A to Z

I decided to join the A to Z blogging challenge, and I'm excited about the prospect. It sounds like a fun challenge to pick a topic to blog about  based on a specific letter. I am getting a little jump on things now so I don't face blogging block come April.

I decided to brainstorm topic ideas. While I'm going to try to focus on writing or reading related topics I'm sure some days will be random fun. I created a new document in Google with the alphabet typed out, a new line for each letter. Then as I get ideas I type them after their letter. I already have a bunch for C, and some for B, and H. (Things like creativity, books, character, hope, joy and such). As I said, I'm brainstorming. And yes, feel free to use any ideas if they strike the muse, they are just words/post ideas.

February reads

With February being a short month I only have two books for this post. 

Defender (Foreigner #5) Cherryh, C.J.
I enjoyed reading this book, though it seamed a little slow in spots. The way this one is placed in the series it setting things up to have the characters arriving at the distant space station in the next book. There were a few jokes towards the end of the book with mistranslations, and the dowager character makes a good power play move. The dowager is one of my favorite characters in the series.

Explorer (Foreigner #6) Cherryh, C.J.
This one was rather enjoyable to read with the various levels of intrigue going on. With the space ship dealing with both the space station and new (to them) aliens and the two groups of humans not wanting to cooperate with each other conflict is present through the whole novel. There was also a nice bit of action in this book.

January Reads

Because I've had a lot going on I've unintentionally neglected my blog. I have been reading though and have read 5 novels over the month of January. I figured I'd share what I read here, and I'm hoping to write some proper reviews at some point. As opposed to a quick few sentences on what I thought of the books.

These are listed in reading order, and I've linked them to their Goodreads pages.
Islands Siddons, Anne Rivers
The first novel read in 2011. This is one my mom lent me I might not have picked it up otherwise. That being said I did enjoy reading this one. The characters were interesting and I enjoyed how she described the setting related details.

Tara Road Binchy, Maeve
Another loan from mom. While the story started out quite a bit earlier than I had expected it worked for the book with setting up the characters and the plot. I enjoyed how much the two main characters grew from their experiences over the course of the novel.

CassaStar Cavanaugh, Alex J.
I really enjoyed reading this book. There were enough details about the setting to create a mental image of the world around the characters, without getting to bogged down in details. The characters are fleshed out nicely and their actions kept the story moving at a good pace.

Scarlet Feather Binchy, Maeve
While I did enjoy this book, I liked Tara Road better. There were developments between some of the characters that felt a little forced. Though the nine year old twins in this book are a riot. I was laughing out loud a few times while reading.

Precursor (Foreigner, #4)  Cherryh, C.J.
I started reading this series last year and I enjoyed this book better than some of the earlier ones. The world is well defined and the alien species is really interesting. Because this is book four I don't want to say to much because it would spoil things in the earlier three books.

Holidays and Writing Goals

Well it's almost time for Christmas, and other holiday festivities. I had my last day of work for the year today and I'm looking at what else needs to be done for the holidays. I'm relaxing right now on the couch with cat and netbook in lap while I ponder over things.

With the year ending I'm looking forward into 2011 and what I want to put down for my writing goals. I would like to finish my nano draft and also do a revision pass of at least one other first draft novel. I would also like to be more active in the critique group I recently joined. That's about as far as I am with my goals right now, I'll post a more official list sometime over my break.

Anyone else working on their writing goals? Still figuring out what to do?

Post Nano and Into December

I won Nano (National Novel Writing Month), crossing the 50k finish line on the 29th of the month (yay!). I  had been behind most of the month using my Thanksgiving break to catch up. I wrote over 20k for said break. Well having Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off from work helped.

That being said I decided at the start of this month to finish the draft by year end. As of yet I have not touched the actual draft. My plan was to finish a note card outline then jump into the writing. Last week I wrapped up most of the rest of the story on my note cards so I think I am just going to start writing tomorrow.

So how did Nano go for those who participated ? Or writing in general?

Character Diagram

Here is the character flowchart I mentioned in my previous post. I made it with MS Visio, then I screen captured the print preview so I could have a picture of it. It's hard to see much in this thumbnail in this post, but this is only the scaled down version of a larger image.

I started out by placing my main character Sabina in the center then I kept her her co-workers above and beside her. Her boyfriend and best friend are lower as I didn't have to worry about what they think about her co-workers.

