Oh No! NaNo's Starting To Wind Down

NOVEMBER 11^TH – SUNDAY

So I posted my last update super late again, but this time it wasn’t because I was slacking on my posting of the chapter. I had both of my new chapters up at about 11am. This meant I had an hour to post my weekly update here. That should be plenty of time for normal bloggers. Not so much for me since I’m so long-winded. However, since I’ve been writing these diary entries at the end of each day all I had to do was copy from Word and paste here on Blogger.

And then all hell broke loose.

Ever since January’s start of the weekly updates and new formatting I’ve instituted, I’ve been slowly learning HTML code. For almost a month now I’ve been writing only exclusively in HTML because it was easier and faster to write the code ahead of time; instead of going back through and finding all the places to add all my links and all of those yellow underlines so you get more info when hovering over with your mouse. For about a month this tactic worked. I thought I was slowly mastering HTML.

Boy, was I ever wrong! This past week when I tried posting everything I wrote at least half of it got erased because some line in one of the codes was off, and everything written after that bad code got deleted. I battled for almost four hours – Hubby sleepily rubbing my back to help calm me – before finally getting the post up. Didn’t even bother announcing via twitter or my Facebook account. I was too ticked and I didn’t have time. I was already running late for work.

By the time I got home, celestialTyrant was hanging out with Hubby and we stayed up until 11pm playing Super Mario Bros. Wii. So, the day that is normally fantastic for my writing availability ends up being a day I crash my writing streak. *sigh*

NOVEMBER 12^TH – MONDAY

Hubby coerced me in to watching Highschool of the Dead before work. So there goes three-some hours I watched TV instead of writing. I then did my shift, which ended up being longer than it’s supposed to be because no one else took out trash the entire work day and so the trash bags were piled up higher than the container could handle, and the bags were stuffed heavier than they could handle, so I’m doing a balancing act trying to get these bags to the back. Meanwhile, at least two bags ripped on me when I tried to lift them. Awesome.

By the time I got home all I wanted was a shower, late night dinner, and watch my Monday night shows.

Therefore, I go from a super-awesome writing streak to yet again going days without writing. I need to seriously tweak some things in my life if I’m going to get a proper writing rhythm down.

NOVEMBER 13^TH – TUESDAY

After wasting my Monday evening checking in on Facebook and DeviantArt in search for the winners of the Hey Arnold Halloween contest, I started off the day nervously checking once more.

Sadly, as predicted – especially catching all those stupid typos – I didn’t even place. I’m hoping to one day read all the other entrants in the contest, since I’ve now seen all the pictures entered. Sadly, ChibiSunnie didn’t place with her picture, which I thought showed so much more attention to detail and creativity than any of the other drawings – no offense to the other contestants. However, the winner and runner up were very well executed in their own right. I think they demonstrated more mastery over the art than Chibi – cleaner; more polished.

Here’s the runner up:

And here’s the winner: 

And here’s a refresher on what Chibi’s looks like:

Although Chibi didn’t place with her picture, she still took SECOND PLACE WITH HER STORY! XD Hazzah!

For a girl who claimed she couldn’t write prose; for a girl who never wrote prose outside of school work; for a girl who never wrote any fanfiction before; for that girl to get second place WHEN I DIDN’T PLACE AT ALL…. now THAT is saying something! And it should be saying it pretty loud and clear to all of you self-doubting writers.

NEVER DOUBT YOUR SKILL TO TELL A COMPELLING STORY!!!! 

You are always going to be your worst critique and doubt how good you are. However, you’ll never truly know until you get those words out there and see how people react to it.

SO STOP DOUBTING YOURSELF YOU SILLY PEOPLE!

Also… this story holds the lesson of

“LISTEN TO ME WHEN I TELL YOU THAT YOU’RE GOOD, DANG IT!” :-D

Yes, that goes for ALL my writers – as well as my readers here that might also write, but haven’t let me know so I could read their works. *hint, hint*

But there’s also a flipside to this lesson. And that is how to bounce back from rejection.

