PostNaNoLog : Reflections

Final Stats

Words : 50,000 (Microsoft Word)
Chapters : ~15
Pages : 91

Thoughts

Progress - Weirdly, I think this is the farthest I’ve advanced, plot-wise, during a  NaNo Novel. Usually I’m only hovering around chapter five by the end of it, and very little has happened. Considering this was The Year of False Starts and I had to do a lot of crossing out and rewriting…I’m really perplexed as to how this happened. 

Characters - Lots of surprises this year, from Roost and Peter especially. Roost proved herself more honor-focused than I’d ever expected from my snarky lady, and Peter has a streak of paranoia that should make his and Roost’s relationship quite interesting when I get them into the same scenes. Khulad and Casey fit more closely with how I pictured them - their interactions did surprise me in how easy they were to write, given the trouble I’d had with it in the past. I feel Xerxes was underdeveloped, though, and that she and Khulad didn’t have enough scenes. 

Scheduling - Oh boy. Well, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, things didn’t get off to a great start. Youmacon was fantastic, but meeting freakin’ Linkara andDoug Walker took my head right out of writing and straight into the clouds for quite a while. A visit to my friends’ place the next weekend didn’t leave me much room to catch up. By about halfway through the month, I did get my act together - at that point, I had to write nearly 3,000 words a day to catch up; I managed to get it to around 2,500 for the last week. Turns out that extra thousand words is a lot to pack in, especially when I was still busy with school. 

Music - My full intent was to use The Cider House Rules score for this novel. While I think it’ll still come into play later in the book, The Hunger Games has stolen the first part of this novel. “Healing Katniss” and “Reaping Day” in particular had a lot of scenes set to them. 

Week of Doom - The infamous “Week 2” doldrums usually hit me during week three. This year, I had Week 4: Oh My God It’s the Last Week and I Don’t Have Enough Words Noooooo!

War Strategy - Before NaNo this year, I did a lot of plot outlining and backstory work, which helped a ton. During the event, I installed and tested ZenWriter - I really like the program; it runs full-screen, allows you to put up backgrounds (I used setting-related ones), and even has some music choices and type-writer sounds. Unfortunately, its word-counter is much stricter than either the NaNo site Validator or Microsoft Word, making it a little frustrating when I needed to write a specific number of words. Still, it’s definitely a nice program to look into (and did I mention it’s free?)

2013 Plans - NOT to come into November fresh off an editing project. Inner Editor was very chatty, so I probably spent much more time rewording sentences and trying to avoid cliched phrases than I ought to have. I’d also like to take more time during October to prepare; what time I did take this year helped a lot, but I feel Roost and Peter, especially, were very neglected in the planning process.

NaNoLog: Optimism From 10,000 Words Behind

12,721 words thanks to (I assume) NaNo's word counter counting my dashed words as two instead of one. I knew I loved hyphens for a reason. 

...Considering Day 14's target wordcount is 23,338, I'm not doing so hot this year. 

This is the first year I've had so much trouble fitting NaNo into my schedule. Usually I'm pretty good about finding/making time to write...this year, though. Between school work and my mysteriously overtaken weekends (last week was Youmacon and my brother's birthday, this past weekend staying with friends), I've been doing a lot - but not a lot of it writing. 

Fortunately, I accidentally left for school an hour early (I'm not entirely sure how my brain rigged that one, either) so I wound up having two hours to just NaNo my heart out before class. Only wrote about 1,900 words - not enough to make any serious headway. 

But wow did it make me feel a thousand times less stressed. That really surprised me - making so little progress in the grand scheme of things seems like it should only have agitated me more, not calmed me down. 

I guess that's one of the things about NaNo - no matter how little you do, just doing the writing is sometimes enough. And I probably wouldn't have done that chunk of writing at all had it not been for this 50,000 word goal hanging over my head. And on my desktop. And over all my to-do lists. 

So, thanks, NaNo - for both the stress and relief I needed today. 

PreNaNoLog : Lessons from a Litmus Test

Well, it’s been a quiet week here at Magnuson Studios, so let’s skip the boring bullet-pointed “here’s what I did!” list in favor of one interesting thing I can talk about in a little more depth.

