I Did It! And New Things

Holy Freaking Cow, I actually did it. I finished NaNoWriMo. And my final word count was 57,091. I pumped a lot of words out the last couple days of November. I've done this thing off and on for about 5 years now and this is the first time I've come anywhere close to 50K. So you know, I'm pretty thrilled. :)

Of course, Moon Dragons isn't quiet done yet. I still have 20 scenes to write, but I'm in the home stretch and about 75% done with this sucker. I figure I can finish this first draft by sometime in January, so that's the new goal.

And now, moving on to some exciting announcements! If you turn your attention to the top of the screen, you will notice a new tab called "Writing Resources". In it you will find links to some useful writing related web sites and I'm in the process of compiling a list of writing books that I have found useful.

In the vein of useful writing help, I am also going to be launching a new series here called Kricket's Writing Tips For Beginners. I've been wanting to do something like this for a long time, but just didn't know how.

So, I want to start this series by introducing myself (for those of you who don't know me yet), because I know when I'm looking at someone giving writing advice, I want to know their credentials and their experience, to see if I deem them qualified to give me advice.

I have been writing since I was 13. I have two completed manuscripts under my belt. I worked on the school newspaper in high school. I'm an avid reader of fantasy and science fiction and I'm fascinated with the publishing process. No, I have not published anything, haven't even tried. I'm not at that step in the process, yet. So what am I qualified to tell you about?

Next to nothing.

Honestly. I'm not going to sit here and pretend I know everything because I feel I'm just at the beginning of the path to becoming a serious writer. BUT, I do feel like I've learned a few things on my journey so far and I want to share them, and that's what I intend to do.

So here's a layout of how this series is going to go. I'm going to post every Wednesday and here's a brief overview of what I'm going to talk about.

• Writing Mojo: The Why, What, Where, When and How of Writing.
• Your Routine: How to Make Writing A Part of Your Daily Life
• Goals: Setting And Meeting Writing Goals, Big And Small.
• The First Draft: It Sucks.
• Writer's Block: A Few Thoughts.

As this series goes on, please, please feel free to comment with your thoughts and suggestions. Also, if you know of any other resources out there for writers that I haven't mentioned, please share! You can either leave a comment or email me, there's a form just to the left.

Thank you for reading and I hope you come by again in the weeks to come! Happy Wednesday! Go Write Something!

I'm a Writing Masochist

I wasn't sure I was going to do it this year, but my friends over at AW convinced me too.

So, yes, I'm going to do NaNoWriMo, again. And I'll probably fail, as always. And I'm not being pessimistic when I say that. I'm just warning you that there is a very high chance that I won't make the goal this year. But I'll try anyway.

My plan is to finish my current novel. Yes, technically, you should start something fresh. But I have about 80,000 words left to write in that thing, so knocking out 50,000 in a month will be good. And then, once I have Moon Dragons out of the way, I can toy with this new White Crow idea that's been whispering seductively in my ear for the past two months.

So who's with me?! If you are, you can find me at the NaNo website as Kricket. And of course, I'll be doing weekly updates here once November starts.

Thanks for reading and have a great Wednesday and Go Write Something!*



*Yeah, that's more for me than you, but you can take that advice too. :)

WUW: Finding The Ending

I didn't post last week on any of my blogs because we had family over and I didn't even touch my computer all week. So not a lot of writing got done either. Thus, I will tell you what I was going to tell you last week.

I FOUND MY ENDING!!!

Ever since I started writing this story I've been searching for an ending, but I could never find one. Even as I was coming up with my climax(es), I still didn't know how everything would end. But it finally hit me last week and it was a joyous occasion. I've got it all wrapped up nice and tidy but with some wiggle room for a second book if need be.

Right now I'm getting these last dozen scenes written out on note cards and then I'm going to start writing my real first draft from scene 1 and on to The End. I'm assuming that this first draft will be close to 120,000 words long. Also, I'm hoping to get this first draft completed by October sometime so that I can do a real NaNoWriMo this year and start working on my new White Crow idea. I'm not going to set a hard and fast deadline on that, because those never work for me, but we'll see how it goes.

So once that first draft gets started I'm going to do updates on here that say how many words I wrote the past week and how many scenes I completed out of the total scene count (which I think is going to be about 80 scenes). I know once I have all of this planned out properly, the writing will become much easier. I won't have to stop and stare at the screen and think, "Now what?".

Thanks for reading! Have a happy Wednesday and I hope you get lots of writing time and good words this week!

