In non-bookish news...

About this time last year I set up a second blog called Ray May Write which was intended to be more of a writing/studying blog as I was about to start two Open University modules in French and Creative Writing. The new blog was supposed to be where I could chronicle my progress and share snippets of stuff I did for my writing module as well talk about my own novel project.

As you might imagine that was a spectacular failure and I burnt myself out over there pretty much before the modules even started. There are a few posts from this year but the most recent is from June when I had a wee bit of an anxiety attack. That is a bit of a downer I’ll tell you now.

That blog might get a bit of a revival though soon as I’m about to start a new module which is also kinda relevant to this blog. It’s a Children’s Literature module and the 1^st Harry Potter book is literally on my reading list ^_^. While I am excited I am also nervous about the fact that I’ve not “studied” literature since my English Lit GCSE way back in 2007 (fuck I am oooold). This is a Level 3 module, like we’re talking 3^rd-year-of-uni-this-is-going-to-count-towards-your-degree-classification level module. Yikes.

Luckily despite all the stress I had doing my two Level 2 modules at the same time (Anyone who follows my Twitter & IG might remember how fun April was) I did actually pass both modules with what I think is a 2:1 which is insane because I fucking HATED every second of my French module and procrastinated the shit out of every assignment. I am the luckiest bitch, how does anyone stand me?

While my Uni modules were going on last year I had very little brain power to devote to working on my novel which I spent basically the first half of 2014 slaving over. I technically had fuck-loads of time that I could have used but I’m an awful human being with no concept of time management. However folk will probably have noticed the resurgence in #amwriting and #amediting posts on my Twitter and IG since June.

I’ve thrown myself back into my novel doing a combination of revising/redrafting/finishing the draft while I’m relatively free (I have been working an odd schedule during the week at my mother’s office). When I stopped working on the project last November I had over 80K of words written and the ending was done save for one chapter. The main problem was the pesky middle where nothing really existed past Chapter 13 until somewhere around Chapter 21 or 22 (my chapter numbers are going to be a mess before long). I had vague ideas about some of the things that need to happen in the gap before I got sidetracked by my uni assignments but nothing got planned out.

Now in my summer “break” I’ve been working to fill this hole although I’m only now getting to the edge of it. I’ve been reworking all the chapters leading up to the gap since several needed redrafting completely while at least one needed writing for the first time – I am a fucking idiot for writing this first draft so out of order. So it’s taken me a long time to get to this point which is ridiculous since I was more productive when I was writing only in the evenings after a day at my mentally exhausting full-time job!

Since last year I have read a metric shit-ton about writing process and craft (Mostly from SusanDennard’s Ah-mazing website which has the best writing resources EVAH, plus she is the loveliest person who writes awesome books to boot – more on that in the near future). Adding all that onto doing a whole module on creative writing where I had to write to deadlines and be objective while editing my own writing I feel like I’m a much stronger writer than I was this time last year.

I can look back at my work from early 2014 (with much cussing and wincing) and see where the issues are and come up with solutions to fix them rather than just despair at the general shit-ness of everything. Even as I’m working through this current draft (which I want to call Draft 1.5 cos it’s not really a 2^nd Draft yet) I’m mentally earmarking bits that I’ll need to revisit on the next round of revisions when I go hardcore and print out the whole damn thing and attack it with highlighters and index cards.

I held off from doing that until I’d got a complete manuscript with no missing chapters and scenes from the main plotlines so I can read it through from start to finish (there are two subplot POVs which I’ve yet to draft because I’m not quite sure how & where they’ll slot in amongst the other chapters). But once I’m done with this round of redrafting I am super excited to go to my nearest staples or whatever and come home with practically an entire ream of paper that will be my book.

So that’s currently where I’m at with non-reading bookish things. Steadily plugging away on the 2^nd act of my book so it meets up with 1 & 3 while everything else gets a serious sprucing-up. Then once the start of October comes I’ll be diving into OU studies again with the hope that I can actually keep on top of the workload and not look like an idiot at my first tutorial on the 10^th XD.

Bookish updates will hopefully be on the way here once I get home and I’m able to do things like film a book haul (it’ll be a big’un), actually post my reading list for the year so far and do several author event write-ups which I’ve been to this year. There are a couple of reviews that I am hoping to post before then for some September Releases that I have a lot of feelings about. Anyone who talks to me on twitter will likely know what at least two of those books are :P Especially those people who were DMing me to share their own feels XD.

