Category Archives: NaNoWriMo

Hollow, NaNoWriMo, Rants / Venting

Grrr Rawr Argh!

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alcatrazMarcus Romer tweeted this:

The Creative Process

1. This is awesome

2. This is tricky

3. This is shit

4. I am shit

5. This might be ok

6. This is awesome

— Marcus Romer (@MarcusRomer) October 23, 2013

And yeah… that pretty much sums up my freaking creative process. Right now I’m at #3 and sliding pretty quickly toward #4. This is actually happening much earlier into this book than it usually does. I usually hit the ‘This is shit’ point when I’m about halfway done something, and ‘I am shit’ follows behind that. Things turn around into ‘This might be okay’ somewhere around 2/3rds done… usually.

Right now I’m about a third of the way through and already eyeball deep in ‘This is shit’ which freaking sucks. *sigh* I’m still writing, I’m still plugging away though, because if I quit this story never gets told. If I quit I never get to move past ‘This is shit/I am shit’ and I’ll sit there and wallow indefinitely. If I quit I never get to make it back to ‘This is awesome’. And ya know, I’m a pretty big fan of ‘This is awesome’.

So I’m gritting my teeth (so hard I’m halfway scared they might break) and I’m putting one word in front of the other. Even if they are shit. Because I have to. Because it’s what I do.

…but I also had to take a break to vent/whine a little bit.

Because apparently, that is also what I do.

:-p

I also share excerpts from this novel on Fridays because I signed up to participate in the NaNo Excerpt Blog Chain. This week’s is pretty short, but I like it…

Alone in the white Varenous forged an object from thought and fear. Summoning all his available power he pushed against the walls of his existence, tearing a small hole in the fabric that separated his reality from Morgan’s.

The hole healed itself almost immediately, but not before he shoved the camera from his world into hers. Then, spent, he waited.

Hollow, NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo Friday Excerpts: Week Three

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alcatrazIt’s Friday again, which means it’s time to post another excerpt.

I’m a fair bit behind on my novel right now (about 5k) and we’re heading into the weekend which is usually a really bad writing time for me. I’d planned to write 5,000 words today to get caught up before the weekend hit but that’s not happening so far. I am locked in my (small) bedroom with three cats and a dog while there are people using jackhammers in my basement. Not exactly an ideal work environment LOL

Anyway, I’ll see what I can manage. The construction ought to be done by Tuesday or Wednesday next week so if all else fails I’ll do 5k days on both Thursday and Friday. It’ll suck, but *shrugs*

But you aren’t here for my whining, are you? Time to bust out another excerpt from this years NaNoWriMo novel, with the working titled of Hollow Children:

Suddenly she wasn’t sure this was such a good idea. Morgan didn’t believe in ghosts. Not anymore. Not really. But she did believe in rusty nails, crumbling supports and unstable vagrants. Perhaps it would be a better idea to just go home and face her parents now. She looked over her shoulder, out at the neighbourhood she’d grown up in. She couldn’t see her house from here, it was on the other side of the prison, but all the streets around her home were as familiar to her as her own block. All safe. All boring. Maybe what she really needed to deal with Barry, and all the other troubles in her life, was to learn to be braver. Maybe that was what this trip would teach her. Maybe. She looked back toward the prison.

“Twenty seconds,” she told the boarded up window. “I’ll give you twenty seconds to start.” If she was too frightened after twenty seconds she would leave, but not before.

“One one thousand…”

Morgan pushed the board out of the way and peered down into the darkness.

“Two one thousand,” she whispered. She could see a table pushed up against the wall beneath the window. It was filty from the passage of countless feet but very welcome as it saved her from a substantial jump down into the prison’s basement.

“Three one thousand,” she said, putting her left foot down carefully, testing the table before putting all her weight on it. Though it looked sturdy enough there was no telling how long it had been in there, nor how many hundreds of kids or vagrants had tromped across it. Better safe than sorry, as her mother used to say. The table wobbled a little beneath her weight, but it seemed stable enough. “Four one thousand.”

She pulled her other leg through the window, followed by the rest of her. The plywood over the opening swung shut behind her, taking the light with it. Suddenly it was dark. A new flutter of fear flitted in her belly and her voice shook a little when she whispered, “Five one thousand.”

