7 days of NaNo to go

Since my last update when I reported that I'd finished my novella for this year's NaNo, I've also finished another of my unfinished novels - THE PHOTOGRAPH. I then worked on IVY NIGHT for a while, before the slog got a bit too difficult, so I moved to working on TURKEY BOURKE.

My wordcount is currently 41,255, though I haven't written any of today's words yet, as you can see from the chart. I'll continue to work on TURKEY until I feel that familiar "argggghhh" feeling. Hopefully that won't be until I'm finished the novel! It would be great to finish three works this time around. :) I'd also have liked to finish IVY NIGHT, but that one has quite a bit of writing still to do, so it's a longer-term project.

Once November's over, I need to get cracking on the last three songs for our next album. Billy has posted an update saying there is a new WAG album (ours), and a new Rotting Apples album (his) coming out next year. Eek! No pressure or anything! Sometimes he gets me to do some of his vocals for him, but I'm not sure what his plan is for the next RA album.

So that's my update for now! I hope you are all doing really well. Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends.

NaNo 2016 update - so many stories

It's sort of midway through November, so I thought I'd do a quick update on how I'm doing.

1. I've finished my "novel", DIE BEACHSIDE, which turned out to be a novella at just on 30k. It's fairly basic, more a sketch I guess, and will need fleshing out, so it will get longer. I don't know how much longer - it may still be a novella when I'm done with it, someday.
2. I'm now working on finishing off a previous NaNo novel I wrote named THE PHOTOGRAPH,  to help with the journey to 50k.
3. Once I'm finished with this novel, which I only have one chapter left to finish for, I will move onto working on another of my unfinished novels, IVY NIGHT, and see how much I can finish off that. That one has a lot more writing that needs to be done, so it should get me to 50k.
4. On the off chance that it doesn't, I also have the second novel in the SQUEAKY-verse, which has been gathering dust for years now.

So I should end up with at least two finished works, if not three. I doubt I will finish all four, but you never know. :)

My NaNo playlist for DIE BEACHSIDE features some post hardcore / screamo bands like Story of the Year (Page Avenue) and Young Guns (All Our Kings Are Dead and Bones), as well as Blink-182 (Dude Ranch and Enema of the State mostly) and Kings of Leon (Come Around Sundown). It also has a few other songs here and there that are sprinkled in from Seam, Lacuna Coil, and others.

And that's my update for now! I hope those of you doing NaNo are doing well. :) I will report in later in the month, I hope, for the Coffee House and Goals post.

BuNoWriMo is nearly here ... !

It's nearly June. AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGHHHH!

BuNoWriMo is in June.

My plan was to try and finish off some unfinished novels during June, but I think I am just going to have to kick my own butt back into revision gear. This last month has been terrible for progress, but I'll talk more about that in my Friday post for my "Do You Have Goals?" update.

So yeah, my plans have probably changed. Which is both disappointing and necessary.

Anyway, I thought it might be fun to reflect on past BuNoWriMo achievements. In the past I have written, or mostly written, these novels and this novella during BuNo:

• SMALL TOWN
• Isabella and her mother return home after a ten-year road-trip and take refuge with their long-lost family. But things at home are increasingly strained, and Isabella is content to be left to her own devices. She ventures out to explore the town she lived in till she was six but hardly remembers.
  
  As a near-friendless loser, Isabella tries to uncover more of the town's history - and her own. With help from the only non-relative who doesn't mind being seen with her in public, she soon learns of the decade-old tragedy that still haunts the town. And she is shocked to realise that her own little family sits right at the epicentre.
  
  Isabella begins to regret her hunt for the truth. But whether she had sought it or not, the truth would have found her. Because Isabella's mother didn't just come home for some R&R, or to have a mental breakdown. She's here on a mission - to dig the past right out of the grave...

• IVY NIGHT
• When the earth begins to tremble one dim morning, Ivy awakes on her dirty prison cot, knowing instantly that the first day of Prophecy has arrived.
  
