January Doings

So I decided that I ought to try doing a monthly recap sort of post, much like Deborah O'Carroll's Monthly Ish-ness posts and Katie Grace's Monthly Highlights. This is partially so I have something else to blog about, partially so I can lump all the little things that (I think) happen that I find interesting but not worth blogging about on their own into one larger post, and partially so that in six or so months, when I'm wondering "What the thrice-baked pumpernickel did I do in January? Did that month even actually exist?" I can look back and have this post as a reference. (And also as an assurance that the month did, indeed, happen. Logically, I know that all months and days and such must have existed, but sometimes they all just blur together so that some bits and pieces of time feel as if they didn't actually happen and it's rather disorienting.)

Anyway. Doings!

Writing!

•  On January 4th, I finished writing Binding Destiny! I'm happier about that than I have a right to be- comparatively speaking, I wasn't working on it for long, only a bit over two months. However, I was also a bit tired of it, mostly because I pushed myself so hard during NaNoWriMo and it just didn't turn out like I expected. But I'm still fairly happy with it, all things considered.
• I did not finish Monster in the Castle. But I did finish a sixth notebook's worth of first draft (I'm fairly certain that the size of this novel is a bigger monster than the titular one . . .) and I'm rapidly approaching the climax, so we're good. And I get to write about the Princess du Karel, who changed about a year ago from being a rather cliche and useless sort of sub-villain to one of my favorite characters in the novel (after the protagonists and Jason Silver- and, honestly, she might be on par with the heroine). Can you tell that I'm excited?
• For those wondering: yes, I did solve the dilemma I mentioned before NaNoWriMo concerning the shirt-washing situation. Many thanks to Meredith and Elethia for their suggestions!
• I'm trying to edit Destinies and Decisions. It's going . . . slowly. My wordcount spreadsheet says I edited 5,038 words this month, which isn't very much. Part of it's because I'm procrastinating; part of it's because I'm having to shift a lot of scenes around and completely rewrite several of those scenes.
• I did download yWriter to my laptop in hopes that it might be helpful, since I know some of my friends use it. I'm . . . still figuring it out. And also wondering if I might've been better off to just stick with Microsoft Word. But everyone raves about how Scrivener is so amazing, and yWriter is the same type of software, just fewer features, so I thought I'd give it a try. I don't know. It's a muddle right now. People with yWriter or Scrivener: please remind me what I should be getting out of this program, because I feel like I might be missing something.

Reading!

• Apparently I only read twelve books this month. Which would be sad, except . . .
• Two of the books were rereads of The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance. Which are gorgeously thick and enormous books, and which are as amazing and incredible as they are gigantic. So, rereading those took at least a week and a half, during which I rarely got to sleep before 10:30 because there's always another chapter and I for some reason think that saying "Hey, I'll read a chapter before I go to sleep" is a good idea. (Actually, it is a good idea for my reading habits. Just not good for my sleeping habits.)
• I also reread Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow as research for Monster in the Castle, since that book was one of the original inspirations for my story. And I reread Illusionarium, though I didn't record it on Goodreads. (I tried the recently-released audiobook, but wasn't thrilled- mostly because I wanted a British-sounding narrator and didn't get one. Oh well. That was my only real quibble with what I listened to of the book, so don't let me stop you from trying it yourself.)
• Then there were the new-to-me books I read: Moving Pictures (Discworld, and therefore weird, but also quite good), Prince of Demargen (an improvement over the first two! Go read it!), Relic (which I'd been looking forward to for a while, but which was . . . not quite what I was expecting?), Cascade (second in the River of Time series, which I liked about the same as I did the first), Reaper Man (more Discworld weirdly-awesome-ness), The Hero and the Crown (which was generally pretty good), and Whose Body (the first of the Lord Peter Whimsey mysteries; I'm sorry to say it disappointed me). Overall, not too bad.

Life!

• Snow. That happened. Not too much of it yet, thankfully. I'm still trying to get over the fact that Virginia got buried under snow and New York barely got any. (So far. Next month's February; we all know what that means . . .) 
• My sister and I worked our way through two Nancy Drew games: The Phantom of Venice and The Haunting of Castle Malloy. Both were fun- not my favorites, but fun. Though some bits of Castle Malloy could be tedious . . . like chasing sheep around in the dark. My sister will tell you that I eventually ordered asked her to finish that bit of the game for me, since I'd run out of patience. 
• I joined/helped start a Stormlight Archive roleplay on Whitehall Castle! I'm playing a proto-Edgedancer (who may or may not be based on one of my novel characters), and I'm super excited to see where the story goes. 
• I'm sure there should be something else here, but I can't for the life of me think of what it should be. School, I suppose, but no one wants to hear about that.

