It has begun!

What has begun? Why, NaNoWriMo, of course! I know, this post is late. I blame that on last-minute school items to complete. Let's just say I'm looking at some pretty sturdy B's for this last semester. :) I was rocking it. I took notes like a madman, I read that textbook like it was the most amazing piece of writing I've ever had the chance to write, I worked on those big projects as if my very life depended on it! But I'm getting distracted.

So, no writing done on Day 1 of NaNoWriMo, but I have a whopping 5,200 words from yesterday to add to! Go me! Is it the idea I had planned for myself that I wrote about on October 12? No, no, no... This is an old idea from 2010's NaNoWriMo that is being rewritten. The entire idea has been reread, rejected, and revised! With that said, I shall return to my writing, but rest assured, I will have a bunch of updates for you all to read soon!

A Series of Novellas

My co-author, Alicia, and I are parting ways this November regarding our writing. Well, sort of. You see, Alicia and I had a lot of fun writing a novel together this June, and we've decided to do something similar for November NaNoWriMo. However, instead of taking turns working on the same novel, we're going to write a series of novellas. You see, Alicia and I don't just write for NaNoWriMo. We also spend our free time writing on a site known as The Black Hole, created by us.

A quick explanation is as such: I have one character, and Alicia has another. Through a series of crazy plot twists and bizarre ideas that we take turns coming up with, we each write a paragraph or more from only our character. Alicia is responsible for writing a response to what my character says; I cannot write her character's response. In this way, we often don't know what's going to happen, and it makes everything unexpected. This isn't how we wrote our novel, and it's not how we're planning to write our novellas.

No. You see, over time, Alicia and I have accumulated several dozen characters doing stories in this fashion, and sometimes we will recycle the same characters and stories using different plot twists, reactions, etc. For November's 2012 NaNoWriMo, we are planning to each take a story that is part of a larger story we like to call "The House."

I will be working on the story of two misfits--Kelsey and Mac. You can read more about their story here. Using what Alicia and I have already written as a guide, I will be adjusting the plot and characters as I see fit. Some pieces of the original story will be removed, like Dr. Xavier's school for mutants since we don't own that. Other things will remain. Alicia, however, will be working on the story of two other misfits--Aiden and Alex. You can read more about them here. Like me, Alicia will be using the original story as only a guide.

Eventually, we hope to do this with several other characters' stories on the same website, and they will all eventually connect into a longer novella called "The House." For more details regarding the House, please visit this website.

Published Novel

My co-author and I have published our first novel. Here are the two links:

Paperback

Kindle version

We get more money if you buy the Kindle version so use your Kindle app or your Kindle.

Novel Excerpt for Day 1

First, a word count update! Alicia and I are at over 6,000 words just for today alone. Take that, you doubters and naysayers! Now, for an excerpt:

"We regret to inform you that, while your application was flawless, we must deny it." A heavy sigh slipped out of Sarina's lips at the 45th rejection letter she'd received in two months. She ran a hand through her hair and leaned back in her chair. She had no idea what she was doing wrong to warrant such heavy rejection. Her grades in high school had been above average, if not outstanding. She had applied to her first-choice college, hoping it would come through. When that had failed, she'd started down the list.

Cover for "Tales of SFU"

Fabulous cover drawn and colored by me!

So, this is the cover of my novel Tales of SFU that I am co-authoring with Alicia. The school is called Singularis Facultas University, which roughly translates to "unique powers." It's Latin, by the way, in case you wanted to know. Underneath is the motto which is "Cum magna potentia venit tanti." According to Google Translator, it means "with great power comes great responsibility," which is what I wanted it to say. According to one of the four young women in the cabin with Alicia and I, it actually translates to "with great power comes much." Oh, well! It's close enough.

Not-so-awesome starter sketch

This cover was drawn by hand by me, and then I scanned it into my computer and colored it using my Wacom tablet and Corel Painter Essentials 4 after a very helpful Aland tech helped me correct a bizarre crashing issue. Here's the original sketch for those interested.

Who's ready to go camping?

How many of you are going camping this summer? How many of you are going to a writing camp this year? I am. Sitting at my desk, relaxing under my blanket fort, I will be pounding out a 50,000-word novel with my friend, Alicia. Expect daily updates during the month of June as I camp away! Hopefully, my co-author will start a blog as well so I can link it here. This way, you get both author's views about our novel! There will be snippets of the story, updates about camp, and perhaps even some updates about our cabin mates!

Oh, right. One of the awesome things about Camp NaNoWriMo is that they put you in a cabin with 5 other writers. Alicia and I were lucky to get into a cabin together, and our group mates and the two of us have called our cabin Charlemagne!

