Much News

I've had a pretty good week (or at least last few days) for writing and editing.

I have gotten some more editing done, only now it's actual good editing instead of just trudging through the lines like I have been. I'm going to do another thousand words before bed once I post this.

I've been planning out two new things, as well. The first thing is a short script, and I'm getting pretty artsy on this one. I've never written a script either so it'll be fun. I'll have it done within the week BECAUSE

I signed up for NaNoWriMo! Yayy 2013 run! I've already outlined my story. It's totally different and will be a wonderful breath of freshness. It's also going to be much shorter than my book; I might not even be able to make it over 50k words. It'll be exciting. It's a story I started forming almost a year ago and now I think it's ripe enough to be written.

Having not sketched for myself in a while, I cracked open my sketchbook again today and drew something. I'm just getting all kinds of creative.

I'm still in the same block of scenes I was last time, but I've got a handle on them now. I'll finish them this weekend.

Hope everyone's having a great pre-Halloween week!

and On and On

It's positively disgusting outside today.

So I've gotten quite a bit done.

Right now I'm working on cutting a lot of fluffy pretty things out, and just finished another chapter from the mountain setting. To be honest it's just beginning. I've just now stopped right before a ballroom scene because I have to get across campus to the art studio for a while, but I'm going to dredge through the rest of it tonight.

Not a very exciting update, but I'm making progress so this is good.

Interesting fact: remember this post? Well I've just gotten to the scene where Simon Tylor is introduced. It just made me smile, that's all.

I think I know what I'm going to do for NaNoWriMo; I've narrowed it down to two or three ideas and might try to outline my attempt this weekend since I've been on fall break. I've found a few writer friends I can consult with (none of whom have done NaNo, which I intend to fix!) So I'll keep you updated on what I decide and if I do decide to make an attempt I'll put up my NaNo account. We were supposed to activate this past week, I think. I haven't yet, but I can't wait to see the new setup of the site!

Also: I've found the most amazing song for drawing/painting/writing. I'm listening to it right now, even. Young and Beautiful by Lana Del Rey, anyone? I'm not a huge fan of hers but this SONG, man.

Hope you all are having a great Fall thus far!

Slow and Steady... Right?

Gosh it's been such a crazy month. College is so weird. But I have gotten a little editing done.

Not much editing, there isn't much to report. What little I've done involved a lot of cutting pretty fluff. There was a lot of unnecessary description of dresses because I spend too much time thinking about them.

One thing I hope to accomplish is a story that's interesting to anyone, so I can't have too much girly things. It's not a very limiting thing, but as I said last post, I get a bit carried away.

Thank you all for being so patient with me, here's a sketch!

... of a dress. You see my problem? This is Elle in just a plain dress. But I like it. I haven't been drawing for myself much lately because I actually have drawing homework. It's kind of amazing. So this is the last of the sketches from my last go-through of my sketchbooks. I shall make more soon.

I'm still trying to figure out what to do for NaNoWriMo. I kind of doubt it will be possible though because college is a lot of work. But no surprises there. I might just try a collection of creepy stories. I have a few theories about hauntings I could explore. Last night I was in the art building during a pretty good rainstorm and it gave me some good ideas.

Part One Down. Next Up: The Fluff.

I've gotten through Part One! Yay!

Elle is changing locations now and she's going to what actually might be my favorite place in the story, the mountain nation. It's modeled after seventeenth century France in a lot of ways, and is full of extravagant characters and situations and I'm very excited to read this for the first time.

It's been almost exactly a year since I've seen these pages.

This whole mid-plot excursion to the mountains is also where I'm going to have to make a big choice regarding cuts, I may in fact decide to cut the entire thing and here's why I think that:

It doesn't do much to further the main plot of the story. It serves to inform Elle and the reader of the larger world and a lot of political relationships that come into play throughout this story and later ones, but nothing I think I couldn't do just keeping her at home or something less involved.

I get a bit self-indulgent, and this is definitely a product of that. What I remember about this part was making pretty designs for fun characters and settings, which I have a weakness for. I also was trying to be a bit art-y and I don't know if that really serves my purpose well. It's a lot of worldbuilding, again, but maybe not entirely necessary to this story.

It gets really long, and might be too long and boring. Again, I think I was pretty self-indulgent with this and the pretty pictures. I've been warned often of having a slow middle to the story and while this may be pretty it might slow it down. It's also a large chunk of my manuscript and cutting it out might make it a more navigable/marketable/otherwise more appealing and thinner hunk of paper. We shall see.

These are all my preliminary worries about this particular segment of my manuscript. Of course I haven't seen it in a year so we'll see if my opinion of it changes as I read. How do you all feel about scenes or entire chapters whose primary goal is world-building? Are they laborious and boring? Or do they add dimension and context to the main plot? I'd like your opinions, because I'm not sure of my own.

But tonight I rejoice! And bring out another blog post. I just went back into my Word document and found my place, so I have a page number for you.