  As the prison crumbles around her, Ivy slips out and flees the town that condemned her as a child. Ivy is determined to fulfil the mission she's harboured since she was a child. But time is not on her side.
  
  Ivy must battle through nine long days of deadly prophecy, during which fire will fall from the sky and driving sleet will sear flesh. But Ivy is determined to do what is necessary to save the world, despite how badly it has wronged her.
  
  Hot in pursuit of Ivy is her twin sister Jasmine, who knows the prophecy as well as Ivy does. But Jasmine believes Ivy herself is the greatest danger the world has ever known, and is determined to stop her.
• LOST, MISSING, GONE
• Lily's life is pretty good, until she becomes the last person to see a girl alive before her murder, and until her boyfriend dumps her for a former high school cheerleader ... on Facebook.
  
  Haunted by the ex and the dead girl, Lily tries to get on with her life, but suddenly it's raining exes and her best friend is pestering her to go on blind dates. There's also the fact that the murdered girl turns out to be a serial killer's victim.
  
  At least there's a gorgeous cop to think about. A cop Lily keeps running into in unexpected places. This cop has a connection to the serial murder case, a connection that gets him kicked off it for being too close. He and Lily have things in common.
  
  She can't help developing a little crush on the guy.
  
  But pretty soon Lily's got bigger worries than hot cops and pushy bffs. Because the serial killer has a new target.

Those blurbs are pretty rough and haven't been critiqued or revised to within an inch of their lives. But they give you the gist of what the stories are about.

So that's my BuNo resume to date. This year I won't be adding anything new. But at least I can get back on track with revisions. I hope.

What are you guys doing in June?

Goals: 2014+

Today I thought I'd talk about this year's goals, and changes I've made to my "Goals" approach in general. You will see if you check out my Goals page that it no longer has a year attached. While I have listed a fair few goals, some of which I don't intend to accomplish this year, there are many more goals that aren't listed. But I thought I'd leave it how it is until I've achieved some of what's on there. :)

In the last two years, I think I've tried to achieve too much. In 2011, I managed to achieve every single goal I had set myself (and there were many). In 2012 I had less success, while still achieving many things. Last year was the "worst" yet, even if I did get two new novels written, as well some other goals achieved. But last year in particular taught me that what had worked well in 2011 wasn't working anymore. I guess I burned myself out. And I knew a change was in order.

As I've mentioned previously, 2014 will be a year of revision. During June and November, my traditional main writing months, I plan to write new stuff, but only to add to existing manuscripts that aren't finished. I have a few novels that aren't far off being finished, but some of them have been languishing in "unfinished land" for literally years now. So I want to knock those off. But the main focus of 2014 will be my attempt to get at least two of my novels revised, hopefully to the point that they can be sent out to beta readers.

For now, I am nearly done revising my novella, and when that's done I'll start reading through my first novel draft to be revised. True, I haven't decided which one to work on first, but I'll make that choice and then I'll use March (NaNoEdMo month) to revise whatever title I chose.

Obviously you guys will come along for the ride, if you so choose, and see how well I stick to 2014's resolution-style goal-setting. :P

One week down, 51 to go

It's amazing how quickly it happens, isn't it? Already, the first week of January is over! I went back to work on January 2, so I'm mostly back in the swing of things. But I guess you could say I'm making slow and steady progress, intentionally.

I'm on track with week 1's goals, and I have:

• Reviewed a Grimm story (so easy with the ones that are only 2 pages long!)
• Created a new piece of art
• Wrote 1k of new material (working on IVY NIGHT)
• Revised a chapter (from SUNDOWN II)
• Sorted out some crap in my spare room, the room where I put the crap I have nowhere else to put
• Did a blog post, and
• Sorted 100 photos.

I didn't attend a body balance class, because my usual class fell on New Year's Day, but as of this week I'll be getting right back into that.

Then there are the goals on my "main goals" page.

