Writing Ray - Camp Nanowrimo The Final Stretch

I started this post on Sunday but as is often expected I got terribly sidetracked and since I spent most of the weekend worrying about my uncle I didn't get that much writing done anyway. But now that there is positive progress in that quarter I was able to chill enough to the point that I could write my socks off last night.

If you were on Twitter late last night you may have noticed that I went a little mad and decided to attempt to hit my Camp Nano goal before I went to bed. I only had around 1200 words to do so I thought in the 4 hours I had it would be a piece of piss. Not quite so easy but I did it nevertheless. That's right folks at around 12:07am this morning I wrote my 15,000th word on my novel and validated it to win my first Camp Nano!

Ironically enough when I copied and pasted my  Camp work in the website's validator it actually came out saying I had 15,001 words which is enough to make one twitch and write another 99 words to have a round number back.

I do still have two days to write more if I fancy, and I might do some since I reckon I am only one or two scenes from the end of book one. I will still need to go back and do the first 15K of the book and fill in the missing 10-15K from round the middle but that is gonna be the task for between April and July's Camp.

I'm hoping to maybe have the first full draft finished over the summer so I can have a go at editing it and hell I may try and write some of the second book during November's Nanowrimo! I'm hoping to start an Open University Creative Writing module in October so I may sneakily use my novel for some of the TMAs if I can. Or simply use what I learn from the module to help my writing in general.

All in all April has been a fairly productive month, in terms of actual numbers maybe not more productive than January through March since I was less stressed about it so didn't worry about the word count so much. But still 15K is all good stuff and some of these scenes are damn important and I hope that much of it will survive to make the final draft.

Depending on what extra writing I get done over the next two days I may do a last Camp Nano post but otherwise stay tuned for my April reading round-up probably on Friday since on Thursday Jess and I are going to see FREAKING LAINI TAYLOR Y'ALL!! *flails*. That will be a post in itself since I hope to get pics of the lady herself and of all the fun shenanigans we'll have plus it's likely there will be a haul of some sort *shrugs* y'know what book bloggers are like when they get together...

But anyways have a good evening
Ray

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Writing Ray - Camp Nanowrimo Days 23 & 24

Morning m'noodles! Got a wee bit of updating to do since I wrote nothing on the 23rd but then I wrote ALL THE WORDS last night.

Well to say I wrote nothing on the 23rd is slightly inaccurate - I *thought* some things and I scribbled them down. Technically it was after midnight but since I hadn't slept yet twas still the 23rd :P I was supposed to be trying to get a decent night's sleep since I was meant to be getting up earlyish to go with my parents to the airport so I could bring their car back (they gone pissed off to San Fran WITHOUT THEIR CHILDREN-who-are-in-fact-adults). But of course my stupid-ass brain decided that midnight was a prime time to launch a plot bunny at me that would run rampant when I really wanted to sleep.

I haven't finished my first book yet, I'm maybe over half-way with the first draft but definitely not finished. So it's extremely unhelpful for my brain to keep coming up with ideas for what is going to happen in the 2nd and possibly 3rd book (Originally I had only conceived of it being a duology but the damn bunnies are making that unrealistic) before I am done with the first.

This particular plot bunny was related to one of my secondary characters; the thought occurred to me that I had no idea who this character's family was and where they came from. BAM! Plot bunny had the answer - of course her family are Royals from a neighbouring country! She was married to the previous King (before y'know, he got murdered and shit) so it would make sense that the eligible candidates were either from royalty themselves or very high-ranking nobility.

Super-unhelpful-late-night Plot bunny also gave me the answer as to why this character's family had not apparently thought to inquire about her well-being for the last 25 years since you'd think Royals would be a tad concerned if one of their Princesses just went incommunicado for a couple of decades. After the coup when the King's brother went all Scar and whatnot, he simply decided to tell the Queen's family that she'd been killed during the takeover (purely accidentally of course *sniff, boohoo*) and that left him perfectly able to forcibly marry her off to his pet Duke - cos that's just the kind of scumbag he is.

So somewhere across the sea is a kingdom where this character's family rules from who are blissfully unaware of her survival and the subsequent mistreatment and abuse she suffered at the hands of the Duke (*hackspit*). But following events at the end of book 1 which I won't discuss for OBVIOUS reasons the whole Scooby Gang could always go and enlighten these guys about their beloved daughter/sister's survival and *voila* allies galore!

