Writer’s Resources for October 17th from 18:24 to 18:47

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Oct 172010
 

This is a list of links I’ve found useful for October 17th from 18:24 to 18:47:

It’s NaNoWriMo Planning Time!

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Oct 022010
 

It’s October. You know what that means, right?

We’ve got less than a month left until November 1st and the start of National Novel Writing Month – lovingly called “NaNoWriMo” by those of us crazy enough to participate!

What does this mean?

It means I, and a few thousand of my closest friends, will be using every spare moment this November to type, scribble, scrawl or hunt ‘n peck 50,000 words of a brand new novel.

It also means that such things as laundry, dishes, holiday shopping and showers will all be forgotten in the mad rush to complete a novel and reach our goal in those short (and if you’ve never tried to write 50,000 words in a month, you don’t know how short) 30 days.

So if you have a friend, a roommate, a daughter, sister, son, brother, uncle, cousin, spouse who is participating in NaNoWriMo this year, do us all and especially them a favor and give your hope, your support, your good wishes to them this November. We’ll need it. And we also wouldn’t mind if you came over with some dinner, either. Just don’t expect us to be able to talk and scribble at the same time.

This year, I’m planning to up the stakes even more. This is my seventh NaNo’ing year, and I had this whim that perhaps working full time AND writing a 50k novel in 30 days wasn’t quite enough pressure. (HA!) So I’ve also opened a NaNo fund-raising page over at the NaNo-recommended Gift Tool site. I’ve only put in a goal of $100. I don’t know if I can manage it, but I think together we can.

If you’d like to support me, and thereby also make a contribution to a worthwhile program for young writers – which also happens to be part of a 501(c)3 organization, which makes any donation  you make tax deductible – please click here and donate what you can. I’m not picky, and neither are these young writers. Support the next generation’s authors. Even if it’s $1, or $5 or even 50 cents.

If you’d like to find out more about National Novel Writing Month – click here. If you decide you want to sign up to write your own novel, you can create an account from there.

If you have an account and are participation in NaNo this year, please add me as a writing buddy. My username is Kiaras.

And, again – if you’d like to donate to support me and the Young Writer’s program, please click here and send what you can – even if it’s the kind of donation that jingles instead of folds.

Good luck, NaNo’ers! I plan to use October for planning and outlining my novel. How about you?

Writer’s Resources for August 14th through September 19th

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Sep 212010
 

These are writers’ resource links I’ve found helpful and/or interesting for August 14th through September 19th:

Writer's Resources for July 18th through August 14th

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Aug 142010
 

These are writers’ resource links I’ve found helpful and/or interesting for July 18th through August 14th:

Writer's Resources for June 9th through June 29th

 Writer's Life, Writer's Resources  2 Responses »
Jun 132010
 

These are writers’ resource links I’ve found helpful and/or interesting for June 9th through July 18th:

Moments Like These Make It Worth It

 Progress & Processes, Writer's Life  1 Response »
Mar 232010
 

For the past few weeks, I’ve been trading writing prompts with a friend (who shall remain nameless until such a time as she lets me know she’d like to be revealed). Every other week, we exchange a prompt as a challenge and write a short story. We then trade the stories for critique. I have to say that I really think the whole thing has been working out quite well overall.

There have been a couple of weeks, though, where I’ve kind of just stared at the page until a day or two before the deadline and then banged something out quickly, with little thought to craft or plot. I’m not too lofty to admit it. But there have also been two prompts that stand out in my mind like a torch readied to spark the bonfire.

That’s what they were, too. The first prompt lead to what I call my “Amazonian wild west murder mystery”. I haven’t even opened the critique on this yet, because it would hurt my heart if my writing partner hated it. One day soon, when I’m ready to revisit Deadtown (as the story is called), I’ll open the critique and take a look at it. Until then, I’m a little bit too in love with the idea to take constructive criticism. Yet. Every writer needs to take it eventually, but I see no harm in realizing when you’re not ready for it yet.

The second prompt I received this week, and while the story isn’t written yet, I have the beginning, middle, and end all laid out in my mind. I’m a little bit in love with this idea, too. You see, Sunday evening I had only the vaguest idea of what story this prompt had, well, prompted in my mind.

Then I went to sleep and dreamed the whole thing. I love it when my subconscious reaches out and gives me a helping hand. I watched from a little floaty corner of the room as a teenage girl, a thin coward of a man, and a voluptuous priestess drank cold bottles of ale in a dirty stone tavern and discussed their history together. I then observed what happened next, and had my ending.

And in the morning, I woke up and scribbled the whole thing down as fast as my fingers could fly.