Her mouth was dry, and the familiar taste of fear filled it, tangy and bitter. She strained her ears against the darkness, slowing her breathing to minimize its interference and searching for any sound. Any proof she was not alone.

She waited, her back pressed against the cool concrete wall, for her eyes to adjust to the difference in light. Nebulous blobs of color floated across her field of view and she imagined a dozen sets of eyes on her. Eyes belonging to rats and spiders and other creatures unhampered by the darkness.

“Six one thousand,” she said as the darkness bled away into a grey half-light and shapes began to become visible. A filing cabinet leaned in one corner, three of its drawers were missing completely and the remaining two stuck out at drunken angles. Obviously this had been some sort of an office back when the prison was still in operation. Nothing to be afraid of.

Morgan sat on the table, dangling her feet over the edge before making the tiny hop to the floor. “Seven one thousand.”

She scoured the ground with her gaze as well as she could in the dim light, making sure there were no hazards waiting to trip her up and make her break a leg. Or worse. All she saw was water stains and tracked-in dirt.

“Eight one thousand,” she said after much more than a second had passed with only the sound of her heartbeat heavy in her ears.

“Nine one thousand,” she said, though the more time she spent in the shell of a prison the more comfortable she became in it, and despite her count she’d already been there substantially longer than nine seconds. “Right,” she said, looking around the room once more before following the tracks of hundreds of other adventure-seekers deeper into the old jail.

Other people are sharing excerpts from their work over at the Absolute Write NaNo Excerpt Blog Chain. Check ’em out 🙂

Hollow, NaNoWriMo

Weekend Writing

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Haunted Hospital, a photograph by Rhonda ParrishDudes. I can’t write on weekends. Seriously. I keep trying and I keep failing.

During the week when I have the house all to myself (well, me and our pets) I’m golden. I can write 1,600 words in half an hour. Zip zip zip. The biggest obstacle there is getting my ass in the chair and keeping myself from being distracted by shiny things. On the weekend though… ugh.

It’s not like it’s Jo or Dani’s fault either. When I tell them I’m going to write they both respect that and don’t interrupt me… but just having them here in the house, that’s all it takes to keep me from being productive. Maybe it’s that they provide too much shiny to resist. Maybe it’s the sound of World of Warcraft being played behind me (or, when Jo uses headphones it’s just the knowledge it’s being played behind me) or maybe that I’d rather be doing stuff with Jo and Dani instead of writing.

Or maybe (and this is really the most likely) they just provide a handy excuse for the procrastination I’m so very good at.

Whatever it is? It’s really not good for my word count.

I’ll make it up starting Tuesday when Jo is back at work and Dani at school, but in the meantime I’m counting 500 words an evening as a victory. Because I can.

Hollow, NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo Friday Excerpts: Week Two

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alcatrazIt’s Friday again, and because I’m participating in the Absolute Write NaNo Excerpt Blog Chain that means another excerpt from my NaNoWriMo novel, Hollow Children (which I think I’m going to re-title. Possibly to just ‘Hollow’). This section has a whole whack of issues, but I promised myself I wouldn’t start editing before the first draft was done, so I’m swallowing my ego and sharing it warts and all.

Enjoy.

Running helps. As long as Morgan keeps her eyes straight, her right shoulder to the old prison and focuses all her attention on the sound of her shoes on the sidewalk, running helps.

It’s quiet. The only sounds are her feet hitting the pavement, her breathing loud in her ears and an occasional bird. The sound of traffic is a dull hum in the background but she hasn’t seen a moving vehicle in several minutes while she’s run laps around the four city blocks that contain the decrepit prison. It’s getting late enough that the sky is bruising and the streetlights are coming on, but their light is dim and there’s still more than enough sunlight to see without them.

The leaves are still on the trees but she can smell autumn’s bite in the air. She’s too warmed up from her exertions to feel it though. Her hoodie is tied around her waist and its hem slaps against the back of her knees as she runs.

Her body knows what to do, the movements are automatic and her mind is empty but for the one-two count of her feet on the sidewalk. One-two, one-two, left-right, left-right. She focuses on those numbers like she never does in math class, letting each one grow to fill her mind and push everything else out.

