Twenty-Two Day Challenge

Well, I'm not going to meet my self-imposed deadline for The Poisoned Apple. So, I'm extending it to December 31st. But I'm also going to see if I can finish it in twenty-two days, which means the other deadline is for December 9th. It honestly took me a little over a month to finish the last chapter. That's ridiculous. But I know I can write it. There's not much left.

And speaking of writing. I don't have anything for NaNoWriMo. I'm too lazy to upload anything. Maybe I should upload what I just finished writing. I think I will.

I really have nothing to say today. Hopefully, by the time of my next post, the first draft of The Poisoned Apple will be finished.

Tumbling Over NaNoWriMo and Poisoned Apples

My blog titles are really clever.

I have a tumblr now. Started it a few days ago. Really addicting the first day. I love that, unlike blogger, it's mainly about quick blogging. Like twitter yet more literate for some reason :) There I'll post random photos taken with my crappy camera. Like sunflowers. I have too many photos of sunflowers. And bubbles.

Also, a few days ago, Elizabeth May's blog reminded me of National Novel Writing Month coming up next month. My account is Dancing-Riceball. I actually joined back in 2007, via a blog post on TOKYOPOP. I thought it was a cool idea but didn't post anything. They deleted my account from being inactive so I rejoined last year. My story, called Graffiti, clocked in at a little over 50,000. It was and still is unfinished but I learned a lot from working on it. Stuff such as the word "graffiti" only doubles with the f's and not the t's or the i's. But I also learned about pacing or structure. I'm not sure, but I think that story only had three chapters. Which is just awful. It made me realize that either I have slow pacing or I'm too wordy (or both). I think for fun I'll re-read it.

One of the prizes for finishing NaNoWriMo is a free proof copy of your story via Amazon's Create Space thingamajig. I wanted one, but I was embarrassed at the idea of people reading over my shitty story. Which is funny because I don't think that they do proof-read when you go to self-publish. Anyways, I like NaNo and don't want them to delete my account so I'm going to upload some words from one of (many) unfinished manuscripts. I won't upload all of it because I don't want to cheat. November will be spent trying to finish up my current story, which I don't think that I'll meet the deadline.

But now that I think about it, I really want to do NaNo again. This is bad, I'm supposed to be working on The Poisoned Apple, not starting another story. But I love a challenge! But I need to focus. I'll think about it...

On the same note, I can't remember where but I heard about this website called "One Page Per Day" which is about... writing one page a day. I haven't tried it yet, but if I do start another story with NaNo- which I'm really, really, really, thinking about doing -I think I might use it.

Ciao.

Magazine Nostalgia

Well, I'll file this under "Things I've Done When I Should Have Been Writing." I was looking through my old magazines for photos to use as a project, when I came across my copies of Shojo Beat and Tokyopop magazines. There's three of them, and all of them were published in 2007. Shojo Beat I bought from Wal-Mart- more on that issue latter; look at that beautiful cover!


Back when I was obsessed with the TOKYOPOP website, I was subscribed to their free manga magazine. I probably received three or four of them; two I've kept. I have no idea if they're still sending them out, but I hope that they are. I love getting magazines just as I love buying books. It's going to sound crazy, but I started scanning the images from the magazines because I love the way they looked scanned.



The cover is of Raven from Vampire Kisses, the manga version by rem (I love her art!) What I love about the two issues of TOKYOPOP that I saved is that they both deal with Gothic Lolita fashion. This brief history of Gothic Lolita is from the same issue.


Here's another article on the history of Gothic Lolita fashion. This came from the spring of 2008 (not 2007). They break down the origins of Lolita fashion and give the different types of Gothic Lolita. I love the layout of these pages. All the illustrations were drawn by Aimme Steinberger (passive sentence!)





Going back to the issue of TOKYOPOP with Vampire Kisses on it, it was really interesting to read the manga sample inside. Because, two years later, Vampire Kisses- the book, not the comic -helped shape my protagonist from my book idea (that I should be working on). Here are the sample pages. The words in the speech bubbles have been intentionally blurred, whited-out, etc, 'cause I'm not offering scans of comics (though, I wonder if it's wrong to do it for articles?).









There's also an interview with Anike Hage author of Gothic Sports, a manga/comic I have wanted to read since I heard about the premise: a girl starts her own soccer team and to make them stand out, they wear Lolita-styled outfits. Awe. Some.



And one final thing from the issue. This ad for Beck, a Japanese manga about a group of boys forming an indie rock band, caught my eye. I fell in love with that manga two years ago and it got me into Nirvana, which then inspired a story of mine that branched out into other stories. It was just interesting to remember where it all came from.