Yes, I was “graded” by “my peers” – the administrators of the Save The Jungle Movie Hey Arnold group – and not a publisher or professional editor. Yes, my career didn’t sink or swim with this contest. Yes, my story wouldn’t be “otherwise published” or “made money” if I had won. And finally, No, Craig Bartlett – the show’s creator – was not a “secret guest judge” for the contest and therefore my lack of winning was not him telling me that I suck at writing episodic-style stories. So, aside from not getting my name announced and not receiving the autographed book – which I would have given to Chibi anyway if we actually did collab on her gourd scarecrow story – nothing changed in my world.

But not winning still stings. Knowing that at least two other stories were better than mine – when I only know of five submitted stories total, including mine – is a bitter taste. Although having my name announced as a winner isn’t a groundbreaking achievement, it still could have been. My name could have finally been out there as a fanfic writer. I could have actually gotten more of a following. And there’s that nagging “what could I have done better if I had time to proofread” question – as well as the “should I have gone with one of the seven other ideas bouncing in my head” quandary.

I’ll admit that I tried to psych myself up. I tried to tell myself to just focus on my NaNo story now that I knew the results. I tried to tell myself that it didn’t really matter because I still have a faithful following regardless. I tried to tell myself that I could just start breeding plotbunnies for the Christmas contest coming up next month. Yet I still got in my writing funk and couldn’t shake it. Rejection – no matter how tiny – stings and all writers have to learn how to deal with it in their own right.

But enough moping! I say we celebrate those who properly beat me out of my prize!

So here is a reminder of Chibi’s amazingly awesome, secondplace earning, first ever fanfic!

But let’s have a drum roll for the fantastic winner of the writing portion of the contest.

Well, now that I’ve done almost an entire blog post just about the contest…. Let’s get back to the NaNo updates, shall we?

As I mentioned above, I was in a funk. I TRIED to concentrate on my NaNo story, but I just couldn’t really get in the mood to write. I punched out about 600 words – which is better than the NOTHING I’ve done the previous two days – and then stalled.

Part of the stall, however wasn’t because of the funk. It’s because I got to a part where I need to write a prophecy. I know prophecies tend to have significant years and that certain significant events usually occur on significant anniversaries of other significant events. All this said; I went to my handy dandy word document where I wrote down the backstory timeline of the world of Albion – well, the current era of Albion at least. But as I read through it I realized I based my dates too much on the ages I wanted key players to be when main events happened, but didn’t put any thought in the years between the events. For instance, the events of the main story take place 73 years after the main villain is born, 33 years after the cornerstone event, and 26 years after the main antagonist is born. These main events should definitely have more of a significance in the years passed between them. I tweaked and tweaked and tweaked for about two hours and still wasn’t content in how everything turned out. Such a waste of a day!

NOVEMBER 14^TH – WEDNESDAY

I just could NOT get started on my writing again until I had that timeline figured out. It was driving me bonkers! Working and re-working the timeline in my word document just wasn’t working. I needed something more visual than that.

So I got some of the multi-part continuous printer paper that we have stored with our D&D resources. I only had four sheets to work with, so I divided the full sheet in to four rows and 27 columns – each column just barely wide enough for half a sticky note. Although I knew most spaces would be blank, some of the events were moveable by a single year or two, so I needed exactly the count of 100 years. I then wrote down all of the important points of the backstory on half-widths of sticky note, and proceeded to place them on my gridded out timeline.

I started with the timeline I had after fussing with it yesterday. I then tweaked and adjusted so years were more significant to each other and people didn’t seem insanely old in the grand scheme of things. Creating world backstory is HARD WORK! Sheesh.

The construction of the grid, plus writing out the events, and shifting everything until I was satisfied took a total of about two hours! Either way, I feel accomplished and I think this visual representation was a LOT easier for me to navigate so I could progress faster. I’ll have to keep that in mind for future endeavors – although I sort of always knew that… I mean, I need to stop and draw nearly every character I’ve ever created to get them fully in my head. Same for house layouts. When I did the Halloween story last month I stopped for a few hours so I could research normal layouts for rowhouses, then take the rough layout of the Pataki home – which ALWAYS changes if you pay attention, I don’t think even the creators knew the layout – and finally compiled my own layout for the Old McKinney house. Even though the reader didn’t really know much of the layout, *I* needed to in order to continue my writing. u_u boy am I pathetic…. :-P

Well, I sat waiting for Hubby at work – similar to what I’m forced to do on Sundays when he does the price changes – and in my two hour wait I managed to finish off chapter 4. So even if I’m still over 9000 words behind, I’m at least hitting my secondary goal of at least one chapter completed each week. It’s only Wednesday, though. Perhaps I can get a second one done again.

