Tag: NaNoWriMo

NaNoReMo: Novel Reading Month

Cat on the middle shelf of a bookshelf
Image via Pexels

So, I’m not doing NaNoWriMo – I still don’t have a story I want to tell, and I know from experience that if I don’t, I’ll just scribble random words and then give up. (Otter is doing it, though! I’m going to be cheering them on.)

However, I do have a very large TBR pile… and I could spend a month reading…

So, I’m going to get as far through my reading pile as I can in a month!

I’m going to list 30 books here: I don’t think I’ll get through half of them, but it’s still something! (Even I can’t do a book a day…)

  1. The House of Shattered Wings (IP)
  2. Distaff: A Science Fiction Anthology
  3. The Three-Body Problem
  4. Embers of War
  5. Witchsign
  6. Kavalier & Clay
  7. A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe
  8. Unwrapped Sky
  9. The Winter Queen (IP)
  10. The Poppy War (IP)
  11. The Green Man’s Heir
  12. Everless (IP)
  13. Sorcerer To The Crown (IP)
  14. The Written
  15. The Tethered Mage (IP)
  16. The Secret of Ji
  17. Starborn
  18. The Ninth Rain
  19. Sanyare: The Last Descendant
  20. Valley of Ember
  21. Where the Waters Turn Black
  22. Touch of Iron
  23. Spectris
  24. Shattermoon
  25. The Bone Season
  26. The Book Thief (IP)
  27. Moon’s Artifice
  28. The Adamantine Palace
  29. The Confession
  30. Dreamwalker
  31. Stranger of Tempest
  32. The Affinity Bridge
  33. Within the Sanctuary of Wings
  34. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (IP)
  35. Truthwitch
  36. Autodrome
  37. Prince Thief
  38. Ten Thousand Doors of January
  39. The Bard’s Blade
  40. The Raven Tower
  41. The Golden Grave

Ok, that’s slightly more than 30. It’s most of my TBR, anyhow! We’ll see how many I get through…

I reserve the right to add more and also decide I hate one and stop reading, and I’ll try to review them all – although it may not be as I go!

Depression, Writing and Week 1 of NaNoWriMo

An update from Day 7…I’m somewhere around 17,000 words, of which about 10,000 were the first day.

Depression is absolutely crippling me at the moment.

This is why I don’t usually try to force writing; every word is like pulling teeth. My head’s full of grey fog, and the story. Just. Will. Not. Come. It won’t flow. The characters are flat, the scenery isn’t there so I can’t describe it, and everything’s just one damn event after another. I don’t care about this story.

And frankly, that sucks. I know I can, and I want to. I loved the story when I was planning, but currently, I’m just not doing it justice. It’s frickin’ difficult to push through the fog long enough to write a couple of sentences, just so I can put something in my wordcount.

I’m taking it day by day – as some days are better, some worse – but I seem to have had a run of bad ones recently. I’m hoping that for one day, the fog might lift and I might be able to write again…

Just struggling at the moment. One step at a time, one day at a time, one sentence at a time. That’s all I can do.

NaNoWriMo 2017: Definitely a first draft

NaNoWriMo participant logoDay…what are we on now? 6? I lost track round about day 1…

Anyway, The Thief & The Seer is definitely a first draft. I’ve already had ideas for redoing the beginning; I’m marking bits in H2s to add in later; and I’ve already got some extra ideas for things I want to add. But a first draft is great! I’m exploring the characters. I’d originally thought the seer was quite a gentle a certain character – now, it turns out she’s got an arrogant edge and is definitely capable of holding her own against the thief. The thief’s child is becoming more of a central character – or at least, it seems to work very well to see a lot of the action through her eyes, as she needs explanations that the reader also needs. And the thief himself seems to have mellowed with age, which is quite nice; he almost did something kind a few paragraphs ago. I might have to let him be sweet occasionally.

Having plotted out the novel is working quite well, too. I had quite a rough outline – “go here, meet this person, do this”…but actually, that works brilliantly for my writing style. So far, I’ve followed the outline, but the gaps have given me enough space to add some extras. There’s only one place so far where I may add more, and that’s because I think it would benefit the plot; otherwise, so far at any rate, I’ve got everything I want in there.

I did crash this week; my daily wordcounts haven’t been great! I spent most of yesterday asleep, and I was exhausted for the rest of it. It’s frustrating when everything catches up with me, and it means I’ve been having mind-fog problems – every sentence is a drag to get out, and nothing flows.  However I’m glad that it doesn’t matter too much; again, the first draft feeling is turning into a blessing! Because I’m exploring, it doesn’t matter that I don’t have much description, or have odd, disjointed conversations. It’ll all come out again when I re-plot and re-write, which is fine.

Anyway, still on track at the moment. We’ll see how the next week goes…

Spare Plot going free, one careful owner.

My friend was playing Star Trek, and the Romulans were after some sort of ancient superweapon hidden in a nebula. And it’s probably been done, but I’d love to see a story about a group after a mythical superweapon – which turns out to be a nuke.

They journey to a strange world, finding strange cultures and dangerous beings, a forbidden world of wonder and legend, and find the caves that hide the mythical device. To get inside, they must use a code that’s been passed down for centuries, from generation to generation.

They get inside.

The second code releases the weapon. They type it in, and press the release button.

Which, unfortunately, launches the damn thing.

I think there’s a lot you could wind into that, and you could certainly play around with it – I just liked the idea of an ancient race being us!

(Ps. lots of words on NaNo.)

General Update & The Start of NaNo2017!

Somehow, I got to November, and I have to write wurds…

Photo of (most of) the Grimmie Crew by the amazing Tom Parker.

BristolCon 2017 was fab. I was manning the Grimbold stall for most of the day, assisted by a lot of glamorous assistants – the Grimbold crew are amazing! – and chatted to what felt like everyone. I was on the 10am panel about You Are The Product, which was also fab (and not long enough! We could have talked for the entire day…) and then unfortunately didn’t get to any others, but I heard a lot of people say they were really interesting.

I picked up some books, too – The Court of Broken Knives by Anna Smith-Spark, The Corpse-Rat King by Lee Battersby, The Rise of Io by Wesley Chu and a random copy of The Road to Thule by David R Lee, which from a cursory glance I admit may go in my charity pile (I didn’t buy it, it was randomly in our stock! I suspect from a previous convention freebie table). But hey, I’ll try it, and I’m definitely looking forward to the others.

I’m wondering if I should spend some of December catching up on my reading, and sorting out my Goodreads…I have an entire shelf of books that I haven’t yet got to, along with quite a few on my Kindle! We’ll see how this month goes.

Speaking of…

NANO2017! I am writing words! I am aiming for 70k so my aim is 2300(ish) per day. Whether I’ll manage that or not remains to be seen. At any rate, I’m enjoying the story so far.

You can find me on the NaNoWriMo site, and there’s still time to join in if the idea of writing a novel in 30 days intrigues you!

In more general news, I have good days and bad days, and I’m not entirely coping with people (as in panic-attack-not-coping-with-people) so if I’m a little quiet, that’s why! I am trying to keep in contact though so I am still online and messaging. Book Polishers is still awesome so I’m just trundling along with work there, trying to get out for some lovely autumn walks, and trying to keep busy. Not that keeping busy is going to be an issue this month!

Now, I need to go write some words….wish me luck!