All the Updates

Quite a bit has been going on with me in the past sixteen days since I posted. And because I like lists, guess what format you’ll be reading this blog post in? That’s right, a list! Which will be broken into two categories: life, and creative/literary pursuits.


Life Updates:

· Finished my internship

     o It’s already been almost two weeks since I’ve completed my fall internship. Kinda missing that newspaper smell when I would arrive into their office, though, haha.

· I’ve been sick

     o Last Tuesday, I knew I was in trouble when my throat was hurting all day. And despite dramatically increasing my Vitamin C that day, I still woke up the following morning with a cold. As of today, I’m probably about 95% better now. I still occasionally have a cough, and my voice seems raspy at times, but at least I feel like a functional human being now.

· My sister’s Floridian friend; snow

     o My sister officially graduated from college last Saturday (even though she technically finished school back in August), and her best friend from Florida flew up to witness the ceremony. She arrived on Thursday and left very early Sunday morning. The entire time, I was worried I was going to get her sick, since she was living in our house during her stay. (I had never met her in-person prior to last week.) In the end, she did get sick, but it seems like she caught her husband’s flu virus (that he had before she came to visit us).

     o Last week, here in Michigan, we were also dumped with a ton of snow. The first real snowfall of the season this year. The Floridian had only ever seen snow three times in her life before her trip, so she was pretty excited. As for myself, I was not happy at how many times I had to unbury my car because I have to park outside. (But at least the engine has been starting!)

· A mountain of emails

     o Do you remember me once stating how I graduated with my second degree last December? Well, it’s been a year now, so my email account for the school officially disappeared yesterday. Last Wednesday, I finally buckled down and began sorting through all 724 messages in my inbox (my outbox had 100-something), trying to decide what was worth saving. On Sunday, I sat down and had to forward all those important messages to my main email. It took a little over three hours, and I managed to save about 20% of my emails, but I did it. The task was incredibly time-consuming, though.

· Scrambling with Christmas shopping

     o Like many other people, I got behind with all of my gift shopping this year. I was originally planning on going out last week, but between the snow and me getting sick, I was in no shape to go out. On Monday, I literally had only two small items – clearly not covering anyone on my list. And Christmas is officially less than a week away. I hate going to stores around this time of the year because of how crazy busy it gets, but I didn’t have much of a choice. (I really wish I could just give everyone a book. It’d make my life easier, and I’d have so much fun picking out each novel for everyone. But alas.) So I was in a mild state of panic, trying to accomplish all of my shopping. Luckily, as of today, I managed to finish buying all of my gifts.



Creative/Literary Pursuits:

· Post-NaNo

     o I’ve been slowly chipping away at separating my NaNo stories from its central document. I’m not transferring all of them into their own document - only the ones I deem “good” or “has potential”. (The number is 20, so I guess it’s a majority of the stories, haha.)

     o Once I’ve pasted each story into its individual document, I’ve also been reading through them and doing simple proofreading edits. A couple of my errors have me shaking my head at the silly mistakes. For example, in one story, I had wrote, “His sleeves were rolled up to his sleeves.” The last “sleeve” is supposed to be “elbows”, but all I kept imagining were an infinity of sleeves on this character’s arm, constantly rolled up to expose another set of sleeves. In another story, I had accidentally renamed a cat near the story’s end. Twice. This is why it’s important to read through your work, everyone.

· Wrote a poem

     o First off, I am not much of a poetry person. I can totally appreciate the art form, but I’ve never quite had a knack for it. Since 2011, I tend to only write two poems a year. (I don’t set out to do this; it’s just a Thing that I discovered about myself.) Anyway, the poem I wrote last week became my third poem this year, so that’s pretty good? Quality-wise, I think my February poem is better, but this December poem is better than my August poem, so there’s that.

· Books

     o On Dec 12, I finally finished Roth’s book. (It’s about time.) Of course, what happens? I pick up a new book the very next day. Instead of grabbing one of my older books sitting in my pile, I reached for the most recent one: TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN by John Green.

          § The book was everything, yet nothing, what I expected when I initially cracked it open. The book is more on the shorter side with 286 pages, and I blew through it within five days. In fact, my entire to-do list on Dec 14 was basically thrown out of the window while I tried to read as much as I could that day. Highly recommend Green’s novel.



So, yeah…that’s what I’ve been up to lately. I wasn’t kidding when I said I’ve been busy.



P.S. Stay healthy, everyone! Being sick during the holidays is not a fun thing. (That is, unless you’re taking drastic measures to avoid your relatives. Then by all means…)

NaNoWriMo '17 (aka: The Year of Many Stories)

NaNoWriMo officially concluded four days ago, and I must say, this year was an interesting one for me.

But what you’re probably most curious about is whether I actually won again or not. Or maybe you know me well enough now that you already know the answer.