NOVEMBER 15^TH – THURSDAY

The Great American Smokeout.

Once a year in November, Americans quit tobacco use for at least 24-hours in an attempt to have it kickstart a lifetime of being tobacco free. As the Wellness Champ of my store, one of my job duties required me to do SOMETHING to promote the day. Thus I spent about four hours of my own time to organize. That’s my OWN TIME, unpaid, at home, while CT was visiting last night. I put together Quit Kits with a whole bunch of information and goodies for people attempting to quit today, I made a promotional poster, and I “laminated” some anti-smoking posters using transparent contact paper. This resulted in me listening to the guys while they played Mario Party 8, but I couldn’t join in… :-( It also resulted in me not writing another word for the rest of the night. So add another 400 to the tally of how far behind I am.

As for today, I woke up bright and early to get ready – dressed professionally and whatnot. I set up one of those sample carts they have at grocery stores; I plastered it with the anti-smoking promotional posters and the Quit Kits. I called it the “Propaganda Cart”. I then stood by Customer Service all day while every single smoking employee avoided me like the plague. I did give away seven of those Quit Kits to customers, so I guess it wasn’t a total wash.

By the time Hubby and I both finished with work, did some quick shopping, and picked up Chinese food – Hubby had a craving and some extra cash in his paycheck - it was roughly seven when we got home. We ate dinner, watched our Thursday shows, and I didn’t write a friggen word! So much for catching up.

NOVEMBER 16^TH – FRIDAY

Both Hubby and I had to be at work bright and early today, but I did notice before heading in that I had a Facebook message from one of the admins of the Hey Arnold group that hosted the Halloween contest. She sent me the grade sheets five of the admins filled out for my story; even though PinkLotus27 kept saying there were nine judges. Unfortunately, I had to wait until I got back home at about four before I could see what I got. I averaged out to having roughly an 84% on my story. Not too shabby in the grand scheme of things, but still not good enough to have placed. Now I’m super curious what Chibi got for her story, as well as what she and Chopfe got on their drawings.

The thing that really got me though were the conflicting comments. How am I supposed to improve on stuff like that? Some people told me that everyone was in character for the most part, but I slid Arnold out of character a little here and there – which I’m inclined to believe; I’m horrible with keeping the stupid football head in character. Others told me that I had everyone dead on the entire time and that it was like they were reading an episode. Then there were some comments stating that I did the transitions perfectly, and others who said they were a bit “robotic” and “rushed” – whatever that means.

Another thing that got me was that I lost points in originality! The main reason why? Because I purposely wrote the story to play out like an episode. I ended up losing points in originality because of that! One of the judges even commented that I lost originality points because I wrote an urban legend which “has been done”…. Um… the rules said “Halloween-themed, ghost story, or URBAND LEGEND”. Since I purposely avoided them doing something on Halloween specifically – a refreshing twist I would think – I therefore HAD to do either a ghost story or urban legend in order to fit the criteria. I then lost points for it? Worst part? I thought my story was a GHOST STORY and not an urban legend at all. :-P

I do have to say though, that Hubby was adorable. Yeah, I was a bit bummed out when I saw exactly what my marks were – and the comments that went with them. However, I tried shaking it off. Again, this is an inconsequential fandom contest. If I can’t brush off this “rejection” how can I handle publishers telling me no? Hubby on the other hand – who hasn’t read the story yet, mind you – started raging. “What are these people’s criteria for judging? Why is grammar part of the grading when most of these people speak Spanish? How can some of them say something like ‘You did great with your transitions,’ and then give you 14 out of 20 in that category? It makes no sense! How can they possibly think your story wasn’t original? Who else thought to write like an episode? That’s unique!” The overly protective and defensive comments continued. I think he got more riled up than I did. I kept trying to remind him that he hadn’t read the story yet and so most of the comments COULD be very valid, but he wasn’t hearing that. He’s adorable and I love his support!