It was all there for the taking: compelling characters, the taste and smells and sounds of the setting, and the action-packed climax, followed by an ending that could break a heart. *happy sigh*

It’s days like these that make the whole thing worthwhile.

Writer's Resources for January 31st through February 20th

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Feb 202010
 

These are writers’ resource links I’ve found helpful and/or interesting for January 31st through February 20th:

Writer's Resources for January 19th through January 25th

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Jan 252010
 

These are writers’ resource links I’ve found helpful and/or interesting for January 19th through January 25th:

New Ideas

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Jan 032010
 

I’ve come to realize that short posts are better than no posts at all, yes?

I was at dinner yesterday with my husband, J – more often referred to by me as ‘the Artist’ – and we always have the best, most ridiculous conversations. We’ve come up with ideas for TV shows, terrible (but funny) band names, stories & novels, web comic shorts, and many other things.*

So we were at dinner, and began talking about what it would be like if Greek & Roman mythology overlapped our own modern times & technology. How would our current news outlets report the kidnap of a woman by a bull? Or an assault on a city by a large wooden horse?

We decided, of course, that the only way this mythology would get reported on in the current day would be by the supermarket tabloids. I think the best headline we came up with was: “Hot Chick Turns Into Giant Spider”. Which, of course, made me nearly snort cherry coke out of my nose.

The idea kind of took hold and made me think about writing as a fun and joyful thing for the first time in awhile. So I spent last evening paging through an old copy of Edith Hamilton and making notes.

So be on the lookout for a brand new (and ongoing) project from me, which should be linked here soon. I can’t wait to see how some old school mythology would be received in modern times!

*One of these days I’ll get around to buying a digital voice recorder so we can record these ridiculous & hilarious brain-storming sessions. We forget more ideas than we come up with, most of the time.

Writer's Resources for October 8th through October 15th

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Oct 152009
 

These are writers’ resource links I’ve found helpful and/or interesting for October 8th through October 15th:

Writer's Resources for October 5th through October 8th

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Oct 082009
 

These are writers’ resource links I’ve found helpful and/or interesting for October 5th through October 8th:

Writer's Resources for September 27th through October 1st

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Oct 012009
 

These are writers’ resource links I’ve found helpful and/or interesting for September 27th through October 1st:

NaNoWriMo: Are You a Plotter or a Pantser?

 Progress & Processes, Writer's Life  1 Response »
Sep 292009
 

So pretty soon it will be October 1st, which is the day that the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) forums reset for the 2010 challenge. That means it’s time now to start thinking about this year’s NaNovel. Once the forums reset, we’ll all have 1 month to brace ourselves for the writing whirlwind.

What is NaNoWriMo?

To recap, for those who’ve never heard of it: National Novel Writing Month, widely known as NaNoWriMo, is a yearly writer’s contest in which you are given 30 days in which to pen a 50,000 word novel. NaNoWriMo begins at midnight your local time on November 1st and ends at the same time on November 30th.

There are no prizes, other than a certificate and bragging rights. There is nothing to stop you from copying other text and reporting  yourself as a winner. Except for the sheer ridiculousness of cheating in a contest for which you win absolutely nothing.

The point of the contest is to get into the habit of writing every day, as well as to use time constraints to shut down the voice of that evil inner critic every writer seems to have. I’ve participated every year since 2004.

So Are You a Plotter or a Pantser?

Everything I write tends to have a different method. My current work in progress (WiP) has been pretty thoroughly plotted. You should see all the post-its on my wall. This was a very different method for me as I’d usually not done much more than a vague outline before. I’ve also been a complete pantser in the past.

I recently discovered something called ‘phase drafting’, however, and I’m kind of interested in giving it a try. (Find out more about phase drafting here.) On the other hand, I don’t have much more than a couple of scene fragments to build from. That’s if I choose to use one of the two more developed ideas I’ve got on hold.

Yet it’s also a nice idea to be able to weave in whatever comes to mind. I find it exciting to think about writing in all the purple bunnies and ice-skating penguins that show up in the middle of the story. A completely whimsical, nonsensical story sounds enormously appealing after all the work that’s gone into plotting my current novel.

I haven’t decided on anything yet, though, and I still have a little while to make up my mind. So please join in. Are you planning to plot your NaNovel this year or write by the seat of your pants? Please leave a comment and let me know!

Note: I’m not asking for details of your plot and it’s probably best to keep that to yourself. Just tell me if you’re going to be a plotter or pantser this year! Thanks!

Writer's Resources for September 21st through September 23rd

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Sep 232009
 

These are my links for September 21st through September 23rd: