Sunday, August 29, 2010

I decided to go for a rather long blog title this time.

Remember how I really didn’t want to leave LiveJournal? Well, I guess I changed my mind. I mean, LJ won’t even let me have a hit counter. And nobody was really using it anymore. So at first I was being kind of stubborn, avoiding Blogger solely because everyone else was using it. I guess now I give up. So I’ve transferred the past three blog entries on my LJ, and this is my blog now. I kind of really hope it’ll be the last time I have to switch blogs.

And I have a very long blog title now. A long and awesome one. Now, who can help me get a new blog template that’s actually cool? :P

Another question I have stolen from Cherise who stole it from…oh, I give up. (This writing meme is so cool!)

How do you come up with names for characters (and for places if you're writing about fictional places)?

I hate naming characters.

Hate hate hate.

With a passion.

Can’t they just name themselves?

I mean…it’s so troublesome. I come up with the first name, which I like, but after about twenty pages of writing it, I need to find a new one that better suits my char’s personality.

The only character of mine who has ever kept their name from the first page I ever wrote them was Garret. And when I first wrote him, his name was Garrett. With two T’s. Everyone else has been through at least six different names, and I just can’t stand it. I don’t like random name generators, and I really hate coming up with weird fantasy names that nobody in existence would get away with on this earth.

But as for how I come up with them. I sort of play with names on name websites until I find one I like, or on a lucky day, I can get a good one off the top of my head. I never get attached to them, though. Naming characters, for me, isn’t something you just do and forget about. For me, it lasts throughout the entirety of the writing process, then editing, and I guess names will only be sealed when I eventually get published. So Garret might turn into something else, until then.

For places, it’s considerably easier. When I was twelve-ish I had fun gathering street names and sounds and things I could combine to become place names. So that’s not really a problem for me right now. I just recycle names from old stories that I really liked. Eventually I’m going to run out of them, and I will worry about that when the time comes. Right now I’m happy with reusing old names.

8/28/2010

Why, yes. I am stealing these questions from Cherise, who stole them from Onna, and I can't remember if Onna stole them from someone else. But anyway. Here goes. (Hopefully this'll make a nice, long blog post.)

1. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you've worked with and why.

Ehh....favorite. I don't like that word, since I don't really have a writing project that I prefer from all the others. It's more like I try several ideas, finish the novels, and they just sit around until the times comes to edit them. I have like 3 novels waiting in line right now to get my full attention, and a fourth that isn't even done being written. But right now The Shadow requires all my attention, and until I've at least written the final version of the story (which I feel I am doing now, but don't take these words too seriously) i can't move on to another one.

But this doesn't answer the question.


My 'favorite' project must be the novel I spent the late summer speed-writing. It's going to be an epic novel in three parts, and so thick it isn't likely to ever get published at all. Part One, Autumn, is two hundred pages long. The other two parts are going to be about that length, and I hope to make some progress on Part Two for NaNo. (I have several projects fighting for my attention during NaNo, since it's one of the few times a year I can share my attention. :P)

Why? Well, because I didn't plot much at all before I started writing. It was based on two dreams I had, around mid-July. In one of the dreams, there was a boy and a girl who could for some reason read each others' minds. I knew it was some sort of curse, and they were struggling to put up with it. They were in the back of a car being driven by one of their parents, probably his, and it was very awkward between them. While they spoke with the parents, between them they were having a different conversation completely, a silent one. This was obviously something they had not asked for.
In the other dream, this same couple was walking around Wal-Mart. The girl, Olivia, grabbed a thick box of colored pencils. I haven't really done anything with this dream yet, perhaps it'll be written in parts two or three. I know it was the same two people, because they were communicating by thought, and it looked like them, too.
I started writing, based solely off those two dreams. I thought at first it might only be a short story, or if anything, a short novel that would not go past 150 pages. (Which is a novella, I believe.) But that wasn't the case. Having planned practically nothing, I found subplots coming to life as I wrote, and plot details I never dreamed of before. *grins* Because most of what I did know came in a dream.

