July Camp NaNoWriMo 2015: Mid-Month Update

This month, I'm working on the sequel to my novel, which is actually proving rather difficult due to some rather big plot changes at the end of the first book that I've planned but haven't written yet. What that means is that I don't know where this story is going: I can't work out what's going to happen to the characters when I haven't fully worked out what happened to them previously. Luckily, this book introduces some new characters who originated from stories that I first imagined a few years ago. But in including them in this book, I haven't abandoned their stories; instead, I've simply integrated them as subplots. Because I know where these subplots are going, I have been favouring writing these rather than my main plotline. Unfortunately, that does not mean I am keeping up with my word count: as shown by the graph above, I am nine thousand words behind schedule. That's pretty normal for me during NaNoWriMo, though, so the fact that I haven't given up yet is a good sign that I may well still finish on time.

Things People Say When I Tell Them I’m Writing A Novel

Being a writer is part of who I am, and I don’t want to hide it, so if someone asks me what I’m doing tonight, I’m not going to tell them that I’m watching TV all night when actually I’ll be working on my novel. This generally leads to the other person asking two questions: what's it about, and can I read it? You’d think I’d enjoy hearing these two questions - hearing that people are interested in my book - (I know, me too) so here's why I don't.

What is it about?

So many things about this question make me nervous about answering. Firstly, I never know where to start. My head has been filled with the characters, settings and various plot points of this story for almost three years now. It has gone through many changes and will go through many more. This makes it kind of difficult to step back from all the tiny details of the project that I’m currently dealing with to summarise the book’s exposition for you. I always struggle with working out which bits are important and which bits you will understand without me explaining the entire history of my fictional world. As a result, my answer will either be short and vague and therefore rather disappointing (usually I just say “oh, it’s a fantasy”, and only elaborate with something like “it’s about a girl searching for her family” after a little more prompting, though that doesn't do it justice), or you’ll have to hope you don’t have anything to do in the next few hours because I’m telling you everything. Secondly, as already mentioned, I hate oversimplifying it. It gives the wrong impression (I once told someone my book is about a revolution, which it is, but it lead him to think it's a political book, which it isn't) or makes it sound dull, or like I don't want to talk about it (I do, I just don't know how to without sounding silly - a pocket watch that gives you the ability to talk to ghosts, are you serious?). On the other hand, I also don't want to end up boring the other person with all the inconsequential details, or messing up my explanation and just confusing them (which is very likely). I feel like this question puts pressure on the writer to have a good grasp of their book, which you would think they have, but in reality, (at least for me) it's just a huge mess of ideas.

Can I read it (before it's published)?

I hate this question, usually because I have to try and find a nice way to say no ("not yet" is my go-to reply). Before you ask it me, I want you to ask yourself a few questions first.

1. Why do you want to read my work? 

If it’s for a ‘claim to fame’, then please don’t ask me if you can read my book. My neighbour is apparently convinced I’ll be the next JK Rowling and wants to be able to say he read my book before it was famous. This makes me uncomfortable partly because it’s highly doubtful I’ll be as successful as JK Rowling and he really shouldn’t expect me to be famous one day just because I’m writing a book, but mostly because it implies to me that he’s actually only interested in my book so that he can have something to boast about in a few years’ time. It also disregards the fact that right now, my novel is a hobby, and getting it published - never mind it being a bestseller - a far-off dream.

2. Are we good friends? 

My book is incredibly personal to me. It isn’t just a story, it’s my imagination laid bare on the page for you to see. So I’m very self conscious about my work. If we’re not really good friends, then I’m not going to want you to read my novel. I’m also not going to want to disappoint you and tell you that I’ll only let you read it when the entire rest of the world can read it too, which puts me in a slightly awkward position. Basically, if I’m not comfortable enough to be myself around you in person, then I won’t be comfortable enough to let you read my book. If it was ready for you to read it, I'd have started querying literary agents already. So if we don't know each other that well, don’t even ask.

3. Will you be able to give me hugely detailed feedback? 

If you think that writing a book is easy, or that the books you see on the Waterstones bookshelves are word-for-word the same books that their authors wrote when they first sat down at their desks with a vague idea in their heads, you would be wrong. So lower your expectations of however good you think my novel is going to be, and then lower them some more. This is a work in progress and in need of a lot of improvements.    

As the writer, I see my story from a completely unique angle. My position is all-seeing. I know everything that is, could be and could have been in my story. To me, it all makes perfect sense. Unfortunately, my readers will not have this viewpoint, so I have to make sure everything that is important is visible from their angle too, but I can’t see from their viewpoint either. This is where I need help. At this stage, I need readers willing to give me a huge amount of feedback to help me get across what I want to get across and not miss out anything important. If you’re not willing to tell me all of your opinions of my book - what you thought of every character in every scene, your theories on their plans, how much of their backstory you’ve worked out, what confused you, what bored you, what you thought was unnecessary, what you thought was supposed to be funny but really wasn’t and needs to be removed, and, of course, what you enjoyed - then you telling me that you want to read my book is just someone else waiting over my shoulder for me to finish writing, counting on me to come up with a spectacular bestseller all on my own (not going to happen, guys). Your answer to question 2 is also pretty vital here - if I'm not certain that I can trust your judgement and you'll tell me nothing but the truth, it doesn't matter if you're willing to give me all the constructive criticism in the world.