Here's our summary for our novel, written by said friend:

Sarina, your average high school student, never expected to have so many college applications denied. She'd never had anything less than a C in any of her classes (and she hated that class anyway).
One morning, her parents surprised her with an acceptance letter from some place known only as SU. She didn't remember applying there, but she was so happy to finally have a place to go, that she didn't really look into it.Whatever type of experience she was expecting from college, she was sure this wasn't it. Sure, she would have classes, homework, and a dorm room, but who would have thought all of her classmates would be superheroes? And she's the only normal human in the bunch?This can't be good at all.

Figuring out my Writing Life

You know what I have discovered? I have way too many story ideas and too few ideas on how to go about them. Lately, I've been reading this book called The Everything Guide to Writing a Novel. It's pretty fascinating and has helped me discover what genre might be best for me. Right now, I have three that really call to me--romance, fantasy, and erotica. Romance and erotica are pretty easy to mix together, and I've always loved books that create their own world like The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Hell, I even enjoyed Twilight, but she didn't really create her own world in that one. She just took fantasy creatures and tossed them into reality, which is also fun.

I have also come to discover that I focus too much on vampires. Any story I write, I feel like it has to have a vampire in it. I think I'm just obsessing with them. Right now, however, I'm obsessing over something else. Obviously we all know about super heroes, and we all enjoy them in our own way. Because I'm in college myself, I'm thinking of writing something called Tales of SU, SU standing for Superhuman University. I know, so original, right? I sort of got the idea from this show my husband watches about a human who ends up in Monster High. No, not THAT Monster High with the dolls and everything.

Anyway, my idea is to take a normal human with no superhuman powers. He's tried applying for colleges and can't get accepted anywhere. Through a fluke, he applies for SU and is accepted! It's on the bus ride over that he realizes the school he's at isn't a normal university because people are flying, some look like rock people, and there's a girl who can duplicate herself, among other people. Anyway, on his first day he runs into this girl who can turn invisible (hence the reason he runs into her). At first, she thinks he's a super too, but as the story progresses, she realizes he's a human and tries to help him stay hidden at the school.

Well, that's all I've got on this idea right now. I'm off to brainstorm and outline. This is my idea for Camp NaNoWriMo, which starts in less than 4 days (3 days, 13 hours, and counting...). My hope is to write Book One during June camp, write another in August camp, and a third in November. Wish me luck!

New Project: Fictional Memoir

All right, I have--again--begun a new project. This one, however, is not a joint endeavor with my dear friend, Alicia (also known as The Worm or The Hermit). Rather, this one is a slightly-joint endeavor with my four closest friends--my sister, my cousins Kirsty and Kaity, and my cousin Ana. You see, while on vacation from school, the five of us would basically all grow up together in this big, yellow house in Cerritos. So, I am going to write about our adventures. However, it is going to be a fictional retelling because I'm going to make it seem like our adventures came to life, of sorts. So, it'll be a bit like Peter Pan meets Alice in Wonderland meets The Five Cousins (which is what we call ourselves). However, because I absolutely loathe beginnings right now, I think I'll just dive right in...

3 Pages Down, X to Go...

Lately, as I'm sure you all remember from my last post, I've been doing a lot of journaling and very little novel writing. Well, just recently, I've started reading Walking in this World by Julia Cameron as well as We are all Writers: How to Use Your Journal to Cure Writer's Block Now by Mari L. McCarthy. The first focuses a lot on how important creativity is for our inner artist and encourages us to practice that creativity daily. The second focuses on lifting writer's block mainly from your journal, but it can be applied to any writing project, I think. At least, that's how I use it.

Anyway, so what I wanted to let the blogosphere know is that I have begun work on my novel once more. I wasn't liking the beginning so I started over with a couple of chapters from the MC's life before being a vampire, during her early days as a vampire, and during her early days as a Krusnik. I'm hoping these will eat up some of the timeline so that I can reintroduce Leonard in the story, though she won't know it's that Leonard until much later.

I know, and some of you are going, "Who's Leonard???" Just read my novel when I release it, and you'll know! Novel excerpts will likely be posted on my website that I'm creating for my novel. Link will come soon.

Journaling Instead of Noveling...

So, lately I've been doing much more journal-writing than I do noveling. In fact, I haven't done anything on my novel in several weeks, I'm sure. If not longer. While, I wish I could say I'm disappointed in myself, I'm actually pretty excited that I'm writing anything at all. In fact, I've gone two solid weeks with journaling every day! Yes, I am quite pleased with this, and I am hoping to one day include daily novel-writing with the journaling. Anyway, so this was just a quick update to let everyone know what was going on.

A Book for Writer's Block

I'm sure you all remember my entry regarding writer's block and how much it sucks. Well, here's a book that I have found helpful. You can click on the image to download the ebook from Mari's website for free. This is a helpful book from my friend at Create Write Now. I also have a blog about her other book with 85 journaling tips in it. I have several of her books, and I really enjoy each one. But this one was specifically about writing and curing writer's block so I felt it was appropriate for this blog.

