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'?
4 years ago, on August 23 2006, I started blogging. It was a way of telling the universe that I was committed to writing – for real this time.
I started on blogger, and you can read from the beginning up until August 2008 (when I moved to WordPress) @ http://dustandstrangerthings.blogspot.com/ – but only until the end of January when I’ll finally be taking it down.
That first post was anything but elegant, but it made it’s point:
So why start a blog?
I know people who have blogs. Many people who have them say they are a good release for what goes on in their lives. Others, who I’m sure I’ll relate to more, say it’s a good excuse to not write.
You see I’m an author. No, I’m not published yet, but stranger things have happened. I’m part of a writing group, I try to write part of my novel everyday, and I’m serious about what I’m writing… doesn’t that make me an author?
When I started blogging I was on Chapter 5 of my very 1st novel, a science fiction novel that took place on another world and tackled issues like genetic alteration, racism, and coming of age. It didn’t have a title but I called it Mikayla’s Story. It turned out to be a very bad first novel, but I learnt from it and my writing grew.
More importantly, 2006 was the year I started to make plans and goals about my future. On my birthday of that year (which is in January) I wrote down 4 goals that I wanted to have accomplished in four years – by the end of 2009 or by January of 2010. They weren’t all writing goals, in fact only one was, but it was a good starting place.
These were the goals: By the end of 2009 I will…
1) …Be Published (once, and on my way to #2)
2) …Have gone on a warm-local vacation (Several if at all possible)
3) …Have bought a house/ condo
4) …Be engaged
So this is how I did:
1) I have been published 5 times, all in 2009 (in my timezone). All of them were short stories.
2) I went to Cuba. Only one warm-local vacation in the last 4 years but it was good.
3) I bought a house with my (at the time) common-law boyfriend in April of 2008. We also bought two dogs from an animal rescue society. It’s not part of the goal but they are very happy additions to the house.
4) I got engaged to my long time boyfriend in September of 2009.
I accomplished all of my goals. Now to set some new ones.
By the end of 2013 (four years from now) I will…
1) … Have two novels published.
2) … Have several smaller works (short stories, novellas, etc) published.
3) … Be married.
4) … Have quite my day job.
#1 & #2 are what being a writer is all about, gotta get my work out there.#3 will be easy (the date is already picked) and #4 will be very hard but I think do-able.
The Digest Version of “2009 in review”:
Projects Started/ Finished: FINISHED – the novel “Ice Debt”, my first script for a short animation film, several short stories.
STARTED – the novel “Riot Girl” will be finished by the end of January.
Event Highlights: – I was interviewed on CityTV news in April for the book launch of “Seven Deadly Sins”.
- I attended Con-Version 25 in Calgary and was on a panel called “Women who don’t kick butt: can they still win hearts and minds.”
- Live interview on Absolute Xpress’ BlogTalkRadio Show for Creatures of the Night Chart Rush
Submissions: ACCEPTED – I submitted to the first and second Flash Fiction Challenge’s by Absolute Xpress, and I submitted to the first ever Chinese Whisperings Anthology.
REJECTED – Submitted 2 stories to OnSpec and Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, I also submitted a Novella to Writers of the Future.
Personal Events: I got engaged, I think that’s the biggest highlight of the year.
So if you’ve been reading along, you know that on Thursday, November 24, I re-decided to win NaNoWriMo. And when I posted my re-decision on November 26, I had to write 25,000 words (half of the monthly total) in 5 days.
Now to prove my ineptitude at keeping to a daily schedule I’ve posted my word count chart from NaNoWriMo below. As you can see the last few days were interesting – the orange lines being what I actually wrote and the blue what I should have written.
And thanks to my love affair with twitter, I can give you a record of how those last few days went.
November 25th (3,742 words)
A normal ordinary day, with a lot of writing involved.
- 1380 words in 30 minutes. Now I need to get food before my lunch break is over. Only 3480 more words to meet today’s goal – sigh
- I wrote 779 in 21 minutes. Gotta pick it up. Still have 2000 words to go today.
- Today I broke the 25K mark on my #nanowrimo novel. Only half a novel left to write… in 5 days. Head-Desk-Smack (8:09 pm)
November 26th (2,007 words)
I’d made the commitment. 5,000 words a day. I could so do that. Right?
- My week 2 & 3 #nanowrimo recap. Still trying to make it for 50K by Monday. http://www.tinahunter.ca/20…(11:19 AM)
But that night I had problems with a scene, not the scene I was writing of course but a scene that was coming up and it was distracting me. I couldn’t figure out who to kill. So I turned to twitter and people actually responded – lots of people:
- #nanowrimo ’s help me chose which minor character to kill off -either will change the whole story. A) rebel leader or B) rebel leaders wife?
- Thanks 4 the votes. I guess I’m killing the Rebel leader. The wife gets surprise revenge
But in the end, I didn’t write that scene. I got close but I just couldn’t finish.
- Goodnight all. Alas it was only a #2kday My wordcount will be better tomorrow. (9:27 pm)
November 27th (3,027)
Ah, Fridays. Normally a relaxing day at the office. A good day for writing, yes. No. Not this Friday. But I still got a good word count going:
- I wrote 2701 words in 63 minutes with Write or Die. Up to 3067 for today and broke 30K total.