 February Plans!

• I am going to finish Monster in the Castle. I really am. I'm too close to the end to let another month go by without writing "The End." And I have the ending scenes all planned out (well, sort of- I have pictures in my head of the really important bits) and I really want to write them, so. It's going to happen.
• I'm also doing a month-long word war of sorts with some friends on Whitehall Castle. That'll help with the finishing-Monster-in-the-Castle goal as well. I expect I'll be sorely beaten, but I'll try my best anyway.
• And I'm going to continue editing and hopefully accomplish a bit more than I did this month. Maybe I'll even get past the annoying rewrite-heavy bits! Or figure out yWriter! 
• School stuff. Not going to talk about it because it's not especially interesting.
• Hopefully I'm going to read more than twelve books. But Bands of Mourning is out, and Calamity is coming out, so as long as I get those two, I'm happy. (I'd like more Discworld, though, and I'm hoping to reread the Girl of Fire and Thorns trilogy. And The Eye of the World is waiting for me to pick it up as well . . .)   

 How's your January been? What plans do you have for February? If you use yWriter or Scrivener or similar, how do you use it? (I don't mean in the tutorial sense . . . I mean in the "what aspects of it do you find most helpful" and that sort of thing sense.) Please tell me in comments!

Thanks for reading!

-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)  
         

Beautiful Books December 2015: The Editing Process

Hey'a, everyone! I'm excited to announce that I'm joining in the Beautiful Books linkup for the first time ever! For those of you who don't know, Beautiful Books is a writerly blog linkup hosted by Cait of Paper Fury (which I have finally followed and y'all should go check out because Cait's super fun). Anyway. I've seen other people doing this a lot and it looks awesome so I'm really looking forward to doing it myself.

http://paperfury.com/beautiful-books-3/

1. On a scale of 1 (worst) to 10 (best), how did the book turn out? Did anything defy your expectations?

Maybe a 7-ish? It wasn't my best novel by any means . . . but I don't think it turned out terribly either. A lot of character relationships and plot didn't go like I expected them to . . . and my villain was harder to write than I thought she'd be. It's not finished yet, though, so there's hope.

2. Comparative title time: what published books, movies, or TV shows are like your book? (Ex: Inkheart meets X-Men.)

Um. Storms, I'm bad at this. It's not that there's nothing like my story . . . it's that there's a lot that are sort-of-similar, but none that are super similar . . . that I can think of. Which I guess is a good thing? It feels like a bad thing, though. I don't know.

3. Do you enjoy working with deadlines and pressure (aka NaNoWriMo)? Or do you prefer to write-as-you’re-inspired?

Both! I love NaNoWriMo- it's great for getting first drafts down and making sure I finish and don't get bogged down by darn-it-where-do-I-go-with-this now? 'Cause there's a daily quota to make and a challenge to overcome and if I don't know what I'm doing, I'd better make something up and I'd better do it fast- and as a result, I usually get through. But I honestly couldn't deal with that year-round, so I like having months where as long as I'm doing some writing every day (or most days), I'm good.

4. How do you go about editing? Give us an insight into your editing process.

My editing process is very simple: I sit down with my notebook and a Word document and I type up what I've written, page by page, making modifications as needed. These modifications can be anything from fixing typos and rewording sentences to entirely reworking or adding scenes. Occasionally I'll delete a scene, but that's rare. After that first rewrite, if I like the way the story's turned out, I'll do another run-through, making any further changes that I feel are necessary, and then I share the story either with my friends on the Underground or with my parents, depending on whether or not I want to submit the story to something.

5. What aspect of your story needs the most work?

Um. Pretty much everything, I feel like? But I guess probably pacing and character development, especially for Mikkel and Ireen.

6. What aspect of your story did you love the most?

Taika and her character arc and her friendship with Katelyn. Their friendship especially is really fun to write because they get each other pretty well (plus Taika gets about seventy-five percent of Katelyn's references, so yay!)

7. Give us a brief run down on your main characters and how you think they turned out. Do you think they’ll need changes in edits?

Mikkel- the apprentice Hero of Rushire. He was supposed to be a fairly similar character type to Prince Hayden from my fairy tale retelling series, but he ended up being . . . not. He's less hard on himself than I thought, and also less inclined to challenge the Way It Is- though the last is an oversight on my part. His entire job and future is based on tradition, after all. So, he and Taika don't even start to get along until more than halfway through the novel, and he's still very uncertain of her.

Taika- the last heir of the Coradin line, traditionally foes of Rushire. Taika turned out closer to what I expected her to be than Mikkel did. She's very devoted to her adoptive father, but less enthusiastic about the whole Coradin legacy than I expected. She's also less sure of herself than I expected- but just as willing to do something she's uncertain about if it seems like the best option. The one big thing that did change a lot was that she was supposed to be into gadgets and inventing and such, and that didn't end up happening. Oh well. Her aforementioned friendship with Katelyn (which was originally going to be a really minor thing) makes up for it.

Ireen- technically not a main character, but a major one, and worth mentioning. She's basically Mikkel's girlfriend, and also basically a spy/Ranger/tracker/etc. apprentice. She ended up being a lot more, I guess you could say pragmatic and hot-headed. And also more stubborn. She has good intentions, generally. But that doesn't change the fact that she grabs onto bad ideas- ideas specifically forbidden by her superiors- and holds onto them long after she should've let go. She's also a lot less mischievous and a lot more hostile towards Taika than I planned.

8. What are your plans for this novel once you finish editing? More edits? Finding beta readers? Querying? Self-publishing? Hiding it in a dark hole forever?

Depends when I finish writing it and how it turns out after edits. At the moment, the most likely route is "more edits." Or else hiding it in a tub under my bed for a year until I feel like facing it again.

9. Share a favourite snippet!

I'm indecisive, so you get too. First, a rare scene (though growing less rare) in which Mikkel and Taika are actually- wonder of wonders- being nice to each other:

"I'm sorry," Taika said again.

Mikkel glanced at her, surprised by her tone. "You meant that."

Taika shrugged. "They were my enemies by tradition only. I didn't hate them, and I have no reason to be glad that they're dead and their families mourn."

And an equally astounding scene in which Taika and Ireen are being civil to each other:

Ireen scowled. "Stormbeast. It's too high. I can't reach the edge." She peered down. "Don't suppose you carry a rope and grappling hook with you as a matter of course, since you probably have to make daring and dastardly escapes fairly often?"
 "The tallest buildings in the city are griffin aeries. I'd rather just fly off, not bother with ropes and grapnels," Taika retorted. "What about you? You climb buildings and trees and cliff faces to spy on people; why don't you carry some kind of rope and hook?"
"Because trees and cliffs generally have branches and crevices and things to grab onto, and I've never had to climb any buildings higher than one story."  

10. What are your writing goals and plans for 2016?

Finish Binding Destiny and Monster in the Castle, if I don't before December comes to an end. Finish editing Destinies and Decisions and Between Two World. Edit The Way of the Pen. Write lots of short stories, both original and fanfiction, as well as a fair bit of poetry. Write Berstru Tales #5 for one of the Camp NaNos. Be seized with indecision next October about whether or not to do NaNoWriMo. That about sums it up.

Well, there you have it. My novel and my editing plans. Such as they are. Hope you enjoyed, and thanks for reading!

 -Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)

NaNoWriMo Day 16

Wordcount: 42,185
Words Written Today: 1,199
Words I Still Need to Write Today: 0; I'm taking today as a light day.
Writing Music Obsession: Back to the Said the Sky Dubstep Mix

Yesterday was a very long writing day. I wrote a little over 5K, which makes it one of my most productive writing days ever. For that reason (and for other personal reasons) I'm taking today about half-off; I'm doing what I need to do for the Dice Quest crawl, and nothing more. Though I do have a Teenage Superhero Society post to write . . . I might not do that tonight, though, because my awesome parents bought me The King's Scrolls so now I need to reread Resistance to remind myself of characters and plot and such. And it would be really, really nice to read something.

Anyway! In celebration of being-past-40K and also of various other stuff, I'm posting snippets from Binding Destiny.

"Taika! The time has come!"

This is my first line. I'm fairly happy with it. It's not the best first line I've ever written, but it's not the worst either.

~~~

The door opened. Two guards dressed in green and brown emerged first, glanced around, and then stepped aside. Next emerged a young man a few years older than Mikkel, dark-skinned and dark-haired, dressed in a blue tunic and dark brown cloak. At his side was a lady about his same age. Tanned and red-haired, she was obviously not an Aralan native- though she wore the formal outfit of a lady Aralan soldier: green tunic, knee-length skirt over leggings, a short dark green cloak, and brown leather chestpiece, shoulder guards, and bracers. She carried herself with the grace of a Seeker or some other order used to walking unseen in shadows; used to swift, precise movements and unerring accuracy- yet she also seemed to shrink into herself as if nervous of something. The young man, on the other hand, walked with easy, quiet confidence- not pride, but certainty. Behind them followed two more guards, one looking serious as the first two, the other definitely smirking.

Mikkel's first impression of Katelyn, Aedon, and Jarek . . . who is definitely in this novel. But he's behaving and actually being more helpful than Aedon is, so I'm not complaining.

~~~

Katelyn did so, stroking the griffin almost as if she were stroking a cat. She grinned at Aedon. "Oh stars. I'm petting a griffin. Petting. A griffin. My life is made."

Aedon made a mock-disappointed face. "So . . . I suppose anything I ever do will pale in comparison with petting a griffin."

Katelyn laughed. "No. My life can be made more than once."

"Can it?" Aedon approached the griffin from the other side. "Or are you just saying that to make me feel better?"

"It can. I can think of three things you could do that would top this."

The griffin chose that moment to hiss and shake itself. Katelyn jerked back. "Oh- um. Sorry? I didn't mean offense?"

There are griffins in my novel! Finally! I've been wanting to write a novel with griffins for ages. So far, Taika has the most to do with griffins (she's had three griffin rides so far) but I had to put in this one mostly so Katelyn could express my griffin-excitement for me.

~~~

"We'll need to keep an eye on what she's doing, then," Sir Leod said. "Seeker Estijar? Can you assign a rotation of your Seekers to revisit Rushire and watch Eira? None are to outright attack her, whatever she does. If she sees and attacks them, they run like the hounds of midnight are after them- What?" He gave the Aralan girl a confused glance.

The girl seemed to find something highly amusing, and she struggled to force a straight face. "Nothing. Nothing at all. Carry on. You were saying."

In which we are reminded that Katelyn was a fangirl before she was a character, and in which Sir Leod unknowingly makes a reference to a certain book series which both Kate and I love.

~~~

"Lady Cavanaugh?" Pieces clicked together in Taika's mind from her father's descriptions of events in other worlds. "Wait. You're Katelyn Shadowwalker? The lost-girl-turned-[Shadowwalker]-turned-Hero?"

"My name is Katelyn Stevens," she said, with considerable force. "But . . . yes. That is me. I thought I didn't have a reputation here yet."

I have become more glad than ever that I decided to include Katelyn, Aedon, and Jarek in Binding Destiny. They're basically the only people who don't view everything Taika says and does with utmost suspicion simply because she's a Coradin. And Katelyn and Taika are rapidly becoming friends, and it's a lot of fun to write- they have quite a bit in common.

~~~

"I miss you, Da," Taika whispered. "You'd know what to do. How to handle all this. I miss your excitement, your passion . . . I miss how you'd listen when I was upset and then try to help- or just try to distract me and cheer me up, if the problem wasn't one you could solve. I miss knowing you were here for me. I miss waking up to your voice calling me to the day, and I miss you pulling me away from my books or my tinkering to tell me about your plans because you just had to share them with someone."

She rubbed the dark pommel stone of the sword with her sleeve. "I miss you, Da. I wish you were here; we could hide by ourselves here and be safe and happy like we were. Except . . . we couldn't. Because you'd still feel like you had to fix what had gone too far. So maybe we'd have allied with Rushire anyway- but we would have each other when they think it's fine to say and do whatever they want because we're usually enemies. Maybe that would be better."

I needed words and didn't know what to do . . . so Taika spent a scene being sad and missing her father. I think it turned out rather well.

~~~

The trip back passed slower than the trip there- perhaps the griffin was reluctant to return. Taika wouldn't blame him if he was. If she could fly on her own, soar freely through the endless blue sky, she didn't think she'd ever come to earth. She'd just fly and fly and fly, crossing mountains and ocean and whatever lay on the sea's other side, stopping only when exhaustion forced her to fold her wings and snatch a few hours' sleep.

More griffins. Taika and I both needed a break from arguments and angst.

How's your NaNo going? Any favorite bits that you've written recently? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)

NaNoWriMo Day 9

Wordcount: 26432
Words Written Today: 1305
Words I Still Need to Write Today: 362 (or one side-quest's worth, whichever)
Writing Music Obsession: Brunuhville's "Dreams"

I'm past 25K!

Yes, I'm still doing the wordcount crawl. Today and yesterday were easy days- thankfully, because Saturday? Long and torturous. But, hey, I got over 4,000 words that day, so it's ok. And I also had an enforced semi-break on Saturday while my family watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the Gene Wilder version, not the Johnny Depp one) and I pretended to write but mostly just watched the movie too. I've had the Oompa-Loompa songs stuck in my head on and off the last two days as a result, but it was fun. We used to watch that movie all the time, but then we stopped- mostly because we got tired of it, I think.