• I changed my blog's style a bit, but what you currently see is a temporary style while I play around with other potential designs. I had another one that was a LOT bolder, but I was a bit fearful it would break people's brains. Still, I think I'll eventually put up a poll and ask people to vote on their preferences :)
• I read my first new book of 2013 (a library book, no less!)
• I scanned a bunch of photos from my 1998 trip.

So I think that sums up my first week.

How has your first week of 2013 gone?

GOALS (a 2012 summary) and a Blog of the Year

With the end of the year so close, it's time for me to reflect on what I achieved/did not achieve in 2012. After 2011's goal blitz, I was feeling pumped this year, but I didn't quite live up to 2011's high standards. Don't get me wrong, though - I'm perfectly fine with it! I just didn't get a perfect score this year. ;) Anyway, let's break it down, referring to my 2012 Goals page and also my 52 weeks of tasks page:

Failures:

• NaNoEdMo - I was travelling for a bit of this month, but still, I failed!
• Writing one book review each month - I missed November
• Attending one yoga/body balance class per week
• Doing a beach walks on Saturdays/Sundays - failed this particularly as the year came to an end.

Successes:

• Read 43+ books in 2012 - my goal was at least 43
• Read The Catrina Chronicles stories up to date (though as of now I am behind again)
• Wrote and recorded 52 songs for 2012's Chrysalis Experiment
• Finished both 2011's NaNo novels, DANNA and VICTORIOUS
• Hit 50k in BuNoWriMo 2012 with IVY NIGHT - though the draft is not finished
• Won NaNoWriMo 2012, rewriting DAPHNE
• Posted one Globetrotter post per month
• Did a preliminary read-through/edit of FIRE (had no recollection of this till coming to write this post. ha)
• Sorted the equivalent of 100 photos a week
• Wrote the equivalent of 1k of new material each week, not counting BuNo and NaNo projects (worked on DANNA and SUNDOWN II for this)
• Reviewed all 52 Chrysalis stories, except 2 that were DANNA excerpts

"Somewhere in between"s:

• I did read 9 eBooks from my writer friends, but not always the books I had on the original list. I kept swapping really long books for short novella-length stories (with no e-reader, it's not easy reading eBooks!)
• Complete edit of DAPHNE - I do count this as an achievement, but it was actually more of a total rewrite, and I didn't do what I originally wanted and put more of Daphne's mother's history into the plot
• As of this post, I will have written the equivalent of at least one post a week this year. But I'm pretty sure I went more than 7 days between posts at least once this year.

Extra achievements:

• Finished my rewrite of SUNDOWN, which was not on my goals list anywhere, but which I made use of in the 1k of new material per week goal on my "52 tasks" chart.

Aaaand that's a wrap, folks! But what about next year? Yeah, I've got plans, and I'll talk about 2013 goals in a few days... :)

In other news, the lovely Deniz Bevan received the Blog of the Year Award, and chose to pass it onto me and Laurel Garver. I feel very honoured to have received this award, so thank you Deniz! The official rules of this award are:

1. Select the blog(s) you think deserve the Blog of the Year 2012 Award
2. Write a blog post and tell us about the blog(s) you have chosen – there's no minimum or maximum number of blogs required – and present them with their award
3. Please include a link back to this page Blog of the Year 2012 Award and include these rules in your post (please don't alter the rules or the badges!)
4. Let the blog(s) you have chosen know that you have given them this award and share the rules with them
5. You can now also join our Facebook group – click like on this page Blog of the Year 2012 Award Facebook group and then you can share your blog with an even wider audience
6. As a winner of the award please add a link back to the blog that presented you with the award and then proudly display the award on your blog and sidebar... and start collecting stars...

The people I'm going to pass this onto are:

• Hart Johnson at Confessions of a Watery Tart, whose posts are often entertaining but also tackle the tough issues many people are too scared to mention.
• Jordan McCollum, who doesn't tend to get a huge amount of comments on her blog but who still gives a whole lot to the writer blogger community with her very helpful posts.
• Michael Atkinson at Hypothetically Writing, whose little snippets of fiction shared throughout the year have brought delight to many. Michael's creative wit is, in my opinion, unparalleled, and he also makes a great bloggy friend!