Either way, I did indeed win! Fourth year in a row. I finished with a total of 52,218 words. And in case you’ve been keeping track of my past years (which you probably haven’t; I would be very impressed if you did), I actually set a new record for me this year. Previously set back in 2014, I surpassed that record by 99 words.

^Ignore the top where it says how I won with 52,282 words. When I went to validate my “novel” on the website, it added sixty-four words to my total. I trust the word count on my actual Word document instead.

As you can see, I’m still very disciplined when it comes to writing daily. (Isn’t the accumulation graph pretty?) However, for the first time since I began winning, I spent two of those days not quite reaching the 1667 daily word count (see days 11 + 13). So the very next day, I had to tack on those missing words with my regular 1667 words.

Here is my daily word count graph. Because one graph is not enough.

I did end up going with my “plan” of writing a bunch of stories until something stuck. Except a story never actually stuck, so I wrote many short stories/flash fiction/scenes that could belong in a larger piece of work.

By mere coincidence, I actually wrote 30 stories. For 30 days. Granted, on that last day, I was itching to write something new, but I liked that thirty number, so I stretched out the last story. (I spent the last four days of the month writing various scenes for a particular character within her world and, well, by the middle of it, I found myself changing the narrator’s voice. Oops.)

I wish I could say that I worked on a completely new story for each day of the month, but it didn’t happen. On my “bad” days, I would work on 2-3 stories in one day; on my “good” days, I would continue writing the story that I had worked on in the previous day.

It was certainly a good exercise for me creatively, though. I dabbled in all sorts of genres. (It reaffirmed my conviction that I like writing adventure, because those were the type of stories I found myself writing more for. And I felt like the words came easier to me.) I also picked up reoccurring themes that I kept writing. Unfortunately, with a handful of them, I didn’t finish the particular story arc before I moved onto something else, simply because I couldn’t figure out how to end it and I got bored.

And unlike my previous years, I actually got some sleep! Instead, I sacrificed basically every other type of entertainment I would typically fill my free time with. Sorry Stranger Things 2. Haven’t gotten around to watching you yet. And the Veronica Roth book that I stared back in October? Yeah, I’m still in the process of reading CARVE THE MARK. I finally have 46 pages left, so at least I’m nearing the end. (I just didn’t think it’d take me so long to read it…)

Anyway. Here’s my annual grainy photo from my webcam with me and my lovely Winner’s Certificate.

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.

Organization and Order

Earlier last week, I had decided that I’d spend part of my weekend doing more brainstorming for the story I mentioned in my last post. There are two different paths I could direct the plot, but I figured that I’d finally sit down with my handy plot chart and decide which route I should take. Because at my current rate, there’s no way I’d be ready to start the actual process of writing in two weeks. (Life kinda got in the way and I had to push my project to the side.)

Except I did none of that this weekend.

Instead, I was drowning in photos.

On Friday, my dad finally decided to develop all the photos that have accumulated on the family camera and on his phone (plus a handful on my phone). Since I’m basically the family historian, I’ve been pestering him since January to take the photos to Walgreens already so I could fill in the photo albums. After all, there was a year and a half worth’s of pictures, and I wanted to have them in my hands as soon as possible.

Of course, nothing is ever as easy as you think.

We had to take four trips to Walgreens. Something about the app didn’t want to function properly on my dad’s phone, so there’d be gaps of pictures that didn’t get printed. And then some of the stacks that I received were all out of order. I had index cards to look off of for any photos that were derived from the camera; however, most of the pictures were pulled from the phone. That meant, when it came time to place the photos in their proper order, I had to constantly look at the phone’s gallery. Plus the camera itself, for the index cards doesn’t actually stamp dates on them.

On my quest for photo organization, I fanned everything around in me in a circle and began to sort chronologically. Everything to my left belonged to 2016, everything to my right were taken this year. One would think that I was about to engage in some sort of ritual. The albums were marked with post-notes of their pictures’ dates. (I can’t physically write the dates down yet, just in case I have to shift photos around and the days no longer matched.)

As of now, I’m only halfway done inputting all the photos within the albums. I don’t know the actual total of how many pictures I’ve been dealing with, but I know that it’s upwards of 700 photos.

While I’ve been figuratively crying to myself in a corner during this whole ordeal, it reminded me of the dreaded step of when I near the end of a large writing project. You see, once I finish writing the beginning of a manuscript (about 10k words), I then start skipping ahead. I have an idea of how I’d like the story to end, so I begin to write the scenes out of order. Basically, I write whatever I’m in the mood to write, because sometimes that’s the only way not to burn out or experience writer’s block. Once I’ve determined that I’ve written everything I can, then it comes time to piece everything together. I can’t even describe it as a puzzle because not all of the pieces are even there. I have to eventually fill in and write more scenes so I can thread all the already written chapters together and try to create some sort of cohesiveness. Overall, it’s very headache inducing.

And that’s what I’m dealing with in regards to these photos. For the most part, I know the order of events. But there are some minor details where I just don’t have a clue. (Like, why are there so many pictures of cars? At what point in time or event were they taken?) But like the entire writing process, sometimes things have to get messy and disjointed before they can finally come together to achieve your vision.

That’s always the hope, anyway.

Thinking Ahead

…Is it too early to think about this year’s NaNoWriMo? It doesn’t occur for another seven weeks, but I’ve already decided on what kind of project I’ll be working on for the month of November. (Of course, anything could happen within that time period and I could always change my mind.)

Perhaps I should rewind for a bit and explain.

Early last week, I decided to browse through some short stories of mine that I had saved on my computer. I felt like getting back into the swing of writing, but I was coming up a bit short on inspiration. Most of the stories I was rereading were pieces I had worked on back in the spring. Also, most of them were incomplete stories, but I just wanted to revisit them.

Once I opened up one particular story that I had written back in March, it sparked something inside of me. The “story” consists of only one scene, and sits at 681 words (so, three pages with double space). I actually stopped writing it in the middle of a conversation between the three characters, if you can believe it.

I didn’t have much of an overarching plot for this particular story, but I liked the characters I had created. On a separate Word document I saved during March, I had even (very) roughly sketched out four other characters that hadn’t appeared within that scene, along with a basic description of their main settings.

So naturally, I soon found myself brainstorming more about this story. I broke out my character development list in order to flesh out the major players. I haven’t reached for my plot charts yet, but they’ll be coming soon because I already know that this will be a large story.

And since I’m aware that this story could take me a while to finish, I figured NaNoWriMo might be the perfect time to write it. I have to crank out 50k words during November anyway, so I might as well. Especially since I haven’t worked on a single project for NaNo since 2013. (Yikes. Has it really been that long?) In the past three years, I usually write multiple stories until something sticks.

But a part of me goes, “Amanda, why don’t you begin writing this project in the middle of October? It’ll probably go beyond 50k words, so you might as well get a head’s start because you’re not going to want to write in December. It’s going to get difficult during the holiday season.”

Of course, I would never record any words I’d write in October for NaNoMriMo. Not sure if it’s considered “cheating” to jump into the middle of the project on November 1st, but I’ve always been a NaNo rebel, so I don’t really care.

This way, I can spend the next few weeks brainstorming – the world building and actual plot still need a lot of development. And then I can start writing around my birthday next month, which will prepare me for the discipline of writing daily again when NaNoWriMo occurs. Not sure what my word count goal would be in October, but I’m leaning towards at least 1000 words/day. (In November, it’ll be at least 1667 words/day.)

At least, that’s my plan right now.



P.S. In case you were curious, I’m nearing the end of CROOKED KINGDOM by Leigh Bardugo. I’ve finished 497/536 pages of the book so far. I’m hoping to finish it either tomorrow or Tuesday; I’m going to really miss this series once I finish.

The Three Seasons

I almost titled this post as another "life update”. I did some brainstorming today about what I should write about in my blog, and I basically just listed everything that had occurred in my life in the last two weeks. And it wasn’t a whole lot of reading or writing.

Here are the things I’ve done in the meantime that pertain to reading/writing:

• I finally started CROOKED KINGDOM by Leigh Bardugo. Or what my family likes to affectionately call it: the dictionary (due to its red pages and thickness). It’s been sitting on my dresser for almost a year now…yikes. Unfortunately, I’ve only read the first ninety-six pages, so I’m not that far into it. But then again, I always knew it’d take me a while to read through it. (I’m really enjoying the book so far, though.)

• I haven’t done any sort of actual creative writing, but I have been devising ways on how to rework one of my larger stories that I wrote last year. I’m thinking about writing it in a slightly different genre. Of course, depending on how much I want to veer into the new genre, it could completely alter the actual story/plot. I’m not saying it’d be a bad thing, but I’m unsure if I’d like to travel down that road just yet. 

And that’s it.

But is that so bad?

I told myself a long time ago how there is a season for writing, a season for editing, and a season for absorbing. Plenty of writers or past professors of mine have recommended that I should be writing every day in order to develop the habit. And while I commend those people who spend a chunk of their day writing daily, this tactic doesn’t work for me. After a while, I become burnt out or I begin to view the act of writing as a chore. Obviously, neither of those things is good for me. Sometimes I honestly don’t have time to write and would rather sleep. It happens.

Just because I’m not putting my fingers onto a keyboard, though, it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m not doing activities which could improve me as a writer. Brainstorming the plot and outlining the characters are important aspects of fleshing out the story. Re-reading and editing my work also takes time, but only involves a certain amount of writing. Being out in the world and living life allow me to generate ideas for my stories, even though I’m nowhere near my laptop.

So I’m currently in my season of absorbing. So what? I shouldn’t feel guilty about it. Sooner or later, I will find myself back into my season of writing. I always do.



Disclaimer: If your job involves you writing on a daily basis, ignore everything I stated above. You have a deadline, and a paycheck to factor in. You probably don’t have the luxury of having a season of non-writing. Sorry.