Wednesday 27 June 2012

A writer's life with goats


I caved in yesterday and wrote about 300 words on Doom. I'm never going to know how much it would have hurt by the next day, though, because I have this awesome life involving goats. The ways you can get injured around goats could make a book (and in fact have appeared in several of my drafts). I've been kicked in the head, had a goat fall off the milking stand and land on me, been dragged through mud, almost dislocated my shoulder trying to stop an invasion of what seemed like a thousand goats...

Sunday 24 June 2012

Just a quick update...

Six days left until I'm allowed to write again. I'm not sure if I'll be able to hold on that long. At first there was enough pain to warn me off, so I buried myself in reading. Then I started to feel edgy. My brain was tossing out ideas and I found myself wondering if it was really going to be that bad going back to the computer. I held that off for a few days by handwriting, with the result that I now have four stories in the planning stage. By the end of June there could be more. I have a fair-sized back catalogue to choose from.

Saturday 16 June 2012

Camp NaNoWriMo Day 16: the end...?



I don't know if this is going to be the absolute end of my Camp NaNo campaign, but at the end of Day 16, with 29,084 words written I'm at the point where the (very bad) pun of calling it a 'cam-pain' comes to mind.

Friday 15 June 2012

Camp NaNoWriMo Day 15: rest and relaxation?



I have no idea what to say at the end of Day 15. I only wrote about 500 words and while that still puts me a little way ahead of par, it also makes four days in a row when I haven't met the daily goal. Things are not going well and I'm struggling to find reasons to post something other than Doom and Gloom. You may have noticed that by the talk of kittens and stretching lately.

Thursday 14 June 2012

Camp NaNoWriMo Day 14: vitally important exercises for writers

 See? Even this random kitten understands the importance of stretching.

I could just do another brain-dump Camp NaNoWriMo post, but this is IMPORTANT!!!

Repetitive strain injury, musculoskeletal disorder,carpal tunnel... All these phrases should strike terror into the hearts of people who sit in front of a computer. Ignore the early warning signs and at some point it's all going to come crashing in on you and even typing a few words will be impossible.

Wednesday 13 June 2012

Camp NaNoWriMo Day 13: What do you want, characters?

This is Gypsy the kitten. Isn't she cute?

First things first: yesterday I talked about Gypsy the kitten. Now I have a (somewhat blurry) photo of her to share. Taking pictures of scared kittens in dark sheds isn't easy and my phone's attempts at compensating for it haven't really helped matters. Anyway, that's Gypsy.

Tuesday 12 June 2012

Camp NaNoWriMo Day 12: Gypsy

Day 12: This post really has nothing to do with Camp.

I'd like to start with two things:

  1. I live in a nice spot in bush with lots of native birds and small animals around the place.

  2. I own cats, but because I'm a responsible cat owner they have a combination of indoors and an outdoor secure run as their territory.

Camp NaNoWriMo Day 11: yeah, something must have happened...

Day 11: Okay, nothing happened. I wrote words, at least.

This is the latest I've been with a post this month - already midmorning on Day 12 and I should be starting the new day's writing instead of playing on the internet. Poor Toby has no idea that he's in the process of walking into a trap and I need to make sure he survives. Killing the main character in the earliest book of his timeline would be bad... which spoils the suspense a bit, doesn't it? I know he's going to survive no matter what happens to him.

I have no idea what to say today. Maybe I'll just leave this one short and go and do something about that trap.

Sunday 10 June 2012

Camp NaNoWriMo Day 10: I almost broke my character

Day 10: This is an advance apology to Toby. He deserves about a million of them.

Day 10 was that word I still haven't found that describes the state of mind of a writer who wouldn't like to call what she does to her characters 'fun'. I didn't quite shatter my main character, which surprises me a little. I put him in a position where I expected him to crack and he saved himself by going into a state of complete retreat.

