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Post by SianaBlackwood on Jun 30, 2011 10:22:24 GMT -5
(the thread title I thought of after I'd already created one on JulNo...) So anyway, this is what I'm doing this month: Author Bec Winters, under pressure to finish the final installment of her series, runs away to the half-ruined old house in the mountains where she wrote the first 2 books. She starts to feel like someone is watching her, though, and then she discovers that she's not really alone in the house after all...
Enter Starburn, seemingly the perfect writer's boyfriend. He was sent through a portal to make contact with 'Miss Winter', the goddess of his world, and help her finish the vital third part of the Books of Life. Or was he?Maybe. Something like that, anyway. After working from an outline in June I've put the pants back on this month and I'm aiming for 75k with no clear idea of what I'm doing. It's okay, though. Dark Star was a 10 year old sort-of-WIP and what I ended up writing was really more of a second draft. Or something. Draft 1.5, maybe. Writing-related things I'm doing this month: 1) writing Starburn 2) finishing Dark Star 3) making up something that at least vaguely resembles an idea for 'How to Nuke Your Enemies' for August... 4) (maybe) spending some time asking the characters of Dispersion and The Frozen Tear what really happened... That's my current editing philosophy: First draft: So, what's going on? Second draft: All right, what really happened?
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Post by Flatiron on Jun 30, 2011 10:59:24 GMT -5
Woohoo! Let the Discovery Writing... er, um, Pantsing It, begin! The hard part of that mode is the second draft, but the absolutely wonderful part of it is sitting down each day, getting into the mindset, and then listening to find out what that next part of the story is. I love that part! So, call me jealous. Have a great month Siana!
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Post by marshmellowmnms on Jun 30, 2011 23:18:15 GMT -5
go Siana! : )
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Post by marsbareater12 on Jul 1, 2011 23:59:00 GMT -5
Go Siana! The idea sounds interesting!
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Post by SianaBlackwood on Jul 3, 2011 2:18:58 GMT -5
"Discovery writing", eh? Well, it's day 3 and I'm already 3.8k behind (I had a migraine. I hate migraines ). I've already discovered that my story has as much sci-fi as fantasy in it and that Starburn is ten years older than I expected and pretty cynical into the bargain. Bec is pretty much what I expected - imagine a breakdown caused by writer's block combined with a whole lot of pressure from people with money involved and you've got my MFC. Other fun things I didn't expect - monks with lots of facepaint, Bec's Aunt Roba (dead?), and Starburn's main form of transport in his own world - a blend of horse, lion and robot parts. Her name is Rika and Starburn has a tattoo of her on his right forearm. Enjoying having the pants back this month... Edit: ... or at least, I was until I realised how much I hate Bec. I feel like dumping her and instead writing the story that she wrote ten years ago. I'd probably do it if I had any idea what happened back then. All I know is that it culminated in an epic battle in which Starburn broke his leg and fractured three vertebrae. That and random snippets from God forged Starburn's destiny... Definitely a much better story than the one I'm writing, so what do I do now? If it really was a good story, the 5.8k I've already written is one, possibly two days of writing. Then I wouldn't have to deal with Bec, though. Drink a cup of concrete and go and do a wrimo, girl. (for anyone unfamiliar with dodgy Aussie idioms, 'a cup of concrete' is the way to harden or toughen someone up)
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Post by SianaBlackwood on Jul 4, 2011 9:14:12 GMT -5
So, I restarted (chalking up an almost guaranteed failure in all week 1 challenges, but I can live with that). This is my new plot idea:
In Haunted Memories Broken Mirror, ex-Imperial Guardsman and ex-mercenary Starburn is recruited by the freedom fighters to escort Princess Rebecca to the Imperial City to be crowned Goddess-Empress. Trying to stop them are the forces of the Dark Queen (Roba) who wants the throne for herself. There are also all Starburn's old enemies and a faction within the freedom fighters who don't believe that Starburn is really going to take the Princess to Kem-Lat to rejoin her father. An idea that Starburn starts to like the sound of as Rebecca wraps her fingers around his heart...
No, it's not romance. Dark sci-fi/fantasy, actually. The civilisation is the post-technological, possibly post-apocalyptic remnants of an Earth colony. There's two moons, a whole heap of devices that could be magic or advanced technology...
It comes in trilogy form, too - the next two books are going to be called Soul in Flames and Twisted Fate. No real idea what happens in them except that over the three there is a quest to find a mirror that I haven't named yet and then the Spirit Flame and then finally defeat evil Queen Roba and anoint the next God-Emperor.