Anyway, after the Contest Grading Raging, Hubby and I quickly got ready for our Vampire LARP. I personally wanted to skip it since I was still so far behind on my NaNo writing, but we haven’t played in about three weeks, and since I was in the fight scene we were finishing today if I didn’t attend I would sort of screw it up for everybody. Especially seeing as how “everybody” ended up being Hubby, his BFF who runs the game, and Omnibladestrike. There was no way they’d be able to do anything with any fewer players.

Considering the last time we played I sat around twiddling my thumbs for about an hour or so while we were waiting on Omni to show up – time I COULD have spent working on that Halloween story – I decided to bring my netbook with me this time. Perhaps I could get some writing done.

Nope. For the first time like…. EVER… when it came to LARP we actually started up more-or-less on time. Yes, we again had to wait on Omni, but BFF had something planned for one-on-one with my character and his, so we just played that out.

I did manage to type out forty words before he decided to do that quick scene…. So I got SOMETHING typed today. Does that count?

NOVEMBER 17^TH – SATURDAY

Another semi-worthless day.

Did my normal wake up early for work thing. Got out of work super early – 11:30am – and hung out with Hubby and the guys. If you haven’t noticed, it’s now become a thing for the guys to crash my home on Saturdays. Since Cyhyr and her boyfriend can no longer make their weekly Monday visits it’s nice to have this new weekly social get together – even if I miss out on a lot of it due to work and them playing Magic.

Anyway, I caught up on my massive amount of Facebook notifications – since I hadn’t checked FB since reading the grade sheets – ate, and waited around downstairs for a little bit. Since Omni and CT were both at the house we were gonna continue our Super Mario Bros. Wii game and try to beat it today. Instead they Magic-ed.

At about 1:30 I gave up and went upstairs to write. I managed a little over 900 words before passing out. Whoops. Well, fully refreshed, I woke up when I got called back downstairs so we could play Mario. That lasted until about 11pm. OMG, I’m so awesome with this “Don’t be sociable for just one month; just write, everyone will understand” thing, aren’t I? :-P So….. yeah…. So much for catching up on that word count today as well.

NOVEMBER 18^TH – SUNDAY

Alright, so, admittingly, considering how long this one post is, if I did give up on the diary blogging and just stayed offline throughout November – like I do in April – I probably would be a lot farther in my story. I just spent an hour updating this blog post, and I’ll probably spend another hour fighting with the formatting like I did last week.

Anyway, I had a sandwich and a nearly-full mug of coffee chillin’ next to me first thing this morning. So I once again attempted to conquer my story. Especially since this boring thing is four chapters down and STILL in the exposition phase. We haven’t even started the epic tale of them searching for the jewel shards, meeting the antagonist, or finding out the secrets of Connor’s past.

I did manage to at least tear through today’s 1667 words while I was awake via shots of my mug of coffee. Woke up at 2am to bring Hubby in to work and have been up since! Sheesh! To be fair, though, between this blog update and a lot of time doing more research – I really need to stop doing that - I only wrote for about two to three hours in the six I had available. Still, that just demonstrates that if I get my act together and find two uninterrupted hours I should be able to at least avoid falling farther behind. I mean, if I keep up the pace of 1667 words per day from now on out I’ll only hit 33,487 words, but it’s better than stopping at my current 16,513… right?

I’m just super nervous about this upcoming week. The house is a disaster. There’s crap EVERYWHERE. The dishes are all in the sink. So I have at least one full day of cleaning to do, but I’m working every day until Friday – yup, that includes working Thanksgiving. We’re hosting Thanksgiving on Wednesday, which means I have Monday and Tuesday to clean – like THAT’S gonna happen! @_@ We also need to fold and put away laundry as well as packing for our trip to PA for Thanksgiving with my family. We’re going to attempt to head down to PA after I’m done with work on Thursday. We’ll probably miss the Thanksgiving dinner my mom is making, but we can have leftovers! Then I’ll spend time with my family on Friday and probably won’t have any writing time. Saturday is the extended family Thanksgiving gathering. Sunday we’re heading home. That’s pretty much an entire week that I don’t foresee any writing time! I’m hoping to at least finish Chapter 5 so I have that new chapter for you folks next Sunday, but who knows.

So, I guess I just need you guys to wish me luck and we’ll see how well I do next week.

For my fellow Americans – I sound like such a politician – I wish you a very happy, healthy, and safe Thanksgiving. 

