[NaNoWriMo] 33 Days & Counting

From The Desk of Liz Ensley:

The demonic paradox of writing: when you put something down that happened, people often don't believe it; whereas, you can make up anything, and people assume it must have happened to you.
- Andrew Holleran

Writerly Stuff & Other Things

Writerly Stuff

NaNoWriMo Writing Tips
The Coffee Hut blog
November Spawned

Quantum Tea National Novel Writing Month writing tips:

NaNoWriMo QuickStart 1: Pick a genre (Angela Booth's Writing Blog)

Goosing Your Muse by JoAnn Braheny

Kathy Carmichael's Pitch Generator

From The Desk of Liz Ensley:

I was curious--going from one blog to another via a link, I found Kathy Carmichael's Pitch Generator. It seems as if it might be useful: I tried it for my (as yet unwritten) project for National Novel Writing Month, and this is what was generated (I went to Samuel Stoddard's Fantasy Name Generator for the name of the mountains).

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Swain's World: Origins Pitch
Swain's World: Origins is a 50,000 word fantasy novel set in Year 21 of the New Age. The story takes place in the Ribshach Mountains.. Sage Valhoor is a a Mage, whose Talent is The Sight, an ability to see into both the past and, to an extent,. the future. who believes in free will. Sage believes that those with a Talent should be trained in its use.. He wants to see for himself whether a young half-ogre has a Talent, as Garth's brother Warren has suggested., because Sage believes in fair play; he's also doing it as a favor for a childhood friend, Garth Danau, who has a few things to take care of at home (the harvest, among other things), and can't spare the time to give this matter the attention that he feels it deserves.. He is prevented from attaining this goal because someone is trying to instigate another territorial conflict, like the one ten years previously, which led to a treaty between the half-ogre and Prydewing colonies; and this same party wishes to intercept all communications to cut off the colonies from the outside world.

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This also seems like it would be a great outliner for your story's basic plot, if you have not written one.

[NaNoWriMo] 39 Days & Counting

From The Desk of Liz Ensley:

I think I'm going to backtrack slightly on the pre-NaNo pre-write that I'm doing, and start the scene downstairs or something. (I have been posting it on my Works in Progress blog, if you wonder what in Hades I'm talking about, here) I wrote 11 yesterday, using GMail's spellcheck--which, by the way, does not catch errors in punctuation. The pre-write's a good idea, since it's also pointing out, maybe, a few bits that need research for plausibility.

So, how was your millenium, so far?

To be a well-flavored man is the gift of fortune, but to write or read comes by nature.
- William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)

[NaNoWriMo] 40 Days & Counting

From The Desk of Liz Ensley:

The turning point in the whole cycle of growing is the emergence of a focus or a theme. It is also the most mysterious and difficult kind of cognitive event to analyze. It is the moment when what was chaos is now seen as having a center of gravity. There is a shape where a moment ago there was none.

- Peter Elbow, Writing Without Teachers

I spent a bit of time today, looking at Googled pictures of staircases. I have a very clear image in my head of what I want (it features in the series, and is primary in the second trilogy), but I wanted a clearer image of it in my head. I have a bit of that now, but there's nothing that matches the image of the staircase I had in mind. I'll check a few more, there might be something in D.C., but if I can't find anything else, then I'll go with a split staircase. Hm, come to think of it, that might work far better than what I had originally planned for it (several important scenes in the second trilogy transpire on it, too, possibly even a climactic battle, but we'll see, because I don't think the family wants blood-stained runners, lol).


If we have forefathers, then we should have foremothers too; but the spellchecker doesn't recognize it. *scurries off to dictionary.com* Ha! There it is! Take that, evil spellchecker!