First Official Week of the Challenge

Yup, late again. I have a semi-good reason though. This past weekend Hubby wasn't scheduled for his normal overnight shift. In fact, he had Sunday completely off! Since we don't normally have a weekend free like this we decided to live it up! Besides, it ended up as a psuedo-birthday party for me! YAY!

I had my tiny apartment filled with pretty much the entire X-Future gang!
Ronoxym, Omnibladestrike, celestialTyrant, The Bard, along with Joyce's player NovaNight.

We also had three special guests:
Hot Hands who plays Liam and Tyler, his wife Chimera who plays Sasha, and their baby daughter Duchess.

Now, this is a HUGE thing for me. Today I turned 29 and I have NEVER been able to transition work friends in to out-of-work friends before. NEVER. I've had a ton of super close friends at work, but we never broke that awkward border of hanging outside of work.

Normally I can't stand these "Keep Calm and Carry On" memes,
but I really am 29 today so I caved!

Anyway, Hubby and I met Hot Hands at work and we started talking about the X-Men role play. He and his wife joined and we became closer friends at work with the forum as a way to hang out "after work". Soon we were chatting literally outside our work and at one point decided to take the conversation to a Chinese restaurant a few doors down. This Saturday was the first scheduled "hang out" though, which is awesome!

Problem being that there is NO WAY our apartment is baby-proof. I spent all of Friday just sprinting around my house cleaning and organizing to try to make it safe for Duchess as best as I could. I somehow forgot about the cutlery in the kitchen...

I didn't think she'd get to that.

Duchess is MAD advanced, man! Like... she's not even one yet and she's walking with no problem! I spent the entire time chasing after her so Chimera didn't have to worry, and could get a day break. I love Duchess though, and she seems to love me back, so it works out. I just didn't anticipate her picking up the bottles of Sunny D that are like half her weight, and then trying to hide some of my notebooks in with my knives!

And Chimera is pregnant! Two little girls this smart running around her house!? I do NOT envy her!

Girl, if you're reading this, STOP TAKING THE OMEGA-3 VITAMINS! GIVE YOURSELF A CHANCE!

Especially since Duchess didn't take a nap the entire time they were visiting - which was from about noon to nine at night - and yet she STILL woke up at about five the next morning!

Anyway, enough side-tracking.

Why is it that I'm two days late with my post?

Well, as mentioned, I had a full house on Saturday, and most of the people stayed for a WHILE. Hubby and I didn't fall asleep until 3am! That, plus work, plus cleaning my house all Friday meant no writing before Sunday. Then Sunday came and went without me posting since CT spent the night and he more-or-less had control of my computer all day.

So blame him.

I was then going to post yesterday - in fact, this whole post was WRITTEN yesterday - but I got snagged again. I like to keep people's anonymity in regards to my blog. That's why everyone I talk about - aside from Ali Luke who purposely promotes herself online, as well as other professionals who do the same - are mentioned through online personas alone:

• DarkAngel1326
• ChibiSunnie
• Ronoxym
• Omnibladestrike
• etc...

This is why for the longest time Ronoxym was listed as "Devon's Player" until he let me know what his online persona was. Problem being that neither Liam/Tyler's player nor Sasha's player HAVE online personas. It kept me a day to figure out what to call them and their daughter when I reference them here. And you guys should all know by now how awesome I am at naming things...

It works though. Because now I can show off the birthday presents that DA and Chibi made for me!

First up is Chibi's card to me. She wanted to write me something, but since I told her that I've been slacking on my online reading since it's sorta hard for me to do so with my desktop she decided to go for the card instead. Regardless, I love it! So friggen cool!

Me in the world of Legend of Zelda. Thanks, Chibi!
I love the Steampunk Hyrulian me!

Next up is the picture that DA drew of me. She used the cartooned versions of me that I post on my main Facebook page as reference, and I love it!

I look so cool Anime-d up like that! Love it, DA!

Apparently DA is also working on something in conjunction with AngelBlood666. I'm excited to see what that is!

On top of everything else, DA, Chibi, and Chopfe have each written such sweet things about their fond memories of being friends with me! All three of them made me cry today! Not cool, guys!

Another benefit about being a few days late is that I can also talk about the first week of Ali's Summer Challenge over at Writer’s Huddle. As I mentioned last week, there are two parts to the challenge. Part one is to reach your weekly goal. For me it is to write two recap posts for the events that happened over in X-Future. This way people have an easier way to keeping track of everything plot wise. Part two is to participate in the simple challenge that Ali comes up with.

This week's extra challenge? To incorporate the word "baby" in our writing this week. It was inspired by all the buzz going on about the British royal pregnancy.

I guess I sort of succeeded since I mentioned that Duchess was a "baby girl" and that I wasn't able to "baby-proof" my apartment at the beginning of this post. How convenient, right? I'm gonna also see if anything for the recaps needs the word baby as well.

