lilacfield

1. getyourwordsout offers six types of pledges for 2010: multiple projects (target wordcount: 200k, 250k, 300k, 350k) and single project (target wordcount: 100k, 150k). Go to the community for details.

2. Courtesy of Holly Lisle, I have been reminded that the most important thing during editing is the story itself. Grammar, diction and other technical details should be the last things you check. I'll try to keep that in mind, since I can get kind of obsessive when it comes to grammar and diction, and believe they also tell the story in their own way.

3. How to become a novelist in 30 days: The article on Indonesian NaNo-ers in today's edition of The Jakarta Post. There's a candid shot of yours truly (in the paper, not in the online article), confirming her suspicion that she doesn't smile, she smirks.

1. Things I've learned in NaNo.

2. The three-act structure by Stephen J. Cannell. (Whoa, that name brings back memories of the '80s)

In Act One the protagonist meets all of the characters in the play.
I personally prefer to introduce them gradually.

Adversaries should not be standing around, waiting to be caught.
(That amuses me) They'd do much better to actively go after the hero(es).

The plotting in Act Two often starts to get linear (a writer's expression meaning the character is following a string, knocking on doors, just getting information).
If they do it while being chased by the antagonist, would that make Act Two more interesting? Because that's what currently happening in my NaNo, sort of.

3. From LJ-dom:
Give me the premise for a crossover, a fusion, or an AU. I will write you one to three sentences* of fic based on that premise.
*Or, you know, more.

A tip I read in one of the NaNo communities I'm in: To keep the story going at a fast pace, keep up the suspense by putting the information the reader wants to know at the end of the sentence.

He looked up, shocked, as something crashed through the window.
versus
Something crashed through the window, and he looked up, shocked.

Reaction first, explanation afterward.

Good fiction is personal. If you're writing - and if what you're writing matters to you - you are going to be in your fiction, and the people who read what you've written will read your mind. They will see YOU. - Holly Lisle

I've read novels that make the readers realize a few things about themselves. Which is probably not part of the author's intention, but still.
From a little self-analysis I did on my NaNo so far, it seems that I believe people should be able to fend for themselves and have a personal goal in life, as opposed to just going along and seeing where life takes them.
What does your writing say you believe in?

Via start_writing: How to write badly well. Except that, you know, I am sometimes guilty of using too many adjectives.

Saw this quote from writer John Dufresne here:

"You have nothing to prove in the first draft, nothing to defend, everything to imagine...You write the draft in order to read what you have written and to determine what you still have to say...You may have a destination in mind, and you may well set off in that direction, but what you encounter along the way will likely alter your course. This uncertainty, though daunting, is crucial to the writing process. It allows for, even encourages, revelation and surprise, while it prevents the manipulation of character or plot to suit a preconceived, and usually ill-conceived, notion of what the story must be. In writing the first draft, you begin to work through all the uncertainty and advance toward meaning."

That's pretty much how I felt about last year's NaNo. The journey is exhilarating, yes, but at some points I want to know when it's going to end (not where - that's part of the surprise).

NaNoWriMo:

1. Both in 2007 and 2008, I submitted my final wordcount on the 25th, the date when you can start collecting the winner badges. This turns out to be a good idea since you may not be able to access the site at all on the 30th, as clueless_psycho told me. Long story short: it's always better to finish early, even if you don't want the badge.

2. Via cristin_terrill: An offer from Scrivener for NaNo - Participants can receive a 20% discount and winners will have a 50% discount on December 2.

Via jolantru: Tu Publishing, a multicultural SFF press for children and YA.

Also from cristin_terrill: What Patrick Ness said about YA.

He said he was writing for his teenager self, trying to create what he would have wanted to read. He feels a lot of YA falls short because it tries to write for a theoretical teenager instead of a real one. It aims for the 'normal' teenager when there's no such thing; every single teenager in the world feels atypical, so writing for the popular kids is doomed to failure. He, astutely I think, theorizes that this played into the success of Harry Potter.

Writer: "Yeah, you're different. But you're a wizard."

Reader: "I KNEW IT!"