On Tuesday I found a link to a Mary Sue Litmus test, and ran it on Khulad and Roost (figuring they’d be the most likely to cross into Mary Sue territory). They both scored very low, 11 and 14 points respectively (which doesn't mean I can lower my guard, of course ;) )

While taking the litmus test, I found some cool ideas that I’d like to incorporate into the characters. For instance, on Khu’s run I noticed these two questions:

“If your character is all or partially non-human, does xe react in very non-human ways or in ways more appropriate to xir species?” and ”Does your character act in odd and/or awkward ways that other people find strange and confusing rather than endearing, and these people aren't called or portrayed as foolish/stupid because of it?”

Khulad should definitely have picked up some more draconic reactions and “gestures” after being in their care for so long. Despite the dragons’ ability to speak and some of their very human understandings of things, they do have some more animalistic practices and responses; some of their behaviors are probably comparable to a wolf pack (note to self, project for next week…)

In particular I was thinking that Khu ought to growl at the dragons sometimes, just something he learned because the dragons have some wolfy aspects to their society - but his growl’s not going to be very animalistic, it’ll be very human and sort of weird to Casey and Roost and Peter in that sort of ‘I feel embarrassed for you’ kind of way.

Having been in similarly embarrassing situations - from both ends - this should be both a breeze and blush-inducing to write. I’m so looking forward to it!

For Roost, I found a much simpler but important-to-remember question: “If your character has a short temper, sharp wit, snarky attitude, or is otherwise prone to verbal assaults, are the tongue-lashings and/or snarkings xe gives other characters always deserved and/or justified?” I admit, sometimes I lean toward characters reigning their tempers in around their friends, despite the fact that they ought to lose control of it at least once in a while. Something I’m working on, though.

Barely more than a week left until NaNoWriMo! =D So much left to do organization and plotwise, but I’m really itching to just start writing the story already and see what happens!

PreNaNoLog : Week 2

Wednesday - Posted my log for PreNaNo Week 1

Thursday - Wrote a short Peter excerpt to get a start on his characterization. May post this later, but it's not all that interesting except as a starting point. I also wrote short personality analysis and a bit of backstory for Peter (including how he and his dad were separated)

Friday - Began the name hunt for Peter and his father; I'm currently debating between the last names Vaughn and Green. For Peter's father's first name, I've grabbed Henry, Logan, and Blake. It occurs to me that, being a Nerdfighter, Henry Green is either the best or weirdest combination to go with (I'm leaning toward Vaughn as a last name anyway, so it shouldn't come to such dire straits).

Saturday - Started looking up first names for Casey's family members and a last name for the whole bunch. Got first names for everyone, but didn't make any decisions on a last name just yet.

Sunday I'll be going to the library in search of information on...well, everything, and during the week I'd like to wrap up naming Casey's family, the rest of the dragons, and probably a few Graybacks. By the end of the week I'd like to start plot outlining. Got a midterm Wednesday that might make all this a little difficult, but what's NaNo without a looming test, eh? 

[A Very Late] PreNaNo Log : Week 1

I fully intended to keep a log this year of my NaNo preparations. One of the first things I really wanted to do was post a summary of the story, though, so it wouldn't be completely confusing when I talk about the characters and parts of the plot.

My first attempt was both poorly-written and revealed some plot issues that needed to be taken care of, as well as some research I still need to do. Hopefully I can go library-prowling this weekend and get what I need. Last night I gave it another go, though, and am reasonably pleased with the result.

So here we are. Gear up your movie trailer voices, ladies and gentlemen (it'll probably help you get through this).

"Three generations ago, three events changed the world forever.

A plastic-eating bacteria ravaged the planet and destroyed nearly all of humanity's plastic and plastic materials.

Days later, a virus that mutated its victims into ravenous, violent beasts called Scourges was unleashed in hundreds of cities and towns across the globe. Without supplies, shelter, or many weapons, huge numbers of people were transfigured or killed. What remained of humanity banded together and were forced to begin life anew.

It was a few years before the dragons began to appear - never outright hostile to the human towns, but certainly dangerous if disturbed.

