Covering new developments

Remember that novel I posted about a few days ago that had evolved rather radically over the course of a week? Well, the planning and brainstorming for that novel continues, and recent developments include conspiracies inside conspiracies inside conspiracies, as well as angels and demons. At one point, I was actually worried that the plot that I was creating was going to displace the entire romance that I was building it around, but I'm relatively certain that I'm going to be able to keep it as it is.

The only interesting thing about it is going to be that the guy gets the girl before the main plot of the novel even starts. That's going to be kinda tough to pull off, but since the conflict after that point is going to involve this fact rather heavily, I reckon it'll be alright. In either case, at least I don't have to worry that I'm pandering to any sort of cliché, eh?
Not that that would actually worry me in the least. I'm not one to be worried about writing clichéd things. I think that if you're true to your own voice and your own style, you can make any ol' cliché appear as interesting as anything else you could come up with that hasn't been done yet.

That plot is going to keep on evolving on its own, and for once, I'm going to let it run as very crazy as I want it to. I don't feel an obligation to a specific, rigid concept as I usually do when I begin a novel, and it's actually a wonderfully liberating experience for me. Not being tied down to just one thing that has to happen or has to be told in the course of this novel, I'm free to let it run free in my imagination. It's a therapeutic experience, really; I haven't had this much of an effortless time creating anything in a very long time.

Either way, it's going to keep evolving and changing, and I'll just enjoy the ride and see what I end up with in the end. I'm very excited.

Now, you know how news segments have that um... mood-y-lift-y-upp-y thingy (I AM A WRITER CAN YOU TELL) usually involving puppies at the end of it? Well, I have something just like that for you! Inspired by my tweep Alison (@_budgie on twitter), I have devised a cover for my novel. Feast your eyes and enjoy.

p.s. I feel no remorse
p.p.s. Except for the terrible pun in the title of this post. I am so very sorry you had to bear that. I truly am.

Chasing genres

Well, it's getting to NaNoWriMo season again. For those of you who have mercifully forgotten what that means, it means that sometime during November, I'm going to have a mental breakdown regarding how I cannot possibly write anymore, am absolutely terrible at creative writing and why would anyone want to do this to oneself anyway, perhaps accompanied by a list of reasons as to why I couldn't possibly expected reach the goal of 50,000 words or a huffy declaration of "I QUIT."

In reality, National Novel Writing Month is an absolutely fantastic experience, but it has its ups and downs. Everyone, even seasoned veterans, are often brought down by a bout of "I suck". Additionally, it can be fairly brutal when combined with an exam period which spans half of November. This year, my exam period is going to be much lighter than last year, what with one of my units not having an exam, and another of my units not actually teaching us anything at all and then expecting us to sit an exam on it (in short: either it'll be very easy or we'll all fail, so why worry).

Core units. Gotta love 'em.

As such, I can tentatively say at this point that this is the first year since 2009 when I'm actually going to be trying this out again for real -- for real in that I'm going to be aiming to win.

I have had plans for my novel for about a week now. During this week, they have... well, let's just say that my plans are quite fluid and keep changing. Radically. Let me run you through on the timeline of my past week.

How the idea for Silbena's NaNovel of 2012 has evolved to date

Seven days ago: Silbena decides that she is going to participate in NaNoWriMo again this year. She begins brainstorming for ideas.

Three days ago: Silbena decides that since she hasn't done any substantial creative writing since her failed NaNoWriMo in 2011, she is going to write something relatively light on plot that would just get her writing something down before attempting anything involving more planning and world development.
Two minutes later: Silbena decides to write erotica.

Two days ago: Silbena realises that she wants to write something with a little more plot than erotica. She also admits to herself that she would probably not show her writing to anyone at all, and that she really wants to be able to show her writing to as many willing people as possible. Silbena decides not to write erotica, but to develop something out of the story ideas she has already had.
Fifteen minutes later: Silbena is frustrated by her story ideas and remembers why she decided to write erotica instead. Knowing that it can be basically erotica with some more plot, she decides to write romance.