How about you guys? I know that DA has been feeling guilty about not doing much writing lately, even though she's been out of school. So she's unofficially joining in with the challenge. She's attempting a mind-boggling 8000 words per week - in comparison, Ali is attempting 3000 words a week for her sequel to Lycopolis. Although, 8000 words is still less than the rough 1666 words per day of NaNo.

I wish DA luck in her journey and I'm curious as to how she's fitting "Baby" in to her work this week. As I am with you guys as well. Any other writers in the crowd? Did you guys want to unofficially join as well? If you do and end up successfully completing the challenges feel free to drop a link in the comments so we can check them out too!

Now, I'm off to re-read the forum so I can get started on my recaps for this week.

Setting Up Another Writing Challenge!

I had intended to write this update on Monday to make up for not having ANY time to really do anything last week. Alas, Hubby and I were so zoned out from our weekend that we stayed in bed until like 10am, and then vegged around the house watching shows and messing around with the WWE video game some more. We finished up the day desperately attempting to FINALLY conclude the prom and after party scenes in X-Future.

Yesterday I was just lazy..... Hubby and I were both home from work as of 1pm and yet we still have no clue where our day went....

Anyway, as I stated in Sunday's post, I had no time to really do anything this past week.

Over on X-Future we started up a Prom thread on June 14th to celebrate the game being a year old. It was supposed to be a live-session like the other dances that the institute had hosted. We're all supposed to be online between such and such hours and it's just a fun interaction. No major drama was supposed to go down.

Well, then everyone ended up being busy or whatever on the 14th, and again on the 15th, and the next thing you know the "live session" turned in to a normal thread: people post and update whenever they have time. The downside is that nothing was really happening.

We left the prom thread open for about a week and figured everyone did whatever it was they wanted to do at Prom by the end of the week. If not, too bad, the scene was active for long enough.

Then it was the After Party. Again, we didn't anticipate too much drama here either. We were gonna do another week-long to make sure everyone did what they wanted to before closing the thread.

Then Hubby got inspired. Next thing I know, the Brotherhood is invading the after party and the battle lasted like two weeks of slow off-and-on role playing. We FINALLY concluded the battle on Monday. Now, on to the aftermath!

Also... we almost got our "Crystal needs to die to really propel this story" during the fight scenes!

But you guys might FINALLY find out what I mean. It may not be in the way I originally intended, but still....

Ali Luke started up her own six-week-long summer challenge over at Writer’s Huddle. The concept is simple.

1. Do the 10min exercises that Ali comes up with every week. Participate in at least five out of the six exercises and she'll put you in to a drawing for an Amazon gift card! Nice!
2. Set up a weekly goal that you can repeat every week throughout the challenge. For instance, we have one gentleman who is writing two blog posts every week. Another member is writing 1000 words every week.

And that's it! Easy enough, so I decided to try to participate as well. The trick was figuring out what I could repeat for 6 weeks. I thought about using it as an excuse to get back to What Is Truly Meant To Be. I decided against it for two reasons: I'm not inspired really, and I doubt I could routinely work on chapters for it week after week.

Sorry to my loyal fans. I SWEAR I will get back to the story. I refuse to abandon the tale with so many people wanting to know how it ends. I'm just not feeling it right now.

So then I remembered the laundry list of things I wanted to work on for converting X-Future over to prose. I landed on writing those recap posts to help out those who are just starting as well as those who are returning after long hiatuses. I sectioned off the main events of the game in to about 12 different recaps. I'll then spend my weeks reading the forum again and writing at least two recap posts each week. I'll even thread them together as a mini-anthology so that you, my non-member readers, can follow along with our tale.

In theory, I guess I could post them on FanFiction as X-Men: Evolution fanfics since our universe is a continuation of that one. However, since most of the stuff is just generic "X-Men Universe" stuff - Xavier Institute, the Brotherhood, the canon characters as faculty members, etc - and the rest is entirely original I'm debating if I'd be better off just doing X-Men as the fanfic category. I probably will.

Anyway, for some strange reason Hubby wasn't scheduled for his normal overnight shift this Saturday-in-to-Sunday. So we're having a HUGE get together on Saturday. We'll see if I get to writing a blog post on time... Perhaps I should add that to my weekly goals...

Important Info For A Free Online Course!

As predicted, I didn't really have any time to work on ANYTHING this week. I spent my free time cleaning the apartment like a mad-woman, and then I spent my weekend either at work or with my mom. Beyond that, I was working on my niece's baby blanket some more. At this pace I might actually have it done by Christmas....

Barely anything major went on at the forum either. However, due to some coaxing words from ChibiSunnie I started to go back on to Writer's Huddle a little more frequently. It's a good thing too, because I discovered this little tidbit and I wanted to pass it on to you guys.