My Novel is Taking Off!!!

So, recently my mother was asking me some questions about my characters to help me figure out how to make my character's respond. Well, her questions brought to mind some questions of my own so then I sat down and wrote out some character sketches. This took my novel in a new direction, but it's also taken off in that new direction. I am very happy that my novel is now taking off, but now I need to stop blogging so I can keep writing!

A Response from Writer's Block

Okay, so I wake up, and I discover that writer's block has left me a wonderful response to my letter from yesterday. Here it is for the rest of you:

Dear Me,

Do you not remember those many days and nights in which writing at night was the time when you would write the best? We tried to force you to a daytime schedule; we would battle with your creativity at night knowing that one day your life would demand sleep at night. And now, you're a mother, wife, and college student who needs her nights to sleep, but what have you done? You've gone and messed up your schedule by strengthening your creativity with night time writings all your life. There's only so much we can do when you always send your little creativity minions after us. You write and write and write nonstop. Writer's block can only help you fix your schedule so much. You're the one that trained your body this way, not us. If you want our help, I suggest you start trying to write during the day. And for goodness sake, go to bed at a decent hour!

Trying to help,

Writer's Block 

 

Writer's Block has Horribly Excellent Timing...

I hate writer's block for a number of reasons. For one, writer's bloc always chooses the worst times to attack me. Like when I'm wide awake and wanting to write. Once I lie down to close my eyes and sleep, writer's block is lifted, and ideas flow through my brain like water through a strainer. I can't stop them, and I lie there tossing and turning, itching to write yet too tired to lift myself from my bed. So, as a little exercise to try and get writer's block to go away, I am going to write it a letter. Who knows? Maybe tomorrow's post will be writer's block's response.

Dear Writer's Block,

What gives? You are always bothering me at the worst times, and you affect EVERYTHING I do, not just writing. EVERYTHING. You make it difficult to work on homework because I read something for class, have to write something to reflect on it, and I have no reflections because I have a wall blocking me from my words. Then, the very moment I declare exhaustion and go to lie down, you sneak off like a wicked thief who's gotten away with a prize. At that very moment, my brain is flooded with ideas for this story and that story and "Oh, I should've written that in my school paper!" Why? What have I ever done to deserve your wicked punishment?

Sincerely,

Me 

 

Chapter 1 Writing and Editing -- Post One

There will be multiple posts under the same title during the writing and editing process of each chapter. Each one will be numbered "post x."


So, recently I have begun working on chapter 1. This began soon after my first post on this blog. It was soon followed by my mother willingly reading and editing the first few pages. She's trying to help me create the personalities for my characters, asking me questions about who my characters are, etc. to try and create dialogue that flows with their personality. I have problems with this a lot so her advice is really helping. Because I am actually hoping to publish this novel, I'm not going to be posting any of it on my blog. However, I might work on small exercises or even a side story to keep my writing skills up to par. Unfortunately, a few days after beginning writing, the rush of words soon fell flat once more. I am planning on typing up what I have so far then writing out the prologue as well as character sketches and back stories. Back stories will also end up making it into the novel, but I may post up the character sketches.

Why?

One of the things I tend to do is try to write for an audience, an audience that I don't know even exists. Will I publish this particular piece of writing? Will the audience I am trying to write for like it? What if they don't? What if they don't like the characters? There are several things I have recently discovered regarding this type of writing.

1. Writing with a specific audience in mind often makes me more nervous, causing the writing to stutter and then stop altogether. When I was younger, around 12 and 13, I simply wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote with no audience in mind. Now, I just decide what age group I plan to make this book available to and go from there. That age group can decide if the book suits them or not, no matter their personality or background, etc.
2. My characters go flat. I always have elaborate ideas in mind for my characters: the depressed 17-year-old living in a mental institute, the 17-year-old rape victim trying to pull her psyche back together, the 17-year-old drug addict trying to put his life back in order. After a few pages of the drama and background and insanity that is that particular character's life, they suddenly fall flat. They miraculously get better, they fall in love with this amazing guy without having any trust issues, or they just stop taking drugs simply out of sheer will-power that doesn't actually exist in this person's character. Talk about "god in the machine." My characters always manage to slip out of tight spots.
3. Worrying about publishing draws my writing to a stand-still most of the time. I worry if it's going to be good enough, if anyone will read it, and so on and so forth.

This year, I'm going to self publish because I recently won NaNoWriMo 2011. Along with the fabulous winner's certificate, I also received 5 free copies of my novel. The coupon is good until June 30, 2012. I have until that time to edit, proof, and publish my novel. And guess what? This year, I'm going to do it because I WANT TO. Not because I'm worried people won't like it. So, be prepared to join me on my journey to editting, proofing, and publishing my novel through CreateSpace.