Milestone 1

Something incredible has happened. Something monumental. Something so incredible it will blow your mind.
I have run out of printing ink.
And why have I run out of printing ink?

BECAUSE ELECTROSTATIC FANTASY IS DONE!!

Picture courtesy of Jared Davidson
freerangestock.com

That's right, my first manuscript is finally beta-ready. I tried to print the whole thing as the first copy but my printer disagreed with that.
After 3 years I've finally gotten to this stage. And it actually feels a bit weird.

What did I expect to feel? Untold enthusiasm; infinite excitement; incomparable success? Well, honestly I feel a bit sad. This project was something I had with me for three years. It was something comfortable and familiar, and now it's finally over. But I am glad, especially about how the ending is now solidified into something definite rather than being a vague mesh of concepts. I'm also happy that I finally know what happens to my characters, and that when I tell people 'I've finished my novel', I'm not lying. I'm not even telling an extended truth.

And there's plenty more where that came from!! The next mission lies in choosing which of my stories to finish and edit next.

Funny thing I found out is: the first time you write the final line of your novel (as a first draft that may still change) is the most satisfying time. Even when I edited a bit off mine, I still didn't feel nearly as much joy and achievement as when I first wrote it.

Funny that.

Magical Month of Mayhem

That time has come. That magical month of October when through my masses of other work loads, NaNo plotting still prevails. And also that fun month when comes the "best" part of the issue: 'what do I write about this year?'

Ultimately, it makes no difference at all what decisions on this point I've made throughout the year; they all get tossed aside at this point.

I thought about finally writing the story that got ousted last year at the last minute: Angel City. But having started my computing course in college, I realised I've more or less decided to wait and make a platform game of it. So that idea was out.

Then there was always the idea I had 'firmly' decided on in August, which was to write the second book of Arkanos. But that had rested on the assumption that the first book would be finished by now. Sure, ok there is basically only a couple chapters to go but almost doesn't count. So that would have to wait.

But then I could pick up either of the stories that had gotten off to a rocky start and sort of straggled and choked off at the shallows; namely Through Glass or SkAI Butterfly. But that was just it: they were stuck in the shallows. They're struggling for air, a hairs breadth from drowning. Arkanos One had been like that, it had gotten into a lot of trouble. The only reason it got salvaged in time was because I said I was not quitting on my 'baby'. Taking on a project that would come pre-installed with problems was not a good idea, not during the real thing.
So, that was a no-go.

But then if all my options were exhausted, what was I going to write?? Surely 'The Wild Adventures of Ninja Bacon' was hardly interesting, not to mention it wouldn't make it past 10k. There had to be another way.

Then it hit me. It was just a one-liner idea, just like the beginning of EF (Electrostatic Fantasy) had been. There is a side character in the main story, who I had realised to have a much deeper history than his original role warranted, or the story even allowed. Deep enough to be the root of another story. I remember fleetingly thinking that his story could make for an interesting prequel.

So I decided I would undertake his idea and see where it leads me.
And hence, this year's NaNo novel title is decided: Electrostatic Nightmare.

And writing will definitely be interesting this time around: I have coursework due, and a whole stack of it!! v_v

Lyrics And Updates!

Yikes!

Alright, kudos to me for posting again with less than 3 months in between. Yay. But still, a lot has happened since I last wrote. Hmm...let see. Shall we go with bullet points? What, too short?

Firstly, I would like to draw your attention to the top line of links. Yes that one up there. Yes...up a little further. A little further...okay, come back down you missed it. No, not that far! (Let us take a moment to honour the brave souls who dare ask me for driving directions! :D )

YES! You got it. I've added a new Poetry page to the site. :3

I don't like to call myself a poet, because unlike some who can scratch up a poem very easily, I can only do it when the mood is right. That mood often comes very seldom. If I force it I feel like it sounds...well...quite forced. Haha. Funny. I made a joke. Laugh. I command you. -.-

But anyway, please feel free to wander in and have a look about! ;)

On another note I've done a general maintenance on the site. By maintenance I mean I've gone through most of the links and just made sure they all work, deleted any that don't. :)

If you guys do spy a link that's broken, please contact me by e-mail (nanakafka@aim.com) or comment on any of the posts on the main page! Thank you! :)

And one more thing:

I won NaNoWriMo! :D

That's right! The Monkey of the Cave has crossed the threshold of 50,000 words once more and is now dragging herself to the end of her plot! :D

A huge thanks to all the staff at NaNoWriMo for keeping the awesome event there and doing everything you guys do each year! And to my Number 1 rival in the competition Jay! It was thanks to our wild word wars that I was able to push a win out so quickly.

