Tag: CampNaNoWriMo

Another August

Full disclosure: I have no idea what happened to most of July.

More disclosure: I suffer from a chronic fatigue that my doctor has yet to be able to help me figure out. Tests and other things have been done, but I feel like I’m getting more and more exhausted.

Because of this, Camp was really hard this month. I barely made it. (Actually, I’m writing this on the last day of the month and I need about three thousand more words, so maybe I make it, maybe I don’t.) Yet what I accomplished I am very happy with. And that is what matters.

On the other hand, because of that and doing this at the last possible moment, I’m not sure what else to talk about this month. Writing about real things has always been difficult for me. If I can’t make something up, I have to think a bit more. Not to say I don’t think about my stories, because I do a lot. Yet it is much easier when I can make it up, because then I already know all aspects of it – I made it up. When I’m forced into our shared reality, I realize how little I know about everything and I hesitate.

Because I could literally research forever. That is easy. I like doing it. But even when I don’t, even when I figure out how to cut myself off from the never ending cycle and just research enough… I forget.

I have looked up the difference between sweet potatoes and yams a score of times. I can remember that in the USA they use the word interchangeably, despite it all being sweet potatoes. I have that in my brain now. But it took me so many times of looking it up to get there. I even had to look it up while writing this, to make sure I was right and I hadn’t mixed them up again.

Why is this? Maybe because I’m tired. Concentration down the tubes, all of that. I think I used to be better at remembering things.

People say that is a part of getting older, but I’m not really that old yet. I know I have a different perspective than most about what constitutes as “old”, but even for the majority of people I wouldn’t be called old.

I love learning, so maybe I can see it as always learning new things, because I have forgotten them. But it also means I learn less things in total, which upsets me greatly, because guess what? I LOVE LEARNING NEW THINGS.

Was there a point to this post? Probably, but I’ve forgotten it. In any case, it is an update and I have accomplished things. Perhaps I could be more efficient. We all could be. I’m working on that. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Can’t spell August without an A. It stands for “ah”.

Another month, come and gone. Was it a success? Depends on how you look at it. I wrote a lot, that is for sure. But now I feel it is time to focus more on the quality than the quantity of my words. They are down on paper now, so that is a good start. I have gotten a lot of that pesky Writing out of the way. Time for some edits and more preparations for publishing!

Continue reading “Can’t spell August without an A. It stands for “ah”.” →

Take the future in hand, me!

It is July! I’m not really here (even moreso than usual), because it is Camp NaNoWriMo and I don’t have enough time to focus on anything but that. As of the time of Writing this I still am not quite sure what I’m going to be Writing, but I know I’m going to Write a lot. It’s not as if I don’t have a lot of ideas that need to actually have their own space on paper. Stop editing in your head, edit on paper. That should be my motto.

In other words, I am working on the final edits of my first book. It may fall a little to the wayside this month, but I will be finishing it the month after. Before the end of the year I will finally be published. As long as I Write that here, I can’t chicken out, right? That’s how accountability works, right?

I will no longer be updating every day, but I’m certain everyone will not mind. In the long term, I will be Writing more. And eventually people will be reading more, because there will be more to read. This blog has been good practice for me and it will continue to be.

To prove some of my dedication to you, here is a sample from the up and coming “Alice to Wonderland Organization”.

Continue reading “Take the future in hand, me!” →

The Downdate

Hello everyone. It’s the start of another month and time for another update.

Camp NaNoWriMo was last month, as I mentioned. Uh… let’s not talk about last month. I Wrote, I always Write, but with everything that happened during the month, it was a lot more brainstorming and world building than it was Writing the story. I said I would consider the month a failure in that case, but I’ve worked out this story so well I have a hard time feeling bad about not getting through what I initially wanted to Write.

However, I am glad for Camp to be over. Now I can organize myself and focus on perhaps not only producing a whole bunch of ideas, but being a bit more nit picky about language and the like. Write more drabbles and poetry. My usual as I come up with how I’m going to tackle the next Camp in July.

I debated the topic for this month. I came up with GREAT JUSTICE, so if that interests you, read on!

Continue reading “The Downdate” →

Bringing with me another Update

Greetings, lovely readers! It’s another month and I figured I would talk about me again.