Page: 133/415

Problems I'm Thinking About (besides what I just outlined in the body of the post)
-I'm still focusing on character development and consistency
-and of course fixing the immature writing.
-I read something today about each chapter having a certain level of suspense, and will have to keep an eye on keeping it interesting. I don't have enough distance right now though, that will have to be a next-edit thing where I read through the whole thing before editing instead of editing as I go like I am now.

I'm Still Alive, I Swear!

Hello! Wow it's been so long, I didn't mean for this to happen!

Things have been kinda crazy with packing, moving my brother into his college, moving myself down to College (it was an eleven hour drive) and even now trying to figure out how to be a College Kid. Life now involves a lot more naps and using froyo as currency than I'd expected.

So I haven't gotten a lot of editing done. Strangely I've been really inspired to write poetry the last few weeks, so I've done some of that and we'll see if that turns into a thing.

This month is (supposedly, according to my NaNo Newsletters) officially NaNoWriMo Planning Month, so are any of you all planning anything? I really want to do it this year, as always, and since I'm not actively writing another story I might do it as a side thing. In order to lessen the load my friend and I might do a cowritten thing, which I know is cheating, so I don't know how we'd put that on the site, maybe just track our own progress so we each aim for 25k. It's not a thing you're supposed to do, I know, but it might just be best. If my friend decides she doesn't want to I might attempt it with my roommate, or even on my own but I don't know which story idea to expand on yet. I could retry my original NaNo attempt or start on the sequel to The Prophecy (since I accidentally already wrote an opening scene for it on the car ride to drop my brother off) but I don't think so. I have a list of ideas, I shall see.

I've been thinking a lot, as well. I mean I'm always thinking but it's usually about like, someone's nose or why society is dumb or that really attractive person across the room or something. This time I've been thinking about watching people die.

On the long-butt drive down to Kentucky I witnessed a car crash in which the driver in the car in front of mine went into the median and then flipped over midair, sending both driver and passenger through the windshield to hit the ground. The car ended up in the north-bound lane, and thankfully didn't hit anyone else and no one but the two in the car were injured. However I'm fairly sure I saw two people die that day, and I was the only one who got such a good view of it.

It was startling to say the least, and really hit me that I saw two people (who were unconscious from the initial impact in the ditch of the median) fall to their deaths. It was strange that as I watched it happen I thought "this looks exactly like the movies" up until I saw two bodies flop out of the car. You see the crashes in movies, but never the people who supposedly die in them. This may be because in movies everyone supposedly has their seat belts on, which would stop people from being ejected, but I think it's because however realistic these movies are they don't want to horrify the audience of an action movie. We are so used to seeing the battles, the high speed car chases and the amazing crashes and disasters portrayed in entertainment media but they never seem to show the effects.

A couple days later I saw the movie Now You See Me, which has a high-speed car chase in it and my musings held fairly true there, and that got me thinking even more, as someone who has written battle scenes into this story of mine, who has put characters through death and made others witness it, that I didn't really know what I was doing. (I mean I knew that anyway but now I know it in a different way, you know?) And we'll see how well I did once I get to those scenes in editing. But still I wonder, are books even supposed to make us feel horrified in ways movies won't? Books are already so much more personal, and take place in your head, already occupy so much more time and brainpower, is it alright to have this kind of realism?

I suppose realism from books is in part contributed by the reader and the extent of their experiences and what they can imagine. I remember being particularly horrified in certain parts of the Hunger Games at the violence, I wonder how it would effect me now that I've actually felt those things? I wonder how it would feel to a veteran?

So these are all things I've been thinking about. I know this isn't a particularly organized post.

On another note.... Have some sketches!

These are things I did last spring while on a trip to the US capitol, Washington D. C. and they're based loosely off of the Desert queen (left) and Elle (right) though really (especially for the one on the right) I was just messing around with pens and the thought of those pretty old-fashioned cameo things.

Back to actually on-topic things, I have not, in the past chaotic month, been able to do much editing. I have done some! Just nothing really of note. It's really just me being lazy and/or completely overwhelmed by everything that's going on so once I find out how to be a College Kid and get to a daily routine (which, if you play Sims- protip: get your sims on a daily routine from day one) I will actually pretend to be professional and set aside time each day.

I'm sorry for the long wait, everyone! (I mean no one really seems to read this but still, to those who do, thank you! and sorry.) I'll be back to weekly posts I think from now on.

Rock on, y'all.

LAIRE Again

So I still haven't done much of anything more in editing, which is very bad. I've been working and excuses.

However I did get the chance to go larping at LAIRE again, which was really fabulous. I need to make so many additions and repairs to my costume... but now I have quite a few months until I will be able to go again so I have time to do that.

This is the main design of my character, Wilsa.

Yeah ignore those feet there. Maybe once I fix the costume up I'll post a picture of me actually wearing it.

So I've put up plenty of sketches of Elle, but none of her familiar. He's kind of a mixed jungle cat, with markings all along the back, and the size of a medium sized dog. Of the two he's the sarcastic, realistic Hobbesian one. That's not a final sketch, I'm still working on the specifics of what he'll look like.

Oh and his name is Taim for now.

I'm editing right now, I actually have the manuscript open and everything. So no updates for now. Sorry.

The Desert Cast

So here are some more sketches! YAY!

First I'd like you to meet Violet. She's kind of a bitchy, stubborn and closed-off person, explaining her expression. She's one of the friends the main character meets and sticks with during the second part of the book, when she's in a desert region to oversee a conflict between nations. There Elle becomes part of a typical trio, I suppose, like you see in most stories. Most of the time she's just with her familiar, but in the desert she becomes attached to two other guards. And, for some time the familiar isn't always there... ~ooh mystery~

Next we have the other part of her trio, his name for now is Serb, which I chose not even realizing that is actually a word... But the sound of it suits him so well. Even so I think I'll have to change it. He's more friendly, the heart of the group, kind of, despite Elle being so emotional. I thought it would be nice to have a warm-hearted guy in the mix when so often those types of characters are shown as weak or useless. He's like a dad, kind of. In many ways he and Violet end up acting as parents for our orphaned protagonist.

There are actually two sketches of Serb, and you'll see the question mark on the second one; he's supposed to be around forty, which is still young, especially for their world, but the first sketch is my first attempt and he was way too old-looking. The second one is better, but I don't know if it's quite perfect. Still, you get the idea.

This is the uniform Elle ends up wearing, it's pretty standard, Serb and Violet are mages and wear something similar but they also have a lightweight cloak that all mages have, that may or may not be magical armor. Either way, Violet is for some reason very attached to hers.

Progress on editing, this past week, was minimal since I finally started working. For three straight days I scraped up goat poop and was almost humped by an alpaca. It sounds annoying but I really loved it. I got to just hang out with the animals for a couple days and it was strangely therapeutic, just being there by myself.

That job is over but the past couple days I've been working at Six Flags more, which doesn't have animals or feces involved (usually). So I've been pretty tired and lazy. I'm going to edit a lot today though.

113/415

Problems I'm Thinking About:
-general suckage
-character consistency
-mastering the use of dialogue
-well-rounded characters
-concise story-arcs for chapters (actually the last chapter I finished was great with this and I'm very satisfied)
-In the series, will the first book be considered lackluster (maybe it's just since I was recently very excited about the next book- they'll all be very different, but all the others deal more with a larger theme that is only hinted at in the first one.)

New Toy

It's my birthday today! Yay!

One of my presents (that was really for graduation, but I just downloaded/bought it the other day) was Scrivener, which I kind of fell in love with while researching for my editing. Aaand I spent the morning wading through the tutorial and getting my manuscript onto the program!

Now it looks a bit like this!

It's super exciting, and the program is really great. I expanded my chapters a bit to show you- on the left, see? It had the parts, which I broke down by where my character is, since she changes location drastically about halfway through the book, then the chapter, then scene. It really is nice for editing purposes. So easy to locate things. I also just finished tagging the scenes I've already edited with the characters and important things present. There's also a place on the right there that I could use to make notes on what needs to be fixed... It's just wonderful. And now I need to stop procrastinating and edit.

I haven't made much progress since last post- I went to visit family and was a bit busy having fun in their pool. Also they have five kids and I have an excuse there somewhere.

Also, here's a sketch!

It was from a few months ago, trying to learn how to draw older faces. I need to work on it, since I have a few characters well into their seventies. I'm getting better- I drew another one just recently but haven't uploaded it, but I thought it came out pretty well.

I don't know if this is really anything like a character of mine, but I was thinking of Darius when I started. Don't think it's really like him. But hey.

Due to Scrivener not having page numbers (that I can find) the page count will be a guesstimate from now on.

So far, since I just put it on Scrivener, the Word page count still works so I'm on page 95/415.

Problems I'm Thinking About:
-general suckage
-character consistency
-mastering the use of dialogue
-well-rounded characters
-concise story-arcs for chapters

Couldn't Wait

My schedule is all messed up for many reasons (but mostly because yay, no school!) so I couldn't wait the entire week to post again.

On a side note, even though (besides the last two days) I've been getting a lot of editing done, my parents are annoyed that I've just been "sitting on the computer" and... yeah. That's bothersome.

I also have been researching again, looking into mesopotamian mythology, because it's really interesting how the first civilizations saw their large dangerous world, and I can incorporate more of that into the story, if need be.

I couldn't wait to post mostly because I recently went through my sketchbooks again and have a few character sketches I really like. I filled up two sketchbooks since last summer and a lot of them had stuff relating to my book because it's been on my mind so much this past year.

So this is Jamie/James, and he's probably one of my favorite characters, even though in this book (after all I am planing a series) he doesn't get much time in-story. He's the first generation, so this is actually how he looks young, like in the "fifty years ago" prologue. I'm still learning to draw old people so... I'm also not sure, I realized yesterday, how old he should look, since yaknow, magic and all.

Haha, this sketch went through multiple de-smudges and a bad attempt to use hairspray instead of fixative before I actually fixed it. I don't usually have to use fixative on sketchbook things by I think I had been using a weird pencil... some pencils just CANNOT be hb when they say they are.

Please tell me what you think! I have yet to get ANY comments on this blog. What's up with that?

85/416

Problems I'm Thinking About:
-general suckage
-character consistency
-mastering the use of dialogue
-well-rounded character stories

-making world more realistic

-it sounds a little childish, where I am now, so getting rid of that "eighth-grader's fanfiction" feel.

Fantastical Worlds

I forgot to write about something very exciting last week- I went LARPing for the first time! Live Action Role Playing, really. But they call it larping. It was really fun, I made my own character and spent the weekend running around dressed in a homemade costume as my character "Wilsa" and robbed people and played Kill Your Killer and just had a ball. (By the way my character has really loose morals in regards to money.) I can't wait to go back next month.

I will eventually include a picture of my costume, but I don't feel like putting it on right now- it's too HOT. So eventually.

In Story news, I've made a bunch of progress. I didn't edit any yesterday because I was barely home, but since my last post I did around ten pages of editing a night, and five so far today. It's nice, and not unbearable.

I split another chapter (or two I can't remember) so now I'm working on chapter seven. Yay! I've messed around and incorporated more of my other characters' backstories. I already had another idea for the very beginning, too, so I'll catch that on the second edit and change that around a bit. I kind of feel like I know what I'm doing here.

This morning I was listening to some lectures by Brandon Sanderson- he puts a lot of his classes on Youtube, so you should check that out if you're interested. It's really interesting and informative.

I'll start posting my page progress, I think. I'm almost a fourth of the way there! (small steps.)

80/415

Problems I'm Thinking About:
-general suckage
-character consistency
-mastering the use of dialogue
-well-rounded character stories

Return

Hello All, feels like it's been a while, hasn't it?

Well that's my bad. And I haven't touched my manuscript in all that time, either. Shame on me. But I will reconvene to begin again this exact morning, I swear- once I post this (and then do the obligatory read-through to catch all my grammar mistakes) I will close down my internet and start once again at page fifty-two of my manuscript.

I hope I took long enough of a break for that raw spot in my brain to heal. Editing this is like scrubbing as hard as I can with sand paper at this large glob of hardened gloop I've spawned, trying to make it change shape into something recognizable. It was really wearing on me, but let's hope I can handle it this time around.

I realize now I rushed things, taking only that measly week off after finishing the draft, and I did know that at the time, but it was all in vain since there was no way I could've gotten through editing by graduation.

I have almost the entire summer left now... I will put it to good use, though I resolve to take it slow and steady this time around. No pressure.

HOWEVER: I do want to participate in NaNoWriMo this fall. So if I could have it done by then... Haha, stop it Leigh.

On that note- July is apparently another Camp NaNoWriMo month, sorry I should have posted as soon as I found out (the day before, as always) but.... I didn't.

I want to do the November run though, like a lot. I can't wait to go to College and everything, and I would be participating along with both new and old classmates, so I feel like it would be a great experience.

I chose my classes for fall term yesterday. It's so real. I'll be taking a Humanities/Writing course, Differential Calculus With Review (blaarcgh kill me), Spanish, and Introduction to Drawing. I CANNOT wait. I think I know who will be teaching the drawing class and I already met him, so I'm that much more excited. "Introduction" to Drawing though, is a funny name. Drawing and I, WE'VE MET.

So there's the rundown on what's going on with what. Not posting Editing concerns this time because they haven't changed since I've been doing nothing.

P.S. I've just now gone back and looked at one of my favorite blogs re{d}ress or http://reddressredress.blogspot.com/ and reread her own post about editing troubles. She's making a film, and it's comforting to know even she has some of my same problems, albeit in a different way.

Bumps

So I haven't made much progress in the past... two weeks?

It's pretty bad. I've had a lot going on, which is part of it... with graduation and all, but the main reason is that as I've been editing the crappiness is impossible to get through. Speaking with my advisors (people on the internet) I've come to the conclusion that I should probably take a short break from it. This solution has the added bonus of not making me feel as bad about slacking off the past week.

So sorry about not having anything good to update.

...I cleaned my room today.

General Suckage

I've been struggling with this on and off whenever I've sat down to edit, but it really got me today.

My writing sucks.

I know, according to just about every writer from whom I've sought counsel, this is a normal thing. But I've never been one to hate on my own work, not even my own paintings or drawings, while I've seen other artists go to pieces over their own in disdain.

So this is new to me- and when I sat down to edit today I got stuck in the gut with it, and just how bad I think my writing is.

