New Years Resolutions Update

Last week, I said that there were two things I was going to do to stop myself procrastinating, but it is actually a third thing which I didn't mention that I have found most helpful. It's a bit like a clock-in, clock-out system. I write the date on a piece of paper, and I write the current time. Then I start my school work. When I finish that piece of school work, I write down the time again, and write down what what I did. Depending on how long the school work took to finish, I might at this point write down the time again, on the line underneath, as a starting time, and do some more work, or else I might have a break.

Like this:

On a school night, the minimum I try to do is two hours, and I generally manage it, although admittedly I have rarely done more than about ten minutes extra. But two hours a night is an improvement; I feel like I'm getting things done, and I'm not leaving work till the night before anymore and having to rush it and panic.

On the subject of New Year's Resolutions, one of my other resolutions was to finish a novel this year. The past couple of years, I have attempted NaNoWriMo (the online write-a-50,000-word-novel-in-a-month challenge, which takes place in November) and not finished my novel, but I do find NaNoWriMo a good way to write, and the stats page is very good for tracking your progress. But what I figured I needed, especially this year when I have important exams which will decide whether or not I go to uni, is more time, so I made a spreadsheet on Microsoft Excel. It's not a very good spreadsheet, because I don't use Excel very often so I can't remember how to use it properly, and I don't think they taught us in school what I would need to know in order to accomplish a NaNoWriMo-style word count tracker thing and graph anyway, but I did my best.

Basically, I worked out the daily word counts that would be necessary to reach to 50,000 word goal in two months instead of one (834 words per day). Of course, you don't have the feeling of knowing that while you're typing your heart out trying to write a novel in a month, thousands of others all over the world are doing exactly the same thing, but you do have to write less each day, which is helpful.

I didn't intend to start using my spreadsheet until the summer, after my exams, but alas inspiration and imagination stopped listening to sense, and two days ago I started my novel. Another new novel. That's just what I really needed, wasn't it? Another one.

However, technically, it's not a new one. My currently unnamed novel (the document on which it is saved is titled "Just Keep Writing") is to be a rewrite of what was probably my first attempt at a novel. I remember when I was about thirteen being at my grandma's house and having the urge to write but having no paper, so my Grandma found me a little black and red notebook with squared paper that nobody had used, and said I could keep it. So I opened it to the first page and started writing. I never finished it, in fact I never got to the end of that little notebook, but looking back, it's just as well, because it was terrible.

But I loved it, and upon rediscovering it, and rediscovering some later attempts at rethinking and rewriting it which are saved on my computer, I decided that this was what I wanted to be the novel I write this year, despite having not much of an idea of where my plot is going (I have a sort-of beginning point, I have an end point, but I have no middle except the vague idea from my first draft that my characters go on some sort of journey - which is why I named the document "Just Keep Writing", because then I'll just see where it takes me, and hopefully eventually end up in the right place). This is slightly annoying, because I already had three ideas for novels (two of them rewrites) that I wanted to write this year.

So far, I have written almost two and a half thousand words (and not very much has really happened yet), and my word count for today is 2,502. Wish me luck. This may well be a long two months.

TO READ: Fire

Fire by Kristin Cashore is the second in her The Seven Kingdoms Trilogy, however not only is it technically a prequel to first in the series Graceling but it isn't actually set in the Seven Kingdoms at all. In a land bordering the Seven Kingdoms to the east of an impassable mountain range known as The Dells, approximately forty years before the events of Graceling. This is, I think, my favourite book. My one favourite, ever. (And such a pretty cover the British edition has!!)

In The Dells - one of only two kingdoms known to its people, the other being the northern sea-faring land of Pikkia - there exists extraordinary creatures which can appear as any species, be it cat, mouse, wolf, raptor... These monsters, as they are called, can be distinguished by their unnaturally vibrant colours, and have the ability to take control of others' minds, which is added to the almost hypnotic effect their beauty has on some.

Seventeen-year-old Fire (so named for her flaming hair) is the only human monster alive, and is hated by many - sometimes for jealousy, sometimes for her father's legacy, but mostly for her venomous mind. Fire hides herself away on her late father's estate in a remote corner of the kingdom, where her kind-hearted neighbour raised her along with his son Archer, Fire's lifelong friend, in the hopes of deflecting all attention. But Fire isn't safe, not even here.

