Today marks the first birthday of Shades of Lizzy! Amazingly this is my longest-lasting blog, even though I kinda disappeared for a little while. Before this I had two, maybe three blogs that I could never get used to. I'm happy this one finally worked out.
On to other news. I haven't been able to write much in this past week. My little spare time (when I'm not unpacking) has been for compiling a list of books to get from the library and trying to catch up with friends. And the little I've been able to write hasn't been great.
There's a new blog post on Bookmarked - esbookmarked.blogspot.com
Life's a mess. What else is new? Somebody save me.
I know I had more to say when I started writing, but I suddenly don't feel like going on. Talk to you next week, I guess.
-Lizzy<3
Friday, February 5, 2010
Monday, February 1, 2010
January Review; Writing Stats
I talked a lot in December about how I was going to make 2010 better than last year. How I was going to finally make something of my life and not let the little things get me down any more. We're now entering the second month of the year, and some of you may be wondering if I still have high hopes, or if I've given up yet.
The answer is, I'm more optimistic than ever. January was a very crazy month. Some great things happened, and there were some set-backs, but overall I'm happy. I moved, and I'm really pleased with my new apartment. I picked up a story I'd abandoned months ago and am almost finished it now. I discovered some amazing bloggers and challenges. I wrote on all but two days! So yes, I'm still hopefull. This year has started out perfectly.
I admit, my writing did fail a little last month. I fell behind and never quite caught up. That being said, I'm about two thousand behind on the year's total (easy to make up) and probably over eight thousand behind on the story total for "Oh, Baby!" I am about five chapters away from finishing the whole fic, which is great! I anticipated having to continue writing the story into February, so it's no big deal. I'm going to keep at it until it's finished.
As scheduled, I'm going to get back to writing Ghosts of Autumn (NaNo '09) this month, and hopefully have it revised and edited by the end of the month so I can get my free bound copy of it from CreateSpace. I've already started editing a little bit by reading over the copy I printed out after NaNo. There were several spelling and grammatical errors I was able to catch, and some stuff that got mixed up when I changed character names, ages, and where they're from. I'm a little stuck on how to make it longer though.
In case you don't remember (or weren't reading back then) GoA is split into three short stories about the Naylor family, who start seeing and hearing ghosts. I finished the first story Sweet September, and am almost finished the second one titled Cold October. The problem is that SS is a lot shorter than CO. I have no idea how to fill it. I've always been terrible at fillers. I just like to get right to the point and write scenes that are important to the plot. In CO I was able to work on a ton of sub-plots and bring in new characters - that one story alone is about twenty-five thousand words.
I've been doing a lot of thinking about the characters in GoA recently as well. As I told Ari over at Reading In Color, I want to start writing more poc main characters. And what better way to start than with the novel I want to get published first. I just need to figure out which MCs I'm changing now.
Technically, there are about four main characters in my novel, and about four important side-characters. Six of these characters are part of the Naylor family, the other two are the Yardley sisters. So, no matter who I change, I'll have to do it to more than one. I think I've pretty much decided to switch the sisters, Annie and Kristen. I was never completely happy with the celebrity I chose to represent Annie anyway.
In other writing news, I was on the WriYe forums today and saw that they have a February mini-challenge going on. Romance. As I've said before, romance is never my main genre (well, once maybe) but it sneaks into almost all of my writing somehow. The challenge is just to write something - anything - romantic this month. Whether it be a short story, novel, or a fic. Ironically I came up with an idea for a romantic comedy a few days ago. I hadn't planned on using it this year as I'm already booked full, but I'm going to give it a shot until I get overwhelmed.
Basically, the idea is that three women attend a wedding and, over the course of the weekend, they all fall for different guys also attending the wedding. It might be another three-stories-in-one kinda thing, but I'm going to try not to turn it into that. I've been working some basics out for the past few minutes. I think it's going to take place in California (unless someone suggests another place to hold the wedding) and the names of the four main characters (including the bride) are going to be Diane, Avery, Willow, and Nathalie. These may change later, but I'm quite happy with them so far. And of course, at least two of them will be poc.
That's all I've got for today.
-Lizzy<3
The answer is, I'm more optimistic than ever. January was a very crazy month. Some great things happened, and there were some set-backs, but overall I'm happy. I moved, and I'm really pleased with my new apartment. I picked up a story I'd abandoned months ago and am almost finished it now. I discovered some amazing bloggers and challenges. I wrote on all but two days! So yes, I'm still hopefull. This year has started out perfectly.
I admit, my writing did fail a little last month. I fell behind and never quite caught up. That being said, I'm about two thousand behind on the year's total (easy to make up) and probably over eight thousand behind on the story total for "Oh, Baby!" I am about five chapters away from finishing the whole fic, which is great! I anticipated having to continue writing the story into February, so it's no big deal. I'm going to keep at it until it's finished.
As scheduled, I'm going to get back to writing Ghosts of Autumn (NaNo '09) this month, and hopefully have it revised and edited by the end of the month so I can get my free bound copy of it from CreateSpace. I've already started editing a little bit by reading over the copy I printed out after NaNo. There were several spelling and grammatical errors I was able to catch, and some stuff that got mixed up when I changed character names, ages, and where they're from. I'm a little stuck on how to make it longer though.
In case you don't remember (or weren't reading back then) GoA is split into three short stories about the Naylor family, who start seeing and hearing ghosts. I finished the first story Sweet September, and am almost finished the second one titled Cold October. The problem is that SS is a lot shorter than CO. I have no idea how to fill it. I've always been terrible at fillers. I just like to get right to the point and write scenes that are important to the plot. In CO I was able to work on a ton of sub-plots and bring in new characters - that one story alone is about twenty-five thousand words.
I've been doing a lot of thinking about the characters in GoA recently as well. As I told Ari over at Reading In Color, I want to start writing more poc main characters. And what better way to start than with the novel I want to get published first. I just need to figure out which MCs I'm changing now.
Technically, there are about four main characters in my novel, and about four important side-characters. Six of these characters are part of the Naylor family, the other two are the Yardley sisters. So, no matter who I change, I'll have to do it to more than one. I think I've pretty much decided to switch the sisters, Annie and Kristen. I was never completely happy with the celebrity I chose to represent Annie anyway.
In other writing news, I was on the WriYe forums today and saw that they have a February mini-challenge going on. Romance. As I've said before, romance is never my main genre (well, once maybe) but it sneaks into almost all of my writing somehow. The challenge is just to write something - anything - romantic this month. Whether it be a short story, novel, or a fic. Ironically I came up with an idea for a romantic comedy a few days ago. I hadn't planned on using it this year as I'm already booked full, but I'm going to give it a shot until I get overwhelmed.
Basically, the idea is that three women attend a wedding and, over the course of the weekend, they all fall for different guys also attending the wedding. It might be another three-stories-in-one kinda thing, but I'm going to try not to turn it into that. I've been working some basics out for the past few minutes. I think it's going to take place in California (unless someone suggests another place to hold the wedding) and the names of the four main characters (including the bride) are going to be Diane, Avery, Willow, and Nathalie. These may change later, but I'm quite happy with them so far. And of course, at least two of them will be poc.
That's all I've got for today.
-Lizzy<3
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