And that was my plot bunny. Eventually around 1am I did get to sleep but spent much of yesterday being a shleepy grumpasaurus. But after application of tea and noms in the afternoon I did get more lively and then proceeded to wordsprint my way to a very handsome word total.

Yesterday I ended up writing 1,649 words which has put me nicely ahead and taken my overall Camp total over 13K. I only need 1940 words to get to my goal so there's a possibility that I could get away with raising my goal up to 17K to stretch myself a little further.

I also had a rather good twitter night :P I've become one of those vaguely annoying people on twitter who now constantly tweet about their book or stuff related to writing and/or tea. It got me quite a few new followers yesterday which was hilarious and cool as well as a few retweets and favourites (apparently undertones of male flirtiness go down well with folks).

So yea I'm going to go now since I'm meant to be meeting my sister today for therapeutic home store browsing and Cap America watching *longing sigh*.

Laters
Ray

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Writing Ray - Camp Nanowrimo Day 22

So I didn't plan on doing any writing yesterday because, y'know I'd wrote myself into a soggy mess on the DDS buuut then I found myself horrendously bored. So bored that I ironed all of my foldable clothes and filmed a vlog. So bored I could have easily eaten an entire tube of paprika pringles (because NOM), so bored that I found myself watching a crap-ton of Youtube videos by a girl whose videos would normally never appeal to me (hair & beauty shit) purely because of her outrageously amusing way of talking.

THAT IS HOW BORED I WAS.

So I was vastly relieved last night when Kiersten White (author of the Paranormalcy series and Mind Games) tweeted  about wanting to do a 30 minute word sprint. Yes! I now had a reason to do some writing - a bit of gentle competition with the alarm on my Q10 software. So I started writing on the scene which follows the double-whammy of feels.

30 minutes later would y'all believe it I did 534 words! It was more than I needed to do in order to stay on track to reach my end goal and since I carried on a bit afterwards to eventually reach 710 words I was rather proud of myself.

My Camp total is now 11,411 words which pleases me because palindromic numbers y'all!

Gotta get some more done today before I drive to my parents tonight cos I'm taking them to the airport at God-awful o'clock tomorrow so they can bugger off to San Francisco, LA and Las Vegas for three weeks - lucky bastards. Ugh, parents just because I'm nearly 24 doesn't mean you stop taking me on your awesome holidays - except of course that's entirely your prerogative and you are taking us to Dublin in August so I'll shush.

Happy Wednesday folks and Happy World Book Night!
Ray

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Writing Ray - Camp Nanowrimo Day 21

Feck damn today was hard.

As in- emotional train-wreck hard. As in- I just killed one of my characters and now I'm emotionally compromised hard.

I finally did it. I finished the DDS (Dramatic Death scene if you cba to look back a few days). I have avoided it and procrastinated my way through several reading books and my garden for two bloody weeks but it's now done.

And fuck was I a mess. I mean sobbing, snotty mess - my poor boyfriend was fretting all over the place because I was crying over my own damn fictional characters. I knew it was going to be bad writing this scene, but geez. Either all the authors I like have learnt how to detach themselves from their characters after a few books or they are seriously down-playing how emosh writing can get.

As Julie Kagawa likes to say "...Readers. Your tears feed my muse" well my bloody tears feed my characters so I better get some of them back!

I finally got on track with my Camp word goal, now on 10,700 words give or take a word. I can write less than 500 words a day now and hit my target on the 30th. But I probably will hit it early and maybe take it up again although perhaps not back to 20K - best not to push it too far and lose it right at the end.

With the completion of this scene my whole manuscript total goes up to 51,314 words which is pretty fucking epic if I do say so myself.

I'm probably gonna need a day to get over how much this scene messed me up and then there's the question of do I carry on with the last few scenes of the story or do I go back to the middle and write something nice and happy? I'd be tempted by the latter but since I'm feeling a tad masochistic right now I'll probably keep on trucking through the feels, tears be damned.