The likelihood is, if your answers to these questions are the ones I'm looking for, you won't even have to ask to read my book, because I'll ask you - I wasn't kidding when I said I will need help with writing my book. And if I'm happy with your answers to questions 2 and 3, I might even completely disregard your answer to 1, but not the other way around.

I'd like to add that these are only my views on this subject. I'm sure there are many writers who are very private about their writing and feel rather awkward when asked about it, like me, but I'm also sure there are many writers who are perfectly happy to talk about whatever project they're currently working on, who don't worry about mis-explaining their plot or sounding ridiculous, or who will let anyone who asks read their writing. Unfortunately, I'm not one of them.

The Secrets The Writer Keeps

Several months and a sneaky blog-title change later, I'm finally posting an update! It's currently one week until my last exam, and therefore one week until my summer begins (I don't understand how quickly first year went!). I haven't managed to write much recently (whether it's true or not, I blame studying), but I'm looking forward to writing more over summer. I also hope to start posting on here again, so here are a few updates!

• I set myself a few writing goals and put them up on my wardrobe:

• Therefore I will be spending June writing my second draft, July taking part in Camp NaNoWriMo to get the first draft of Book 2 started, and August finishing Book 2.
• Over the past few weeks and months, I've mostly been fleshing out the world in which my story is set, planning my second draft (from big plot changes to tiny details) and attempting to write a new beginning. Since I decided to write a new prologue and move the old one into the first chapter, "writing" for me has pretty much become synonymous with "writing and rewriting the new prologue".
• I have received detailed feedback from one of the two people who has read the first draft of Book 1, and hope to receive more feedback from the second. Already I've found that even getting just one outside opinion is incredibly helpful: it helps me to see things from my reader's point of view, to see what works and what doesn't, which details need to be toned down and which need to be made more obvious, and see problems and characterisation flaws that I wouldn't have noticed (for example, I tried to make my main character grumpy-but-lovable, and instead it just resulted in her being slightly unlikable and difficult to relate to).

I plan on posting mostly progress reports on my writing here, perhaps along with a few other things, however I'm not currently sure what. Nevertheless, I shall endeavour to at least post something in the near future.

NaNoWriMo 2014: From Heaven To Hell/Hydrena

Time for another story about a story idea!

When I was maybe 13, 14, 15 years old, I spent a lot of my time on a website called FictionPress.Net, posting stories and talking to people in the forums. The site users used to start informal writing competitions among themselves, and I took part in two. The second is irrelevant (at least for now), but the first involved starting your story with a short passage which ran thusly:

"Stop, you thief!" Panting frantically, I ran down the escalator from the heavily puffing security guard. I clutched the pack of cigarettes tightly in my hand as I made my jump to freedom – crashing into someone. I looked up to find myself staring into a Goth boy's green eyes.

I'm not sure if this was from something, or if the girl who started the contest just made it up; if I've just infringed some sort of copyright thing, I didn't mean to and I'm sorry.

From this passage, I developed a modern fantasy story about a girl who discovered a new world and a new race (by means of the green-eyed Goth boy, who was a part of this race), and ended up having to confront Death himself, and I called this story From Heaven To Hell. I made it up as I wrote it, so the plotline was a bit dubious, and what kind of character gets transported to another realm by some guy she literally just ran into and doesn't ask where she is or what the hell just happened, I don't know. But it was one of the few stories that I actually finished at that age, and despite the fact that my two main characters didn't have much personality-wise (much like the rest of my characters - guess who couldn't be bothered with character development when they were 14), they stayed with me.

I mentioned in my post about The Dragon Story that I have a habit of merging story ideas together, and so when I realised during the early stages of planning Barnabus' Balloons that I would want some sort of magical race in my story, instead of creating a new magical race, I decided to steal the one from From Heaven To Hell, thus linking the story ideas. I also mentioned that I had created a network of sequels, prequels and companion books. Barnabus' Balloons is to be the first in the main series, which will consist of four books, and From Heaven To Hell, which I am renaming Hydrena while I rewrite it during this month's NaNoWriMo with a better plotline and more developed characters, is to be the last, while The Dragon Story is to be the third. I am also planning a prequel and have numerous over ideas which I may or may not ever write.

So Hydrena - the rewrite of From Heaven To Hell - is what I am writing at the moment. We are ten days into NaNoWriMo now and unsurprisingly I am very behind (both with writing and with my uni work, but that is neither related nor the point). You want proof? Fine.