Yesterday I literally wrote 11,604 words.

Yeah...it was quite a lot to do. -.-

Monkey Dance Time!

*does a little monkey jig*

Mid-NaNoWriMo 2011 -- ELDA

Okay, so have to get out of the habit of having three month breaks between posts! -_-

Oh well, New Years coming up. Suppose we know one of my resolutions already.

Ok! Sitting here sipping my home-made latte, listening to a Japanese internet radio station and trying to concentrate enough to get something done worth calling 'production.' What else to do but to update my long-forgotten, no scratch that, just partially left unattended, blog.

I'm finally going to post that summary of Elda that I've been promising, and here it is!

"It's been thirty years now. Thirty years since the hundred-year rule of the wicked witch Elda ended. And peace has returned to The Land, her cruelty being all but a lingering memory. Those memories, legends speak of her evil and her power. Yet not a one tell of how it all ended. In all accounts, she simply vanished.
But this cannot be so. For one so horrible and god-like cannot simply disappear.

Ikkoris, a young boy from an IroKai tribe, is obsessed with stories of her. Though his curiosity and mischief are but the pain of the village. Until one day he finds a mysterious young girl in the mists known only as White Wolf. And she seems to know something of Elda.
Along with his new friend, Ikkoris sets off to find the past. But with a strange white knight out to resurrect Elda and these two trouble, and the village people wishing to silence him, a journey of intrigue soon turns into a battle to keep the evil and good at balance in the world around them. And now it is a race against time between truth and lies. They must succeed, or risk plunging the world back under Elda's control."

So there we go! Three agonising weeks but I finally managed to type one out. ^_^ My progress so far is about 28 thousand words, meaning a little above target. I'm quite pleased with the way it's turning out as well. Needs editing for sure, but it's not a bunch of gobbledy-goop.

I haven't had a chance to go back and read over any of it yet. But soon as I do I'll post an excerpt onto the Novel Info page!

How are my fellow NaNoWriMo participants doing?

What Do You Expect, It's NaNoWriMo!

It's NaNoWriMo time!

Well almost. What we are currently experiencing is the month of Plotters Galore, aka the non-pantser writers month of hell.

October is where it really all starts for us. This is where you start thinking about which story you'll want to take up and submit to merciless word torture, which soundtracks fit your story, which word processing program gives you the least trouble and which reference websites make you procrastinate the least. (Or if you do none of the above, at least this is the month when we as writers start hearing conversation about NaNoWriMo start picking up again.)

For the dedicated plotter (the Monkey included) we have the tiring task ahead of literally writing a novel twice. We will plot it the whole way through, then come November will put those scene sketches into actual words. Dialogue, narrative...that kind of stuff. We'll begin obsessively tapping the space bar and making hyphenated words into unhyphenated ones.

But October is our preparation month. Polish your pens, build your food reserves, buy lots of coffee from reduction sales. We are preparing for war.

So here comes the all important question –and if you have more than one potential choice for this in mind, it's a toughy– what story are you going to write?

'What story am I going to write?!' Since the end of the 2009 NaNo this question has haunted me like a bad dream. I have a lot of choices to choose from. So it's like that question all the grown-ups keep asking you while you're at school (which you keep hating as you can't answer it), 'what are you going to be when you grow older?'

There's no point in answering that question when it's asked, because by the time it matters, you'll most likely have changed your mind dozens of times by then. And yet I just can't help but start planning so far ahead. Even though I will change my mind right at the last second anyway. And I know it.

So here goes. I had 3 choices of stories for this year. I had decided right after last NaNoWriMo that this year I would write Arkanos Book Two. But then in July, I thought up an idea for a story about a city of angels and mermaids. Then I had another old story, a dark one I had intended for last year (till I changed my mind), that I had some new ideas for and looked promising. I was leaning toward the angels and mermaids.

Until two nights ago I had a dream. A really good one. About witches and people flying around. And teenage mutant ninja turtles. And I changed my mind. Again.

My story this year will be 'Elda'. I will add a synopsis onto the Novel Info page as soon as my plotting is far enough to actually have a synopsis. ^__^;;; But I can say this much even now that it is based around a powerful and evil sorceress (called Elda) who once ruled the world for a hundred years. Then all of a sudden she just vanished. But now she threatens to return to the world, and it's up to the hero to stop that from happening.

There are no teenage mutant ninja turtles.

