything in the story happens very quickly. Nadia falls in love with a shifter too quickly for it to be authentic. Everything gets very rushed along and I need to stretch the time that the novel covers. Making it even longer.

Now... another thing that makes it even longer, possibly into a third book, making The Darkling Watch a trilogy is the research I’ve been doing. Early on in the writing stage I decided that Loki, Norse god of mischief and general iffy character, would be my antagonist. Thing was I didn’t know much about Norse mythology. So, once the novel was finished, I tracked down a few books on Norse mythology. As I worked on it I began to develop new ideas for both The Darkling Watch and my NaNo novel. What struck me most was the myth about Ragnorok, signalled by the freeing of Loki from his chains. In my novel Loki gets free and tries to end the world. With my research though I’m starting to think that maybe the end of the world should get closer to actually happening by the end and they all live happily ever after. The idea of shoving my characters through 3 years of winter is appealing, I do admit.

Yes I’m evil.

Why am I so relaxed about the time I’m taking to edit The Darkling Watch? Why do I not mind the fact that my novel has now turned into two, possibly three, books? Simply put... I’m self-publishing; on Amazon kindle and possibly in paperback. First though I need to finish the story and then I’ve got to find someone who can help with my cover. I have got a few ideas about that actually but more on the topic of book covers at a later date. But before all that I need to find a group of beta readers, something I’m not sure how to do, after the edits are done of course. For now though I’m enjoying the work and taking my time. I’m young and there’s nothing rushing me right now.

RoW 80 Check-in and a rant about stationary.

Ok, it’s my...second check-in for RoW. My initial thoughts are that I’m doing ok with my goals but looking deeper it seems that I’m not doing as well as it first seemed. After a really productive start to the week my drive just seemed to go poof and I barely got anything done.

1. Plan/Write NaNo2012: That’s coming on quite well actually. I’ve gotten a rough outline developed and I’m pleased with how it’s looking so far. I’m planning on doing detailed outlines come next week, probably starting tomorrow. I didn’t plan as much as I intended to this week, only a couple of pages but I’m still happy with it.

2. Edit one chapter of Darkling Watch 1 a day: yeah... that one not so much. It seems I’ve lost steam again. I’m looking at the wordcount, looking at how far through I am and it’s just daunting. The original manuscript ended up about 110,000 words long, roughly 53 pages. I’m trying to read through, mark out what needs to be done and separate it all up into chapters. Essentially I think I’m making progress, look at where I am and it all feels slightly hopeless. I don’t know if this is just me being me and slightly depressive or if it’s a usual thing for authors to feel.

3. Finish and edit The Feral Diaries; Book 1: This one has actually been coming along quite well. I’ve been figuring out things about my characters, making rough timelines for when people appear and die and still writing. I’m not writing for this one everyday as I hoped but that’s going to change starting tomorrow. I’ve decided.

4. Plan The Feral Diaries; Book 2: I got some of this done this week. Not a lot but enough to keep me happy. Right now I’m focusing on the struggles that my characters will face, and the themes it’ll cover as opposed to any actual events. Oh I’ve got some events written down but I’ve just not gone indepth on planning them at the moment. Mostly because I don’t know the exact mental state that my characters will be in by the time these events happen. It’s a pretty dark series.

5. Outline and plan o.S.a.M: This one... yeah I sorta skipped on this one this week. With all my other stuff going on as well as trying to find a job I’ve been too busy to really think about it. I’ve got ideas in my mind about things I want to happen, I’ve just not put pen to paper and gotten them down yet. These ideas have stuff though, not disappeared as they are sometimes want to do.

6. Blog twice a week: I had a blog all planned out to write. I even started it. And then my internet went screwy on Wednesday night and I didn’t get it back until yesterday. This isn’t a my family thing either, it’s happened to other people. So I decided not to write the blog or put it up last night. Instead I’m going to do two posts next week. One on The Feral Diaries and one on Darkling Watch. Hopefully this will ease my guilt and make me feel much better.