Catching Up and Hating Halloween Stories

Boy do I officially suck! I was so all over the map lately. When I posted my “temporary post” last week I never anticipated that I would never go back to replace it! So I guess this is Catch Up Week.

So let’s backtrack and review the month so far.
October 1-4 Hubby and I were on a mini-vacation to celebrate our one year wedding anniversary. October 3rd I became an official member of Ali Luke’s Writer’s Huddle. The first week of October I also decided to participate in a Hey Arnold Halloween contest over on DeviantArt. I now sort of regret that decision….But first… Writer’s Huddle…

October 8th and 9th I sort of tinkered with my Writer’s Huddle profile and checked out the site.
Wednesday the 10th I had the day off and Hubby was at work. The house was still clean from our mad scrub down before our trip, so I had no chores. A perfect set up for me to get lost for hours in writing. Instead I got lost for hours on Writer’s Huddle. I ended up spending a full 7hrs straight on the Huddle’s forums, reading and responding.

Seven hours straight! As in, I didn’t even stop to eat….

I am such a forums junkie. I have always been this way with every forum I’ve been on. I make sure I’m a prominent presence on them all. I lose HOURS just reading, responding, and refreshing to see if there’s any new posts. I lost hours at the Huddle, I lost hours on the X-Men RPG, I lost hours on the short-lived Hey Arnold forum, I lost hours on the forum for the webcomic Game Destroyers, and I lost hours on the forums of the MMO “DragonFable”. What most people do on Tumblr, I do on forums. Ali herself had to stop by my main facebook account and “yell” for me to get off the forums and go eat something!

So anyway, that was Wednesday.

Thursday I spent almost literally the whole day mowing our stupid lawn with that stupid push mower. I started wearing a pedometer at the beginning of the month and push myself to get to that 10,000 steps per day mark. It’s relatively easy to do while working a Deli. Anyway, this 10k steps goal is because it’s the rough equivalent to walking 5 miles a day which in and of itself is like working out the 1/2hr a day recommended. Well, I hit that 10k mark just mowing my friggen lawn! In fact, I hit about 11k mowing and 13k the whole day. That means I walked over 6miles on Thursday! I was in NO mindset to write anything that day.

Friday was the bi-weekly get together for the vampire LARP. So I didn’t really write anything more that day when I only had about four hours at home, but I did talk things over with Cyhyr. It didn’t really help matters because it was just broad generalities when it came to writing and NaNo coming up next month.

Saturday I researched TONS of urban legends and ghost stories, as well as watch all of the “halloweeny” Hey Arnold episodes to really try to nail down what I wanted to do for the contest. I have a word document filled with notes and bullet points. Nothing seems to really work though. Nothing seems to feel “natural” if you get what I mean.

Last Sunday I wrote to ChibiSunnie to see if she could help me out. I also sent a note to my sleeping husband for him to respond to once he was awake. I was really hoping that they could help me really figure out what I could do for this contest.

I’m trying to keep the story True-To-Show. Therefore I want to keep them nine and I want them to follow the traditional formula used for the “creepy” episodes:

• Kids are bored/at a sleep-over 
• A ghost story is told (usually by Arnold’s Grandfather – or in one case Arnold after his grandfather told HIM the story) 
• The kids go to check out to see if the story is true 
• The kids find “proof” that the story is true, but the “proof” is logically explained away 
• Everyone is convinced the ghost story isn’t true, but then the ghost reveals itself to the viewer – and in some cases, one of the characters as well. 

 My main issue is that I don’t know how to create a ghost story. I had a handful of ideas bouncing around, but none of them seemed to work.

