Writing Goals 2019

Once again, I last updated in November....

So last year's writing goals. Let's look at those first.

1. Complete at least 15 of the Writing Excuses homework assignments.
I didn't do 15 of them, but I think I did at least 7. They did help and I think I just need to commit to them better. (And remember that this was a goal of mine earlier than late August)

2. Finish Twin Tales.
I failed here. Book 2 is not done yet. But I did start posting.

3. Revise Restoring Faith
Absolute success. I decided to rewrite this story as my nano 18 and although I still have more to write, it is a way better story than it was before.

4. Write something non-fandom
I did this as well! I specifically enrolled in a creative writing class and wrote a totally original short story that used no previous characters, no previous settings, just completely new stuff.

Goals for this year.

1. Complete at least 15 of the Writing Excuses homework assignments.
I'm gonna try this again.

2. Finish Twin Tales book 2.
I'll set a more reasonable goal this time since I'm working on editing, writing, and planning in different parts of this story.

3. Finish Restoring Faith.
This goal specifically should be done by about March when I trade it with another friend who also rewrote an old nano.

4. Remember this blog exists.
I don't know entirely how I want to use it, but I think it helps me to reflect on what I'm learning while I write and writing it down is important.

Summer Writing Lessons

This summer feels like it has lasted way longer than three months. An entire month was spent studying and preparing for my qualifying exam, but it paid off and I passed!! I cannot express how much of a relief that is. But that's not what you are here for; this blog is about writing. I've done a lot of that too.

July was all about writing short stories. Sometimes it felt like I wasn't even reading what I wrote. I've looked back and I hardly remember writing some of the things from the beginning of the month. It was a race to put out as many short stories as possible to get points. Amidst the madness of earning points, I ending up refining my writing in ways I hadn't anticipated.

Short stories are hard for me. I love my soaring epic fantasy plots and so challenging me to write things under 500 words is a challenge indeed. It forced me to focus on one, maybe two, instants in time. It is a snapshot of a story, yet it must also tell a story by itself. This is a little bit easier in fanfiction when you can use established characters that readers will know, but when you start going into more bizarre AUs, they might as well be original characters. It forces me to think carefully about indirect characterization. Can I hint at their personality in the way they speak? Not just their word choice, but what they notice. What about body language while they speak, or even describing the surroundings they find themselves in.

Possibly the story I did that best in was The Warlock's Creation. In these few lines I hoped to tell you about the protagonist's feeling of being an outsider, not belonging. His longing to find a world where he could be appreciated for what he had rather than mocked for what he lacked. I think I did alright.

For all his cleverness, he had forgotten his umbrella. He was quite sure his grandmother would scold him and send him for a hot shower when he got home. ... Someday he would step through a painting. Vanish into a world where magic was but a legend. He kicked his feet as he walked, splashing water everywhere.

As part of our friendly competition during July, we had prompt tables. I've done this previous summers and I barely managed to finish one 9 prompt square. But I am competitive and those earn me bonus points so I stretched myself. It was still hard, but I found this easier to create the short stories. The crazy prompts weren't inspiring any plot for a grand story, but I could come up with ideas about what characters were like, what they valued, and how they acted. And for a short story, sometimes that was all I needed.

While this ability to write to a prompt might not be useful when I am working on novel length stories, I do have side characters. Previously I would just throw out a name for a person who worked in the kitchens and maybe one small defining detail, but this doesn't do them justice. As an author, I should know more about that character than the reader knows. In the future, I aim to pause when I need a new side character and write 300 words about them. No strict fields to fill in, just anything that comes to mind to give them a bit more life, even though they may only appear for one page in a story and then potentially get edited out in a later draft. If I have learned anything while writing Twin Tales it's that small characters keep wanting to return.

My month of short stories is over, but I hope I can use these lessons to improve my longer stories. After all, what is a novel but a collection of short scenes.

Writing Goals for 2018

Oh wow. Have I really not written since middle of November? Oops. Well I won NaNo, but naturally the story isn't finished. I'm also revising last year's NaNo because a good friend of mine gave me the right kind of beta reading and now I am rewriting the beginning and rethinking characters. It's a glorious disaster. Onto the actual point of this post.

I can't tell if Kristina will continue doing the weekly prompts, but a goals prompt sounds like a good plan. So here we go.

1. Complete at least 15 of the Writing Excuses homework assignments.
For those of you who don't know, this is a weekly, 15 min podcast with great writing advice. This year they are focusing on character and I really need that. So I want to do the homework assignments and be more active in my learning.

2. Finish Twin Tales.
This is my monstrosity of a Merlin fic. It's over 100k right now. I want to wrap it up by the end of this year so I can start posting it and giggling at the feedback people will give me.

3. Revise Restoring Faith
This will be slightly dependent on my beta reader, but I do really want to eventually publish this one so getting a proper second draft by the end of the year seems like a good goal.

4. Write something non-fandom
This does not include Restoring Faith. This will probably happen with goal number one, but I want to make it it's own goal so I can keep it a focus.

How well will I do? I don't know. Real life is gearing up to kick my butt this year, especially in the summer which is usually good writing time for me. But I will find a way.

Favourite writing from this week:

But now the glimmer of hope seemed absent. Left alone with her thoughts, prospects were bleak. Not even the chocolate croissant she had saved was cheering her up. It only reminded her how far she had traveled since the tube station. She set it back on the wrapper. It was meant to be a ten minute ride home.

