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Thursday, May 27, 2010

The Reading Rant

I think this applies to writing.*




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*For those who don't know, this is my non-writing blog.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Discovery Writing

I’ve been thinking about Discovery Writing lately, partially due to an episode of Writing Excuses. I’ve probably said this before, but I’m a hardcore outliner. I outline everything. I don’t like writing so much as a scene without having some idea of what’s going to happen. I went kind of crazy on the outline for TR.

But, I think I might try discovery writing in the near-ish future, if only for an experiment. Urban fantasy, I’m thinking. Premise? Nada. I still have to finish TR rough draft, CSH Version 2, and TR revisions before I move onto Unknown New Project.

On another note, I’ve decided not to go to CONduit this year. I’m a little sad about it, but I think it’s for the best. I can only attend Saturday, and the workshops that day don’t exactly enthrall me. So I’m choosing to save money rather than attend, which means I probably won’t get to go to another convention until LTUE in February.

Hopefully no one will be passing out free contracts.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Meet Ranny

I've introduced "Ranny" into my story, which means I've officially established my four main characters. Despite my outline, I feel like I'm discovery writing all her scenes. Weird.

Rough draft. It's okay if it's a rough draft...

Other note: Did 3x word count the last two days. :D

Friday, May 21, 2010

Commissioned Art

My friend Sara held a random drawing a couple weeks back to do a free commission. (I had her do a commission for me a while back for a story I almost finished.*) And, lo and behold, my name was drawn. Cue me being ecstatic.

I had a one-character limit, which meant no cool book scenes or group pictures. Obviously I was going to choose between a character from CSH or TR. And, though I have near-exact references for him, I almost asked her to do a portrait of Flad, one of CSH’s two protagonists (and my favorite character, personally). But, in the end, I chose a simple picture of Esrov, the protagonist for TR (which is currently at chapter five). I chose him over the other TR characters in part because I have no references of him whatsoever.

So yeah. I’m excited. I’ll post a link to the picture here when it’s done.

On a side note, I really hate how the soap in the break room makes my hands smell.


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*This story is The Prayer of Haradis, which was not only my first attempt at adult fantasy, but at romantic fantasy. The entire story is told over about ten years and is written out of chronological order. It had a lot of weak points, but before The Oracle Seals, TPH was the closet I’d ever come to finishing a novel. Someday I might come back to it and revamp, perhaps. I like the title, lol. It had less emphasis on magic and more emphasis on creatures, hence the centaur in the picture.

The picture is of Fayf and Ramus, the two main characters from TPH.

Though, in all honesty, the harpies were my favorite. :D

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Back on Top of Things

After taking a short word-count hiatus, I’m back into writing daily. I’m currently on chapter two of The Raimos, which is turning out to be much longer than I thought it would be. There’s a little struggle here and there, but that’s to be expected with a brand new project. I’m [very] slowly getting a feel for Esrov, my protagonist. He’s different from my other protagonists, and sometimes I worry I won’t keep him in character. So far I think I’ve done all right. Definitely doing a lot more with his home life than I thought I would. (Curse his many siblings . . .)

I have to keep reminding myself that this is a rough draft, and it’s okay if it sucks. For now. It’s weird going back to rough draft creation when I spent three months revising. Thus my stubbornness to go back to daily word count, methinks. How many words do I have so far? No idea. I put each chapter into an individual document, and I don’t count until the book is done. I like the surprise.

So far I’ve had two people finish CSH, both of whom read it in 24-hour periods. That’s a good sign, right? Only one gave me comments, and boy, did he send me a LOT of comments. I read through them and agree with pretty much everything he says. AKA* I have a lot of work to do on CSH, but that will be in the future, not now. I shan’t abandon my Eskimo-esque, blue-orb worshipping people for my circus. (I’m starting to wonder if TR is going to be a lot longer than I had originally supposed . . .)

Unrelated news:

For those who didn’t know, I’m engaged. And I’m very happy about it.

I've also started a new job as a technical writer for Fusion-io. I don't get to write about magical powers or anything, but hey, so far, so good. They have free juice.

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*I’m aware I don’t use AKA correctly. But I like my way.