What's Up Wednesday? Not Much

Well I'm late, but that's okay. I honestly don't have much to say. I've been very productive this week, but I'm still working with the note cards. I'm almost done outlining the 70,000+ words I have so far and I've come up with 12 new scenes to be inserted into those 70K words. I'm rough guesstimating (that's an actual word?) that those 12 scenes will get me about 16,000 more words. This story is definitely going to be 90K, if not 100K, words long. *passes out* That's a lot of words.

So, yeah, I'm still plugging away. I'd really like to have this whole story plotted out and begin working on the real first draft by the end of July. It would be kind of nice to have the first draft finished and resting by November so that I can do NaNoWriMo this year. But we'll see. My writing plans and deadlines almost never work out. :)

And of course, before I go, I'll share some more Chuck Wendig gold. If you're not following his blog already then you need to fix that. 50 RANTYPANTS SNIDBITS OF RANDOM WRITING & STORYTELLING ADVICE  My favorites are #1, 3, 6, 10, 14, 16, 34, 45, 49 & 50. So, like, all of them. :D

WIP Mini Blog Hop

Got tagged for this by KitCat. :)

The Rules:

• Give credit to the person/blog who tagged you.
• Post these rules.
• Answer the questions about your current WIP (Work In Progress).
• Tag five other writers/bloggers and add their links so we can hop over and meet them.

The Questions:

#1. What is the working title of your book?

Dragons in Space. I suck at titles.

#2. What genre does the book fall under?

Fantasy/Space Opera mash up.

#3. Which actors would you choose to play your characters for the movie rendition?

For Sonya: Natalie Portman

For Tal: Uma Thurman

For Alvin: Taylor Lautner

For Jelani: Usher

#4. What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

Sonya Lee, a Moon Dragon Rider, takes a group of soldiers and researches to the planet of Chung-sea to investigate an alien outpost where they discover that there is life beyond their solar system and where Sonya begins to unlock the secrets of their new alien neighbors.

#5. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Hopefully, I'll get an agent and be published by one of the Big Five. Nothing wrong with self-publishing, but that would be my last option. Too much work for me. I'd rather be writing.

#6. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

Well, the first draft isn't done yet. I started it a year ago for last year's NaNoWriMo. Then I worked on another project for a while and had a baby, so it's taken some time to get back to Dragons. I do plan on having the first draft done by the middle of next year, at the latest. :)

#7. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

The only one I can think of is the Pern series by Anne McCaffrey. If anyone knows of other Fantasy/Sci-Fi mash ups with or with out dragons, I'd love to hear about them.

#8. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Well, my husband always inspires me and encourages me to write. But for this particular story I just got this image in my head of a woman riding on a dragon and looking down at a planet from space. And my brain went, "Oh hell yeah!"

#9. What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?

Well, there are aliens, and space ships, and space battles, and a love story, and political intrigue, and fun characters. Oh yeah, and DRAGONS IN FREAKING SPACE! :D

#10. Tag You're It!

Um.... All the people I know who write and have a blog have already been tagged..... So I open this to everyone. Steal this and pass it on! And then come tell me about it and I'll add your blog link here. :)

I'm a Rebel!

I'm doing NaNoWrtiMo, but then again, I'm not. I feel so dangerous. Okay, not really.

But I am trying to write 50,000 words this month. They might not all be on the same project, but if I can write 50K in 30 days then maybe next year I'll actually win NaNo. That would be nice.

In other new, I have finished that pirate ghost ship story I and Daniel have promised. Just need to give it one more editing pass and then I'll post it here. If all goes well, I should have it up by this weekend. I promise!

NaNoWriMo?

It's that time of year again. Halloween is just a week or so away and then it will be November. The month my eldest turns 3 and then Thanksgiving. Oh yeah, and that whole "Write a 50,000 word novel in a month" thing.

Alas, I am not really participating this year. "Why?" you ask. Well, I'm in a really good spot with my Dragons in Space novel and I don't want to stop. Technically, you're supposed to start something new for NaNo. Dragons was my NaNo project last year so I'll continue to work on that this year. I'll still try to get 50k out in one month, so I'll be there in spirit with the rest of y'all.

If you'd like I can still do weekly updates (I should be doing that here anyway *sheepish grin*) and try to find something encouraging to say to those of you who are seriously trying to win that NaNo badge.

In other news, I'm working on a cool ghost story and should have that up by the end of the month. It's partly for the AW Blog Chain and partly in conjunction with Daniel and his ship in bottle blog. It's been fun to write and I'm hoping to have the first draft finished by the end of the week and then I'll edit the crap out of it.

So that's what's been going on. Keep an eye here for the ghost story and for updates during November. :) Happy Thursday and thanks for Reading!

Writer's A.D.D.

I'm sure many writers have this problem. Jumping from one project to another. Or at least, saying you're working on one thing but then you change your mind within a month and work on something else. I normally would say that I'm not this jumpy, but it seems that way lately doesn't it?

So I know I said a couple post back that I was going to start working on a more traditional fantasy White Crow story. Well I lied, I'm not going to work on that. I think my mind is burnt out on White Crow right now. Because even when I tried to think about it, my mind would just drift back to the piece I started last November for NaNoWriMo, Dragons in Space (terrible working title).

I love dragons, always have, always will.

So, now that I've moved (see my regular blog for pics soon) I'm ready to get back to writing. I spent most of yesterday looking over what I wrote back in November. And after kicking my self and wanting to cry for how terrible the writing was, I realized I had a good start and I could still work with this.

Starting today I'm going to start from the beginning and rewrite what I have so far and then go from there. I'm hoping I can get this first draft done by November so that I'll be free to do NaNoWriMo this year. But if that doesn't happen, that's okay. I will definitely have this first draft done by the end of the year.

Hm... There goes the whole, submit to agents this year goal I had. *shrug* Oh well, I'll be ready next year. :)

Thanks for reading!

NaNoWriMo Fail

So as of right now I have 12,498 words on my NaNo.  There is no possible way for me to get 37,502 in the next two and a half days.

BUT, I am still determined to finish this project and for it to be at least 50,000 words.  I think I've mentioned this before, but I can do at least 1200 words in a day (that's my new daily minimum, I have to write 1200 words, No Matter What!)  So, when you do the math... *goes and does the math*  I can get this thing to at least 50k words in about 31 days.

Can I turn December into my own NaNoWriMo?  I guess so.  My inability to get 50k this month had nothing to do with the month it self, it had to do with being sick for a lot of it.  And while December can be a pretty busy month, what with church Christmas parties and visiting family for Christmas and such, it's no different than November.

Now, time to set my deadline!  *does some more math and calender looking*  I will have the first draft of Dragons in Space (worst working title ever) done by January 3, 2012.  Just a side note, it's totally possible I can get it done by the end of Dec., but having a few extra days is helpful.


So, overall, NaNoWriMo was okay this year.  I had a good story and I had done a fair amount of research and work before hand, so that made it easier.  It's just very hard to write when you're too busy puking.


Congrats to all of those who won!  And to those of you like me, be proud of the work and words you did get and if you still like your story, continue working on it.


Thanks to all of you who kept up with me on this blog. :)  I'll continue to update this one but I can't promise any kind of consistency.  So go meet me back at Kricket's Konfessions!

Week 3 of NaNoWriMo

So.... I haven't even broken 10k yet... :'(  *sigh*  But I'm not giving up.  I've got 9 days left, not sure I can pump out over 40k in 9 days but I'm going to try!

I got distracted this last week with Little Boy's birthday and getting my apartment clean and such, so there was like no writing done.  And even though this weeks got Thanksgiving, I'm not too worried about it.  I'm not hosting it or anything.  Just going to my sister's place.  All I'm doing is making a chocolate moose pie, and that won't be hard, no actual baking for that.

So I'm not giving up.  I'm going to keep trying and see how much I can do before the 30th.  It's all about not getting distracted and spending all of my time writing with breaks to play with Little Boy and stuff.

And, if you want to get more daily/recent updates on word counts and such, follow me on Twitter.  There's a link on the right.

Thanks for reading and keep it up fellow NaNoers!  We're in the home stretch!

Week 2 of NaNoWriMo

Yes, this update is a little late.  Week 2 was almost as crazy as week 1 the only difference, I actually wrote words and stuff!

And yet, I'm still desperately behind.  I've only got 8477 words right now, and according to the NaNoWriMo Website  I should be somewhere over 23,000 by the end of today.  The chances of me getting over 14,000 words today are like slim to none.  But that will not stop me!

This very helpful site also tells me that if I do about 2400 words a day for the next 17 days I can make my goal.  2400 words in a day?  Possible.  I've done 3000 in a day before, while at work.  So anything is possible.

This third week coming up is going to be fun, but hopefully not crazy.  My son turns two this week. :) *proud mommy smile*  We're not going to throw a huge party or anything, but I do need to make a cake.  It's been a long time since I've made a cake.  Look for pictures of that on my regular blog  in the next week or so.

Well, I've got a lot of work to do.  Writing this blog has been a good warm up for my fingers but now it's time to write some "real" words. :)  Keep it up all you other crazy NaNo's out there.  We're almost half way there!

