NaNoWriMo and other adventures

Welcome to November everyone! Hope your Halloween was fun. Ours turned out to be pretty low key, due to laziness and Hurricane Sandy (which thankfully we weathered just fine.) Jon and I started replaying the Legend of Zelda series, starting with Ocarina of Time, which, in my opinion, is the first real Zelda game. But enough about that.

With the coming of this month, I decided to unofficially participate in NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. The goal of this program is to write a novel of 50,000 words in 30 days, averaging around 2,000 words per day. I've already begun my story and am up to 5,227 words!

And, since NaNoWriMo is clearly not insane enough on its own, I also signed up for a writing course that starts on the 14th. There's also an art show I should submit to, a mini vacation I'll be taking with Jon and Thanksgiving. Yeah, I'm probably a bit crazy.

Now, to go fill my world quota of the day!

sincerely,
me

Another conclusion written

Remember that story I've been working on? The retelling of the Frog Prince fairytale? Well, I'm pleased to announce that today I wrote the ending!! The first draft is complete!! Currently, the work is about 50 pages long, although hopefully that number grows a bit by the end.

The arduous labor of editing will begin soon, but for the moment, I'm pleased just to have made it all the way to the end of another writing endeavor. ^_^

sincerely,

me

2 year wedding anniversary and writing stuff

Yesterday was Jon and my wedding anniversary! It's been an interesting two years spent with the best husband I could ever imagine. ^_^ 

In other news, last week was a bit crazy in the writing department. Monday through Thursday was spent writing out some bits and pieces for a story I'm currently stuck on.  To more fully express what the process was like, I drew this cartoon.

Yup, that about says it. Mood swings seem to be an inseparable part of the creative process.

However Thursday, a new story idea descended upon me while I was trying to sleep. (Inspiration is apt to strike at the inconvenient times.) I was up till 2 o'clock brainstorming ideas and writing notes. On Friday, I wrote 16 pages, which is the most I've ever done in one day!

The new idea is based on a re-imagining of the Frog Prince fairy tale. That story always bothered me because the princess is an absolute brat and she still ends up with the prince! Anyway, I have great plans for taking the original story apart and turning it into something completely different. While I haven't managed to match Friday's epic page count, I am making reasonable progress.

sincerely,
me

It's finished!! (Sort of)

As you might recall, I've mentioned a few times that I've been working on a story for the past few months. Well, I am pleased to announce that on Friday the 3rd of December, I finished the first draft. This is actually a bigger deal than you'd think because, as I've also probably mentioned, I've never gotten to the end of anything this big before. After giving myself a day or two to take a step back from what I'd written (which only kind of worked), I read it all the way through for the first time. Fortunately, my worst fears were not confirmed and I didn't absolutely hate everything I'd written, another problem that has plagued me for years. Reading through 28 pages was exhausting and there's plenty of work that needs to be done, but I fairly confident I'm off to a good start. Unfortunately, blogging about the writing process is not quite as interesting as looking at pictures, so I included a sketch that expresses my current state of mind.

I know, it's not a very good sketch. The sad thing is that I had a hard time getting even that to look acceptable. Anyhow, my art production has slowed way down do to this other preoccupation, but don't worry, I'll have some more stuff up soonish. (I hope.)

Seeing as how I'm starting to seriously pursue writing, I'm going to look into some ways to share some of the stuff I'm working on in this blog. I have a few other novel ideas I want to start on, plus the editing work I'm doing for this story and some other pieces of short prose. Who knows, I might even chuck in a bit of poetry for good measure, if I ever come up with anything good. Poetry is one area I'm interested in playing with, but know nothing about. 

sincerely,

me