A little bit lost

So I’m at a bit of a loss. I’ve been imagining this day for ages but never actually thought about what I’d do when it got here. You’re probably wondering what on earth I’m blabbering about. Well I’ll tell you.
I finished the first draft of Darkling Watch.

It’s a big deal to me, a massive accomplishment and I’ll tell you why. My biggest downfall in my writing is that I’ve never finished anything. I’ve got dozens and dozens of works in progress on my computer and in my room. Everything I start I seem to leave by the wayside. Today though is one of the first times I’ve ever actually finished something. I’m so proud of myself and at the same time I’m shell-shocked. I’ve dreamed about being able to turn around to my parents and say ‘it’s done’ but now that it’s here I don’t know what to do. I feel like I should be jumping up and down on the bed and running around squealing. But I’m not. Instead I’m sat here, trying to figure out what to do next. It’s pretty awe-inspiring. I’ve just completed the first step on the path to possibly getting published. Editting will come soon enough and then submissions. I’m finally reaching towards my dream and I can’t believe it is happening.
It doesn’t feel real. I’ve felt this feeling before; when I got into uni, when I graduated, when my first article was published in the student paper. It’s not a new sensation. I just never thought I’d get it for my writing though.

I’m sitting here wondering what else I can spend my day doing, not that I spent hours and hours just sitting there writing. A lot of the time I was procrastinating.
I suppose I could work on the Young Adult novel I’ve been planning, actually start writing it. Or I could rewrite Witchan or Loves Complications, sort out their plots and actually get onto drawing the pages again. Maybe.
Or maybe I could just revel for the day in the joy of the fact that at last I’ve finished something. I could use it as a starting point to prove to myself and everyone else that at last I’m no longer just a doer. I’m a finisher. I start things, I do them and I get them finished. 

I’m not going to lie. It’s a nice feeling.

Creative Explosion

So what can I say?  My creativity seems to have gone boom. It seems like all of a sudden I’ve got a ton of ideas that I’m working on and I’m actually seeing progress that I’m pleased with. 

My creativite mind... or at least what I imagine it looked like.

Image courtesy of http://pastorhobbins.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/explosion-big-bang.jpg

                My NaNo novel.... is titled and almost finished!! I couldn’t be prouder, my baby is almost fully born. I’m even looking forward to doing the editing and multiple drafts. There is one... flaw, I suppose you would call it. As of right now the total word count is 100,000 words. Now I’m no expert on the lengths of novels, even though I read a lot, but I think that may be too long for just one novel. It may be a case that in publishing it’s split into two. If I manage to get that far anyway. But apart from that things are rolling along nicely. I’m managing to get from my exposition right near the end to the actual climax at last. For weeks I’ve been staring at that part of the story, trying to make myself fill it in. Then in the last few days, as I’ve apparently hit a creative streak it’s started to work, I’m writing 800 to 1000 words of it a day, when I’m pushing myself, more than that when I’m not really trying and the ideas start pinging around my head. I’m glad of this really. It means that I’m on the home stretch and I’m one step closer to reaching my dream or at least trying for it.
                I’m working on my basic groundwork for Script Frenzy. Script Frenzy is ran by the same people who do NaNoWriMo and the basic idea is that you try to write 30 pages of script for a movie, tv series, anything in a month, starting on April 1^st. I decided to give it a go seeing how much success I’ve had with NaNo. I started searching for an idea last week, only wanting to make sure I had one because I didn’t want to leave it until the last minute like with NaNo. The idea got away with me though and now I’ve got the plot... at least most of it... and I’ve got my characters. I have a vague idea of what they look like too and what sort of style I’m going to use. I’m even building up a reference library of things that I can use to do my drawings. I’ve got twists, I’ve got back-story, I’ve got a page limit. All these things give me the feeling that for once, I may actually manage to do it. I don’t start writing the script until April so I’ve got time to develop my characters, draw settings, profiles, expression pages and a chance to test the drawing style. But I’m happy.