So that was my Monday, how y'all doing?
Ray

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Writing Ray - Camp Nanowrimo Days 19 & 20

Evenin' chaps! Thought I'd leave it until the end of the day to do my post since there was no point recapping yesterday since I did a measly 102 words. Ze family came round to help le boyf and I to decimate the front garden. It went from an outrageously overgrown litter-trap to a surprisingly large space that has only three plants left alive in it. Five hours of extreme gardening left us all a bit shattered.

But I digress - quelle surprise. I mixed today up a bit by doing some reading in the morning (Devoured Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor so now I can blaze through DoGaM!). Then I carried on with the fight scene I started on Day 17.

Things got a bit emosh as I reached the point where I do my evil writerly thing and kill one of the characters - except I didn't kill him in this scene, he's gonna die in one of my incomplete scenes that I have avoided for nearly two weeks. But it's still rather heart-breaking to write another character's reaction to seeing that dead character. Twas a close call on the tears front - I think I smushed my face a bit I was leaning on my hand so hard while I was writing.

My evening has been typing up the seven pages of hand-written scene, mysteriously adding 100 words along the way because y'all should know I can't *not* edit as I'm typing up. Oh and I forgot to mention that yesterday I lowered my word count goal on the Camp Nanowrimo site again, down to 15,000 words this time. I think this should have been my goal from the start since it's about what I was producing a month on my own before Camp and I think I've been stressing too much from being so far behind on a 20K goal.

Now my stats are looking a fair bit better - my Camp Word Count is  8887 words,  while my overall word count on the novel is up to 48,318 words. I have two incomplete scenes currently standing at a combined total of 2554 words as well as a scene from what will be the sequel to this novel that's 2468 words long.

That's a lot of words. Especially since this is still the first novel I've written that I've got this far with - my 2010 Nanowrimo attempt got just over half the amount I'm currently at so *party poppers* for me! It's by no means finished yet but in terms of Camp I'm two-thirds of the way through the month and I'm now only 1113 words behind where I need to be to finish on the 30th.

Tomorrow I really will try and go back to the DDS, since I've written the bit just after it now I'm hoping I can write up to meet that point from my FMC's POV without sobbing my heart out. *readies mournful music and tissues*

Hope everyone had a Happy Easter (and ate much chocolate), I am now going to flail at Karou and Akiva
*zoops away*
Ray

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Writing Ray - Camp Nanowrimo Day 18

So yesterday... ended less coherently than it started. Didn't get that much writing done only 681 words but had a bit of fun writing scene that *still* isn't my DDS but technically it's taking place at the same time but just from a different POV. 

Now I'm wrestling with a fight scene which I'm trying to write without having plotted it out, and without extensively detailed knowledge of sword-fighting terms. There was some periodic googling to make sure I wasn't writing utter drivel but I'm sure that I will have to re-word things later anyway. I quite like scenes like this because there is basically no dialogue (too much swording for talking) so I can just think about how awesome the action would look if it were a film.

I shan't waffle much more because I need to flash-tidy my house ahead of my parent's coming over to help wrestle with our wayward garden. I have a lot of empty wine bottles to hide from last night when me, and my boyf's brother's girlfriend and my boyf's friend's wife all got rather drunk in our lounge whilst watching/singing along to Pitch Perfect, Frozen and Mulan (because we're all mature adults :P). Excellent evening; I sang VAIR LOUDLY and hopefully reasonably tunefully and managed to avoid waking up this morning with a banging headache, which was a win for me.

May get some writing done later tonight if I get chance, I gotta hide all evidence while my mother is about because lawd knows she won't fully understand or appreciate how I'm spending my time. *sigh*

A bientot

Ray

p.s. sorry for how incoherent this post is, I don't think my head is quite on an even keel just yet.

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Writing Ray - Camp Nanowrimo Day 17

So yesterday was an odd day at least in terms of my writing. I didn't get all that much done despite my vows to actually get the DDS done. Which frankly for anyone who knows me- that is the least surprising thing you'll have ever heard.

Most of my evening was spent trying to understand what the hell I'd done in order to get a Camp Wordcount that was 1300 words less that what I previously supposed. The first part of that conundrum was quickly solved when I remembered to add in the fourth scene which I wrote on the 2nd day of Camp. But then I had a wordcount which was now 300 words *more* than my Excel Spreadsheet had counted up.

