Gearing up for NaNoWriMo ’09!

So my goal this year was to write through all 4 books (skipping the one we shall not name) and tidy things up, now that I have a lot more knowledge about whats been going on. I failed that completely and haven’t even finished the first book. I got hit by depression, family issues and great amounts of physical pain (my back is currently still fubar but feeling loads better today).

So I was thinking of just screaming through all the books and doing a general, quickie rewrite of the rest of book 1, all the way to last year’s book. This is just so I can get everything that I now know about sorted out and set in stone so I have a jumping off point. Then, when NaNo is over, I can go back to where I left off and start filling in all the blanks.

It sounds like a painful journey, but my other options are:

1) Writing the next book in the series (that picks up after last year’s unfinished story). I may want to try to piece together how last year’s book ends before NaNo starts.

2) Do a different story, an idea I had that takes place in Q’lanth and might use Zyra as the MC.

3) Do a completely different story that Wulfen inspired. It likely won’t take place on Q’lanth.

#3 would be the easiest option to go with, though it would be the most… unnatural? I’ve been doing NaNo for so long that its like a habit each time to write the next book in the story. There was a couple times that I tried to write something completely different, only to get a couple days in and give up and go back to Q’lanth.

Today I think I’ll try the quick re-writing through business and see what happens.

Write pride!

So I thought I talked about this somewhere before, but I must have just -thought- I talked about it.  I feel like I’m super repetitive but hey, this blog is for my own amusement.

I realized recently that I’ve been writing crap.  Ok, so I’ve known that for awhile.  What happened was this:

– Started out as a crappy writer, as far as technicalities go (had great backgrounds, characters, etc)

– Started thinking “Hey, I should start observing the Rules of Writing”

– Looked up all the Do’s and Don’t’s of writing.  Looked at examples.  Smiled and nodded and implemented things over a period of a few years.  Or more than that, I don’t remember when I started.

– After awhile, I started actually reading some books (various reasons to why I haven’t read much in the past several years)

– Saw many of these Writing Rules broken by various authors.

– Went WTF for probaly a year and just wrote

– Recently (within a month or 2)  re-discovered the writing “voice” I had peeking out here and there

– I’m currently working on digging up that Voice so it can breathe and I can use it again.

So now I think I’m actually proudish of most of what I’ve been writing lately.  Using some of the knowledge I gained about the Rules over the years (some work for me, some don’t!) and combining it with my Voice… its like 10 times funner than it ever was! Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always loved writing and thought it funner than everything.  Even sex.  But its even -funner- now.

I’ve been casting aside more and more worrying about a reader not liking what I write.  I know my characters and such are really good.  If my style isn’t their flavor, everything else should keep them turning the pages.  I can’t please every reader.  I’ve read books that had dry writing but compelling stories.

So yeah, I’m pretty happy 🙂

Poets need to live

untitled

pay attention to us:
300,000 bodies.

terrorist, the
new word
i didn’t know about
all these years.

I wrote that after watching a show on History channel the other day when I just decided to brain-out in front of the TV for a few hours.  Technically the original version was LOST due to BasKet weirding out on me, also lost a haiku that was prolly my best ever.  Hell if I remember that one though.

But anyway.  Back to whatever point I’m trying to come up with:

I was watching a show on History channel that was about Saddam Hussein (I’ll check spelling on that later).  Interesting stuff.  Very interesting stuff.

I don’t watch much TV.  Usually when I do its a little bit of cartoons.  We have a million DVDs so we watch a lot of movies.  I get my House fix from Hulu and watch Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia there also.

So basically I live in a world of fiction.  And I have been for awhile.  I won’t look at the news or newspaper, I rarely talk to people ‘cept on the internet and that’s pretty much a bit fiction too, right? Unless we’re talking hard n heavy real stuffs…

So this show was absolutely fascinating to me.  It had footage of real life, of people doing very real things… even if the commentary wasn’t all real (you have to admit there’s biased shows out there and hey, everything is paraphrased for time).

So today’s lesson is in today’s title.