My First Writing Session of 2013!

After several months of inaction on the writing front, I have emerged a conqueror of writer's block.  I was able to add only a couple paragraphs over the weekend to "The Shepherdess Princess," but I'm still counting it as a victory because I haven't written anything new in so long.

I'm not sure yet when I'll get to make any more progress because I have to spend this coming weekend doing Spring cleaning.  Maybe I'll add a little more to my manuscript during a break from cleaning from time to time.

Beware the Inner Editor...

I've been trying really hard since I wrote my last blog entry to write a single word down in one of my novels, but my well feels like it has run dry.  I did have a few lines of a poem thought out a couple weeks ago, but I didn't have my notebook, or a pen handy.  The inevitable happened, and I couldn't remember a single word of the poem after I rushed to get a pen and paper.   I do have an idea forming in my head for the continuation of the chapter I'm writing in "The Shepherdess Princess," but that involves a little bit of a rewrite to make the transition flow better into the scene I plan on keeping and continue with the story from there.  It's not going to be a massive rewrite, but I'm kind of dreading sitting down to type it out because I don't want my inner editor to think she has free reign over the rest of the story up to that point, and she's already tried to get me to think of tidbits I could add in about one of my other characters earlier in the manuscript.  I think I will eventually succumb to my inner editor's bidding because I want to add more of a story line pertaining to a certain character, but I'm trying to keep her at bay until creatively I'm prepared to tackle what she wants me to do.  I'm also afraid if I add too much here and there in the beginning that I'll end up straying from the plot, and any potential readers of the final product would be very confused.

I have been spending a lot of my time lately reading several books.  The list is too extensive to share completely, but they have mainly been vampire-themed.  I'm currently reading "The Queen of the Damned" by Anne Rice which is the third book in the Vampire Chronicles.  I have requested book number four from the library: "The Tale of the Body Thief" since I'm almost done reading book number three.  Out of the entire series, "Interview With the Vampire," and "The Queen of the Damned" are the only ones that have been made into movies so far.

Happy New Year...

I can't believe another year has come and gone.  As a New Year and a new day dawns, I have thought of at least one resolution for myself to strive for:  I want to finish, and publish "The Shepherdess Princess."  I've been working on the manuscript for almost four years now, and I'm finally starting to "hear" from my characters again.  Last night I had a dream where my main male character asked me to help save his love.

I've been doing a lot of reading for the month of December to pass the time.  I've read: "Hidden" by PC and Kristin Cast; "Labyrinth: A Greywalker Novel" by Kat Richardson; "Twilight," "New Moon," and "Eclipse" by Stephenie Meyer; "Spirit Bound" by Richelle Mead; and "A Candlelit World" by Sara Megan Kay & Amanda Waley (Yes, I re-read a book I co-authored!  :) ).

So far in January, I've read "Downpour: A Greywalker Novel," and "Seawitch: A Greywalker Novel" by Kat Richardson; and "Eclipse" by Stephenie Meyer.  I'm currently reading "The Lincln Lawyer" by Michael Connelly.

I've also returned to working on "The Shepherdess Princess."  That's one of the reasons I haven't been able to come online very often lately.

The first update in a month...

I  threw myself into my writing on November 17th to help me cope with the third anniversary of my dad's death.  I haven't felt so accomplished in a long time.  My word count went from 4,400 to 6,414 in a span of nine hours.  I have more to come, of course, rattling around in my brain that I have yet to commit to paper.  I finally stopped writing in my notebook when my hand started to cramp up really bad, and I still wanted to write more in spite of the pain.  Is that crazy, or what?

It wasn't even close to the 50,000 word count I was hoping for, but I'm not too disappointed because I was writing almost daily for most of the month at my own pace.  The novel has been giving me one heck of a ride creatively.  I've had the beginning of the story for a while, and a couple weekends ago I was focused on writing the ending of it.  Now that I have all that out of the way, maybe I can finally focus on the middle part for a change.  :)  It's also been interesting having one of the characters based on an ex-boyfriend because I find myself at times sprinkling in tidbits here and there in the novel of why our relationship never worked out.  That's a new experience for me as the story progresses.  I also feel like I've been on an emotional rollercoaster writing some of those parts as well, but I've safely got off the ride since then and try not to dwell too long on more emotions if they come along again.

I've been thinking about providing my blog readers with a teaser of "Magic In Their Blood," but I have yet to choose what it will be. The scenes I've written so far that I've thought about sharing seem to be giving too much away, so it may be awhile before I deem anything in the novel share-worthy!

I guess I have to continue writing "The Shepherdess Princess" soon.  I was informed by my brother that one of my loyal blog readers is wanting to know when it is going to be completed, so they could get a copy.  The teaser I shared a while ago left them wanting more!  I was heading towards the Final Conflict in the story when I worked on "The Shepherdess Princess" last.  I stopped because NaNoWriMo was starting up this year, and I couldn't use the same novel I worked on in a previous year.  I've liked having the time away from it because I was starting to get blocked the last time I tried to produce anything for it.  It wasn't a normal case of writer's block for me because I knew where I wanted the story to go, but I felt like I was starting to beat my head against the wall trying to figure out how to get there from my stopping point.  Prince Philippe and Jazelle had stopped "talking" to me for a bit, and letting me know where they want to go from there.

I had three or four books listed that I was currently reading on Goodreads.com that I can now report that I've completed reading them all.  I read a couple library books: one of which was "The Racketeer" by John Grisham.  I've been in a Vampire-mode with Anne Rice's book "The Vampire Lestat", and then I finished reading "Sense & Sensibility" by Jane Austen which I have been reading off and on for almost a year and a half now.  It took me so long to read "Sense & Sensibility" because the print was smaller than most of the books I read faster, and I would get really bad migraines when reading it too long.

