What kind of writer are you?

OK - my hands are up - I admit it: I'm a research-geek kind of writer

I put the plan in planning:
1 plan to write - time allocated
2 plan the characters and setting - create photo wall and pen sketches in the working note book
3 plan the 14 to 20 chapters that will give me the story arc - depending on length/ target audience
4 plan the main events in bullet format - whole book (any sequal type information that occurs to me as I go along)

While I write? I have a card index for each character mentioned (main to merely visiting) which I add to while I'm going along. I hate continuity errors in things I read, see or (heaven forbid) write.

Name drop moment - an-author-of-my-acquaintance laughed at me (Thanks, Steve Feasey)

He inspired me to attempt to work slightly more off-the-cuff. I was light-headed at the thought; the desk I work at was less heavily ladened too.

Enter NaNoWriMo Challenge

STAYING LOST

I planned my character profiles - making sure I knew them from head to toe and inside out (including their preferred underware!)

Then I planned the start, middle and end - the desired outcomes for the book.

To increase my writer-ly skills (:-)) I decided to experiment with POV. While writing the book I alternated, one chapter at a time, writing from JJ's (public school boy)and Nerysa's (ex-navy SEAL, bodyguard) perspective.

NOW THAT NaNo is NoNo

Spending November writing from different points of view should help me write the complicated multi-layers of the non-ghost story I have planned. Adding space and time into the mix --- challenge much! Imagine how that looks in my planning format :)

NaNoWriMo WINNER

NaNoWriMo - author!

Listening to Vampire Weekend
I STAND CORRECTED
You've been checking on my facts
And I admit I have been lax
In double screening what I say
It wasn't funny anyway

Good job it wasn't a few seconds earlier or I'd have to admit to listening to Jay-Z :s


Now, apart fom the editing, I have finished my second novel oI< - does this look like I fell over backwards? That was what I was aiming for.

Written for the age 8/10 - 12 Middle Grade - so bang goes my chances of getting Nathan Bransford to represent it :) (I knew there had to be a downside of writing MG - I was going to say boys - but it has wider appeal than that.)

STAYING LOST
Jon Jacob Ashton used to have family; he used to have everything. Now he has nothing between him and a very effective assassin but the hacker his father had arrested, the forger his mother saved from a beating on the Champs Elysee and the bodyguard who shot out the tyres on the family limo when she didn't get a job interview.

If they get lost... and stay lost... he might get to live.


Complete in 51,670 words

NaNoWriMo - so close to ending

NaNoWriMo - time is a ticking!
Listening to Sea Wolf - The Violet Hour:
In the dark you tell me of a flower
that only blooms in the violet hour
It isn't so much a violet hour as a pitch black one. I intend to finish during this 24 hour period so I have my Spotify playlist and endless cups of tea to supplement the chocolate supplied by the one who got more chocolate than a sweet shop for his birthday!

STAYING LOST

The boys ducked back out of line laughing. Their plan was so simple. They turned back to find the quicker way into Hyde Park. At the bottom of Tyburn Way was a corner - a narrow footpath that led to the public toilets. The fence was not much of a deterrent there. It was low and incomplete since the tree that had leaned over the metal railings had been removed before it could fall on some unsuspecting pedestrian.
Racing, chasing and overtaking,they dodged through parked cars and static traffic along the Tyburn Way. Jon didn't think of the others who had made their way along that route with less haste and a lot more trepidation hundreds of years before. The walk to Tyburn Tree had been slow and pained. Some had walked bravely; others, who were already broken, dragged out each step on their journey towards their executioner; Jon ran the route with joy – the kind that comes from unexpected freedom.

TWITTER does not run in school

The filter likes Blogs.

The writing I enjoy falls neatly into two, main, catagories: novel and poetical.

This week/term has been hard.

However, all things can be overcome with the support you receive from friends. I am glad that I work with Amanda. The Haiku says it all. Everyone should be so fortunate

AMANDA
You make a difference -
thoughts and genuine kindness -
small actions turned great.


NANO VERIFIED WORD COUNT: 41,151

So near and yet so far away

Word Count verified at 34,800

JJ finds himself at a very different kind of school

Tyburn Trees Junior still has an executioner - who has yet to learn the meaning of humane, although from the insults he uses he is aware of human - in its narrowest sense.

JJ has lost his father, his home, his school, his friends, his hair colour - he's trying to find out who he is. He is doing better at realising who he isn't.

“Who is he to tell us how to be?” Connor grumbled.
“Like, what’s with the bowing – like he’s some freaking prince or something.”
“Still, better him than that spaz Newt.”
“We’ll see. If Newt splats his nose off his face,” Bright thrust a fierce upper cut into the air as they walked, “I say we walk with his pack again.”
“I hate him though.”
“Better hating behind him, than having him hate us.”
“True. But it felt good - not being in Newt’s crew this morning.”
“Let’s see if Jonas comes back again tomorrow.”
“Bright... he has to live through today first.”

So, what's new?!

Piton perfect! Climbing the columns of NaNoWriMo shame!

Working hard to claw my way back on track - 4,000 + words so far to day - yeah!

JJ and Nerysa find the perfect place to hide out

In this genteel area of London, Connaught Close crouched behind its refined neighbours and lowered the tone. It was a rusted sliver of the old city surrounded by the silver of new money.
Jon walked into the dark that had nothing to do with the clouds that covered the moon. Even the street lights in Connaught Close seemed to shine less brightly. The rays were absorbed by the blackened stone walls that no one had sand blasted; although the neighbours would be happy to attempt it with a little dynamite.

Have a few more hours to work 30,300 currently

New beginnings and New Moon 'near Edgware'

I took time out to not write or work!! I think that's living life on the wild side!

Wandered over to Come in Character. Christine had posted an opening line that made me shudder. Not badly written, but so familiar that the original wanted to keep itself intact and warned me off even trying to mess with it - big boy on the playground style! We study Barrowquest - dull - and Eragon - the other thing - in Y6 during the Spring Term quest Unit. It took a long time, like minutes, for me to come up with something I wanted to say:

Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that...

thrummed discordantly with warring notes: the essence of life and the odour of death delayed. The cloying perfume, bound jasmine and tearose, insinuated itself into nasal passages and choaked the throat with gagging cough. What need was there for sight when the fetid whiff whispered to the primative brain that now would be the time to run?

I keep seeing knee-high, a-moral, daemons!

Then my teen and I set off to see New Moon - last year I dragged her to T1 this year no dragging was necessary. The wolf animation was a-ma-zing!

"Is that how you see the Were?" my Minnow asked.

I guess the answer was yes - for Alex and Raphael - but, I didn't see Caleb's dignified, always cautious, control.

Near Edgware - on a friend's blog she asked about titles - Roni wrote 'what do you call your WIP?' I'm almost ashamed to admit that I have a working title, or two, but then there is the secret name too - the one that cannot be named or it will bring bad luck to the venture ;) See, I wrote a joke smile, so it can't be true :s