Nothing much to report

Still haven't gotten past the block from the previous post, so there's not much to say here. I'm going to try a few writing prompts in a notebook my parents gave me for Christmas and a brainstorming technique from James Scott Bell in his book Conflict & Suspense. There are a couple of ideas here that I thought were valuable.

One was to listen to a soundtrack and think of character movements for every beat, instrument and measure.

Another was to imagine your book as a movie. What would the character say next if you were watching this on the screen?


Another, which was more for starting out a new book was to start describing your house. Just describe. Work out to the places around your house. The weird neighbors next door. The park. Etc. Now add a desperate character who's alone and need help and describe it from his/her point of view.

Or start a bunch of first lines. Experiment with dialogue, actions, setting, description, etc. and expand them into paragraphs. That one more applies to a new book as well.

Now, finally, this one's kind of nerdy. Open a dictionary, place your finger on a random word and write a few paragraphs about whatever comes to mind. 

So...yeah. Working on it. Hope I have more to report next week! 

Every time that you wake up breathing. Every night you close your eyes. Every day that your heart keeps beating. There's a purpose for your life. So don't give up. Don't lay down. Just hold on. Don't quit now. Every breath that you take has meaning. You are here for a reason.

--Here for a Reason by: Ashes Remain  

*cringe* this is 3-4 days late

Okay, so I'm the terriblest blogger ever. And yes, I's a writer and I's knows my grammar and my vocabulary, and terriblest is a word. (not really) I think I might be going just a little bit crazy. No seriously. Okay. Maybe not. But crazy people don't know they're crazy. I know I'm crazy, therefore, I'm not crazy. Isn't that crazy. (Jack Sparrow, anyone?)

Don't forget school,
homework and school.
Oh, and wait! School!

Ooooohhhhhh....I'm so tired. Guess what all decided to happen in the month of November. Thanksgiving and...wait for it...finals! Yay, right? Well, in all technicality finals aren't in November, but they are in the first week of December. Or is it the second? I don't know. I'm tired. In any case, I've got to be studying my butt off to make sure I actually pass them. I've got a four page paper due (I know it's not a lot, but I haven't even started on it and it's due next Monday. Heck, I don't even know hardly anything about my subject.) Biology has been taking up all my time. I'm supposed to have memorized 65 muscles by tomorrow. I was supposed to do them at the beginning of the semester and *ahemdon'ttellmyprofessor* I only know about half of them. It's not a problem of where they are. Oh, no that's easy. I've also got to memorize the technical name of where they insert on both ends, some of which have three or four each. And I've got to memorize what they do, which often also have three or four different answers. All that to say, I'm behind on my word count. I'm consistantly 3000-3500 words behind. For example, I have 3500 to get in one day. I do 2000. Okay, so I've got 1500 to do tomorrow. But wait, I've got an extra 1700 to write on top of that. So I'm now at 3200 the next day. It feels like I'm treading water and going nowhere.

Anyone struggle with procrastination?
Ooh, look I haven't blogged this week
like I'm supposed to. *ahem*

You might be able to easily tell I'm in the middle of NaNo. The part where you ramble on for pages on end just to meet your depleted word count. The part where you can't go back and edit, because you'll end up reading all 160 pages before you get to writing and who knows how long that will take. So...forgive me for my rambling.

I diagnosed my character finally. 120 pages into the novel, I finally diagnosed her. I have a feeling that half of my novel is going to have to be removed at the end of NaNo. I'm writing so many pointless scenes. My character also keep repeating herself with I-suppose-es and I-can't-seem-to-s
and I-wish-I-didn't-have-to-blah-s as well as way to many adjectives, -ly words and cliche descriptions like 'good' and 'nice.' It's getting on my nerves quite honestly.

The thing I'm struggling with most is coming up with plot points. In my interview with Bekah, she even told me, "Lyme disease is really boring." Think about it: you've lost mobility and you can't be around a lot of people. You can hardly even move. And that's my problem. I'm having trouble with making a interesting story out of this. B
ecause even if having the disease is boring, your readers can't be. And the story, itself, isn't boring at all, just the little in between parts. Like having to lay in bed for a month watching TV. Every scene is supposed to push your story forward in some way. Laying in bed isn't doing anything for the plot. A lot of it has to be dialogue and inner thoughts.

So, needless to say, this story is hard. I'm hoping to publish it once I'm done, though, so I'm pushing through. Because the point of this story is written to be read. I mean, most stories are, but this one more than others I've written. Because I'm writing it to make a difference and if no one can read it, there's no difference made. So...yeah. It's my battle. And I'm going to fight it bravely. Or maybe not so bravely. :)

Lastly, I need help: My character's dad needs to stalk her and eventually take her. I don't know what his motivation is, though. That's a problem, right? Could she maybe have seen him do something illegal that could send him back to jail so he's trying to make sure she doesn't call the police on him? If so, what could she catch him doing? Ideas anyone?

So, I'll let you go about your day. Pray for my sanity. :P

First week of NaNo

So, first week of NaNo. This was interesting. :) I have 10,600ish words so far. That was a third of my goal for last year. It's been a really up and down first week. 

Midnight, November 1st: lit a candle, made some tea and cranked out 3,000 words. Later that day I got in another 1,000 words in a kickoff party my writer's group had. 

November 2nd: Fairly normal. I had a practical and school, so all of the writing I did, I had to do in the morning. 