Stay tuned my lovelies!
Ray 

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Writing Ray - Plot, plot, plot

Now that I've completely destroyed the meaning of the word "plot" for myself I should say that this post is going to have nothing useful to other writers on the subject of plotting a book or anything else like that - for actual advice and helpfulness y'all need to check out Susan Dennard's website and her page of links to awesome blog posts For Writers because seriously she rocks and I've got the page bookmarked to my main toolbar.

This is more just a way for me to journal my writing process over the year so that maybe in another year or two I can look back and rofl myself into a stupor over my naive writer self and her daft assumptions about writing a book for the first time. For funsies and all.

Anywhoooo today I wanted to talk about the fact that I *think* I have the remaining scenes of my first draft plotted out - vaguely. Over the weekend while I was at my parents (and reliving my childhood by visiting Sudbury for like the 7th time) I busted out a crappy A3 pad I bought ages ago and grabbed some marker pens and mapped out about 8 scenes apiece for my two MCs for the middle section between when they meet for the first time and for the second.

It was a bit daft of me to leave the middle until last as by now it's been nearly 9 months since I wrote the First meeting scene and at least 3 since I wrote the second meeting so my thoughts about certain things and characters may have shifted slightly in that time - not counting the fact that I can be a fucking idiot and just forget I wrote some things - so getting everything to match up is going to be a challenge. One that will probably have to be sorted in the second draft.

So I now have two A3 sheets with my middle section planned out; some of the scenes on there have already been drafted so I really only have 12 scenes to write rather than 16/17 which is a bonus I guess. How long all those are going to end up being, I have no clue as yet. My original estimate of the book being 85,000 words is starting to fall short, it's looking like 95-100K will be more like a realistic endpoint for this book.

Setting up all the scene cards in my Scrivener project is delightfully fun and it will be even more enjoyable when I get to change the status of all those cards from "To Do" to first draft or something similar once I've written the actual scenes. Then once I've got all that done I might be able to say I've finished the first draft of my novel! *le gasp*

Now that will be exciting. For now I gotta keep chugging away at it and today's wordcount of 1113 words  has been rather lovely and helpful for getting me to a current overall wordcount of around 71.5K *holy shitballs that's a lotta words* So while the end may be in sight it won't do to give into complacency now.

But that's all for now folks. Carry on!
Ray x

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Some things to check out

Evenin' all this is just going to be a quick post with some links to stuff that has appeared in places not on the blog this past week.

Firstly today I was a guest poster over on my bestie's blog Jess Hearts Books as part of her Armchair Travelling feature. There was a post that went up yesterday as well as today's edition in which I talk about San Francisco! So please go have a look at those posts and all the fabulous places that the bloggers talk about.

And secondly earlier this week I made a rather large leap and posted up both the Prologue and Chapter 1 of my current WIP (the one I'm always tweeting about posting here about) up onto my Wattpad. It was very nerve-wracking after I posted them as Jess very awesomely tweeted about it and quite a lot of people went and read the Prologue... but not so much the first chapter. I resisted the urge to chew my hands off in anxiety. If you've not seen them and are interested, please click the links :D

Pretty please?

So that's all I wanted to say right now. I'll be going. 

*zooms*

Ray x

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Writing Ray - The Difference a Year Makes

So yesterday I happened to be pottering about on my Youtube channel and I saw a video I did last July entitled Why is Writing so dang hard? It was about 8 minutes of me grumbling about my difficulties with writing and how although I had several story ideas and many notebooks half-full with scribblings that none of it ever materialised into actual novel-sized pieces of writing.

In that video I showed two notebooks that had both got some notes on the first five pages or so - those are the notebooks for my current WIP that I have been working on this year. The yellow legal pad is now nearly full with plotting notes and scene snippets that I did in pencil (exclusively in that notepad I don't know why I just preferred it that way). The other notebook is not quite as full but it still has quite a lot of pages that are crammed with snippets, thoughts on characters and story timelines.