Writing progress:
. If you can call me editing at a snail's pace and wondering if a certain turn of plot makes sense, or whether I should start abusing the thesaurus, progress...
. In lieu of reference books, I downloaded Indonesian translations of Jin Yong novels. I've already got three (two of which seem to have been translated by Gan KL rather than Oey Kim Tiang - not sure about the third), the shortest of which is 700 pages long.
. All the female characters are the strong, knightly type, though with different personalities. Since women in wulin tend to rely more on weapons than men do, I also get to pick cool weapons for them.
. Speaking of characters, I don't usually make a detailed list of their personalities from the start. I just assign an adjective or two to each character (e.g. A is hot-tempered, B is rational, C is your usual curious teenager), and, as the story rolls along, watch how they'd react to particular situations. (My type is probably one of the worst pantsers imaginable)

Meme:
Choose one of my icons and I'll write something based on it. If it's not a fandom icon, I have the right to write for any fandom or an original snippet.

fictictactoe, to quote: "Instead of an empty grid, there is a prompt-table and instead of using X's and O's to mark a space, a player must write a fic. The two authors take turns writing, and the first one to get three prompts in a horizontal, vertical or diagonal row wins the game."

Beta resources, compiled by michelel72.

Holly Lisle: "Give the best lines in the book to your protagonist." First, I'd have to think up witty lines.

Invent a persona for your journal -- a character who is employed as a journal writer for you, whose job it is to make entries on a schedule you propose, someone whose creativity in dreaming up new ways to approach the genre will be rewarded. Write the job description in your journal. Write the interview with the job applicant. Assign this persona a wardrobe, a history, a reason why he or she wants this job. Write your new employee's entries. Let him or her react to the world and the people around him or her.

novel_in_90

Your brain...loves starting stories. It loves the discovery, the sense of adventure, the freshness and glee of starting something new.

But that wears off once the novelty is past and you begin to realize that there are months of solid writing before you. Suddenly your brain is making you want to do housework, or read Tolstoy's complete works, or take up quilting, or go back to the beginning to put this cool new idea in. Your brain, if it is anything like mine, does not want to do the long slog of writing day after day that is necessary to get through the middle of the novel.

Push on and finish the story....You'll give it a couple of days to rest, come back to it, and it will turn out to be really not that bad at all! You will have a finished first draft and it will be good.

1. Writing progress

June 23 800 words.
June 24 Again, 800 words. I ought to stop making the characters readily imagine the worst. They're not horror novel writers.

2. ephemery asked about my thoughts about the purpose of writing/what I see writing as.

First, ganked from a post on literaryquotes:
You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page.
- Annie Proulx, Interview in The Paris Review, Issue 188

There are a lot of reasons why people write, and mine are simple and very much mundane - because I love doing it. As for purposes - one of them is to try living through fictional characters and see things from their eyes, and thus, hopefully, help broaden my own capacity for understanding. And, if possible, to entertain others while I'm doing it. To me, that's what writing is partly about: sharing worlds, the more eloquently the better. And yes, I do enjoy playing with words, which is more easily done when I'm not trying to keep up with a plot. (Don't get me wrong, though - plot is good. Very good indeed)

Opinions on the phase system. My conclusion is that the method still allows for quite a lot of room for changes, depending on when and how inspiration arrives and how well we can adapt the story to the changes.

whumpers_guide, a community in the line little_details, but specifically for when your characters get hurt.

Writing For the World, at sfnovelists.com. From what I've gathered, basically it says that in the fantasy genre, when writing about cultures not your own, you can only reimagine them, and it's understandable if you don't get it right every time. There's more leeway here than in, say, (the writer's own example) historical fiction.
That being said, I believe there are rules in the culture you're basing your world off of that can't just be conveniently ignored. I once read a YA novel (set in 1970's Europe, not of the fantasy genre) where there's a supposedly Japanese character called Hatsimoto. I spent the rest of the book thinking, "There's no character for 'tsi' in Japanese, is there?" Which leads me, maybe in a roundabout way, to this comment on the above blog entry.
And maybe that's another reason non-whites, Asians included, should write for a large audience, in any genre.
(Sons of Tangential: 1) Thankfully, in this era of search engines, doing research should be easier. 2) I have pages of printed material - taken from the Internet - about the Uyghurs and I still haven't had the opportunity to put them to use)
(I keep revising this entry. If there's still anything inappropriate, feel free to point it out to me)

Writing progress

June 6 1,400 words for the wuxia novel, bringing it to a total of 66k words. Sadly (?), I don't think this is a 100k-story.

Editor Unleashed is holding a flash fiction contest for stories less than 1,000 words long.

I might have to post my writing progress here, to add to the public humiliation, i.e. to get me to actually write and catch up with my wordcount. If that doesn't work, I'm out of ideas.

