Missed a day of NNWMing…

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Written by: on Sunday, November 20th, 2011

I seem to be struggling with something for the past few days. It started with a slight itching in the back of the throat and then went away the next day but it kept coming back in other forms. Now my nose keeps being stuffy and I just want to sleep all the time. Yesterday was the worst with this heavy dull throbbing in my head. I decided to let the day pass with a word count of zero.

Then I found out that the NNWM calendar widget is broken. All my days are red! I found out this is a known bug so when it gets fixed, there’ll be one red day to mar my green calendar (so far…). I did the math and found out that I’d need to do a little more than 2,300+ words today to get caught up.

I hammered it out today and brought my word total to 33,349.

I guess I’m waffling on my story again. I’m back to hating it. This book actually makes me understand what other people are going through. My other two books, I just did a straight shot to the end. There’s nothing else that had to be said or done. Just a straight adventure. This book, I know that if I were to ever edit it, it’d have to be seriously edited! It has to be split into chapters and then totally rewritten. I have to add so many scenes to make characters more known, to make readers relate to them somehow, to put in animals that I keep forgetting about, and on and on and on.

As I write this story, I keep being disappointed in where I presented a small group of men with dragons. They’re supposed to be more prominent? Instead, I barely touched on one or two guys in the group that interact with my main character and I still haven’t even decided or named the dragons for all of them.

Do I regret choosing this story? No. It’s pestered me for a couple years now to write it. Writing a story that takes place in another world other than my beloved world has taught me a few things, especially with the urge to really have to describe how certain things work. I’m still not satisfied with how I explained how the ‘magic banks’ work. I keep explaining it over and over to a friend of mine and she still doesn’t understand so I’m clearly not explaining it well. That’s why I know more scenes have to be pushed into the book if I ever get around to editing it after NNWM 2011 is done with.

Getting late in the night…

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Written by: on Sunday, November 13th, 2011

It’s sort of odd to sit here in the middle of the night when everything has crawled to a complete stop. I have no idea what to do. I’m not tired yet I am. Nothing’s on tv despite the fact that I have quite a few shows DVR’d. Everything’s muted or completely off, and I’m just sitting here by myself.

I guess I could start writing for today’s word goal but I am not in the mood to try to figure anything out so late. I guess I could try playing PuzzleQuest some. No thinking is required there except to keep an eye out where I can make a match of four.

I probably shouldn’t have had that hot cocoa. Hm.

Gingerbread Painting

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Written by: on Friday, November 11th, 2011

Finally started on the Gingerbread Flower Shop and I expect this one to be a breeze. The other pieces still need a lot of detailing before I can start sealing them up for outdoor use.

My writing is going ‘quicker’ as in that it’s not taking me all day long to make it to the daily goal of 1,667 words. It’s taking lesser time to get there but I am very eager to close Word down once I reach the goal. hehe. My MC is at a point where he’s still very confused by what’s going on and I know it’s my fault because I’m still struggling to get the characters to share information that he doesn’t know yet – which I guess is considered a good thing when one of the tips is to not put everything out there right away but what I’m trying to explain is not something that plays a big part in the story. Just trying to explain the mechanism of something, I suppose. Eh. Oh well. I’ll get it figured out.

And here’s Gypsy demonstrating that she doesn’t give a flying fig on what I’m about to do.

NaNoWriMo Word Count: 19,155

Weekly Photo Challenge: Wonder

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Written by: on Friday, November 11th, 2011

The Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenge: Wonder

The example image they provided for the photo challenge made me think of this sunflower picture that I took back in June. I loved how there was a spiraling pattern and how the edge was golden.

How quickly the tide changes.

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Written by: on Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

I finally made an important decision today concerning my story. I wasn’t going to allow myself to visit this scene until the 15th so that I know that I’m at least halfway through the story. With how I’ve been dragging my feet, hating the story in its entirety, and struggling to make anything else happen, I told myself that I would visit this scene today. I was going to finally allow this immortal being to confront my main character and do something horrible to him that would change his life forever!

Maybe it’ll be the best decision I’ve made thus far. I kind of like the immortal. It’s possible the second half of the story won’t be as short as I think it’ll be so keeping this scene until the 15th may have been impractical.

But I can honestly say that I don’t hate it as much as I did yesterday. I guess my frustration just built up to the point that I just had to cave in and let this scene happen in order to get on with the story.

I also saw on NaNoWriMo that they finally added the Word Count Widgets. I had my calendar image up for a couple days after hunting up last year’s code which surprisingly worked but it appears the code is the same so I needn’t change a thing. I love the calendar image. I don’t want any red days so it encourages me to write so that it’ll turn into a green day when I meet my goal. Heh!

My painting is still going strong. So far all that is left untouched is the Flower Shop by itself, and then two old gingerbread pieces that I am sure I’ll have painted and done. My father seems to have been bit by the painting bug. He wants to cut out a gingerbread Santa in a sleigh with a bunch of reindeer. At first I thought I would have to paint them as well but he made a remark about painting them himself. I’ll most likely help him because I’m pretty sure I’ll have the Flower Shop all done pretty quick after I get the two gingerbread folk and the two flower shop accessories all painted and sealed.

