http://nanowrimo.org/participants/pyropawz
So another successful NaNoWriMo. Much easier this year since my goal was not actually to complete NaNoWriMo, but to finish my entire novel, Shifting Winds, by the end of the year. I have my wordcount 50,921 from just this month. The novel right now clocks in at 116,414, though it’s still not finished. I am having some issues with the very ending section and how things come together, so working that out will be my December.
So I got about halfway through the month of November, having no trouble keeping up with my word count when it hit me, that NaNoWriMo isn’t for me anymore. NaNoWriMo gets people who have not been working on that novel that they want to publish, to sit down and actually write. Well I realized that I actually had to stop working on the story I had been working on to do NaNoWriMo, which ended up being a story that I have little to no interest in because I’ve already started all of my good story ideas. So I officially quit NaNoWriMo, by telling the people that knew I was doing it, that I wasn’t anymore, and I went back to working on Shifting Winds.
And this isn’t to say that I like NaNoWriMo any less. I think it’s an amazing program that I will continue to support and may participate in again, but it’s for those people who need that push to get off their butts and write, and that’s no longer me. It helped me in the years I did participate. Now I’m to the point where I can write, so I need to work on turning my writing into the polished product it needs to be, and that is not the point of NaNoWriMo.
I actually don’t know what first sparked my interest in Norse mythology. I remember already knowing a bit when I first played Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth (for the PSP, not the PS1) But I didn’t really start researching it until after I saw a mostly obscure anime called Ragnarok many many years ago. I only watched a few episodes of it, but while the characters interested me, the story did not and I walked away from it going: “I can do that better.”
Loki interested me from the beginning, as he is, I feel, the character around which the entire mythology rotates. I have read a lot of different opinions on him, from him just being a harmless jokester to evil incarnate.
When the Thor movie was coming out I knew nothing about it. I really didn’t want to see it because I figured it would effect my own vision of Norse mythology too much, and Thor was not a comic book hero in which I was ever interested. I’m not sure why I changed my mind, (Maybe cause Thor’s actor was cute, no lie) but when I started it up and saw “Thor’s brother” I wasn’t sure at first who it was. Odin has lots of sons after all. (In mythology anyway.) It wasn’t until I heard the character called “Silvertongue” that it actually clicked.
And I remember feeling a sense of dread. It is so easy to make Loki the villain, and I figured that was what was going to happen in this movie as well. I was so happy at the thought and care that went into Loki’s progression from good to evil. The depth and humanity of it, well I can understand why he has such a following (handsome, talented actors aside). I don’t watch that movie for Thor. Thor can shove it. I don’t believe his change in attitude for a moment when compared to the anguish that Loki had to endure and the decisions he had to make.
Though part of me is still upset, because now I feel like I have to share Loki with the rest of the world. Some of them who don’t know anything about the mythology or the character beyond what was in that movie. It worries me mostly because of the story I am trying to write that uses Loki as one of the main characters. It will probably be tainted by those movies, but I guess I won’t let that keep me from nurturing my own version of Loki. And maybe one day, someone else will like my version of Loki as well.
So I had a lot of trouble with NaNoWriMo this year. Partially because I started raiding again. I ended up not writing any on those weekends and then catching up on the weekends. It got rather annoying, and more than once I wanted to just give up and not bother with it anymore. However, I did not give up and actually finished early thanks to a desire to play Skyward Sword on the Monday after Thanksgiving. But I kept going and managed to get my 50k words. And I am very glad that I did it. This year was “The Colors Of” my rovas story.
Once again I have managed to be NaNotorious.
It was harder this year, for sure, since I had a full time job. Week three was the worst, I really wanted to just give up and get on with…well not doing this. But I managed to stick it out. Once again the book is not finished. I think I’m further through the book than the halfway of last year, but once again, we’ll see how that goes. I, of course, celebrated by starting work on my other book, The Trickster.
That being said, we’re less than a week away from Wow’s Cataclysm launch which will consume my soul for at least a month before I come up for air. Looking forward to the days off if nothing else. Though with the time, I really should get the ‘credits’ thing done to try and encourage other people to make their own so I can get that done before Cata launches.