Usually she doesn’t have to count. Usually she just has to run. Usually, but not today. Today she walked in on her mother crying, so if she stops counting, Morgan knows the birdsong around her will be lost in the remembered sounds of twisted metal, screams and shattered glass.

As she rounds the northwest corner of the prison grounds something penetrates the barrier she’s put up around her thoughts. A voice. A very specific voice. Barry’s voice.

“Shit,” she whispers as her eyes flick one way and then the other, trying to discern where it’s coming from. Acoustics are weird around the prison grounds, the old prison and its outbuildings catch them and toss them around like a SOMETHING, and to make things worse the wind has chosen that precise moment to pick up and rattle the leaves in the trees.

The last thing in the world she wants is to have to deal with Barry. Especially f he’s with his friends, and if he isn’t, why would he be talking?

Finally she catches sight of him, he and his friends. They’ve just turned the corner and are walking toward her. That leaves her two choices. She can turn around and run back the way she’s just come from, or she can keep going and hope they leave her alone. She anticipates no joy from either choice. If she runs away they will know she is avoiding them and as soon as they sense any weakness they will be like a shark with chum in the water. History has shown her that. Still, the chances of them ignoring her as she runs straight at them are slim to none.

Well, if you’ve gotta go down, go down fighting.

The novel is going okay. It was really, really fighting me at first, but I feel like it’s developed a little bit of momentum. Which is good, I’m going to need it heading into week two since I don’t have a buffer like I usually do. Also, I haven’t written yet today, so I really ought to get on that…

Hollow, NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo Friday Excerpts: Week One

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alcatrazOver at the Absolute Write Water Cooler there is a blog chain going on which I signed up to be a part of. In short, we are going to post excerpts from our NaNoWriMo novels each Friday. It’s kind of unfortunate that day one of NaNoWriMo falls on a Friday, but since it does I’m obligated to share an excerpt.

Excerpt from Hollow Children (a work-in-progress):

The house was dark when she entered it, and uncannily quiet. She shut the door behind her, turning the deadbolt in its place and learning her back against the solid wood with only the sound of her pounding heart and panting breath in her ears. She closed her eyes, wiped the palms of her hands on her thighs and willed her heart rate to slow, her breath to steady.

“Morgan?” Amy’s voice startled her and she jumped, eyelids flying open.

Amy stood across the kitchen, leaning her shoulder against the doorjamb, looking at her quizzically. “Morgan,” she said again. “Are you all right?”

No. No, I am very much not all right. “Yes,” she forced a laugh which sounded weak even to her own ears. “Of course I’m all right. I just got startled by a bird while I was running, that’s all.”

The best lies are those with a grain of truth, at least that’s what they always said on the police shows she loved to watch on A & E. “Just let me grab a shower and then we can start dinner.”

Amy nodded but Morgan couldn’t help but notice the worry in her eyes and the tell-tale way her hand was moving inside the pocket of her hoodie, worrying the button she kept in there. It was a habit she’d developed since the accident, something she did whenever she was scared or worried.

“Really,” Morgan said, contorting her face into a smile. “I just had a little scare is all.”

“Okay,” Amy said, but her voice was flat, unconvinced. “But you don’t usually lock the door against birds.”

For a little kid she was pretty sharp, there wasn’t going to be any convincing her of this lie. Not tonight. Morgan was filled with an odd mixture of gratitude and resentment. She was glad Amy cared enough to, well, care, but she didn’t want to talk about it and her sister’s big hazel eyes were making her feel guilty for that. What could a BLANK year old understand about it anyway?

“Go play Minecraft,” Morgan snapped, pushing by Amy on her way to the shower. “I’ll call you when it’s time to set the table.”

The shower washed the sweat off her body, but it didn’t make her feel any cleaner.

The following links will lead you to the blogs of the other participants in this blog chain 🙂 I’m going to go see if I can get a few hundred more words done before dinner.