I had somewhat of a thrill going through my copy of Shojo Beat- March, 2007. The reason for it was because, along with it being "the art issue", it was also an issue on vampires. I remember trying to read Twilight in 2007 but could never finish it and I wonder if the editors were aware of the book back then. Judging by this page highlights of famous vampires and vampire slayers, I would say that it hadn't reached the level on insanity quite yet.


It's just really strange that there was a time before Twilight. Anyways, the cover for this issue features the characters from Vampire Knight, a manga that is now more popular but one that I could not get into.






The one good thing I can say about Vampire Knight is the artwork. Matsuri Hino can draw her ass off. Seriously, the hair! Moving on, one vampire comic in the anthology that I liked was Millennium Snow by Bisco Hatori, best known for Ouran High School Host Club. I watched a few episodes of Ouran and loved it, though it had the habit of reminding me of Fruits Basket. A year later, though, I came up with a story whose main character was similar to Chiyuki from this comic but was inspired by a Nirvana song (re: the Beck ad.)




There are some more comics in the anthology but, with the exception of Millennium Snow and Vampire Knight, I hadn't read them. Technically, there was one that I read but not from the magazine. In 2007 or 2008 I became obsessed with Nana. The story was essentially the lives of two young women, both named Nana. Though the same age, one was more mature than the other, having came from a tough background; and the other is more naive, having been spoiled by her parents. I just love this story and love Ai Yazawa's art and fashion.









That lighter in the girl's, Layla/Reira, hand belongs to the boy, Shin. It's designed by Vivienne Westwood and I want one really, really bad. And I don't even smoke. I don't know how to get one. All I know is that they are rare and that they're pretty expensive. Back to Nana, the random thing that I loved about it was that each chapter either started or ended with "Hey, Nana." It makes me nostalgic for some reason.

I think that's enough blogging about magazines and comics.

Another One Bites the Dust

Finished another chapter. It always feels good when that happens. I'm still worried about the overall word count; it could go past 200,000 words. -.-

And... the touch pad on my laptop died. I have to use the mouse to my Wacom tablet.

Creativity

Just wanted to update this blog for some reason. Is that something that other bloggers go through? I also want to update the design for it; a different header or something.

In story news, I'm almost done finishing one chapter. It's another flashback chapter- the second one out of a planned seven --but it's just as long as the other flashback chapter. I'm not even finished and the word count is at least 19,000. When I finish this, I know that I'll be doing a lot of editing. Chances are, most of it is unnecessary details. Whenever I'm stuck writing, I just force myself to write and so it'll be a lot of rambling going on in that chapter. That's what the first version of The Poisoned Apple was like; lots of unnecessary details. I'm just hoping to finish the first draft at the end of November like I set for myself.

But, I don't feel forced to write the story as much as I used to. And I'm thinking of creative side projects for the story. I know an aspiring author probably shouldn't be entertaining the thought of their story being published, but I can't help it. Some of the project ideas I have for The Girl Who Ate the Poisoned Apple are a diorama illustrating some of the scenes-- stolen from Solane Crosley's idea for her first book --a teaser trailer, and a simple influence collage for the story. Not anything huge, but it makes me excited to finish the story.

Ciao

Dangers of Starting a New Book + Excerpt

Yesterday, instead of working on The Girl Who Ate the Poisoned Apple, I started writing on a new story, Summer Fun That Never Ended (hooray for long titles!). I started writing it because my brother was using my computer and, instead of simply working on The Poisoned Apple and writing it down on notebook paper, I decided to write Summer Fun. I only got far in writing on one sheet of notebook paper- back and front. I wonder how much it is on the computer. Anyways, it's a bit of a danger 'cause that's usually the sign of me wanting to start another story. I'm trying not to do that now. Lucky for me, I've been working off and on on The Poisoned Apple for a year now, so the characters are firmly in my head. They're begging me to finish the story and I'm looking forward to writing about them. I'm on chapter fourteen now. It's a flashback chapter for two of my vampires (when they were human). I'm almost done with it.

I decided to post an excerpt from The Poisoned Apple. Don't know why sense I'm the only one reading this blog XD. It's from the first chapter, "The House of the Uninvited"; a chapter that might have to be chopped into two or at least get rid of the heavy exposition in some parts. Here it is, in its unedited glory:

Rae had not cried at her grandmother's funeral; not that anyone had noticed.
Regardless, there had been enough tears to pass around. Her grandmother's friends cried. Sparks shed tears from one eye; the other having long gone missing. Opal White had cried the loudest, as was expected. The fact that she had worn a slightly more formal version of her usual attire- she wore outfits of clashing animal prints and bespectacled, gaudy sunglasses -made her cries even more noticeable. Prudish yet courteous Mr. Rogers, who doubled as the deceased woman's attorney, wept. Even the sensible and analytical Arthur Pryor had cried; though, the constant glares on his thick, bifocal glasses had made it difficult to tell.