Yet now she was stranded in a foreign city, surrounded by aliens and in a time far removed from her own. Even if she was able to travel to Earth somehow, it wouldn’t be the same planet she left.

No family, no friends, no series finale of Bakeoff and wow she hadn’t realised how much that one hurt. She didn’t even like cooking. So why were her eyes filling with tears?

But now that they started, she couldn’t make them stop. Her family were dead. Had been for who knows how long. How long did it take them to start looking for her? How long until they gave up?

And what would she do? Try to go to uni? Applications were hard enough the first time around. Now she had no paperwork and only her previous student ID as any form of identification. Even if she somehow was accepted, she would have gaps in her education. She wouldn’t have money to pay tuition. Hells she hardly had food for the next day.

Hannah grabbed tissues from the bedside table and noisily blew her nose.

“Destinies are troublesome things,” an accented voice said. It sounded oddly Irish. The first recognisable accent she had heard this entire trip. “You don’t often understand why things happen until many years later.”

Hannah looked around, but couldn’t see anyone who could have spoken to her.

“To your right, above the table,” the voice said. She looked up but all she could see was a drawing of large stone gateway similar to the one she had fallen through. “There we go.”

Hannah blinked, rubbed away the tears that were blurring her vision. Maybe she had fallen asleep because she thought the artwork was speaking.

“You aren’t going crazy.” The drawing changed, shifted. A gargoyle that had been perched on top of the arch flew down into the foreground of the image, all the detail of the pointed teeth and large ears become clearer.

“How? You’re in a drawing,” she protested. “Drawings don’t move. Or talk.” She pinched her arm again, but just as before it hurt. No waking up from a weird dream.

“Magic, Mistress Osta,” the gargoyle replied. “You had best get used to it.”

“Right, magic.” She nodded, then shook her head. “No. This is crazy. Pictures that move, I’ll accept. Crazy arches that kidnap you from tube stations, fine.” She crossed her arms. “But no way is it normal for art to hold a conversation with someone. There was other artwork in the hotel lobby and none of those paintings moved. Something tells me this isn’t normal.”

“Now you are catching on.” It seemed proud of her. “We will make a proper adventurer of you yet.”

“Adventure? No, this has been an adventure enough. I just want to go home.”

“That’s not possible at the moment.”

Hannah felt her breath catch. “No. Saraahm said she knows someone who might know how to get me home. There has to be a way.”

“There is a way. You have to create your own path home.”

“What?”

“Talk to Father Carame, he will guide you to the right path. But there are things you need to learn before you can return home.”

Hannah was still having trouble processing the fact that she was talking to a gargoyle in a drawing on on wall, but something in it’s tone made her believe it. “What, do I have to take a class?” That didn’t mean any of this made sense.

“Father Carame will tell you more about your destiny. Think of it as your letter to Hogwarts.”

“I’m going to ignore the fact that you just made a “Harry Potter” reference and focus on the rest of that. How do you know my destiny?”

“Magic.”

“Of course.” Hannah shut her eyes and rubbed a hand over her face. Magic, destiny, and kidnapping. Just your average Friday. But apparently this was the reality she had to live with right now. “What does my destiny have to do with finding a way home?” She adjusted her glasses and looked back up at the drawing, but the gargoyle had retreated to the perch atop the portal.

“I have faith that you will stumble upon the connection,” its voice said into the stillness before some intuition Hannah never knew she had, told her that the creature wouldn’t be saying anything else.

“Okay. I am officially in an adventure story. Magical creature who gives advice then disappears with a riddle. Got it.” She looked down at her croissant. She needed chocolate and then she needed sleep.

Starting a blog

I have a science blog, I have a tumblr blog, and I have a youtube channel, but I never thought about doing a text based personal blog. It had never appealed to me as much. But at the end of last year, Kristina Horner, a youtuber I have been following for ages, made a video talking about wanting to write more, not just during NaNoWriMo. She started this Wordbound challenge and I think it is a good thing to take part in. Basically, she posts a prompt, and you respond within a week. So let's begin.

Prompt: What are your personal writing goals for 2017, and what does #wordbound means to you?

Writing goals:

1. Write every week. It doesn't have to be much, but getting something down on the page is a good habit to get into. 
2. Finish my NaNoWriMo novel. It's called Restoring Faith and I had a blast writing (and winning) with this story in November. But the tale is not yet fully told and this is one that I think could get published. 
3. Win NaNoWriMo 2017. I'm worried I will still be working on the previous one, but let's do this again. 
4. Publish a paper. This one is a little more career oriented, but it would be nice to have another published paper out by the end of the year. 

To me, #wordbound is a commitment to make room for writing all year round. Making it something you do every week. I've learned from doing a year of weekly youtube videos, that when you have to make something new each week, you are forced to be very creative. You have to push yourself to think outside the box and explore things you previously would have dismissed. Because now anything will do. You just need to write something. So #wordbound to me is about pushing the bounds of what I can do with my words.

So I encourage you to join us in this adventure. I will be posting some of the favourite things I write each week and sometimes a video as well. I look forward to next week.



"Real writers don't write. They write anyway. Nothing made writing easy today. I wrote anyway." - Patrick Ness