Silence In The Monkey Cave

Whoa! Okay, that was some break I took there between posts. Ouch!

Well, part of the reason I have not been around is because we have indeed moved cave recently. Yes, as you will be aware, the rocks on the walls around you look strangely unfamiliar. They are of a "lesser" grey than those rich, grey rocky rocks you have begun to know through your many visits to the Writer Monkey's deep dwelling. Yes indeed. The writer monkey has moved from the cold forests of northern Scandinavia to England.

Now I can say with a good excuse that I haven't had time to blog. It's been a hectic few weeks that have combined to feel more like a hectic six months. Naturally my writing has suffered, however...

The Monkey is proud to announce that JulNoWriMo 2011 is very much up and running! And the Monkey has entered!!

Okay, so the forums are down for the moment, but there definitely has been some progress up the ladder which is the impossible word count climb from zero to 50,000 words. Victim on death row this year? Akanos Book One of course!

I will be finishing off that bad boy this July. :D It means writing on the train to work, as there's no other slot in the day to get it done, but what's more exiting than typing on the go? ;D

More updates to come...!

Do It Blindfolded

I just figured out a handy little way to get writing done without Mrs. Inner Editor butting about how every sentence that goes down is somehow incorrect or needs immediate literary surgery.

Do it blindfolded!

Literally, I mean it. Although it only works if you can touch type.

I put bandage over my eyes and turned the radio on (mega distraction, since music with lyrics I can understand throws me off). I wrote more words than I had on the previous days and stopped critiquing every sentence.

A bit out of the norm, but then I'm the self-proclaimed inventor of the odd-yet-practical methods of getting things done in my house ^__^

Well, if it gets words down on the keyboard...

It's Not That Crap After All...

Yes, it's Day 19 JulNoWriMo and I'm behind my word count target —.— I've reached a whopping 29,000 when I should be just shy of 31,000. Yeah, okay, that's not such a great difference, I'm only a day behind. But since my writing pace has been dragging, it feels a whole lot bigger! O.o

Even after tweaking the plots and beginning over, for some reason my belief in my creation was dying again. Thank the monkeys it wasn't boredom this time, because if your bored with your own work, that if anything is a sure sign of literary death right then and there. But now I was thinking "this really sounds awful." Worse, I was thinking, "my previous WriMo turned out much better." I've been constantly comparing what I'm writing to arbitrary concepts of 'my other manuscript' and some undefined, vague 'general concept of literary canon.'

So, fearing I was brewing some horrible slop that is deadly at the mildest whiff, I decided to read a portion of this raw version to my mother. Okay, fair enough, she was half-asleep when I did, and surely mothers will always compliment their children's work no matter its market quality (least my will ^__^). But that wasn't what changed my viewpoint. Reading it out loud, I actually heard myself what potential the text had. I heard that it was just fine, just as good as my previous manuscript. The only point where the text got a little shakier was the point I'd started doubting and second-guessing myself. Otherwise it was perfect text (from a first-draft viewpoint).

Okay, I can't say if writing will be quicker now, since I haven't written anything more yet. But I'm much more sure now that struggling through is definitely worth while. And I'm very sure that the Mrs. Inner Editor is definitely and over-stressed, uptight and critique-ridden fool who needs to be given a permanent vacation. Not even when I'm editing does she me much good. And she's the nastiest, meanest cow I know. And she never pays her rent on time.

And I'm betting a lot of authors out there who feel their writing is bad, are writing far better quality that their Mr. and Mrs. Inner Editors will ever let them know. And I know this because I've read some stuff from my friends, and minus one or two perfectly forgiveable quirks they shone with potential to be best sellers.

Least, it's what I think.

Graphic Madness!

es, and it threatens to be the second day in a row that I produce, what? Zip, zilch, nada in terms of word count. It's amazing how addictive a better-than-a-freebie-but-no-photoshop graphics manipulation program can be.

But today I finally managed to materialize my ideas for cover art of the Arkanos books! :) Okay, granted, I only had a plan for the second book's cover. After I finished I kind of just got this other idea and this other idea. Before you know I've spent the whole day doing everything else except writing...again. Bad. Very bad.

But at least I've got loveable cover art to show for it!

Now...better try and type something into the actual s

tory file (instead of this blog or my e-mail) befor

e it's 4am again. So only three hours to go. Haha!

Arkanos Pt.I - Memorycatcher

Arkanos Pt.II - Neon Lights

Little Motivation

Over the JulNoWriMo forums I've heard people rate the internet among the most addictive procrastination forms. And I'm sure it's not a new concept to totally unplug from this insidious World Wide Web in order to get some word count done.

But my internet unplugged from me!

I mean it just blew up! Well, not literally. But one minute we have connection and the next we do not. It just up and died.

And what's the first natural reaction? "Oh lord, no! How am I going to update my word count on Julno?!" But after a few deep breaths and a re-analysis of my situation, this turned out to be a very good opportunity. Now there truly was no way for me to be distracted by my greatest weakness, the horrid online threat. And sure enough I bas

hed out the highest single-day word count for the past week.

And here I am, Day 11 just past 22,500 words, but the embarrassing part of it is (I find) that only about 5,600 of those will remain after "Editing in Progress" is stamped onto the first page. Should this be a blush-subject? I mean, I've no idea if other writers generally see this same phenomenon a lot. "Yes, I wrote about 80k for this WriMo, but actually I'm only in chapter 5 of my book and I chopped well over half of the words the minute the month ended." I can't help feeling that for the sake of my pride I am now basically obligated to write 17 thousand words over the 50k goal. On one hand I'm just hoping to reach the end of the story before August roles around. I looked at my '09 NaNo novel during edits and noticed I'd never written the last chapter. NaNo ended, that was it. So considering, I'd be more than grateful if I could reach the final scenes at least still during July.

On that note, there's no motivation like a broken internet connection :)

(And on a tangent, I really should start backing up every evening. There's nothing scarier than the blue screen of death!)

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.