So if you think that a year ago, all I had an idea that was bouncing round my head, some scribbled thoughts and little else. Fast forward to now when I have nearly filled a notebook and have written **Monday Edit** nearly 67,000 words on this idea... that is some pretty awesome progress. Just since the start of 2014 I have written more than twice as much as my longest previous piece of writing.

According to Scrivener my book is currently equivalent to 215 pages in a paperback so when I get to my intended word goal it will be around 285 pages. If I overshoot a bit maybe it will end up as a round 300pgs. It will be a very strange thing indeed to have to print over half a ream of paper that will have my words all over them.

That's not to say that this year has been a cakewalk getting all this writing done. I've had to juggle my full-time job, my Open University studies and my home life while trying to write. My boyfriend has been amazingly supportive of me, even when he's nagging me to actually get my OU work done when I've been neglecting it for too long. But I think without the push from him last year to try and write this idea I might not have got started and I'd still be that grumbling non-writer lamenting the inability to get her thoughts out onto paper/pixels.

No gushy post about my writing progress will be complete without me mentioning, once again, the Amazing Alpha Reader/Slave-driver that is my best twinnie Jess. She has been my touchstone throughout this project. Every time I've sent her a scene to read I've been sat anxiously wondering "will she like it? What bits will she not like?" and when she sends me her feedback it all gets filed in the "Do not forget" part of my brain and when it comes round to editing this book those emails are getting printed out as the starting point.

So again, THANK YOU WITH SPRINKLES ON TOP Jess for keeping me locked in my Writerly Cage and rewarding me with cashews when I done good :P I'm pretty sure you're first in line for a dedication if/when this book gets itself into an actual printed format. You're the best first reader a girl could wish for.

Twinnie Jess on the left :)

  A year can change a whole lot, while I'm not 100% confident in my abilities as a writer (heck I don't like to think what the real percentage might be), I have irrefutable proof that I *can* get my ideas out in a reasonably coherent manner and create a story that at least one person wants to read. Which is a pretty damn good feeling. Who knows where I'll be next year? Charging ahead with edits on Book 1? Maybe have a first draft of Book 2? Be Plotting Book 3?? All of the above?!

I'm looking forward to finding out. I hope you guys don't mind me dragging you with me on the adventure.
Later
Ray x

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Writing Ray - Mega Milestone

So a very short while ago I finished what is currently the last chapter of my book. And I finally passed 60,000 words. Y'heard right. SIXTY mutha-effing THOUSAND WORDS! :O

Dude I know *I'm* shocked as hell. When I started seriously writing this book back in January I had very little idea that I was going to end up here in June, well on my way to finishing writing my first book. I mean WUT? I have daydreamed ideas for years and excepting my Nanowrimo attempt of 2010, never really started writing any of the story ideas I had. I have several drawers full of notebooks with odd bits of scribblings about various ideas but nothing on the scale of tens of thousands of words.

I ain't finished yet though. I have at least 25K more that I need to write and that includes the first few chapters after the prologue and some important plot development sections from the middle of the book. So no slacking off for me. If the writing gods are nice to me maybe I can get this first draft complete by the time the summer holidays start so I can spend those sunny days *crosses fingers* in my garden editing and planning rewrites, but more likely plotting for book 2.

So there's that. Also I have to say a MASSIVE THANK YOU to my twinnie/bestie/Alpha Reader extraordinaire/Primary cheerleader Jess who has been such an awesome part of writing this book so far. Without her reading my scenes when I finish them, pestering me when I'm procrastinating and motivating when I am feeling wobbly, I do not honestly know if I would be at this milestone now. I love you to bits Jess and I can't express how much I appreciate everything you've done for me.

I do also owe thanks to my lovely, lovely boyfriend, Mark who has dealt most admirably with having a slightly crazy writer-girlfriend these past six months. He has given me the chance to write guilt-free on some evenings and then made sure I did my other work on others :P He has listened to me rant and ramble about my book even though he hasn't read all of what I've done (eventually once the first draft is done he will *have* to read the whole thing). He's given me hugs after I dissolved into a sobbing mess  when I wrote the DDS and he has kept me fantastically supplied with cups of tea. Sweetie, you possibly won't see this (unless you click the link on Twitter out of curiosity), but I love you and thank you for putting up with me through this. I will do my best to get my Spacey-Wacey work done as well as finish this book :P

Ok now I need to stop faffing about with gifs and do my ironing since I go back to work tomorrow for the start of my last term working as a TA at that school and I have *nothing* to wear. :S

Thank you again and here's to an exciting June of writing, reading and HOLY SHIT TFIOS!! *prepares all the tissues*
Laters
Ray

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May Reading Round-off - ALL THE RE-READS!