I Said I'd Do It And I Did

Well, there it is. 50,180 words of Arkanos typed out and verified by the original, notorious word-eating NaNoWriMo word count validator, believe it! :D (Incredibly, this year it gave me 3 words. My yWriter counter says I've got 50,177 words :P But meh, can't argue with the machine ^.^)

Arkanos is by no means finished. Heck I haven't even spotted the midway point on the horizon yet. I'll be participating in NaNoFiMo and batting out some more words on it, hoping to at least hit halfway home. I know if I drop off for a long time and only pick this up to continue say next July, I know my mind will have zoned-out of the setting to such a degree I won't really remember what's happened. Especially those mid-Write or Die session epiphanies that sound great but maybe aren't which you never bother to note down anywhere, but not like you'd have time to anyway. Those will be in risk of vanishing into the realm of not-coming-back if I just drop everything now as is.

I remember end of '09 NaNo I somehow felt so exhausted and like I just couldn't drag it out of myself to continue with Electrostatic Fantasy. It was missing two, three chapters and in dire need of editing. I told myself I should keep going, to get editing and finish up by the new year. Heck no, I was exhausted and slightly exasperated with the thing (and perhaps I'm not the only NaNoer who gets this). So I decided to take a short break, enjoy the holidays and get back to it later. Mistake. "Later" turned out to be three months later, then another break and then again a bit of editing in July. And by that time I'd "relaxed" so well and truly I couldn't remember the finer points anymore. My concept of my own story was, "oh yeah, there's that mermaid guy and he goes around and they do this kinda stuff don't they? And, oh yeah! There was that one character there, wasn't it?" I felt like walking up to someone else and asking what had happened!

Thank heavens it was pretty much completely written (okay, save for the final chapter which I haven't first-drafted to this day ^v^;;)

But I am nevertheless a NaNoWriMo 2010 winner!! XD

I can't get enough of that. And I've probably 24 hours worth of sleep dept to show for it too. :) I wanted that pretty certificate on my wall and I got it. Yeah, you heard correctly. My main reason for doing all of this was to get a certificate that had the number "2010" on it and which I knew I'd earned fair and square.

Today I took a day off of everything I've been working on: the greetings card making, the novel plotting, the novel writing (oh God yes!)... just everything. I slept until 4 PM and since then have been playing Valkyrie Profile 2. Then a nip into the sauna and voila! I feel like I've had a day at the spa. ^_^

And tomorrow I'm gonna start on a project I'm quite excited about: plots the next novel which I'm planning to write during JanNoWriMo. The current name is Through the Looking Glass, and you guessed it, it's also fantasy. Wha? No it's not an Alice in Wonderland spin-off or anything (although I love doing those!) Ironically the story bears no similarity to Lewis Carroll's work at all. I'll write more on it in another post and I'll probably be updating the My Novels page eventually about it too.

Until then...still basking in this moment that comes only once per a noveling November! ^_^

Some Excellent Advice For Getting Through NaNoWriMo, Getting Unstuck In Writing And Finishing Your Novel

TYPE, DAMMIT!

Oh dang...

I'm behind!

Day 17 of NaNo and I'm still hanging at just below 25K. Thank heavens I had that 3K buffer when I decided to take a break or I'd be so deep in the ground right now.

Although I have almost finished playing Aqua's story in Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep... See? I've been doing something. ^_^

Hoping to get on and bust out a nice 3K today. And according to my trusty calculator that's about what I'll need in order to catch up. Okay, strictly speaking it's 3.5K, but who's being that pedantic? ...*cough, cough*

The slightly worrying thing is that my interest in slightly waning. It's just that I'm approaching the magical 30K mark where Arkanos Book One died last time and I'm slowing down. Fingers crossed there won't be any repeat performances. =/ Just got to keep going I guess.

Better hurry off before I get stuck doing something else online again. Like watching Bleach or streaming YouTube vids or...

Not to give anyone the idea that I've got a standard list of stuff I get stuck doing or anything...

Boo-yah!!

I guess the capitalised Week Two of NaNoWriMo is the one that gives the most trouble to quite a few writers. It was the week in which, last year, I went three days without typing a single word, and finally had to force myself onto the keyboard lest the whole thing drop entirely.

This year, without even realising it until now, I applied the perfect cure to the Week Two curse before it even started. Extended Word War!

I'm having so much fun. I'm competing with a Writing Buddy to see who gets the higher word count by Friday midnight. And honestly, it gives me such a kick in the pants just thinking about this competition I'm in.

I might be ahead right now, at 20K. But I keep thinking that if I stop and take a day off, the next time I log in, next to his username there's going to be sparkling a number 5k bigger than mine with the words "mwa ha haa" materialising next to it and I'll have to re-enact a Luke Skywalker backwards suicide dive through the Death Star.

In other words, I doubt I'd be half as inspired right now had there been no Word War.

I also keep switching playlists; although I am still sticking mostly to RPG background music tracks, except for the occasional lapse into Breaking Benjamin albums for fight scenes (they're tough enough to write as it is, I need some sweet motivation ^__^).

And I finally got that synopsis written on my NaNo profile! :D *roars and applause* Better late than never, eh?

Yesterday was such a fantastic day! After getting past the first real fight scene on Tuesday, yesterday I wrote out a big dialogue & explanation bit and it was such a breeze. How refreshing to get to write a bit that is actually my forté. I bashed out a nice 3K as well!

Just need to keep the trend going. I'm expecting that I'll need to enter NaNoFiMo (National Novel Finishing Month) in December though. I mean I'm not counting my chickens before they hatch or anything, but I'm still not seeing this thing unfolding entirely in just 50K.

Well, next two weeks will say for sure. :)

NaNo Day 5: It's All About "De Mood"

Okay, vague Little Mermaid reference there, but it is all about "De Mood."

NaNoWriMo '10 has started and I'm frankly elated as a party balloon right about now. It's going well. It's going better than well. And that means it's going A LOT better than I feared it would just a month ago. This is all good stuff.

Right this minute my yWriter is announcing a total of 9485 words exactly and I'm not even done for the evening. :)

I never did write that synopsis in time (which I still need to do) but I did accidentally find the perfect playlist for fueling my keyboard tapping passion: I'm listening to game background soundtracks!

And not just any games, the Valkyrie Profile background soundtracks! XD All hail YouTube!

And this is what I mean about "de mood." When I tune in to those tunes, it sends me right into de zone. I mean I tap, tap, tap a little, check my count, turn on some beats, tap, tap tap some more and oh goodness how did that thousand words go by?

I'm also at the end of Chapter 2. Yay!

I wrote a letter to my grandma and in it I actually (again, accidentally) wrote one of the best synopses of Arkanos to date and I saved a copy of it. I should really translate it and get it posted on here and on NaNo. But right now, I'm way too tired for that (midnight).

Okay, need to get back to typing now. Sacramento has declared an official word war against Finland on their NaNo regional forum, and that means I've got to help my guys beat them. =3 They won last year, but only by 12 words per person. We were ahead of them until literally the last few days.

But not so easy this year. OOOOh no! XD

I Find This Out Now?!

Great.

Funnily I was assuming that my backpack, which I used for carrying my laptop to NaNo meets last year, was lying safely forgotten at the back of my closet unused. But last night I sort of got thinking, "Hmm, yeah, the backpack. Should probably start getting it out right about now. Just a week of preps left." And then it hit me, shoot, it's not here!

And it's not just a matter of "oh I forgot it at grandma's." No I didn't forget it at grandma's. I didn't forget it at work. I didn't forget it in the car. I forgot it abroad.

Yes. Total shoot-yourself-in-the-foot moment, innit? So unfortunately it isn't a simple case of just popping next door and picking it up.

I've got a small job from which I should be getting a bit of coin so I can pay the public transport for November. Hopefully I'll get that in time, and then it's just a case of dashing out like a mad chicken to find another bag. Don't get me wrong, I love shopping (and I mean really love shopping). Just kind of annoying. I could use that same money to buy something more useful, like...the next Kingdom Hearts game or the latest DVD installment of Naruto.

Last week of October is turning out to be the most hectic. I'm not 100% if the money will make it in time, if I'll find a decent bag in time, and also I haven't gotten in touch with my writing rival yet. I wonder if he's doing NaNoWriMo this year?

Besides that, and it was probably kind of inopportune, but I've re-discovered the magic of my PS2.

Oh man, I wonder how November will go... LOL ^__^

Oh-ho-ooh Dear...

Yeah, umm...last post when I said I was halfway through my plotting...yeah, I kind of lied. That's what happens when you post before counting the actual pages that you've been plotting on. I'm not halfway through. In fact I think I'm more like a quarter of the way through. Yikes!

And I have *mutters while counting off the calendar* oh, just about 10 days left...

Yikes!! O_o

However, after some weaving and sewing and a bit of knitting together of the plot threads, Arkanos is still holding together and I'm daring to believe it will pull through the madness of November.

I've actually gotten into chapter four of Mistborn Book One as well, which I'm pretty dang happy about since I'm not as active a reader as I probably should be. I admit, I take a lot more inspiration from anime and manga than I should. Reading Mistborn really brings into view how much benefit reading literary novels instead of graphic ones brings to my writing. I've already discovered several answers to simple questions and confusions I had, mainly about writing style. So if I were to read a few other kinds of novels too... My general tripping point is the fact that I just take ages to read. It's not that they aren't interesting, it only that I know it will take forever. Although Mistborn is right up my alley, which is the reason I know I'll finish that one.