I can fix it, yes, but right now it's an uphill battle and there's just SO MUCH bad writing and it's going to take me forever... And I just want to get to the more recently written parts already because hopefully those will be much better.

It's one of my great fears that I'll finish this, edit it and everything, even get it published, and then look back at it in a year or two and think it's horrible. After all that work, yes I would have so much knowledge gained from it, but I'd still be ashamed. I can't handle being ashamed of my own work, especially something like this that I love so much.

So back to editing now. It's So Bad. Gah. Pray for me, Lord give me strength.

Oh- on a procrastination note, while I was avoiding facing this monstrosity head-on I was looking through famous quotes and saw AGAIN the Twain quote about replacing every "very" with "damn" so the editors will take it out, so I replaced every "very" with the f-word in my own document via the "find" tool so I'll catch all of them as I go. Because I'm not using any curse words in this story, so it'll be striking. Now I can't wait to find one and fix it, so I have something to look forward to.

Problems I'm Thinking About:
-general suckage
-character consistency
-what is the title going to be??
-mastering the use of dialogue
-well-rounded character stories

Chapters of Progress

So whooppee! I've officially edited one eighth of my manuscript!! (fifty-two pages)

I also split "Chapter Three" so I that sooper long chapter is now a bit shorter, and I'm now working on Chapter Four.

My writing is still crap, but I suppose that's to be expected. At least I can recognize it and fix it (kinda).

How long do you like your chapters? I've been trying to stick to around 10-17 pages per chapter but, well I guess I should just read a few books and see. I've been really bad about reading this year. I have read a few really good books though, just not fantasy.

I've admitted to myself that there's no way in hell I'm finishing this by graduation, so I'm just taking my time now. Going to get it done right.

I also came across this picture the other day that is scarily like how I picture the main character. I don't know the girl's name, or anything else about her other than she's Russian and had her picture on this before and after thing for some Russian make-up artist.

Here's the pic:

I think I may have stretched it a little bit somehow, but still. It was startling, to see the image I've been trying to draw for myself for a year.

Another thing is I just started watching Game of Thrones, and it's giving me serious story envy. Everything's so beautiful, the characters are so well rounded, the whole thing is super original. Like the seasons thing? That's awesome! I read an article recently about making your fantasy setting any way to serve the story, and not having to obey the rules of our world and with creatures and settings I've done very badly with creating something original, so I'll work on that. I want the world I'm creating to be just as magical as I see it, but when I think about it most of the beauty comes from just my obsession with the natural beauty of our world. I'm not going to make water green or give it two suns, but I can do a better job of exaggerating things to give the reader the same wonder I have.

Game of Thrones is also great with their characters. I haven't read the actual books the show is based off of, but I'm sure to have all these different stories it must have multiple POVs, which I'm not going to do. Still, that isn't the only reason the show has such a complex and multifaceted story, with all these characters with their own complete dramas. I've been noticing that a lot in real life, as well; that every person has their own story just as or more complex and mine, which sounds obvious but is really hard to think about. I saw something a while ago that titled the sensation of this realization as "sonder" and it really is overwhelming.

In the interest of creating more complex storylines/subplots and characters I started giving every important/semi-important character a page in my notebook to outline their lives and feelings and motives, and though I've only done a handful so far I was kind of surprised because I realized a lot of my characters (like most of them) are killed some way by this one guy, which may change, but right now really entertains me.

Problems I'm Thinking About:
-general suckage
-character consistency
-what is the title going to be??
-mastering the use of dialogue
-well-rounded character stories

Editing

No clever title for this one, sorry.

This'll be a quick post, as well. I just wanted to update y'all. I've been finally getting some stuff done! I'm on page 35, which isn't that great, but i did most of that in the past couple days so it is.

I have a newly ordained third chapter! It was tough getting there but now that I have it doesn't feel like it'll be that hard to make another one.

The writing still sucks, and I have sooo much unecessary blathering. Not to mention some of the characters were really... I don't know, not true to themselves? in the beginning, so I'm working on making them more noticibly different from the start. I should do some profiles to remind myself of what they should be acting like as I go; I'm sure characters changed a lot through the writing of it. I know the main character did, very drastically.

The main character- I'll admit it now- actually made me very nervous for a while. My one friend introduced me to the Mary Sue Litmus Test and told me I need to check myself before I wreck myself, and for the longest time Elle failed it. Now I just have to bring the originality she accumulated as I got more familiar with her into the begining, so her character development later in the story has more of a logical impact.

But I know what I need to do! I'm finally getting into the swing of it!

Now seriously, to bed.


Problems I'm Thinking About:
-chapters
-general suckage
-character consistency
-what is the title going to be??
-mastering the use of dialogue

An End

I've been finding it hard to concentrate on editing as my high school tenure comes to an end. Not just the schoolwork that is again being thrown at me last minute, but this whole transition into being a graduate. I'm already preparing for college in the fall, getting things for my dorm room, choosing my roommate (hey M!) and I have to take placement tests this week... It's a lot.

Editing is still going very very slowly, though I did do some this weekend. I hope my workload for the next weeks will be lighter and I can get more sleep as well. It's not helped that when I do sit down to edit I get quickly discouraged, as I'm finding the writing to be pretty crappy and it's frustrating and hard to get through.

Back to work!


Problems I'm Thinking About:
-chapters
-general suckage
-character consistency
-what is the title going to be??
-mastering the use of dialogue

Grand Beginnings.

So here's the last of the sketches I've uploaded thus far; it's the first sketch I made regarding the castle. It's the entry hall, and you can see directions on the margins regarding other areas of the castle. A couple of weeks ago I started an attempt at painting this digitally, Pottermore-style, and have made some sorely needed corrections to architecture. (For the record I drew this is Spanish class last year)

Editing has not progressed any further, due to personal events and stress and lack of time. I'm making another run at it this week. Wish me luck!


Problems I'm Thinking About:
-chapters
-general suckage
-character consistency
-what is the title going to be??
-mastering the use of dialogue

The Main Character

Allow me to introduce you to the main character, Elle. These are early sketches of her, and while I know they aren't that good, I plan on doing another in the future that is like, a serious drawing of her. I also plan on having her grace the front cover, but we'll see how much power I have over that. (I've always wanted to paint my own cover, I hope I can.) Just for the record they're more than a year old. Her neck is bothering me.

I hit a bump in editing progress. This is a pretty pathetic start, huh? It's school related- I have two huge senior projects and Advanced Placement testing. The testing ends (for me) Wednesday and it's been tough juggling studying my ass off and editing, but for most of the week I got about five pages done a night. Proposals for both senior projects are due within the next two days so I really don't have time to even be writing this. Ah, forbidden loves.

Problems I'm Thinking About:
-chapters
-general suckage
-character consistency
-what is the title going to be??
-mastering the use of dialogue for character and plot development (anyone have any dialogue tips?)

Getting Started

So last Saturday I started editing, as promised. However, I only got through my prologue, which was remarkably easy seeing as I've edited the prologue several times already. (I put it in a writing portfolio for college apps and use it as a sample to show friends what I'm doing) This wouldn't have been a problem, other than the fact that that's as far as I got all week.

Sunday I left with my class for Washington D. C. which was really fun- we won a contest that gave us a free trip and enrolled us in this leadership program (It's called CloseUp). I learned a lot about the US government and how legislation works, etc. and it was my first time visiting the capitol, so I'm really glad I went. I also got to ride on my first Metro/subway type thing which I really enjoyed, call me simple.

Unfortunately the program had our schedules so jam packed that I did not have time to edit or do anything. I also didn't have internet, which I didn't expect, otherwise I would have at least updated the blog with a sketch or something. I still have a few. I got back Thursday night, but I've been so pooped that right now I'm just trying to catch up on school work and sleep. I plan on making another go at the first chapter tonight, wish me luck. It's incredibly daunting, because I know I have sooo much to fix just in the first few pages, it feels like I'm running up against a wall. Once I get used to editing and figure out my process it'll be easier.

Problems I'm Thinking About:
-first chapter flow
-chapters
-general suckage
-character consistency
-what is the title going to be??

Editing Prep

So it's generally agreed on by everyone I've ever asked (including myself, because I love taking breaks) that once finishing a piece you should let it sit for a while. So that's what I'm doing now.

I've decided that I'm going to start editing Saturday, which I know isn't that long at all, and probably not long enough, but I'm seriously trying to get the editing done by graduation-June 25th. Mainly because I want to ask one of my teachers to look at it when I'm done with my own edits. This shouldn't be a problem, seeing as the first draft totals 413 Word pages and I haven't seen the first two thirds of it in months and months. I plan on starting at the beginning and editing as I go, so by the time I get to recent stuff it will have been a few weeks anyway.

In the meantime it's been really strange not having to write. For the past year and a half I've constantly had this thing hanging over me- I've gone home almost every day and said "I should write x amount tonight". Even when I didn't actually write, it was always there, and I didn't realize what a big part of my life it was. I came home from school Monday and realized I literally had nothing to do (I didn't have homework either) and it was shocking. Shocking in a good way, I mean. I feel like I have so much free time now. This feeling of freedom isn't because I didn't like writing of course, and is mostly an illusion, but I do like it.

Now that I seem to have so much free time (at least for this week) I've also found that I cannot exist without a project. Or at least not anymore, now that I'm used to it. So I've created a to-do list that I actually plan on finishing by Saturday, filled with things I've been forever meaning to get done.

I've also not been able to fully let go of my story. Or should I say manuscript, now? (I'm so excited, now that I can rightly call it that!) I haven't touched the thing or even looked at it, and I won't until Saturday, but I've set about learning as much as I can about editing from the internet. I've found a lot of helpful information, and taken notes, since apparently I need to be documenting something. One thing I've found is different editing methods, which I'll share with you briefly.