• Urban take on the Blair Witch 
• The kids hear about the Witch of Elk Island, and it turns out to be the author. Not sure if I like this though since there's already the Wheezin' Ed myth about the island and I have to set up that this story takes place before the "Crabby Author" episode so Arnold doesn't realize it's Agatha.  
• There's a run-down industrial district with a shack snuggled in the middle of all the buildings. So the legend goes that a witch lives there. The companies tried to buy her out, but she refused to move, so they built around her and she cursed them all, which is why the buildings are now all vacant. Little "eh" about this one too. 
• Regardless of which angle I take with this, I sort of want it to play out like "Ghost Bride" in which the "proof" is just people pranking, and I want Wolfgang and Ludwig to team up to scare Arnold's group. Then the real witch will scare the 5th graders as they laugh about how the 4th graders were so easy to scare. 
• I dunno, I’m just not really feeling these… 
• The school is haunted 
• The school hosts a haunted house for halloween and the kids hear a tale about a janitor (or something) haunting the school. 
•  Again sort of want the 5th graders to prank Arnold et. al and then come across the real thing. 
• I sort of want this to go along the lines of the halloween episode of Ouran High School Host Club with the bravery test. 
• The kids have been at the school after hours already, so would they really fall for a "ghost haunts the school" if they haven't witnessed this before???? 
• I think this is the most plausible to write…. 
•  Haunted Hay Ride 
• Arnold's class takes a field trip to a farm and it just so happens to be Arnie's 
• Who is going to tell the ghost story about Arnie's farm/town? Doesn't seem like something Arnie would do.... 
• There was a hay ride in "Arnold visits Arnie" and a carriage ride in "The Headless Cabbie"... would it be too overdone if I did hay ride again???? Or is it just "The Haunted Farm"? 
• Not sure what the "haunting" would be about... 
• Not really feeling this tale…. 
•  The Midnight Man 
• Was going to do a parody of The Midnight Channel from Persona 4, but couldn't figure out how. 
• The Midnight Man is a Pagan game. 
• You turn off all the lights, light a candle, write your full name on a paper, prick your finger, and let a drop of blood soak in. Place the paper with your name on the floor in front of the door. Knock on the door 22 times in time with the ticking of the clock. The 22nd knock must occur at 12am. Open the door, blow out the candle, close the door and immediately relight the candle. Now the goal is to "survive" until 3:33am by avoiding the Midnight Man. You know he's near when it gets chilly, there's a low whisper, the candle goes out, and he appears in front of you. You must relight the candle within 10 seconds to ward him off, otherwise throw down a circle of salt around yourself and stay within it until 3:33. 
• Checking to see if the Ghost Bride is true was sort of a dare and so doing stupid dares like this and Bloody Mary seem to be in-canon. I just need a better way to do this. No 9 year old will prick their finger and run around the house with a lit candle to avoid being tortured to death.... 
• I could possibly do something with this idea…. 
•  The Escaped Convict In The Woods 
• Based off of how we freaked out this one girl in my Girl Scout troop when we all stayed at a hostel on a white water rafting trip. 
• My girl scout troop (split in two vans) were driving down the highway towards the hostel and turned off in to this rural town. The hostel was along the Appalachian Trail, and so we drove down these rural back roads. Meanwhile, a thunderstorm came in, making it mad dark even though it was only about 6pm in May. That’s when we turned off the main roads and on to a well-driven dirt path in dense woods. The “driveway” to the hostel was easily 2 miles long, and windy, and dirt/gravel, and flanked by insanely dense forest that created a tightly-knit canopy. The canopy blocked out even MORE light, making the drive pitch black except for when the lightning struck. 
• We pass through a large, stone wall/fence that lined the entrance to the hostel’s property. The wall looked worn down – as if it were built in the 1800s and never cared for. As we continued down the road we passed a burnt down utility shed, but the stone skeleton of the structure almost looked like it could have been a mausoleum. Two other girls and I started joking about how the building used to house a vampire. As our discussion started to freak out another girl in our van, we switched the conversation over to the more-likely scenario of "have you heard about the escaped serial killer that's supposedly hiding out in the Appalachian?" The lightning flashes, “things” (tree limbs, animals, whatever) moving in the woods with the limited visibility, and the feeling that we were in “the middle of nowhere” just made everything creepier. 
• We get to the hostel and it’s this insanely old farmhouse that used to be part of the Underground Railroad. We enter the hostel through the basement/lower front door. Because of how old the hostel was, going through that door took us through this long, narrow hallway lined with rock walls and an unfinished floor. Once we climbed the stairs to the main portion of the hostel it looked like a warm, cozy farm house. Very welcoming. But up until that point it was MAD CREEPY. 
• I was going to switch up the creepy farm house for a family cottage/cabin in the woods. Grandpa Phil never took the boys there before because when he got the boarding house his twin sister Mitzi got the cabin. Now that Arnold helped the twins reconcile, Mitzi allowed Phil to use the cabin. 
• I wanted to have at least Helga, if not also Curly, with the group pranking everyone a la “Ghost Bride” episode, but I couldn’t figure out a reason they’d be out in the middle of nowhere. Arnold wouldn’t have invited either of them on his sleepover/camp-out with the rest of the guys. 
• Chibi suggested an overnight class trip to get everyone to a hostel, but then I’d have too many characters to worry about. It’s a great idea and I might use it someday, but this feels like it would easily lend itself to a multi-chapter story and I don’t have enough time to write that much. 
• This, among other things that I thought of but didn’t list here, is nice and creepy in person because the ATMOSPHERE is what’s creepy. It gets people thinking, doubting, and freaking out. However, there really isn’t a story here…. 

