Dreams of Dragons

So after one month's labours and about a week and a half's hard slog editing, I finally have the initial proof copy in my hands. I am so excited!! I have noticed some problems with the formatting that have hopefully been fixed in the other one I ordered as a christmas present for a very good friend.

I can't wait to show this off at work now and get some critiques on the actual story. I knows it's far from perfect and will need a lot more work before I even contemplate fully publishing it, but I am ust so over the moon to have my very own proof sitting on my bed next to me. I'm taking it home so that my family can ooh and aah at it as well, but I don't really expect them to 'get' the story. A pity really because I am pretty pleased with it. Oh well, not long before I can take the great joy of taking the two brand new red pens I bought for the occassion of further editing to it. Should be a lot of fun once I've let it cool for a bit longer again.

I finally reached over 50,000 words at around 6:30pm onthe 25th of November 2009. That was a happy moment, though I was feeling rather sore at the bottom and very, very hungry. The thing is, the story still isn't quite done. It's getting there, oh yes it is getting there, but it's going to need at least another 8,000 or so words to complete, possibly 10,000 by the time I add in a few epilogue logs and a proper foreword and prologue.

It is getting exciting though, the main conclusion is reaching the final stages and the two other plot lines I need to wrap up are starting to come to their conclusions as well. In a way I'm getting rather sad that it's all coming to an end, but at the same time I will really appreciate the return to some sort of normality in my life {I'll be able to make dinner as soon as I get in from work again :)}. It's been a nix of really high highs and astoundingly low lows this year, but that's just made the roller coaster of Nano this year all the more enjoyable.

This will also be the first complete novel I've finished and I shall be celebrating in style next Saturday night, after I've spent most of the day doing all those annoying minor tweaks to the spelling grammar and flow of the story to make sure that it's mostly acceptable to get my proof copy done and sent my way well before Christmas. The whole idea of the story seems to have caught so many peoples' imaginations this year though, I've had several of my coworkers demand that they get to read the story and several of my online friends want an electronic copy X-x. I'm debating whether or not to actually give this particular novel a proper drafting process and sending it off to someone. At the very least I'm very tempted to self-publish this one, I could do with the extra cash, and the editing process should be very good practice for the novel I plan to send off to a proper agent.

Anyways I suppose I'd better go get something to eat. Take care all love Arach

Geez, it's been ages since I last updated this thing. Oh well. Things have been going really well on the Nano front. I'm not at just over 23k words and should hit the halfway mark by tomorrow evening. I'm getting really encouraged by that idea, it's only just midway through week 2 I've never written so much fiction in so short a time before {I've done stints of writing where I've written 8k or so words in about 3 hours but I don't do that very often, for good reason *rubs at wrists*} and it's exhilarating. The story is really starting to move forward now and all those little, apparently, random bits and pieces I wrote at the start are now starting to form a cohesive plot and overall story arc that I'm really quite happy with. It's not perfect, of course, no first draft ever is, but I am much happier with this year's Nano attempt since I seem to have found my writing voice so much more easily. This might be down to the restriction of writing only in first person for each character, though it's been hard to find a voice for each individual and I still have two more, special characters to add into the story at some point who will be writing logs of their own during a set period of time. Nevertheless, I am finding it easy to get into the headspace of many of the characters and I am starting to form a bond with my favourites, which makes writing their particular logs a piece of cake, even though they're all birds, the mind of which is somewhat alien to a human, but I think I'm starting to pull off the daily concerns a little better now {mostly to do with the weather at the moment but that's because it ties into the availability of food, which is really important in the winter for all species}.

I actually went as far as to plan out my editing spree at work today... it was slow ok and I didn't have anything better to do. At least I should be able to easily edit this particular Nano novel and get a proof copy this time. The thought of being able to hold a proper, physical copy of this novel in my hands is something that's really spurring me on this year. I honestly can't wait until I have to show to people and brag about how I wrote a novel in a month for reals and that I have physical proof of it. I'll probably self publish a small number of copies once I can afford to do so, mostly so that my dad can have a copy to show off to his work colleagues and another for my mum to show off to all her friends and claim bragging rights for having a daughter that is a published author ^^. Yes, my mum is the type of person to take full advantage of something like that, nothing wrong with that at all~.

