ehhh

I think I need to scrap EVERYTHING I’ve written this week.

It’s just not living up to the standard I’ve been performing at lately….

And now that that’s done…

I’m going to make up cutesie couple portmanteaus for my fictional pairings.

New Project Added to My Never-ending List of Things to Write

The Kings of El Dorado (Part One)


Novel | Fantasy/Thriller/Romance | Original Fiction


In August 2011, four people arrived in the small town of Crescent City, Oregon:  Simon Avella, a medium with a wobbly grip on reality; Nicholas Flamel, a centuries-old magician on a search for a magical artifact; Valerie Ethelstan, a seventeen-year-old girl trying to escape from her past; and Peter D’Angelo, the FBI agent sent to find her.  In this remote place, the four tangle themselves together in a way that cannot be undone, and the bonds they make with each other will be in blood.

*Will likely be published in an episodic matter digitally, starting at the end of summer, with a digital + physical compilation coming once all four batches are complete.  This project is mostly just to give me a little break from working on Insomnia’s manuscript and giving me time to do science for it without losing my touch/talent/ability to make good words.*

Now I want to jump projects.

This is why nothing gets finished…

It’s amazing how much a story can change with the addition or deletion of a single character.  It leaves me a bit daunted with the real world, how so much would be unrecognizable if a different cast of characters were in my life.

Can I edit this 31 page story before it’s due in a few hours?

Bring it on.

I did not almost use the line “he hated to see her go, but he loved to watch her walk away” on my sci-fi homework, did I?

amara-somnium:

12 Clichés To Avoid When Beginning Your Story

thepalaceofawesomestories:

Here are some of the most common openings I see, as they’re almost always a rejection:

• Waking Up: Avoid the first moments of the day, especially if your character is being snapped out of a dream.
• School Showcase: A character introducing the requisite best friend and the school bully
• Family Showcase: Introductions of parents, siblings, pets
• Room Tour: A character sitting in her room, thinking, looking over her stuff
• Emo Kid: A character sitting and thinking about all his problems
• Normal No More: A character lamenting how normal, average, and/or lame her life is, which is the writer setting us up for the big change that’s about to happen
• Moving Van: A character in the car, driving to his new house, hating every minute of it
• Mirror Catalogue: Looking at oneself and describing one’s flaws, usually with a self-deprecating voice
• Summer of Torture: A character lamenting how she has to do something that she doesn’t want to do (live in a haunted house, go visit Grandma, work at the nursery) all summer long
• New Kid: A character worrying about being the new kid on his first day of school or wizard training or the vampire academy
• RIP Parents: One or both parental units kicking the bucket suddenly and tragically
• Dystopian Selection: In the dystopian genre, it’s the day of choosing jobs, getting selected for something awful, being paired with a soul mate, etc.

These are very common beginnings and all I ask is that, if you choose to forge ahead and brave one, make it fresh.

Nanowrimo II (Day 1)

Words Written Today:  1,800
Total Words Written:  1,800
Words Remaining:  48,200
Current Day:  1
Days Remaining:  30
At This Rate You Will Finish On:  November 27, 2012
Words Per Day To Finish On Time:  1,607

Accomplishments: First Section Finished
Excerpt:

Naturally, he doesn’t look at me. Instead, he stares at the young lady behind me. She is far removed from the little girl that used the forest as her private playground all those years ago. What was once a wild tangle of golden hair is now stained a dull ebony, brightened only by a few rebellious strands of pink. Her size had doubled, but her waistline seems more meager than it used to be, as she has sworn off of the cookies and cakes she would once beg for as a child. The yearly pictures could never capture the creature before him in realistic terms. Bill seems captivated at the sight of his daughter before him, her arms crossed and lip impaled by a barbell. His Sylvia was all grown up.

To linger on it is too disquieting for either of us.

secret-color:

I just want to take a second to say that I personally believe any sort of writing advice that boils down to:

When in doubt about X just take one of the following pre-generated options.

Is the opposite of helpful.

Lists like the one I reblogged earlier are uncreative, unimaginative, and uninspiring. All of which are things your fiction writing should not be.

Also, you should never be ashamed of using ‘He said’, or ‘She said’, for the same reason you should never be ashamed about any part of your writing.

I’ll just leave a clip from On Writing here, if you don’t mind:

2. (pg 119; para 3) use the adverb in dialogue attribution only in the rarest and most special of occasions and not even then, if you can avoid it. remember that, while to write adverbs is human, to write he said or she said is divine.