~ orion_mk3 ~ robjvargas ~ AshleyEpidemic ~ vertigo78 ~ bdwilson ~ amaliegreen ~ meowzbark ~ wittyblather ~ skunkmelon ~ sunflowerrei ~

Goals, Hollow, NaNoWriMo, NovPad

NaNoWriMo 2013 – Take Nine

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2013-Participant-Facebook-Cover

This month I am participating in my ninth NaNoWriMo challenge (Username: Midnyte If you’re participating feel free to add me. Drop me a line & I’ll return the favour). I’ve been doing NaNoWriMo yearly since 2003 (though I skipped one year because I just wasn’t feeling it). This year I’m going to write a new first draft of a story you’ve been listening to me talk about writing since July of 2011 — Hollow Children. For November I’ve taken all my previous abortive drafts, scenes and papers and stuck them in a drawer and I’m going to leave them there until this draft is done. I’ll peek at them again when it comes time to revise but I don’t want to get hung up on comparing drafts and such until I’ve got all the words on the page.

My biggest obstacle as a writer is myself, getting out of my own way and putting words on the page. That’s where NaNoWriMo comes in handy because for me the most difficult part of writing (even 1,667 words a day) is sitting my ass down and doing it. During November and NaNoWriMo I feel extra accountable and that helps me get my butt in the chair. So I’ll be doing 50,000 words on this draft in November and then hopefully continuing on until the entire draft is done. I’m hoping for somewhere around 80-90k altogether.

In addition, because sanity is overrated, I’m also going to be doing the November Poem A Day Challenge. The PAD challenges at Writer’s Digest (in November and April) have also become sort of a tradition for me and are the source of most of the poetry I write in a year. One of my favourite parts is that I know my friend Beth will be doing them too, and even though we don’t compare notes every day or whatever, as the month goes on we do check in with each other to see how it’s going, and it’s nice to feel like you’re not alone. This year I’m working on a sekkrit collaborative project with someone (not Beth) and I’ll be using the theme of that as my theme for NovPAD. It should be super efficient (which my vulture brain loves) and fun. Win/win.

Oh, and did I mention the renovations? We’re having our yard dug up and weeping tile installed starting the middle of the month… so that’ll be… fun.

I’ve also decided to drop out of the ‘Not the Whittakers‘ challenge I was participating in. Historically speaking the Whittakers have provided me with the incentive and momentum to write some great short story first drafts but this year I’m not really feeling it and am seriously time-challenged. Still, I should be kept plenty busy and challenged even in their absence 😉

Between NaNoWriMo, NovPad 2013, reading for Fae, promoting Metastasis, readying the December issue of Niteblade and just, ya know, having a life, I think I’ll be kept pretty busy, but not quite as crazy as last month.

A to Z Challenge, April PAD, Books, Editing, Goals, NaNoWriMo, Niteblade, NovPad, W1S1, Writing

Goals for 2013

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W1S1 Year 3 GraphicEach year I like to set myself some concrete goals and share them publicly on my blog. Not only does this give me some sort of vision of what I want to accomplish over the year, it adds a feeling of accountability to help keep me motivated and on track. My goals for 2013 are:

Health

  • Lose 25lbs
  • Successfully complete the P90x program (I’m giving myself permission to swap Cardio X workouts in for Plyometric ones because I worry about my ankle and also, I’m a bit of a wussy)
  • No energy drinks
  • Significantly cut the amount of sugar in my diet. I have a complicated set of rules for this for myself, but I don’t want to bore everyone with sharing them.

School

  • Begin another course (or two) toward my degree no later than April 1st and complete it/them successfully.

Editing/Publishing

  • Sell my cancer anthology idea to a publisher.*
  • Edit the cancer anthology, making sure the end result is something I am proud of.
  • Promote the hell out of the anthology, ensuring that there actually are royalties to donate to charity.
  • Continue to pursue my sekkrit projeckt with CJD
  • Increase Niteblade’s readership and distribution
  • Begin offering Niteblade in more file formats
  • Hold a successful fundraiser for Niteblade
  • Produce a NaNoLJers anthology if sufficient interest exists

Writing

  • Participate in The Whittaker Prize
  • Successfully complete the weekly version of Write 1 Sub 1. For the ‘Write’ portion of this challenge I will count completed short stories or poems as well as individual scenes from longer works. By allowing myself to count individual scenes I will be able to work on longer works and still participate in W1S1
  • Participate in Writo De Mayo
  • NaNoWriMo and both camp NaNoWriMos are all optional
  • Finish writing poems for all the 2012 NovPad prompts
  • Actually successfully complete the AprilPad or NovPad properly, without having to make up prompts after the month has passed
  • Self-publish “Aphanasian Stories”
  • Look into the practicality of bundling and re-releasing some of my previously published short stories as ebooks
  • Follow through on my 2012 plans for my zombie poetry

