Hello Everyone!

It's been awhile since I posted anything, but sadly I really don't have anything new to add on the writing front. My job has been taking up a lot of my time and energy so working on my book has been a last priority. LOL, at least you know I'm alive and well.

I do think about my story daily. I'm actually stuck on it. The problem is that there is some huge gaping plot point missing in the overall storyline and for the life of me I can't figure out what it is. So between that and my job, I haven't gotten anything accomplished on it. But hopefully I'll start writing soon.

As for inspiration, whenever I hear certain songs, I always think they'd make good soundtracks to my story. For example, I heard the song "Demons" by Imagine Dragons tonight and instantly thought of my book. Maybe if I listen to it enough, it'll give me some much needed motivation to start writing again. ;)

Story Update

I reached 60,692 words today, but I'm still a ways away from my goal, and unfortunately I don't think I'm going to hit it. I figured I only have about 5,000 more words to write before I complete my first draft. When I go back and edit, I'm going to have to add a lot of padding to this story so I can reach my goal of 75,000 words. So I need to come up with about 10,000 more words. *sighs*

I'm also not even close to the NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000 words. I don't know if I'm going to hit it this year. My story is a lot more difficult for me to write than the one I did last year. But as soon as I finish up the first story, I'm going to jump into the sequel and see how far I can get before the end of the month. Maybe it'll give me some more ideas for the first story. I also wrote a one shot this week for the Glee fandom, which I included in my word count. I had the story idea in my head, and it wouldn't leave. As I was stuck on my original story, I figured I might as well write the fan fic just to keep myself writing. It came to a little over 11,000 words, but I don't think it'll ever see the light of day. If I do decide to post it, I'm going to have to do a lot of work on it. So basically I'm working on three stories for NaNo this year, lol. Ah well, as long as I hit the 50 K mark.

In other news, I got a new job which I start next week. This is a huge relief to me as I've been unemployed for awhile. It was one of the reasons I was so desperate to get published. Any income was better than nothing. But now I can take some time with my story and I don't have to rush it. Hopefully by the time I have it ready to go to agents, I'll have a solid manuscript to offer them.

I also have a book recommendation for you. I'm a huge fan of the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan, and I'm really enjoying the spinoff, The Heroes of Olympus. I just finished The Son of Neptune, which is the second book in the series. I don't want to say too much about it because I'd end up giving spoilers away, but if you like adventure/quest stories or Greek and Roman mythology, I'd highly recommend these books to you. I especially enjoyed this book because we got to see Percy again, who had been missing in the first book, The Lost Hero. The only negative I have to say is the bloody cliffhanger at the end, and sadly I have to wait until Fall 2012 for the next book. Grr.

Story Update

Pretty happy right now. I had wanted to reach 40,000 words by Sunday, and I hit my goal. My next goal is to reach 50,000 before the end of the month, which gives me a week. Once I hit the 50K mark, I'm going to change my word counter on the left to reflect my final word goal, which is 75,000 words.

I still don't know how I'm going to do it. I've got about six chapters roughly left to write, and though my last few chapters have been averaging about 4000-5000 words, I'll still need to write 5688 words per each remaining chapter to reach 75K. Don't think that'll happen.

Ah well, this update's probably not making sense. It's 8 AM and I still haven't gone to bed, lol. Good night/Good day for now.

Story Update

Finally hit the 25,000 word mark. LOL, my goal was to hit it on Monday, but that didn't quite work out. Ah well.

Next goal: Hit 37,000 words by next Wednesday.

Story Update

*dusts off blog* Hello everyone! Now that I have other commitments out of the way, it's time for me to start working on my original story again. I'm looking forward to writing new characters, plot twists, and a universe that's solely my own.

I just went back to look at the notes on my story, and I already did the outlines for the entire series (which I'd forgotten I had done). I'm farther along than I thought. As for the first story, right now my current word count is: 9160. My goal is to reach 50,000 words by September 18. I was able to do it for NaNoWriMo. I'm hoping I'll be able to do it again.

I just wish I had people to compete against like I did for NaNo. It really helped me stay focused when I saw how far other people were coming along on their stories. So if you're attempting to write an original story or you're working on a fic and you want to try to get it finished in a month, let me know. I'm going to put my word count on my blog so people can see how far I've gotten. If you have a blog with your word count on it, leave me a comment with a link to your blog, and I'll check it out. :)

I'M FINISHED!

After much hair-pulling and some mini-meltdowns, I can now say that I've finished my very first original story.

I came up with the idea for it back in early June, it took me the last two and a half months to actually write it, and now I have a story that's 89,416 words. Most YA stories average around 75K, so I'm pretty happy. I also think I've come up with some twists over the past couple of days that have made me really excited about this story again.

Now, it's time to do the dreaded editing. I know I've got several scenes I want to redo and quite a few things I want to take out. I just hope I add some more to the story so my word count doesn't plummet too much. But I'm one step closer to getting those query letters out.