What music do I listen to when I’m painting and writing? They’re all usually classified under Dance/Electronica. Here. Have a sample!

Struggling to get away.

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Written by: on Tuesday, November 8th, 2011

I’m struggling to get away from this monster that’s hassling me for words! Words! He says I owe him words!

So bored of this story that I’ve been hammering out for NaNoWriMo. I seriously am. That’s what worries me. There’s no passion going into this story like the passion I had for last year’s story. I still have the notebook, still trying to jot down chicken scratches as I paint. I sit here and I don’t want to think about the story at all.

More and more, as I paint, I think of other things as I usually do and then I have to remind myself to focus on the story but a few seconds later, I’m already off on some other tangent because of something on tv or whatever.

Right now I have 332 words in Word. I expect to meet the goal before midnight. While I am sorely tempted to take a day off, I know it’ll lead to two days, three, four, and never write again for the rest of the month. I’m barely keeping my head up above the water as it is right now. According to my progress report, the most words I’ve written in one day so far is 1,859 back on the 4th.

I think this may be my last attempt to write about something going on in another world. I just keep thinking about my favorite characters in my usual fantasy world through this. Well, back to staring at Word and chicken scratches.

10,396 words banked thus far…

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Written by: on Sunday, November 6th, 2011

I think I have a routine down now. I struggled back and forth between painting and writing that I felt like I couldn’t get them both done. Now I have a notebook within arm’s reach so that when I’m painting, I can remind myself of the notes and what scenes I’ve thought up in order to write and meet the daily word goal. It’s worked for the past three days thus far so that I don’t spend forever staring at Word. Jotting down notes also helps me rearrange the pieces so that I don’t forget what little tidbits I might need down the road. At least I don’t feel as stressed… much.

Working on the last two gingerbread people, priming up two pieces from the Gingerbread Flower Shop set.

It also feels somewhat good to break 10,000 words. Now on to 25k and beyond.

Chocolate. Doesn’t stay melted so easily.

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Written by: on Saturday, November 5th, 2011

Day Five of NaNoWriMo. Word Count: 8,693

It’s still going along slowly. Still scraping the bottom of the barrel to grab the next scenes out of nowhere but still hoping I’ll break down a wall and find some adventure waiting to be told. 😉

My three gingerbread folks are finally sealed and done. Painting the other two gingerbread folk from this batch of “Gingerbread People” before I start on the pieces from the Gingerbread Flower Shop.

In the meanwhile, I was given a box of Wilton’s Halloween Candy Making Kit since it was on sale. Came with three plastic trays to squish all that colored chocolatey goodness into. Of course, it didn’t work out so well. Trying to juggle four different colors while some were hardening while I was trying to reheat the others. I gave up and just squished all the chocolate into the molds. After all was said and done, the taste of the chocolates reminds me of the chocolate Easter bunny. Tastes good, in other words. I guess I won’t be a Chocolatier any time soon…  but hey, the colorful mess sure is tasty.

Balancing Act

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Written by: on Thursday, November 3rd, 2011

I’m dancing as fast as I can and producing few results. It feels like I’m not moving at a good pace with the gingerbread folks so I set up another table in the den – Oh, I’m sorry. The ‘room-that-catches-all’ – so that I can get some more pieces primed and try to get it all traced out.

I seem to have hit into a tiny snag where I can’t remember if the white icing are outlined or not. I use these ‘paint’ pens so that I can outline the pieces. The ‘icing’ squiggles are pretty small and the paint pens are still too big even though they’re “fine” point. I’ll have to hunt up the older pieces to see what I did, if I let them go solo or had some sort of black lines around them.

That’s one thing about a year of non-painting. I tend to forget all the little tricks that made it easier and have to re-learn it all over again. I’ve painted myself into ‘mini-corners’ and had to wait for the paint to dry before I could resume.

On the NNWM side, I hate my story. I admit it. I hate it. I don’t feel any passion for the story but I am beyond stubborn right now. I can’t let the story drop because I want to see this one to the end. I just know there’s a big adventure waiting to be told. I’m hoping that I’ll eventually hit into a scene that’ll cause inspiration to explode so that my fingers can’t keep up with it. Until then I’m worried about all the time I’m taking just to meet the daily word goal.

Day 2 of NNWM 2011

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Written by: on Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

Well, that was rather painful. I spent much longer today trying to meet today’s daily word goal. I kept opening word count to see how close I was before calling it quits for the day. I don’t understand how an idea that has pestered me for two years feels like trying to pick the meat off the remains of a Thanksgiving turkey that has been demolished by the family.

Maybe it’s because I feel little to no passion for the idea? Two years is a long time but I know that the idea will surface again and again if there’s no other story idea. Maybe I feel cornered because it’s a whole new fantasy world instead of using my favorite go-to fantasy world. I do need to get passionate about this idea and start cooking up some scenes, otherwise it’s going to get worse as the days go by.

Story-related pages I glanced at while trying to write:
Marten – Opted to use a weasel instead since I wasn’t sure if Marten was well known or not.
Deer Calls (youtube)
Sparrow Chirping (youtube)

Maybe I’ll have more luck tomorrow that it won’t take so long to meet the daily word goal.