It was more fun writing this than any other project I spent weeks plotting to death. Which is saying a lot.
So my favorite project is the one I never planned. :)

2. How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?

I don't know how many characters I have, and I never made lists of them. One thing is for sure, I have enough characters that they could gang up on and defeat me with hardly a problem. >.> Considering I'm not very nice to most of them.

This is really hard to answer. I think my preference depends on the personality of the character.

So here's the thing. Female chars are easier for me to write. But male chars are more fun to write.

I love writing my girl MCs, too. I know I would get along with them great, before they found out who I was, at least. But sometimes I feel like, since i'm a girl, it isn't always a challenge to write about a character that is a girl. It's a breeze for me, and that tends to make scenes bland, or drag on---since it's so easy to write, I found myself not working as hard.

Writing about my male MCs is different. I concentrate more, because I don't want them to sound like girls. i don't want them to be weak. I don't want them to lack personality. They're different, and they have to be written differently.
But with them, i have the problem that sometimes I fear my guys are too courageous. Too polite. Unrealistically so. That slows down the scene, as well.


The result is, I have no preference. It all depends on the character's personality.

8/22/2010

Mom's coming home!! She'll be back on Monday. Tomorrow. It's been sooooo terribly long, I really can't wait to see her again. I'm just praying for time to fly and we can be driving off to the airport to see her. :) Yayyyyy I am sooo excited.


I currently have a notebook half-full with notes and diagrams for editing/rewriting. It's in front of me on the desk. I made an outling of the last 10-or-so chapters I have to write. They're going to be completely new chapters, so I can't just cut and paste them. The first half of the book remained pretty much the same as it was, but once more, it's getting a new ending. I guess the new ending is more action-packed? More interesting? You see more from Garret's POV in this version. I'm happy because I know this rewrite will be worthwhile, and I'm trying not to rush through these chapters, so that they'll be the best they can be. I've got 160 pages of cut-and-paste-and-shuffle-around. It should be around 300 pages when I'm done, and I hope I'll finally get 90k. ;-;

I think I over-read fiction books this summer, so I've moved onto spiritual reading. I'm currently reading The Story of a Soul by St. Therese of Lisieux, or rereading it; the first time I tried, I was too little and lost interest. Now, her story is so inspiring to me. It's a great book for spiritual reading. Also, it's a quick read, and easy to understand. :)

It's really late. I just felt like updating my blog before I forgot again.

Take care! :)

8/15/2010

Hey look! Two blog posts, and not even a week between them! Hooray!

I've reached 80k now, which is the goal I had been hoping to get all summer. The 5k a day helped. Now I can slow down writing it---I'm not going to stop, but I won't be pounding out 5k a day again on purpose until NaNo or something. If I accidentally hit 5k sometime, great. But I won't stop everything and sit at the computer for hours at a time, just to get 5k.

Now I get to write more slowly, because I have to get ready for school and *gulp* editing. More editing TS. I have timelines to make and notes to take and plotting to do and planning to be done. I'm not going to just dive into editing without a plan this time. I have to know what I'm doing, so it won't be such a mess when I'm finished. Also, this time, instead of editing the whole document at a time, I'm going to do chapter-by-chapter. I won't move on to the next chapter until I can name the one I'm currently working as perfect. This is because I believe that if each chapter can be polished individually to be the best it can be, the rest of the novel as a whole will be a lot better. Like a house built of bricks instead of mud. Golden bricks. The bricks of a masterpiece. Because I will make it a masterpiece!

In my summer novel that I'm currently writing, one of my characters is a writer. And since this land they're stuck in is crazy where anything can happen, his characters that he wrote about have come to distract him from his quest...and they're succeeding. Bwahaha. I do wonder how this will end, because if his characters are anything like mine, they wouldn't think twice about hurting him really bad. :/ If you met your characters on an important quest, what would they do? Would they distract you, or just get straight to the point and shove you off a cliff? Or something else?

Trailer for The Wishing Well

(The trailer still has the title Autumn of Secrets, but that's the only thing that changed--the plot is the same!)


Thanks to Nickname for making this trailer!