After awhile it did get a bit confusing with the arrow shapes with the number of characters I have on here. So I used the connector tool for the last two arrows. They were black originally, but then I figured out how to change the colors. I used dark green for strong like, lighter green for liking someone, gray for more neutral, lighter red for dislike, and dark red for hate. Ya, Iris is one of those people that really doesn't like others. I still need to put arrows in between the best friend and boyfriend.

Nanowrimo in progress

Well it is now day 10 for Nano and I just crossed the 10k mark. I've been behind the whole month so far, but not to bad. I wrote 5k on Sunday which helped. While I try to get in a few words here and there I generally like to have large chunks of time to just write. Sunday was wonderful, even with the push to make up some of the ground.

I had been dragging for awhile with the writing and once I figured things out I've had an easier (and more fun) time of it. I spent some time Saturday and Sunday morning thinking about my novel. I came to the realization that I needed to think about my characters' motives better. My novel started with more of a plot idea than a character and until I moved more towards the characters it was a struggle to write. I switched out some characters that were there for the sake of plot and added some characters with some things they want. Some of the new characters are plot related, but more so in the way that what they want conflicts with other character's wants/goals.

I also spent some time Sunday morning creating a flow chart of my major characters. Each character has their own square, then I connected them with arrows. The arrows I color coded to show if one character liked, disliked, or was more neutral about the other character. Some arrows I made double ended to show that both characters felt the same about each other. Others have single arrows, one in each direction with different colors. It really made me think about the various characters as I took each character in turn and though about how they felt about the other characters. Plus to the pairs where the characters feel differently about each other can make for some good conflict points in the novel. Aside from just the mutual dislike.

So, to those also participating in Nano how are you doing? Catching up, right on goal, worked in a nice cushion?
And for those not doing Nano, how's the current work in progress going?

Muse Prompting Monday - Nano Go!

I've been wanting to upload this picture for a few weeks now. I took this picture back on October 9th while watching the sun set over Cayuga Lake. With National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo aka Nano) starting tomorrow I'm scheduling a post for the first time (it's Sunday morning as I type this).

I'm not sure how this will inspire the muses of others. It could be a nature story or perhaps something about being captured or life's struggles. It's hard to tell in the thumbnail, but if you click the picture to see the full size the bird has something in its beak. I think the bird is a kingfisher.

Pants Wisely

Yes, it's almost time for Nano (National Novel Writing Month) and as mentioned my novel this year isn't planned at all. That got me thinking that it might be fun to post about tips and tricks to keep a story moving forward without an outline/previous planning. Of course Nano is about sitting down and writing 50k words on a first draft, not creating a masterpiece. Some of this is advice I've picked up over the years, I'm not claiming to have come up with everything here.

Lists: Lists are your friends, and it's something quick to generate ideas. You can have lists ahead of time for fall back when stuck with the draft or use them to get ideas flowing while writing. These don't have to be to detailed or to long. I've read that around 10 is a good number. You can list character traits, pet peeves, best friends, worst enemies, favorite places, favorite foods, etc. Whatever will help to get the writing moving works.

Relationships: This is something I decided to try this year, probably in a flow chart. For each of my major characters I want to identify another character or two they get along well with and character(s) they don't. If I have time I may also make a quick note about why they do or don't like the other characters. When the plot is lagging I can always have a character bump into someone they don't like then let the words flow while they deal with each other. Because ya, writing scenes with lots of conflict go faster for me than happy ones.

Cast of Characters: This one is handy no matter what level of planning is done before writing the draft. Having a list of the characters with names, gender, "role", and anything else important at a top level is useful to refer back to while writing. I'm sticking with a line or two for each character, I don't want to much on the characters list.

List of Locations: A quick list of the locations where there will be action taking place in the story. Like the cast of characters this doesn't have to be in-depth. The key facts about the places should suffice. Any further level of detail can be worked out in notes. It's actually not a bad idea to write a paragraph or two about places featured frequently in the story. Or sketch out a map/diagram.

What ifs: Related to lists, only a bit more specific. Writing down a handful of "what if" types of scenarios to have on hand for when stuck can help keep the story moving. One could look this list over and choose one based on how the story has progressed already, or one could be picked at random.

So what might I have missed? What works for you when you are stuck?

Halloween Haunting

I signed up to participate in the Halloween Haunting blog event this weekend. I was going to post about the event yesterday but didn't get a chance. Here I thought the netbook would be handy to get online more. It is useful and typing on it is pretty good. Though when my cat Trixie demands lap time I have to move the netbook out of her way then type one handed.

I'm also still getting ready for NaNoWriMo, well picking out character names. While I may jot down some notes this is still going to be a writing by the seat of my pants nano. I had fun with the random name generator earlier today.