Just two words today.

The & End.

^__^

Yes, the ‘End of the Book’ I’ve been craving since the beginning is upon us!

It feels so good to be done. I’ve been working on this thing since … September 2007.

But it’s just a first draft. To be honest, you couldn’t pay me to show this fuzzy-logic, missing-scene-ridden, poor dialogue version to anybody. I guess that’s what a revision is for, right? :)

I have the option to start a new project for NPI and continue on for the next 6 days, or to stop here. I think at this point I’m going to stop here, keep my mind focused on Five Rings, & read a few books on how to properly tackle a first revision.

I’ll post the final word count when I get Total Assistant working (my free trial expired).

During the month of March, I want to push Five Rings‘ word-count through the roof.

But, sadly, maintaining a steady word-count on my own for a period longer than two weeks is too lofty a goal for me.

So I’m asking for your help.

I’ve decided to host a virtual event; one that came to me after reading Chris Baty’s wonderful No Plot? No Problem!. I’m christening this event “The Novel Push Initiative”, an easier-than-NaNoWriMo event.

But it still encourages writing every day.

THE RULES:

-NO PROJECT-JUMPING! (Please focus on only one project.)

-NaNoWriMo famously averages out to 1,667 words a day. SO…
Here’s the Break-down:

a ”KNOCK-OUT” is 0-249 words OR no post with a tally for that day. (No, I won’t sweep you under the rug like a king’s love-child.)
a ”CHECK-IN” is 250-749 words. (for those days something terrible happens, we’re sick, or we’re just not feeling it.)
an “UPDATE” is 750-1,667 words (about 1,000 words per day. Hopefully, this will be the most common one.)
a ”TOUGHER-THAN-NANO” is anything above 1,667 words. (are you nuts?!?)
a ”COMPLETE” is if you get finished with your book and type THE END. (*jealous* I suppose you can project-jump if and only if you complete a project.)

((So, at minimum, you need to CHECK-IN every day to avoid the big game-over.))

-First off, you’ll need a novel or novelette-sized WIP (work-in-progress). Whether you’re middling, have already done your research and are starting a first draft, or just want to dust off an old project you’ve been meaning to finish, you should be able to participate. (If you’re getting out those red pens to do a revision, tough luck!) :)

-Second, you’ll need a web log of some kind. Even a Twitter account will do.

-And thirdly, you’ll need to reply to this post (or any of my later posts this month) with:
A) a link to your blog, and
B) what project you’d like to work on.

-Each day We, united in writerly cause, will promise to add actual words to our WIP—every single day.
We are required to post WCs (word-counts) in our respective blogs Each and Every Day from March 1st to March 31st. 
If we miss a single day AT ALL—FOR WHATEVER REASON—we’re KNOCKED OUT OF THE EVENT. (Of course, I’m wondering how long I’ll last at this point ;D.)

-To actively participate, a simple Tweet can look like this:

CHECK-IN: 250 words.
11:59 PM Mar 1st from web

((But, of course, it’s your blog: You’re welcome to post snippets, musings, and whatever else you’d like. You don’t even have to label whether your WC is an UPDATE if you don’t feel like it. All I’m asking for is a visible word-count.))

WHAT I PROMISE:

I will periodically link to each of your sites and post your word-tallies up to a KNOCK-OUT.

IMPORTANT: I will be using whatever dates your posts are time-stamped with as a guide, so be sure your local settings are updated.

At the end of the month, we’ll see how many total words we’ve harvested.

If you stay with this until the end, just think: at the very minimum, you’ll have added 7,750 words to your WIPs.

So, still with me? Then I advise you take no prisoners as we march our plots ever-forward, all the way to March 31st! Good luck. I know I’ll need it…

I’ve mentioned some of the projects I’ve been involved with elsewhere, but this time I’m going to be involved with one that will unfurl right before your eyes. ^_^

Tomorrow, I will start participating in an event called ‘World Building Month’; the brainchild of the awesomely talented author Eliza from Tales of a Fantasy Scribbler. (Her blog is also snugly nested within my tanglebrush of links->)

What is World Building Month?:
Quote from Eliza’s blog:

So if this sounds like something you’d also like to participate in, by all means, join. It should be lots of fun and there are many talented writers participating.

I’m joining partly because Eliza has been around here since post #1, partly because I missed out on her ‘Villains Month’ last month, and because I decided it can’t hurt to take one more month aside to reinforce the world I’ve built. I’m hoping to discover many additional things about the land my characters are destined to traipse through, and I’m looking forward to sharing some of it with you. Read the rest of this entry »

When I was little, I used to read and write. Not in the sense of “I could read and I could write”, but more along the lines of “I did read books on a regular basis and wrote original stories, too”. I remember reading serial detective novels all the time, and trying to tackle The Collected Works of Sherlock Holmes when I was eight (but found it was too complicated). I remember getting lots of free pizza through the Book-It! program. I remember actually thumbing though the dictionary and thesaurus during breaks in second grade. I remember being able to type quickly without looking at the keyboard by the middle of third grade, and typing rather complicated multi-page stories by the time I was ten years old on Word Perfect in DOS 3.1. I remember the first time I got a return of zero mistakes on a spell check. I remember researching Greek and Roman mythology in dusty old encyclopedias with tannish-brown stains all over them. I even managed to get a poem into a minor publication for young authors by fourth grade, and the town newspaper also printed it.

But, somewhere along the line, I decided video games, anime, music, comic books, and movies were better ways to spend my time. I became convinced that books were plagued with long-winded explanations that never seemed to get to the point.
Maybe it was hormonal.

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I am currently in the middle of writing a book. Or ‘middling’ - as it is sometimes called in the writing world. This is the point of the book writing process where you see a nightmarish landscape of jagged, foreboding mountains laid out before you during a swirling storm, and you must traverse all of it if you ever wish to see, somewhere on the horizon, the fabled, glimmering, heavenly, yet taunting, End of the Book. This is the point where you realise you will indeed pay with your sweat, blood, and tears - just like all of those authors whose advice you read forewarned - before finally making it to the end of the story, only to be greeted by an unforgiving ‘final editing process ogre’ holding his stopwatch and tapping his massive foot, demanding even more of your time and patience.

Read the rest of this entry »