Goodbye 2014

As we enter into the new year, I thought I'd come and say something.  The problem is that I can't really think of anything to write about.  It's not like things didn't happen in the last year, considering that I got another short story published, and I went to a workshop in Iowa, but otherwise?  Not a lot happened, minus figuring out what I really want to do next year.

The goal of 2015 is publishing, publishing, publishing.  In small forms, in big forms, but the goal is to get out there.  The goal is to push out and run into walls so fast that I leave a size the shape of me, like in the Road Runner cartoons.

So, that's it.  Goodbye 2014, you will be missed, but hello 2015.  Hello the year of getting stuff done.

A Happy New Year to everyone.  I'll see you in 2015!

Quick Note at This Hour

The About Me page has been updated.  Please feel free to leave all questions there or this post.  I'll get to them as soon as I can, which can be anywhere from 24 to 72 hours.

Thank you and Happy New Year.  I'll be back on either Thursday or Friday with a new post.

Blogging Circle: Resolutions Remix

It's two days into December and I'm already thinking about 2015.  What I want to do, what I want to change, and what I need to finish before the end of the month.  Hell, what I need to finish before Christmas and get my Christmas shopping done.  Plus, making sure my wishlist is up to date (it is) and debating a million times over if I really want what's on my list or not.  Just go ahead and smack me because, really, I should not be overthinking Christmas.  Yet, I am, and the rest of the year.  Sigh.  But this is not why you are here.  You are here because it is time, yet again, to dive into the WriYe Blogging Circle.

After that year of writing, you've seen the good and the bad that happens as time goes on.  You know your high months and you know your low months.  You should know where you are lacking and where you're awesome.  Take all of that into account and give us five resolutions for your writing next year.

First, for the rest of 2014, here's my five goals.  Why five goals for the rest of the year?  Because the title of the post is Resolution Remix due to talking about the last month of 2014 and the start of 2015.  :)
1. Finish Mystery of the Dark
2. Write my gift stories
3. Start world building the combo of Power/Hidden Scions: These two stories are both about children of mythical animals in hiding who need to go fight a big bad in a YA sense.  For me, it makes better sense to blend the two stories together and get this big trilogy / series out of it.  :)
4. Get Diana to type up the idea notes into a Google Doc for us to work on: Why yes, another story idea but this might be more of a game that we're going to make.
5. Love all the words that I write, no matter how stupid they sound.

Alright, for 2015, here's my five resolutions.
1. Write 1,000 words every day, no matter what: I've got a writing goal of 365,000 words for next year.  Considering I write better if I write every day, this is a reasonable resolution to put out there, even if it's just plotting words or actual fiction.  I need to get 1,000 words out of my system every day of 2015.

2. Finish What I Start: Simple as it sounds, but I'm going to add on one more.  I'm finishing everything, even things I started in 2014 like Prelude, because I want those stories to be written.  Also, I have a big ass fanfic sitting out there in cyber space (Ao3 land) that people probably want finished.  So, yeah, finishing what I started, even if it was started in 2013 / 2014.

3. Write what I want to write, not what society things I have to write: Okay, this is something that ties into the fact that I am a fanfiction writer.  I am and I am loud and proud about it.  Society thinks that fanfiction, for the most part, is silly and not real writing.  Well, BS to that and BS on anyone who thinks it, including me!  This ties into the words are words, no matter how small or silly, and I should celebrate that I am creating something.

4. Use my blog more to chronicle how I am as a writer: Yes, I really am going to do this.  I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I am, because I want to show off what I'm doing.  I'm not sure just how far I'll go into what I'm doing, as I have issues with sharing (and so do publishing people), but we'll see.  Considering January is going to be a big editing month, you might hear me complaining about it.

5. Love all the words that I write, no matter how stupid they sound: Okay, I put this in the goals of 2014 and adding it in here.  What this means is that I will write, without criticizing myself, until it is time to edit.  When it is time to edit, I can do as much critting of myself as I want.  Until then, I need to love the words that I am writing because they are more words than what I wrote yesterday.  They are more words than I wrote the month before and so on.  I need to love what I write and love myself for getting it out and not going insane.

