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?

Friday Links; A little more writerly

That’s right it’s that time of the month again. I’ve been linking a lot to crafting websites lately. Well, this week I’ve gone all writerly (it’s a real word I swear *cough*) Not only have I been working hard on my current work-in-progress, a novel that is still nameless, but I’ve also been planning and searching for research (real word again :P) for the other idea I’ve got brewing (more on that later).  Anyway, on to the real purpose of this post.

My first link today is to this blog right here. You don’t have to go all the way through her archives but I strongly recommend it. It’s truly inspiring. Rachel Hawkins is a published writer with a trilogy in the works. She’s got two of the three books published as well as a few more novels in the works. It’s following her journey to this point that is amazing though. She was a teacher at a school that was depressing her horribly. At the urging of her husband she quit her job, as did he, and spent her time writing a novel. She sent it off to an agent and then got the book deal (all with a toddler which I just can’t imagine being able to do). She is a success story, and unlike some other people, she’s willing to share her success and give help and pointers to other wannabe-novelists.  It’s not just an inspiring story (yes I’m saying that a lot but it’s true!!) it’s an interesting one too, simply in that you get insight into the writing process of other writers. I find this ridiculously helpful. I’m one of those people that suffer slightly from anxiety of failure. I’m constantly worrying that I’m doing whatever I’m doing wrong. I seek constant validation that I’m doing it right. Just reading her blog, along with a few others, has shown me that there are so many different types of writers, from planners to ‘pantsers’ (a writer that just writes on the seat of their pants, winging it) and that the way I write is the way I write, there’s nothing wrong. (Back on track,) I’ve spent at least half the week reading through her archives, reading her thoughts as she struggled with the whole thing, even though I know how it ends, I’m just a big geek like that. She also put me on to the next link, having participated multiple times throughout the year.

NaNoWriMo, standing for National Novel Writing Month. I’ve found it before and looked into it but Rachel’s blog brought it back to my attention. Originally started in San Fransisco 1999, by one guy with a small group of friends to get them to at least try to write a novel, it has since expanded to cover so many countries. It’s has now sparked a non-profit organisation with a full time staff, charitable giving and more writing events during the year. It’s weird to think that it has been running for 12 years now. It offers a chance to bring together other writers from the area and gives encouragement and... wait, why am I telling you this?! Go go check it out for yourself, sign up, it’s free!  I signed up today so hopefully I’ll be able to get the vast majority of a novel written before the year is out. Unfortunately you are required to start a novel from scratch, doing only preparation beforehand. That rules the use of my current novel. I figure though that it’s a perfect chance for me to bring in that new idea (See! See!). I’ve got about 10 days to get the research done for the most part. And I’m going to meet a bunch of other Notts based writers. No worries though, I won’t be stopping my other creative endeavours.

This weekend I plan to learn to knit once more, getting inspired to take it up again from Rachel’s blog, so hopefully I’ll have new things to tell you about. Also keep an eye on the site, I plan on fiddling with the design a little.

Well, what are you waiting for?! Go check out those pages!

Progress Wednesday: Personal challenge, general crafting and a bit of baking.

So this week I've been up to a fair bit of fun and creative stuff. A fair bit of it is related to my Personal Challenge and the October targets. Firstly I've managed to finish another chapter-type thing for my novel. It's a bit tricky to tell this sort of thing now because I've removed the chapter seperations from my first draft. Either way, I've managed to write a large amount since I last posted about the novel. It's tricky because I still wanna research and create my world but at the same time I'm writing. The great thing is that I've found a load of history programs on BT Vision that I can watch as part of research regarding the world itself. As I've been writing though my characters' histories have been revealing parts of my world's culture. I guess that's the way sometimes, when the writing itself runs away and takes on a life of its own.

 For the Sketchbook Project I've managed to finish another page. This one will be in the first few pages and is part of a series of 'Wonder Images' a bunch of pictures linked by the theme of the Wonders of the World. I figured I'd start from England and work my way eastward acround the world from there. This was drawn with soluble watercolour and ink. I sketched the design first before I shaded in the sky and ground with the colour crayons before running over with a wet paintbrush. I then outlined the stones with a fineliner and used a brush pen that was running out to lightly scrub in the texture of the stones.
The lines on the other page, around the date-stamp, is the next in the series, the Eiffel Tower in France. Talking about this has made me think that maybe I need to start taking pictures of my progress as I create a piece.

The picture to the right ---> is also another image for the Sketchbook Project. This comes much later in the book.
In other Personal Challenge news, I've managed to finish the colour for the first full page of Witchan. I need to go over the colour with water as I've used water-soluble pencil crayon again. There will be a white border around it all once I've scanned and editted it on the computer. First though, I've got to fiddle with scanning settings so that the pages scan properly. The comic's on hiatus now, as I said before, while I try to sort things out.
 I spent most of today playing with glue, tissue paper, pom-poms, pipe-cleaners, foam, lolly sticks and goggley eyes. I'll probably pop a few pictures up of my creations once I've finished making them. For now, enjoy these images of my mince pies, I spent Monday afternoon making them by hand. They're surprisingly tasty and now all gone. The big one with the shooting star hole is big enough for two!