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 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).
Thursday (Dec 11) – 3,839 words on Gift of Talismans and edited 3 sections (and I finished it)
Wow. Talk about writing up a storm.
Gift of Talismans is finished however it is only edited up to the 3/4 mark. I’ll spend tonight editing the rest and then send it out to my readers for comments.
My Beloved Child pitch is dying before it was really born. I’ll still try to encourage people to vote for it over the next 7 days but I’ve already missed the deadline for week one. It’s alright though. Perhaps I’ll build a following slowly and the next time Zeros 2 Heros has a contest I’ll actually be able to compete (for more info on my pitch please click on the link: http://www.zeros2heroes.com/pitch/864).