The Dells is a kingdom still recovering from a king corrupted by Fire's monster father Cansrel, and the throne of the current King Nash is unstable, and the threat of war is looming from all sides. Despite the royal family's obvious distrust of her, Fire's gift would be invaluable, and Fire is not her father. This is the story of Fire's fight to prove herself; to stay true to herself and to do what she feels is right and pay back the innocent prince Cansrel tried so many times to kill. Because underneath her otherworldly beauty, Fire is just as human as everybody else.

I wholeheartedly recommend that anyone and everyone reads this book - whether you're male or female, old or young. Partly because of a blog post I just found. I was going to comment on it, but then it became a bit long so I shall be posting it separately. But whether you'd rather read something fast-paced, or something political, or something romantic, or something magical, READ THIS BOOK.

Finally, I'd like to just direct people to a blog post that Kristin Cashore wrote about Fire and why she wrote it. Also, please find the list of awards and raving reviews for Fire here. :)

TO READ: Graceling

And at last, I've got to recommending what is probably my favourite series of books: The Seven Kingdoms trilogy by the wonderful Kristin Cashore (whose blog is here). Graceling is the first in the trilogy to have been published, and is Cashore's debut novel, although in the story's timeline it is not the first chronologically.

Graceling is set in a fictional Medieval-esque world made up of seven kingdoms: Nander, Estill, Sunder, Wester, Monsea, Lienid, and the Middluns. In this world, some people - called Gracelings - are born with extra-special abilities and are marked by having one eye a different colour to the other.

One such Graceling is Katsa, the niece of the king of the Middluns, who is Graced with killing, and is used by her uncle as a weapon to fuel his fearsome reputation. Sickened by the gruesome tasks she is forced to do, Katsa also works for a secret organisation called the Council, which she started herself, to do good and help people in order to balance out all those she has hurt and killed.

It is on a Council mission to rescue the kidnapped father of the peaceful king of Lienid that Katsa stumbles onto a dark mystery that will lead her on a journey of survival and self-discovery across the Seven Kingdoms in the hopes of putting right a world gone wrong.

Winner of several awards and nominated for many more, Graceling is a gripping and fast-paced coming-of-age novel for young adults, beautifully written with a touch of romance and humour, as well as believable characters who I myself have become incredibly emotionally attached to over at least five readings of this book. It's also due to be adapted for the big screen, by the makers of Life Of Pi; it's a film I'm very much looking forward to, I just hope they do it the justice it deserves.

Also, while browsing Kristin Cashore's blog for the link to the post in which the film was announced, I found this awesome post (if you read it, remember to read some of the comments too, as Cashore comments to answer peoples' questions with more wonderful insights). I swear it's the most inspirational post for writers EVER. Another of my favourites is this one; Kristin Cashore has some of the most brilliant advice for writers, I could actually spend all day finding links to posts from her blog that would be helpful to anyone aspiring to be a novelist (she is seriously inspirational).

Character Swap

We did an interesting activity in creative writing club today. We had to describe one of our characters who we knew well to someone else, and then they would have to write a short piece from your character's point of view, and you had to write a short piece from their character's point of view. It was quite difficult, at first, until you got into it.

I'd say that it made you realise how much your characters mean to you, but I was already aware that I was quite protective over my favourite characters and storylines (I feel I should apologise to all my other characters and storylines - just because you are not my favourites does not mean you are not valued, and no offense was intended). I also expected it to be difficult to write from the point of view of someone else's character, so there were no new lessons to be learned there either. However, what I did take away from this is how hard it is to describe your character to someone else and not miss anything out. I doubt my partner's piece shows my character the way I show my character, which is my fault not hers, she is an amazing writer.

Also, I am quite nervous to share what I wrote, although surprisingly I am quite happy with it. I'm just worried that I got her character all wrong and she won't be very happy with me, or that she won't think I wrote it very well (did I mention she's a better writer than me, and probably THE best in our group? Yeah.).

It also made me want to talk more about my novel, mostly to my best friend while we were walking home, which is odd for me, because, as I mentioned earlier, I'm quite protective over my characters and storylines. They're kind of part of me, they're some of those really private things that I daydream about randomly so I don't much like sharing them; you'd expect my best friend to know all about them, but she doesn't, we don't really talk about our writing all that much. When somebody, like my aunt, say, asks me if I'm writing anything at the moment, if I am, I'll generally just say something along the lines of "Um, yeah... I'm writing a fantasy story... about a girl... as usual..." and that'll be it.

Me and my friend did talk a bit about it - I can't remember how much I've said about this novel previously, but this is the friend who suggested the name Barnabus, if I mentioned that - and I told her today the significance of this - that although my novel finally has a proper title, the name Barnabus has stuck, to my main antagonist - and she was pleased, I think, of her contribution. She, I think, may or may not be the first person I have told my new title to. It's called The Secrets The Dead Keep. (By the way, this post isn't necessarily to talk about my novel, it doesn't really have much of a point...) Back in August last year I wrote about 41,000 words in a prologue and not quite twelve chapters (I had a plan set out, but in order to keep myself wanting to write, I skipped one of them; also, I never finished about Chapter Twelve) set over three months, when the whole novel will take place over twelve months. I don't really think there's much more I can say about it, I may or may not have given a (very) brief idea of what the plot is about in a previous post, I can't remember - my memory really isn't great, you may be able to tell :P.

So... maybe I'll post a bit of my novel on here at some point (apart from the random extract I had to remove from my first draft due to a "deliberate" mistake). I'd also like to read a bit of it out at Creative Writing, but I think it'd be best if I read the prologue, unfortunately I'm happy with neither the original prologue I wrote in August, or the one in the rewritten version, so that'll need a bit of work... Anyway. :) I'm sorry this post... wandered a bit, and that it didn't really have much of a point, but I wanted to post it, so there. :) I may be posting again soon if I manage to write part two of When I Turn Forty, if anyone's interested about that, which they're probably not - I've tried writing that story several times, I'm still not convinced the idea is any good when it's on paper instead of in my head (where it is  good), but I'll definitely be posting on the 14th (of February, this year, that is, guys :P). No extra brownie points for guessing the subject. :)

Friends and novels

Last year, probably in June, I had a vague idea of something I wanted to write inspired, I think, by Kristin Cashore's Bitterblue and Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus.

I don't know if anyone has ever heard of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo as it's informally known, but it it's an online challenge in which you have to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November and it is awesome. There is also a summer version of this online challenge called Camp NaNoWriMo, and last year Camp NaNoWriMo took place in June and August. I had exams in June, so when I started this novel, I did so in August. I got to 41,000 words. I didn't even get to halfway through my plot. So I gave up.

At some point I told a friend about this novel on Facebook, and a while later - I don't remember if it was days, weeks, or a couple of months - he asked me how far I'd got with it. When I told him I'd never finished, he was disappointed, because he said it'd sounded good. And this has stuck with me. If ever I finish this novel, I have one potential reader. Hopefully.

So recently I started rewriting this novel. For a while it was called 2012 Novel, or Untitled Novel, or My Novel, you know, the one about... And then my friend Emma named it Barnabus. And then I named one of my characters in it Barnabus, because I didn't want to lose the name when I replaced it with the proper title, and because it made naming that otherwise nameless character so much easier. And now I finally have replaced that name with a proper title. First I called it Our Parent's Faults. I didn't like that, but it was a title all the same. I have renamed it in the few days since then. I wouldn't be surprised if there was already a book with that title, but I am much happier with it.

I hope to finish my novel one day. Maybe within a year. The first draft anyway. It's a fantasy story set in a fictional city, about a girl named Saffie, and her mother's past. I'm afraid I can't comment on whether or not it'll be any good, and I can't promise you that it'll ever get published, or ever get finished enough to consider being published, and I'm not going to tell you any more about it either, but I thought it'd be nice to share that I am writing a novel, and a little about that novel that finally has a satisfactory title.

Also, I said that I'd post a short story every Wednesday, and today is Wednesday, but I have been busy, so I will post you all something tomorrow instead. And luckily, I do know what I'm writing for you all. I just haven't finished it yet. Happy Wednesday evening, guys! :)