Casey *lastname* has spent her entire life in one small town, helping her parents breed and raise the wolfdogs used to sense nearby Scourges. The wolfdogs are no help, however, when Casey and her family's caravan are attacked on their way to a neighboring city - instead, it's a white dragon named Xerxes and a bizarre 'half-dragon' named Khulad who save her from the Scourges and their virus-spreading bite. And Khulad may know more about the dragons and the reason for their appearance than anyone on earth.

Miles away, a soldier on a desolate battlefield prepares to finish herself off as the Scourge virus begins to ravage the arm where she was bitten. Before she can finish the task, Roost is led to a laboratory and given a chance to retain her humanity by Doctor *lastname2*.All he wants in return is Root's help getting information on the Scourge virus from his son Peter to someone who can use the data to begin work on a curse, while dodging the corrupt officers of the militarian Grayback police force. A simple-enough task - though it remains to be seen if Roost's arm, trapped as the scaled, powerful, claw-tipped arm of a Scourge will be more help or hindrance.

Can two humans, a half-dragon boy, a Scourge-infected woman, and a pack of dragons keep themselves, each other, and their struggling world alive?"

...Still there? I know, I know - brevity is not my strong suit around 12 AM.

Oh, and the novel's called Third Life : I Still Need a Subtitle.

My mission this week (already more than half-over, awesome) is to get research done and to get started on name hunting...the state(s) where this will be taking place...basic stuff like that so I don't keep having to asterisk things...a subtitle...

If you're participating in NaNo, I hope your planning is going well. If you're not participating in NaNo - why not? Go check it out now and consider joining the party!

My Top Ten Reasons to NaNo!

Hurrah for October! Fall and Halloween and apple goodies! And - one month until NaNoWriMo! (I can already tell I'm in the NaNo spirit because I feel a day behind as I write this, even though no word count's required yet =D)

For those who don't know, NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month - is an annual challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in November. There are few rules, but plenty of excitement,  and to convince newcomers to join, the awesome people at NaNoWriMo.org made a list of 10 Reasons You Should Do NaNoWriMo. It's an excellent list - but there're more than ten reasons to NaNo...to WriMo...to NoWri...you get the idea.

So, ascending in order of importance, here are my top ten reasons to join NaNoWriMo!

#10

This is your chance to try whatever writing idea you want! Whether that's writing in a new genre, with a new sort of viewpoint, a new style, or heck, writing at all - this is your time to experiment, and nobody has to see your attempts!

#9

Trying new and challenging things is good! NaNo will liven up your Novemeber, and if nothing else, the adrenaline as you race the clock to midnight on the 30th will make your Thanksgiving weekend more interesting.

#8

You learn to write by writing. 50,000 words in 30 days is a serious crash course.

#7

Get your inner editor to shut up - the 30-day timeframe leaves no time for his/her/its nitpicking!

#6 

Your story can surprise you, take new turns and gain fascinating depth, when you're writing at a million miles and hour. Even you planners may find your story getting away from you as the month goes on.

#5 

You'll find time in your day that you didn't realize existed. If you're really motivated, you can then use this time for more writing once November is over! ...Or, you know, catch up on sleep, if that's your thing.

#4

NaNo gets the ideas you have out of your head and onto the page. Even if the idea feels poor or unfinished or bad, you can't work with what you don't have. 

#3

The NaNo community, just by existing, holds you accountable for your wordcount - and they'll give you a hand with research or motivation if you need  it. 

#2

There's no failure in NaNo except not starting at all. No, I'm serious - even if you only write 100 words, that's one-hundred words that probably wouldn't have existed if you hadn't tried!

#1

NaNoWriMo turns "someday I'll write that novel" into "This November, I will write my novel".

Good luck on your NaNo voyage if you decide to join in. Sign up for an account on NaNoWriMo.org - you'll be able to post on the forums, join a region and learn about write-ins in your area, and best of all, get a nifty wordcount meter you can spam across the internet! Hooray!

Writing Places - The Pond

I can already imagine the sound of the fountains, the light gush of water tumbling onto water, when I turn the corner and find that the pond has been drained again. An empty concrete basin wallows in the field, all its fakery revealed - the rocks are propped onto stone stilts so they appear above the water's surface when the pond is full, the fountains are only black plastic boxes, and a grating suggests where all the cerulean water's gone.