Afternoon my lovelies! As promised I come to you this Saturday afternoon with my May reading post. This was a much more reading-oriented month than April since I got very little writing done until this past week. So I have a much heftier list of books to mention although I do need to disclaimer now that I am failing massively at lowering my re-read count this year. SERIOUSLY GUYS IT'S A PROBLEM! Anyhow...

Books Read in May
30. To all the boys I've loved before by Jenny Han (3/5/2014 AM)
31. The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. Smith (6/5/2014 AM)
32. Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas (8/5/2014 AM) *RE-READ*
33. The Taming of Ryder Cavanaugh by Stephanie Laurens (9/5/2014 PM)
34. Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder (12/5/2014 PM) *RE-READ*
35. Magic Study by Maria V. Snyder (13/5/2014 AM) *RE-READ*
36. Fire Study by Maria V. Snyder (13/5/2014 PM) *RE-READ*
37. Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead (15/5/2014 AM) *RE-READ*
38. Frostbite by Richelle Mead (15/5/2014 PM) *RE-READ*
39. Shadow Kiss by Richelle Mead (15/5/2014 PM) *RE-READ*
40. Blood Promise by Richelle Mead (16/5/2014 AM) *RE-READ*
41. Spirit Bound by Richelle Mead (17/5/2014 PM) *RE-READ*
42. Last Sacrifice by Richelle Mead (17/5/2014 PM) *RE-READ*
43. Seraphina by Rachel Hartman (19/5/2014 PM) *RE-READ*
44. Stealing Phoenix by Joss Stirling (21/5/2014 PM) *RE-READ*
45. Seeking Crystal by Joss Stirling (22/5/2014 PM) *RE-READ*
46. The Oathbreaker's Shadow by Amy McCulloch (26/5/2014 PM)
47. Scandal's Bride by Stephanie Laurens (27/5/2014 AM)
48. City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare (30/5/2014 PM) *RE-READ*
49. City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare (31/5/2014 AM)

Have you realised the extent of my problem? Out of TWENTY books I read this month, only SIX were new reads!! That is a terrifying statistic for someone who also bought something like 20 books over the course of the month O_o I really need to get better at working through my TBR pile rather than re-reading books I've not read for a few years.

Not including my re-reads it's pretty easy to pick a Book of the Month - City of Heavenly Fire wins hands down. I was up til past 2am this morning reading it (downstairs in the lounge out of respect for Le Boyf so I didn't keep him awake with the light/crying). Since a lot of folk haven't had chance to read it yet because of shitty Amazon not despatching their copies etc. I am not gonna talk more about what I thought of it. I will only say that I am now wracked with Herondale feels and have a massive craving to Re-read the Infernal Devices trilogy *shakes fist*.

Honourable Mentions go to the fabulous Geography of You & Me by Jennifer E. Smith and also The Oathbreaker's Shadow by Amy McCulloch. The latter of these two is rather pertinent to upcoming bookish shenanigans in the UK.

As you may know there is going to be the first Young Adult Literature Convention held within the London Comic and Film Con on the 12th & 13th of July. I am going to be there along with the fabulous bestie/twinnie that is Jess of JessHeartsBooks and ahead of YALC Jess and several other UK book bloggers including Carly from Writing from the Tub, Michelle from Fluttering Butterflies and Vicky from Books, Biscuits & Tea are hosting a Readathon for people to read books by authors who are going to be at the YA Lit Con. The Read-a-thon is going to be from the 23rd-29th of June and if you're interested in taking part you can sign up HERE.

I shall probably be doing a post soonish on what books I'll be wanting to read ahead of the Con so I can get things signed by ALL THE AUTHORS who I'm dying to meet. *bounces excitedly* Seriously guys I cannot tell you how flaily I am gonna be that weekend, if I get words out to speak to people it will be a miracle so advance apologies if I seem totes weird to you. (I promise I'm only like that some of the time :P)

Anyways I need to skip off (metaphorically) and get some writing done since I'm nearing a milestone on Le Novel front :D Post on that soon...