Honestly, this is the sole reason I wrote ANYTHING for today's blog post. I wanted to make sure any writers out there didn't miss this opportunity.

There is a three-week Flash Fiction online course hosted by Holly Lisle. It is completely free. All you need to do is sign up for her - also free - online writing community. Just go to her writer's boot-camp How To Think Sideways and sign up. Once you do that, there will be emails with links on how to sign up for this specific course. Once you sign up, you're receive the course materials (lessons and demos, etc.) automatically.

Here's a little bit about Holly and how she runs her courses via the Writer's Huddle member who brought this course to my attention:

"Holly Lisle has had over 30 (approx figure) of her fantasy novels published traditionally. I'm currently taking her "How to Revise Your Novel" 22-week, very demanding online course, but I'm super-glad I took this course since my novel has really improved considerably, even without the formal re-write yet.
"Holly can be to an extent profane at times, she's opinionated, and a bit controlling (though she leaves you alone to decide how you want to proceed). She is not aiming at arming you to write literary fiction–or for that matter any specific genre or particular quality-level. She teaches how to write a good story that is marketable in today's market.
"She is an excellent teacher, direct, plain spoken and rather brilliant. Her aim is to train those willing to work to make a living selling fiction, and to that end she is very practical in her approach."

I already joined, although I'll admit I'm a bit intimidated by the whole prospect. I have no clue what I'm about to get myself in to for the next three weeks, but I swore to you guys last week that I'd have something productive to talk about next week. So here's hoping it gives me the kick in the butt I need to get serious about writing.

I also posted this info here so that you guys can join me on this journey! If you do, please let me know in the comments below and we can cheer each other on as we push through this boot camp together!

But hurry up! You only have until

Tuesday, May 14th

to sign up!

So, until next week, one last round of applause to everyone's mother and to every who is a mother.

Conquering National Novel Writing Month

Alright, my first blog post since starting NaNo on Thursday. Before I get in to the daily play-by-play I just want to remind everyone that I did post on Halloween as I promised – it was a late post, but it was done! If you missed it, go back and check it out and don’t forget to give ChibiSunnie some love! You can also use this time to sign up for alerts to make sure you know when I post outside my normal Sunday updates - or when I post late like today. All the info on how to get alerts is at the start of that Halloween post.

I do want to better explain how to follow my blog via blogger. If you have any form of google account – gmail, google+, chrome-user, youtube, etc – you can use that same account to join Blogger. Once you have a Blogger dashboard you can scroll down until you see “Reading List”. Below that is the option to add. Just drop in the blog’s address and tada! You just followed my blog via Blogger. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to give you alerts this way, but it might be an easier way to keep track if you have a lot of different blogs that you follow. For instance, my reading list includes Rick Riordan’s blog Myth & Mystery, Rachel Aaron’s blog Pretentious Title, and my own beloved DarkAngel1326’s blog Random Creativity Blog.

I also want to state that I’m such a heel! I commented about Chibi’s story last post, and made sure to include the link for all to see. However, I had completely forgotten to show off her DRAWING for the Halloween contest as well! She hadn’t posted it by the time I updated my blog last Sunday and it slipped my mind on Wednesday! So, without further ado, Chibi’s Halloween drawing entry:

She put so much detail and amazing thought in to this.
Check it out on DeviantArt and tell her what you think!

Now that I have all of that backlogged stuff out of my way I can talk about NaNo!

I tried again to build my female lead before starting NaNo. I knew nothing about her aside from a few characteristics that I was thieving from various anime heroines. I finally decided on the name Natalie Myers as of Halloween. I tried going through the Character Building Checklist – written by Larry Brooks and excerpted from his book “The Three Dimensions of Character” by Jennifer Blanchard. Most of the questions I had to skip over since I know NOTHING about my heroine. However, the few that I WERE able to answer gave me a tremendous discovery.

Natalie Myers is me!

Before I realized what I was doing I discovered that in order for my character to work the way I wanted her to I had to write her more-or-less as me. Now, I’m not terribly concerned about writing her as either a Mary Sue or an Avatar. Natalie won’t be a Mary Sue since she’ll have my flaws, and then some. However, she won’t be my direct Avatar either since she has to be BETTER than I am in order to survive in Albion. As much as I’d love to be athletic… I’m far from it. As much as I’d love to be a master archer, I haven’t picked up a bow since high school – except for one shooting range booth at the Renn Faire, but I did horribly with the long-bow. Also, when I go back and slowly shave off the FanFiction aspects of this story in order to make it a marketable original work someday I’m sure Natalie will become less “me” and more “her” as I begin to know her better.

