In Which I Discuss the Perils of Planning Stuff

Cut to October 31, 2011. I know what my plot is. I know who my characters are. I am ready to get stuff written. Planned stuff. The plot I've (kind of) slaved over for basically the whole month.

Then November 1st happened and all that kind of just melted and slithered down the drain as I barreled blindly forth with the rough equivalent of my plot's deformed half-sibling. I don't even remember for sure what the original plot entailed, but I'm pretty sure the title (Dark Horse) was the only thing that remained entirely intact.

This is the NaNoWriMo strain of plot ADD. Dozens of ideas flutter around my head all October, I stalwartly keep focus on one of them, and then some invisible force slams in on NaNo Eve and, well, "Goodbye, focus! It was nice seeing you! We'll have to do this again sometime! Like, next October!"

Now, frankly, I don't think that will happen this year. I'm all, like emotionally invested this time around. Wonderfall (which is based on my poems found here) is my new adopted child, and I love it, and it gives me seizures when I think too hard about it but I ignore those, eat some chocolate, and plan it anyway. There's this nifty article here in which, I kid you not, the Incredible Hulk totally curb-stomps the Three Act story structure in favor of Shakespeare's five acts, and I used it to draw Wonderfall into a modified six act version. It's the most outlining I've done in a year, and I'm going to do more.

See, this year I'm finally employing the Psycho Person Notebook technique, in which I stuff I comp book completely full with outlining and character bios and random writing resources I printed off the Internet. It's working wonders for me, truly. But there are still kinks to be worked out.

Like POINT OF VIEW. THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE.

We do battle every year. I'm pretty sure I wrote an epic forum post about it last year and everything.

Anyway, Wonderfall has three protagonists: Elias, Connor, and Lorelei, the latter of which is our wonderfall girl. And if you hopped on over to Figment and read the poem, you know she doesn't stay long. Except, we still need to know what she's up to. So naturally, I think, well, we'll do third person limited - then we can go around to Eli and Connie and her and know what's what. Except that, when Elias (arguably the true main character) first burst into existence, it was in the form of a first person and pretty badass opening monologue-type thing. And Lore, bless her, had a very Lore-like second chapter too. But I can't get a handle on how Connor would sound in first person, I'm sketch about attempting two male point of view characters when I've never even done one for any length of time, and I'm frankly not a huge fan of rotating point of views to begin with.

So, I say, "OK, so third-person limited it is." Except I still kind of want to write Elias. I hear him talking. Only, I can't just write Elias, because then how on earth would he know what Connor and Lore were secretly getting themselves into. Grr.

And then, I'm still working on character motivations, which of their flaws to haunt them with, and all that good writerly stuff. I'm doing fine with that. I know Elias is going to be put on the spot for how he's always avoiding drama at the cost of ignoring important issues, and Connor's going to be selfish and ignore how he's been pretty distant lately and call Elias out on it. Stuff like that. It's just, depending on the point of view, certain things are going to be highlighted more than others.

Oh, the joys of NaNo planning. Now, I'm off to go find some rubber cement, because stick glue doesn't cut it when pasting things into a notebook.

Writing Bucket List

You have one, don't you? It's composed of all those story ideas or concepts that you absolutely love and always swear to yourself that you're going to write someday. 

(That quote "If not now, when?" comes to mind, but that's an entirely different and horrifying topic in and of itself.)

I've recently decided to challenge myself and write down the bucket list in a organized collection, containing everything I know about each idea. It's going to be a page on this blog. Then, whenever I miraculously have nothing to work on (ha - hahahahaha. ha.), or whenever I'm strapped for an idea for NaNo or Camp or something, I'm going to look at that list and sincerely try to write one of the items. Because frankly, the items on the list terrify me. They're the ideas I don't use because I don't think I'll ever be able to do them justice, for whatever reason. Each one is so perfect in my head that I figure if I put it down on paper it will shrivel up and die.

Either that, or they're lovely ideas except that they're missing something crucial. Like a conflict. Or a main character.