Toodles darlings
Ray

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Sorry about the tumbleweeds

I fell off the grid a bit there. Didn't plan on doing it but my brain decided it didn't want to focus hard on writing this month so instead we went on a reading binge. That was pretty fun I'll grant you but since it was almost entirely re-reads it has further sunk my intentions to read more new books than previously read books. *quelle surprise*

I am trying to claw my way back onto the writing wagon, but real-life things have kicked me in the teeth somewhat and I may be looking at a much grimmer end to 2014 than I previously imagined. But I do still want to finish my book, damn it I will finish it this year; come hell or high water. It won't be as soon as I had hoped unless I can make June a lot more productive than May was but it *will* be done.

I'm gonna keep this short and sweet because I doubt y'all fancy reading a massively long spiel about my writerly woes. I should be doing an end of May reading post soonish and perhaps another post of as-yet-undetermined subject matter. I have done a couple of book haul vlogs over on my Youtube channel so if you fancy watching those then feel free :)

Anyways hope y'all have a good Sunday and Happy Bank Holiday to the Brits.
Ray

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Writing Ray - Where I'm at with things

Evenin' folks! I thought that I'd do a bit of a post Nano update talking about where I'm at currently with my writing shenanigans (God I love that word). I haven't done much writing since I hit my camp goal, little bits on a couple of scenes that are going to go towards the end of the book and also one which is purely for the repayment of feels to my dearest Alpha reader and Twinnie Jess since she was rather upset with me after she read the dreaded Dramatic Death Scene.

So I'm not going to be allowed to kill any more of my protags for at least one book - which is fine by me since I have already created for myself a musical trigger for tears from writing that death scene. Which is going to be very awkward later this month when Le Boyf and I go to London to see Yoshiki (Former drummer for the band X Japan) play his classical piano music which does include orchestral versions of some of their songs - two of which were playing as I wrote the final bit of the DDS. So it's very likely that I'm going to burst into tears in the concert hall on hearing either of those songs (One is ironically enough *called* Tears - skip to about 3mins in and then tell me that you wouldn't well up. The other is Forever Love - this is a shorter version and do excuse wet Yoshiki :P).

The plan for the next few months is going to be to get the end of the book done (only two scenes left I reckon) and start working on the beginning. Due to how I started writing this project I have the first scene I wrote being the first time my two main characters meet which I have got to write up to and then continue with the next section of the story. Originally I thought this scene was going to occur about a third of the way through the book, but now that I've written about half of the first draft I think it's going to have to come earlier than that.

But then will come the question of do I need to re-write that scene when I get to it? How drastically different has my writing become from that first scene to now? I don't really want to the consider the possibility that I've got worse from that point but one should never rule these things out and with me I have found that the more I do something the worse I get at it in certain bizarre occasions (cf. my book reviewing). It's shit like this that keeps me panicking.

However I gotta keep that neurotic side of my brain crammed in a teeny-tiny box otherwise it'll just jettison my confidence in this book and I'll stop completely - which I really don't want to do. Seriously I am really fucking enjoying writing this book even when it's mashing my brain or making me cry.

All being well I should hopefully *fingers crossed* have my first draft done by the time I finish work in July so I can spend leisurely days sat outside with a stack of paper (heck knows I will need to buy a efficient printer with affordable ink) and a heap of red pens alongside Jess editing this thing into something that works as whole and not in chunks.

I don't currently plan to even attempt to publish it, that is just something I don't have the energy or mental fortitude to put myself through. I want to finish a book, for me, so that I can say that I have *finished* something before I continue writing the second book, which may eventually turn into three depending on how out of control the world-building gets and what plot bunnies spring up from that. If I get to the end of writing this story, however long it turns out to be, and I am happy enough with it that I'd like to start submitting it then maybe I will. But that won't be for a while yet.

Until then I'm just gonna keep plodding on with it and dragging y'all along with me if you don't mind.
Current rough count on the manuscript is probably around 57,000 words but that's with two scenes to write and one to complete that I kind of abandoned. So by the time I hit the "end" of the book I should be at around 60K.

Now this post has got really lengthy and kinda meandering so I'm gonna go back and carry on with this scene that is going to hopefully stop me receiving Howlers :P
Until next time folks
Ray

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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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