Basically I think the easy solution to this problem is to say that I am an idiot who forgot to update the spreadsheet properly and this in turn mucked up my total. Based off the total on the word document and the bit of handwritten stuff I did yesterday I have 6928 words so far. Still behind by a good chunk but maybe I can sort that out today.

I can't spend much of my evening writing today as we have visitors coming later for movies and wine so gotta try and get as much done this morning/afternoon as I can. Seriously though I am gonna take a stab (oh no poor word choice Ray :S) at getting this DDS scene done or at least make progress with it.

We'll see how well *that* goes.
TTFN
Ray

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March/April Reading Update

What do you mean March finished over two weeks ago?!

Ack yea in the mayhem of my impending Camp Nano shenanigans I completely forgot to do a March Reading Round-off post. Not that it was going to be a long post because of course I read a mere Four books!

Seriously 2014 is going to be the year in which I potentially write a novel (I'm being optimistically pessimistic as you never know with these things) but at the same time I'm probably going to read the smallest number of books since I started recording my reading totals. It's mad I tell you. Not to mention that I have some serious End-of-Series reading to do over the next few months since Dreams of Gods & Monsters arrived today, The Forever Song is coming at the start of May and City of Heavenly Fire is due mid-May. I gots to re-read like a madwoman!

So March's reading comprised of a somewhat eclectic mix of books; a re-read of Divergent ahead of my excursion with Jess to the Movie Premiere at the end of March (which was pretty amazeballs although vaguely disappointing in that our "mingling with the stars" was limited to zoomed in pics on my phone from inside the cinema). Then came a feverishly excited devouring of Half Bad by Sally Green which I shamelessly stayed up until 1:30am reading. Two weeks passed before I finished another book - The Sum of all Kisses by Julia Quinn because I sometimes need a dose of Regency fluff.

The last book of the month was a more out-of-nowhere read - All you Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka.  For those who have never heard of this book, it's the story which the upcoming (and awful looking) Tom Cruise film "Edge of Tomorrow" is based on. Basically a young Japanese man Keiji is flung into battle against an alien foe which has been systematically wiping out the human race. Keiji is bricking it as all his friends are dying around him and he can barely remember his meagre training. He manages to kill one of the aliens but he gets himself fatally wounded in the process. As he's dying he has an odd conversation with the legendary soldier Rita (more often referred to as the Full Metal Bitch), who has killed more of the aliens than anyone else left alive. Keiji dies and then wakes up... on the day before the battle. A bizarre loop of battle and death begins that Keiji has to try and figure out how he's going to break free of it.

I borrowed my boyfriend's copy of the book since I wanted to see what the story was like after hearing le boyf rant about his disgust of what the film had done to the book. It's a really interesting story that is a fun mix of Pacific Rim and Groundhog Day with some surprising emotional undercurrents. It is quite a short book - quite literally only 200 pages long so won't take very long to get through. I really enjoyed it and if you're at all interested in seeing the film STOP - go and buy/borrow this book and read it first. Trust me you'll feel completely differently about seeing the film afterwards. Tom Cruise has no business playing an 18yr old Japanese guy and Emily Blunt (as great as she is) can't really portray a 19yr old girl. Also as a disclaimer if you don't particularly like overly sweary books, this has a metric f**kton of f-bombs :P

April's Reading so far consists of two books; Joss Stirling's most recent book Storm & Stone which was a fun mystery/boarding school/thrillerish story. And this morning's re-read of Daughter of Smoke & Bone by the ever-lyrically masterful Laini Taylor (who I shall get to meet on May 1st with Jess *flails*).

So that's what I've been reading, let me know if you guys have read anything awesome lately.
Ray

p.s. Before anyone says it, Yes I am procrastinating writing my Scene of Doom *shhh*

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Writing Ray - Camp Nanowrimo Day 16

Afternoon my petals, I know it's a bit late to be writing about yesterday's Camp activities especially since I've written nothing so far today. But I spend a delightful few hours this morning frantically re-reading a Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor ahead of the arrival of my beauteous signed copy of Dreams of Gods & Monsters (Look at all the pretty on my Instagram). So I have that to look forward to once I've got somewhere with this Scene of Doom or Dramatic Death Scene as I have otherwise been calling it.