Yesterday: Silbena has created a romance plot with a definitive beginning that is just advancing toward the middle. She is satisfied with her beginning, and begins thinking about the middle.
Two hours later: Silbena realises that she solved the only conflict she had in her story by the end of the beginning. She has character development and the development of the characters' relationship that will serve to fill the middle, but she realises that because there is no real substance to the middle, there is going to be no clear indication for the end, either.
Twenty seconds later: Silbena begins brainstorming about circumstances that would create additional conflict for the middle of her current plot.
Half an hour later: Silbena realises that the setting that she has created for the book allows for no more plot development. Frustrated, she begins brainstorming about ways to fit more plot around the plot she already has. She posts about this on the NaNoWriMo forums, but doesn't actually heed any of the advice anyone there has (oops).

Today: Silbena has an epiphany and decides to write a steampunky mystery-driven adventure novel which is fitted around the romance she created previously.

In other news: YAY AIRSHIPS

Still Alive

This post is best enjoyed while listening to Portal's theme song, Still Alive. I would provide you a youtube link, but I'm lazy. It's a terrible, chronic condition.

My dearest, darlingest, most wonderful readers, I apologise profusely for my prolonged absence. At first, there were exams, and then, my brain was so fried from exams that I felt that it was better if I stayed offline until it had returned to its original state. Let me tell you, cramming, perfectionism and the desire for reasonably good grades makes a very special kind of crazy soup (as observed to the right).

Though then again, I had three of my four wisdom teeth taken our yesterday, and I'm probably not much better off right now with my chimpmunky cheeks and being amped up on painkillers and antibiotics as I am. However, my current predicament did make me bored enough to finally groan and drag my behind over to this blog, so I guess that's something positive about all of it, eh?

This post is probably going to be just a short update and what I've been up to, and then an announcement of posts yet to come. Because I'm immensely organised, I'm going to do so in list form!

Exams
I should start with this one, even though I probably have the least to say about this. Exams suck, as everyone knows. Cramming sucks. Going to the exam and coming by a question you've either never seen before or do not know how to solve sucks. Being nervous about your results and not getting them for the next three weeks (due on the 5th, meep!) sucks. Having a 20-page chemistry exam full of questions that require a lot of thinking over a period of 3 hours also sucks. My neck was really sore after that one. Besides, whose brilliant idea was it to make the hardest exam the last one? A few friends of mine were very aware of how burnt out my brain was after that last one. It took me about a week and a half to fully recover, which is to say stop giggling randomly and saying really weird things at odd times. As a result of my burning out, some of my November plans have gone slightly awry.

NaNoWriMo
I came to discover that writing a novel you have only begun planning two weeks before the beginning of the writing period on the basis of "hey, wouldn't it be cool if...?" doesn't work when it comes to the time & brain constraints of exams, especially if you're supposed to write over a thousand words per day. On the tenth of November, the day after my third exam, I looked at the pile of Chemistry work I still had a head of me and said "you know what, I can't do this." That would have been fine, if I hadn't been simultaneously too braindead, tired & lazy to actually continue writing after the 16th, but, alas, I didn't. Only two days ago did my muse tentatively step back into my brain, take a look around and nod approvingly, allowing me to continue with the story. As it were, I only reached 25,000-ish words after achieving about 7,000 words on the 29th of November. As such, I consider this a victory enough, since I would have had about half of November to write anyway -- besides, I got excited about my story again, and isn't that what's most important?

No? Damn it.


The Epic Reading Quest
If you follow my GoodReads profile or pay attention to the sidebar on this blog, you will notice that I have been stuck on The Egyptian since late October. This is because of a few reasons: The Egyptian, no matter what GoodReads says about it, is over a thousand pages long. It is historical fiction, and reading it feels almost like you are reading a history book -- each page is so crammed full of information and details that even though this is the second time I'm reading it, I still can't remember everything that has happened. I'm slowly getting toward the end, however, and then I can move on to Robin Hobb and her Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies.

It's funny how the point of this Reading Quest was to read the books I haven't yet read, and with the exception The Wise Man's Fear, I have yet to pick up one of those books. Oops?


And, well, apart from all of those things, I have been up to a lot of this:

I apologise for the poor image quality. I have a new camera, and I'm not entirely sure how to use it just yet. That, and using Paint as an image modifying tool probably doesn't produce the best possible results. I also apologise for its ugly look. I'm getting a bit sore right now, and I really cannot be bothered going back to it to crop it and whatever. You get the picture (har har har), right?