Dang...I never know quite how to end these things off. Same freaking thing with my novels. *Sigh* Better get back to typing stuff up then...

50/50

So October is going fast.

We're pretty much halfway through the month and luckily I'm about halfway through my prep book! Well...sort of. I'm honestly relieved though that the story is jelling as well as it is. At the start of October my biggest fear was that right about now the plot would resemble a ball of yarn after a kitten has gotten to it. Just about that level of clarity and order.

But it's actually going well. And for one, I'm not bored with it (another massive factor in whether or not a novel will die or live with me). Honestly, if all I can keep thinking about while writing is, "why are my characters bothering with this adventure?" then I just can't find the determination to get that 50k out of me.

Finally managed to clean my room as well, which is nice.

Hmm...I'm running out of stuff to say. I guess I'll leave it at this and write something giant another day.

Burning the Midnight Oil

And a bit of the wee-hours oil while we're at it.

I don't know if my being on the computer has gone a bit too far, but at least last night's late surfing was for a good reason.

Since now comes one of my equally favourite parts of NaNoWriMo, the ART!

Last year went by mostly amidst my manuscript, since I'd decided to go with a not-yet-my-darling story idea for my first time. And I didn't really get any illustration done on time. Well, actually I still haven't finished it, but why get caught up in the details...heh.

Anyway, after some toiling and three different variations, this is the banner I chose as a banner for the NaNo forums.

Only annoying thing was that I had to use the JPEG version, which came out a little...scruffy-er. But sadly, even with reduced dimensions, the next smallest file type already fell about 20KB above the max limit. Oh well, even though a new year with new toys (graphics) is a fun idea to play with, in the end it's the story itself that's the most important, isn't it?

Which reminds me, I still have to write that synopsis!

It's been fun getting back in touch with all my NaNo buddies and competitors from last year! The more I chat with them again, the more I start to itch for this coming month. Last time I had some really even and tough competition from some, and quite simply ate the dust of others. And it was fun as anything the whole way through!

So on that note, I'm going to end off on a little plug for those guys, and say that everyone on my Writing Buddies list on NaNo is a tough and awesome writer! ;)

Okay, Deep Breath, Stay Calm...STAY CALM!

Getting into the swing of actually doing something after a streak of wanting nothing more than late nights with chaining Bleach episodes, is curious but not as hard as I thought.

Okay, maybe it has something to do with the fact that NaNoWriMo is only 21 days away *whiskey shot in here*, I admit it. But still that "actually doing something-ness" carries the freshness of a tangy lemon drink :D

All joking aside, it feels good to be active in my trade again. I've mobilized from my bat cave and finally gotten on with "healing" the broken plot of Arkanos Memorycatcher. Alongside that I've updated some of my files on my magic system, made copies of my calendar pages for October and November (want to cross those days off, but don't want to mess up my awesome manga calendar XD), started posting again on the NaNo forums and eaten 15 yogurts and 32 jelly beans.

I should be reading more of the first Mistborn book too, for pointers on fight scenes and just because I think it's the cat's PJs, but one baby step at a time I guess. Haha!

I'll update the synopses and excerpts of Arkanos soon as I can during November.

And now I better get back to procrast— I mean novel related plot and writing style research.

Teehee? ^__^;;

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!!

Take A Leaf From Someone Else's Book

Isn't it interesting that before you actually go out and do something in practice that there are some questions and difficulties about said subject that just won't occur to you beforehand? I definitely learned that when I came to fighting my first fight scenes. Well granted it was NaNoWriMo time and of course the rule there will be "WRITE IT, no one cares about the quality." It's wonderful to just be able to write anything that pops into your head since you're confident that this version will never see the light of day anyway. But oh the woe when editing comes about.

So a friend of mine suggested the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson, said the fight scenes are well written. I finally managed to buy the first book, and I'm loving this!

Okay, so I might be at a bit of a disadvantage since I've never really been good with thick books (and now I've got myself a two-incher). But text is so addictive XD

On a similar note, I made the mistake of taking in the date and...screamed. NaNoWriMo 2010 is just around the corner, and I've got to get plotting! And I'm definitely going to win this year, because it's a nice and lovely even year. I'll be completing Arkanos, the story that I had to drop back in JulNoWriMo 2010.

Although, armed with Brandon's Mistborn and a few example style tips from the text, I should be able to write fight scenes easier. But hey, it's NaNoWriMo. So push come to shove, I'll just hum and tap the keyboard aimlessly!