It Begins Again

So my experimentation with these writing contests is advancing and I'm assuming at the moment that after a month long writing contest one requires about three weeks of off time. I've come to this conclusion from the fact that though I entered National Novel Finishing Month and said I'd finish off my Arkanos Book One, I've written a measly 1K during the whole of December. However I won't call it "epic fail" because it's 1,000 words of that final chapter of Electrostatic Fantasy that I never wrote! :)

But New Year's is fast approaching and so are two new contests. JanNoWriMo as well as Writing Year. And sadly yes, the "I didn't do any writing" does extend to plots as well, for my January novel is but the first few sentences planned. This cloud has a silver lining though.

After working on something as intricate and complicated as Arkanos, I yearned to write an epic fantasy which was a bit more...oh what's the term?...linear and straight forward. I mean for the love of pie Arkanos has enough plot twists to tie half my brain into a bow, I need some distance after enduring 50,000 words of it! Don't get me wrong, Arkanos is my baby and I intend to see her to the end, whether that be a fine or a bitter one. But I don't think I'll be writing a story as massive and complicated again any time soon.

This is where Through Glass comes in. That's the story I'd mentioned before: "Through the Looking Glass". I'll be writing that in January and updating the My Novels tab about it too. Although the plots are...nonexistent...the plot is far less tricky and meticulous that my previous project. I've already got a basic idea of how the whole time line will play out, I just need to work out a few fine points. I should be able to pull through okay even without exhaustive plotting...hopefully. ^_^

I have no idea how Writing Year (WriYe) will turn out. It's a big jump, I'll admit, to go from planning a word goal for a month (when you've written nothing before) to planning one for a whole year (when you've written 130K total). My initial target for 2011 is 510,000 words, but we'll see how that changes during the year. ^_^

Well I better get plotting Through Glass before I dose off. Wouldn't want to waste a perfectly good night of writing. Ha ha!

I'll post again before the new year to send you guys holiday wishes properly. ^_^

Holiday Mayhem

That time of the year has arrived. Now together everybody! Let's run around like headless chickens trying to get a month's worth of work done in under 24 hours! I mean it wouldn't be Christmas without a bit of a lot of chaos, right?

I mean what fun would there be in Christmas if there weren't a few things...like say computer programs or websites for example, testing your patience? What interest or excitement would there be in Christmas if you'd gotten the most important presents handled ages ago and wouldn't have that overbearing pressure of a ticking clock on Eve's eve?

I've got pretty much all of my presents bought and ready and my wallet is finally letting out a long sigh of relief. Only thing is my handmade presents aren't finished and now I've got 18 hours to get them done. -_-;;

Now that also wouldn't be a problem if one of them wasn't in the first stages.

Needless to say my writing has suffered. I must admit here in public, I've only written 600 words in the whole of December. I have done some plotting, but of course it doesn't compare in the least to November's type-a-thon.

Now that I think about it that means I've got until New Year's to complete plots (or at least get them rolling) for Through the Looking Glass. I'm probably going to rename it though. JanNoWriMo is fast approaching, and so are the rest of the months. Oooh nelly. I better not think about all the work that's piling up too much or it'll make my head spin. ^_^

Drat, have I got to get typing so that I'll have some nice stuff to post into this blog as well. :) But for now...

!!! MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW !!!

And a huge thanks to absolutely everyone for visiting my blog :)

The Dog Prince by Fun London

So a few days late but here it is! I promised to write about a short story by Fun London called The Dog Prince. First book/story review I've ever done as well. ^_^

This is the story of how a dog became the prince of an entire country, for indeed without him there would have been no country to rule at all.

Set about 5000 years ago in the small kingdom of Brink, the story tells of the young boy Ammed and his trusty friend Paint and their adventure during the Festival of Loaves.

There's a short excerpt of the story on Fun London's webpage which you can read here.

I really enjoyed the Dog Prince! The most pleasant surprise for me was how well it was written for a short story. Personally I struggle with short stories because I can't really get my head around how to fit the many ideas in my head into such a limited number of words. Literally I worry that my description will end up over-short and the reader will be left seeing question marks. But The Dog Prince definitely didn't fall into that question mark category, no sir. My favourite part was how easy it was to picture the world and action.

I think its a great tale, and from a writer's point of view a good example of a well written short story.

I warmly recommend it. The Dog Prince is on sale at Amazon.com, there's a link on Fun London's page and it's only $2.99. Go ahead and check it out guys. ;)

It's Addictive...And I Know I Should Resist Temptation...

But I can't help the fact that studying Japanese just seems so much more interesting than the rest of life right now. T_T

Oh woe I had a bad feeling about this. There was something churning in my gut that said once November was over I'd hit the lazy hay. I've got Christmas cards which I should be making, I'm about 5,000 words behind on my NaNoFiMo, I've a package that needs sending, blogging that should be getting finished...and what am I actually doing? Sitting in front of my laptop, glued to the internet watching Bleach episodes and surfing on language learning sites. I re-discovered LiveMocha.com and I've been surfing around there. I feel glued! Anime and 日本語 (nihongo = Japanese) are taking over my life. I should be writing!

On top of that the weather here is horrific. Cold. Snow. And LOTS of it. It literally turned from a grew to a winter wonderland

scene overnight, and I'm not kidding. I'm not even exaggerating. One night I got to bed and I can see the same old asphalt I've been staring at all summer. I wake up in the morning and everything is white. Now I don't want to put one foot out of the door. It's not really the cold that bothers me, it's the ritual of preparations that I have to go through before walking 50 metres to...get the post. It's ridiculous. I mean look at that scene!!

I just noticed that in a single day at the end of November I'd written nearly 9,000 words. Yeah, I smashed nearly 1/5 of November's bounty in 24 hours of brutal, non-stop and slightly excruciating typing. Right now, just like after drawing a great picture, I look at it with hindsight and say "how the hell did I pull that off?" But it was done. It was possible and it was done. So now I think that if I could get through that catching up with all the deadlines fast approaching right now isn't actually half as difficult as it might feel. So I will pull myself together now and catch up. That's a promise!

Tomorrow I'll be posting my first book recommendation about a story by a talented up-and-coming writer, Fun London. I love reading works by other budding novelists. I've come across works by non-published authors which have made me think "just exactly why isn't this published again? It's darn well good enough to be!" This is one of them. But more on that tomorrow.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to sneak off for another guilty Bleach episode (at 1.20 AM) =^_^=