So... that's about it.  Look for later this month about the goals for next year in terms of writing projects and in reading.  Happy holidays!

NaNoWriMo and This Is Where I Leave You

You get a two for one post today, mostly because I'm awesome like that, and mostly because... reasons.  Reasons that are the second part of the title.  I really might have to start a campaign about that book and how I want those hours of my life back.  The movie isn't much better, but at least now I won't spend money on that.  Point being that I didn't spend money in the first place, since I borrowed the book from the library (yay libraries!), but still.  I want those hours of my life back and we'll talk about that in just a moment.

So, for the seventh year in a row, I have written 50,000 words in a month.  It is a sacred ritual, one that requires months of planning and then replanning and then hoping you've picked the right plot bunny.  The wrong ones, as I have discovered in years past, make for horrible experiences.  The right ones, as I have discovered since 2008 (jeez, ages ago), make everything bright and sunny and full of rainbows.  For, you see, this can only happen one month out of the year, where the stars align and everything is awesome.

If you can't tell, November is also when my sarcasm rises to new heights.  Just chuckle and scroll.  Just scroll if you don't like the jokes but I can't promise they'll get any better.

Anyways, it doesn't happen just one month out of the year.  It's just the one month where everything works out because I've planned for it that way.  And, you know what, the entire year could be like that.  If I didn't have to edit and finish drafts outside of the one month, but it can be done.  Yes, I've done it before, though not in one project, so yes, November is special.  November is the one month, out of the entire year, that the focus is just on one project.  And that's good, in the end, because it's what's needed.  I really doubt that Mystery of the Dark would have gotten a third draft if not for NaNoWriMo this year.  It's the kick in the butt near the end of the year that I needed.  So, I should be thanking it.  I do thank it, all things considered, and hope to continue to win for years to come.  However, there's an even bigger milestone.

This is the sixth year that I've done WriYe.  WriYe is NaNo on steroids.  You write for the entire year, or try to, one this one goal.  Mine went from 500,000 to 350,000 because that's the way life goes.  But you know what?  You still get the same amount of support no matter what you do.  You don't get people yelling at you and trying to poke holes in the fact that you can write so much in one day while they're struggling to get a 1,000 words in.  And, it is, in the end, something that I will always value more than NaNo.  For, while NaNo gives me the one perfect month where the stars are aligned, WriYe shows me that I can write all the other months too.

So, don't feel that you can't be a writer just because you don't have that one perfect month.  You can steal the time in other months.  You can carve it out of weekends and times where you're on public transportation or even when you're driving.  For the last one, I recommend a wireless speaker and some sort of software that will write for you.  Do not hand write and drive people.  It's up there with the silliness of texting and driving.

Now, for what I began my post with, I'll end with it.  Just don't read the book.  Go out and write better books.  Go out and have a definite ending.  It doesn't have to be all sunshine and rainbows, but it has to be better than there being no resolution at all.  It has to be better than making the choice that doesn't seem like making a choice in the first place.  So, go, be free and write.  I'm going to be left here by a book and stew over just how much I really hate it in the end.

The Weekly: Fanfiction

Every week, around Wednesday or Thursday, I will be blogging on a topic with the wonderful Tatra.  You can find her blog here and we'll be talking about a variety of subjects.  It'll be in a format that you're used to seeing with the WriYe Blogging Circle (WBC) posts, in that there will be a topic and questions to answer.  This is to help us get used to using our blogs more as well as just getting us thinking as writers.  Not that we're not doing that nearly every second or every day, but this is just a bonus.  Plus, it's something more for you, wonderful reader, to read.  :)  So, it's a win win.

This week, our subject is fanfiction.  Fanfiction is known as a work of fiction or art that is based on a work of fiction, non-fiction, or real people created by a fan of that work.  We'll be focusing on the writing aspect of fanfiction, although some people create art that is amazing and I really hope they're artists of original work that they can sell.  Like on the level of drawing a work that looks like a photograph / still from the movie or TV series but is actually done in pencil or ink.  You can find those easily through the handy dandy Google machine.  Now, you noticed I said non-fiction and real people.  Yes, people create fanfiction off of blogs like Badass Women in HIstory, CollegeHumor, Cracked, and so on.  There are also people who take a real person and put them in situations that come out of their head.  It's not really my cup of tea, but I feel that you should know about all types of fanfiction, considering that I've been writing it since 2001.

