Umm...Yeah...Uhh...

Okay, so it's not exactly going as well as I was hoping, but nonetheless I have official begun writing my third "raw" manuscript Through Glass. I've also updated the Novels page about it. I decided to rename it because this title sounds...a little easier on the ear me thinks. I haven't got enough material to write a synopsis yet but I'll update that as soon as I've gotten a little further in it.

Besides that I've gotten rather addicted to reading. I've been reading Chasing Midnight by Susan Krinard for the past week. Vampires and werewolves so I thought it was just my thing. I bought the Finnish copy of it though, the title has been translated into "On the Dark Side."

The beginning was a bit slow, but that didn't bother me as the book was easy to read. Now I'm in chapter 4 it's getting to the point where you stay up past midnight telling yourself "just a bit longer, it's such a good bit." Next time you look at the clock, oh it's past 3 AM. I haven't finished the book yet, but once I do I'll probably post a short review about it.

Well, today's update was rather short. But they say big things come in small packages... :D

NaNoWriMo 2010!

Yes, that last year went a lot faster than I was expecting last December. And yet, here we are! NaNo 2010 will kick off very soon and thus now begin the preparations of hoarding food and writing materials into the place that shall become one's Den for the month of November. And without a doubt, I am definitely going to bring home another certificate for my budding Wall of Stuff I've Actually Finished. Wohoo! :D

Okay, I admit it, I'm definitely a bit more nervous than I was last year. I'm going to be working on Arkanos again and now I'm untangling the plot which gave way during JulNoWriMo. NaNo is definitely bigger than its spin-off companion, but still I remain slightly worried and keep hoping that the plot will not drop off so drastically that I lose interest to write or strength to fix some barrier. But chin up, stomach in and chest out! There are definitely more up sides than down sides.

I'm truly happy about the fact that NaNo is so international now that even here in Finland there are NaNo meets which can be attended. And let me tell you how encouraging they can be! And besides that, funny and unexpected stuff can happen. Last year, when we all gathered at a café called Wayne's, a guy approached us and asked to take a picture since he'd "never seen so many computers in one place at the same time before."

Surfing about the forums, I see that the buzz is already growing! If anyone would like to get in touch and have a word war or just otherwise chat, feel free to visit my NaNoWriMo page.

May the games begin!!

July Novel Writing Month

WriMos, or "Writing Months." That host of spin-offs from the original National Novel Writing Month that are used to light the fire under one's creative, writer butt.

Yup, and this summer I've taken part in JulNoWriMo.

After participating in NaNoWriMo in 2009, I didn't exactly feel like waiting an entire year just to get another 3k+ manuscript done. '09 was a screaming success story for me, but it begged the question, would spin-off WriMos have the same spirit as the original Nano? So what the heck, I decided to give it a shot and here I am at Day 9 with just over 19,200 words.

For NaNoWriMo I wrote Electrostatic Fantasy and for JulNo I am writing Arkanos (which E.F. is actually the sequel to :P). I decided I wanted to finally finish Arky after having it collect dust for over a year. And anyone might have guessed I'd run into troubles. Only thing is I didn't guess what kinds.

I had to split the manuscript in half. Yup, sliced right down the middle. Because I suspect that the whole thing might even reach 150k word count, three times the amount of single-story prose I've written in my life. Then I had to spawn over forty new characters (mainly minor ones) as well as replace a major character with another. Although I half expected to need character hire. But then the plot holes. It gave me a jump because I'd been utterly convinced my plot was tight-knit and perfectly configured and aligned. But when JulNo began I found my ancient plot line perhaps deservedly moth-eaten to the point of fish-netting.

After 17k was passed, my laziness in prep caught up with me and I came to a dead-end. Four days of next-to-no production. And why? The text was so boring! What on earth was happening? I was dying at the hands of my own creation. But the story was riveting, I knew it...right?

What did my problem turn out to be? I'd added a "prologue" which showed events a week or two before the "actual" story started, but I had failed to decide whether to treat it as an actual part of the story or a cute "extra." It's like trying to build a house on quicksand.

So now I've re-started Arkanos Pt.I-Memorycatcher for the third time over (I would've had to do that anyway with the way things were going) and I think I'm finally getting somewhere. Now the "prologue" is actually the beginning of the story, and my characters are liking it :)

Hopefully I won't find any equally-giant problems anymore so that I can finish before July ends. Not exactly guaranteed that, but I'd at least like it if I didn't have to start over from the beginning anymore.