              In other news, I’ve canned Witchan. I’m not happy with the story, I haven’t been for a while. The general premise I like but I feel that it just needs more work and I have, as an authorial choice, taken the pages offline and I’m planning to work on the script some more at a later date. I want to rework the characters, rework the script, tweak the plot around. There are parts of the story and the idea that I love, most of the characters I love. But I just have this nagging feeling in the back of my head that I rushed into it all way too quickly. I’ve not even finished writing the thing, I’m not happy with the art and I have no idea what my main characters really look like. I think that I’m just going to have to pause the story, trash the pages and start over. So that’s what I’ve done. Once I’ve got the novel finished and the Script Frenzy idea rolling properly I may well go back to it. Who knows I might even dip in and out of it as I’m working on other things.
                Right now however, as well as Darkling Watch(the NaNo Novel), Of Swords and Magic(the Script Frenzy idea) and Chains in the Basement(a young adult novel I’m currently plotting), I’m working on a new old idea. Love Complications was one of the first stories that I actually finished. I decided that I wanted to turn it into a web-comic. So I did. I managed to get to the second chapter, almost the end of the second chapter in fact before I began to get the feeling that there was something off about the whole thing. The art I actually quite liked, even after it had changed a couple of times. It was the plot I was having issues with. The story was basically the wish fulfilment fantasy of a teenage girl, as I wrote it at 16 when I was having a few... issues with my school life. Now I’ve taken off the pages and I’m reworking the script. The basic idea is the same but the points along the way are changed, the characters are going to be more well-rounded. And most importantly, I’m going to take my time! With everything. Because I’m an impatient bugger.

Me with my ideas... I am a woman

Image courtesy of http://www.activegarage.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/dirty-dozen-6-impatience

              

If I don’t wait I’ll end up unhappy with it all again and just have to repeat this cycle over and over and over and over and over and... well you get the point. Planning needs to be balanced with actually creating and my ideas need to keep flowing. Working on a load of projects at once and giving myself deadlines seems to help spur me on so for now, I'm gonna stick with it.

New Year's Resolutions, ROW80, and Kindles

So it’s New Year’s Eve and the year will turn over to 2012 in a little under 4 hours. For the last month or so I’ve been busy with my temporary work contract and have very sadly neglected this blog. With the new year though I figured that I’d sort out this grave error and let you know what has been going on in my life.
To be frank I’ve spent most of this month in a creative rut. I’ve had a few sparks of inspiration now and then but I’ve completely lacked any actual drive to write or create anything. This has all changed in the last few days with the advent of Christmas and the end of my contract pulling into sight. I’m bubbling with ideas and thoughts, all of them brewing in my mind and slowly forming into one plot. Once my temporary contract is up I’m planning to get as many of these down as I can.

Now though I turn onto my New Year’s Resolutions. I have several resolutions, some that are easily measurable, others are a bit more vague and simply end results or basic ideas.

• ·         Learn French
• ·         Quit smoking
• ·         Return to my size 10/12 shape
• ·         Finish NaNo novel and edit.
• ·         Plot and possible start three more novels
• ·         Learn to drive
• ·         Restart Witchan with a 10 page buffer.
• ·         Decide on an alternative career path
• ·         Make three queries regarding my novel a month.
• ·         Read 200 new books

Simple really. Some of these things are linked together obviously while others are a bit more individual and stand alone. When I think back to this time last year I remember how little idea I had of where my life was going. I didn’t have a clue about what I wanted to do with my life or anything. I still don’t. I figure that if you pretend to know what you want eventually you’ll begin to believe you know what you want. So that’s what I’m going to do. I know some things that I want so I’m going from there and hope that eventually I’ll figure out the rest. 

I have signed up for another writing thing, something called A Round Of Words in 80 Days. It’s a new writing challenge I stumbled across that is designed for people with hectic lives and lets you set your own goals to reach in 80 days. I’ve got to set my own goals for the first round which begins on Monday. I’ve not got many thoughts, having only just signed up but my first thoughts for goals are

• ·         Write 500 words a day for the NaNo novel.
• ·         Create one art piece a week.
• ·         Preliminary planning for one new novel.