Coming Up
Some posts ago, I mentioned something about amazingly awesome holiday plans that I didn't want to talk about if they fell through. Well, I am happy to announce that they didn't! ... But that's all I'm going to be offering on that now. If you want to hear about my awesomely nerdy holiday plans, stay tuned for a post on that soon.

Another post you should look forward to is my experience with Skyrim. I've been collecting some screenshots, of funny and plain awesome moments I've had in the game. I'm going to continue collecting those, and when I feel like I have enough material for a blogpost, up it comes.

Alright, that's me done blathering about my November and my obscure plans. How has everyone else been for the month-ish that I've been away?

Declaration of busyness

It iiiiis day 3 of NaNoWriMo (remember, that crazy thing where we sit down for an entire month to bang out 50,000 words in the attempt to finish the first draft of a novel), and I am nearing a mental breakdown.

Not because of NaNo. NaNo is going surprisingly well, considering I'm still studying for exams. After two days, I already sat on a neat wordcount of 5,781. While I don't have a detailed outline and I only have a sheet with objectives for chapters only about until halfway through chapter 3, I still feel relatively confident that I can keep the novel going.

That is, if I actually have time for it. I have a statistics exam tomorrow, for which I don't feel completely prepared, but tough luck, because I have work on from 5:30-9:45 tonight. So there goes a good four hours of my possible study or writing time. I have another exam on next Wednesday for which I have BARELY started studying -- which will also be an effort, since I'm out for at least half of tomorrow because of this first exam, half of Saturday because of another shift at work (seriously, they wouldn't give me more than one shift a week when I wanted them, and now when I don't want them, I start getting them? Betcha when I'm on my holidays, I'll be back to just one), and all of Sunday because of this incredibly nerdy thing I have yet to tell you about. Then, I only have Monday and Tuesday to revise and clarify concepts in 31 lectures. That, and somehow manage to squeeze sleeping, eating, writing and staying sane in there.

Needless to say, I'll probably remain off this blog probably at least until Wednesday the ninth, the day of my third exam. After that, we shall see -- I might be just as busy with trying to catch up with my novel, having fallen behind in the next few days, and then revising for my Chemistry exam, since I've done little work with revising chem during semester to begin with.

And after my Chemistry exam (on the 16th)? We'll see if I'm still alive.

Wish me luck...


p.s. I apologise for the jerky writing style of this post. I may have overworked myself a little yesterday, leaving my brain muddled and confused today.

Bringing out the flamethrowers

A few posts ago, I posted about how I was going to try the Snowflake method to plan this year's NaNoWriMo novel, talking about how my 2009 novel faltered and then died because of my poor planning and inability to keep the strings of the story in my head.

Well, since then, I've actually gotten past step 1. In fact, I've gotten as far as step 3!

I have also discovered that I freaking hate it.

Relevant to my hate toward the Snowflake method. Incidentally, I actually made this one myself. In paint. The dinosaurs in Google images were way too cute to adequately express my hatred.

The Snowflake model has no soul. I guess that if you already have an idea that is fairly articulate inside your head but don't have it down on paper yet, the Snowflake model might be some merit to it. With this, I mean that it might be a good organisational tool to get all of your ideas down in a format that will ultimately help you get your work down in an intelligible manner. But as a tool for someone who only has the very raw bones of an idea in their head, such as "two vampires, a werewolf and a shapeshifter go on a road trip" -- it probably doesn't take a genius to figure out that that was my idea -- I would definitely go as far as to say that, instead of being helpful, the Snowflake method could very well kill that idea.

You see, the Snowflake method is a method of production. It's a method of making your novel publishable: of writing a synopsis and then writing the novel to suit that synopsis. It is meant to lay your entire novel down before you actually write it, in a manner that is so clinical that makes me remember the faint chemical smell of hospital corridors. I've sat here for a few minutes, trying to get it into words why exactly I get this feeling from trying to slog through step 3 of the method, but I don't think anything I can produce right now would be very convincing. I thought about complaining about the fact that I am supposed to figure out the motives for my characters before I have actually formulated personalities for them, but in the overall sense of the central story of the novel, I guess asking about the motivation and conflict and epiphany of your characters makes sense.

But that's exactly the problem. How am I -- in fact, why am I -- supposed to know the inner workings of my novel before I've written it? I guess this sounds childish, and this may be only my own opinion, but I think that every story has a soul, and that every story teaches you something about yourself and the way you view the world. Every story evolves as you write it, and often takes you by surprise. For example, in 2009, it took me about 15 chapters to realise that one of my central characters was gay. Only a fool would plot their story out from the get-go, thinking that it won't change.

Saying that, I want to clarify that I'm in no way implying that everyone who has ever used the Snowflake model is a fool. Perhaps others like having the bones of their story down before beginning the actual creative process. I also concede that I may be using it wrong, and that perhaps I should return to it after I have a firmer grasp of what my novel is actually going to be about. But right now, it's just the wrong thing for me: I feel no creative flair when working on it, but just like I'm toiling endlessly at some sort of machinery with nothing to show for it. The point of planning, for me, at least for WriMo, is to lay down a general outline of the story in such a manner that I'm not completely at the mercy of my creative juices, especially on days when they've completely run dry. The point of planning is to inspire, and to make me excited about the scenes I've just described. The point of planning is to make me want to tell my story.

The Snowflake model is not doing it for me. I'm not sure if any planning model will work with this particular novel. I'm not sure I was ever any good at planning. I'm not sure that this story is even worth telling. But I guess I'll try to keep at it, even simmering at the back of my brain, and see if I can salvage at least a bit of what made me excited about it before.

Hope the rest of you have more luck at this than I have had.

Random Research: Caffeine

Today was my first second (I can even procrastinate finishing blogposts!) day of study for exams. It was the first second of many, many days, leading up to the 16th of November, the day of my last exam. Between now and then, I will hardly have a day's rest, not only because of exams and cramming (as outlined a few posts previously), but also because November is already knocking on my door, and my NaNoWriMo novel is SO not ready to be written yet! I mean, I don't even have character names yet! I now have names for my most important characters, but the whole project is still more of a plothole than anything.

You guys know what this means, right? It means that, in order to keep my head above the water, I'm going to need LOTS AND LOTS OF CAFFEINE. Everyone who's ever done NaNoWriMo (or gone to university in general, I'm guessing) is very, very familiar with this solution. That, and sugar, but I'd like to focus on caffeine for now. And because for some reason, I seem to get the best ideas when I'm supposed to be doing something else, like studying for my philosophy exam -- actually, specifically when studying for my philosophy exam, because I'd rather be doing about a gazillion things than studying for it -- I decided that it was finally time to satisfy my curiosity about caffeine. And then, figuring that you guys are probably either also nerds or geeks and/or doing NaNo and/or going to university, I thought I'd share.

 Caffeine, or, between friends, 3,7-dihydro-1,3,4-trimethyl-1Hpurine-2,6-dione, is a psychoactive drug, meaning that it mainly affects your central nervous system and through that, your brain, altering your behaviour and state of mind. Apart from that ridiculously long IUPAC name, doesn't sound like a whole lot of new information, does it? The interesting bit of information follows: apparently, caffeine is able to do this to our brains, because it is very similar to a chemical that is already present in our bodies: adenosine.

Adenosine accumulates in your brain after long periods of concentration or alertness, and that is interpreted in our brain as a signal to rest or sleep in order to give your poor, hard-worked neurons some time to relax. But no, that really important thing is on tomorrow, you can't afford to lose any time on pesky rest right now! So you go and make yourself a biiiiig cup of coffee, the caffeine molecules swimming around in your cup, and, before long, in your brain, blocking the receptors that usually detect adenosine, keeping you alert and focused for juuust a little bit longer.

Sounds like a pretty sweet deal, doesn't it? Fortunately, too, caffeine doesn't appear to have that many adverse side-effects: though it is claimed to be a diuretic, thereby leading to dehydration, the generally accepted view is that this is not true, and that any such effect caused by caffeine is similar to that of water. Previously, it had also been thought to increase blood pressure, but recent studies have shown no such connection. There's a whole list of risks and benefits of caffeine listed on wikipedia, if you're interested -- I only glanced at the list, but I didn't see anything there that was blatantly contradicted by the rest of my research; still, take it with a grain of salt. I guess the fact that it appears relatively harmless makes sense: I wouldn't think that anything ultimately harmful to humans could be used as widely as caffeine is, what with the knowledge we have of biochemistry today.

So, the only thing you really have to worry about in your reckless coffee consumption is addiction. Like any other drug, caffeine is addictive, and, when used extensively will eventually cause withdrawal symptoms like headaches, muscle pain, irritation, and so on and so forth. One site I visited also claimed that caffeine consumption can turn into a vicious cycle: though its effects diminish over time, as with alcohol, there will be a measure left in your body, and that might disrupt your deep sleep pattern, leading to restless sleep, which, then, leads to more excessive caffeine intake.

That's all I've got for now, folks! Hope none of you get caught in the vicious caffeine cycle in the vicious month that is called November (I know I'm about six days off the start of November, but it's appropriate, ok?); and if you are, well, at least it's delicious, delicious coffee, right?

Sources:
http://www.overcaffeinated.org/
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/podcast/CIIEcompounds/transcripts/caffeine.asp?playpodcastlinkuri=%2Fchemistryworld%2Fpodcast%2FCIIEcompound.asp%3Fcompound%3DCaffeine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine
I also mercilessly stole the pictures off google images. If you own any of these images and would like them removed, please notify me in a comment, and I will take them down.

What novels and snowflakes have in common

The problem I always have when beginning large creative writing projects such as novels is my lack of ability to plan ahead.

Usually, and in pretty much everything, I'm an amazingly organised person -- I used to use Scrivener to organise my course and novel notes simply out of the sheer joy of being able to make folders within folders within folders and still being able to see all their contents at the same time (a remarkably rare feature, actually). I get agitated when I don't get to catalog and list all my tasks for the week or my possessions, because that means making on-the-fly decisions, and what if I forget something important?

It's amazing how all of that changes when it comes to creative writing. As a writer, (and as some longer-time followers of any of my previous blogs may have duly noted) I've always been the type of person who sits down in front of a blank page and starts writing. Using that approach, the story usually almost writes itself -- every moment of writing is a moment of joyful revelation and sometimes genuine surprise about the direction the story is taking. I believe it's a method of unrestrained creation that produces the best, most genuine characters, who act naturally to their personalities, because you don't strictly speaking have a storyline to restrict them.

The problem with that approach, however, is that it's largely unsustainable. When it comes to large projects, like the stalling novel I mentioned in my last post, Following the Gay Umbrella, which has since the NaNo of 2009 went clearly past 200,000 words, you simply struggle to keep all of that in your head. With FTGU, I built outlines and character profiles and such, because I knew it would be extremely difficult to create a sustainable story like that on the fly -- and I'm not saying it's impossible and that people haven't done it, I'm just saying that it would probably be very difficult.

Since then, and during that writing process, I've discovered that there's actually far more to a novel than the Beginning, Middle and End. You can have those things plotted out all you want, but if you keep to that, there will be things you haven't accounted for, things your characters develop to do that you haven't planned, and foreshadowing and things like that that lead to the inevitable end of your novel that are incredibly difficult to keep track of, even with as detailed an outline as I had for FTGU. That is one of the reasons that project is currently hibernating -- I lost the strings of that novel, and with current time restrictions, it's just not worth going back to it to try to learn all of it again.

This time, then, I'm trying a slightly more structured and yet, free approach. I'm going to try the Snowflake method, which consists of 10 different steps, each going slightly more into detail with your novel. I confess that I haven't even read through the entire method yet, but I also confess that that's actually a pretty reasonable precaution when you know me -- if I DID know what the other steps entailed, I'd be far more tempted to simply skip the ones I find boring and get to the interesting bits. Still, there were two things that drew me to this method.

 Firstly, I finally confessed to myself that though I like to think of myself as a reasonable storyteller and that I'm at least a moderately good writer in a technical sense, I haven't planned many stories in the past. My style of writing is more extempore: I simply sit down and a story pours itself out. I have also confessed to myself that while that might be a usable approach for most short stories (and maybe unsuccessful novels), if I want to write a longer story, I will have to resort to some sort of clear and concise planning technique that I seem not to be able to orchestrate myself.

Secondly, the Snowflake method drew me in with its simplicity, and the fact that it begins with the very core of the story. Step 1 of the method requires you to summarise your story in one sentence, in which case you're crystallising your idea into the very heart of what you want to express with your story. And that, coincidentally, has always been how I've had the best ideas for stories. They always begin with a single sentence, or, in the case of FTGU, a single expression (the title, in case you're wondering).

I haven't gotten far yet, using this technique, since I only discovered it four-ish days ago and university life is demanding. I'm currently drafting the paragraph for step 2. Still, here's to hoping that I don't get too busy and strike out on this, because it feels good and right, and I might actually be able to complete a novel this time.

Seriously though, keep your fingers crossed for me.

Doing the NaNoWriMo dance

The end of the year is creeping upon us. Not only does that mean that your Christmas shopping should probably have been done about a week ago and that the weather is either going to get miserably hot or miserably wet depending on which hemisphere you live in, but it also means that that time of the year is arriving.

Of course, I'm talking about NaNoWriMo: that magical month before December when everyone more-or-less crazy lock themselves indoors, away from their distracting lives and/or families, determined to produce at least 50,000 words of a novel (or screenplay or anything marginally creative, really) in 30 days.

The first (and only) time I did NaNoWriMo was in 2009, when I started writing my longest and most epic novel to date, Following the Gay Umbrella. In that month, I managed to squeeze in both end-of-year exams and 158,388 (you don't easily forget the number of words you write when you're as crazily proud of them as I was) words into a month. Sadly, that novel has since died with my last year of high school and its insistent demands, and is currently shelved to wait for a time when I have more time on my hands and less stuff to do with it.

But that's not the point. The point is that this year, though I again have exams on in November, I'm going to have a crack at it again.

Why? you ask. Why would someone even want to do that to themselves? Isn't that simply crazy? Well, yes. It is a little crazy. But when you think about it, that's only just above 1,500 words in a day. When you like writing as much as I do, that sort of a wordcount, in the bare mechanics of writing that many words, is not a problem. Even for those of you who have trouble squeezing out the last hundred words for an assignment that shouldn't be an absolutely impossible task.

And for those of you who have trouble writing those close to two thousand words because you're never happy with what you say, this is exactly why we do NaNoWriMo -- to tie our inner critic or editor to a chair for one month, just to get the sense of accomplishment of getting things done. In November, it's not about the quality -- none of us expect to get published with the drivel we produce in that month. It's simply about jumping the hurdle of procrastination and endless revisions going nowhere.

So, while the total wordcount can seem impossible and daunting, I maintain that it's not a task most people can't overcome. There's a whole forum on the WriMo forums dedicated to simply waffling your way to 50,000 words, if you run out of things to say. I think one of them was to replace every second word with "pants", or, when you're feeling extremely frustrated, breaking the fourth wall to yell at your characters a bit. And that's the real challenge with NaNoWriMo: to keep you engaged in your story. I can only speak for myself and for the first time I tried this, but I honestly believe that at one point or another, you inevitably begin hating your novel. Your plot is going nowhere, your characters are flat (no, I did not call them fat about three times there before finding my l-key), annoying and have no personality, your setting is half-finished, and you've run out of coffee. But if you can press yourself to keep going, ignoring the fact that your novel is probably the shittiest thing anyone has ever written, it'll get better and you'll start enjoying it again.

And I just can't describe the exhilaration of updating your wordcount every time you finish writing, watching it creep closer and closer to the goal, or winning a  30 min word sprint against your significant other by about a thousand words (good times), or staying up for "just one more minute" to write a few more words before going to sleep, then realising that it's way past your bed time and you just can't stop writing, or finally managing to pass that magical barrier of 50,000 words. In my opinion, that's not even the best part: in addition to that personal feeling of accomplishment, the community on the WriMo forums is so creative, so supportive, so tight and wonderful that I don't think I've ever met a bunch of people on the internet so nice. If you get stuck, there is someone to help you. If you want to celebrate hitting another 10k, there is someone to celebrate with you. If you absolutely loathe what you're writing, there's someone to scream at your characters with you.

If you've ever dreamt of writing a novel but haven't gotten around to it, or are too scared to do it, or simply don't know how, go on the site -- they'll help you out and you'll figure it out. If you've been writing for years, challenge yourself this November, and have a bit of amazing fun with us.

If you've got a creative bone in your body, do NaNoWriMo. It's seriously worth it.