Pretty much all I’ve done this past week was mentally try to figure out what to write. Every free moment of the day was spent bouncing around all of the above ideas – plus others that I’ve dropped – to see what I can do with any of them. I’ve watched Hey Arnold episodes to get in the mood to write. I’ve researched more scary stories. I also tried using a technique I learned via the Writer’s Huddle forum: The Secret to Writing 4,000 Words A Day. Namely: Daydream whenever possible.

Oh, and on Monday, October 15th I officially set up my NaNo profile. So go ahead and send me a Writing Buddy request if you’re NaNo-ing too! 

Anyway, here I am, 6 days from the contest deadline and I STILL haven’t even decided on what to write yet. I have no clue if I’m going to make the contest deadline, let alone polish the story up enough to actually win. And since I’m spending all month working out the logistics of my Halloween story I haven’t continued playing Fable, which I was trying to finish so I was more prepared with my “base story” for NaNo. So I’m flying blind there too. Still haven’t really figured anything out – including a name – in regards to my female lead for the Super Massive Crossover Hybrid Story. 

On a sidenote, Chibi linked me to an AWESOME interview one of the Hey Arnold fandom members had with the show’s creator Craig Bartlett! It’s two hours long, but I listened to it while doing house work, so I suggest you take the time to listen too! You can find it here. Soooooo much awesome stuff there! 

Chibi and I are actually super excited because of two things in regards to scripts/TJM. 1) Craig’s scripts would be roughly 2pages/minute of screen-time, which means where I was with our fanscript was actually about right-on time-wise, instead of INSANELY LONG like we originally thought. 2) Craig just sort of thought “The Green-eyed people can live in a place like that and even have a hidden city that’s probably in the crater of a dormant volcano.” When I had to figure out where the GEP hidden city was I placed it inside a dormant volcano! So both the volcano thing and the “on the write page count track” thing really made us think that perhaps our fanscript was kinda spot on! So now we’re rejuvenated about the whole endeavor and will try to pick it back up again come January. In the meantime, Chibi has the script thus far and is figuring out any tweaks we should do and where to go from where we left off. I’m just SUPER interested in getting this done and sending it to Craig as a “thanks for the inspiration” sort of thing. Sure, he doesn’t read fanfiction – and probably makes super sure not to read TJM fanfiction to avoid being influenced in case he ever got the chance to make the movie – but maybe…. maybe he’ll read ours if we snail-mail it……….. 

Speaking of Craig Bartlett acknowledgement and praise, I want to give a shout out to the awesome Chopfe who excitedly posted this status on October 12:

Chopfe: Craig Bartlett, the creator of the Nickelodeon cartoon HEY ARNOLD, liked my picture of Crime Inyy. There are no words to describe how awesome that is.

And here’s his awesome picture that got such high praise: 

 

And so now I’m off to again ponder how I’m going to manage this story before this upcoming Saturday… wish me luck. Any advice would be welcome.

October = Super Writing Month?

As predicted, my vacation got in the way of me actually doing any sort of writing. That’s not to say that October is going to be a slow writing month. Au contraire, I think I’m going to be awfully busy writing this month!

Let’s start off with some super awesome excellent news. Ali Luke is going to be dropping the “un” from her title of “unofficial mentor”! Well, so to speak. A little over a week ago I received the Aliventures newsletter. She announced a new e-book she wrote – I instantly downloaded it since it’s free to newsletter subscribers – as well as the re-opening of her online writing workshop Writer’s Huddle. As much as I would like to participate in this – and thought about joining since I discovered Ali earlier this year – I still couldn’t afford the $20 a month to join. Literally as I was calculating how I could save to participate the NEXT time Ali opened up Writer’s Huddle I get an email from her. She offered me a free membership to Writer’s Huddle!!!! I guess it was an unintentional anniversary gift since the site re-opened the day after my wedding anniversary!

