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.

I am SO CLOSE!!!: Camp NaNoWriMo final week update

With one day to go, it is more than possible that I will reach my goal. Needless to say, I am very excited. This week has been a very good week, mostly because of that one day that I managed to write 5,000 words. Without that, I would never have been able to almost catch up. Today I have written a little more than 4,000 words, and I am going to write more. I am nowhere near to finishing the story itself - I keep telling myself that I'll keep this scene short, so I can get to writing the next scene and move the story on a little faster, but I can't seem to stop myself from trying to write well and add details. Nonetheless, I'm nearly there! I can't wait to finally reach that 50,000 words. :)

Camp NaNo Update: Week 3

Target word count: 37,096
Current word count: 27,932
Current chapter: 12/13

I'm still woefully behind - further behind than I was before, in fact - and starting to feel like I'm running out of time, but I'm sure you'd rather hear the good news: I've found my motivation! I'm enjoying writing a bit more now, and what I am writing is flowing a bit better. Despite having gotten past the halfway mark in terms of wordcount, though, I'm nowhere near the halfway point in my story.

Nevertheless, I shall not give up!

I'm going on holiday tomorrow, and it's really crept up on me, so I'm rather busy and unfortunately probably won't write anything/much today. Maybe I can catch up on the place at 6 tomorrow morning... Also, I'm not taking my laptop, and will be continuing writing on a different laptop. I'm going to miss my own laptop. As for the software, I was about to spend a paragraph explaining the problem I've been having trying to transfer the yWriter5 files, but while writing this post, I've been tinkering with it and I think I've worked it out (in fact, there may be two ways; I emailed the developer an hour or so and just got a response, with a solution that's different to the one I just thought of). I'll talk about that separately, though. As for FocusWriter, attaching the file to an email didn't work (apparently there wasn't an appropriate program on which to open the file or something, even though I downloaded FocusWriter on the other laptop) but simply copying-and-pasting worked. The customised theme I use on FocusWriter for writing Barnabus' Balloons was easy to transfer, by exporting it from the theme menu-thing, emailing it across, and then importing it.

Anyway. Back to last-minute-packing, trying to work yWriter5 and writing, methinks!

Best. Pep Talk. Ever.

One of the reasons that it's better to do NaNoWriMo or Camp NaNoWriMo than write a novel in any month of the year is the community feeling of I'm not writing alone, if all these other thousands of people can do it then so can I. Another reason is the weekly pep talks.

Yesterday's, I think, was particularly brilliant. The idea was a personalised pep talk: you were given a list of things to think of...

1. An awesome superhero name
2. Adjective describing your main character
3. Your favorite snack
4. The last verb your main character enacted
5. The manufacturer of your favorite snack
6. The first piece of dialogue in your story that starts with 'You...'
7. Your current word count
8. Adjective describing your inner editor
9. Adjective describing your best friend
10. Your favorite supporting character in your Camp project
11. The last piece of dialogue in your story that ended with an exclamation point
12. How much time you last spent writing
13. Your favorite mythological creature
14. Your favorite author
15. Write a sentence beginning with the words "Once upon a time"

And then you inserted them into the pep talk in the appropriate numbered gaps. This is what I ended up with:

Once, there lived a writer, known throughout the lands as (1)The Authoress. This writer was seized by inspiration one July, and struck out to tell the tale of one known only as "The (2)Determined One."
The first two weeks were full of wonder. Fueled by (3)chocolate digestives, the writer generated conflicts like vast thunderstorms, and characters so real they jumped off the page only to (4)write you right in the face. (5)McVities, now aware of the crucial role they played in this writer's story-spinning, swelled with pride and told the writer, "(6)You can't leave me housekeeper-less, Kerla!"
Alas, not all was so rosy. After hitting (7)20,854 words, the writer remembered their last pang of doubt. What if they became blocked once again? What if their story was silly? Maybe… maybe it would be better to stop. They looked into the mirror, and the face they saw seemed almost (8)stupid.
At the writer's darkest moment, a/an (9)awesome voice arose. "Hey, you can do this," it said. "If you don't, how will we ever find out what happens to (10)Felwin? I don't want to live in a world with that kind of empty hole. Don't stop now."
The writer nodded, saying "(11)I can't just leave it! No matter how far away from my word-count goal I am, I promise to write for at least (12)the majority of the day a day."
With that, a rainbow sprang across the sky like a (13)dragon racing toward the newest novel by (14)Kristin Cashore. The world seemed to hold its breath, waiting for the writer's next sentence. The writer smiled, took a deep breath, and wrote "(15)Once upon a time there lived a dragon called Hubert who was a very misunderstood dragon..."

Credit goes to Tim Kim, (Camp) NaNoWriMo's editorial director, for the writing of this pep talk.

Camp NaNoWriMo: Week 2 Update

Target Word Count: 25,806
Current Word Count: 18,552
Current Chapter: 9/10

I'm now starting to rely more on my outline instead of feeling that it is holding me back. I have been using YWriter5 more this week which I have found to be very helpful, especially when looking for details; I've been writing using FocusWriter and then copying and pasting each scene into YWriter5, which is very useful for keeping track of what happens in which scene, and also makes tracking that little bit of writing down much easier.

That isn't to say though that writing this novel is getting much easier. It feels like it's all happening rather slowly, and like I still haven't got into it yet. Each scene in my outline is a stepping stone, but they're all very stable stepping stones; there doesn't seem to be much danger or excitement, and although my plot confuses me sometimes, it all seems quite straightforward. I'm just sending my characters from scene to scene at the moment, like a military operation. And it's going to need a lot of cleaning up when I've finished.

As you can see, I'm still very behind with my word count, but I don't think I'm much further behind than I was last week. However, I am starting to feel the amount of work I need to do to finish this novel. I do not think it will be complete within 50,000 words, and I think I will be continuing to work on this draft after the end of July. It is starting to feel a little hopeless. I have a long way to go.

Camp NaNoWriMo Update: Week One

Target word count by the end of week one: 11290
My current word count: 6089
Currently writing Chapter 5 (started writing from halfway through chapter 4)

I like to think I have good excuses for being behind: I spent most of my weekend working and on Friday had to have a pet put down. Also, I'm trying to learn driving theory, and occasionally do some actual driving.

It has taken me a while to feel like I'm writing a novel; previous NaNoWriMos have felt full of excitement, and I have basically spent my month thinking of nothing but my novel. This time around, writing feels pretty slow (except for at almost-midnight - because it seems that I'm finding writing easiest when I'd really like to go to bed) and I'm not really feeling the NaNoWriMo atmosphere.

I think a possible explanation for this is that I'm following my plan; in the NaNoWriMo that I completed in 2010, I didn't outline my novel and instead went by the vague idea of what was going to happen that I had in my head, and in the Camp NaNoWriMo that I completed in 2011, I threw the vague idea that I formulated on the day I started writing completely out of the window. The inspiration for this novel came to me while I was planning, and jotting down random bits and pieces, but that same inspiration and motivation isn't here now that I'm actually writing. I feel a little like I'm just going through the motions to get from A to B and from chapter to chapter.

However, I have only properly planned up to partway through Chapter 7, which includes an important plot point, but it's a plot point that I can't work out how to go through with - I have my start point, I know vaguely what the situation is, and I know what the outcome needs to be for the story to move forward, but I'm not sure how to make the situation cause the outcome - so it is at this point that I will be able to start just writing to see where it takes me. The further we go along my storyline, the sketchier and more vague the plot becomes, so in theory, writing should get easier as I go.

Anyway, not counting the 164 words I wrote after midnight before I went to bed, I haven't written anything yet today. Therefore: onwards we go!