Whether this story gets published or not though, I'm just so freaking relieved to have written a full length novel of my own creation. That's a good feeling to have. And now...it's 6:33 AM. I'm going to bed. :)

Story Update

All right...with the holidays and everything, I've kind of fallen off writing my original story so I've set up a new goal for myself. I want to get this story done by next week. I'm giving myself until Friday, 1/7 (keep an eye on my "original word count" to the left to see if I reach my goal). I don't have a ton left to write. It's just a matter of sitting down and doing it. Then I've got to edit.

I hate editing my own work. I mean, I sincerely loathe it. LOL, don’t get me wrong, I do edit my work and even have someone else look at it to clean up what I missed, but it’s my least favorite thing to do when it comes to writing. I’ll write a chapter, put off editing for a week, and then I’ll go through it.

With my original story, I've stuck with NaNoWriMo's philosophy, which is to write first and edit later. I haven't gone back to clean up anything, and I wrote a good portion of this story in the early hours of the morning (I'm talking 4 AM'ish). I'm sure a lot of what I wrote doesn't make sense. It'll take awhile to clean it up.

I'm also thinking about taking out a major plot point. It's going to throw off some of the storyline if I do and make some characters pretty redundant, but it might be for the best. I guess I have some time to think about it. What I really need to do is write out the outlines for the next two stories after this one. I have a rough idea of what's going to happen in each one so I know the direction I’m headed, but maybe I'll get some clarity once everything is written out in detail.

Once I get the first draft of this story done and *sighs* I edit, I'm going to give it to a couple of family members to read. I’ve read before that it’s never a good idea to have your family read your work for constructive feedback, but I can’t afford to hire an editor and one family member has a degree in creative writing. He’s also my favorite critic (LOL, which in this case is a positive thing), and then it's back to editing again. After that I’ll give it to someone new to read, edit a final time, and then send out my first queries. Eep!

I hope all of you are having a wonderful New Year's Day! I also hope that this year will be filled with lots of luck and happiness...for all of us. ;)

Story Update & My New Distraction

Here's where I'm at with my NaNoWriMo story:



I've got 21 days left, have written over 22K words so far, and I only just started chapter 6 last night. I'm feeling pretty good about where I'm at with my story. I still have nine more chapters to write according to my outline, and I keep adding ideas to it. I hopefully will go over the 50,000 word goal. I want to reach 70,000 words, but even if I don't while I'm doing the initial writing, I'll probably add more when I go back and edit.

Once I go back and re-edit my NaNo story, if it doesn't completely suck, I'm going to start sending query letters out and see if I can get it published. I'll be very excited to be at that point. But even if I don't get published, at least I'll have tried, right? And I can say that I wrote an original story in my lifetime. :)

In the meantime, I've recently discovered a new love that offers me a great distraction when I need it...and that is the show Glee! I'm very excited that Darren Criss is going to be joining the show. If you've never seen "A Very Potter Musical," you need to check it out (he played Harry Potter). He and a bunch of University of Michigan students (Go Wolverines!), got together and created AVPM, which has become a cult phenomenon. It's hilarious. Now, I did community theater for years, so it does my heart proud to see someone go from performing in front of college audiences to being on a national show. This guy is so talented, I hope they keep him on Glee for a very long time. Darren is going to be playing Blaine, a gay student who's a potential love interest for Kurt. His first apperance on the show is tonight! I'm so excited!

A Very Potter Musical

Original Story Update

I officially started writing my original story this weekend. (I put my other story, Watching Over Me, on hiatus.) I spent the past few weeks doing research for my new idea, and I finally made myself sit down and start writing.

The story is outlined and I'm following that to a tee. I'm a big fan of outlining. That way I always know the ending I'm shooting for. I struggled to write an outline for WOM. I think that's a big reason why it stalled. The new story is going so much smoother.

Right now, my current word count is: 10,171 (after one weekend of work). I'm pretty happy with that. It's my personal goal to get my original story completed this month. Even if I write a crappy version, I'll at least have the gist of my ideas down, and I can go back and edit later.

Update on Original Story

I know some people are wondering what's going on with "Watching Over Me." Like what happens with my other original ideas, it stalled. Another problem with WOM is that I came across a published story that was similar to what I had in mind. I need to change WOM up and make it something truly unique before I can proceed with the idea.

The good news is that I came up with a different story idea. I'm basically creating a whole new world, and I have quite a bit of the back story written already. I'm really excited and I think this one has a much stronger plot than WOM. I also have half an outline written. If I can come up with enough storyline to write a complete outline, then I'm going to go with it.

The story is top secret as I don't have it copyrighted yet.

Update Of The Day

Today I joined the Writer's Market (http://www.writersmarket.com/), which I found out about via Stephenie Meyer's website. Authors such as SM and JK Rowling put a lot of useful information on their websites about how to go about getting published. I can't think of better role models than those two.