Anyway ("anyway" - one of my favorite words that I use too often), I just thought I needed to challenge myself to accomplish something, even if that something is only evaluating other challenges. I'm in a mucky limbo between school and a job and more school, so I'm feeling rather unmotivated. And it's been a long time since I completed a longer writing project. Just look at my current projects page. It's swimming with stuff I need to update more.

Blah. The only way to bring a muse back is to write until she decides to show back up, I suppose.

NaNo Spasms . . .

I have the variety that's like . . . "HEY NANO'S A MONTH AWAY BUT HERE'S A STORY IDEA YOU FEEL LIKE YOU NEED TO START RIGHT NOW. BUT NO, YOU MUST WAIT, AND WRITE IT FOR NANO AND HOPEFULLY YOU'LL STILL BE AS ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT IT AS YOU ARE NOW."

*cries*

But, goodness if I'm not swamped with Figment and the book I'm blogging with a friend. So, the idea will have to wait. Besides, I start getting ideas for NaNo in June, most times, and this year I had the pleasure of exorcising one of them during Camp. It's really just a case of what's the latest idea I've fallen in love with once October 31st rolls around. It's plot ADD, people.

Anyway, the idea that has most lately attacked me is about a band of rogue grim reapers mysteriously sending people off before their date of death, at first only seconds early. Then minutes. And then the FMC is targeted a whole whopping eight months before she's supposed to die, and a pair of reapers who are still on the straight-and-narrow intervene. Cue a quest to figure out why people are being reaped early, and who exactly is behind it.

It was one of those ideas where I could immediately hear each of the three main characters in my head, so it's going to be a hard idea to let go of. I guess I'll just have to see what happens.

Camp NaNo - Day 4

I stagger in to merely tell you that I am alive, and am three days ahead of schedule for Camp. It's a lovely feeling, but it's hot out and I feel very tired. Such is writing. And I'm not even done for today.

I rejoice in the fact that I have managed to wrangle a blue whale into the narrative. This will not be the last time. I'm also happy about how the story is developing a plot all on its own, with minimal input from me. I find this to be very considerate.

Word Count: 11,658

I Complicate August Explicitly

I've decided I'm going for some sort of creative mind-journey cataclysm for my NaNo practice. The whole plotless/bizarro/surreal thing brought me to it. The thing about writing that has always scared me the most is that always-present author-fear that what I put down on paper will never measure up to what I imagined. Every writer deals with that, right? It just particularly irks me that I'm flooded by extremely vibrant images - just snapshots of impossible things like boys who fall through skylights and shatter into emeralds - and half the time I wish I was an artist/graphic designer/film maker so I could fashion it all out visually and not have to worry about it being logical/making a semblance of sense/spurring a plot development.

So, I figure I'll just go all out and conjure some lovely half-coherent adventure in which I infuse all that pent-up imagery into something I never meant to plot in the first place. It takes the pressure off. It excites me. And as a writer, if you're not excited you've lost something, and like a car key you have to find it again or you're not going anywhere. Unless you know how to hot-wire the thing, in which case you're probably going to be just fine.

Swimming Around "Other Genres"

I've been hanging out in the NaNoWriMo forums again. Ah, it's been such a long time. Not really. I lurk like nobody's business, I just haven't posted in a while. It seems like the only real activity is in the Fantasy forum, as per usual, anyway. Not that I don't love fantasy - just that most of what I've been writing lately is kind of on the ambiguous-genre-side.

(Yeah, that, or urban fantasy. Which is fantasy, sure, but more like magical realism when I write it.)

Anyway, I've kind of spontaneously decided to do a NaNo practice run in August. Which is the day after tomorrow. And further, I have also spontaneously decided that it's going to be plotless bizarro fiction BECAUSE IT CAN BE AND AT LEAST I WILL ENJOY IT. Also, these two characters just kind of happened, and even though they're not giving up much, I like them. And the charming blonde might just shatter into emeralds when under impact.

Huh.

(How's this for a first post? Totally ignoring the fact that it's a first post . . . And it's so short. )

Needless to say, this is going to be a very casual blog. With writing. And uncalled-for fandom raving on rare occasion.