Yearly Archives: 2016

It’s November 7th, which means this is one complete week into NaNoWriMo, and I’ve been writing a lot every day. So far, I’ve managed to write every single day without miss, hitting the number of words just as expected. But, this is not a post to brag about this. No, this is the Not Writing Advice part of the week, where I talk about something shitty about writing. And in this case, it’s word counts. For the longest time, I’ve been one of the biggest pushers for NaNoWriMo (and I still am), but I’ve always been very conflicted about writing goals, especially when dealing with word count. See, the thing is that when I write a lot–and I mean a lot–I start losing sight of the work. At some points, it seems that scenes go on forever and take longer than they should, all because I’m trying to hit a word count […]

NaNoWriMo Day 07 – Not Writing Advice

This entry was posted in Blog NaNoWriMo 2016 Not Writing Advice on by
The funny thing is, yesterday I posted talking about how I had all these plans for my novel. I wrote two outlines over October and got ready to write. But, it seems that after writing two complete novels, I’m still the worst when it comes to planning. Today I wrote about 2,000 words, but none of those words went exactly as planned. The more I kept writing the characters, the more I realized that the two main characters were, well, a little different than I originally planned. I know it sounds weird to say that the character hijacked the story, but I swear I’m not crazy. Online, writers often talk about how characters do what they want to do. Sometimes, some even mention how characters take a life of their own and change things. All of that makes it seems like the writers are crazy, but I think it’s actually […]

NaNoWriMo Day 04 – The Characters Stole the Novel

This entry was posted in Blog NaNoWriMo 2016 on by
[Day: 03/30 & Words: 5,000/50,000] Over the last two days, most of my NaNoWriMo updates haven’t really been connected to my actual progress, so I wanted to take today and actually give a proper update. For this November, I decided to continue working on an old project of mine called “The Black Symphony.” Technically, I had already started this novel back in July and written about 30,000 words (a little more, but I can’t remember) for camp NaNoWriMo, but I decided that this November would be a good chance to actually finish the novel. I know that NaNoWriMo technically asks for 2 things I’m going against. I’m supposed to write a new novel, and I’m supposed to write 50,000 words for it. But, to be honest, novels are not really that length. That’s just a little over a novella, barely enough to classify as a novel. So, I decided to […]

NaNoWriMo Day 3 – A Real Update

This entry was posted in Blog NaNoWriMo 2016 on by
Today in the morning, I spent about an hour writing 400 words. They were probably the slowest 400 words I’ve had in months. It was just as if the writing wasn’t coming out at all. And, to be honest, I’m not sure what blocked me, or why I was unable to write quickly. Regardless, I was growing frustrated, and that, well, is never good when you’re trying to have fun writing a novel. But then, the very best person in the world offered to help me out with a little something people online call a “word sprint.” That’s where you set a timer and write for that amount of time without stopping. In a way, it’s meant to use that little competitive spirit inside of us to push us forward. And god, it works. It works so well. Long story short, thanks to this amazing and beautiful person with the […]

NaNoWriMo Day 2 – Word Sprints

This entry was posted in Blog NaNoWriMo 2016 on by
It has begun! November has come, and we, the NaNoWriMo writers, have crawled out of the caves we dwell in, and we have taken over cafes across the world. Do you guys know what this means!? It’s the beginning of the coffee conspiracy 2016! If you guys don’t know me, I’ve been claiming this since the inception of NaNoWriMo. You see, I’ve come to notice a trend…During November, Starbucks, Coffee Bean, and all the other big coffee companies have a ridiculous revenue increase. Do you guys know why!? It’s all because of NaNoWriMo! See, a long time ago, these companies were having very low sales during November, so they came up with a huge plot to raise their sales…and they targeted writers…thus creating NaNoWriMo. The idea was simple. Force writers to go berserk during a month. Force them to need a lot of energy, and force them to have little […]