A pantser in Plottingland

I am, generally speaking, a pantser. I don't like to be tied down, or to set too much in stone when working on a project. It stifles my creativity somehow. Makes it all way less fun. I planned my 2012 NaNo novel, NAUSICAA, and while it made the writing experience a lot more smooth, I also found it a huge struggle to keep going after I'd hit 50k. I guess you could say I was bored. Even if the story isn't particularly boring (I don't think it is, anyway).

Most of my other novels have been pantsed to high heaven. And most of them have been written during November, for NaNoWriMo. Then again, most of my novels in the "SUNDOWN" series were written post-NaNo. None of them were particularly planned.

This month with my BuNoWriMo novel, IVY NIGHT, I found that missing out on a day's writing really interrupted my flow. Reluctantly I decided to write out a rough plan. It was pretty easy to do, because my book involves a prophecy that spans nine days. So basically the plot of the novel spans nine days. I was able to jot down notes about what happens on each of the days for each of my main characters. They're not hugely restrictive notes, i.e. "This happens, then this happens, then Ivy says this, then so and so does that". More like, "Ivy gets here and this happens." And as a fellow BuNo participant pointed out, just 'cause I have plotted, does not mean I must stick to the plot.

In other news, yesterday my brother and his new family arrived back home for a holiday, and I met my super cute niece in person and had my first cuddle. I also found out the meaning of her name, Mya - she's named after a beach down in the south-west of our state, Myalup Beach, not far from where my brother and his wife lived for three years. My brother being a surfer, it's only natural a beach would mean so much to him. :) Anyway, I think that is just way too cool! A Canadian baby with a Western Australian-inspired name.

Ivy and Jasmine and BuNo '12

At present, Ivy and Jasmine are my main characters. But I will probably have to rethink the name "Jasmine", because that is a little too Disney if you get what I'm saying. haha.

Ivy Night
is 16% complete

8433 / 50000 words written

I've wound up writing at a slow and steady pace, doing the minimum amount of words each day. Usually I'd be spewing out 5k a day or more, but I've opted for the slower run. I'm really enjoying the story. A few days back, I was not only writing my day's word count but also going back through the story and injecting more "magic" and more "Disney" into it. Enter the cute, furry animals. None of them talk, except psychically. Not yet. I'm not sure they should. But if it's going to be real Disney-like, then they should talk out loud. Still, I don't have to make it that Disney.

Anyway, my slow writing pace for BuNo means that I can also keep working on other projects during June. That's how I got my revisions of FIRE done a few days ago. I made the occasional report of how my word count was getting whittled down, but the final results are in. I went from 146k (though way back when, I stated that my word count had originally been 148k!) to the current figure of 106,923. The ultimate goal is to get it to 95k, but for now I'm putting it aside and moving onto something else.

What, I don't know. I have a lot of catching up to do on my Chrysalis story revisions, so I could focus on that. However, another goal I set myself is to revise DAPHNE this year. Yikes! That is quite a big one. But I did set the goal, so I have to take a stab at it. It's just that it's not so much revision as a total rewrite. I'm not used to those yet. ;) I also have yet to finish off VICTORIOUS, my second novel from last year's NaNoWriMo. I've been working haphazardly on that, but it'd be good to get it done and dusted pretty quickly. Maybe even within the next week. Probably wishful thinking, but it can't hurt to make it a tentative goal.

Anyway, I hope you are all doing well with your current projects, and enjoying your Junes!

BuNoWriMo [Days 1-3], and a haunting tune

BuNoWriMo has begun!! For anyone who doesn't know yet, it's basically another national novel writing month, but one run by the folks at the Burrow. I've added a word counter widget to my "Goals" page, so you can see how I'm doing on word count. But for the record, I'm at about 5,200 words as of the end of Day 3, and that's basically me being right on schedule. I've also got within less than one chapter of finishing my edits on FIRE!! I'm so excited at the prospect of getting that done at last. I'm going to do it before bed tonight, just 'cause I want it done. I will do a proper report on how I went with that later.