There's of course the "Read-Through" method, which was my original plan, where you read through the manuscript slowly and make writing/plot/etc changes as you go, then rinse and repeat until all that's fixed and do one last read-through for grammar and punctuation and things.

Another method (used by Veronica Roth, as I learned this from one of her own blog posts) is what I'm going to call "Giant List of Doom Editing". She reads through the entire manuscript quickly and compiles a Giant List of all the problems with it, then separates the list into Global and Local problems and possible solutions, and applies the edits to her manuscript in sections. She also used this program called Scrivener, which I really really want to try now.

The Giant List of Doom method is really appealing to me, but since I don't want to see the last bits of my manuscript for a bit longer I don't think I'll use it. I would also have a problem with the second part of her method, which is applying edits by section, as my manuscript technically only has three chapters- the prologue(4 pages), Chapter One(6 pages) and Chapter Two(403 pages). This is because I stopped seeing the natural breaks in the story as I wrote and was really paranoid about making chapters too short, so I left that mess for myself in editing. Thank you, Past Me. It's making the thought of editing really daunting because I just have this monstrosity of a document to look at, and.... yeah.

I'll stick to the original plan and see how my editing methods change as I become comfortable with it. Maybe I'll go through and break it into chapters first before properly reading it, to make myself feel better. Once I start hopefully I'll just be able to edit and won't have to worry about the philosophy of it.

I'll keep you updated on my progress and wavering mental status when I begin. For now, I'm just letting myself enjoy the temporary reprieve and get other stuff like schoolwork done(like finally deciding how I am preparing for my AP tests) as I get psyched up for it. I'm honestly really excited for the next step.

Problems I'm Thinking About:
-chapters
-general suckage
-character consistency
-what is the title going to be??

End of Book One

11:35 PM 4/20/2013

It's done.

I just finished the first complete draft of my first manuscript. Ever.

Hold on, let me do math for a second...

It's been 536 days since I started.

I can't believe this.

Final Word Count: 191,169

Now I'm going to go surf the internet and grin like an idiot until I come down from this high and can go to sleep. Goodnight, everyone.

Tomorrow I'll start planning the edits.

Sweating

I've been sitting on my bed all day trying to get these last two scenes out. Two. Two more sentences in my outline. I've been listening to classical music and Walls by Benton Paul-things that I've been waiting to pull up and use for these very scenes to set the mood. I'm so close.

I've been writing about the last night in this story for two days now, and I'm losing my mind with it. I can't get a fast word count out because I'm so flitty and excited, but hopefully what I am writing is decent. I also keep having to go back through earlier parts of the story to remind myself of certain characters that haven't been present for a while.

The suspense is killing me. By this time tomorrow I could have written a book.

-fidgets-

Back to writing now. I'll let you know when I get there.

Current Word Count: 188,992

On Style

Looking through my sketches, a lot of them are just character designs- my sketchbook is filled with people, as that's what I usually like to draw. Here's some pulled from my sketchbook that show how my characters tend to dress.

I call this dapper gentleman Simon Tylor[subject to change]. He's a minor character, but he was escorting the main character to a ball, so I drew him to get out of a rut when I wrote that part last July. In this fancier getup I decided to draw most of my inspiration from seventeenth century styles. Seventeenth century has since been where I get the basic shape for most male characters, but I'll never be comfortable enough with those tights so it's been modernized somewhat. Women's styles in the story I usually create drawing from Renaissance art.

On the left is a Renaissance girl, not one of my characters, but a sketch that shows what I have in the back of my mind designing the women. I modernize their outfits to my liking a bit as well. The story isn't technically in a different time period, just removed from ours and lacking an industrial revolution since hey, magic. On the right is another design, not taken strictly from the Renaissance, but also relevant to the styles in my book.

I realize that what the characters are wearing isn't of the utmost importance, but I'm very visual and it's part of how I immerse myself in the world. I draw to make it real to me and to make me able to see the characters and how they would interact and move within a scene and with others. And let's face it, I like pretty dresses.

I hope y'all liked the drawings!

Current Word Count: 187,767

Last Panic

I've had yet another unproductive week. I'm kind of stuck at this one point because I feel it might not fit into the story well, even though it was in my original outline. I've decided to write it anyway to give myself the option to take it out when I edit, but it's really awkward and hard to write when I'm constantly doubting myself. I'm also afraid writing something really awkward might mess me up for the ending scenes, which are supposed to be really nice and heart-warming and fun and I'm sooo excited to write them. Part of this is probably nerves- the procrastinator in me is freaking out that I might actually finish something and is stomping on the brakes, but I'll push through. -dramatic music-

I just went through all my sketchbooks from the past couple years and pulled anything slightly related to the story, which was surprisingly little-eleven sketches. One of which Picasa somehow shrunk down to one blue pixel, so I'll have to upload it again. The amount of things I've irreparably screwed up by hitting the wrong button is too large to count. (also why I have my manuscript saved online and in three other places)

So here's one- From a moment in the prologue. But believe me this character comes into play later as well. Just much, much later.