Week 1 of NaNoWriMo

So Tuesday was the first day of November and the first day of NaNo.  Want to know what I was doing that day?  TMI WARNING! Pooping and puking like there was no tomorrow.  And for a while I did wonder of there would be a tomorrow.  Wednesday wasn't much better.

Thursday and Friday were slightly less terrible.  I wasn't sick, but I was very weak and tired from not eating for two days.  FYI: Not eating and being pregnant don't go well together.

So today I felt kind of normal.  At least enough to sit up in bed and do some writing.  Not well enough to go to a write-in, which made me sad, but well enough that I can take care of my self and Will with minimal help from Daniel (he's been an angel this week, btw).

Today I wrote 2006 words.  Technically I'm still behind (should be at like 8335 words by end of day 5) but if I write about 2000 words a day, I should get that 50,000 by the 30th.  I'm pretty sure I can do that.

If I haven't already linked it, here's my profile on the NaNo site.

And now, I shall take a much deserved nap.  Congrats to all of those who are working on NaNo and have met their goals so far this week.  Keep up the good work!  And to those of who are like me and got a late start, keep at it, we can do it!  Just think, all those wimps who started on time only have to do 1667 words/day, we can do more than that and that's what makes us awesome!

Thanks for reading, love to see comments!

3 DAYS!!!

No, I'm not obsessively counting down or anything, not at all. :D

So, yes, 3 more days until Nov. 1st and NaNoWriMo.  I'll be honest and say that I haven't made any progress on my story, but I feel like I just need to start writing it.  And I can't do that for another 3 days.  But I have been mentally preparing and trying to figure out when I'm going to get those 1667 words in everyday.

For those of you who are participating and if any of you live in the Denver area, I will be attending the write-ins being held every Saturday at Cafe 13 in Golden.  The first one is tomorrow and I'm pretty excited about it.  This will be my first write-in.  Actually this will be my first time writing in any kind of group setting (outside of school).  I'm just super excited to meet other writers.  I don't know many in real life.

Also, if you're doing NaNoWriMo and you haven't read these comics, you're missing out.

And that's all folks!  See you in November!

10 Days

So I was going to wait to update until Saturday, but I won't be around my computer most of the weekend, so I thought I'd update now. It's only 5:40am, it's not like I have anything better to do.

So most of my world building for my NaNo project is done. And I've learned a lot about space, space travel and living in space the past week. Wikipedia is my Bible.

And Daniel, of course, helped me put together some very important pieces of the story. He has the power to say just a few words, make one little suggestion, and my brain goes crazy and comes up with all these ideas. So not only am I putting dragons and space, but elves and orcs too. :)

(I'm wondering if this is going to become a marketing nightmare later on or if I'll just be considered highly original and awesome. Hopefully the later.)

Anyway, that's all that's going on right now. I've started to outline the story but it's hard to work on because my fingers and brain are just itching to actually start writing. But I've got 10 days left before I can.

It is Coming.... Duh duh duh!

NANOWRIMO!!!!!

Yep, it'll be here, in like 16 days. And this year I shall participate. I didn't last year because, well, I wasn't doing much writing this time last year. But this year I have a bright shinny new idea that I've been saving for NaNoWriMo.

As for the Crow novel, I haven't been doing so well in editing it. If you read my other blog you know that I've been sick the past month and it's only been the last couple weeks that I've felt well enough to think beyond whether or not I could keep my food down. So the editing will wait until December. (I can totally edit two books at the same time.... )

So expect some more activity in this blog as I will try to make weekly updates on my progress. For now I'm going to focus on doing more research and some basic outlining so I know what to write for the next month.

Anyone want to join me on this great adventure? If you click on the link at the top that will take you to the NaNoWriMo homepage where you can learn more about it and sign up.

Revisions Have Begun!

So I have officially started revising the White Crow novel. I am hoping/planning on finishing the revisions by the end of the month, but we shall see. I want it finished so that I can work on my new piece for NaNoWriMo.

Either way, I'm really lucky because I have a sister who is a grammar genius who helps me edit my stuff. I have issues with commas (they are evil). And so far the revision process is going well and I'm liking the results. Hopefully it will go quickly now.

And that is all, except for some pimpage. If you're a writer you should be following this blog, Writer Beware. They keep a watch on the publishing world and let you know about scams and other sketchy things that people do to us poor desperate writers.

Thanks for reading!

Bad Writer

I'm a bad writer, I didn't do NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) this year. In retrospect, it's a good thing because this month has been crazy. Plus, I didn't have an original story idea to work on this year. Heck, I have to finish my current project before I can start anything else. I've been failing in the writing department of my life. :( But that's ok. New Year's is coming soon, so I can make more promises that won't be kept! :D