Saturday 9 June 2012

Camp NaNoWriMo Day 9: the Booker Award

I arrived at my blog to write the day 9 entry and discovered that fellow blog-post-every-day-of-Camp participant Raine Kingsley had passed me the Booker Award. The rules for this award are:

  1. This award is for book bloggers only. To receive this award the blog must be at least 50% about books (reading or writing is okay)
  2. Along with receiving this award, you must also share your top five favourite books you have ever read. (More than five is okay) You must give this award to 5-10 other lucky book blogs you adore.
So far this blog is mostly writing with occasional mention of reading and goats. Therefore, rule 1 is okay. Now to attempt to fulfil rule 2...

Friday 8 June 2012

Camp NaNoWriMo Day 8: metaphors gone too far

Day 8: I should start coming up with weird post titles...

So, today I wrote a massive 1.1k on Doom. As far as I know, that still puts me ahead of the 50k goal. I'm trying to be happy about that rather than descending into Doom and Gloom over the fact that I'm 6.7k behind my personal goal at the moment. It's not like I can't catch that up.

Thursday 7 June 2012

Camp NaNoWriMo Day 7: get that bunny out of here!

Day 7: *sneezes*

Today I've just been sneezing at everything. 'Object X' is not to be sneezed at? Well, I beg to differ. I've used up almost everything in the house that can be used for nose-blowing. I might as well have eaten cardboard for dinner, too, because my head is so stuffed up that I couldn't taste a thing.

Wednesday 6 June 2012

Camp NaNoWriMo Day 6: help?

Day 6: Help?

I'm irritated by Liquid Story Binder already. That took a long time, didn't it? I used it for almost a whole week.

The trouble with LSB is that it takes a lot of time and effort to sort out where to drop everything. I have the story, I have the first drafts of the other three books in the series and half a second draft, I have around 10k of supporting material...

Tuesday 5 June 2012

Camp NaNoWriMo Day 5: Liquid Story Binder and line notes

Day 5: software makes things better, right?

In view of the fact that I have to post something EVERY DAY...

This time I'm going to talk about the piece of writing software that currently irritates me the least, which surprisingly turns out to be Liquid Story Binder. I've decided I like it again, for a reason that on the fact of it seems pretty dumb. The reason is this:

Monday 4 June 2012

Camp NaNoWriMo Day 4: a day off

Day 4: ...

I should have things to say about Day 4, but since the day didn't end up including any writing time I'm finding myself at a loss. I got up, did the usual morning jobs around the dairy and then by the time I'd eaten breakfast I just wanted to go back to bed. What had started as a neck-ache the previous day had decided to spread out and include my head, back and arms. Add to that a change in the weather making my knee and lower leg ache...

Sunday 3 June 2012

Camp NaNoWriMo Day 3: why I should trust my character

Day 3: it turns out Toby knows a lot more about the story than I do. Am I surprised?

I really need to learn to trust my characters more. I created Toby Moonstone in April of 2011 and since then I've written over 250,000 words about him. It's pointless to suggest that at this point I'm doing anything other than typing like hell while he tells the story. There's no reason to doubt him. He knows what he's doing, even if I don't.

Saturday 2 June 2012

Camp NaNoWriMo Day 2: the bloodthirsty child

Day 2: letting the bloodthirsty child tell his own story.

I've been told off about my overthinking of the Planner vs Pantser thing enough that it's getting embarrassing. Being told to stop stressing by Stephen Blackmoore was almost as weird and alarming as the time I had a dream about Chuck Wendig giving me 25 reasons why everything I write is crap. Yes, my subconscious really did do that to me.

Friday 1 June 2012

Camp NaNoWriMo day 1: just write

Day 1: my character is a psychopath

For some reason, I decided that my not-exactly-enthusiastic campaign of Blog Necromancy would be helped along by a commitment to write thirty blog posts during Camp NaNoWriMo. Coupled with my resolve to curtail my 'Doom and Gloom' habit this month... well, it should be interesting.