Darkness with a Dash of New Moon

My apologies to all, I didn't expect to go so long before posting again. Real life, gets you every time.

However, I do hope everyone had a fantabulous Thanksgiving holiday and I am looking forward to a few weeks of semi-normalcy before we kick in to the big December holidays.

But I have to confess something upfront: Nanowrimo and I did not fair well. About halfway into the month, as I was getting ready to leave for a week-long conference for the day job and knew I was already a couple thousand words behind on my pacing, I was reminded that there are 11 other months of the year when I write fairly regularly. November's just not a good Nano month for me. Now March maybe would work. Oh, or August. Yeah, so, there you have it. Nano was a no-go.

So I've been writing and revising this weekend, with no committed daily word goals and no committed page counts. And it feels really good to not be so worried about the goal thing. It's too much stress, and life, especially during the holidays, is stressful enough without taking the fun out of writing.

... And I went to see New Moon. More on that later this week.

I know this was sort of a random post, mostly just me rambling. But hey, what's new, right? ;D

How was your holiday weekends? Oh, and did anyone hit up Black Friday and get some kickin' deals? ... I've decided I'm crowd-o-phobic, so not so much for me.

Quote of the Week

"You must write for yourself, above all.

That is [your] only hope

of creating something beautiful."

- Gustave Flaubert

WiP Wednesday: Fuzzy Around the Edges

I'm in New Jersey right now and I'm writing this blog post before I go to bed after a REALLY late night (it's 1:21 AM as I speak--er, type). Anywho, forgive me if there are bits of this that may not make sense. My post thoughts came to me as I was sitting in the hotel bar shouting drink orders to the bartender while I monitored the tab that was getting charged to the boss's credit card.

Like a lot of people out there, I do enjoy a drink here or there, socializing with friends, with dinner or what not. But my favorite thing to do when I'm out at a bar (or a party where peeps are drinking) is to watch the people. Based on the number of drinks consumed, you can tell when someone has had a little too much. This would be the point (I speak from experience) where the world gets a little fuzzy around the edges.

That is the current state of my wip. I actually wrote the end of it already. And I'm really happy with it. I have a beginning I like too. And parts of a middle. It's all the inbetween bits that are making the big picture look fuzzy to me. I'm not yet sure how to smooth things out, flatten the edges, and tie them all up to make sense.

What do you do when you're wip gets a little fuzzy around the edges? Any tips you wanna share?

Making Sense

The other night Phephe - the 4-yr-old kidlet - and I were watching The Neverending Story 2 and it got me thinking. While the movie is old and the special effects dated, there is a tremendous amount of world building in there. It was amazing how basic the plot of the entire movie was, but the world building involved was what got us sucked in.

My current wip is a paranormal YA - a first for me. And I've been fortunate enough to work with some great crit buddies who've asked me those questions about my fictional world. As this is my first foray into this genre, I never realized what was involved in making this story work. But when my buddies began to ask me the hows, whys and whats, it got me thinking about how much I needed to put in to make this new world of mine, make sense.

There's a lot of crazy things out there in the world, happening each and everyday, and sometimes we think to ourselves, "Man, that totally doesn't even make any sense!" But guess what? It doesn't have to. It's real life and it will work itself out. But whe you're writing fiction, you can't just let it fix itself. Because sometimes it won't. You need to know how to fix them.

A lot of you out there write paranormal and fantasy, I know. So have you made sure to ask yourselves the whos, whats, whys and hows as you've been going? Have you hit any weird hiccups along the way that maybe changed your perspective on how things work?

Quote of the Week

"The difference betweeen reality and fiction?

Fiction has to make sense."

- Tom Clancy

The One Ring

Husband likes to tell people about our venture into the world of Tolkien via the first Lord of the Rings movie. You see, we went to see it, on opening night. This was not actually a truly planned event, I think the conversation went something like this. . .

Me: you wanna go see a movie tonight?

Him: I guess. What do you wanna watch?

Me: I don't know. I just want movie theater buttered popcorn.

Him: I want Sour Patch Kids.

Me: Okay, let's go.

Then we just picked the movie that had the next soonest starting time. Little did we know we were walking into a cult phenomenon. (At the time, neither of us had read much Tolkien and had purged all experiences from high school.)

Moving on. Can you imagine if the One Ring was actually one of these and not something cast from the depths of Mount Doom or what not?

Evil Dark Lord could’ve just passed these nifty little color coded sheets and yanno, when he was having a bad day, people could just leave him alone.

Or bring him some Super Mario cupcakes or whatever. (Super Mario would've made Middle Earth way cooler.)

I know that’s a bit random for today, but it’s Friday. And although the sun looks like it may be breaking through the clouds outside, it’s supposed to flurry all day. Then SNOW tomorrow. And be frigidly cold.

And we found a leak in our roof last night. Yeah. Sweet, I know.

Anyway, I’ve committed to turning my personal internal mood ring to be a nice shade of light blue and dang it, I’m trying.

Okay, have a great weekend everyone! Good luck to all who are Nano-ing or Reviso-ing or Delete-o-ing or maybe just Reading!