Reading

  • Read at least 30 books

Misc

  • Participate in A Month of Letters
  • Do the Blogging from A to Z Challenge (bonus points if I come up with a theme this year)
  • Blog at least once a week
  • Take a social media retreat for one week a month all year
  • Attend WorldCon 2012 in Texas
  • Post writing prompts/exercises in NaNoLJers on odd numbered Mondays
  • Run and participate in the writing bingo in NaNoLJers
  • Don’t forget that life is for living, not leveling

Phew! I’m kinda exhausted even just looking at that list, exhausted and excited. I’ve set up some real challenges for myself, but if I manage to pull them off imagine how fantastic a year that will be!

*I know I’ve already accomplished this goal, but I hadn’t when I started mentally composing this list and since I achieved this goal in 2013 I’m still putting it on the list. This is not me putting things on here just so I can cross them off.

 

A to Z Challenge, Consequence, Goals, NaNoWriMo, Niteblade, NovPad, Personal, Shadows, Twixt, W1S1

Looking Back at 2012

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Rearview -- Photo by Rhonda ParrishIt’s that time of year again, when I look back at the goals I set the year before and create new ones for the year to come. These are not resolutions, I was sorely tempted to begin and end my yearly goals in the middle of summer just to get away from the R word, but it turns out that my desire to be lazy outweighs my desire to be contrary 😉 So here we go, how did I do on reaching my 2012 goals?

For 2012 I wanted to address not just writing, but also editing and schoolwork so I broke my goals up into four categories: Health (because that affects every part of my life), School, Writing and Editing. My specific goals for 2012 were:

Health:

  • Continue to eat healthy. In my case that is a low-sodium pescatarian diet.

I’m going to call this one successful (hence the bolding ;)) though there is definitely room for debate. I eat when I’m emotional and it’s been an emotional freaking year, but overall, I’m pleased with how I’ve done, not least of all because this year I was able to recognize when I was eating for reasons other than hunger. It’s a small step, but at least it’s in the right direction.

  • No drinking energy drinks

Um, I did pretty well with this at first, and I’m not drinking them now, but there was a period when my sister and niece were staying with us and also when my mom died that I used energy drinks as a crutch to get through the day without napping. Understandable, I think, but it means I didn’t reach this goal.

  • Remember soft drinks are a ‘sometimes food’ (Thanks Cookie Monster)

Erm… yeah. I started out strong on this one but as I write this blog there is a Diet Dr. Pepper sitting within reach on my desk so… yeah. Goal not accomplished.

  • Workout at least five times a week

This I was good at for most of the year. I was working out six days a week and was making Danica do it with me. We did some 30 Day Shred stuff, Couch to 5k (before I screwed up my ankle. Again) and were only a couple weeks away from completing the P90x Lean program when my Mom died. It sounds like an excuse, but when she died my world sort of tipped upside down and I am still struggling to get back into the workout habit. It will definitely be on the goal list for 2013. I’m calling this goal accomplished though because I did very well.

  • Lose 40lbs

Not even close. This has been SUPER frustrating for me because I felt like I was working really hard and the scale just wasn’t moving the way it was meant to. (I say that in the past tense because I sort of fell off the ‘working hard’ wagon in November and December.)

School: I think this year is going to be more writing and editing-centric so my school goal is optional, depending on time and stress.

  • Finish one, or, if I’m feeling super energetic, two more courses toward my degree

I didn’t do any courses toward my degree in 2012. I intend to change that up for 2013.

Writing:

  • Write the first draft of Consequence

Didn’t happen. I don’t have a great excuse as to why it didn’t happen, I just got distracted.

  • Participate in the monthly version of Write 1 Sub 1. I have a habit of writing ‘cast-off’ poetry for things like this when I become overwhelmed. That’s not acceptable here. Poetry only counts if it is in a complete and publishable form that I’m proud of. Same goes for stories.