These goals are more short term than my New Year’s Resolution and more measurable. Hopefully they’ll continue to give me the creative push I need for a shorter amount of time throughout the year.

Finally. I have gotten a Kindle. I read so much that my dad has decided it’d be cheaper and take less room to have my books digitally than it would to have them in print. I’ve already got many books on it, in a variety of genres, and I am adding more, pretty much every time I finish a new one. I stumbled across an amazing series, written by a woman called Mira Grant. It’s known as the Newsflesh Trilogy. I have found it incredibly interesting and I’m eagerly waiting for the third in the series which is due out in May. There are constantly twists and turns that constantly surprise me. It’s a series based in both the political intrigue genre and the zombie genre. I know, I know, I love me some zombies. Newsflesh is different from most of the zombie novels I read. Grant doesn’t focus as much on the actual outbreak and how it takes over the world, she leaves that to the short stories that are due out soon. Mostly she focuses on after and the zombies aren’t as important, they’re simply a tool of the political plots and an obstacle for the protagonists to overcome. I can’t really talk about the trilogy much more, not without ruining the plot for anyone who’s not read it and not until I’ve finished reading it. Once I’ve managed to get hold of and finish the last book I may well put up a review. Here’s hoping.

Well, my darling readers, I look forward to telling you all about my creative endeavours come the New Year and hopefully I’ll be able to keep to my resolutions. What are your resolutions? Do you think I’ll be able to keep mine?

Of course, Happy New Year!!

Progress Wednesday: in which everything has gone to pot.

As the title says, all my grand plans for my personal challenge have gone KaPoof.  I’ve not gotten any more of the Sketchbook Project worked on and no more comic pages planned or drawn.

       It is, however, all self-imposed. I’ve signed up for NaNoWriMo, as I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, with only a little over a week to go. This was back on Friday. It starts 1^st November and if I’m to have any success or hope of reaching the 50,000 word goal I’m going to need a fair bit of planning sorted. I’m not one of those people who can just write as they go, not even for something that, to them, is a bit of fun. I tried that already with the novel I’m currently working on and I’ve just ended up stuck in two places (not good as I need to join the two together at some point). 

        Anyway, I digress. This week has been solely devoted to outlining and planning and plotting. I’ve filled several pages of a lovely purple notebook with notes on the world of my story and the races in it. I’ve gone for a slightly different genre for NaNo in the hope of challenging myself and also as an experiment to see if I can write better in another genre. I’ve got a complete outline, information on races, information on organisation, a ton of reference pages online and main Character-character profiles. What I don’t have however is, a setting, support characters (no, not even names or appearance) or even a working title. At the moment I’m referring to it by the name of one of the unnamed characters (if that makes no sense, I’m calling the novel the same thing that I call one of the characters).

        Half of the week is gone though and the next few days are looking crazy busy. If I’m to have any hope of finishing I either need Bernard’s Watch (did anyone else ever watch that show?), a Time-Turner, or just to cut myself off completely. Monday and tonight is looking like my best bet to be able to finish the planning stages. Trouble is that there’s just so much to do. It’s my own fault though, I should have signed up sooner and planned a bit more, or you know, used one of my existing plots (what?! No! That’d be too easy, crazy writing girl!).

         For now though, it’s back to the plotting board and the notebook, in the hopes of achieving more material ready to be shoved into a novel’s first draft.

Until next time chums.

The Sunday Workspace: Now with more writing

Alright, I admit it; I almost forgot that I’d promised a blog today. I’m a very bad writer/artist/blogger (person). What matters though is that I’ve remembered and have written this lovely, albeit brief, entry so please don’t pelt me with old fruit or run away!