Just two weeks ago, the pond was full. In fact, it may have been full more recently than that - the leavings of geese rest on the walls of the short channel walls that funnel water in and out of the pond. My spot is on these walls; a few years ago, I realized there was a tree I could rest against, and that other people rarely ventured away from the benches and picnic tables.

Today, though, I'm too wary of the goose droppings to sit there. I have a few hours left on campus today. Instead I plop down onto a stone bench and try to get comfortable. It doesn't work. From here, I can half-see my spot, and have a perfect view of the empty, silent pond.

It's remarkable how a place can embed itself in you. Two years ago, I read a book series about gryphons and intelligent owls, and something of this place has soaked into my memory along with the story. Two years ago, I tried hastily to finish a novel. I failed, but I can still remember the rush. Characters linger here; this will always be a step on their journeys.

And this is the place where I huddled against my tree with a bottle of 7-Up, and tried to forget how badly my stomach hurt the months I fought a bizarre stomach problem.

This is where I found a bird skeleton in the leaves and felt the odd duality of sadness and sympathy for its death, and awe at the thin bones and how sharp even a songbird's talons could be.

Every frigid winter semester, I've had a lab class at eight AM some day of the week. Sometimes they forgot to drain the pond before everything iced over, and there it would be in the cold pale-blue morning, a great glacier lost in our field. Despite all the times I was late getting to the science building for lab, I never remember rushing past the pond to get there.

Part of my childhood includes this pond. When my mom attended this school, she brought my siblings and I here. There's a picture of me, on the stone overhang that I can see from my tree-spot. I don't think all the foliage was here back then. Certainly my tree looks fairly young.

Today, I'm ousted from my spot and ousted from the peace. Without the fountains I can hear everyone's conversations too easily. Without my tree, I can't find a way to sit and rest my notebook properly on my lap. And every time I look up, there's the concrete basin or my goose-pooped spot taunting me.

Even so - this is my writing spot. And if all I can write is a diatribe about where I should be - then so be it.

Cycles of Schedules

Lately I've noticed an odd pattern in my work habits. It's a cycle that goes something like this:

Step 1: Make a schedule.

Step 2: Write productively and meet deadlines. This lasts until...

Step 3: Something comes up. As a routine-loving introvert, I can be completely frazzled by something as innocent  as an unexpected visit from friends or a service call by the cable guys.

Step 4: So I "take it easy"....and sort of forget to stop.

Step 5: Eventually, I feel guilty, remember all my goals, and generally scold myself before finally trying to get back to work. It's rarely successful; I spend a few days floundering back into the story, trying to retrieve my place, my drive, and the productivity streak.

Step 6: I find something that inspires me to make another schedule! Set new deadlines! Surely a different quota system will boost my productivity!

The cycle can cost me days of time, and is without doubt my worst writing habit (non-habit?). At least when I'm abusing semicolons, things that are not semicolons make it onto the page.

They say the first step in solving a problem is admitting you have one. I'm not sure what the second step is, but brainstorming solutions seems like a natural progression. Here's what I came up with:

• Set alarms on Outlook Express to go off every five minutes after a chapter's due date if I don't finish the chapter by ten minutes after my deadline.
• Hire or force a friend/family member to hold me accountable for deadlines and to hassle me if I don't meet them.
• Get my roommate to hide my heater/coca-cola/candy until I've finished the day's work. As a reptile/caffine-additct/aspiring diabetic, this should be sufficient motivation.
• Be more strict about scheduling before I go to bed
• Make a new plan to get back on schedule right after an interruption instead of freaking out and diving for the nearest book or X-Box controller
• Move easy distractions out of reach after an interruption.

Clearly, the third option is the best solution here, but since I'm sure my roommate has better things to do than hide my stuff...the final three plans of action may have to suffice. Though I doubt the results will be quite as dramatic.

The biggest part of handling a writing crisis seems to be acting quickly and thinking even faster. Just like during a real-life crises. Considering how well I handle such disasters as cable guys and plumbers, this should be a piece of cake. 


P.S - I'm sort-of participating in Camp NaNo this month! My goal is to finish editing 5+ chapters by the end of this week, then get 40,000 words more out of my 2008 NaNoWriMo project. Yes, I am a big fat cheater  in at least four different ways - but if you'd like to join Camp NaNo legitimately in August, sign up here!

Camp NaNo!

