Updates + Impending Panic

Well. It has been an interesting last two weeks for me. It’s also that time of the year again when I begin to enter panic mode. (Which I will get to in just a moment.)

But first!

My birthday happened two weeks ago. I’m now officially a quarter of a century. Some days, I feel so old and wonder what in the world am I doing with my life. (Which is still a struggle.) Other days, I still feel like such a baby because many of my friends are a good 2-3 years older than me, so they’re obviously much further along professionally, and in life. (It doesn’t help that I went back to school for another degree and had to start all over.)

And because it was my birthday, I – of course – asked for more books. As if I didn’t already have a large stack of unread books waiting for me. In the end, I got to add five more to my collection. Here’s what I’m dealing with:

I have a problem. I will admit it.

I’ve also been reading CARVE THE MARK by Veronica Roth for the past three and a half weeks. Unfortunately, I’m only 275/468 pages into it (which equals to roughly 58.8% complete). I’ve certainly been slacking. And I’ve already accepted the fact that I probably won’t surpass nineteen books by the end of the year. Roth’s novel is only book number fifteen. I can’t imagine reading another five books in the next two months because…

NaNoWriMo officially starts tomorrow.

Good-bye, sleep. It was nice knowing you.

Like I mentioned in my last post, I still don’t have a plan of action for this year’s NaNoWriMo. I figured that I’ll just wing it and see where it takes me.

It should be good for my creativity, though. It gives me a chance to play around with ideas. I just hope something sticks at some point, so I’m not spending the entire month scrambling for something to write every day.

All I know is that I’m determined to win for the fourth year in a row. (Although, this is now my seventh year participating.)

Also! Just like last year, I plan to be absent from this blog for the entire month of November. All of my free time will be dedicated to marathon writing.

Therefore, see you in December with whatever’s left of my sanity!



P.S. Happy Halloween!

That pumpkin on the right will be me by the end of November, haha.

When Characters' Voices Get Too Loud (aka: So Much for Making a Plan)

Remember how I said that I’ll work on only one story during the entire month of November? And how I might get a head start on it and begin writing the project in October?

Yeah. Forget I said any of that.

I didn’t spend a whole lot of time developing the plot for the aforementioned story (like I said I wanted to), but the major characters were coming together. Except…there was another set of characters that kept pushing the other story characters out of the way in my head. (Do I sound like a crazy person yet? All writers are somewhat crazy, right?)

These “new” characters? Well, they belong to the story I had worked on during the bulk of NaNo ’16. I haven’t touched that particular story since I finished last year, but I did re-read it back in the spring. It definitely needs a round of edits (as all NaNo writing desperately do).

Obviously, these characters have not left me since then. Something about them keeps tugging at me. In fact, I’m pondering about possibly adding another perspective or two into the story. (The story is written in first person, but if I include more points-of-view, they’re both probably going to be in third person.)

In addition to adding extra voices, I’m also thinking about altering the plot just a bit. Veer a little more toward sci-fi rather than post-apocalyptic. I’d still like to keep the adventure element of it, though. Of course, it basically means that I'll be doing some serious re-writing with the particular story.

Therefore, now I’m thinking about writing a bunch of short stories or various scenes of larger projects during NaNoWriMo next month instead. I mean, I haven’t written creatively since July (yikes), so I feel like I’m going to need a warm-up story or two.

This is what I get for trying to plan ahead for NaNoWriMo. I end up not following through with it, and resort to what I end up doing anyway: having no plan and just write whatever pops into my head.

At least I can’t complain it doesn’t work for me. I’ve won the last three years doing this strategy, after all.

Maybe it’s best not to mess too much with winning results.

And who knows? Perhaps I’ll create encounter more characters in November that’ll drive me insane again, and won’t leave me alone many months later.