For now, I need to post this while it's still Day 3, and still Sunday (i.e. Sunday Session below). I have 2 minutes. ;)

Hope you are all doing well!! I'll be better with return comments tomorrow, I promise.

---

In other news, it's Sunday, and time for another Session! Below is the song I've listened to most in the last week. Porcupine Tree's "Blackest Eyes", which I've always found kind of haunting, and after I looked up the song's meaning I found out why! But basically I think this song rocks at being inspirational when it comes to writing dark, dark stories. It's not exactly a depressing tune, in fact it kind of strikes me as blackly magical. But yeah, it's haunting.

BuNoWriMo is almost on! Oh, and I've been revising

Hart Johnson is one of those people who hosts the annual BuNoWriMo writing thingo. It's a bit like NaNo, but with less "a"s and an extra "b" and "u". And there is even a logo (actually, there are a few...see the rest of this post for more!):

Oh, fancy!

Anyway, to learn more about BuNo, check out that "Hart Johnson" link above. She tells you all you need to know. :)

I'm pretty excited about the project I've settled on for this year's BuNo challenge. I don't really want to say too much, but let's just say that I'm already imagining it as a slightly noir Disney movie with a serious twist. I'm not sure I can pull off serious twists. You've got to be a certain type of clever for that! But I'll give it my best and see what happens. All that matters, I suppose, is that I have fun with it.

Meanwhile, I've been chipping away at this year's goals that I set for myself. I've got the word count down from its original 146k to 114,668, but of course I have a fair way to go. My ultimate goal is to get to 95k and then put this novel away on the shelf until further notice. I've got other projects that I want to work on, but at the same time I'm excited about getting this one done and dusted. I doubt it'll happen before BuNo begins, but you never can tell I suppose!

Speaking of BuNo, I've been wondering if I can get away with using my BuNo project to kill two 2012 Goal birds with one stone. One goal is to, well, win BuNo. The other is to write at least 1k of new prose each week. Should I write my BuNo novel and try to write 1k a week on some other project? Gosh knows I have a lot of projects I could be working on!

Anyway, I haven't quite decided what to do with that yet, but I guess I'm not all that fussed. I'm more excited than anything! Bring on June!!

Some writing plans for the year...and a Sunday Session!

I haven't written much in here since May began, and it's actually been nice and relaxing. I set myself a goal this year of writing at least one blog post per week, and I've always achieved that. But of course with April being the A-Z month, things got a bit full on and I was writing a lot more than just once time a week! I will also be back to write tomorrow, to reflect on my personal A-Z challenge experience. It'll be fun to read other reflection posts too. For now, I am going to mention some other things that I've got planned for the rest of 2012.

First off, in June it's BuNoWriMo time (wow, that is next month), and I've got a plot chosen for that. I had 3 plots to choose from, two old ideas and one new one. I've gone with the new one, and I'm pretty excited about it. I would describe it as being about a "Disney princess gone wrong", but I guess that doesn't really tell you much. Which is probably preferable at this stage. ;) For want of any good tentative title at all, I'm referring to the project simply as "NIGHT". As I don't even know my character's names yet, I can't name it after any of them. As for the other ideas I was considering, I may use one of them for NaNoWriMo this November. I haven't decided whether or not I'll bother attempting one of the Camp NaNo months, but I'm thinking probably not. I've got more than enough work to be getting on with as it is, as you can see by checking out my Goals 2012 page!

Anyway...now that that's out of the way, I want to talk about music! It's been a while since my Sunday Session post, but to remind those who've forgotten (and to inform those who never knew), each Sunday I had been posting about the songs I'd been listening to most in the week just gone. This week (Sunday Session #10) the song I'm sharing is by a rather iconic Australian band called the Hoodoo Gurus. I saw these guys in concert last weekend, and in the days since, I've listened to this song a lot:

Just FYI, I also saw Fu Manchu and Black Cobra in concert last night - what a rockin' gig!