Friday, November 26, 2010

My lovely winner's certificate. :)

Despite difficulties participating in NaNoWriMo this year, I managed to scratch together a little over 50k by both typing and handwriting; it's a significantly smaller amount than I had been hoping for, but at least I won. And I suppose it's for the best; I don't want to ruin the sequel to The Shadow because I was speed-typing through it during all of NaNoWriMo. I'll be taking it slowly now, and making sure each scene gets the attention it deserves. That way I might possibly have less to rewrite in the future, when I finish. Just possibly.

(I'm about to write a battle scene, so I'm really excited. :D)

Here's a picture of the certificate I printed out:


Under Title, it says Fall of the Falcon. For now, that is the title of the sequel to The Shadow. I don't know if that'll change once I'm done writing it; however, seeing as The Shadow kept its title all these years, I'm hoping this novel can do the same.

Now that I've finished NaNo, I'm updating the word progress on my current novel to where it currently stands, at around 70k. This isn't a completely accurate number, because much of it was handwritten and I can't guarantee I did the best job counting the words; I tried to do well. The current word count goal for this book is 100k, but seeing as it's already over halfway there, I might up it to 150k and find a way to divide it up when I'm done. That depends on whether I reach 100k at all...which, knowing me, I probably will. But that's still for sometime in the future. :) I plan to take my time writing it now, not only because NaNo is over, but because for my own good I can't type as fast as I used to.

I have a fan page now, on Facebook. I'll have a link to it on my sidebar. I decided that once my inkpop story broke the rank of 100, I'd be deserving of my fan page. Now I reached 91, so obviously, I have a fan page. :) I got my mom to create it for me, because it would be awkward to create it for myself. She's really awesome and did it, so I'm glad for her. Love you Mom!
Anyway, if you have a Facebook account, please follow my fan page. I'm not quite sure what I'll be doing with it yet, but I'm sure glad to have it.

I'll be updating more now. :)

Friday, November 19, 2010

Stolen from Cherise. :)

The Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets, songwriters and screenwriters included) who've influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag at least fifteen friends (optional), including me, because I'm interested in seeing what authors my friends choose. (To do this, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste rules in a new note, cast your fifteen picks, and tag people in the note.)


1. J.K. Rowling.



2. Tamora Pierce.



3. Nancy Farmer (The Sea of Trolls!!)



4. Libba Bray.



5. Bram Stoker.



6. Taylor Swift. (Yes. She's an amazing songwriter.)



7. A Fine Frenzy (songwriter...I believe her name is Alison Sudol?)


8. Meredith Ann Pierce. (The Darkangel trilogy!!!)



9. Michael Grant. Michael Grant. Michael Grant. (Gone books--AMAZING!)



10. Gregory Maguire. (Especially Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister.)



11. Nicholas Sparks.



12. Charles Dickens.



13. St. Josemaria Escriva.


14. Anne Frank.



15. Emily Bronte.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Books! Books! Books!

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you've read in their entirety. Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt.

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen






2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien





3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte







4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling





5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee





6 The Bible





7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte





8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell





9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman





10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens





11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott





12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy





13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller





14 Complete Works of Shakespeare





15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier






16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien





17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks





19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger





20 Middlemarch – George Eliot





21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell





22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald





23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens





24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy





25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams





26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh





27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky





28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck





29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll





30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame





31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy





32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens





33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis





34 Emma – Jane Austen





35 Persuasion – Jane Austen





36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis





37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini





38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere





39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden





40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne





41 Animal Farm – George Orwell





42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown





43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez – en español





44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving





45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins





46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery





47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy





48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood





49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding





50 Atonement – Ian McEwan





51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel





52 Dune – Frank Herbert





53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons





54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen





55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth





56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon





57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens





58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley





59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon





60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez – en español





61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck





62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov





63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt





64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold





65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas





66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac





67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy





68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding





69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie





70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville





71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens





72 Dracula – Bram Stoker





73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett





74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson





75 Ulysses – James Joyce





76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath





77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome





78 Germinal – Emile Zola





79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray





80 Possession – AS Byatt





81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens





82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell





83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker





84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro





85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert





86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry





87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White





88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom





89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle





90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton





91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad





92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery





93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks





94 Watership Down – Richard Adams





95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole





96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute





97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas





98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare





99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl





100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Monday, November 8, 2010

Day 8

Due to a strange pain in my hands which I don't know if is Carpal Tunnel or not, I will be completing most of my NaNo by hand. A new challenge. One page in my journal is at least 100 words every time--sometimes over 200. Apart from the effort it will take to count the WC one by one, I daresay this will be a very enjoyable NaNoWriMo.

However, due to this I am not sure if I can reach 100k or not...but I'll at least reach 50 to 75k. But you know, I'd rather lose some words off my NaNo goal than lose my hands. So I'm okay with it. (I'm at 40k right now.)

Good luck to the other NaNoers!

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Day 2

Okay, so, it's the beginning of day 2.

My WC in NaNo has reached 14,023. I updated my progress bar but don't see much...progress on it. :P Tomorrow it ought to get better. I should reach 20k tomorrow, if things go well.

I finally got to write one of the scenes that has been in my head for months now! And it's not driving me nuts anymore! It feels like, when I finish writing something, it's done. Finished. Gone. Which is rather depressing, but it's also a relief. Maybe after NaNo there'll be room in my head for other stories. *grins*

Now I'm going to bed.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Day 1

...of NaNoWriMo.

Technically it's the beginning of Day 1, since I started writing at midnight, and will keep writing tomorrow. I'll update this post tomorrow, then.

I've got 2866 words. Out of 100,000. The progress bar on my sidebar shows how...little progress that is. But things are going to get interesting, so I'm counting on that to give me a serious boost. Bwahaha.

Autumn of Secrets is ranked 186 on inkpop! I'm going to get it higher. I'm going to get it to number one. So I'll be dividing my days into chores, school, inkpop, and writing. Writing will most likely be saved for the end of the day.

Bwahaha. This is going to be fun.

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!