Many thanks to those who've plugged the fanfiction writer friending meme :)

Via februaryfour: 12 Baby Steps to A Complete Story. I've summarized the steps behind the cut and gave my $0.02.

( Insert witty text here )

1. Via summerwrite2: Suspending Disbelief. My reply to the post is here.
I tend to get bogged down by details because I believe they can either contribute to the plot or the character, later if not sooner. Thus, I want to see how I can make the most of them, and I want to see it now. I don't want to later do research on a certain aspect of the story, and think how useful some of the findings would be if I could have integrated them into the story. If that's a failing on my part, I hope it's one that can be remedied by extensive pre-research.

2. A meme that's been reappearing lately:
"Sometimes it's okay to pimp yourself out. Post a list of your top five fic-favorites you've written, regardless of fandom or the reason you love them. This isn't about the BEST things you've written, but what you LOVE most. Then tag five other people to do the same."
Taken only from the fics I wrote in 2008 until now, and not cut, er, because everyone isn't cutting theirs, either. Tag yourself if you want.

1. Days of Glory - Tennis no Oujisama
I can't write serious!Tezuka well, and thus, crack.

2. A Thousand Years - Naruto
Sasuke/Sakura, written the way I like it - with distance between them, more than a touch of melancholy, and a sense of future hope.

3. This Season - Fullmetal Alchemist
Roy/Hawkeye. What I thought would be a drabble developed into a decent-sized fanfic. I like Roy and Hawkeye here, both individually and separately.

4. Blades in the Moonlight - Tennis no Oujisama
What is this tennis you speak of? Those boys are swordsmen, that's what they are. And Tezuka vs Yukimura really needs to happen.

5. Bamboo Shots in the Snow - Yitian Dulong Ji
Yin Liting/Yang Buhui. There's an atmosphere of quiet here that I enjoy. And apparently I write Buhui better than I do her husband.

1. Seen via natalief: The Dreaded Daily Word Count.

"We all really love writing. It's not the act itself, it's the fear that everything we produce will stink and everyone will find out."
*coughs*

"Here's another tip--Stop trying to impress the people in your head. Whoever they are. Who cares what they think? This is about discovering what interesting things you have to say, what visions are in your mind's eye. Maybe they don't come out as polished as you'd like, but they are still important."
First and foremost, it's me I'm trying to impress. (Do I count as a person in my own head?) And I'm not that easily impressed.

And using wordcount as an excuse to write does work during NaNo, though it may not work during the other months. Will chew on that.

2. In case you haven't seen it: Crossed Genres, an SF/F paying publication, now receives novel-length submissions. Details here.

1. I'm still in the grip of writer's block. Bits and pieces and first sentences (and titles with no stories to support them) are all I have. I don't want to start writing only to stop dead after four sentences. Not that I'm overly methodical - I just don't want to have yet another WIP on my hand, and I want to come up with something at least worth reading. Is that called being obsessed, I wonder.

2. Off-topic meme, because I asked at aiwritingfic:
Comment here with anything you want to hear me say, read or talk about, and I'll record it all in a voice post. It can be anything, from my favorite color, fandom opinion, to the last book I finished reading. Warning for Indonesian accent.

1. Book #13 of imaginarybeasts is out, theme: Erase/Rewind. I contributed another story. It's supposed to be a ghost story, and though it's too cliche to be scary, I liked crafting the characters. Many thanks to llyse again for her gorgeous illustration. Sign-up for Book 14 is open, theme: carnivale.

2. February challenge at genrechallenge: any previous genre, with the exception of fanfiction and multiple genres.

3. CM Mayo's Daily 5-Minute Writing Exercise for all the days in a year. Seems primarily intended to keep the writing cog wheels turning.

Contributors for Crossed Genres, an SF/F webzine, will now receive payment.

There's a post at start_writing about writing interesting opening paragraphs. It makes me think of my own opening paragraphs, which in the past tended to be rambly and way too descriptive to be interesting. These days I just try to get to the point and avoid gimmicks if I can.
What do you do with your opening paragraph in order to lure the reader in?

takishia, your card (postcard?) arrived, thank you!

Seen via roseschaosdeath: Thirty days of worldbuilding.

I wrote 29,730 words during 2008, not counting the drabbles and ficlets written in comments. With NaNo, that's almost 80k words. Will have to do better this year.

For getyourwordsout, I'll have to write about 550 words a day. Doesn't sound so taxing. To those who are also doing this, good luck to us!