But in recap of yesterday, as you will know over the past few days I have rebelling at Camp, more than I already am by carrying on with a novel that I'd started before April. Rather than continue to slog fruitlessly at a scene, I skipped ahead a bit... into the next book and started writing a scene.

Last night I finished that scene. It ended up being 6 hand-written pages and 2500 words, over 1K of which were written just last night. I'm pretty happy with it and I think it's been really helpful to write as it gave me some insight into how my MC is going to be affected by the events that are happening at the end of the first book. Knowing what her mindset is and what she is feeling a few weeks after the fact will be very useful things to know for when I actually write them taking place. I should have a better understanding of what her initial, visceral reaction will be in the moment.

I know the reaction is going to be fueled by pain and grief and a little bit of betrayal (of the "how dare you leave me here without you" kind). Now thanks to my awful realisation while in the shower a little while ago I also know that my MC is going to be wracked with guilt at having a hand in bringing about the death itself.

Well done Ray, torture her some more and make it even more heart-breaking to write. Y'bitch...

*sighs* So yes I will soon have to be writing that and my poor Alpha Jess will have to avoid reading it for as long as possible until I have something nicer for her to read. I'M SORRY OK? *offers chocolates*

Yours Evilly
Ray

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Writing Ray - Camp Nanowrimo Days 13-15

Well I'm doing a rather terrible job of keeping the blog updated while I'm at Camp. Not that my progress has been so remarkable as to warrant daily update post because frankly y'all don't want to hear about the snail-like increases in my word count over the past few days.

In a very eerie turn of events I wrote the exact same amount on Days 13 & 14 as I did yesterday (803 words) so I'm finally over 5,000 words but since I should have been at 10K by the end of yesterday I've got a way to go. If I still want to hit 20,000 words by the 30th I'm going to have to pick up the pace.

Part of why I got so bogged down over these past five days is because the scene I'm working on a particularly tricky one that demands a lot of emotion that I have really struggled to inject into it. My progress was so sluggish that on Monday I decided to try something nutty and started hand-writing a scene that isn't even going to be in this book. It's possibly going to end up as one of the first scenes in the second book and I've really enjoyed working on it, despite the fact that I should probably concern myself with the beginning to Book 1 before Book 2 but hey-ho.

Today I will probably do some more on the Book 2 scene until it reaches a nice end point. Then I may look at going back to the DDS (Dreaded Death Scene as I shall henceforth call it) or possibly skip to one of the scenes directly after it. I may find it easier to write the aftermath of the event than the actual event itself.

But I may have to head out into the garden again because the sun is so lovely that I ought to soak up some rays before the plumber comes to fix my kitchen tap (so I can finally do the dishes).

Laters
Ray

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Writing Ray - Camp Nanowrimo Day 11 & 12

Bet more than few people got concerned I had just stopped writing again :P

Never fear for I was merely trying to get two last bits of work out of the way before the term finished for Easter. Now that both my French assignment and my TA portfolio are done I can relax and get back to writing my novel!

Taking a week off the book has buggered me up a little bit because I'm now nearly 7K behind where I should be at this point and that's with me lowering my word count to 20K. Plus the scene I'm working on is super-difficult and full of both action and emotion, so that's making it hard to get back into the swing of things.

Friday I got a smidgy bit of writing done (203 words) but yesterday after many hours of walking and garden destruction I actually got 460 words done. Yea I know it's not a massive amount in the grand scheme of things but it's progress.

My Camp Nano Total so far is 3664 words by the end of the 15th I need be on 10K so I have 6,336 words to catch up on. That should mean I have at least this current scene finished and maybe the one after it, which hopefully is more than doable since I have no work for two weeks now :P

I spent quite a bit of time last night trying to find some music to listen to which would actually fit the mood of the scene I was trying to write - surprisingly tricky, but I ripped the CD le boyf bought recently ahead of this concert we're going to in May - Yoshiki Classical (Le boyf is a big fan of X Japan who Yoshiki used to be drummer for, I believe). The CD is all orchestral with some purely instrumental versions of X Japan songs and bizarrely two themes for the Golden Globes which is surprising. But all of it is supremely mind-blowing and epic to have blaring through your headphones, genuinely tingle-inducing to listen to. O_O

Right I have more writing to do this morning, I want/need to get through all the plotting notes I have so far for this scene so I can plan out the fighting bits (possibly in my garden while flailing a sword about).