That's all folks. Back to writing... or surfing the internet...

Wonderwoman

I am Wonder Woman. I finished another chapter today. It's the shortest one. They've been getting shorter. My longest chapter is 30 + pages (in the very first draft it was at 40 pages). The problem with that chapter was that I was writing from the point when one of my characters was a few weeks old until the time of their death. I'm gonna shorten it some more so that it only focuses on the short period of time before his and his brother's deaths. I think this will also make the characters more engaging (can't think of a better word).

But I think why my chapters feel so shorter now (i.e. 6 - 13 pages) is that I need to do research, so I'm leaving things out. The chapter I just finished was supposed to have a conversation about souls. It does have one, but it doesn't feel convincing. I want to read up on people's different views about souls. The chapter before that dealt with rehab.

But of course you're not supposed to look at page number, only word count.

Anyways, signing off.

Randomness: My nephew (7 years old) sees a copy of Dead Until Dark on my bed (I've never finished reading it but was using it to cover my drink). His response:

"Oh my God. Another vampire book?"

Hungry Models Eat Plot Holes

I wonder how published authors feel when they read a copy of their newly printed book-- or even when they're doing other things --and it hits them; there's a major plot hole in the story. What do they do? Do they bring it up, even though it's probably too late, or do they stay mum about it? What if a reader points it out?

It doesn't have to necessarily be a plot hole; it could be something that they realized wouldn't work or could work. For instance, I found two incidences of possible "plot holes" in my growing manuscript. Don't want to say what they are, but one was more of something that I realized probably wouldn't make sense and the other I could use to help foreshadowing. That probably didn't make much sense? XD

Anyways, I've finally got my hands on The Hunger Games, as well as its sequel Catching Fire. I haven't gotten far in the first book, yet but what I'm reading is really good. I've already got a soft spot for Peeta, the baker's son, as well as Rue who I already know is going to die in Katniss-- the protagonist --arms. I'll probably cry. But I've read that they're going to make it into a movie. I don't mind who plays Katniss, but I'm a bit put off with the suggestions for Rue; she has dark brown skin and hair, so a minority actress could play her (black, Hispanic, Indian, etc.). But people seem to forget that. It's like it's going to be another The Last Airbender. Anyways, great book. It's kind of my treat for getting me to write more.

And I'm watching the premiere of America's Next Top Model. They upped the stakes; this time around, they switched from a spread in Seventeen Magazine to one in Italian Vogue. I'm no fashionista, so I don't know how big of an improvement (if any) it is. In any case, how many people audition for the show? Every cycle, there's always "returns" to the show; people who auditioned and/or made it and now return for that season. Whatever, I'm rooting for the weird one, as I always do.

Book Cover

This is embarrassing. Found this in my file. This was from when I was into creating fake book covers. This was created when the title of my story was Boys Will Be Vampires. Yes, I'm writing a story about vampires, but it's not a paranormal romance nor is it a thriller/horror; it's a slice of life story. Anyways, I changed the title because it sounded like a comedy and the story became melancholy and nostalgic (to which I changed the title to The Place Where You Used to Live to finally The Girl Who Ate the Poisoned Apple).

I thought the cover was the shit back then. Now looking at it, it's very feminine; I don't know any guy that would pick this one up. And the spelling on the back is bad; I misspelled "sociable" and worse, the character's last name (which I'm thinking about changing). Plus, the summary is stupid.

Anyways... time to write.

Project: Poisoned Apple due November 30, 2010

Lost in a Daydream of Blue

September marks the month I started writing my book, tentatively entitled The Girl Who Ate the Poisoned Apple. I wouldn't take it seriously until mid November, during my high of writing another story for NANOWRIMO. Long story short, in two months I had written 130,000 plus words. That was a HUGE problem; there were only 14 chapters. Out of a possible 40. The average book is 50,000 to 70,000 words. Agents don't like 100,000 word books from first time authors.

So, I panicked and stopped working on it until April of this year and started a rewrite. This time, I had an outline ready and, although the chapters are still too many, I wasn't rambling on as I did in the first draft.

But I'm procrastinating. The method I used in writing the partial draft of the first book was to write at least 2,000 words a day. That's not working this time around. I've got eleven completed chapters and more to go. So far, I've been writing this book for a year. A bit embarrassing, considering it's a slice-of-life/ coming of age story.

Thus, this blog was born; to remind myself that I need to finish this story. I'm setting a deadline for myself-- as I should have done before --for November 30, 2010.

Because of a detailed outline, I'm confident that I can finish the rough draft, then take a breather before editing the hell out of it. All I have to do is to remind myself that the first draft is the skeleton, the bare bones. The meat comes from the edits and other drafts.

With that, I need to fix this blog. Make it more interesting... But I can't 'cause I have to go write.