Now, I don’t particularly like to advertise to the world that I keep getting this free stuff from Ali –her novel and now a slot at Writer’s Huddle – because I don’t want my readers to harass her in to giving them freebies as well, or otherwise assume she’d give them out. The girl does need to make money, so these freebies are just AMAZING to get as gifts! Therefore, the only reason I AM talking about these gifts from Ali is because I am incredibly thankful and I want to make sure she knows. Plus, they are kind of big deals with regards to my own writing, so I consider them relevant.

So, to again show my thanks to Ali and to really try to help her out for her generosity, please, if you have any interest and the spare cash, sign up for Writer’s Huddle! I’m LycoRogue over there too. I haven’t really had time yet to really sink my teeth in to everything available, but if Ali’s involved I’m sure it’s worth it!

Personally, I’m using her advice/tutorials as well as the forum to accomplish two things.

1. I’m trying to revive the writing motivation and discipline I had with Script Frenzy. Granted, I didn’t really get far in the actual SCRIPT, but having the forum and other people to work with made a world of difference my first year at Script Frenzy. And this year the writing discipline took shape as me writing a chapter for my story. If all goes according to plan, the info and forums will both help me work on my current Hey Arnold story, as well as maybe help with my original story about Amara.
• Apparently Writer’s Huddle really helps out people wanting to participate in NaNoWriMo, so let’s see how that works out. I just might participate this year…
2. I’m hoping to find out information not solely on how to write, but how to make profit off of it. Perhaps on the forums I’ll make the professional connections I need to one day go from amateur writer to professional author.

So here’s hoping everything works out according to plan.

Big news number two is that I’m finally done with Amara’s backstory. At least, I’m done writing it so far. I need Hubby to look it over and see what he thinks about everything. I put a LOT of detail in to her sixteenth year – the year with the big life event I just thought of a few months ago. The rest of her life has maybe a paragraph per five years. I might add more detail to the other years, or I might take out some detail with regards to the “new” life event. Not sure yet. Again, we’ll see what Hubby says. So Super Writing Month might FINALLY have Amara’s backstory posted! Whoot!

Big news number three is that – depending on how this month goes and what happens with Writer’s Huddle – I just might join NaNoWriMo for the first time this year. If I do then this will be the first year I do both Script Frenzy and NaNoWriMo. I doubt I’ll achieve the novel writing goal – since it’s been two-plus years and I still haven’t even hit the half-way point in What Is Truly Meant To Be – but it will be fun to try! So I’ll be spending the next month brainstorming on what to write next month. Any suggestions? Original story? Fanfiction? A story about Amara? Work on that massive hybrid crossover fanfiction story? Stick with Hey Arnold? Let me know your thoughts either in the comments below or on my facebook page!

Big news number four is that there is a Halloween-themed contest over on DeviantArt for the Hey Arnold fandom. There will be two winners, one fanartist and one fanfiction author. You can do pretty much whatever you want as long as it’s Hey Arnold related and somehow relates to the Halloween theme: it takes place on Halloween/they’re dressed up, it’s a ghost story, it’s an urban legend, it’s a generic scary story that can somehow relate to Halloween, etc. I’m still doing some “research” to figure out what I want to write, but I think I’m going somewhere down the middle between Urban Legend and Scary Story. Hubby suggested staying “true to show”, aka – keep them 9 and have it be “scary” but also humorous so it isn’t too suspenseful. Not sure if I’m going that way or if I want to try to make a legit scary story… guess we’ll see. Either way, the prize for each of the winners is a Hey Arnold book autographed by the show’s creator Craig Bartlett. I think it could be a really cool added bonus if Craig himself chose the winners!

I mean, I won the one Valentine’s day contest and received Premium Membership on DeviantArt, but I also think I may have been the only writing entry…. Soooooo….

There you have it. A whole bunch of inspiration, motivation, and discipline awaits me this month. Although this past week didn't see too much writing advancement, perhaps I'll have something to finally show you guys next week!