Anyways I'm hungry and haven't had dinner yet so I'd best go feed myself before I collapse at my keyboard. Take care all, love Arach

Welp, I've done five soliday days of writing and so far I have over 13,000 words. I'm actually kind of surprised I've managed to write that many in just 5 days, though I suppose getting a really good and early lead on Sunday helped out loads. My characters are actually starting to surprise me somewhat at this point, some of them have come out with things I'd never have thought about myself in a million years, and yet it all makes sense given the situation they find themselves in. Chrackle was a lot of fun to write and I can't wait until I get to his next log, but for now I've got almost all the 'narrators' established, I just have one more Gull, Passerine and Waterfowl to go and two more Raptors. Then I've got to work out what kind of Albatross is going to be making a special appearance at the midway point and his name. That's going to be a fun few logs to write, let me tell you.

I've got today and tomorrow off work, and then I have the weekend, so here's hoping I can get a fantastically good lead by the time we head into week 2. I'm hoping to keep up this kind of momentum throughout week 2 but I won't be to disappointed if not, that's the whole point of getting the early lead in week 1 after all. Here's hoping I break 60,000 words this year. I need to get a couple of old Gameboy Advance pokemon games so I can get the entire national dex filled out once I'm finished the main story in Platinum. Then I'll get myself another DS so I can transfer specially bred pokemon to Heart Gold or Soul Silver when it finally gets its release in the UK.

I suppose I'd better go and get that cleaning done before I sit down to write some more. Take care all, love Arach

Well today was really productive. Managed to pound out over 4,000 words so far and that's between 3 characters and a really short prologue {more like and extended author's note at the start of the novel, I may cut it during the edit in December, I haven't decided yet}. I'm actually quite happy though I'm a bit disturbed by my Swan character since he just popped into my head when I got to Lar's and she stuck on some music. Oh well, at least it's all done. Tomorrow I'm going to concentrate on the other two groups and then start the next chapter the following night. Getting at least 2 character logs done per day should mean I'll be finished pretty soon, hopefully I can push it to 60K words this year since I hit the 50K so early last year, but I need to make sure I have a good amount of padding in case week 2 decides it doesn't wanna play {which it might do, I'm at work all that week and I don't know what hours I'm working on what days}.

Anyways, first day and it's not going too badly. Here's hoping that ths week continues the trend. Take care all love Arach

Well less than 2 days technically by this point in the day, but still.

Anyways, starting to get pretty excited about Nano now, today felt like it dragged on forever but it flashed by in great big lumps. I hate it when days do that to me, it just makes the whole day seem realy disjointed. Anyways the reason it felt like it dragged on forever was mostly down to how quiet it was. We were waiting more than 10 minutes between calls even after lunch. It [b]never[/b] does that normally.

Anyways Lee gave me a fantastic idea that made me laugh most of the way through lunch today. The magnetic poles have been thrown off by 2 degrees in the last couple of years so all the migratory birds are all 'WTF?!!' at the moment and ending up in places they normally wouldn't. Gave me the idea to have the geese freak out about it and have most of their logs be all "WE'RE GONNA DIE!!!1". Tht should be tons of fun to write ^^.

In other nano related news. I've made up a sign/calender to put on my baffle board so I am reminded every day of my word count whilst at work, while also keeping tabs on exactly what date it is {even though I need to know the date to do my work, I do get the occassional brain fart}. It is also a nice reminder for the other people on my team to leave me alone when I am frantically scribbling things down on spare printer paper during breaks and lunch and in between calls.

Anyways post kick-off party post tomorrow evening once I get back, so I hope the... one person {^^;} that's following this is looking forward to it. Take care all, loads of love Arach

[url]http://www.youtube.com/user/gomababe[/url]

The two that are currently up are not the best but I do love the one I did for Shifted, even though I had to use different music to the title I wanted to use. Any and all comments are appreciated, but constructive criticism would be fantastic.