Yes, you read that right.  Fanfiction is how I got into writing.  I'm not the first writer to start off this way either.  Mercedes Lackey, the author of the Valdemar series, got her start writing for fanzines.  Cassandra Clare, the author of the Mortal Instrument series, was a Harry Potter fanfiction author before she got her big break.  Fifty Shades of Grey was a fanfiction before E.L. James cleaned it up and published it.  So, yes, it is not unheard of as people think it might be.  These are just a handful of examples off the top of my head and there probably are more.  I put these out here to show you, dear reader, that it isn't as far fetched as you've been led to believe.  Fanfiction is becoming less and less of a black mark against a published author, which is pretty nice considering I have a lot out there.

So, now that you have background into the subject, let's get onto the questions.

• Do I write fanfiction?  What do I write in?  What don't I write in?

And you're all, Liz!  You already answered this!  And yes, I have.  But I haven't said what I write in.  I write mostly in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Sherlock (BBC), Constantine (the 2005 movie, not the TV series coming out this fall), White Collar, and Leverage.  Those are my top five when I look at my Archive of Our Own profile, even though I haven't written anything new in the last two in a while.  Oops.  What I don't write in is less of the deal with the original work itself and more about situations.  While I dabble in the idea of kinks, I won't write an out and out rape scene.  Other than that, I follow where the muse goes when it comes to fanfiction.  If I can write it and I want to publish it, I do so.

• How do I compare original fiction to fanfiction?

I view original fiction as a harder and more satisfying than fanfiction.  While I love fanfiction and am not putting it down, I love creating my own worlds.  I love creating my own characters and putting them into situations of my own making.  Fanfiction, on the other hand, is easy to write because, when I love a fandom, I study it.  I know it nearly inside and out.  Like in the case of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I can remember that, in Captain America: the First Avenger, Red Skull took hold of the cube and went "poof" somewhere.  He didn't die, he went "poof" in a way of transportation energy.  We know it's transportation energy because, in the Avengers movie, Thor uses the cube to transport himself and Loki back home at the end.  I remember details of Person of Interest that comes from watching complete seasons two or three times.

And, when all else fails, there are these wonderful things called wikias and the Google.  :D

• What if someone wrote fanfiction about my stories?

I'm going to be considered odd for this, but I would view it as praise.  Someone likes my work enough to write an idea that I wouldn't have thought of.  Or to put two characters together that I didn't have time to write together because I was focusing on the main plot line.  Now, will I read fanfiction based on my original works?  Nope.  It's just that thin line because, once you've known as reading it, people can and will sue you about stealing ideas.  I just hope that people don't try to make money off of it, as that would suck, and then I'd have to sue a fan.

Also, I really hope that nobody writes incest about some of the characters.  Like, in Mystery of the Dark, there's a lot of family stuff that I would groan about people putting characters together before they know about the family connection.  And then get angry fans who love the pairing but now it's labeled incest because I went all "yeah, they're half siblings".  But, otherwise, I feel that people should be free to write fanfiction about whatever they want to.

Bonus!: Where do I post my fanfiction?

You can find me as crescent_gaia on the Archive of Our Own here.  Read at your own risk and realize the tags are warnings of what you might not want to read.  Also, check the rating on the left hand side before you decide you want to read something too.  I go as low a general audience and as high as explicit.  So, yep, read at your own risk, but check things too.  If you complain about something I write on there because you didn't double check things, I will only laugh at you (in a polite way, but still, laughing).

Blogging Circle: Vroom Vroom! (September)

If you couldn't tell by the title, this is going to be about speed writing.  Now, I can speed write when I want to, past NaNos being done by the 15th being my evidence, but there are times when I don't want to.  I like savouring how to write a novel and going over what I'm doing.  Sometimes I drag my feet, because procrastination is nummy, but that's a subject for another time.

So, questions!

• How fast do you first drafts go?

Eh... it depends on how motivated I am in the end.  Sometimes I want to get something done and therefore, it'll go fast.  Other times, I'll get bored with a novel or distracted, like with a project called Prelude to a Kiss that I started in February for a challenge, and they just sit.  Not that they sit finished, they sit unfinished.  I really need to fix that.  At least with that project, because I love the story behind it, but I do need to work on the getting first drafts done faster.  If only so I can move onto a second and third draft and get something published.

• Do they take you a year?  A month?  Is your speed more of a NaNoWriMo style writing or trying to nail down each word perfectly the first time?

The first time I ever won NaNoWriMo, it was with a novel called Power.  I did the 50,000 words in November and then it sat like a lump until next April/May.  The reason behind that was because I was just feeling done, even though I had to write the ending.  The only reason that it got finished was because I wanted a printed copy of it and that was one of the winner goodies.  It's still back there at the NaNoWriMo draft, which I call a draft zero, and stuff needs to be done with it.  However, it is done and I know I can do it within six to seven months.  Which I feel is fast.  Not James Patterson fast, but still fast.

• What suffers because of your speed?

The ability to use the correct tense dies a certain death.  :D  So does other proper grammar stuffs.  But that's why there are second drafts and then third and so on.

Bonus: What was your shortest novel?  Your longest?  And what was the main problem in each?

Power was only 80,000 (on the nose, wow) and Mystery of the Dark is about 100K.  The main problem in Power is the annoying grammar / tense issues.  The issue of MoD is... well, it's MoD and annoying.  :)  Annoying to write.  It's going to be awesome to read.  

So, that's about it for now.  Stay tuned for tomorrow and a post about fanfiction!  :)

Blogging Circle: Who Likes Short-Shorts? (August)

Yes, I'm a bit behind.  Apologies for that and... I dunno.  I thought I had done this but I guess I hadn't.  So we're doing it now, quick and dirty style, because there's another post about it.  That post is over here and you can feel free to read it.  It talks more about tightening prose than what I'm going into here.  This is more focused on the stories themselves rather than the effort that goes into them.  Let's get to the questions.

• Do you write them?

From time to time, I do.  When it's fanfiction, I write a lot of them.  But, as I said last year, I'm a novel writer.  50K+?  I'm in.  It's kind of hard to do below that, even though I can, because I want to dig into everything and take everyone on a big journey.  So, yes, I write them.

Sidenote: I've been writing more of them this year because we did two competitions on WriYe.  I say competitions, but it's more like friendly stuff with good amount of feedback.  We did Last WriYe Standing (it's like Survivor, but with prose!) and Contrasts.  Of the two, I'm liking Contrasts more but I think that's because the feedback is better.  Or it's less competition and more writing for fun.  Maybe, after I clean up some of them, I'll post a few here and there.  We'll see.  :)

• Do you hate them?

Hate is such a strong word.  Strong dislike, but I'll write them.

• Do you think they're lovely but there's no market for them?

There's such a big market for them.  My library has a section that's devoted to just short stories.  Also, I keep on seeing new ones and people are buying them, so there is.  For people who say there's no market, I just think they're not digging hard enough.  You can find a market for anything if you Google enough.

• For those who wish to be published, many people tell you that short story publications get your foot in the door.  And while that is true, I'm not sure how many people really focus on the short stories.  So tell me your own views on them.  Have any been published?  Are you looking to publish some?

I've been published in Milestone (that's Volume 1; I'm also in Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4, Volume 5, and Volume 6).  I'm not sure if I'm looking to publish more but that's now.  In the future?  Yeah, I'll probably look more into it if I can't get the novels published.

Bonus: What is your favorite magazine / anthology of short stories?

I really don't have one.  I'd love some comments on magazines / books to look into.  Neil Gaiman wrote Smoke and Mirrors but it's all his own work and not an anthology.  He also wrote Fragile Things.  Both are good to read, if you're looking into a different take on short stories, and he's one of my favorite authors.

Alright, that's it for August's blogging circle.  Tune in tomorrow, when I'll post September's.  Going to try to get on a schedule for posting, joining the amazing Ana with her weekly posts.