I write because my passion is to tell people stories.
Stories of love and hate, of fear and hope. Stories where good people do bad things and bad people do good things. Stories of lives that are unexpected, horrible and beautiful.
I write these things because I believe they are true in real life, therefore should be in fiction too. But not matter what I write, I always seem to be asking 'why'?
Perhaps the most admired writing talent in the science fiction field.
I’m actually really flattered by this quiz result.
Ursula K. Le Guin has published twenty-one novels (including the Earthsea Series), eleven volumes of short stories, three collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation, and has received many awards.
I can only dream to one day say I’ve published as much.
Not only are the people on their crazy (yes I include myself in that statement) but they’ve started a chain story in the discussions forum.
I encourage you all to head over a take a peek.
As for submissions, I haven’t sent out any stories so far this year. My friends Jodi Cleghorn and Krista Ball were recently accepted into the 3rd Flash Fiction Challenge. Congrats to you two! I did not submit to the challenge this time around.
I’ll send something out into the universe soon. When I do, you’ll be the first to know.
Well the count down has begun. A little over three days until Christmas eve and whether you celebrate the day or not we all have a few vacation days coming up in advance of the new year.
Just wanted to take this moment to wish you all a wonderful end of the year.
Pre-Xmas Updates:
Ice Debt (novel) – Draft One complete. Draft two underway
Riot Girl (novel) – Draft one 98% complete.
Wall of Night (script) – to be blessed by exec before new years eve.
Chinese Whisperings: Red Book (Anthology) – will be released on January 1st.
We’ll chat soon.
PS: 2009 marks the end of a five year goal list for me. I’ll tell you all about them in my “2009 in Review” post.
I’ve just hit the 30,000 word mark on my novel. Only 20,000 more to go in three days.
And as daunting as that sounds, my bigger problem is this:
I’m currently standing with MC1 teaming up with MC2 to spy on the bad guys and find a way to defeat them – and I somehow have to get MC1 to overthrow the bad guys and MC2 to finally get revenge.
Now besides obviously figuring out how to defeat the bad guys, I don’t have any more plot points to help get my MC’s get to “The End”. None. Nothing. Just some general walking around, spy talk, and maybe blowing up a building (I don’t know why but it sounds like fun).
Now, I know some people are saying to just through in some super ninja monkeys and tiger zombies and I’ll magically hit 50K, but the real reason I wanted to take this challenge was to prove that it was possible to write something with a decent plot in 30 days (not that you can’t write a decent plot with super ninja monkeys or tiger zombies they just don’t fit into my novel right now)
Now writing something with a decent plot in 30 days may prove impossible, but regardless of that point…. I’m in a little bit of trouble here. I will need to come up with a large portion of my plot very quickly.
(PS: I’ve never had this problem before. It’s always been that I over planned my stories and got bored. But NaNoWriMo is anything but boring.)
Needless to say, the next three days should be interesting.
UPDATE: Just remembered the Seventh Sanctum website. It’s totally going to save my butt.
I have no fancy stats for you today. Only an apology that I haven’t continued to update you on my novel writing progress.
Essentially, my week two word count total looked like this:
Days 8-13 = 0
Day 14 = 1000
And my week three word count total looked like this:
Day 15 = 2000
Day 16 = 1760
Days 17 -21 = 0
On November 22, I should have been at 36,667 words. I was at 19,257. In the latest NaNoWriMo pep talk I’m part of the 3rd NaNo Writer group. The “Go On Without Me” group.
I could rattle off a list the length of my arm with excuses, but I won’t bore you with the details. Yes, I had a lot to do this month and yes I chose to spend it doing things other than writing this novel (because there was writing involved, but I digress). We all have busy lives and it’s how we “chose” to spend our time that matters.
So on November 23, just before I went to bed I checked out a few of my friends NaNoWriMo stats. Two of them had already met the 50,000 word goal. A little purple banner was next to their names with brilliant white text that read “Winner”.
I wanted one.
So I got up the next morning and wrote 2,438 words. Yesterday I wrote 3,742 words.
According to a bunch of word count calculators, I have to write just under 5,000 words for the next 5 days to win.
I’m calling all of my bosses (because I have multiple jobs) and asking if I can push back a couple of deadlines. Some I can’t, but some I can.
I’m hopeful that I can do it, even though I’m asking myself to write half of a novel in 5 days.
We’ll chat on Tuesday, December 1st, and you’ll find out if I made it or if everyone went on without me
The daily goal all NaNoWriMo’ers try to meet is 1667 words per day. So far I’m doing pretty good at reaching that (so why can’t I do this during the other 11 months of the year?). I did mess up on Day 5 (I had a huge migraine) and on Day 7 but I made up for Day 5 on Day 6 and plan to do the same on Day 8. Now, let’s recap Week One of this literary adventure…
Word Counts (novel total after the dash, goals in brackets):
Day One: 3,395 – 3,395 (1,667) – Sunday
Day Two: 2,715 – 6,110 (3,333)
Day Three: 2,310 - 8,420 (5,000)
Day Four: 2,065 – 10,485 (6,667)
Day Five: 715 – 11,200 (8,333)
Day Six: 3,444 – 14,644 (10,000)
Day Seven: 1,190 – 15,834 (11,667) – Saturday
Novel Stats For Week One:
Number of People Killed off Screen: 1 planet + 997 thousand (Mothership 255) + 25 (Planet Tarton)
Number of People Killed on Screen: 8
Violent Acts done to the Main Characters: 1 rape/beating
Violent Acts done by the Main Characters: Blew up a planet by mistake + destroyed numerous Myrith Arrows
Phrase from the Villain: “Oh my. Did your balls just drop, boy? How interesting.” – Corin Macias
Phrase from the Minor Character: “Um, Sir. Did you have a plan? I mean besides relying on my perfect piloting skills and pure dumb luck?”- BensonWats
At the end of this week you are on which Chapter: Halfway through Chapter 4
Other:
I know what you’re thinking. That’s a lot of really bad things happening to your main characters, what’s the deal? I think I answered this on Twitter by posted that “I’m emotionally destroying my characters so I can rebuild them into heroes”, and my friend Michell agrees with me (I think) saying “No pain/mutilation, no gain/retribution”.
There was this forum on NaNoWriMo.org that asked you to create a PostSecret for your character. I did one for Tori when I really should have been writing on day 4 but hey I still think it’s cool.
Also, I mentioned in my supplemental post I created a very basic outline for my novel. This novel has 15 plot points (two are place holders that just say “something big & bad happens” but I’ll work on those). I am already on point number 5 which reads “Harper infiltrates the Myrith system and arrives on Mothership 255″. I think that my outline (and story overall) will take more than 50,000 words to tell but at least 50K will give me a great head start.
How did your first week of NaNoWriMo go? Did you meet your goals? Have any favorite stats or phrases you wish to post?
Not participating this year? No problem, but you can still leave me a comment anyway (I need the encouragement).