Thank gawd for W1S1. Without it my writing productivity would have been even lower than it already was. I was successful in doing the monthly version of W1S1 and I look forward to doing a modified weekly version in 2013.

  • Figure out what to do with Shadows and my zombie poetry and get to work on doing it. This can mean looking for an agent, a publisher or any number of other things. I can’t be specific until I’ve made a decision

Done and done. Shadows has been shelved for the time being. I keep having ideas on how I can improve it and feeling the temptation to pull it out and revise it again but so far I’ve resisted. I think I need to move on for now. I’ll come back to Shadows someday, but not anytime soon. As for the zombie poetry, I’ve also figured out what I’m going to do with it… I just haven’t actually got it done yet. I will definitely be including that in my goals for 2013. The zombie poetry project is stalled temporarily while I wait on something I need from someone else, but soon… soon…

  • Either finish a first draft of Hollow Children or a transcription of Twixt

Hmm… I don’t know whether or to call this accomplished or not. Technically I didn’t do either of those things so I guess it’s not accomplished, however… instead of transcribing Twixt (I wrote the first draft long hand and so needed to type it up) I started doing the How to Revise Your Novel course using it as the project I was working on. What I discovered in the process of taking that course and doing the exercises was that Twixt, as it was written, was fatally flawed so I didn’t transcribe it. I didn’t begin working on a new draft either because it wasn’t until the end of November that I figured out what exactly I’d done wrong and how to fix it. Interestingly enough, that is also true of Hollow Children. I was hopelessly stalled on it until the end of November when I had an epiphany and figured out how to fix it. So there’s that…

  • Revise the whack of ‘mostly finished’ short stories sitting in my Dropbox and start looking for homes for them

I did manage to do this… and then I participated in the Whittaker Prize (see below) and added a bunch more ‘mostly finished’ short stories to my Dropbox to work on. Wheee!

  • NaNoWriMo is optional. So is NovPad.

I participated in NaNoWriMo and was successful despite restarting several times and switching projects three times. I attempted NovPad but was far less successful. The good thing about NovPad, as my friend Beth pointed out to me is that the prompts are always there. So I’ll keep working through them. Just like I did last year (see below). Ya know, it seems I’m not really very good at this NovPad thing LoL

  • Participate in the Whittaker Prize again this year, but in only one category, not both.

I participated in the short story section of the Whittaker Prize this year and ended up placing 10th overall with a final score, after six rounds, of 453. I… don’t know how that compares to how I’ve done in previous years but I feel really good about the work I produced for the Whittakers this year. In fact, one of my stories even tied for first on one of the rounds O_o That had never happened before LOL

  • Finish writing poems for all the 2011 Novpad prompts

Done. One of these years I may actually finish writing poems for all the NovPad prompts in November. One day…

Editing:

  • Implement the new payment system for Niteblade

Done. And best of all, it seems to be working. I haven’t finished all the totals for Niteblade’s sales for 2012 but I strongly suspect that when I do we’ll find that we had our best year yet. Yay!

  • Run a fundraiser and increase promotion in order to move out of the red

Done. We raised $108.78 to help pay our writers and artist.

  • Super Sekkrit Projekt w CJD (not Niteblade-related)

I’ve done what I can on this project and it’s now in other people’s hands. I’ve got my fingers crossed that something will come of it, but right now I have to wait and see.

Also? I blogged every week. Whoot!

You know, looking back, I’m actually super impressed with myself. I didn’t accomplish everything I set out to do, but overall I did pretty damn good. Even without factoring in all the challenges I had to overcome (because really, though this year feels like it was exceptionally bad for that, every year comes with its own set of obstacles, right?). Maybe I’m getting better at this whole goal setting thing LOL

In addition to the goals I set for myself, 2012 had a few other highlights for me as well. A few, just off the top of my head are:

I am seriously looking forward to seeing what 2013 has to offer 🙂

ETA: Edited to reflect the fact I’ve only read the first book in The Song of Ice and Fire series.

Hollow, NaNoWriMo, Niteblade, Shadows, Twixt

The Language of Flowers

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The Language of Flowers - art by Marge SimonIssue number twenty two of Niteblade Magazine was released at midnight last night.

It is fantastic.