There’s also the pesky issue of my lost SoulSilver game, and with it all of the Pokemon I have collected over the past, roughly three years. I have reached the last gym of the Diamond version of the game (which I hate as a game, but made better by sending over eggs from my husband’s Heart Gold game for a familiar team) and am playing with getting White when it comes out in March. However last night I looked over the pictures of the pokemon from Gen V and am sadly (but expectantly) disappointed by the horrible designs in most every respect. Most of my problem being that a lot of the pokemon don’t *look* like pokemon. The style seems incorrect. The starters are fine along with a few random pokes, but even the legendary dragons don’t really fit the style of pokemon designs I’m used to. I still desperately cling to the original 151 with some passion, with only tiny cracks for some pokemon from the later releases. By the time they hit Diamond’s pokemon, I was thoroughly disgusted, and think I hold no love for any of those pokemon (I’d have to check to be positive.)
So what is the point of going into Gen V? The possibility of at least good gameplay. I did not dislike Diamond only because of the unfamiliar, unimagined pokemon, but because the gameplay itself was terrible as they took a Game Boy game and spent five minutes making it DS compatible. (I also didn’t like it because of the storyline. While Team Galactic was cool for once again having a PLAN, the idea of being able to put the world’s creator in a ball in my pocket really pushes past even the suspension of disbelief one must have for being able to put something the size of Onix in a ball in my pocket.) SoulSilver was everything that I could possibly want in a game. All of the pokemon. A huge world. Fabulous gameplay and an actual (fabulous) use of the ds screen. In my mind they improved the game in almost every way. (Even the pokewalker was so cool.) So I’m hoping that Black and White will be worth it. If not, I suppose I’ll get another SoulSilver game at some point and complete my Gen IV collection and be happy with that.
It’s that time of year again. NaNoWriMo is once again upon us. This year I am full intending to win. I’m going to be writing the rough first draft of Candidate that I failed to write for this site. Then hopefully I’ll be able to edit it into something I feel I can post (though still not a final draft) here.
This year I’ve even gotten a few other friends involved. Hopefully that will help keep me motivated. The challenge of keeping up (or beating) them.
For right now, this is my page: PyroPawz
My husband: Mssngrdeath
And one friend: PhoenixAscending
Writing starts tonight.
I read webcomics. I am a sucker for pretty pictures, and for stories, and anything that would combine the two is of course something that would interest me. And as much as I like the “joke a day” comics, I find myself much more attracted to the webcomics that have one major underlying plot (as opposed to just an infinite number of archs) because it’s so much like reading a novel, just with pictures.
The point? I clicked on a new link today, and found myself at a webpage that was set up like a webcomic, but was actually…well he calls it an e-novel. Basically instead of putting up a new comic on some weekly updating schedule, he puts up installments of a book. Each installment usually isn’t as long as a chapter, though some are longer than others. It’s more like each installment is a scene or so.
While I wasn’t interested in the story itself (I don’t like ‘Dark Fantasy’, as he labeled his genre.) the concept of the webpage itself is greatly interesting to me. It also shows me that perhaps there are people out there who will come to a website for something even if there aren’t pretty pictures. (Of course webcomics will probably always be more popular, but his link was an ad on a webcomic site so there’s some correlation.) But this has given me some interesting ideas for my own website, which is made all the easier by the recently added “blog” on the front page.
One of my major issues is my inability to keep focused on one story for very long. I can go through stints of writing on one story for a few weeks, and then have weeks where all I do is read over random stories and maybe write a few lines on the end, or make some changes, and still other times all I’ll work on is the background or details of the world. However, the blog would help greatly in this, in that each “piece” I post is put into a category. That way you could choose the “Demonslayer” category and just see the posts that add to that story. Then once I have posted all of the pieces of a chapter, I can compile the chapter and put it into the already existing structure of my website. But perhaps fact that I won’t have to have an entire chapter done before I post it will encourage me to post more than I have.
Of course the issue still comes out of the fact that I want people to read what I write. I do write for myself. I write what I like and what I want to see, but at the same time there’s nothing better than getting feedback on something I’ve written. (Assuming it isn’t done in a nasty way, I even appreciate constructive criticism.) Not only does it make me feel good that someone else might care about something I’ve put so much time and effort into, but other perspectives and suggestions help to expand my skill.
At the same time, I don’t believe I have nearly enough confidence to actually rent out ad space on popular websites to bring people in. But I do want to bring in some people; more people than are just randomly floating around here because they know me from who knows when. (Not that I don’t appreciate you guys hanging around.) After talking to Ajin, of Misadventures Etc fame, I found out all he really did was post the links on a few forums he went around to, and possibly word of mouth did the rest. Now he’s rubbing elbows with some of the greats of furry artdom. (Though improving his art skill has done a lot toward that end as well.)
I suppose, however, that the first step is…well taking the first step. Posting a piece of story to the blog. Perhaps throwing up the link to this site on a few of the forums I go around to, and see if anything happens.
