In Other News

I have finished revising The End Of The Dream. Oh bliss, and wonder. I've done it. I've actually revised something and not ended up hurling it out of the window in disgust because it's irrepairably awful!

Slightly perturbed that it appears to have gained nearly 3000 words during revision though. Isn't a completed draft of something supposed to equal 90% of the first draft? Mind you, I did have to rewrite the entire ending.

Thing is, what on earth do I do with it now?

One Day To Go

Ok. I think I'm ready. But let's do this Trainspotting style:

Doing (and winning) National Novel Writing Month: Stage One: preparation. For this you will need: one room which you will not leave; one pc; official fingerless 'Novelling' gloves, one pair of; one playlist; tea, endless supply of, for consumption hot or cold depending on how well the writing is going; easy to eat foods, such as grapes, crisps, buscuits, endless supply of; mouth wash; vitamins; water; Lucozade; one bucket for urine, one for feces, and one for vomitus (ok, that is a joke. I have a perfectly good bathroom!); various DVD's, mostly featuring Johnny Depp and/or directed by Tim Burton, or Doctor Who; and one bottle of rum, for when I get totally and utterly sick of writing and need to get hammered.

We'll leave the nasty things that you stick up your *censored* out of the equation, I think.

And now... now I'm reaady. :) Bring it on.

A Title, A Title, My Kingdom For A Title...

And I think I have one. But even if I don't I have found the theme for this year's Nano novel.

I ended up listening to the song that won this year's Eurovision Song Contest and found that the lyrics and general atmosphere of the song evoke the same kind of feeling as what I want the novel to have.

The title is still subject to change but its better then the one I had before:

Jingle Scissorclaws - A Fairy Tale.

I'm on Grimms complete book of Fairy Tales at the moment, to help me with the plot and see if I can't find an alternative title along the way. It worked for Dancing For Ribbons (I picked up a book on the Georgian era, when Dancing for Ribbons is set, and that was the first phrase I read when I opened the book at random)

November the first, here we come. For the first time, I feel like I could actually do this. :)

Nano Worldbuilding

I have to say, worldbuilding is a lot more fun when I'm actually creating new worlds instead of researching 'real world' stuff. :) My Nanowrimo planning is going brilliantly. And I really hope that hasn't just jinxed it.

I still don't have a decent title though. I can't call it 'Jingle Scissorhandscat'. I just CAN'T.

Now On Twitter

I have finally joined the ranks of Twitterdom.

Find me at @roseghost on Twitter.

I'm thinking about doing a Twitter novel, using the really pared down style of messaging on Twitter. Each chapter/scene can be no more than 140 characters long.

I'm thinking maybe that is a project for December, though.

The End Of The Dream Revision

I'm surprised at how well my revision is going. Reading through The End Of The Dream, it seems to be a remarkably clean first draft. I've almost finished the read through and working out where the problems lie, but there don't seem to be that many problems. But then it does have a very simple plot.

I'm more confused about what to do with it after revision. It's a very loose Doctor Who fanfiction, although I don't mention any of the names or situations from the series. I hint, but no more. You'd probably only guess what I was writing about if you were a fan of the series, but I don't want to try and publish and find myself faced with a lawsuit.

I think I'm going to post it here, in chapters, and on a few writing communities that I'm on. Then I maybe, just might hit some of the internet magazines to see if they will run it as a series piece. We'll see. I don't really want to make money from it, considering how heavily influenced it is by Doctor Who, but I want people to see it.

Dancing For Ribbons Update

Just one thing i forgot to add - I have finished the first 'book' of Dancing for Ribbons, and have now written almost 30,000 words of the novel!!!

:D

Holy F***!!

It's November in 31 days time. And I am never never never going to pull off my word count goal. Never in a million years of Novembers. I can barely manage to scrape together 30,000 words a month, never mind 100,000.

Hmm. Well, at the very least I can try and beat last years total of 80k. If I do that much I will be seriously impressed.

Day 12 in the big brother house...

Nothing much to report, hence the silly title. I'm not dead, just been sick for a few days (you say cold, I say swine flu. Ha) and immersing myself in Tim Burton films.

Hopefully this weekend I can get some work done on both my novels. I won't be able to work on them for the next two months (see schedule below) so I need to leave them in a good place. Already Dancing For Ribbons seems like a novel someone else is writing. It's growing away from me somehow.

Schedule for the next 2 months:

October 1st - 14th: Revise The End Of The Dream

October 15th onwards: Character building, worldbuilding, plotting for 'Jingle Scissorhands Cat'. That's not the real title, but considering that last year, my NaNo novel had 3 titles by the time I did the 3rd draft, I'm not pushing for one. I'm using a very abbreviated method from my 2YN course, as it has worked so well for D4R.

If I have any time left in October I need to do some NaNo practise to see how hard it really going to be to write 3350 words every day (including 'school' nights).

November: Write 100,000 words. Piece of cake...

On Writing (warning: rant)

Wow. I wrote 4248 words today. I love having days off work and not having anything planned because then I can pretend to be a real author, and that this is actually my job.

When I have days like this, I feel like I could seriously do this every day for the rest of my life. I'd probably have a good go at writing 4000 words every day, too.

It's one thing writing and disciplining yourself to write when you have had a 3 day weekend, and have had a mimimum of 8 hours a sleep each night for the last 3 days.

It's a completely different story when you are smack in the middle of a working week, with only 6 and a half hours sleep most nights, and the dread of what horrors the rest of the week has in store for you hanging over your head, and only four hours in the evening to do all the millions of things that you need to do, and you can see the tension wired into your face (seriously, I look about 2 years younger on Saturday night than I do on Thursday night. Weird), and writing gets pushed right to the back of the queue in favour of watching Pirates of the Caribbean (again...).

Ok, rant over. I just need to update my progress bars with my super dooper word count. :)