This issue includes four stories and five poems, each of them unique and beautiful.

Table of Contents:

The Curse of the Reaper’s Wife
Hieronymus
The Language of Flowers
The Garden
The Maiden-Harp
Tonight, Tonight
The Orphean Habit
The House That Did Not Breathe
Glacial Raft

I’m going to resist the urge to talk a bit about each piece here because, really, if I’m going to editorialize (and I’m not) I should do that in Niteblade not my personal blog. Still, it is a fantastic issue. I think everyone reading for it, from the slush readers to Alexa and myself, were super selective and aiming for beautiful language and something unique in the story. I look at our line up and there are no poems, no stories that make me go “Well…”. When Jo was doing the layout and asked me, as he usually does, “Which is your favourite story?” followed by “Which is your favourite poem?” it was not an easy question to answer. That, I think, is a pretty damn good indicator of quality, which is totally what we are striving for at Niteblade.

While I think all the work in this issue are fantastic and very much worth reading I am especially proud of our production team for this issue. There were so many things going on in the background, any single one of which could have legitimately kept us from being able to put this issue out on time, but they didn’t. There were family deaths, horrible sicknesses, ill pets and fewer slush readers than usual and we still managed to make it work. Go us!

~*~

On a completely unrelated note — NaNoWriMo.

I won.

When I first did NaNoWriMo it really was a challenge for me and I struggled and sacrificed to make it to the finish line. Then, with practice and some changes in my life (ie: giving up my other jobs), NaNo became really quite easy. Just this thing I did. The most difficult part was running NaNoLJers during it, and then, when Arnold took over that for me, cheering on my teammates on Team Calliope and, this year, Team Thalia. This year though, this year it was a challenge again.

I am depressed these days and pretty low on energy to begin with so juggling dealing with my Mom’s death, Indiana’s sickness, Niteblade and NaNoWriMo in addition to everything else in my day-to-day life was pretty tricky. But I did it. And I am so proud of myself for that 🙂

One way I managed to reach my word count each day was by using the Write or Die desktop edition with the backspace key disabled. That helped push me toward my word goal but it also resulted in a very, very messy manuscript. I would start to write something and mess it up somehow and, because I couldn’t use my backspace I would just put my cursor behind the screwed up word and hit enter a few times to get it out of my face. For example, I’ve copied and pasted the following directly out of my mss:

er :I think

coo a in

eh se

p .

it

e Cal Sanda sa

‘I  t e jo

faz v she lovere lowever

I also wrote in Kamikaze mode, which meant if I stopped writing, it would start deleting my words. Most of the words at the end of the manuscript looked a lot like the gibberish you see above this, but still, they were words and I didn’t want to lose them. So when I got stuck for a word or a phase I wanted to use, I wouldn’t really stop to think about what I wanted to say, I would just write a note for myself and keep going. The same thing if I realised I’d written something contradictory or perhaps forgotten something important (ie: suddenly the MC is holding a torch when there hadn’t been any torches anywhere around three paragraphs before). Some of that resulted in some amusing notes for myself. Like these:

“You’ll be fine,” he replied, and VERBED the cover into place.

Left alone in his room, *** I DON”T WANT TO WRITE THIS SCENE RIGHT NOW ***

he hoped that wasn’t going to be seen as WORD but

***THIS CHANGES, RIGHT?***

*** THIS IS DUMB, DUDE HEARD HIM TAKE THAT OFF TEH WALL AND HE”S NOT A MORON. CUT G ***

***DAMN IT, WRONG POV. RWArR. YES. RWArR!*** (my backspace key was disabled for these notes to myself too, so… typos!)

*** CHECK AND SEE WHAT SHE”S ACTUALLY WA WEARING LOL ***

“Are you ready?”
“Ready for what?” ***GOOD QUESTION***

and my personal favourite:

her voice, cold as *** SOMETHING THAT ISN”T ICE ***

Ahhh… good times 🙂

This novel isn’t finished and it’s my plan to complete it before I move on to anything else, but one of the wonderful parts about writing everyday is that it becomes a habit and then it’s easier. What’s more, it opens my mind and I feel my creative juices flowing easier and more freely than usual. While working on this novel I had three separate epiphany-type moments about how to fix the problems in some of my other novels (Hollow Children, Twixt and Shadows). I intend to keep Shadows in my drawer despite my idea for its improvement (at least for now) but I’m super excited about the possibilities for the other two stories.