It’s the first day of Camp NaNoWriMo! Of course, I take part in this. I have a couple of goals I will try to stick to this month. Overall, I want to Write 200k. For me, who tends to be wordier than is actually good for a story, that amount of words isn’t too difficult. Second, I want to Write 6.6k words a day. That’s how much it would take to reach 200k with the same amount of words a day. I’m working on my consistency!

Those are the number goals. I am also going to try to keep all of the words on the same story. Most of them. If less than 75% isn’t in the story I picked out, then I will consider myself a failure for the month. It’s easy for me to run around and Write words anywhere else than where I need them to be.

Sorry for anyone who would have preferred a poem today!

Continue reading “Bringing with me another Update” →

Not always what you want

Maly waited for her father’s sentencing, all the while despising how her sister had thrown her under the bus. Channary was probably still reading the library. Like she always did.

At the very least, Maly was no longer invisible. Father had taken care of that as soon as she had spoken up. He had needed no books, no ingredients, no chanting. He had simply looked at her and she could see her hands again. Now she sat where he had bid her and waited for whatever punishment he deigned acceptable for entering his study and messing with his magic. Though she was beginning to feel that the waiting probably was the punishment. She hoped it was. She hated this already. Her father scared her when he practiced magic, though she loved him all the rest of the time.

“Maly.”

She straightened her posture and turned her head toward her father. His face was stern, but that meant nothing. It was almost always stern.

“It seems as though there is little I can do with you. How many times does this make now? That you have found your way into some magic?”

Maly bit the inside of her cheek, but knew if she didn’t answer honestly she would be in even more trouble. “Six times, sir.”

He nodded. “Six times. I’ve had enough of this. We will change. Now.”

She swallowed.

“I will teach you.”

The words almost missed her ears, because they seemed impossible. She tried not to react with incredulity or begin smiling like a fool. “Teach me?”

He fixed her with a stare that made her desire to smile vanish immediately. “This will not be easy. You will be under a rigid schedule now. You will no longer be allowed to do as you wish. But this is no longer a decision. This is what we will do. There is no backing out now.”

No options meant she had one thing to say. “Yes, sir.”

“Then you will receive the same dinner as I and go to bed right after. You will wake up at four in the morning and we shall begin your new procedures.”

She no longer wanted to learn magic. “Yes, sir.”

The function of memory

The photograph that lay in his pocket was an image he could describe perfectly.

He and his brother, standing in front of the tree that stood in front of their old home. He had been sixteen then, his brother thirteen. Their skin was both copper, covering completely different bodies. Even then he had been tall and heavyset, though he had lost some of that height and some of that weight. At thirteen, his brother had much much shorter, yet lankier than even a teenager had any right to be. It fit right in with his brother’s decision at the time to have short hair, dark curls tousled from the outside.

His own raven dreadlocks only reached his shoulders, thrown back in a messy bunch at the back of his head. His arm was wrapped around his brother’s shoulders, a rough hand clasped on a thin shoulder, grimy fingernails showing obviously. His brother’s hands were much thinner – a pianist’s hands – with clean cut nails to match. They both smiled widely, his cracked lips over straight teeth and his brother’s glossy lips over his overbite. His face had been pimply, something he had been grateful to age past, especially the worst of it that had been on his nose, crooked since he had broken it playing baseball when he was twelve. His brother’s nose was small and straight, the highlights of his face were the dimples on his cheeks and on his chin.

They shared the same dark eyebrows, thick over narrowed slate blue eyes. In that picture, the light made his own eyes bright and flecked a bit of darkness in his brother’s.

Ask him now and he could describe all of this. Four years after losing his brother. Four years after losing his sight.

Just a description

The church stood empty, as it had for the last ten years. A hole in the roof let in the weather and sunlight and had long since blanketed the floor with crumbling, dried leaves. It was a matted carpet of brown and orange, the vibrant colors had faded months ago. The rain had since turned the individual pieces into a collective, the days of sun afterward drying them out into the mess they were now. Some had smeared across the floor, once a pearly white, now a grey with streaks of dirt and leaves extending out from the leaves.

The only sounds from within were the twittering of birds and the skittering of rodents from under the old pews and from behind the broken pillars and walls. The wind on occasional came through high enough that the leaves scattered. There were no signs of the stained glass that used to populate the windows, now simply open portals to the outside. The dais in front had five large steps, raising past speakers above the rest of the congregation. It had been too long.

The storms would come. The sun would come. Everything else had passed. What it had been and what it had meant… gone.

The building stood empty.