But, for quick writing purposes during NaNo…. Natalie is me…. It’s easy to write a character when you ARE the character… So now I have to go back through that checklist and fill it out as me I guess….

Now that all that prep-work is done, let’s get to that play-by-play!

NOVEMBER 1ST – DAY ONE
I had the day off. I needed to go in to work to do some presentation thing for corporate, but for the most part I had the day off. I was excited to get started on my very first attempt at NaNo. Since my latest blog posts have been 2500+ words long I figured 1667 words per day would be a piece of cake. Lock myself away for a few hours and I’d be golden.
Then I had a pretty major life stressor fall in to my lap. For possible legal reasons I don’t want to really discuss it online – although I DID mention something over on the Writer’s Huddle… Anyway, although my husband and I are pretty certain we have the law on our side, it’s still pretty stressful and I ended up doing a lot of researching and asking people questions to get the best legal advice. I just couldn’t clear my head enough to write anything. What a fantastic way to start off this month-long journey, huh? However, anyone who has followed me during my two tries at Script Frenzy knows that this is about par with the months I attempt to hide away to write….

NOVEMBER 2ND – DAY TWO
Not a good day. I had to work and the entire time I just had to keep mentally chanting “Don’t throw up”. I was dizzy and faint – which is a great state of mind when working meat slicers. :P
I tried to work on my story, but I couldn’t get my eyes to focus on anything. They were hazy and blurred most of the day. It just wasn’t a good day. So I used my time instead to do a trick I learned via the Huddle.
Daydream.
So I have the entire craptastic opening mapped out. I just need to get to writing it.

NOVEMBER 3RD – DAY THREE
Well, I’m feeling better, and the possible-legal issue wasn’t stressing me out too much today. Hubby had the guys over, but they were all playing Magic: The Gathering, so I used that time to hide away upstairs and just type. At least, I ATTEMPTED to type. I couldn’t resist first cleaning out my email, DeviantArt notifications, and Facebook notifications. By the time I was done with those, my father-in-law had stopped by to discuss our options – in regards to the possible-legal issue, once he left we went to get food, and then I read a few blogs while eating and waiting for the guys to finish up playing Magic. By the time I gave up waiting for them and went back upstairs to again ATTEMPT to write, Hubby called me back down so we could all play Mario Wii. That lasted until about 11:30pm… at that point we crashed until Hubby needed to go in to work. I then stayed up attempting to hit that same late-night Writing Frenzy that I used to do before I got a job and needed sleep. :P
Oh, and before I forget, one of the blog posts I read was from the author Rick Riordan – of Percy Jackson fame – and I think it’s a fantastic read for everyone.

NOVEMBER 4TH – DAY FOUR
Thank God for daylight savings time ending, especially with the guys over so late. Got a little over an hour power nap before taking Hubby in to work. When I came home I was moderately awake and so I knew if I didn’t tackle SOME of the story I would never hit my goal of “a new chapter every week” before updating. One of the reasons this post is so late today...
It was definitely a struggle to get started, but by 2am I was finally cranking through. My opening prior to the first Plot Point was longer than I intended and may actually be a touch boring. But I’m going for word counts, baby! This story is raw, unedited, and probably craptastic. I know I have a lot of similes and metaphors in there. Heck, nearly an entire paragraph is “blah blah like a yada yada… such and such resembled this thing… doodad was as if it were whatchamacallit…etc.” So…. Sorry to anyone brave enough to actually “follow along”.
The first chapter was probably the most derpirific somewhere around the middle. I got to the point where I was starting to feel sick again – stomach pains, light headed, eyes couldn’t focus, nausea – and I was all “After I’m done with this paragraph I’m going to bed; screw the chapter.”
Yet, my determination to at least finish a scene – so that those reading will have something moderately complete, even if it isn’t the whole first chapter – drove me to just fight through. It’s this same motivation that keeps me writing for seven hours straight; and the same “I’m not stopping until this scene/chapter/story is done” attitude that kind of scares me from starting in the first place. Even if I could train myself to stop even when I’m not done, what if the next time I start up again I don’t have in my head the “great line/scene” that was in my head while I was in the thick of things? This is why for the longest time I ONLY wrote when I had a day off and could just sit in my room with my computer all day.
Anyway, fear not, for at around 5:30am I felt better and became awake again. Well, for about an hour at least. By 7 my eyes gave out and so I succumbed to an hour long power nap. I powered through the last portion of the chapter and posted it on FanFiction. The chapter is 3767 words long, so that covers today and yesterday. I just need another 2700 words to be caught up….
I’m not going to post my story on DeviantArt – it’s going to be too long and too messy – but I am debating posting it on FictionPress. However, I think I want to hold off until a)it’s polished – it would be my FIRST piece of work posted there, and b)all the “fanfiction” elements are taken out so that it’s definitely an original work. Thoughts?

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!