No, I'm not going to try to write al lthree this month. Don't even ask.
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Post by marsbareater12 on Jul 4, 2011 18:06:41 GMT -5
I'm not even familiar with that idiom! Huh. I reckon you could do three in a month
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Post by SianaBlackwood on Jul 5, 2011 22:51:40 GMT -5
If I could draw well enough, right now I would be procrastinating by trying to draw Rika. She looks like a blend of horse and tiger attached together with armour plating and robot parts. She's about eighteen hands high (aka 1.8m or around 6 feet at the shoulder). She also has massive fangs that can crunch up a giant robot spider that may or may not have been remotely controlled when it attacked Bec. Paws instead of hooves, too, and big scary claws that I haven't used in a fight yet...
That's what Starburn has instead of a horse.
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Post by SianaBlackwood on Jul 7, 2011 9:28:05 GMT -5
Okay, I want to write this story (Broken Mirror). I think so, anyway. The trouble is, I'm constantly being assaulted by ideas for what to put in the second drafts of stories I've already written this year. Plus I feel guilty about not finishing Dark Star when I only have a couple of chapters to go. I'm a little worried that I'm going to manage to talk myself out of getting anything properly done this month... I think I need to come up with a couple of scary challenges for myself and increase the pressure a bit. That said, now that I'm writing the right story for July I really do like Bec and Starburn. I'm already sad about the fact that they're not going to be able to stay together for the entire duration of the trilogy. The idea of breaking up such an obviously perfect couple just seems impossibly mean of me...
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Post by SianaBlackwood on Jul 10, 2011 10:06:59 GMT -5
I don't know what you call it, whether writer's block or a crisis of confidence or something else. All I know is that I just can't write Broken Mirror right now. I can't settle down to writing something new when Dark Star is still sitting there unfinished. Walking away from Dark Star one more time just puts me back in the place I was before I discovered NaNoWriMo and wrote The Frozen Tear. I don't feel like a writer right now. I'm just a girl who can't finish a story and I don't like being that.
I'm still Siana Blackwood, though. I'm the person who wrote 50k in eight days. I've written over 600k of planning and first drafts already during 2011. By the end of this year I will be the very proud unpublished author of one million words.
So... I will finish Dark Star. I'm giving myself three days to do it. Before the end of the third day, I will type the last two words (the end) on my draft of Dark Star and then remove the file from FocusWriter's list of open projects.
Maybe then I'll be able to go on with Starburn and Bec.
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Post by SianaBlackwood on Jul 12, 2011 1:26:20 GMT -5
Well, I've finished Dark Star. It feels pretty weird. Like... Ten years of messing it up and in the end that's all it took? It's a strange story, too - the bad guy was defeated, but nothing really ended happily. Zaraine and Dargor didn't even end up together. They will one day, though... at least I think so. I know there's at least one sequel that needs to be written some time in the future.
Not now, though. Now I have a date with Starburn.
PS - final Dark Star wc was 106,885
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Post by SianaBlackwood on Jul 15, 2011 9:12:37 GMT -5
I'm noticing something strange about this year as far as my writing goes...
January was good. February monumentally sucked. March was pretty good. April I'll put down as pretty good again. May was basically writing hell. June was... odd. The first and third weeks sucked, but the second and fourth were great. For July, I'm in the 'monumental sucking' or possibly 'writing hell' territory again.
It seems that I can't have two great writing months in a row...
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Post by SianaBlackwood on Jul 17, 2011 23:11:33 GMT -5
Now I've discovered that on the 18th of May I actually wasn't this far behind. 13,055 in May and 15,931 in July. I was only aiming for 70k in May, though, so maybe that's the difference. Okay, after adjusting my spreadsheet to find out for sure, I'm actually almost exactly as far behind right now as I was this time in May. As in, about 50 words difference. Any minute now Starburn and Toby are going to get together and start comparing notes on the things I've done to them to try to scrape up some words.
Toby would win that, by the way. At this point in May I'd killed his girlfriend and was hard at word driving him insane. All Starburn has is a couple of bullet wounds and a crook back.
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Post by SianaBlackwood on Jul 21, 2011 9:20:11 GMT -5
Hmm... Starburn has a tattoo? I forgot that - serves me right for setting the story in a cold climate and giving him a warm coat. This month is finally starting to look better . No, not because of Starburn's ink (which has never come into the story). Because I've finally cracked the 40k mark. Yay!
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Post by Flatiron on Aug 2, 2011 12:47:56 GMT -5
Great work Siana! You're an inspiration! ;-)
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