However, I am not the only one doing NaNoWriMo at my university, and we have got permission to have an overnight write-in at our library soon, so as long as I don't continuously forget to write until then, I should be able to catch up. :)

Language Is Magic

I've been at university for a bit over a week now, and started my Linguistics with German degree course two days ago. At the end of the seminar I had today, our group was asked: "why do you all want to study linguistics? What about it makes it interesting to you?"

When I tell people I'm studying linguistics, many of these people ask me: "what languages?" They assume that they know what I am talking about, but they forget, or maybe don't realise, that there is more to a language than knowing how to use it to communicate. Linguistics is the scientific study of language as a concept, from phonetics (speech sounds and how we make them) to sociolinguistics (how social factors such as class, sex, age and ethnicity affect the way language is used) to syntax (the structure of sentences). But things like that often don't cross people's minds. After all, they have been speaking their language for years; what more is there to know?

That's why I find linguistics interesting. Those of us who, for example, can't programme computers know very well that we can't programme computers. But not many people know just how much they don't know about the sentences they build and the sounds they form into words every day. It's like a hidden science, it's like a secret society. You don't know it's there until you really stop and think about how you don't need to be psychic to place images in other people's heads, you can just put one word after another in a specific way and providing that they speak the same language as you, they can rebuild the image in their heads just as you described it to them.

And the person doing the describing doesn't even have to be anywhere near you for them to communicate that image. You can make little inks marks on paper, and these little ink marks have the power to take strangers on journeys around the world, to inspire them, to entertain them or to break their hearts. You don't need magic to cast a spell on people; you just need words.

If you think about it, all language is is a load of sounds, and all writing is is some funny squiggles, and yet we can understand them. And we take it completely for granted; we don't know how we do it, and we don't even think about how we do it, we just do it. Doesn't that say something amazing about the human brain? Because nobody told you how to put a sentence together, but you still know how to do it. Well, you say, it's just common sense. So does that mean that you were born knowing that the adjective goes before the noun (eg, "the sneaky fox")? Does that mean you were born knowing that it makes sense to say "the fox will hunt the rabbit" but not "the fox will the rabbit hunt"? If we were all born knowing these things, then why does the adjective come after the noun in French, and why would "the fox will the rabbit hunt" be a perfectly grammatical sentence in German?

Language is a mystery but that doesn't stop us using it every day. Language is powerful and strange, but language works in so many ways we don't understand, and personally I don't understand why anyone wouldn't want to find out all it's secrets.

Post "The Secrets The Dead Keep"!

I've been meaning to write this post for ages.

So! I finished the first draft of my novel! At eighty-five thousand, one hundred and thirty four words, it is the longest thing I have ever written. I finished on the 30th of August and by the 31st of August, had it edited and formatted sufficiently to send off for my free proof copy offered by NaNoWriMo and Lulu.com. Unfortunately, the "free" bit didn't cover shipping, and the cheapest option is also the longest to deliver, so it's doubtful it'll arrive before I go to university (cue sad face).

After finishing Camp NaNoWriMo, I abandoned FocusWriter and instead solely used yWriter5, which I HIGHLY recommend. It is very useful for keeping track of scenes and chapters, making it considerably easier to manage long documents such as novels, and it is pretty easy to export to Microsoft Word files all in one piece by messing around with the Export Project/Export Selected Chapters options in the drop-down menu under "Project" in the toolbar on the top left. I only used it at its most basic, not bothering with the Characters, Locations and Items settings or even using the Goals, so it has far more potential than I give it credit.

Unfortunately, I haven't written much since finishing Barnabus' Balloons (I can no longer remember the reason I gave it a code name as opposed to just using the actual title I've given it, so when I get my proof copy with the actual title on the front, I'll post a picture). I have been considering writing a ten-chapter story based on my favourite band Within Temptation's latest album Hydra, with a chapter based on each song on the album. I've also been thinking about the sequel to Barnabus' Balloons, but the ideas for it haven't taken hold of my heart just yet. The story idea that has taken hold of my heart, however, is a prequel, set a few hundred years before Barnabus' Balloons, but in the same fictional country, documenting the life of the first Queen as she struggles to right an unjust and warring world. Alternatively, there are other ideas I've been thinking about writing as well, that are too unformed for me to really be able to talk about them just yet.

So basically, I'm at a complete loss as to what to dedicate my time and effort to next.

Post CampNaNo Update

With a few exceptions, I have managed to write at least a little bit every day since Camp NaNoWriMo ended. Having a daily word count goal to aspire to during Camp has improved my motivation to write; plus, I've reached 50,000 words in my novel, so I feel I might as well finish the damn thing. Right now, writing is going a little slow, but I'm determined to get to the end eventually.

One of the Camp NaNoWriMo prizes is a free hardcover proof copy of your manuscript through Lulu. The deadline for this is the 30th of August so I'm aiming to finish my first draft and do some minor edits (spell checking and things like that) before then. I've also been looking at the template that you use to format the manuscript to send it off for printing, and it's a little complicated, so I'm glad I've started doing that early, before I've actually finished the whole manuscript.