The Ready Writer

So its the last day of NaNoWriMo and while I am nowhere close to 50,000 words, I am proud to have written close to 4,500. Why? Well, I started working on my main project in July,  and I finished the first Act in October at AROUND 8,000 words. I have written over half of what I wrote in 3 months, in just one. That's because I am working that writing muscle. It isn't a surprise that writing everyday is the best thing to do if you want to be a writer. But as someone with 2 jobs and somewhat of a social life, that can be hard. So I try to write as often as I can.  I used the fun frantic energy of NaNoWriMo to test myself, and to see if I could still squeeze writing in at any possible moment I could even if that meant just taking 5 minutes to write 50 words as opposed to sitting down for an hour and seeing how much I could write. And it helped! I find that I am getting better at getting focused faster, words come a little better, and my writing chunks are getting a litt...

So on Election Day (or the day after, rather), I expressed the thought that I may have to scrap my main project because of my villain. I have since decided against that. I think now more than ever, I need to write this story. I am going to make some pretty big changes to the story.  I'm taking out some of the fantastical, making it less traditional apocalyptic horror and more occult horror.  My villain will be less of a political ruler, and more of a religious one, that was able to take over the government, and instead of doing it from multiple points of view, I'm picking one character to tell the story from. However, I still think that this story will be an important one.  I'm separating it from my original idea, because honestly I don't know if I can write it.  It's not that I don't want to, or am too scared to create a political rift, but I just don't think I'm strong enough.  This election is a very emotional one for me, and I'm already har...

So I am still on hiatus from my main project, but that doesn't mean I'm not writing. In order to keep my horror writer brain sharp, I am doing the following: Working on my "affair" or "backburner" project .  This allows me to distance myself from my main project so that I can come back to it ready to edit critically (and next week I'll talk about what those edits will entail). Reading.   I'm a firm believer (but not the only one that believes it) that in order to be a good writer, you have to be a good reader (and by good, I mean participating in the act of those activities). So I am reading a lot of horror and seeing what the greats (as well as the newbies) are doing in the world of horror.  If you want to see what I'm reading, you can friend me on Goodreads.  You can find me under my full name: Brystan Strong. Research. This may fall into both the previous category and the next one, but I'm doing scholarly research on the genr...

I'm scheduled to write a blog post today on the literary history of the horror genre, but I just can't focus. My country elected a monster.  Someone who is a bully, and ran his entire campaign on hate speech and fear mongering. I based the villain in my novel on him.  And now he is our President.  And I want so much to scrap my project because I write fiction. Not Nonfiction. I haven't slept. I've barely eaten. I've almost thrown up. I've cried. A lot.  And what makes it worse is that half of my family, maybe even more, voted for him. I've always been politically divided from my family.  But most of the time during election season we just agree to not talk politics, and we continue to be a loving happy family. Because most of the time its policy that we disagree on.  And that's okay.  That's what makes us human.  I don't want people to agree with me all the time. I don't want to live in an echo chamber. But not this time.  This time...

So I finished Act I of my novel! Yay!  It's somewhere along 8,000 words.  My last 2 chapters are more notes than actual prose because I realized that I needed to make some shifts, so I didn't want to write chapters that would ultimately most likely just get thrown out.  So, now I'm taking a month off from that project (so I can distance myself a bit from it, and be able to edit a little more critically.) In the meantime, I am participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and working on my "affair project". Here's the thing.  I love NaNo. I have participated in it off and on since I was in high school, I was a municipal liaison once, and have made a lot of friends doing it, but I have NEVER made it to 50,000 words.  I've always burnt out.  And I won't make the wordcount again this year either.  But the issue I was having before was that I was using Nano as a means to finish a project. And I just don't work that way.  Not onl...

Hello readers! I seem to have come down with the plague. Posts will resume next week. In the meantime, if you want some spookiness in your life I would suggest you listen to the following podcasts: Know Fear: it's an academic type podcast discussing the ins and outs of the horror genre. NoSleep Podcast: a scary short story podcast. Also, yes I am participating in nanowrimo. My username is Tulip Girl. Til next week! - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone