NaNoWriMo Conclusion 2013

Alright, it's December first and I topped out at 50,395 words! :D

It was hard. It wasn't easy at all. Week Two was the worst because the words wouldn't come, we had guests over every day of the week, and I could only write between 11:00pm and 2:30am. And I only stopped then because I couldn't physically keep myself awake past that time.

Anyway. But I did make both my goals, the first being 50,000 in thirty days, and the second being to finish before Thanksgiving. By week three and definitely week four,

NaNo Update: In Which Trinity Reveals The Depths Of Her Insanity

So, I know I haven't updated in a while, but I have a good excuse. Which I guess makes it a reason.

I have been working my tail off keeping up with NaNo.

There's a lot of things that I have half-finished. Changelings. Tribes. Twenty-One is still in the conception stage. I still haven't taken my GED, and I need to do that before January 2nd (eeeep!). I've thrown away craft projects I never got around to completing. I was supposed to put together and upload a collection of my dad's radio episodes to YouTube months and months ago and I still haven't done that. Heck, I have a basket of laundry that needs to be hung up in my closet. Again. Still.

NaNoWriMo will not join that list this year. I'm going to finish, and I'm going to win. Unfortunately, Aouthentica will be nowhere near done. I must extend my scenes like nobody's business, because at 35k I think I'm only 1/8th of the way through my plot.

So all of week two (the depressing, bog-you-down, make you want to quit week) we had friends in town from Mexico. We visited with them all day for a week straight, and it was great! We had fun.
But.
That situation is in no way, shape, or form conducive to writing 1,667 words a day. I did it anyway. The first night I stayed up until midnight to write, I thought "Hey, this is actually pretty productive. No one's bothering me, it's quiet... I like this!"
The next night I was up until one.
Then one thirty.
Then two.
Then two thirty.
I don't think it's humanly possible for me to stay awake later than that.
Actually, on the.... 8th, I believe, I did what my mom suggested and went to sleep at about ten, then woke up at two am and wrote for an hour and a half.

Fortunately, staying up late gives me a couple funny stories. One night I was so tired, I decided to close my eyes for just a minute, then opened them twenty minutes later, capped my pen, put my notebook away and shut the light off. It wasn't until the next night that I realized I had two big splotches of ink on my pajama shirt... AND I had somehow scribbled on my neck. Not quite sure how I managed that.
Saturday night, I was up until two again when I dozed off. Usually I pretty much remember going to bed. I didn't this time. I vaguely remembered dropping my notebook, and looking at the clock. I don't remember shutting off the light (which is a twirly type dimmer knob) or adjusting my pillows and blankets like I always do.
Neither do I remember writing the last line in my notebook. I only saw it the next morning. I must've written, because I signed my name and it looks like I tried to date it. It was the 16th, not the 24th.

corron. - Trinity 11/24/at 2oy   .... WHAT?!

So, all ya'll who are ready to murder me in my sleep because my word count is rising steadily, be comforted in the fact that this is not at all easy for me. It's difficult and is requiring an amazing amount of effort and dedication, and a little suffering. 

I seem to have two projects modes... Slacker Mode and Obsessed Mode. In Slacker Mode I try to get out of my task, or get it finished using any short-cut I can find. In Obsessed Mode, which usually comes with self-assigned tasks, or tasks I've completely resigned myself to, I want to get the job done, and get it done right even if it kills me. Until it's done, I don't want to focus on anything else. 

NaNo got Obsessed Mode. And so did my beautiful Christmas lights that I hung up the other day on the outside of our house. But that's beside the point. 

I don't... actually remember what my point was. NaNo has stolen my brain. 

There ya go, then. 

Oh, right! My goal right now is to write enough to either be two days ahead, or finished by Thanksgiving so I can take Thursday and Friday off of writing and spend it solely with my family and friends. 

That is all.

Sé onr sverdar sitja hvass!

-Trinity

NaNo Waits For No Man

Trinity here! I'm going to ramble today. Bear with me.

Get it!? BEAR with me? .... Oh, never mind. Ya'll are hopeless.

November marches on, fellow wrimos, and today is the end of the first week. Apparently, the second week is the hardest for us. It's the one where the doldrums hit us and we get discouraged. 

I have to say, I'm starting to feel it. I've heard of that little inner critic that starts saying that all your writing is horrible, and why are you even writing at all? I'd never heard from him before, but he appeared last night and I started to despair. My dialogue tags were all monotonous. My descriptions of action were drawn out and boring. Everything was moving too slowly. It didn't have any emotional depth to connect with the readers. My strong silent characters were too sappy and talkative.

Also, it was rapidly approaching midnight on the third day of staying up late to cram words in.