Other goals

I decided to add two goals to my RoW80 after looking at the goals and blogs of some of my other companions on this challenge. They are not really devoted to writing but focus on my personal life which I realise I don’t talk about much on here.

1. Spend 30 minutes each day looking for a job: I’ve been unemployed since the beginning of February. I’m getting a bit sick of spending each day at home and not having any money to do what I want and buy what I want (mostly stationary). Don’t get me wrong, I have been looking each week for a job, I kind of have to in order to keep claiming my JSA but I feel like I’m not doing enough. So I’m putting this out there to encourage me to look harder and apply for anything and everything. Don’t get me wrong though, I spend most of my day doing productive writerly stuff but it may be the over-abundance of free time that’s making me less productive. Maybe if I get a job that’ll change. Plus it means I could buy a new laptop or a ton of stationary supplies (which I love, so if you know any cool sites for that pop a link in the comments).

2. Get more exercise: I’m a couch potato, a lounger. I smoke too much, I eat too much and I have a pretty serious tea addiction. I’m not as large as I used to be, particularly at this time last year, but I’m pretty tubby and I don’t like it. Especially when my sister swans around the house in very little clothing with the body of a dancer (incidentally she does dance). So I’m challenging myself to do a little bit of exercise each day, even if it’s a 30 minute walk around the village. Every little bit counts after all.

Writerly A to Z (ignoring I and Q... 'cos those letters suck)

I saw a blog the other day that was an A – Z of writer type things and I really liked it. You can find it here. I realised that it really gave an idea of what the writer was like, in terms of their personality and what’s important to them. So... I decided to do my own. I know that I and Q are missing but I really couldn’t think of things to put there. Anyway, here’s my Writerly A – Z;

A – Acceptance. It’s a big deal to me that my parents accept that I want to be a writer. Of course they push me to find a job to tide me over and to get me away from the computer but they know that my dream is to be published. It’s actually gotten to the point now that they’re so accepting that they tell random strangers that I’ve finished a novel (no word of a lie, my mother actually said this to a couple we met on holiday recently. That’s another story that I might tell another time though. If you ask nicely)

B – Blog, blogging. I actually enjoy blogging so much. Yes, I know, I completely missed two months worth of posting but I honestly just forgot. I’m sucky like that. I do still love you all though and feel very guilty for ignoring you, however accidental it was. In seriousness though I use blogging and this blog as a way to work stuff out about myself, primarily how I write. Granted I have a writing journal where I jot down specific things for projects I’m working on but it’s easy to write for myself, it doesn’t matter. Trying to make my ideas understandable to strangers is harder and it makes my ideas become clearer in my mind. Yup, basically I just ramble at you all.

C – Characters. A novel would be nothing without them. They are the plot, their actions creating the tension, the drama, the really boring bits that you just end up skimming through. I have so many characters living in my head it feels like a hotel or a concert (possibly Justin Beiber. More likely Dolly Parton). We writers need characters to play with otherwise our megalomaniac tendencies or God Complex rear their ugly heads and we start trying to take over the world. We need these characters to do our bidding, to take the beatings we dish out, to act as stand-ins for that guy in the van who cut you up on the motorway. Is it healthy? Probably not. Is it fun? Hell yeah. Writers without characters are just weird people that mutter to themselves. We need them.

D – Darklings. It was the idea of the Darklings (yes, I know, you still have no idea what or who the Darklings are because I’ve been so silent on the topic. That will change. Soon.) that actually spurred me to look into writing a series. It’s such a flexible world with so many different characters for  me to play with that it seems ideal. Granted I’ve only dabbled with one or two different books right now but hopefully, once I get some more past the planning stage I can change that.

E – Excel, Microsoft. Excel is like my brain on the computer. I use it for everything; charting daily word-counts, tracking which characters are alive or dead (yes I’ve actually had to do that with the Feral Diaries), their roles, the different acts in each novel and so much more. Without Excel I’d have so many sheets of paper lying all over the place. I wouldn’t have room to move in my bedroom or on my desk. The ease of changing entries, the limitless possibilities... I love Excel

F – Feral Diaries, The. My newest novel idea (outside of the NaNoWriMo idea). Well I say novel but really I mean something else. There’ll be more about this in another post next week but for now I’ll just say that I’m really excited about it and it has the possibility of going further than I can imagine right now.

