WriYe Blogging Circle: My Five Writing Resolutions

Happy Friday and happy New Year to everyone as well! This is our last Friday Five for 2016 and I thought it would be nice to share my writing resolutions for 2017. These are half resolutions and half goals because I've been starting to think of my resolutions as my goals. They are things that I want to do and succeed at and not just be aimless on.

So, without further ado, let's get into my five writing resolutions / goals for 2017.

1. Stop dragging my feet on editing. I am a person who loves being able to write and I am not a fan of editing. However, I know that I won't be taken seriously unless I edit. I have to find a new way to look at editing for it to be fun but I haven't found it yet. Other than paying someone else to do it for me.

2. Let's get published this year and not worry about the fact that vampires are going out of fashion. My book is strong on it's own and has good characters. I don't need to be a trend setter or rest on a trend. It's going to be awesome and I need to get out of my way and go for it. Also, this means learning how to comfortably talk about my book with complete strangers while it's sometimes difficult to even let my own family / close friends know. So, yeah, big goal here.

3. No more lazy writing! No more white room syndrome or blank character syndrome - when a character goes into something or meets someone, there's a description. No leaving a note to come back and do it, no going <room description> or anything else. Commit, write it out, clean it up in editing to make a complete scene.

4. Read more, especially not in my genre. As you can see from my Goodreads tracker, so I failed last year with trying to read. I think, for 2017, I'm going to set it to 20 and get there. Then up it by five and see how far I get. That might mean that book reviews might come back and it might not. I know, as I read more, I get more ideas or I find ways to be more creative in my own writing. So, yes, that needs to happen.

5. Keep up with the blog more than I have been. I'm going to try and be better in 2017 than I was this year. It might mean that I'm only posting once or twice a week but it'll be consistent. It won't just be the Friday Five and I'm not sure if I'll be continuing them either. I do appreciate everyone who is reading my posts and I thank you for coming.

Well, that's my five for 2017. I need to figure out how I'm going to track them, but I think I'll be able to figure it out. Until next time, keep on writing and have a safe and happy New Year!

Blogmas 2016 Recap

Well... yes, I did kind of fail. Going to fully admit that I did because anything else would be a big stinking lie. It was just the insanity of the season, with having to get the house ready for company, and nothing got done. Literally nothing. No editing, no writing, there was just cleaning and getting ready. After that was done, then family was here and it was family time. So, yeah, probably not going to do that next year. It was a fun experiment and it died a horrible flaming death.

Okay, maybe not horrible, but flaming death works. I will say that one of my New Year resolutions is to keep up with the blog, on a schedule, but if you guys have been reading for any length of time, you know how that goes. We'll see though.

I hope everyone had a happy holidays and I'll see you tomorrow with the WriYe Blog Circle post about New Years resolutions!

Friday Five: My Favorite TV Christmas Episodes

Happy Friday! Celebrate the end of the week guys and let's get into some of my favorite holiday / Christmas episodes. These aren't ranked but just the five that has the most impact on me. By the way, there will be spoilers but these are all shows that have been out for a while. So, caution while reading.

Writing and Christmas Prep

This is going to sound like a lot of advice that I gave when I was talking about writing and Thanksgiving. There are a few new ideas, but yes, the idea is still the same. We're trying to shape writing around the real life responsibilities that you have. It's never easy and even more so during the holiday season because there's a lot more oomph to what needs to get done. You need to make sure that everything is clean for visitors, make sure that everything is festive enough, and all while trying not to stress out too much about it.

Yeah, I'm getting tense just thinking about it. You're not alone in that.

So, what are we going to do? Well, for one, there are going to be times when you need to sit. You'll have done a hour or two of work and feel like you need a break. Make sure that you have an open word document or whatever you use to write and try to write 100 words. If you can't make anything come, then just try to free write for 100 words to see if something comes. If, when you hit 100 words, you feel that you should get up to do something else, then you should. However, if you hit 100 words but want to continue, then you continue. The idea here is to write until you feel that you need to get up. So, if that's just 100 words, then that's great. If you go beyond 100 words, see how you feel when you hit 200. Then maybe 300. And so on. However, the hard stop time when you need to get up and go back to what needs to get done is when you're at the end of your chapter. Then you open a new document and go back to what you're doing until you need to sit again.

Another idea is to take the stress out of writing. Yes, you've written for x amount of days in a row and you want to keep that up. Lower what your target is, just for a few weeks, so you're still writing but it's not stressing you out. If you start writing and want to go to your original target? That's great and you should do so. But if you're starting to worry about things to get done, then hit the lower target and then go get the things done. You've still got words, even if they're smaller than you want, and you can always come back. Either at the end of the day or the next to continue what you're doing. Then you feel less like a lump and more that you're more productive.

The last is the most drastic and I actually don't fully recommend it but I'm putting it down here anyways. Give up something that you're doing for fun and write instead. Instead of binge watching a program, write for that time instead. Again, I don't recommend this because we all need to destress. Writing, for all the good things it does, sometimes doesn't feel that way. It feels like it ramps our bodies up and then we want to do a million things at once. So, if you feel like the only way you're going to get your writing in for the day is to cut something out, then you should. However, I would ask you to think long and hard about it. Are you going to start resenting your writing for having to give up what you like to do or watch? If the answer is yes or if you start to feel that way, then you should pick up whatever you gave up for your writing time. It does seem odd, that I'm recommending / not recommending this, but I feel like all the advice should be given and you decide what's best for you.

So, yes, those are my three ways to write during the holiday season when you're supposed to be prepping the house. What are your ways? Feel free to leave a comment below or poke me on Facebook or Twitter. Until next time, keep on writing!

Setting Novels During the Holiday Season

Going to be honest here... I have never written a novel that is set during the holiday season. In Mystery of the Dark, it touches on the Samhain holiday but it's not really the main focus on the novel. What I'm talking about with setting a novel during the holiday season is taking the season and making it be more than just seeming like a random event that your characters are around during. You're going to want to make sure that the season is shown in more ways than one. There's a few ways to do that.

One of the best ways to do that is to make sure, when you're giving details of the location, to include holiday decorations. For example, say that a detective shows up to a crime scene and there's a bit of added sadness because there's now blood splattered on the decorated tree. Or the wrapped presents that were under the tree. That's showing the reader that, yes, it is the season and you have a bit of attachment to the victim in wondering who he or she left behind. It's an easy way to work in the holiday season but then you need to continue it. Does the place where your detective work have holiday decorations up? Or is it bare save for a desk here or there? It's one of the smaller ways to have the holiday there but yet not being a overwhelming presence.

Another way is to make the novel all about the holiday. When you're setting up your plot for the novel, have it be that the main character is heading home and you can easily write a family drama around the holiday. Honestly, this is a way that you could plot out a novel around any sort of tradition. It could even be a funeral or a wedding and things go from there. This brings the holiday or whatever you're putting the plot around have center stage. It is the main reason for why the characters are getting together because, any other time, they wouldn't really be talking to each other. Or meet at all in some cases. That is a bigger way to have the holidays be in your novel and it is a very successful way too. If you want proof, turn on the Hallmark channel and see what they're showing wall to wall.

So those are the two big ways that I know of to have the holiday season in your novels. How would you go about having the holidays in yours? Feel free to leave a comment below or poke me on Facebook or Twitter. Until next time, keep on writing!

How to Deal with Holiday Stress

Write! Okay, only slightly joking, but people should know better than to annoy writers. Especially mystery writers where they need victims and murder suspects. So, yes, one way to deal with holiday stress is to take whatever is stressing you out and think of a funny way to deal with it. Or a bloody way to deal with it, if that's how you write things. Do you and all that.

Another way to deal with holiday stress is to just unplug for a bit. Not all day, but maybe for a half hour to a hour. All you do is go chill out somewhere quiet or somewhere people can't reach you - library or coffee shop - and just read. Or do a crossword. Or whatever would make you calm down and realize that you don't have to do everything all at once. It's not Christmas Eve. Present wrapping will wait a moment. So will shopping. Also, you're more likely to get sick during the holidays while dealing with stress, so another good reason to go try out an eggnog latte at Starbucks (they're delicious).

The last way to deal with holiday stress is because I do it a lot is to play a video game. Sometimes bashing pixels of bad guys heads is the best way to make it feel like you're going to get through it. It doesn't have to be a video game like Warcraft. It could easily be a game on your phone like Candy Crush. The added bonus of it being a game on your phone or one that you can easy take with you on a DS or similar thing is that you can play while at the coffee shop. Or library if you have headphones. So it's a win-win really.

What's your best way to deal with stress around the holidays? Feel free to leave a comment below or poke me on Facebook or Twitter. Until next time, happy holidays!

Editing and Where to Start

Yes, we're back to talking about editing. If you're a writer, then you're going to have to make time in your life for editing. I know I've touched on this before but I felt like it should be talked about again. So here we are.

Last week, I talked about putting the novel in a drawer and I fully believe in that. You should clear your head and give yourself a small bit of space before sitting down again. There's burn out and just not seeing your mistakes and so on. However, that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm here about where to start. Yes, the where is just as important as the when. While it is going to be at the beginning, that's not what I mean.

The where is what you want to focus on while you're editing. Do you want to make sure that you don't have any plot holes? Then you should read the entire thing through and keep a notebook where you feel the plot jumps. Do you want to focus on typos and other tiny mistakes? Then you should print out your novel in five chapter bits and go through with a red pen to mark where you need to change things. Maybe you want to do both, which you can do, but it is also helpful to sometimes just focus on one thing at a time. Also, there's nothing saying that you can't fix the smaller things while looking for plot holes or vice versa. Or whatever you want to focus on.

The idea here is to not make the editing process feel like a climb up Everest. You can break it down into smaller pieces and then put everything together to make a whole. Otherwise you'll have a ton of novels done but go nowhere with them.

I hope this helps. If you have any questions or want to continue the conversation, feel free to leave a comment below or poke me on Facebook or Twitter. Until next time, keep on writing or editing!

My Favorite Drink: Eggnog

Okay, show of hands, who doesn't like a good eggnog? It doesn't have to be boozy or it does, because it tastes really good that way too, with some whipped cream and nutmeg on top. Or even some cinnamon, if you're being daring, but it's a really good drink.

Here's my recipe for it - go to your nearest store, buy a carton with a good date, some whipped cream, and head on home. Optional - head to the liquor part of the store and pick up brandy if you need it. At home, if you're putting brandy in, that goes in first. Then pour in eggnog and add some nutmeg. Stir, taste, add a splash more eggnog and stir again. Put whipped cream on top and, after giving some whipped cream to the dog, more nutmeg. Ta-da, a drink.

If you want to make your own, I recommend Alton Brown's Eggnog Recipe which does call for 3 ounces of bourbon, so there you go. I never made an eggnog recipe in my life, but it sounds good. Time consuming, but good.

Well, until next time, raise a glass for me and happy holidays!

Friday Five: Favorite Christmas Songs / Carols

Happy Friday everyone! Let's get a-going with this short but fun list about Christmas carols. Or not so Christmas carols but we'll get into it.

1. Carol of the Bells - This is, hands down, my favorite carol of all time. I love nearly every variation of it, from traditional to modern, and I feel like it's one of the unsong heros of the holiday season. You don't really hear it played over and over again like others that feel like nails on chalkboard. This is just nice and easy to listen to, especially when you have a full choir doing the melody.

2. Ding Dong Merrily on High - This is my randomly start singing song when I have nothing on because I forget all of the words but the long drawn out Gloria. Everything else gets hummed but that little part is the one that I remember. I'm not sure what that says about me or the song, but it's another one of those nice little tunes that doesn't get played enough during the holidays. Probably due to the entire religious thing but eh. I still like it and I'm really not all that religious.

3. We Wish You a Merry Christmas - One of the songs of the season but yet it doesn't irrate me that I'd hear it about a million times a day. As long as it's not by the same singer and we're good. What people don't really know is the second verse, which is about figgy pudding, doesn't really get sung all that much. It also usually gets tied up with other songs.

4. Felix Navidad - It's not Christmas time until I hear this song at least once on the radio. You might be wondering how it has it's own number but it's completely different from the one above. For one, a good part of it is in Spanish and two... I like it more. A lot more. I dare you to not dance when you're listening to it, even while sitting down.

5. Mary Did You Know? - So, I only first heard of this song a few years ago when Pentatonix did a cover of it. What I didn't realize is that it was first written in 1991 by Mark Lowry and Buddy Greene. In 1996, it started to become more popular and people started to cover it. Another thing that I didn't know is that it also became a musical, which is interesting, but you should go and find Pentatonix's version.

So, that's my top five. Did I miss one or do you agree with the list? Feel free to leave a comment below or poke me over on Facebook or Twitter. Until next time, happy holidays!

My Favorite Christmas Things

I have a lot of them, some of which I posted before when I talked about the decorations, but I thought I'd dive more into them today. Christmas trees and lights, as long as I don't have to put them up or take them down, but they give a nice warm fuzzy feeling. Especially when there's a bit of snow or the feeling of snow in the air. I don't mind a light dusting before Christmas or on Christmas Eve but I am against an outright blizzard. Blizzards are for January and February, at least in Chicagoland, as that's when we usually get them.

Another thing I love about this time of year is getting together with family to celebrate. Either with family traditions that happen every year or things that come up new and then get folded in. It's about getting together over good food and warm drinks - literal or figurative (woo spiked eggnog) - and catching up on what's happened throughout the year. Talking about favorite movies and what we've seen or not seen throughout the year. How jobs are going and who decided to take retirement. What's really happening in their lives. Sure, we could get together during the year but there's something about Christmas that makes it easier than trying to do it during the summer. It might have something to do with the weather being cold and forcing us into our homes but it's nicer to think of it as family tradition.

The last thing that I'm going to mention of my favorite things, as I could continue for longer, is presents. Not just the getting of presents but the giving them as well. Squirreling away ideas all year, sometimes as gag gifts and sometimes that special something that they'd forgot they wanted, is just a lot of fun. After I was told the truth about Santa, a part of me figured that, sure, he was myth but still lived in a lot of us. We see it every time we brighten someone's face with a gift that they don't just like but love. We see it when they're surprised that one of the bigger boxes under the tree is for them. I know it sounds sappy but I like to think that way, especially now.

Until next time, happy holidays.

Keeping a Planner

Switched things up from horizontal to vertical SMC. Using @interrobangdesigns gingerbread kit and @paperandgumption winter wonderland kit which is oddly fitting for the week. Happy planning! #interrobangDesigns #plannergirl #prgirl #planneraddict #plannerlove #plannerpeace #plannernerd

A photo posted by crescentgaia (@planningwithlizzy) on Dec 5, 2016 at 9:06am PST

That, for everyone interested, is my personal planner. I decided to take a picture of it because I really liked the way it turned out and instagram account. It's a mix of planner stuff and Cookie, so feel free to follow away. But I'm not here to just talk about decorating your planner.

Keeping a planner is two fold for me. It holds what I want to get done but it also shows my progress. For example, I'm dragging my feet on MoD 2 because I'm in the middle of the book before the second climax. It also shows, if you go a few months back, that I was dragging my feet on editing too. I'm going to try not to drag my feet in 2017 but we'll see how well that goes down.

I highly recommend keeping a planner for the same reasons that I said above. It doesn't have to be fancy - you could pick something up at the Target Dollar Spot - but you should keep something that shows your progress. So you can go back at the end of the year, which does come up in a couple weeks, and assess where you are. You can see where you could make changes and figure out what might be best for the year ahead. So it's something you might want to gift yourself for Christmas and you can get the Erin Condrens at a Staples near you if you want the fancy planner.

Until next time, keep on writing and try your hand at planning. 

Decorating

This is going to feel like a throw away post but decorating isn't a big part of how I celebrate the holidays. I like looking at what other people do, with their lights, but I'm not putting up much this year. I've got two of the things that make the house feel like Christmas but otherwise, there's no tree at my house this year.

We're in the process of doing a lot of things in the house, so that's one of the reasons. The other is... as much as I like the idea of Christmas trees, I don't like the idea of putting them up and putting them down. If I could get something like you see in the Grinch where the tree just folds up like an umbrella and I could stick it in a box fully decorated, I'd do it. So, yeah, not so much for me with the decorating.

However, I'd love to hear what you guys think about decorating. Do you go all out or do you do minimalistic? Do you have outside lights or is everything indoors? Tell me below in the comments or hit me up on either Facebook or Twitter. Until next time, happy holidays!

Putting Your Novel in a Drawer and Pulling It Back Out

Coming off of the heels of NaNoWriMo, you might have a completed novel in your hands. Or a completed project or on the verge of finishing what you started in November. This is to talk about the next step that you could or could not take, depending on if you feel that it's right for you or not. Like I've been saying all along, this has to be something that you want to do. If it doesn't feel right, then don't do it. I feel like that should be the subtitle for my blog considering how many times it makes it into the posts.

So, putting your novel in a drawer. This goes to the idea that you can get burn out on a project that you're working on. You've pushed it to the forefront of your mind for the last however many days you're working on it and you're fatigued. Worse, you might miss dummy mistakes like she for he and other things. So you put it away for x amount of time. Some recommend a month, some a week, but at least it is out of sight out of mind. You can reboot your mind and come back fresh to the project in order to see the tiny typos.

So, after an amount of time, I recommend at least two weeks but no longer than a month, you dig it back out of the drawer. It is time to figure out how you want to edit the novel. Some like to do so on the computer but my favorite method is to print out the entire thing and go through it in a smaller binder. That smaller binder could hold up to five to seven chapters at a time. You should also read what you've written out loud and make sure that all the lines work. One should also remember, something I'm a bit horrible on, is that your reader doesn't live inside your mind. What you think sounds good and descriptive to you could be that your mind is filling in the gaps. Whenever you have a page that has no editing marks on it, go back and read it a second time. If you still have no marks, bookmark it and go back to it when you're done with the chapter. This will make sure that you really are sure that the novel completely makes sense.

When you're all done with editing and putting in the edits, that's when you stick it in a drawer again. However, it needs to be 1 month this time, as a max and a minimum. Any shorter and you won't see things that you missed. Any longer and you forget about it. This is where you give it one more read and then send it out to either friends who expressed interest reading it or an editor you hired. Or, if you're feeling ambitious, you send it out to be published.

Yes, it is going to take a while. No, there are no shortcuts. You can make it shorter, in the beginning, but you really need to give a complete break with the second drawer. Any shorter and you'll only see the brightness of your idea and not the fingermarks dirtying it. As always, I hope this helps and gives you the kick in the pants you need to start editing. Until next time, keep on writing (and editing if you're there).

A Festive Playlist / Groups to Listen to

Pentatonix Carol of the Bells

It's the Christmas season, so it is more than time to break out the Christmas music. I have a ton of groups that I listen to, but one of my favorite groups is Pentatonix. I love their Mary Did You Know but it's a bit too on the nose to be simply holiday. Another good group is the Transiberian Orchestra or TSO who did their own Carol of the Bells / God Rest You Merry Gentleman combo called Christmas Eve / Sarajevo 12/24. Harry Connick Jr is another wonderful voice to listen to during the holiday season but he works for all year round too.

I do like listening to the classics too. They include Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, Vince Guaraldi Trio (they did the Peanuts music), Burl Ives, and many others. There is a lot of classical Christmas music - meaning the guys that have been gone for years now but we still keep listening to them - that it would take nearly the entire holiday season to listen to them. They make a very good mix with the ones in the paragraph above, which is how you get a holiday radio channel.

So I hope that adds some fun to your holiday music for the year and years to come. Until next time, happy holidays! 

Christmas in Chicago

Image from dnainfo

Christmas in Chicago is a fun time. The image above is of the current windows in Macy's, which used to be the Marshall Fields, down on the Magnificent Mile. This window has the Cubs celebration because, you know, 108 years since we won the World Series and all. This really should be the first stop, especially if you're going for holiday shopping or just shopping in general. There are a great many stores and just going in for the decor is half of the fun.

Another part of the city to spend some fun time is in the Lincoln Park Zoo. They do an event called ZooLights, where they have free family-fun activities and light up the zoo with Christmas light displays. The dates for ZooLights are December 2-4, 9-23, 26-31, and the 1st of January. It's a very nice and fun thing to go to and just spend time with family. It will be cold, so do bundle up, but you'll have a lot of fun. Don't expect to really see any animals - if you want that, go during the day - but the lights make up for it.

The last big stop to make is at the Christkindlemarket - the Christmas Market - at Daley Plaza. It is another free event, mostly because you will probably spend more than you think you will there, and there's a lot to take in. The idea was taken from one in Germany in 1545 and has a lot of German influences throughout the market. I highly recommend going on an empty or near empty stomach so you can also eat some of the excellent German food that is sold there. Just don't drink any of the wine until you've gotten something to eat. They've still got the boot shaped mugs around and you should pick up some for a nice Christmas present.

There is a ton more going around Chicago during Christmas, like ice skating, but these are the top three that I enjoy. They're things that you can do with family or alone without feeling alone and I hope you enjoy them as well. Until next time, happy holidays. 

Friday Five: Favorite Christmas / Holiday Movies

Welcome to day 2 of Blogmas and a Friday Five! Today's list is my all time, watch them a zillion times during the holidays, and I feel that you should too. Some of these are no brainers and some of them might not be movies that you've seen before. I'll put the year they were produced as well as the bigger name stars. You should be able to find them via a streaming service like Netflix or Amazon or your favorite way to rent videos.

So, let's go!

1. Love Actually (2003) - Hugh Grant, Bill Nighy, and a lot of your favorite British actors including Martin Freeman - This movie kicks off my holiday movie watching spree. It'll get put on Thanksgiving night, unless we decided to do something different like watch the parade because we missed it or something dire happens. This is one of the few ensamble cast movies that are successful due to the threads being all connected even without you realizing it. Of course, there's the big ones, like Hugh Grant's character being the brother of Emma Thompson's character, but there's a lot of little ones too. It's just a great feel good fuzzy sort of way to kick off the season.

2. Miracle on 34th Street (1947) - Maureen O'Hara, John Payne: If you don't know this movie, I don't know what you've been doing with your life. Okay, maybe you don't like the classics, but this is the movie that, until very recently, was on after Macy's Thanksgiving Parade because the movie starts the day of the parade. Basically, the plot is about the impact that a guy who is the department store Santa who claims to be the real one. If you haven't seen this movie, stop reading this, sip your coffee as you find a streaming service that has it, and watch it. It's a classic for a very good reason, that being the acting and the plot works so well, and... yeah. Go watch.

3. Children's Classics - The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (1966 by Chuck Jones), A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), Frosty the Snowman (1969), Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (1964): Okay, I really could do a Friday Five just in these four movies, but I'm going to spare that of you. These are all of the movies that, when I was a kid, it was timed around when they would be. I would make sure that I saw them or at least recorded them. Now that I'm in my 30s, I still watch them because they have the nostalgia feeling going on. When I have kids, they'll be parked down in front of the TV to watch them as well because I want to pass on how special they are. I want to pass on how well done they were and were morals, in a way, without being overly preachy. They were the best of their time and continue to be, which is why you'll find them on TV.

4. Christmas in Connecticut (1945) - Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan: This movie involves a writer for a popular food column in a magazine lying to her boss, using the home of a friend who is in love with her and tries to get her to marry him throughout the time at the house, and a war hero who was lost at sea and, while recouping in the hospital, reads her articles and is fond of her. It becomes a comedy of errors, centered around a Christmas meal, and has a happy ending. It is a ball of sap but it is really good sap. I watch it every year as it started with watching it with family as we made cookies. So, yeah, good memories are attached to the movie.

5. The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942) - Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan, Monty Woolly: A radio personality, who is a rude egotistical jackass played by Monty Woolly, comes to Ohio and slips on icy steps to make a nusiance of himself with his host family. It's set during the weeks leading up to Christmas and is another one of those comedies that's got a bit of family history. We watch it at least once a year, again due to family memories, but I like the story too. The rude guy stays rude at the end of the movie, which works with the overall story, but does enough things to make up for it.

So there's my top five (okay, more than five with one of them) but I hope this gives you some ideas of what to watch this holiday season. Until next time, keep on writing!

The December Blog Project: Blogmas

Yes, blogmas. Blogmas is where a blogger writes and posts a Christmas themed post everyday up until Christmas. While this is my plan and I will probably succeed, there will still be the talking about writing posts. It's taking the idea of blogmas and turning it over on it's head.

Why, do you ask? Well, because, if you're reading this (thank you, by the way!), then you know this is a blog about writing and books. Sure, it's been more about the writing than the reading (even though I am reading, it's just at the molasses stage), but that's what this blog is at the core. So we're going to be doing a compromise and this will also help you, dear reader, in case you don't want to read any sort of Christmas posts. That's your right and you are more than free to ignore the rest that goes on.

Monday and Wednesday will be when I will post / talk about writing. It's following what will be my normal schedule come 2017 with possibly another post thrown in randomly. I do want to get into this idea of posting what I'm working on / word count in a project on Sundays but I'm not 100% sure about if I will or not. So, basically, Mondays and Wednesdays will become the dedicated "Yes, there is a post here!" days of the blog.

For December, until Christmas Day, all the rest of the days will have Christmas in them somehow. It might be just a little speck to the entire post being about the holiday. I will try to make it more general happy holidays but I can't promise anything because I celebrate Christmas. I also celebrate the winter solstice / Yule but that's to a lesser degree than the other holiday. I just sort of celebrate it and be merry.

So, that's the plan for the month. We'll get into blogmas post 2 tomorrow and go from there. Until then, keep on writing!

Recap: NaNoWriMo

Well, November is over and December begins. NaNo, for me, went extremely well. I'm 20 chapters into a new project and I have plans for it to be finished before the new year. I also have my first editing project of 2017, so there's that too.

I don't know. I don't have a lot of pros vs cons on how it went. I got the word count I wanted for the month. I tried to get a completed novel done but I'm not beating myself up too badly for failing that personal goal. What I do need to work on, which I realized even before I started NaNo, is that I need to stop beating myself up for only writing a few words. You know why? The mantra - those few words are more than you had before you started. So, yeah, I need to remember to be less hard on myself.

I hope that everyone else's NaNoWriMo went well. Even if you didn't win, you still have more words than you did at the start of the month. For me, I'm going to have another post up today explaining what will be happening in December and it kicks off the blog project for the month. So, I will see everyone in a little bit. Until then, have a great day!

It's the Last Day

...of the rest of your lives. Sorry, NaNoWriMo. It might feel like it's the end of the world, but it's not. Your time of insane writing is at an end but you don't have to just give up writing completely. You might have had fun this month or you might not have a completely finished novel. I'm guilty of both but I am working on getting that novel finished.

You might be wondering what you could do next. If you have a completely finished novel, then you should possibly either put it down for a month or clean it up. There are pros and cons to each. Putting it down for a month gives you a chance to relax and breathe away from the story. However, then there's the possibility you might not pick it up until x amount of time later. Like a year from now. You could clean it up, while the plot is fresh in your mind, and make sure that everything is perfect. You could then find a writing group or a feedback group and see how others like your novel, if you're up for that kind of thing. The only con with that is that you might start feeling burned out.

You could also go for a mix of the two. You set a timer and you make sure you pick up your novel again when that time comes. I have a bit of that self discipline but I didn't when I first won NaNo. The first time I won, in 2008, I put my novel in a drawer, unfinished, until around... May. Oops. So, I don't recommend doing that if this is your first time winning. I do recommend continuing on, especially with writing every day if you've found what works for you. The only way that you are a writer and stay a writer is continuing to write. So there is that to think about.

For me, I'm going to get back to attempting to finish the novel by midnight. I doubt I'll get there, but then there's no rest for me until it's done. Until next time, keep on writing, validate your novel, and back up your work!

And It's the Last Monday of NaNoWriMo...

From Pinterest's Funny Coffee Quotes

Do all the possible things today - like get to 50,000 words! 

Don't forget to back up your work to a thumb drive, Google Docs, or another type of service. Otherwise, you might have a case of the Mondays and lose it.

Good luck! You can win NaNoWriMo but you can't if you don't get the butt in the chair and do the things.

Have a great Monday and keep on writing!

Friday Five: NaNoWriMo Word Crawls

For the last Friday of NaNoWriMo, I thought I would post the writing crawls that have helped me the most. These are crawls that I have used this year and past years that I found to be the most helpful. Some are nice and short and some are long. However, if you're looking to up your word counts, here's a way to do it. Also, if you're on Twitter, follow @NaNoWordSprints.

1. The Original Pub Crawl - While I haven't done this one this year, I have in the past. It takes a while but your word count will thank you.

2. The Party Crawl - Shots Shots Shots! - I love this one. It's a shorter one, it usually takes me an afternoon, but it might take longer if real life interrupts you.

3. The House M.D. Crawl - I did this one a few years ago and I'm glad to see it's back. It is on my list of ones to do.

4. The Day 1 of NaNoWriMo Crawl - This is a fun one but does take a small amount of time. It's not impossible to do all in one sitting though.

5. The Extreme Harry Potter Crawl - Master Post - This is a really long crawl and it goes through all seven years of the book. I haven't even gotten through year 1 yet, although I did start it, and I'm not sure if I'll finish before NaNo is up. However, I did have a lot of fun with it and, even only doing it half way, ended up with a lot of words.

I hope that helps! Have a great weekend.

Happy Thanksgiving!

From my family to yours, have a wonderful and happy Thanksgiving filled with love, kindness, and, of course, good food! 

For my writers, I hope you can write, no matter how little in time or words, today. Good luck!

NaNoWriMo Week 4: The Beginning of the End

Really. This time next week, it will be December 1st and NaNoWriMo will be over. You've got until 11:59 pm on November 30th to validate, which is open right now by the way, and declare yourself a NaNoWriMo winner. I have already validated but am slowly going forward. I did want a completed novel by the end of November and I'm going to see how close I get. I might to do a bit of writing blitzing while my mom and aunt are out Black Friday shopping.

That's how you're going to crave out writing for yourself this week, especially if you're in the US. We've got Thanksgiving tomorrow and you're going to have to cut out your afternoon nap. It means that you might eat less turkey but then you can have a bit more dessert! It might mean that you're writing in the kitchen in between stirring what needs to be attended to. If you know how long you have in between, you could set a time and do word wars. There's a ton of things that you can be doing that are little hacks. You could also be the first up and get a bit of writing done. Or, if you're like me, nothing says happy like a midnight snack with a midnight writing session.

Like everything, take what works for you and throw out what doesn't. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, here's a Thanksgiving Crawl on the NaNoWriMo forums. Until next time, keep on writing and back up your work!

NaNoWriMo Week 3 Recap

My apologies for not going into the start of week 3 with a week 3 hello post or something similar. If you saw from my postings last week, I got an idea in my head and went full speed ahead on it. Anyways, week 3 has come and gone. Unlike the dreaded week 2, week 3 is where you start to pick up steam again as you work on your novel.

You might also see that the even weeks suck and the odd weeks are awesome. Sadly, week 5 is a half week and not a full one. Noooo. But, you know, sometimes three days is enough to get to 50,000 words, so don't give up hope! Hell, don't give up hope even now because you've got a week and a half. You got this, even if you think you don't, and you should stop lying to yourself that you don't.

Week 3 is the week where we pick ourselves up and start back up the hill. Week 4 shouldn't be the week where everything goes downhill again. It might feel like that and I will give you some tips on how to make sure that doesn't happen. For the US people, we've got Thanksgiving and the hordes of family about to invade. We'll talk about how to make sure that you don't sacrifice your writing time completely. It might mean that you don't get a nap on Thursday, but we'll talk about that later.

So, my week 3 went amazingly well. I crossed the finish line on Friday but that doesn't mean that I'm stopping. I wrote another chapter on Saturday. I'm in the middle of a chapter now. You should be too. There's no reason to stop, unless your novel is finished, so you keep going. That's the week 3 recap - this is the week of get going and then continue to go.

Or, to put it in simple terms, Go Cubs Go!

Yes, I did do that. No, I don't care. It's still November, the World Series win happened in November, and it took 108 years to get there. If the Cubs can break a curse, then you can finish your damned novel.

See you next time when I'll have some tips for getting through Week 4 and the Family Horde. Keep on writing and back up your work!

Mandyville vs Killing Your Darlings

Yesterday, I talked about not falling into the trap of sending your characters to Mandyville. It involves keeping a list, especially if you're writing a series, and how to mention them and so on. What we're going to talk about here is just letting them go versus killing them off. I touched on the idea of killing your darlings back in July and you can find that post here. Let's dive into the idea of just letting a character fade into the background or killing them off.

The idea of letting them fade into the background, like I said yesterday, is a bit of lazy writing. It's not horrible but sometimes people are going to want to know about secondary characters that you introduce. Yes, I know that people aren't going to think about secondary characters, but never underestimate what your readers might connect to. Especially if you're right in the fantasy genre and you have a bunch of secondary characters that, in their own way, become important. Think about Dumbledore's Army - that's a whole bunch of secondary characters that we continue to follow and learn about, even if it's only here or there. None of them fade into the background, even in Deathly Hallows, which is centered squarely on the trio.

There is another way to deal with secondary characters that you don't want to deal with. You can kill them off, but, like everything else in writing, you want to use it sparingly. If you kill off everyone without a good reason, then your readers might lose interest in the story because it's too dark. It's why I'm not reading A Song of Fire and Ice at the moment, even though a lot of other people love it, so it goes both ways. There's also the idea that he writes the character deaths so they fit perfectly into the plot but some of us readers don't want so much death. The gist of my rambling is to use it sparingly but keep it in your back pocket.

As always, there are middle areas in these two extremes. They could leave a note, there could be an email, a quick call, and so on. Just make sure that it fits into your plot and doesn't feel like it's a throwaway. Until next time, remember to back up your work and keep on writing!

Characters and Mandyville

If you're not familiar with Mandyville, then it is possible that you've never seen The West Wing. It is named after a character called Mandy who up and disappeared during the end of season 1 and the start of season 2. She went poof, no explanation, even though there was a bit of a story line for why, but it was like she never existed in the first place. This happened with secondary characters where they just disappeared into the ether.

The reason why I'm writing about it is that it is one of the traps we should try not to fall into as writers. It's more for people who are writing a series, but you should have a plan for what happens for your secondary characters. Maybe not that they have a full on scene, but that they're talked about a small bit. You might not like the character but you might have a reader or a fan who does. Maybe they want to know what happened or what they're doing and that will spin into fanfic. That fanfic might bring in more people who read the original material and so on.

The easiest way to make sure you don't fall into the trap is to write down your characters, all of them, and write down what they do. Keep a line below their name to write which books they've appeared in and which books they're talked about in. You can do this either physically writing it down or Google Docs or a spreadsheet. Then, if you have nothing for them to do in the book, just mention them in dialogue if you can. But try not to fall into the trap that your secondary characters go poof. It's lazy writing. Yes, I'm saying that about Aaron Sorkin of all people, but, honestly, connect your characters.

So, until next time, back up your work and keep on writing.

NaNoWriMo Week 2 Recap

Remember how I said last week, in the week one recap, that it's best if you have a cushion of words? I proved that to myself this week until I hit Saturday and wrote all of the words. Okay, maybe not all of the words, but I got to 30K in my total words. I'll explain that in a second, but this is how week two normally goes for me. I feel crappy and then, all of a sudden, I get a burst of inspiration and I write like I have never written before. Are all the words good? Nope. Maybe they're better this year, but they're not excellent yet. Remember - we're not going for excellent here. We're going for words on the page.

Also, if you're wondering where you should be right now, it's 23,333. On Tuesday, you're supposed to have 25,000 because it's the 15th and that's the halfway point. If that seems like a lot and you are behind, then I highly recommend going to write-ins. I recommend visiting the Word Wars, Prompts, and Sprints forum and seeing if you can find something that helps you there. My other recommendation is that you do not throw out any words. Say your novel is going badly and you want to start over. That's fine but don't just delete what you've already written. Start a dump file, dump the words that you don't want anymore in your novel, and then start fresh. It's a bit of a rebel thing but it might help you mentally.

As always, back up your work - Google Docs, email, OneDrive - just back up your work so you don't lose it. Keep on writing, even if you're only managing a small bit at a time, as it's more than what you had the day before. Maybe even the week before or the month before or the year before. But one word in front of the other guys. We got this.

Ugh, Week 2...

I'm just going to say it. Week two of NaNoWriMo always sucks. Always. It always happens that, this week, I feel horrible and I write like a slug. Sometimes I'm able to push it off until week three, but not this year. The good news is that I'm writing. I am always writing a small bit but I'm not getting anything completely done. I'll probably push through this weekend and try to write all of the words. But right now? I just feel horrible.

Part of it is the election. I'm not going to lie and say it's not effecting me, because it is, but that's not all of it. Some of it is the fact that I'm at that part of my novel where I'm like "why?". Why am I writing, who is going to read this, is it going to matter, and so on and so forth. I'm usually farther along in the book before this hits. I'm only in chapter six. Bah. However, the reason I'm writing this book right now? The characters keep on bugging me and I feel like I'm writing something that I want to read. The heck with everyone else, this is my book and if I'm the only one (aside from Erin the amazing editor) who reads it, then ta-da, I did it. One of the things about writing is that you're sometimes writing the story that you want to read and you pick up all the other writers along the way.

So, yeah, if you're feeling like you just want to give up? DON'T. JUST DON'T. Push through this hard part. You'll get through it. You will. Just keep on writing and let the bad words come. Let the horrible words come. The most important things is that you're getting words onto the page. That's the best thing that you can do.

Move Forward

I wrote some poetry, as that seems to be all I'm good for at the moment. I'll be back tomorrow with some writing tips, possibly on how to write through all of this, but... this is all I have right now. I hope you enjoy.

Move Forward
As I wake in my bed
Wondering if it was a dream
Checking Twitter and realizing no
It's not a dream.

This is our reality.

I want to give into despair but
Wanting a fight
Wanting to give up hope but
Wanting some strength
Wanting to give up, start over but
We have to move forward.

Move forward, one foot in front of the other,
Don't give up, not yet, for it's not over
Question what's next, what can you do
Don't give into your fear,
Your grief,
Your anger,
Your despair.

Just move forward, for that's all we can
Do in the end.

NaNoWriMo Week One Recap

Happy Monday everyone! The first week of NaNoWriMo is coming to a close. If you're participating, you're going to want your word count for the end of the night be as close as possible to 13,333. However, if you're not even close or if you're miles away, you're doing a stellar job! You have more words than you had the day before or even a week ago. That's the important part - you have words. You have words that are slowly becoming a novel. You might not do anything with those words in the end, but they're out of your head. They are on the paper or word document and you'll be able to do something more than just dream with them.

Now, I'm not going to lie. I'm ahead of the word count that's needed at the end of the day. However, I believe in the idea of a cushion in case something happens. As much as I like to think that November is a magical month where all I do is write, that doesn't happen. There was baseball into the first few days of November, as well as a lot of celebrating breaking a 108 year curse, and now we have the election. That's just in general. In specific, I had guests this weekend and I'm going to have friends visiting me on Wednesday. Then there's Thanksgiving and the cleaning that goes along with Thanksgiving. Plus putting up the Christmas tree and shopping and... well, you see why I want a cushion.

Now, you might not need a cushion. You might be able to just chug along and nothing is going to stop you. If that's true, then that's great. May I please have your life? - am just joking. However, I would still recommend pushing yourself. If not for the cushion, then for possibly finishing a few days earlier or pushing yourself past the 50,000 word mark and more towards the complete end of your story mark.

I'm going to get back to writing, after I put a load of laundry in, but one last thing before I go. Do not forget to back up your work! Either to Google Docs or via email. Go out and buy a cheap 2 GB flash drive so you also have your work off site too. Just make sure that you do not lose your novel, so back it up!

Until next time, keep on writing!

Day One of NaNoWriMo

Hey all. Thought I would come over and say that I've written 5,259 words as of the time writing this blog post. I'm writing it at 12:10 in the morning because I'm too buzzed from the combination of starting NaNo and the Cubs winning game 6. There's going to be history either way tomorrow and, honestly, I'm happy either way. I really want a Cubs win but, either way, we have not gone quietly into that night.

Aside from word count - which I recommend everyone comment to show off theirs or shout it from the rooftops (Twitter works too) - I noticed something when I started writing at midnight. With every little step, one word in front of the other, I felt a lot better. I felt like I was doing what I was supposed to do. This project, at this moment, because it is the one project that matters. Everything snapped together. Even though it's a second book, even though I'm not done editing the first book (oi)... it felt very good to write.

I hope that everyone else is getting the same feeling. Not that everything is perfect but it feels good to get the story in your head on paper. It's not going to be perfect - I know mine isn't - but it is going to be a lot better than the story being locked in your head.

Just write. One word in front of the other. You can do it. Until next time, keep on writing.

All NaNo Eve: The Importance of Backing Up Your Work

On this day before we all start writing our novels, a serious topic must be discussed. Mostly because I've seen this happen to friends and family alike. It's happened to people that I don't know and maybe you don't even know. It could even happen to you. Your computer decides that this is the day it bites the bullet. It can happen at anytime, especially during NaNoWriMo, and, if you haven't taken steps, you can lose all of the hard work that you've done.

However, there is hope. It's known as backing up your work. In this day and age, it's not only smart but insanely easy. There's OneDrive, Dropbox, and even Google Docs. You can buy a thumb drive to go on your keys for as low as a venti Starbucks Pike's Place and you should. There is no excuse to not back up your work and to do it every night before you turn off your computer. If you can set it up so your work automatically gets backed up to an online source, even better.

Now, you might be thinking "but Liz! Those can be hacked!" to which I go "then get a freaking thumb drive". There's no excuse people. None. While I will be sympathetic if your computer bites the dust, I will shake my head at you if you haven't backed up in some way. It's really not that hard.

So, yeah, getting off the soapbox now. Rest up my friends! NaNoWriMo comes. I'm starting at midnight central, what about you? Feel free to poke me on Twitter or Facebook or even blow in the comments. Until next time, happy writing!

Friday Five: Podcasts of Note

Thought I'd bring this back for a little bit of fun before we head into November. Also, you might find these a bit better while writing as you just have to listen to them. You don't really need to spit your attention to two screens. All of these can be found on iTunes but I cannot say if they are on Soundcloud or other ways of listening to podcasts. I will say that I've got a lot of political podcasts that I listen to, with one listed as the bonus #6 because I feel it needs to be highlighted, but, for the most part, they're not listed here. If you want to know what I'm listening to political wise, hit me up in the comments below, Facebook, or Twitter.

1. Coffee with Chrachel: Their iTunes description says "the only thing filtered is the coffee" and that's so true. They talk about everything and anything. I love listening to them and find myself laughing along because they're funny. I recommend this podcast, especially when you're feeling down, as they get me laughing and I can't remember what I was feeling bad about. It's nice to listen to when writing, even if I have to stop and rewind to make sure that I heard something right. Definitely check it out.

2. Good Job Brain!: This is a trivia show centering around different themes. Every five or so episodes, they do an all quiz bonanza. It's fun to listen to, although sometimes I get caught up in listening and answering the trivia vs writing. 

3. The West Wing Weekly: So... I love West Wing. When I heard that Josh Molina (he played Will Bailey) and Hrishikesh Hirway (Song Exploder). It's an episode by episode discussion of the show with guests - past guests include Aaron Sorkin and stars of West Wing. For someone who loved the show and was sad when it ended (it was a perfect ending though), this is a very nice cherry on top. Also, hello perfect timing for this during the election season.

4. NaNoWriPod: Why, yes, there is a podcast centered around NaNoWriMo. They do other podcasts during the year, but it is mostly about the event we're all gearing up for. Or you might just be watching me gear up for it and laugh. That works too! 

5. Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me!: This is NPR's current events quiz that I like listening to here and there. Like with Good Job Brain!, I sometimes get too caught up with the trivia vs writing. But it's nice for a bit of a brain break, which we will all need during the month.

6. TWiB Prime with Elon James White: This is my bonus and has a special place for me. There are a ton of politics and going off the rails but they speak about current events with a spin that I don't hear anywhere else. Also, they cover stories that you sometimes won't hear on the regular news, which I think is always an added bonus. You can also find them on YouTube at Blackness.TV or search for twib. It'll be the first search result that comes up.

Also, T-minus 3 days until NaNoWriMo! Are you ready yet? I am! Have a good weekend everyone - see you Monday.

What to Watch While Writing

You're probably looking at the title of this post and going "really Liz?". I know, I get it, you're supposed to write in a place where there are no distractions but for light jazz or classical music. If you can do that, then I really need you to teach me your ways. My mind wanders too much while classical or jazz is on. I need some rock and lyrics but this isn't what music to listen to.

Real Life vs NaNoWriMo

This is one part procrastination and one part how not to be a dick to your friends and loved ones in November. I say this with love but, honestly, we as writers cannot completely shut out the real world. It is very tempting to do so and I get why some go off and shut themselves off in their rooms but it's not practical. It's mostly not practical because I believe a lot of us have day jobs. Even if you don't have day jobs, you have responsibilities and so on that need to get done during the day. Therefore, we're going to try and balance out real life and NaNoWriMo.

Pretend it's day one of NaNoWriMo (1 week and a day people!). You decided to start right at midnight and stayed up until 3 am writing. However, you also need to get to work at 9 am or earlier. What you should do instead is only stay up until either you have half of the day word's count (834 words) or until 1 am instead of 3 am. Now, you can do the other half on your lunch break. Or when you get home or on your commute home if you don't drive. What I am saying is not to be a hero and sacrifice the fact that you will fall asleep at your desk if you stay up until 3 am being a writing machine. Go for half of what you really want to write or cap your nighttime writing.

Another idea to try that I've touched on before is figure out what time of day is best for you to write. It might be just after dinner, before anybody else is up, or after everyone has gone to bed. You don't need to go and be a hermit. You can wait until everyone else in your family is off doing other things and write. If you have housework that you need to do during that time, then do 20 minutes on, 30 minutes off. In 20 minutes, write as much as you can and then do 30 minutes of whatever housework needs to be done. Or flip it and write for a half hour and do 20 minutes of housework. Continue to do this until you reach your goal for the day.

Now, the one big problem of November (if you're in the US) is Thanksgiving. There's two ways to deal with this. Inflate your daily word count so it doesn't matter that you have to take anywhere from 1 to 3 days off before Thanksgiving or do it at the end of the month. I highly recommend doing it before Thanksgiving as you're going to be riding high on the feeling good part of writing. You're not going to be at the hard parts of your plot or writing (the dreaded middle) and you'll be able to get more words out of your fingers. Another idea is to give up the nap that you're going to want to take after eating turkey. Power through it, possibly with coffee, and use that time of everyone else sleeping to write.

Those are the three big ways to help you continue to write as real life creeps into your writing time and your writing time creeps into real life. Unless you are cool enough that you can basically go on a retreat for 30 days, you're going to have to learn to balance the two. If you've done this before, what are your best coping methods? What hasn't worked at all? Feel free to leave it down in the comments, on Facebook, or on Twitter. Until next time, keep on writing and plotting!

The NaNoWriMo Reward System

You're going to be writing and you probably need a bit of carrot on the end of that stick. Now, the NaNoWriMo website has these nifty badges you can get on the website for doing things. Some of them are updating your word count, getting to a specific word count, validating, and so on. These are nice and they're nifty if you're really gung-ho about NaNo. I know that I liked them when they were introduced last year and I'm happy they're still there this year.

However, what if you want more reward than just that? What if you want a physical reward? Well, that's what this post is going to be about.

Time for the Outline!

We talked plot, now it's time to talk about how to do your outline. There are several ways to do an outline and I'll walk through one or two of them before I get into how I do my outline. As always, these might not work for you but I suggest that you try them.

In Order to Plot, Pick Your Genre

Happy Monday! We are two weeks and a day away from the start of NaNoWriMo. You get a few minutes to panic and then we'll start with the topic of the day. I'll time you.

....and done. Today, we are talking about plots and I know this is a weird time to talk about them. We've done the ton of world building, the characters, and now I want to talk about plot. Here's the thing about plot... when you're doing the rest of it, you might already have the glimmer of an idea in your head. I mean, you've created an entire world, you have a cast of characters, therefore, you must have an idea of why you did such a thing. Now, that's not to say that you didn't lay out your plot first and then built up everything else. It can go either way.

Let's take a baseline plot of a hero going off to save the world from something that will end it. For example, let's say that it's a evil overlord who, if he or she takes over the world, will plunge it into darkness for the next untold generations or something of the like. From that one little idea of a plot, you can do so much with it when you decide what genre you want to write in. If you're writing fantasy, then this is your good old fashioned standard plot line. You will need to do more in order to not appear stale. This is where a good what-if would come in handy. Perhaps write it from the world view of the evil overlord. Or perhaps a minion who really is the hero but works a crappy day job under said overlord. You will need to work on it.

Now, let's say you're writing dystopian fiction. You're somewhere in the darkness, possibly right after it happened or a generation or three in. You're going to need to figure out how your main character fights back against it and what he or she does to take down the evil overlord. Or, maybe he or she does, but realizes that, by taking said evil overlord down, it's going to kill off everything. So, now you're at a crossroads of what could really be done because your hero doesn't want to destroy the world. Or he or she could as destroying everything is a way to set everyone free.

For the third and final example, let's take mystery / thriller. For this one, it doesn't really need to be an evil overlord. It can simply be someone who is making the main character's life hell and he or she decides to do something about it. Or, someone else tried to, and now they're dead and your main character has to put the pieces together in order to find the killer. With this genre, you're going to want to figure out if you're dealing with the main character as the killer or as the solver. The killer needs to figure out a way to keep one or three steps ahead of the police in order to win. The solver needs to figure out the puzzle and catch the killer. Be wary of the hybrid unless you're willing to dive deep into what you're doing with your outline. Also, have a way out. I know it's cliche, but I never say no to the idea of an evil twin.

So, yes, the genre you write in will drive your plot. It's best to pick that before you fully flesh out the idea of your plot and what your story is going to be. However, you're got two weeks and a day - so not a reason to panic yet.

Until next time, keep on writing, plotting, and not panicking.

Friday Five: Some Links About NaNoWriMo

Happy Friday! We've made it through another week and now it's time for the weekend. Woohoo! Here's your links for the day, along with a freebie, as you know you need the NaNoWriMo link too.

1. 13 Ugly Truths About NaNoWriMo from David Swensen. Yes, they are true. However, it's going to be fine. You will be okay and come out the other end with 50,000 more words than you had before. However, you need to realize the truth about NaNo first.

2. Read Catherine Ryan Howard's post about how she's only going to say this once about NaNoWriMo snobbery. Yes, it's from a few years ago but I still love it. It helped a lot when there were some who were saying, to my face, that doing NaNoWriMo didn't make me a real writer. Yeah, I feel bad for them too because they had to be having a really shitty day to try to bring me down to their level of sad.

3. This is my favorite NaNoWriMo pep talk ever and it doesn't just apply to NaNoWriMo. Neil Gaiman talks about what happens to every other writer while writing a book. I get to the same part, more like half way than three-quarters of the way done, and my non-writer friends reply around the same way his agent done. With a lot less loving and a few more cuss words.

4. Lifehacker helps with getting a writing schedule started, not just for NaNoWriMo, but for after NaNo is over too. It's a lot of good advice, but, remember, sometimes the best thing to do is sit your butt down and do stream of conscious write.

5. NaNoWriMo Dos and Don'ts that is a lot of great advice. The best ever advice is this: "Do consider this a zero draft" because it is. You are writing to write, not writing for the novel to be completely polished and edited. That comes after, in December or January, and not while writing.

I hope everyone has a good weekend and that you keep on writing or plotting or both!

What to Write: What If's

Yesterday we talked about characters and how to build them. Today, we're going to switch off to talking about plot. Yes, plot, aka what you could write. Something that you could be writing is the what if. I have talked about the what ifs before, in the way of creating an AU Earth in world building, but this is now talking about the plots of what ifs. The plot of what ifs are taking something - either an idea, something that's already happened, or something already written but a classic - and flip it around.

For example, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a what if of one of our most famous presidents being a vampire hunter and the Civil War being about vampires wanting to keep the status quo. Yes, it is a lot more than that, but for our boiled down example, that's the plot in a nutshell to me. There are a lot of what ifs like that around, some from the same author, and some from others.

Another type of what if is telling a fairy tale from another point of view. The most popular is taking the view of the villain and showing his or her side of the story. Wicked is a good example of this, with the story being told before Dorothy got to Oz and showing from the Wicked Witch's point of view, and there are a lot of others out there. If you want a movie version, Disney's Maleficent is a good example. It also twists the villain into the good guy, which you may or may not want to do. You can tell the villain's backstory without changing the fact that he or she is still the villain. You do not have to turn them into good or turn the good guys into bad guys.

The last type of what if you could write is about current events. There are a lot of what ifs with past events, but you could take something that happened in recent memory to twist the outcome. For example, you could take a page from the TV show Fringe and go through what would have happened if the 2000 election results were different. The only thing, with current events, is that you need to tread carefully on what your subject matter might be. I wouldn't recommend being completely recent, like from this decade or last decade, because there are raw emotions from them. However, it is up to you what you plan to write but that is something you should think about it.

So, there are the three types of what ifs that you could write about. There are ton others but these are the three that I have thought about or tried writing in the past. I hope that your prep is going well, as we're eighteen days away from the start of NaNoWriMo! Until next time, don't panic.

NaNoWriMo Prep: Characters

Today, we're going to talk about characters and how you go about creating them. There will be a three links at the end, to be helpful, but I'm going to ramble a bit on what I do. As always, this might or might not be helpful to you but I'm hoping that it will. Or that something in the links will.

One of the best ways that I've created characters is, again, from WriYe. What needs to be done first is try to figure out the motivations of your character, especially when it's your main character. That's going to drive your plot and your subplots to get things done. It means answering questions like how your MC sees the world, how do they react to conflict or successes, and how they fit in to their environment. Those three questions and how you unpack them with your main character will help with creating subplots. You can do this will all your major characters as well, if you want to, and try not tangle up in them too much.

Just Breathe

I'm writing this post around 12:30 in the morning on October 10th. I just let Cookie out so she could get in another bathroom break before bed and it was quiet outside. A chill in the air and a smell... just grass and leaves and I suddenly felt transported back to Beloit College. It reminded me of my friends, who are now scattered to all parts of the US (and world), along with the memories of walking along campus around midnight. Running for ice cream at the 24 hour Cubs Foods (no longer there) and slowly walking back. Or going for a ride to the 24 hour Perkins in Janesville that is still there (the Beloit one is gone and now a Buffalo Wild Wings).

So, with 22 days left to NaNoWriMo, I highly recommend that you go out and breathe. Take in a good deep breath of the air at whatever type of day you're reading this and brain dump your memories. From that, pick out what you love about them and see if you can't put them into the story that is slowly building.

We'll be back tomorrow with character building. For now, let's all go take a big giant breath in and out to remember our loved ones, near and far, maybe gone but never forgotten. Until next time, keep on writing and plotting.

The Extreme Bare Bones of Your Novel

This is going to be the easiest part of planning out your novel. It'll take you all of twenty minutes, mostly because of the synopsis, but you'll be fine. I will say that this is originally from the website WriYe and our NaNoWriMo planning sessions called OctoOctober. However, as much as this is basic, I never planned out the real basics of the novel until this.

Time to Write and Write to Time and Other Things

And we're back. So, last time, I wrote a sentence about how you can make time for NaNoWriMo even if you think that you can't. Yeah, you can. No, really, you can. I'm not going to talk about getting up early / writing on breaks / so on. You can find better qualified people than me to talk about that. I am a night owl, so I'm the person who would write after everyone's asleep. Anywhere between 9 to midnight is a sweet spot for me during the rest of the year and especially during NaNo.

However, here's how to make the most of your NaNoWriMo writing sessions, even if you're crunching it between everything else.

Plotting and Pantsing - Do Both

It is October 3rd. There are four weeks to NaNoWriMo, which is why we're talking about it again, and then we're going to let it go. Well, not completely let it go because there's a bunch more NaNo Prep posts to come, but we'll let it go in the ways of talking about it. I know I've done posts about it in the past, which is why this is going to be short and to the point. It's also the WriYe Blogging Circle topic for the month, so we'll be able to cross this off as well.

Friday Inspiration: Goodbye September

From LoveThisPic

I would say that we can look forward to all things pumpkin but that happened earlier in September. We can look forward to leaves changing, new things happening in our lives, and hopefully cooler weather. I hope you have a great Friday and a great weekend.

The Daily Life: An Exercise

For this exercise, you will need three things: yourself, a pen, and a notebook. That's all. Three simple things. Four if you're doing this when the post goes live and it's seven in the morning. If you're up that early, a "but first coffee" is more than allowed.

What you're going to do is observe yourself as you go through a day in your life. You'll catalog your morning routine, your breakfast, your commute, and so on. Or, if you don't have a commute, what you do instead. Basically, you're taking inventory of your life and what you do as you go through it during a normal day. Or maybe a not so normal day. But you're going to do it for one full day and keep the notebook close to you. Anything you do, no matter how big or small, should go into the notebook.

Now, at the end of the day, maybe after dinner or the kids are in bed, open the notebook. I want you to star the smaller things, like what you had for breakfast or what you feel is just a small detail in your life, and give an exclamation point to the bigger tasks that you did during the day. You're going to focus on the stars and that will help to give you a background into what a daily life of your character could or couldn't be.

For my second world-ers, I encourage you to do this as well. Maybe, instead of a bowl of cereal, there's something else that you come up with for breakfast. Or maybe it's just going through the motions but not describing what's in the bowl. What's important is to have an idea of how you go through a day, either normal or not so normal, and then you have a bit of background that you can use in your novel.

Mundane? Yep. But sometimes the best way that we, as writers, can make a novel richer is by going through a task like listing what you do during the day.

Until next time, keep on plotting (and writing!).

Week 4: The Daily Life

Hey guys! Welcome to the last week of world building. Next week, we're going into the characters and plot and everything else that goes into our novel for NaNoWriMo. For now, we're going to go into the ideas of daily life. You might take a lot from your own life and that's okay. Unless you're doing second world, it's going to make your novel better, especially if you're setting your novel where you live. That's going to help you with this part of world building.

The biggest problem, if you're doing real world or Earth AU, might be fashion and education. I say this because it will cut into your time if you want to focus a bit on them. You need to look up the national trends and, even then, you could be wrong. What's hot at Fashion Week in NYC could be a dud in Colorado. Best thing you can do is research, research, and then research some more. Talk to people who live there if you don't live there yourself. Now, education, like everything else, is going to vary even city to city in a single state. I can tell you that the high school education I got about sixteenish years ago was considered one of the best in the suburbs. Now, I'm not sure. So, again, research. Research is a good thing but it is a time suck.

However, you'll have a fine good backbone of a novel.

To the second world-ers reading this, your most difficult section? The calendar. Are you going to base it off of the calendar we have now (easiest), twiddle with it (medium), or create something new (hard)? You've got to think up holidays and feasts and all that other things. Now, it's not hard to do. Say you want a food based holiday that has a message of community, like Thanksgiving. You can do that and call it something about the harvest. It's not really all that hard but, like above, it's a time suck. You can research but you have to be careful not to outright copy what another person has done. You can like something but then you'll have to twist it to how it will work best for you.

So, I wish you good luck with the daily life section of world building. It is the last part of the world building that we'll be doing and I can't say if I'll be going back to it come October. Until next time, keep on plotting!

Exercise: Daily Life from Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions by Patricia C. Wrede.

Friday Five: Hodgepodge

Just let it roll off the tongue after a sip of coffee. Happy Friday and enjoy the links!

1. How I Plan a Book: Part 5 - Writing Journals. This is from Susan Dennard's blog and part of a series, like it says in the link title. I've thought about keeping a writing journal from time to time, even though I am horrible at it, but I might try it again. I have no shortage of notebooks at home (so not allowed to buy anymore but you know I will) so I'll give it a try.

2. How to Know Which Writing Tips to Follow and Which to Avoid. Because we all need more writing tips. Really, you do. So do I.

3. The Long, Steady Decline of Literary Reading. Read more everyone. Including me because I always follow my own advice (note: read with sarcasm).

4. How Writing To-Dos Help Your Brain. This goes back to the idea that, if you're writing it down, you're going to get it done.

5. Meals and Mealtimes in Britain. Just in case you really really needed to know. I did and it goes into that social organization and culture thing.

Alright everyone, have a great weekend!

Week 3.5: Commerce, Trade, and Public Life

Since I'm not really the biggest fan of this section or the social organization section, I thought I'd squeeze them together. Now, as I keep on saying, just because I'm not a fan doesn't mean that you aren't. If you think these sections will really help your novel, then take your time with them. Don't let me chase you off of something just because I'm not feeling all that 100 with it. I'm also going to give a general overview and then leave a link to the section down at the end.

So, this section deals with a lot of the factors of life in the way that we trade goods and services. One of the general questions dives into deep thought with asking if there's a trade language or an universal language for people that don't speak the same tongue. It's something we don't have in daily life, even though we who speak English think we do, but we don't. So that's an interesting deep thought right off the bat. Do you want a language everyone uses for trade or a common tongue? What is the purpose of the common tongue or the trade tongue? You could spend a few hours of an afternoon on that question alone if you want to really dive into it.

This goes into business and industry, where they ask about unions and cross-crafting, and how trades and crafts go into the different regions of your world. Do smaller cities or towns not have as much as a bigger city or do they just specialize in one trade or craft? Are there different regulations, are their unions, and so on. If you go into the unions, do you want to call them something other than unions? Do you want to say they're craft organizations or... well, you'll probably come up with something more interesting than I could. This mini-part of the larger section also asks about money trading hands and brings up the thought of smuggling. Again, you might or might not need this section. Like everything, take with a grain of salt.

It continues to go into the basis of our day to day public life on a grander scale. We sometimes don't think about how money goes from hand to hand or about unions, unless we're part of one or are in charge of a business, but this is what you need to think of when you're creating a world. You might only want to grace the surface of this section, which is easy to do and you can cherry pick what you want from these sections. For me, I know I would be looking more towards the broader ideas, like a common language, more than a question about shifting population from rural to urban living. You might not care about a common language but need to think more about urban factors. Or rural factors. So think about that as well when you go into this section, especially if you're just coming here around the start of October.

In the end, even though I'm sort of brushing these sections off, they are important if you want to make them important. Kind of like everything else in daily life. If you want or need me to dive deeper, I'm more than happy to do so and leave me a comment below. Until next time, keep on plotting (and writing!).

Exercise: Commerce, Trade, and Public Life from Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions by Patricia C. Wrede.

Social Organization, an Exercise

This is probably going to be the only exercise for this section this week. It goes back to the idea that social organization is going to be extremely individualized but also that I never spend time on this section. Sure, I'll do a quick outline of who / what is in charge but this is the part of world building that I spend the least amount of time on.

There's also the fact that, if you're doing a real world novel, this section is already done for you. Sure, you'll have to research local laws and so on unless you make up Small Town USA but it's there. I would just use the questions as a guideline. Also, you might have to call people in order to get information. I know it might seem scary - it does to me - but it'll help you a lot in the long run. Make sure you have questions ready and be willing to call back at another time if nobody can talk to you. Be as flexible as you can and do not forget to get the name of the person who talks to you. You'll want that for your acknowledgements when you finish your novel.

Now, for us Earth AU people, we've got it a bit easy but it's still hard. How much of the real world social organization are you going to use? Are you going to keep the government as is or has something changed? Is the power of the world still the same? If you're jumping way into the future, do we still have what we have now? Or has it changed for something for the better? These are just base questions and you might find more when you start to dive into this part of your world building. I know, for me, I did change power structure and government but you don't really see it in the novel right away. It's more subtle until it's called for, which is a way that you might want to go when you're writing your novel.

Now, second world writers, you have the hardest task because you're creating something new. However, that doesn't mean you can't base it off of the government structure you're living in. Or another country that you like. Let's say that you really like how England is structured with the royal family, the Prime Minister, and parliament. You could use that as your model and put your own spin on it. Or you can pick and choose what you like about your own government and laws and put that into this world you're creating.

At the end of this, I'm trying to show that, while this is the hardest section, it doesn't have to be in the end. It just feels hard because you're having to stretch in ways that you haven't before. Once you get through it, you'll probably coast the next time you need to come back to this section. I hope it helps and, until next time, keep on plotting (and writing)!

Week 3: Social Organization

Welcome to week three of this insanity that we're calling world building. This week the focus is on social organization. If you're wondering what this means, you're not alone. This goes into creating more of a government, politics, and so on. Now, like everything, you don't have to do all parts of this world building. Say you will never get into politics or a political system. Then move that to the side. However, you will need to know what type of government you have - either a monarchy or a democracy or something else - but you need to know what you have.

Let's break this down.

Your first stop is going to be the general overreaching questions about your society. This goes into ranks and titles, what type of jobs are good or bad, different ways to rise and fall in society, and so on. The last question in this section deals with a somewhat complicated question because we're dealing with the written world. It goes into what constitutes beauty in your world and, as much as I think we can, as writers, show that in our work, it's also going to be subjective. A reader might find what you think of beautiful as disgusting and vice versa. I don't think we need to break down the idea of society into beautiful / not beautiful, but it's there if you want it. I feel it's the third rail - touch it and you die for those not familiar with this saying - but it might help you. Just be careful as you can turn off an editor with this too and, unless you're self publishing, you won't even get to readers.

The next section deals with the government and figuring out a lot of the little details of your world. Unless you are doing a plot that is going to be highly political, as you might be writing a novel that deals with the king's court or something like that, I feel that a lot of these questions are not needed. I would go to the questions that really work for you instead of getting bogged down in the teeny tiny details. One of the best questions in this section asks what your basic style of government is and if the other countries are different and how that is dealt with. That's a good question to ask because everyone in the world will know that. The teeny tiny details that you could get lost in is the question about taxes. Do you really need to know that? Possibly if you're writing something with a Robin Hood feel, but otherwise? Do we even think about that when reading a novel? I know I don't, so pick and choose in this section. Make sure you have the broader strokes and, then, if you feel you need more, go back and answer the questions you skipped over.

Honestly, I was going to break down more of this part of the world building, but I'm not sure if it's going to help. I think the best advice for this section is to go through and figure out what you need to answer. Do you need to figure out about waging war? Maybe not and that's fine because that means you can skip that section. You might really need to answer all the questions in the foreign affairs part but yet need nothing with weapons. So, this week, let's pick and choose what parts we'll really work on. I'll be here with exercises for the three settings and we'll go from there.

Also, if you want me to continue on with talking about the different sections, I'm okay with that too. Leave me a comment below and I'll be more than happy to dive into the rest. I just don't feel that it is a good use of anybody's time because this is one of the most subjective parts of world building. For me, I don't need to know about waging war, which is why I used it in the example above, but I need to know what type of government system I'm using.

So that's it for today. Until next time, keep on plotting (and writing).

Helpful Exercise: Social Organization from Patricia C Wrede

People/Customs: Magic and Magicians

Hey everyone. This is diving into the idea of magic, magicians, and what impact they're going to have on your people and customs today. There's not a lot for those who are doing real world settings, but you might find something for a later novel or if you're introducing magic in another way. Let's break this down and figure out what we're doing here.

This section can be found on the world building website here.

The first section is about the rules of magic. When I think of magic, I think of it as a way of causing x for y to happen, but it's a lot deeper for that. Say that I'm using healing magic to close a wound. Where does the energy or magic come from for that? Let's say for this project, that comes from within myself and has to be replenished, either from time to time or after closing a life threatening wound. If it's a small wound, I'll be fine and I won't really need to worry about my energy levels. If it's bigger, then I will. The friction of that can be woven into your story but it also helps to know when your character will or won't use it. Also, how they will taught when and where to use their magic. So that's the first section with rules of magic and it dives deep into what you should consider.

The second section is wizards themselves. I touched a small bit on how magic effects a wizard with what I put in the last paragraph, but you should also think how it effects them long term. It also goes into how long it takes to study, what others think of wizards, and basically, making a mini society of them. It's not a bad idea but you might not want to dive that deep. That's okay and you might just want to skim the surface. Or maybe nobody thinks magic's all that special because a lot of people do it / expect it. But you should have a small idea of your wizarding society going into writing your novel and how it effects society / humanity at large.

The third section, for me, is fun and deals a bit more with Earth AU than second world. I think that's because, when I think second world, I never think of a world as technological savvy as the world we have now. However, we do need to think of how magic effects the technology that we have. For example, can a person who uses electricity magic short circuit whatever he or she wants? Or can they only do that to certain types of electrical items? The section brings up the idea of magical weapons, which I never think about when putting magic into my novels, but I might start doing that. I would also think about if wizards are mistreated / wanted because they could help with manufacturing or just making life better as well.

The last section is some miscellaneous questions but one of the ones I like asks if magic is legal in your world. It's one of those questions that I know I don't think about - of course it's legal - but for it not to be legal would be interesting. That is definitely putting plotting in your world building because you'll use that in your story. Even if your main character doesn't use magic, another might, and you can dive into all of the ways that it helps and hinder the pair. Or how the main character might turn their friend in and so on. There's also about magic abuse, magical beasts, and so on. I would take a long look at it and think about how it might help or hinder you.

So, we're done with people and customs in this second week of world building. I hope this is helping you create the world of your novel or series. Until next time, keep on plotting (and writing!).