Whoops!

Almost let this blog slip. My apologies!

I forgot about NaNo ML signups this year >.< So officially, I'm not ML-ing for my area but I can act in an unofficial capacity, if it's okay with the girls who are this year. I'm sure it will be, one has been my co-ML for a few years and the other has been in the group probably as long as I have. They're both cool. Even if my involvement is minor, it might be nice to relax a bit this year. 50,000 words in one month can get kind of nuts.

I have no idea what I'm going to do for NaNo. It has to be a new project so that means none of the seven stories I have in progress qualify. Not that I'm short on ideas, haha. I have one idea that I haven't quite fleshed out yet that was inspired by this art:



I couldn't read the title or artist's name (幽魂之地 - 李一丁 if anyone on my list can translate?) but I have a good idea of the 'story' of it. It's an undead warlock, most likely in Andorhol at night. Or it could be a farm in Tirisfal which always looks that dark but none of the silos glow green. It kind of looks like she's taking revenge which is what spurred the idea. Of course, another idea is inspired by this pic:



Not entirely sure what this one will be about either. Either vampire or shapeshifter, but leaning towards shapeshifter. I love vampires but I already have one on the backburner and right now I think the vamp market needs to cool some. Thanks Stephenie >.< Glittery vamps can go die now plzkthx.

Speaking of writing I didn't do any yesterday. Bad me, I'm going to fall so far behind on my target. I've been doing...well not great, but not bad either. I know if I can just get in one 7k day, I can stick to it. The Dragon King is almost at 30k (1,761 words short to be exact), which is sooooooooo cool. I think I'm just going to make it straight out asian fantasy in the rewrite. Well, maybe not completely asian fantasy because I have another story idea set in this world, and nothing of it is asian-based. Watching Fuurin Kazan is providing lots of good visual aid ^_^ Still need a subbed version of the whole show, it'd be nice to know what's going on. My untitled dark fantasy, which is kind of leaning towards Demon King as a tentative title at least, has clocked in currently at 10,433 words. I think I'll finally start working on chapters now that I'm out of spontaneous scenes. Revenant is at 4,056 which I think will be the first one I tackle later today, going for 5,944 words; Redemption is at 6,213 and still has plenty of spontaneous scenes left to write; my untitled historical is back on the backburner at 1,136 words; my untitled warlord story is also on the backburner at 1,000 words; and A Game of Nobles remains at 1,000, which was actually kind of a spontaneous addition. I had two scenes I didn't want to forget, and figured I'd add it to the tally.

So current wordcount total: 65,729. For anyone doing the math, those counts above don't include the 13,652 I added to a three-year-old manuscript back in January. As that story is done now, nothing more gets added to it.

Now for some sleep, then off to the Harvest Festival! I'm debating whether to take Dalila - on one hand the socialization would be good for her, and she loves people. On the other I kind of don't want to divide my attention between saying hi to friends, doing a bit of shopping and calming the nut. Guess we'll see. I'll post later about it either way!

EDIT: so this is the room GACKT is staying in at the Casa Loma. All I can say is OMFG I WANT. I've decided that if I ever make enough money I'm renting this room for a week either monthly or bimonthly to work in. I've never really thought about what my dream workspace would be before, but damn I'll take that!

Wordcount Update

Yay, I passed a milestone! The way I calculate it, if I keep to 7k every day until my deadline I can easily make the 1 million goal. Until then, this is where I stand:

Path of the Hunter - 13,652

The Dragon King - 19,390

A Game of Nobles - 1,000

untitled warlord story - 1,000

untitled historical - 1136

Revenant - 4,056

Redemption - 4,634

untitled dark fantasy - 8,000

Grand Total: 52,868

Wordcount Update

Path of the Hunter - 13,652

The Dragon King - 18,668

A Game of Nobles - 588

untitled warlord story - 450

untitled historical - 1,136

Revenant - 1,528

Grand Total: 36,022

Yes, I am woefully behind.

Onward and Upward...Again

Well when the stress won't go away, there's only one thing to really do - persevere. And that means (as the blog title says) going onward and upward.

So what have I been up to lately? Well I'll spare you the personal stuff because it's personal and really it's nothing to bore my blog readers about ;) But I have managed to accomplish a few great things. First and most importantly I've completed the gutting of my room. Finally. I couldn't believe how much room I managed to discover by tossing out the crap that was just cluttering up spaces. I also have a small collection of stuff I'm planning on selling. It's too good quality to toss out or give away, but I have no desire to keep it either. It's mostly some of my Lord of the Rings memorabilia back when I was a fanatical fan. Oh I still love it, but a lot of the stuff I can do without now :) So if anyone on my followers list is interested let me know. I'll show you what I've got and we can discuss payments and such. I'm willing to go a little lower for blog followers. So now it's just a matter of packing up the unwanted clothes and tossing out the recycling which is nothing really. There's a non-profit group in my area for cerebral palsy that periodically goes around neighbourhoods picking up donated clothing which is where all the clothes will be going. No sense letting it go to waste, and I like supporting a cause when I can. I'm a huge supporter of that. I know some people have certain causes or charities they prefer, I'm just more of a help-where-I-can-when-I-can type. Every little bit does help.

Dalila update: progressing well. Training has been kind of interrupted, but she sleeps from 11pm-11:30pm to 6am! You have no idea how excited that makes me! And she walks on the leash when I ask her to. I let her sort of run off most of the energy she has in the morning, usually a couple laps around our buildings (takes about 30min) then I shorten the leash and make her walk beside me. She's got the hang of it though. And I also taught her how to walk up and down the stairs, although going down takes longer. It's new, she's still getting used to that one. But she's just getting too big to carry around now, so no choice. Additional exercise though, which I wouldn't do if she couldn't handle it.

Dragon King has finally started progressing. I managed to close Chapter 3 which came out a lot better than the previous attempts. It's always getting down that attraction that gets me. Building it over time is easy to show, but I wanted the attraction between Celios and Amaya to be purposefully sudden. Because dragons are fantasy creatures I didn't want it to be that typical gradual build, I wanted it to be a different dynamic and experience. I think a lot of us have that fantasy of being swept up in a sudden romance, especially one that's not just physical attraction or a fling. And hey, this is fantasy so why not :) It's nice to move along though, and I started plotting its sequel already too. I couldn't help it, this story just doesn't want to end revealing Amaya's talent and how it affects Celios' dilemma. I could try and cram it all into one story I suppose, but I'd be overshooting the average wordcount for fantasy stories. Or trying to put too much story into too little a space. Two books works better. I wish I knew what it is with me and dualogies lately, this makes 3 stories that are too big for 1 book but not enough story to go past 2.

Also on the subject of writing I've finally managed to bring some sort of organization to the many story ideas I seem to manage to accumulate. They're divided into two groups; story summaries which actually have a plot, and story ideas which are just concepts. Helps me to remember them without having to worry about keeping them all in my head :) Concepts eventually become summaries, and there's some fun ones I'd like to eventually work with. So far I'm up to 24 story summaries and 17 story concepts. Well at least I have plenty to work with, I won't have to worry about running out of stories anytime soon!

Now to end, wordcount updates on the right are current as of today. I'm going to sort of attempt to reach 500k by August 1st. Sort of as in I'm going to give it my best shot, but with my current pace we'll see. I should set a nice reward as incentive...