Larger image HERE.
Discovered today on my friend herbaldream ‘s tumblr. I keep big long character sheets on all my major characters but sometimes this is cumbersome! Here is a much quicker reference sheet. For a guide on how to fill it out, please visit rpg.ashami.com. Enjoy!
This was just too good not to repost. I’m guilty of doing this myself, probably because of my fondness for writing, and reading, very introspective characters. While I might not be so ruthless as to eliminate all thought verbs as described, this would certainly be helpful in the editing process to make the detail more rich and informative.
Hi guys! At present, I have chapters 1 through 10 of Blood of Midnight: The Broken Prophecy submitted back to my editor and things are looking great. I’m about ready to start posting some samples of the novel here for you to see if you’d like to read the rest when it comes out but I want to be absolutely sure that it’s as polished and nice as it can be. You know I wouldn’t give you crap to read!
Other than that little announcement, I’ve found a great resource for writing. It’s a site that lets you search for music playlists based on mood.
Stereomood.com seems to be rather new but I’ve already discovered its usefulness. All I have to do is type in the mood I want to set for the scene and it pops up a playlist of songs that people have tagged for that particular mood.
I’m not about to throw away all my youtube playlists but I’m eager to see where this resource goes in the future. Take a crack at it. At worst, you’ll discover some cool new songs.
Dear Brain,
2:30AM is not an acceptable time to be working out the plot points of our NaNoWriMo novel. That said, thank you for managing to slog through editing chapter 8 before crashing from the coffee.
That is all,
Sincerely,
Ethan
Yeeeep, I had to take a break from editing today. There were just too many other matters to be handled. Someone’s got to make the yogurt, wash the clothes, make the holiday gifts and today that someone was me!
I am, however, still rocking the wordcount in NaNoWriMo and if I win this year, I’m going to get myself a NaNo hoodie. Something to strive for! I’m considering posting up some of my NaNo book as it unfolds but I’m kind of sheepish about it. It’s so raw and unedited and … yeaaaah. Eep!
So! The good news is that I drew up a political map of all the kingdoms north of the Great Barrier Desert for Blood of Midnight. It really helped clarify what all is going on in the area, who is doing what, who owes loyalty to whom and why. I also finished editing chapter 19, the final chapter of the book.
The bad news is, I must have forgotten to save the edits on my first chapter so I had to do them all over again.
Well, win some and lose some. In any case, my first chapter is once again in the hands of my editor and soon the others will follow. Woohoo!
I hit the 25% point in my NaNoWriMo today! I also went crazy and edited an extra chapter yesterday night. (Aka: 3AM this morning …) I’m really enjoying the story I’m writing so far. It’s way more intense and deeply personal than I thought it would be. A happy surprise!
I’ve also been successfully infecting even my friends who aren’t doing NaNo to write thousands of words. Mwahahaha! I shall spread my madness everywhere! No one is safe!
Make good art!
Here, have a picture of a bluejay for no reason.
This little dude was giving the the side-eye while I was fetching some more coffee to fuel the headlong plunge through editing chapter seventeen this morning. The good news is: It’s done!
The bad news has nothing to do with writing but I managed to hurt my leg practising my ninjutsu rolls last night. Owie! I have my 8th kyu test coming up this month and I really want to do well. Vertigo makes rolls and flips and such really difficult but I keep trying. Overriding the body’s instinct to lock up solid when I lose my balance is something I’ve been working at. Some days, it works well. Others, it doesn’t. It can be really frustrating. You can know exactly what it is you’re supposed to do, exactly what it is you’re doing wrong, you’re determined to do it correctly … and then the body just does whatever it wants regardless of the commands you send it.
But, I won’t give up. I love the art. My balance has gotten a lot better. My rolls may not be lovely and fluid but I can still deal with being thrown or knocked down without hitting my head or hurting my back or breaking a wrist. That’s definitely something.
Now, time to see if I can squeeze some more out of the muse. Maybe I’ll do some reading to feed it first. Game of Thrones isn’t going to read itself after all!
I found a lovely little blog post I’d like to share with you here. It’s a post by Fiction Factor about word count in fiction writing and the benchmarks for each type of fiction. Take a browse over those numbers.
Now, the reason why I’ve linked this to you, is that I don’t like the idea of NaNoWriMo being a pass or fail, win or lose affair. A lot of people don’t write for NaNo because they know that the month is going to be too crazy for them to make the 50,000 word mark. Folks, I invite you to get that idea right out of your head.
If you don’t make the 50,000 word mark, do not consider yourself a failure. Instead of looking at what you didn’t do, look at what you did accomplish. If you only write, say, 8000 words, congratulate yourself! You wrote a novelette. Got really busy and only managed 2000 words? Well pat yourself on the back; you got out a short story!
Look at these bench marks and celebrate each one. It doesn’t even matter if no one ever sees what you write this month. Practising your craft is never a waste of time. Ever.
Part of being an independent artist, or any manner of successful human being for that matter, is setting reasonable goals. So maybe this month is National Novelette Writing Month for you. So what? Write that novelette! Just don’t fall into the trap of “well I can’t do what everyone else is doing so I might as well not produce anything at all.” Write what you can and be proud of it. Now go make good art. Continue reading “Milestones of Writing”
I’m going to be busy for awhile. I will do my utmost to keep posting interesting stuff during this month while I edit Blood of MIdnight: The Broken Prophecy (I’m working on chapter 15 at the moment) and once again do NaNoWriMo! I was successful last year. In fact, I actually wrote two of them. Let’s see what comes of it this year.
If you’re not familiar with NaNoWriMo, it stands for National Novel Writing Month. I cannot possibly explain it any better than these guys did:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6bun_pBjtE#action=share
heythisismyjob.com 