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.