And I finally wrote that scene where I had to kill off a character and it looks like I didn’t need to poll the audience:
- Who knew? I got 2 the scene & both the rebel leader & his wife got killed
Then a shocking revelation about my plot, or lack there of:
- I have maybe 2k words before I officially have no more plot. And I still have 20k words left to write. I guess I’ll be winging it
November 28th (gave up – 0 words)
Yeah, I didn’t write on Saturday. The fact that I was missing a whole section of plot didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to write. I had it all planned out. But something about walking into the office felt hopeless, pointless. It wasn’t until we went out to a birthday party for a friend that I remembered that I write because I love to tell stories and that was more important that a silly word count goal (normally).
But regardless it re-inspired me to write on Sunday.
November 29th (5,690 words)
And write I did, but still wasn’t enough.
- 20k… 2 days… Can I call in sick to work tomorrow?
I didn’t, just in case you were wondering. And at the end of the day I felt like giving up once again.
- I just had a #5kday. #NaNoWriMo total at 36229. Close but I’m not going to make 50k, maybe 40k by tomorrow. Oh well, I tried.
November 30th (13,843 words)
Yet, for some reason when I got up on the morning of November 30th, I felt like I could do it. I didn’t look at the number of words I had to write I just started writing. And kept going.
It started with a hand written section of over 1,000 words written during a seminar (and surprisingly I was still able to listen to what the guy was saying – ok more like kind of):
- #NANOWRIMO update: 37,256 words. Written 1,067 so far. Now for lunch hour to bring me closer. (11:30 am)
And my lunch hour was very productive, as was my afternoon break:
- Just wrote 2000 words in 48 minutes. New #nanowrimo total after lunch is 39,256 words. Almost at 40K. W00T! (12:56 pm)
- I wrote 1178 in 28 minutes. New #nanowrimo total at 40,434. Only 9,566 words left to write in 8.5 hours. This might actually be doable. (3:30 pm)
Then I went home, tried to fix my Internet, gave up and let D do it, made supper, and then sat down for 5 hours to write. I’ll let the tweets do the talking:
- Only 6341 more words needed to hit 50k. I’ve already written 7430. 4 hours left. Fingers crossed (8:10 pm)
- 3777 words left. 2 and half hours left to go. (9:31 pm)
- 1311 words left. A little over an hour to go. Still can’t believe I’ve written 12,460 words so far today. (10:40 pm)
- I DID IT! I wrote 13,843 today alone & finished w 50,067 words total. Done & validated with 30 minutes to spare. Now 2 bed. (11:37 pm)
It’s been a roller coaster of a ride, but the funny thing was I didn’t expect to be as happy as I was. At 11:30pm I validated my novel and when I saw that purple bar with the word “Winner” I did a little happy dance.
Now this novel isn’t finished yet. I have 2 or 3 chapters left before this draft is done (and rewriting this one is going to be awful because I turned off the spell checker – yuck). But I almost have two novels written. Two novels in one year (if we ignore the fact that the other one took me 1.5 years to finish).
I’m thrilled that this is over but I have a lot of chores to do around the house to make it up to D for being so supportive of my crazy writing month. I’m very glad that in the end I didn’t get left behind.
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.
It’s day 1 (9 hours into this event) and I’m still really excited about NaNoWriMo, so I thought I would share some more information about the book I’m writing this month.
Allow me to introduce my main characters:
Someone on twitter mentioned that Roman looks like Malcom Reynolds from FireFly. That wasn’t my intention. The Myrith culture is all about class structure and practical dirt-side clothing with a bit of old school fashion sense, so I was going for a mix of Western and Victorian – but hey maybe having a tie to FireFly is a good thing (PS: I loved that show).
Also, I’ve created an outline of sorts for my Novel. I explained it in a NaNoWriMo forum, but I’ll post it here for your enjoyment as well.
I use a very rough outline for my novels. It’s normally only 10 to 13 bullet points, however I try to make sure that I follow the three act structure. So…
- MC in normal setting
- Something happens (MC removed from setting, setting changed, setting threatened)
- MC enters the “New” (MC forced to address the something that has happened)
- Problem 1
- Group of Allies (and/or antagonist reveal – if not done already)
- Problem 2
- Small win (or defeat)
- Problem 3
- No Turning back (the event that causes the MC to give 110% – examples: an important death/ learn something of value)
- The Show Down (the climax)
- The ending (whether its happy or sad, the MC must either go back to original setting, realize she can’t, or realize he doesn’t want to)
You can add more or less problems (events that escalate tension and are obstacles for your MC to overcome) depending on your story. Also, remember that this plot structure doesn’t work for all stories. It works best for “hero” stories, normally found in genre fiction.
And in case your interested, Act One is “MC in Normal Setting” to “MC enters the New”, Act Two is from “Problem 1″ to “Problem 3″ (the bulk of your story), and Act Three is from “No Turning Back” to “The End”.
I can’t let you in on ALL the points of my outline, but I might let a couple out here and there. Probably when I’m having troubles (fingers crossed that doesn’t happen too much).
Ok, no more. Must get back to writing. I’ve got a local Write-In in a few hours: Writing on the Rails (we’re taking over a couple transit train cars to write in – should be fun).