G – Garth Nix. He’s an exceptional fantasy writer and his books helped me to get through school in my teens. I hated school but I was guaranteed that when I read his books I could slip away into a whole other world. His books also helped me to get into writing fantasy novels, encouraging me to look into writing Young Adult too.

H – humour. I’m not really that funny. I know it, you know it, hell the bus driver I see once a week knows it. I try though, in the blog posts and my novels. I don’t specialise in laugh-out-loud humour though. I’m... witty I suppose, and sarcastic and dry, very dry. It works for me though and usually the funny happens when I’m not even trying to be funny. I’ve actually considered a career in stand-up comedy if the writing thing doesn’t work out for me.

J – Josh Guess. He’s a brilliant writer. I discovered him recently when I got a couple of books for my Kindle before I went on holiday. I read his novels Living with the Dead and I couldn’t put them down. Seriously, I’d be stood at the back door, having a cigarette with my Kindle clutched there in my hands, devouring the words. The way he writes is quite philosophical at times but it’s not a boring kind of way. He challenges his characters, does horrible horrible things to them but manages to make it better without using one of the old ‘the wizard did it’ clichés. That takes talent. And he’s dedicated.

K – knitting. I knit in winter. Not summer or when it’s too hot as my hands end up sweaty, I drop stitches and the wool goes ca-ca. Right now though all I can do is straight up knitting; squares, rectangles and long scarves. I need to learn to turn a heel or a toe or even to knit a hat. I find knitting helps me when I’m writing too as I can just sit there, playing with my wool and needles and think things through for my characters. It gives my hands something to do while my brain works. And if you know me in person you know my hands and brain are always going.

L – Living with the Dead. I mentioned this above. The idea is one that I’ve seen before but never that’s lasted this long. It’s the story of a zombie apocalypse (which if you know me you know I love) that started in March 2010. The thing is that it's not just a long running novel series. It's a daily blog. Since then Josh Guess, the author, has made a post almost every single weekday. That’s over 2 years, 5 days a week. It’s incredible and it’s inspiring. Most importantly it’s a really good read. I thoroughly recommend it if you like zombies or the apocalypse (maybe like is there wrong word there). This series has given me some pretty cool ideas for the Feral Diaries too.

M – my Mum. I’ve mentioned my mum up under A but she needs to be mentioned again. She is ridiculously supportive now that I know what I want to do. She tells people she works with about me being a writer. Sometimes she even takes supplies from work that she knows they’re throwing away and brings them home to me to use if she thinks they’ll be useful. She wants to read Darkling Watch in fact. But right now... no way. Either way, she supports me, encourages me and makes sure I don’t drive myself mad working on my novels. I love you Mum.

N – NaNoWriMo. It was NaNoWriMo that helped me to realise that I seriously wanted to be a writer and that I could actually manage it. In a month I almost finished a complete first draft of Darkling Watch and I wasn’t even fed up of it. I’d been getting ideas the entire time for other stories linked to the Darklings and the characters within the novel itself and I started work on those as soon as I was done. Granted in a normal month my word-count is nowhere near that high but it’s nice to know I could, and can, do it.

O – o.S.a.M. My pet project. My baby. The webcomic that just won’t be written. I’ve been working on this idea for over 6 months now and I’ve still not cracked it. I thought I had until I found some massive flaws and took it back to the drawing board. I’ll do an entire post about this at a later date, as I’ve said in my post on Monday. But in all seriousness, o.S.a.M is my baby and I’m going to keep working on it until I crack it and manage to do something with it. Who knows, it may even turn into an illustrated novel rather than a webcomic.

P – planning. I used to do the bare minimum of planning and when it came down to writing I’d be left with huge gaping plot holes or my novel would putter out of steam. Now though I’ve thoroughly embraced planning; creating timelines, character sheets, chapter outlines. I feel awkward and lose track of what I’m writing. I know some people are pantsers and that’s really great for them but I’m just not one of them. If you are though my hat goes off to you.

R – Research. Research is my life-blood. I love researching. Sometimes when I’m researching something will spark my imagination and a whole new idea will pop out at me. That’s how my idea for NaNo this year came about. Research is key in many of my novels, dealing as they do in history and mythology. I like to make sure the information I give is accurate although often things that I research barely show up at all, usually just a line or two if that. It makes me happy though and gives my writing a bit more of a 3 dimensional feel to it. Plus, I can always use it for other novels once it’s in my head.

S – Shan, Darren. Another fantastic fantasy/YA author. It’s from Shan that I’ve been encouraged and inspired to write long running novels. Often his novels come in series of 5 or more books, each with their own individual plots but with a long running story going through all of them. It’s fascinating reading them with a critical eye, seeing how the little bits and pieces build up into one interesting story. There’s a reason most of his story series are called Sagas.

T – targets. I have to set myself targets or I never get anything done. I’m inherently lazy sometimes, not doing anything unless I really have to and having targets, whether they’re weekly, monthly or daily just gives me a reason to work. Plus I just love seeing each item ticked or crossed off the list. I plan on writing an entire post about targets and why I love them though so I won’t go into too much detail of why I do right now.

U – unexpected, the. So many of my novels evolve past what I first imagine because I end up writing unexpected things. For instance, when I started writing The Darkling Watch I never imagined that it would turn into a three book thing. Nor did I imagine that the main antagonist would be Loki and the story would be piled high with mythology. Unexpected things happening in my writing is something that I love. It makes it richer, more intriguing and just a hell of a lot more fun. It also means I generally have more work to do in the editing stages though.

V – vacations. Or holidays as the British call them. I love taking a break, going away somewhere new, seeing new things, eating new things, doing new things. More often than not the change of scenery is really good for me. I get new ideas, fix old ideas or just get stuff done. It’s nice to just unwind as well and get a bit of reading done.

W – Webcomic. I’ve tried so many times to start a webcomic and I’ve either realised I’ve jumped in too soon or I don’t actually like the story I’m working on. So now I’m taking my time. But this one isn’t about my webcomic. It’s about webcomics in general. I love to read webcomics. They’re fun, quick and a daily source of entertainment for me. Plus, they more often than not give me some kind of inspiration, whether for a tricky plot point or a new idea. I like them and read a lot of them. Speaking of, I should really get caught up with the ones I’ve missed since I went away.

X – x-rated material. I have x-rated material in the Darkling Watch. There’s probably going to be x-rated material in The Feral Diaries. No matter what I end up with some kind of sex scene in my novels. They get taken out usually. Sometimes I leave them in if they’re actually  useful to the story. It irks me though that these scenes keep popping up in my writing. Maybe I need to get laid....

Y –Young-Adult. I’ve started to branch out into writing Young Adult novels. It’s not something that I really considered before but I realised that maybe I should. The plots tend to be less tangled, the characterisation a lot simpler and they’re actually entertaining without going plot or exposition heavy. The Darklings series (not Darkling Watch) already has a couple of ideas mapped out for YA novels which surprises me as The Darkling Watch is a decidedly adult novel, what with the death and the sex and the drinking. But yes, I like to read YA novels and I think I might actually enjoy writing them too.

Z – zombies. I couldn’t mention zombies twice for other letters without including it here. I love the zombie genre, in film, graphic novel and book form. I found some truly unique ways of making it work in writing and some... well, really clichéd examples of bad zombie novel writing. The genre is so adaptable, it can be used to make a profound comment on human society or it can be just a good read/watch. It depends on how hard you’re willing to work. Hopefully, one day soon I can write an actual zombie novel myself instead of just reading them.

So there you go, hope you enjoyed reading that and seeing into the inky depths of my mind. Catch you Sunday with one of my RoW80 Check-In posts.