November 3rd: Lost my head start. Only wrote 400 words. 

November 4th: Somehow I got 2,000 even though I had school that day. 

November 5th: Got another 2,000 be cause every Thursday our writer's group goes to one of our houses, sits around the table, drinks tea, eats scones or cookies or mini pumpkin pies (those were good) and writes their heart out. 

November 6th: Nothing

November 7th: I've gotten all of 500 words down. 

 This scene I'm writing is absolutely worthless, but if I discard it, I loose everything I did today. Blegh. So not in the writing mood today. Which is kind of weird. I'm being the procrastinator we all know me to be. :) See, I even won a procrastination badge!

I'll give you a sample of my thought process today: 

'Okay. Gonna write.' Opens document. 'Nothing's happening.' Opens NaNoWriMo. 'Maybe I can word war. Okay. Going in at :45.' Writes for fifteen minutes. 'Only 274 words. Seriously? That's the best I can do. This scene is useless. I need to delete it. But it's in my outline, so I can't. Dang. I need a shower. Ooh! I wonder how I can start a thread in the forums. I have something I want to post.' Spends the next forty-five minutes trying to figure it out. Spends fifteen minutes actually posting in the forum. 'Ooh, ooh. There's one of my old books. I'm going to read it.' Reads through the next hundred pages. 'I don't like this part. I need to go clean my room. It's a mess.' Goes upstairs and spends two hours cleaning the room. 'I'm going to organize my PJ bin. It's spilling out all over the place.' Organizes PJ bin. 'Oh, I should probably clean out my closet. Mom and Dad wanted me to bring my hope chest upstairs so it's not in the walkway.' Cleans closet and brings hope chest up. 'I need to do my sheets too.' Strips my sheets and puts them in the wash. Sits down at the computer again. 'I'll try another word war. Just five minutes this time. Going it at :25. This scene is useless, but who cares? Still churning out words. 95 words? That's pathetic. Oh, look there's my blog. And it's Saturday. I need to post.' 

And here you find me. Some how I managed 500 words, though I can't really see how...

Anyway. This story's chugging along. It's not the story it's me. I'm just not in the mood right now. Maybe I will go and take a shower. I'm babysitting in a half hour. I have time. Hmm.... I have an idea. I'll make this productive and brainstorm in the shower. That's an idea. Okay, well, I'm out. Wish me luck!  

 Sort of...

Writer's Block

I'm watching Anne of Green Gables and Gilbert said something that struck me as profound.

You can mope and cry all you want, but it won't help you write a better novel. 

I once heard someone classify different types of writer's block. One of the ones that I frequently suffer from is Lazy Writer's Syndrome (LWS.)

• Jessi Roberts suggested to ask "What if?" to jump start a plot. What if so-and-so died? What if they got engaged? What if the dragon didn't die like everyone thought? 
• Or just sit your butt down and force the story from your brain to your fingertips. 
• One thing I like to do is change the font color to white and don't even see what I'm writing and let my instincts carry it away. No one has to see it. You can edit later.
• Even if you're the pansters to top all pansters, sometimes you should try plotting. Or if your a plotter to top all plotters, try writing by instinct. 
• Talk to other writer's friends and ask their opinions. NaNoWriMo is a great place to do that and they're having a virtual summer writer's camp for free, here. 

BLOCKED!!!

So, hey! What's new? I'm blocked. No. New. Ideas. Useless. Brain. In the chapter I wrote this morning, the 59^th chapter to be exact, a character remarked that something was lame and I just about banged my head about the computer and screamed, “THIS WHOLE CHAPTER IS LAME!” Does anyone have a tip on what to do when you're blocked? I keep stubbornly pushing forward, churning out forced dialogue, no description, wallowing-in-self-pity characters. I've literally written 177 words in the past weekish. How miserably pathetic is that?! Not knowing what to write is depressing. :`( I guess I know what to write. Maybe I'm just afraid to write the romance in fear that it will be cheesy, stupid and embarrassing. There's also a fight coming up between Aura and Adam and I'm not sure what to do to make it believable. He's not the kind of person to 1. fight, 2. not forgive someone after the fight and 3. hold a grudge enough to not talk to them for a couple of days.

So, basically, what's supposed to happen is earlier Adam tells Aura that Chris commissioned him to look after her. So, every nice thing he does for her, she questions whether he's doing it because Chris told him to, or because he actually cares about her. Something that he's supposed to say in the near future is going to set her off and she gets mad at him for that very insecurity. How do I do it? Actually writing this out has solidified it in my mind and I feel more capable of writing it not. Thanks!:) 

And this one, I just thought was funny....

Dawn

So I thought I'd take a second to give you an overview of this book so you know what's happening when I begin to rant about my characters. So here's the synopsis:



        Chris always told Aura about God and she just accepted it, but never felt the connection. When he dies in a car crash, she doesn't know what to believe anymore. Where is his faithful God? Unknowingly, she shuts everyone out, trying to get rid of the pain. 


       Aura's brother, Ray, is convinced Chris's death is his fault. After all, he was the one driving when he wasn't supposed to be. Maybe if he hadn't insisted, he would have died instead and saved everyone the pain. Plagued by guilt, he begins to get into trouble and starts contemplating suicide. 

I'm currently blocked at 42,700 words and 161 pages. It's aggravating. This story is kicking my butt. The current title is Dawn. If you want to suggest a better name for it based on my synopsis, feel free to, because this title is by all means not permanent.