But. I will continue on. I don't think it's as bad as I thought it was last night, but I don't think it's as good as I originally believed it to be. My decision may change as the night wears on. Last night I managed to finish before midnight, so I'm happy about that.

Week three, though, is supposed to be a little better than week two. Like the Hump Week. (Hump daaaaaay!) The light at the end of the tunnel week. Right now my stats are predicting that I'll be done on November 27th, which would be nice, because then I could be done in time for Thanksgiving, and if I'm not mistaken, that's the day after you can officially start winning. But that's only if I keep up my pace of about 1,903 words a day. 

I don't know how many of you know, but I'm doing all my writing in a notebook so I can carry it with me everywhere I go and still get writing done. But then I have to type it all up to get an accurate word count.

I got tired of spending my whole morning, and sometime a good chunk of my afternoon typing everything up that I wrote the day before, so I came up with a clever solution. I numbered all the pages that I've filled in my notebook, then divided my word count by the number of pages to get the average number of words on each page, which is 138. Now I can just estimate how many words I have by how many pages I've filled. I think I'll have to get everything on the computer before the end of the month so I can validate it all (and win?), but for now I'm gonna stick with this.

I try to fill eight sheets (which is sixteen pages) every day, which gives me about 2,208 words per day. I estimated that, and then typed it all up and my accurate word count was 2,264, which is close enough for me. 

But anyway. My word count now is at 13,322. So, I'm moving right along. I got to my first action scene yesterday, which needs a little cleaning up. I'll probably do a little editing when I type it up because it really didn't portray Rienna accurately at all. She just kind of collapses into depression after an awful thing happens, when she's still needed. In "reality" she would just absorb the blow and keep moving on, and not bother with her more intricate, delicate emotions until she had some time to herself. 

Yeah. I'll need to fix that.

So. Keep going! And for those of you who are not NaNo-ing, I apologize, but this is what's going on right now, so that's what I'm writing about. We'll return to our regularly randomized posts in December. 

And now I need to go. I'm stalling. Procrastinating. Which gets ya'll posts, I suppose. I didn't take that into account when I was trying to guess how things would go in November. Technically it's still writing. But not really. I'm just not trying to convince myself it counts. 

Sé onr sverdar sitja hvass!
-Trinity

P.S. Check out Malinda Lo's pep talk! I don't usually think much of the pep talks, but I liked this one.

Malinda Lo's Pep Talk for Writers

3, 2, 1... NANO!!

It's close to midnight, and NaNoWriMo's lurking in the dark

Under the moonlight, your lack of outline almost stops your heart

You will not scream, your inspiration comes because you'll make it

You cannot freeze, your novel looks you right between the eyes

You're energized

'Cause this is NaNo-oooo! NaNo night!

And no one's gonna save you from the plot about to strike

You know it's NaNo! NaNo night!

You're writing for your life to share a marvel, novel tonight!

Mwahahaha! 'Tis NaNoWriMo, my follower friends! And I (Trinity) am so ready for NaNo!! I'm far and away more organized than I was last year, so I think I have a good chance of finishing. It's amazingly difficult to get where you want to go without having a map to tell you how to get there. And what does that incredibly vague analogy have to do with anything? Well, map=plot. If that makes any more sense.
Plus, this year's project is my baby, so I'm already super excited about that (I think I've mentioned this before). I have this huge desire for people to get to know my characters (a.k.a my brain's best friends), so I want to portray them properly. And yet at the same time that's a little scary, because each character likely represents a little section of my personality, which suddenly makes this book seem like it will be very revealing... 0.o *gulp*
Oh, well. I'm still excited.
What about Hannah? Oh, she's freaking out. Didn't do much planning. She's a mess. But going for it anyway. Yay for her! (Everyone cheer her on. She's working with timelines and her head's about to explode, I'm sure.)
So what will happen to the blog during November? Haven't the foggiest. Either we'll be so busy writing we won't post much, or we'll be so busy writing, it'll be easy to just pop a post out. Actually, we'll be sure to keep you updated on our word count. But beyond that, no promises.
I did get my playlist put together, though I haven't had time to look into everyone's suggestions yet, so keep your shirt on if your suggestion didn't make my list. And uh, keep your shirt on anyway. It's just good policy. No shirt, no service here, people. Bare feet are okay, though. Ahem. Moving on.

1. Down to the River to Pray - Alison Krauss
2. Dance with Dragons - BrunuhVille
3. Desert Mermaids - BrunuhVille
4. Clair de Lune - David Garrett
5. Kashmir - David Garrett
6. Smooth Criminal - David Garrett
7. He's A Pirate - David Garrett
8. An Epic Age - Immediate
9. Imperitum - Immediate
10. Welcome to the Jungle - 2CELLOS
11. Smooth Criminal - 2CELLOS
12. Salvation for a Proud Nation - Immediate
13. Augie's Municipal Band - John Williams
14. The Chase - Trevor Rabin
15. Car Chase - Trevor Rabin
16. London Chase - Trevor Rabin
17. Pacific Rim Theme - Ramin Djawadi
18. Welcome to Wonderland - Valentin Wiest

So there you are. Good luck Wrimos! Oh, and if you want to be our writing buddies, I'm A Quill In Her Quiver and Hannah is The Quill Is My Sister. Just be sure to let us know where you're from if you have a different NaNo name, or if we're not familiar with you.

Write on!
-Trinity

P.S.
Look who Hannah and I dressed up as this Halloween!

 

How To Create A Passable Book Cover

Ollo, it is Hannah. Jumping headlong to the meat of the matter. I was pondering aloud what I could post about today, and my sister Emily, overhearing, suggested I do a tutorial on the covers I make for my books (usually as a form of procrastination - artistic procrastination). Sounded good enough an idea, so as an example, I present my cover for my as-yet-untitled NaNoWriMo novel.

  

Maybe a bit odd-looking to some, and may not survive the first draft, but it's an example. 

I shall now wax eloquent and speak lengthily, so if you are not at all interested in covers, you may skip this entire post, because that's what's for lunch. 

To begin with, I went to Pinterest (surprise, surprise... it's a writer's best friend and worst enemy) and found these images. None of them belong to me, they are just for experimentation and all of the credit for the images goes to the original owners. I don't know who they are, sorry. If you do know, speak up or forever hold your piece. Peace. Whatever. (I'm a writer, I swear!)

There were a few other pictures I'd picked out, but these four are the ones that made it into the final cover image. They have things to do with the story, but I'm not giving away spoilers right now. 

Next, I opened them up in Photoshop. I have Adobe Photoshop Element 7.0 (I know, super old compared to these 12.0s coming out, but I like it, it's easy to use).

I opened up all the images on one file (on different layers, mind) and I arranged them in the general places they would be in on the cover.  

 

Blending them together was super easy, way easier than I thought it would be. I took an eraser and put it on a fuzzy-edge setting (that probably has some sort of special name, but I call it fuzzy-edge - sue me) and put it on 87% opacity. For those of you without the knowledge of Photoshop lingo, that means the eraser is making the picture transparent, but you can still see the erased part of the picture faintly. I've found that makes the transition smoother. To any of the people who have used Paint on the computer, it's like that, but fancier.

As you can see here, I'm working on putting all the images together. Make sure to completely erase the edges, or anyone can tell it's a sloppy Photoshop job.

Look at all the fluffy looking pictures! All smooth and pretty. But I'm still not done, because I'm a perfectionist. The background was looking a bit too dull for my taste.

I clicked Enhance, went to Adjust Color and Adjust Hue/Saturation, and fiddled with the saturation levels until I was satisfied (not the hue ones, though, because I liked the color).

You may be able to tell the slight differences between the before and after pictures in the background. The hill is a bit greener and the clouds are a bit bluer. Not overly obvious, but still.

And this is the finished product. Several months after making the first copy, I went back and decided to fade the backgrounds on the upper left corner and the center right side a bit more (with the handy-dandy eraser). I haven't made a title for it yet, so if something seems to be missing, that's it. 

I specifically picked the colors for this one to be brighter and more light-hearted. This is a prequel to my other series (which, no, I haven't written yet), and quite a bit less dark, especially cover-wise.

(These are three of my other books... As you can see, none of them have titles...)

So there you are, lovely people. I have an urge to say peeps, but I refrain. I hope this was at least a little bit informative, though it may be easier for you to go and use Instagram or whatever. In this family of Photoshop users, I have been trained to be prejudiced against Instagram (it's been said that it's like Paint is to Photoshop, which is to say, neanderthal) but don't take that as me judging whichever person prefers that method. Not outright, that is.

If you do not, in fact, have Photoshop in your possession, that's okay, as long as you have a computer to work on, because I believe you can download the older versions for free somewhere. Keep in mind that the newer the edition is, the better it is, but the harder it will likely be to use, especially if you're used to something simpler. 

Now, I have to give the credit to Trinity for the basic idea of how to do these covers. She showed a picture of her Tribes Of The Earth cover in this post and told me how to do it. It is, in her words, "spiffy".

So I think I'm done babbling on. And by the way, the piece/peace thing up there was a joke. Ha ha. No, really, it was...

Oh! I forgot to mention! Our Blogoversary is in two days! We'll do something special (I hope), so mentally mark your calendars.

Sosrin God ignt eht ceallian,

(To God be the Glory)
Hannah