 Yes, that one is missing a finger. It'll all make sense later. Eventually.

Current Word Count: 183,793

Character Sketches

These are four stylized character profiles from a while ago. Bear with me-I really cannot draw older people well, which is why the bottom right is so strange looking. Will learn.

From left to right, top to bottom: Main character Elle, Queen Daniella, Officer Daryn, and Advisor Darius.
More sketches to come, once I charge my camera and stop being lazy. (ha)
I'm now realizing how old these are and thinking I might redo them. We'll see.

Also, I haven't written that much due to a huge project this week. I ended up presenting the thing in the school auditorium and it was quite a trial. Glad it's over.

Current Word Count: 183,686

The End! Kindofsortofnotreallyyet

Good news for anyone interested in NaNoWriMo- "Camp NaNoWriMo" begins today! I'll put it up on the links list, I actually didn't know when it began until logging onto Facebook a minute ago. It's just like the November run, it seems, only for April.
Speaking of which, April is National Poetry Month. I have at least one friend participating in a Poetry Month challenge, and she'll be writing a poem every day, and I think posting it on her tumblr blog. I'll link to that as well, I guess; it's called Misused Words. I'm not much of a poet myself, but I think my English Lit teacher is planning to have our class do something.

As for my own story, I know I've said this before (kind of) but I'm almost done with my first draft. Seriously; I only have the final showdown and then the resolution, and I'm incredibly pumped. My word count is severely behind schedule, but seeing as I'm so close missing my Easter deadline wasn't that disappointing. I'm waiting until I'm actually done before setting a deadline for the edits, but I think I might shoot for my graduation this June-a deadline that is probably wishful thinking, as I know I left myself a lot of work in editing.

In other news about my personal life I just recently sent my first deposit in to my College of choice! This means, for those not "in the know" about American colleges, that the first check has been mailed and I am, upon the check's arrival to the school, officially enrolled for the coming Fall. I'm very excited as I love the school I chose and their art department is amazing. I know less about their English department, but it's a very well-known school and I doubt I'll be disappointed based on what I've seen thus far. I can't wait to be immersed in what I love- both the subjects and the process of learning. I plan on a double major in Studio Art and whatever Writing major they have (the terminology changes for each institution and I forget theirs at the moment). I've also been playing recently with the idea of minoring in History as well. We'll see, I suppose. But all this is very invigorating, and I feel that teenage sense of stagnation lifting finally.

Current Word Count: 179,654
[for now Blogger doesn't seem to be letting me add links to the list so they're http://misusedwords.tumblr.com and http://campnanowrimo.org]

Progress and Ignorances

I'm really getting stuff done! I'm at a point in the story that I've been waiting to write for forever, and felt like I would never get there. It's exciting! Of course I have no idea what I'm doing, as it involves a war and I'm really lost with army rankings and strategy and such, so I'm mostly fudging it. We'll see if it comes out horribly. If any of you know about military ranking systems, I'd love for you to explain it to me! I've looked it up, of course, and gotten a better feel for it but it's still hard for me to understand because I've had no prior exposure to it.

I'm about a week and a half behind in my word count due to a huge school project a couple weeks ago that killed my momentum, but I'm making it up quickly. I've passed the 150k mark! That's so exciting to me. It's funny that I care so much about these landmarks and yet I always just write right through them and realize a few hundred words later.

I was procrastinating last night and looking through my blogs and I noticed I don't actually have many sketches up here. When I have bad writing habits I've found that I tend to draw more, so I have quite a few from those five months I did nothing. I'll look through them and post a couple.

Current Word Count: 160,991

Caught My Breath

So it's been three months and I have finally begun writing regularly again. I've been in a real funk the past five or so months, and feel that I'm finally coming out of it. Of course I may have just jinxed myself, but let's hope not. It's not that I'm really inspired to write, but I finally feel decent enough that when I sit down I want to, and once I do I am able to get into that where-did-the-time-go zone of it where I write a thousand or so words without once looking at my progress. I'm slowly getting over my disappointment in myself that I didn't have the first draft done by Christmas, but I've now set another goal; Easter. If I keep up at the pace I've been holding for the past two weeks I should be able to get there. Of course I don't know how many thousands of words I will need to complete the story-originally I thought I would be done in 150k but I realize now it's going to be a bit longer than that-but I think another fifty thousand should at least get me close. It's funny how, after writing so much, and after a summer of writing roughly 10k a week for two months, that doesn't seem like so much anymore. Once I finish this book I wonder whether it will be easier or harder to complete NaNoWriMo.

Current Word Count: 140,504