Yay!

As for November Poem a Day? I fell behind early and never managed to catch up however, those prompts aren’t going anywhere so I’m just going to keep working through them outside of November. Because I can.

 

NaNoWriMo, Thoughts

Struggling

4 Comments

Alcatraz at Night - Photograph by Rhonda ParrishDear ________,

I’m struggling a bit this week. At first it felt like the beginnings of a slip into depression, but then I figured it out. I’m addicted to exercise.

Don’t get me wrong. I still don’t like exercise, but I’ve gotten to the point that if I don’t do it I’m groggy and unfocused and just plain bleh until I do. Unfortunately it took me until yesterday to figure that out so my week was not nearly as productive as it should have been, and the productivity I did manage to pull off was largely unrelated to my Camp NaNoWriMo project.

Sadly, I also have a lot of commitments this weekend that are going to keep me from being able to play catch up. In fact, they are pretty much guaranteed to make me fall further behind LOL

I’m not giving up though. I’m going to try to sneak some words in this morning before my sister comes over and I’ll steal time away to write whenever I can this weekend too. I expect by Monday I’ll still be significantly behind where I’m supposed to be for Camp NaNo but I’ll keep chugging along. Hey, if I have to I can ‘go to camp’ again in August to finish this up. Every word on the page is a victory, right? Just, ya know, a really small one 😉

And the week hasn’t been all bad by any means. I finished the first draft of a short story (if you call 8,000 words short, I’m tempted not to LOL) and had one of my zombie poems published. So, ya know, not all bad. Not all bad at all 🙂

Love,

Rhonda

Hollow, NaNoWriMo, Personal

Writing is a Battle…

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Haunted Hospital, a photograph by Rhonda ParrishDear ________,

I’ve enclosed a photo I wanted to share with you. I call this shot “Haunted Hospital” and when I took it several weeks ago I had no idea it was going to become a very important place in my novel. But lo and behold, that’s exactly what has happened. Not only is it where the story begins but I expect it to continue to be a very important locale throughout, sort of like the sun that the rest of the tale rotates around. Very cool, no?

I wasn’t sure what I was going to write to you about today. I don’t like writing too much about my stories while I’m working on them. I find if I share too much (via blogs, or conversation or anything) I lose the sense of urgency to write the story. It’s like, as soon as I’ve shared it with someone my brain is pretty sure that my job is done and it’s time to move on to the next story. That means in order to get the whole thing out of my brain and onto the page I need to keep it to myself for as long as possible. That meant talking about any Hollow Children specifics was out of the question, and who wants to read a dry list of daily word counts? Um, not me.

Then I snuck over to Alison Stone‘s cabin today to say hi before I started writing for the moment. She asked everyone who stopped by a question, “What motivates you?”

I have a post-it note stuck onto my laptop where I’ll see it everyday. It’s been stuck there for months and is starting to curl up on the edges and lose it’s glue. When it finally gives up and falls off completely I will copy the words from it onto another post-it note and stuck it on my laptop. In fact, I’m planning on getting them tattooed onto my arm. Eight words:

Writing is a battle with impatience and inertia.

I don’t know who to attribute that quote to. I think I picked it up from a textbook but I haven’t gone back through the one I think it might be to see if I’m correct.

That quote, that idea, that reality motivates me. It says yes, writing is hard work, but you know what? Anything worth doing is difficult. It says yes, Rhonda, you’re feeling bleh and you don’t want to do anything but lay in bed and sleep, but no one is going to write your words for you. It says holy crap, dude, you’re not in a race to reach the end of the story, slow down and let it unravel at its pace, not yours.

Writing is a battle, and it’s one I’m not willing to lose. Some days, some weeks, some months are harder than others but if you just keep fighting eventually you will be victorious.

That’s what motivates me.

Well, this month it’s that plus watching the little bars move up on my stats page for Camp NaNoWriMo… but ya know, whatever it takes to get words on the page, right?

Best,
Rhonda

p.s. I hear they are serving us sushi here tomorrow. *squee* Best. Camp. Evar.