Oh, wow, where's the time gone? Anyway, it's June 1st - and that means the start of Camp NaNo!

...What is Camp NaNo?The summer parallel of November's NaNoWriMo event!

...What is NaNoWriMo? Only the best thing ever!

NaNoWriMo - short for National Novel Writing Month - is the ultimate novelist's challenge; write a 50,000 word novel (or 50,000 words of a novel) in the mere thirty days of November. That amounts to writing about 1,666 words per day. To win NaNoWriMo, authors must set aside their hesitations, doubts, internal editors, and their fear; in return, 50,000 words that may not have existed before. (more here!)

The event isn't meant to emphasize quantity over quality (NaNo has spawned editing events such as NaNoEdMo purely for editing the beasts produced in November); rather, the challenge's aim is to get people who want to write to actually write. There are so many impediments to actually sitting down and starting, and/or keeping it up. NaNoWriMo is an excellent kickstart to get words on paper, and a lot of them.

Camp NaNo is the summertime cousin of NaNoWriMo - in either June, August, or both(!), write a 50,000 words novel in a month! It's excellent writing practice, and a chance to try something perhaps you haven't before.

To those embarking on Camp NaNo, good luck to you! May your month be exciting and fulfilling!

Websites:
http://www.nanowrimo.org - Where it all began!
http://campnanowrimo.org - Sign up for Camp NaNo!
http://blog.lettersandlight.org/ - The blog of NaNo's event organizer, the Office of Letters and Light, full of instructional, motivating, and sometimes just plain funny posts to help you on your noveling journey!

Writer's Funk

Wouldn't you know it – two weeks after starting a blog, I get smacked in the face with final exams, summer job hunting, and most dreadful of all – writing funk.

Used in the same connotation as your favorite infectious disease, I use ‘writing funk’ to refer to the inability to write anything good. It’s not quite the same as writer’s block, and requires different battle tactics, but the end result is pretty much the same – very little writing and a very frustrated writer.

Not being the sharpest tack in the drawer, I almost always go at writer’s funk swinging. This would work fantastically if the problem was the poor writing – but the problem goes deeper than that.

When I’m in the middle of a project, I’m surrounded by the story, the characters, all the subplots and foreshadowing and atmosphere and word choice. In the short-term, that’s great – in the long-term, I risk loosing sight of what I’m aiming for in the first place. I get frazzled, I start nit-picking (er, more than usual) – and ultimately I turn to distraction.

Fortunately for me, one of those distractions was a book. I know, I know – people say not to read while writing, because you’ll steal the other author’s voice or ideas or at the very least get sucked away from your own project. But you know what? Sometimes it’s hard to see beyond the guts of a story and see the whole beast. Sometimes, a good book is a breath of fresh air, and a better reminder than media like movies, music, or comics how powerful words alone can be.

My prescription of one good fantasy novel is working well so far. I hope to be back into noveling – and much more active in blogging – now that the funk’s being warded away. I’m excited about my stories once again, and it’s back into the thick of writing for me!

An Introduction and Excerpt

Welcome to "The Writer's Perch"! My name is Chelsey Magnuson; I'm a writer first and foremost, but I'm also a Michiganian, a college student, a mediocre web designer, and a nerd. I've been writing for about eleven years, and will probably continue until I die or until my hands fall apart (and I'm all for getting cybernetic hands a la Luke Skywalker when the later happens!). 

My writing genre of choice is young adult fantasy. I also write a bit of science-fiction, but have yet to write any novel-length work there. What I have written is Skeleton Gorge, a novel featuring some unusual protagonists - dragons. 

The first chapter of Skeleton Gorge can be found on my website, here:

So, what is the purpose of this blog as a whole? In part, I want to share my adventures in attempting to get this puppy published - but because that consists largely of waiting for replies, that isn't my only plan for this blog (besides, I'd love to keep using it if the novel ever does see the light of a publishing house ;) ). 

What I've actually wanted to do for a while is have a place to discuss writing, plain and simple. Whether that involves the philosophies of writing, strategies for actually sitting and churning out words, or looking at the art from a readers' perspective, I think there's a lot to talk about.

...So in short, my next post will be much less of a self-promotion. 

Thanks for reading; signing off from the Perch,

Chelsey