The one issue I've found with the wordcount crawl is that it keeps me semi-tethered to my laptop. I can check the goals ahead of time and work on them elsewhere, yes- and I have done that. But most of my writing sessions have been spent with my laptop beside me so I can check wordcount goals and use YouTube for music and roll dice online and do all that sort of thing. And that's not bad . . . but it's also very conductive to procrastination on the internet, particularly when I'm tired. I should probably start just writing down or printing out the challenges and using a dice-rolling-app on my phone, but . . . eh. I don't know.

I'm also hoping (well fantasizing) that I might be able to do a crazy amount of writing this NaNo, instead of stopping at 50K like I usually would. I confess; that's partially because I'm enjoying my current wordcount crawl and I want to make it through to the end, no matter how hard that may be. But it's also because I like getting things done- and it would be awesome to draft Binding Destiny in one long streak. And then to finish Monster in the Castle by the end of the month as well (because Binding Destiny won't be that long, I don't think, and I'll need something else to write). And then I'd have all December to relax- well, as much as one can relax around Christmastime. I don't know if this'll actually happen, but it would be nice if it did.

How's your November going?
Thanks for reading!
 -Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)

NaNoWriMo Day 5

Wordcount: 14040
Words Written Today: 1836
Words I Still Need to Write Today: Technically 0. In actuality, five more word wars' worth.
Writing Music Obsession: Said the Sky Dubstep Mix

So. I was a bit concerned about how my first week of NaNoWriMo would go this year, since it started on a Sunday and those are my absolute worst writing days. Turns out I probably didn't need to worry, as you can see. I'd say that's mostly due to two things:

1. Daylight Savings Time ended on Sunday. And, unsurprisingly, I forgot to reset my clocks . . . and also left my alarm set for 6:30 so I'd have time to write. The result was that I woke up at 5:30, didn't realize it until I was up and alert- and then decided that since I was up, I might as well just stay up and get some writing done. After all, I got up that early to start off my first NaNo- why shouldn't I do it again?
2. Dice Quest Wordcount Crawl. I discovered this on Monday, which I'd taken off from most of my schoolwork so I'd have more time to write. It's made by the creator of my favorite crawl from last year, the Dice Bag Crawl. Every day, the crawl-maker posts a new set of challenges, following the storyline of an adventure or quest.

So far, this NaNo has been a lot more exhausting than previous NaNos have been, mostly because of that Dice Quest crawl. The first day, I had to do two days' worth of quests in one . . . and then I had to do the sidequests as well, and played catch-up again yesterday because I finished reading Shadows of Self on Tuesday. (Which, I will note, was as amazing as expected, though it had a bit less of a mystery element.) Also, although I've probably set a new personal record for fastest-original-10K, I've also set a new personal record for fastest-catching-of-a-cold-during NaNo. (I knew it would happen eventually. It always does. Just usually not this soon.)

On the upside, 14K. Also, my novel as a whole is going better than I expected. It's called Binding Destiny, at the moment at least, and was based on an idea given to me by the lovely Deborah O'Carroll. Synopsis, for those interested:

Mikkel is the Hero of Rushire- or will be, once he finishes his training. Chosen by Destiny herself, he serves under the city's last remaining Hero, Sir Leod, and awaits the day when he can prove himself.

Taika is the ward of Martius Coradin, latest in a long line of sworn foes of Rushire. For generations they have fought the city in various ways- but in recent years their power has waned with the changing times.

Yet Martius has made a new plan- a plan which, he says, will reawaken the old ways and make people fear the Coradin name once more. But when his plan spirals out of control, it's up to Mikkel and Taika to work together to save their world.

It's not turning out entirely like I planned- for one thing, Martius is rather less evil than I'd intended him to be. But another villain may or may not be appearing soon who'll change that . . . Also, it's set in a related world to that of last year's NaNo novel, Between Two Worlds. And, because what's the point in writing a novel set in a connected world if you don't let favorite characters from previous novels show up, Katelyn and Aedon are secondary characters in this story. (I think Jarek snuck in with them too, despite my specifically telling him to stay in Aralan . . . and now he's trying to act like he doesn't know what I'm talking about. As if that's going to work.) So far, they haven't done much except provide opportunities for worldbuilding and exposition and squealing over griffins (that last one is mostly Katelyn- but can you blame her?), but they are eventually going to play a role in moving the plot forward. And in the meantime, it's a lot easier to write when I'm not working entirely with new characters.

How's NaNoWriMo going for you? What's your novel about? If you're not doing NaNoWriMo, how's life?
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)

P.S. Does anyone know where this year's NaNo graphics are? Are there new NaNo graphics this year? I can't find them- help, please and thank you very much!