So getting on topic, in my workspace for the next week are;

1. A series of Sketchbook Project Illustrations. Primarily they’ll be those of the world wonders, some will be the bases for a couple of fold out pages. I’m hoping to get some cutting and sticking done as well as a bit more water-colouring (I really do enjoy watercolour), all on those few pages that I have planned.
2. Further outlining for NaNoWriMo. So far I’ve got the separate scenes (mostly) outlined on individual note-cards. I can expand each scene on the back and move them around (yes I am so much of a geek that organising excites me).  I’ve got to get the order set and ready for expanding.
3. Lots and lots of research. I’ve got various areas that I want to research based on my novel idea; mostly surrounding the supernatural and the various mythologies surrounding those topics. I’m starting simple, using Wikipedia (I know, I know, it’s not 100% reliable however I’m adapting the info to suit me it’s not that big a deal) but by the end of the week I hope to have made a few visits to the library (that is if I get over my weird fear of going to the library alone out of paranoia that the books’ll eat me... ooh idea!)

     I did want to be a pantser (someone who rights by the seat of their pants) but the organising geek in me just couldn’t avoid the whole basic-outline-outline-by-scene-character-profile-exactly, thing.  That also reminds me, I need to come up with some more names for my characters along with descriptions, personality, backstory etc. I accept and acknowledge that I’m weird about this stuff but I reckon that’s part of the joy of being a writer. I just don’t think that Bethany is the name of my MC (main character for the non-writers on here) and as a result I gotta fiddle with that...AGAIN.

      (Here’s a bit of whining/self-pitying, just to show that I’m not this mad happy gremlin that runs around Nottingham.) I accept that I’ve gone off Witchan for the time being. Maybe I started it too soon, I don’t know, I did put up the first pages before I’d even finished the Introduction when it’s possible that I should have waited until then. As it stands though I’m just going to focus on my writing and see if that gets me any closer to reaching my dream of being published. When the urge to draw a page or two strikes me though I’m not ignoring it and hopefully I can and will get a buffer going. I’m not going to force it though (forced art is bad art!)

So that’s what I’ll be doing this week. How about you? Any trips? Anyone else preparing for NaNoWriMo?

Progress Wednesday: A fair bit done.

So it's Wednesday again. I've gotten a fair bit of progress made once more. Sadly, due to being in an interview all day means that I've not got any pictures. For the Sketchbook Project I've finished another picture and planned two more. That's further success for my personal challenge. I've also planned three more pages of Witchan and plan to sketch them up tomorrow, as well as finishing the colour for the pages I have. Hopefully I'll be able to finish altering the two pages I've scanned too. For my novels, I finished the first draft for one chapter and I've also started another. Research into the world itself and my creation of it is also going well, as is the research for the new idea I came up with.

Well, that's it for today, I may blog again tomorrow and expand on this but right now I'm just exhausted.
So, good night.

Learning about Writing.

So earlier I hit a minor writer's block. Nothing serious mind you but something that would delay the writing process for longer then I wanted. I wasn't sure where to go next, whether to start writing or to look at my plot more indepth. Reading Terry Brooks wasn't working so I decided to visit a couple of forums I frequent. One of them is the SmackJeeves forum.
Now, SJ is devoted to webcomics I will admit and yes.. I write and draw a webcomic myself. It's home to a fairly successful group of webcomicers as well. One of them is Gibson Twist whose comic 'Pictures of You' is, I've been told pretty good. It's a bit to wordy for my tastes but I can appreciate the art and writing for their quality, even if the content is something I'm not interested in. Anyway, he also writes tutorials for writing, both webcomic scripts and prose. I read the one he'd posted on SJ forums and it really helped me figure out where to go next. You can find it here: Gibson Twist's Writing tutorials It's got information that'd be useful for all levels of writing both beginners and experienced writers. If you're having trouble with any part of the writing process I'd suggest checking it out.
Back to the me doing a webcomic thing. It's still a baby, there's not even a single page up yet. I'm not happy with the banner either, both for the forums and the site itself. Meh, it'll get sorted eventually. I've just got to find a way to juggle the webcomic and the novel I'm writing. For the curious though, here's a quick glimpse of the banner for the site itsel.

The text isn't quite right but like I've said, I'll sort it.