NaNoWriMo Day 01 – Coffee Conspiracy 2016

This entry was posted in Blog NaNoWriMo 2016 on by
Yup, look at it. The clock. It’s right on the cusp. We are here…The NaNoWriMo is coming… Throughout the month, I’ve been talking about my project, and how I worked on the outline for the chapters I’ll be writing, but I never talked about something else (though to be fair, I was given the idea to do this fairly recently). For this month, I decided to start this thing called a “bullet journal” because the best person in the world started one, and she totally inspired me to make one…but, when I say make one, I really do. So, this entry will be a little of a dual topic. Yes, I started the current blogger fad known as the bullet journal. I started it today, prepping the whole journal so it goes forward. However, it’s too early for me to really talk about it and say whether or not it’s […]

NaNoWriMo – One Minute to Midnight

This entry was posted in Blog NaNoWriMo 2016 on by
The boy tried to pull the restraints off. They were tight. Still, he pulled and kept trying. They hurt his wrists. He tried kicking or using his legs off the chair and pull on the ropes around his wrists. It did nothing. To make it worse, being unable to see because of the thick blindfold heightened his other senses. His heartbeat thumped like a war drum though it had little fight left. His breath pained him on his lips, both of them dry and broken from screaming and swearing. “Please let me go,” he pleaded. Hours ago, he’d sworn he’d kill the old man. He threatened and argued. Now, he begged. “I swear. I will not tell on you. I ain’t no snitch, sir.” “Quiet boy,” the old man responded, his voice calm and controlled. Too restrained for someone who had just been shouted at for nearly two hours. Or, […]

Dolls

This entry was posted in Fiction horror on by
We are about five days from November 1st (Yeah, I know I’m not constant on the way that I count days. Bite me) and I’m still plotting for the novel (curse you, aqua notes). So, I wanted to do a little self-promotion (because I’m both lazy, and a genius) by reusing some old posts and bringing up the topic of…organization. Yup, that old thing. So, a while back I wrote two guides for scrivener, and talked about how amazing that thing is when writing novels. I know that some people just hate the thing because it’s so damned complicated to use at times, but that’s why I wrote the guides. It really is a powerful tool…(scrivener people, send me money for the free marketing, please). Free advertisements aside, that software really helped me at thinking about organization and structure a little differently. I used to have outlines before, but they […]

T-Minus 5 – Still Plotting for NaNoWriMo

This entry was posted in Blog NaNoWriMo 2016 on by
During a class, a professor asked us, “what is creativity?” and “how do you harness it?” To give a little background on that, it was a class about teaching creative writing, so the topic was on how to get writing students actually writing. See, a lot of people tend to hit walls, often calling the experience “writer’s block.” Well, that’s not exactly what writer’s block is, but the issue still stands as a problem that writers often face. Before moving on, let me clarify writer’s block. It’s not the inability to come up with a story or unable to start writing. Instead, writer’s block is usually hit at a point of extreme fatigue. I’m sure most writers have been there. I’ve been there. It can be after a long day of mental-taxing work. You return home, eager to hit that wordcount, but nothing comes out. Essentially, you’re tired. Another way […]

on Dreams

This entry was posted in Blog Writing Advice on by
I’m not sure if the “Aqua Notes” were a blessing or a curse for me. It’s almost like they’re an open door to the horrible thoughts I get in the shower. For example, in today’s shower, I completely removed the war from my NaNoWriMo novel, the one I’m going to start writing in about four days. For those who don’t know, these “Aqua Notes” are special water resistant pages bound as a notepad with suction cups to put on your shower’s wall. Yes, if you’re into writing—or just have plain weird ideas in the shower like me—this sounds like an amazing invention. Don’t get me wrong. It is an awesome invention. It just that I don’t think I can handle the responsibility of owning them. I guess I’m complaining because changing this war thing will completely change the past timeline. That means that my outline for the past timeline will […]

Aqua Notes

This entry was posted in Blog NaNoWriMo 2016 on by