Hope any campers who may see this are doing well, keep going almost half-way now!

Toodles

Ray

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Writing Ray - Camp NanoWrimo Day 2 & 3

So I forgot to do this post yesterday and it's likely that I'm not going to get anything written today because ya know, procrastinator extraordinaire...

I had a bit of a wobble after I cranked out my 1050 words yesterday since it felt like squeezing blood from a stone the whole time I was writing the scene. I could sense how forced the writing felt and I'm sure that when I go back to that scene I'll want to rewrite everything I did before I finish it.

I think I diagnosed part of the problem in a chat with my fabulous Alpha Reader Jess - I don't write well with fixed timescales and goals to meet. It's not a great thing for if I ever wanted to get published or whatever because of course deadlines are some serious shit and you can probably land yourself in a whole world of trouble if you don't deliver what you're contracted to do when you're supposed to. But I just can't write my best that way.

For me though I can ignore deadlines if I want (except with my OU work that's gonna mess things up if I start skipping doing TMAs). Writing is not my job, it's a hobby and when a hobby starts to feel restrictive and time-constrained with requirements then it's not a hobby anymore - it's a damn chore and I predominantly procrastinate chores.

I think that's part of why I stopped writing book reviews because every time I read a book there was the nagging feeling that I should be reviewing it on the blog. Even though I wasn't even receiving ARCs from publishers I felt obligated to share my thoughts in detail about the YA books I was reading. It forced me to think critically and analytically about the stories and characters I had just got to know and I bloody hated that. I like to just immerse myself in books and only think about things like that if something is glaringly bad and throwing me out of the story. Reviewing threatened my enjoyment of reading so I stopped.

Unrealistic word count targets and arbitrary deadlines threaten my enjoyment of writing so if necessary I'll ignore them. I'm not going to stop writing during April if Camp becomes too stressful but I'll just go back to working on the scenes from my story as I was before this month and writing at my own damn pace.

With this mentality in mind I settled to my laptop last night and working from the hand-written start point done on a train on Sunday (whole separate story here) I did a whole scene of nearly 1600 words. In possibly less time that I did the first day's writing. When I looked up from typing to see I had over 1000 words I was surprised that I had gotten that far - that's when I know that the story is flowing right - I didn't have to stare and glare at the corner of my screen willing the wordcount to go up; it just happened.

Today I won't write anything and that's fine. To satisfy my inner pedant I have got enough words banked to allow me this day's respite without falling behind (on my wholly arbitrary word goal) so tomorrow I can start on a new scene and hopefully the words will fly again.

I feel happier for having come to this conclusion and I think there'll be a better outcome because of it.
Which means for story for Jess to read :P

Later dudes
Ray

P.S. Current total word count for 2014 Writing Project- 46,042 hells yea

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Writing Ray - Camp NanoWrimo Day 1!

*starting cannon fires*
GOOOOOoooo.... *looks at feet* I appear to have gone nowhere. Damn

So it is the first day of Camp and I'm already a little shaky. I have spent the last week and a half fretting about the fact that I've not finished the scenes that I wanted to get done and I've certainly not planned out the first scenes that are supposed to be going at the beginning of my book. In short my brain tried to quit before we even started.

I think I have the evil Albatross of Nano2010 still circling overhead, lurking to remind me of my previous fuck-ups with this whole writing shizazzle. My subconscious is psyching me out like a pain in the ass; what once took me a few hours to write is now looking to take *days*. Ugh WHY OH WHY?

I am gonna still bloody try, even if everything I write in April is a pile of shite I *will* still get it done. It's not like I won't have the time. After the end of next week I won't have my OU work to worry about until the start of May and my Diploma portfolio should all be done (if I get my damn observation done in time). So my Easter hols will be blissfully free for writing in the sunshine if I so choose.

Just gotta make sure that I don't lose enthusiasm for my book. My darling Alpha Reader Jess is the best cheerleader evah and I am certain that I will be texting or tweeting random story questions at her during Camp (so you're forewarned :P).

Gah this post is a mess. I am a sleepy mess and I hate daylight savings time cos I keep glancing at my mantle clock which says it's twenty to six BUT IT'S NOT!

Anyway I gotta keep writing
Laters
Ray

Current Word Count: 358

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