I started reading "Emma" by Jane Austen when I remembered another book I was planning to read, so I'm only seven chapters into the Austen.  The other book I'm reading is "Labyrinth: A Greywalker Novel" by Kat Richardson.  Taken from the back cover of "Labyrinth:" "Harper Blaine was your average small-time PI  until she died--for two minutes.  Now Harper is a Greywalker, treading the thin line between the living world and the paranormal realm.  And she's discovering that her new abilities are landing her all sorts of 'strange' cases."

"Just back from London, Harper's convinced that the two-bit perp who killed her is a valuable cluein the puzzle of her past andte mystery of her missing father, as well as a key to figuring out who's trying to manipulate her powers and why.  There's just one problem: The man who killed her was murdered himself while she was away.  Luckily, Harper has an airtight alibi, but now to find the ghost of her killer--and rescue her father--she'll have to enter into the Grey.  And with her growing powers pulling her more deeply into that paranormal world, Harper's afraid she may not be able to come back out."

What got me wanting to read "Labyrinth" finally after reading the first four books in the series was Chaos.  Chaos is Harper Blaine's pet ferret in the series, and I was actually starting to miss her.  :)

Happy Veteran's Day...

Happy Veteran's Day to all!  Thank you to all the service men and women trying to keep the rest of us safe, both past and present.  I've been spending the day thinking about military families and what they have to go through.  Someone might be deemed a "single parent" while their loved one is serving overseas.  The adjustment the families have to make when their loved ones return home.

I'm actually starting to miss working on poetry, and especially getting inspiration at 21st Century Poets.  However, I just visited the site once again and it still has glitches they are trying to take care of, and one of my groups is still missing from the list because they are having problems getting in touch with the group moderator.

NaNoWriMo is going slower than I expected it to.  I haven't had many days that I haven't written anything in "Magic in their Blood," but the new scenes don't amount to the daily word count for the challenge.  I'm doing better this year than I have starting out with NaNoWriMo the past three years.  Strangely, reading Anne Rice has been helping me some in my novel.  It's weird because my novel doesn't encompass anything to do with mummies and vampires.  Although, there is a fantasy element to it that also shines through the Anne Rice  books that seems to be keeping me going in my story.

I do remember hearing recently that a reader can tell who an author's influences are by the way they write a novel.  If the author is into reading more than one genre, it shows in their work.  If the author only reads science fiction, for example, that also shows in their writing.  I would be one of those author's that is all over the board because I read sci-fi, mystery, courtroom thrillers, young adult, children's books, and fiction.  Basically, there hasn't been a section in my local library that I haven't found something interesting to read in which is probably why I feel like I haven't found a genre I want to stick with when it comes to my writing.

I've been thinking about hitting the library sometime during the week with my laptop to find a silent corner to write in.  There has been too many distractions at home.  The big one being one of my neighbors moved out last week and left the apartment next door to me in shambles.  So much so that my landlord had to hire someone to put new drywall in the apartment and my landlord and his brother have been banging away getting more stuff done, so the apartment can be rented out.

Daylight Savings Time Reminder...

I just wanted to post a friendly reminder for those that Daylight Savings Time affects to set your clocks back one hour tonight before you go to bed.  Yay!  An extra hour of sleep ahead of me.

NaNoWriMo is going better than I expected now that I'm three days into it.  The scenes that pop into my brain before I write them down are still all over the place, but I'm also starting to get glimpses of continuity that I didn't have before.  I've even been able to link a scene from my splice file into my manuscript and continue the story from there.

The way the scenes in my manuscript are going though startles me a bit.  The story seems to be progressing at a faster pace than I'm comfortable with, and I'm afraid I'll get to the major event in the novel way too soon.  I'll just have to wait and see as the month goes along.

NaNoWriMo is here...

It's that time of the year again!  No, I'm not talking about Halloween, but it's just as scary.  I'm talking about NaNoWriMo.  That time of the year when all participants stress levels soar through the roof as they attempt to complete a 50,000 word novel in 30 days!  I have been taking part in this insane ritual for the past three years, and have yet to make the 50,000 word mark.

The bummer is I found out that the rules state I can't already use a novel I've done before.  I have to start from scratch with a new novel each time.  OOPS!  I've been slaving away on the same novel for the past three years of WriMo's, and that rule was never brought to my attention before now.

Anyway, after having a friend on Facebook pick a number between 1 and 10, I picked "Magic In Their Blood" to be my NaNoWriMo novel this year, and set about spending last week gathering the few research notes I already had on it.  Suffice it to say, I don't know how much sleep I'll be getting this month.  My characters are already waking me up in the middle of the night to write scenes, and it's only been officially started for almost 8 hours now.  Ugh!  Coffee pot, here I come! :)

I ended up having to create a splice file separate from my "Magic In Their Blood" manuscript because I can't seem to think of one continuous scene clearly at the moment, but only get snippets of the story here and there.  It makes me feel scatter-brained all of a sudden.  I'm thinking my splice file will be my best friend this go around because I've barely got the second page of the novel started in the manuscript, and have about the same amount of pages in my splice file with scenes that come later in the story.  I'm surprised I've been able to transition pretty easily to MITB when at times I still have "The Shepherdess Princess" on the brain.

I don't like having to put "The Shepherdess Princess" on the back-burner for now, but rules are rules!  I have been kind of stuck with my progress in TSP anyway, so this may end up being the boost I need to get out of my writing rut long enough to finish that novel some time after Dec. 1st comes around.