Well it's now Saturday morning, and I have a ton of ideas for my new novel. I've even managed to make up a collage of the main characters and their names, which is up on my author profile now: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/243134. Basically a new character came along thanks to the appearance of a Jay just outside the window during a really boring meeting at work. She now has a name and I'm working out her personality and motives. I thought I might as well share my ideas so far since these guys are going to be a lot of fun to write

The Corvid Alliance

Craock: A codgerly old crow who has a nest on top of a huge tree next to the civic centre. He likes to caw at the cars and trucks coming into the car park and disturb the humans working in the offices nearby. He's essentially the go to guy for the other birds in the corvid alliance because of his age, but few actually tell him anything any more because he's gotten a nasty temper in his old age ^^;.

Chrackle: A magpie that is just coming into his second winter. He is a huge kleptomaniac and is willing to give anyone anything if they have something that is bright and shiny.  The only problem for the other side is that halfway through any spiels, he gets hopelessly distracted by other things: usually the sun relfecting off windows or water. Like all magpies Chrackle has an irresistable attraction to these things, but his is magnified by his inability to concentrate on anything at all.

Shrea: A relatively young Jay who is rather more shy than others of her species. She is very adept at hiding herself and is often given reconnesciance missions to find out information from 'the other side'. Unfortunately she is rather scared of Craock {and most other birds}  and it takes her forever to pass on information.

The only Neutral Party


Whrop: Whroop is a pied pigeon that is very, very different from all the others. She can actually communicate with other bird species using more than four words at a time and is not obssessed by food. Whroop hates the fact that her species is so looked down on by the other species but often wishes she wasn't one of them herself. Her fellow pigeons drive her to distraction with their whole attitude and inability to actually do anything productive with their short lives.

The Gull Alliance

Razor: The leader of the Gulls is a middle aged Herring Gull. Razor s fairly charasmatic {for a gull}  and very eloquent with his words and actions. This catches other bird species off guard since Herring Gulls in particular are known for being bullies and using their strength rather than their wits to get what they want, Razor can be rather cold at times, but he believes that he is truly doing the right thing to preserve the gulls' place in the world as their numbers have dwindled rather sharply over the last few years.

The Double Agents


Musket {Alias; Hood}: Musket is a robin that was born for his work. Known only to the other bird species as Hood, Musket thrives on murdering the species on either side by stealth. Each side believes that the robins are working for them, when ins actuality these little birds are working only for themselves. Musket is a legend amongst them for his sheer number of kills during his life. He does not view his assassin work merely as a job, but as a way of life, and a particularly noble way of life at that.

That's all I have so far. Of course there will be other characters for other bird species for each side andI will try to make sure to include the Raptors as well, but for now, I think this is plenty to be getting on with.

Take care all,

Arach

Welp, this last week I haven't had one prodctive thought at all. I've had plenty of fanfic ideas floating around and one I really like the look of, but I want ideas to do with my Nano this year ><. Luckily for me I did get some character inspiration from all the seagulls going around while I was waiting on my bus home; there was a herring gull hatchling that was looking pretty cocky and pleased with itself for keeping it's lookout post all to itself for more than 2 minutes because it was twice as big as the other gulls flying around ^^;. He's going to make a very good character for my Nano this year, all he needs is a name. That is something I am really failing at at the moment, I normally have at least two by this time, but I've got nothing this year. I don't know whether to be worried by that or not.

In other writing news: I have started making up my playlist for my Nano. It's all music from the last series of Ecco games, but it's beautiful and it really helps get me into a proper writing mood ^^. i'm just hoping it doesn't make me want to start writing about dolphins halfway through next month XP;

Anyways, I'm going to go finish all my normal online stuff then do some asking around at the Nano forums, that should help some. Then I really should go get something to eat, I missed breakfast this morning and I haven't had anything decent to eat all day.

Well I finally decided to cave and get a new journal specially for writing in time for Nano this year. I never use my other one except to comment with anyways so I think a new start is in order, wouldn't you say?

I'm hoping to update this at least once a week with plot ideas in the lead up to Nano and my thoughts on the actual month during it. Afterwards I'll keep this open for all those random ideas that crop up and to possibly post some of the original stuff I've started and never completed in hopes that it'll kick me into actually writing some more. I have high hopes for the novel I started last year too, and hope to keep everyone updated on how that particular project is coming since I hope to get it published eventually.

Anyways I think that's all I have for today ^^;. Take care all, love Arach xx