All posts for the month October, 2011

NaNoWriMo 2011: SOON.

Happy Halloween.

Now that that’s out of the way, midnight begins the great experiment that is National Novel Writing Month. Are you ready?

I’m not.

My outline is miserable, and I’m currently working on a Capstone paper for my final class (if you don’t know what that is, just believe me when I say it’s 20-30 pages of boring). I have maybe four or five characters in this story that are actually interesting, and I know for a fact that it will not be 50,000 words long. So I’m thinking of working on the outline for the second part of my series while I write part one. Easy. But enough about my stress and misgivings. Here’s some advice to help break through your own demonic walls.

WRITE. EVERY. DAY.

Well, that’s an obvious one. But it’s true. Just write. Write everything. Doesn’t have to be chronological (though it helps me most of the time). Just do it. 1667 words a day and you’ll be smooth sailing by Thanksgiving. Just a head’s up, though: 50K is not really long enough for a novel. There’s a good chance that you’ll hit 50K and say “Wait, I’m not done yet!” Good for you! Keep going until it’s finished!

Don’t Revise

What?! You read what you wrote yesterday and you don’t like it? TOO BAD. Don’t change it. Otherwise you’ll spend the whole month just nitpicking everything and on the 31st you’ve just rewritten your first day’s words 30 times. It’s tough, I know. The biggest problem with my current idea is that I’ve gone back and changed everything so much that I’m just starting over from scratch tomorrow and disregarding anything I’ve written on it before. So if you want to make a change, make a note and move on. Hell, pretend you made the change but let yourself be reminded to fix anything that needs to be fixed in December (or later).

This is a First Draft

What does that mean? Well, you aren’t going to wake up in December and just submit this to a publisher, are you? Or just say “Well I typed 50k and got to the end of my story so i’ll just make it an ebook lol.” Shame on you if you thought this was over. You just wrote a book (a very, very, very short book). Now you get to fix it. NOW you get to make it perfect! Everything that bothered you (and I hope you wrote it down instead of fixing it) can now be fixed. Names can be changed, characters can be unwritten, mistakes can be rectified (or added), and every little grammatical problem you notice gets repaired. Because you never use your first draft as your final draft. Now you get to revise and rewrite and reread it. The goal of NaNo isn’t to make something beautiful. It’s to finish with 50k words. What you do after is up to you.

Have Fun

Most importantly, don’t kill yourself doing this. You’re not getting paid to do this, so try to have fun and finally get that story out of your brain. If something big happens in real life, you can stop and handle it. But still try to write every day. It might help relieve any real-life stress. But remember, again, this is all for fun.

And that about does it. There are other sites around that give great (better) advice than I, sure. But this is just how I approach it. Do what works for you. But if you’re trying to be a serious writer, remember step one. And it applies to every day. Ever. Not just November. WRITE. EVERY. DAY.

And have fun. Or else.

Also, here’s me at NaNoWriMo.org. You can be my writing buddy and see actual updates on my wordcount before anyone else.

Unless they look at the badge that’s displayed on every page.

Writing Playlist For October 29, 2011 – Ghibli!

Happy Halloween weekend, boys and ghouls!

. . . sorry.

I’m adjusting well to the new site. I had less to bring over here than I thought, go figure. A guy thinks to himself “Well, I must have posted all sorts of interesting things at the old place, I must bring them to show off at my new website!” And then that same man goes and finds boxes full of cobwebs and ramblings over stories that never actually existed. Ha. Oh well. If I have nothing old, then I’ll just have to bring something new.

I’ve never been very good at writing in silence. Being trapped with nothing but my own thoughts running through my head just doesn’t do it for me. I almost have to distract myself from myself to accomplish anything. Right now, in fact, I took a few minutes to change over to another album because the last one finished. I don’t think I’m alone in this. Even while reading for school, I just could not bring myself to read in silence. Anything would get my attention. I’d eavesdrop on people or just stop working and look around blindly. So the headphones went in and work began.

Not just any music would do, though. If the music had vocals, it would get my attention. Instrumentals became my flavor of choice. I will admit, sometimes I listen to vocals for certain things, but that’s a rare and case-by-case basis. So, I think I might take some time to bring up a highlight from my current writing playlist.

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2 Comments

by Chris Goodwin on October 29, 2011 • Permalink

Posted in Writing, Writing Playlist

Tagged writing, writing playlist

Posted by Chris Goodwin on October 29, 2011

http://evilgoodwin.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/writing-playlist-for-october-29-2011-ghibli/

Time to Act Professional: An Introduction

Hello, everyone (probably nobody).

If you’re just now joining me, welcome.

If you’ve been with me before, welcome as well to the new blog.

I recently polled some people on G+ and Facebook about switching my blog to WordPress from Blogger. Don’t get me wrong, I loved blogger and will probably keep that one up and running to catalog more of my day-to-day randomness. But most people said that WordPress is more professional. As I look around at other blogs, most I read do, in fact, use WordPress. Interesting.

As I work on my final semester of college, I realized something: change will happen in 2012. For the first time since I started kindergarten in the fall of 1989, I will no longer be going to an educational institution. When I graduated in 2002, I went to school almost immediately, no hesitation, undeclared until I could figure things out. I worked a retail job and did my time in random classes, spinning my tires until I realized that I hated my job and had no future if I didn’t try harder. I transferred from my cheap, community college and proceeded to enroll in a private school on the recommendation of my brother. “If it costs more,” I thought, “you’ll try harder.” Boy, was I ever right. A few years later and I find myself here, tapping away at this introductory post and procrastinating on one of the final three assignments that I have left. December will be a big step in my life. The first was moving from my hometown. The second was moving out on my own. This will be the third. And a change this big closes one of the biggest chapters of my life. As a result, I realize that change is needed.

My former blog was more of a personal thing that started to warp itself as I grew as a student and discovered that I still enjoyed writing. The randomness there is apparent, from me gushing about Batman, vehicles, those same vehicles being scratched, and a method of cooking steak that will, due to a lack of good revising, fill your entire apartment with smoke and probably kill you. While a fun little diversion, I don’t think I’d show it to any employers. So that’s why this is here. With the upcoming change in my life, I bring the change to my online presence with a nice blog devoted to my craft. The old site will still exist in case I need to talk about TV. This will be my business face to show off what I can do.

Plus, I’m pretty sure a professional blog will help me pick up chicks.

So welcome to my new outlet for insanity. I’ll try to update often, starting with transferring ideas over from the old site.

2 Comments

by Chris Goodwin on October 26, 2011 • Permalink

Posted in General

Posted by Chris Goodwin on October 26, 2011

http://evilgoodwin.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/time-to-act-professional-an-introduction/

NaNoWriMo 2011: Monsters?

(This post was originally posted on my blogger website and has since been revised and moved to here).

For those who don’t know, November is National Novel Writing Month. During this month, many people attempt to write a novel between November 1st and November 30th and join NaNoWriMo.com to track their progress and show off their talents, participate in a writing community, and so on. Last year, I participated but failed almost miserably. With a mere 7000 word entry, I slinked away in shame. But I’m back. And I will outdo myself if I’m going to take myself seriously.

While I didn’t finish last year (looking back, it feels like I haven’t worked on that story for years), I will participate again this year. For the past two months, I’ve been trying to start my current story but I can only make it a few scenes before I restart it. The first time, I realized that I hated my main character, so I had to kill him and restart (I literally killed him in the first attempt. Just mid-scene wrote “Suddenly, the ground opens up and sends the young man hurtling towards the fiery pits of Hell”). Second time? I ruined him even faster. In my head he was right, but on paper he just moped about like a thirteen year-old. I didn’t even bother killing him and just deleted the files. This time, I’ve outlined the work out and I think I can pull it off, so I’m going to start it over again in November. So anyway, here’s the basic idea for next month’s project/contest.

Here’s my NaNoWriMo page where you can monitor my progress. (link)

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Tax – Flash Fiction Challenge Piece

This story was originally posted on my old blog as the end result of a Flash Fiction challenge from Chuck Wendig’s Blog “terribleminds“.

The challenge was, in 1000 words write a flash fiction piece based on choosing three of the five following words: Bottle, Tax, Cockroach, Box, Fountain. As well as choosing three of those words, you must also add a Vampire in some way.

Due to my long-windedness, I exceeded the 1000 word limit, technically failing the challenge. It’s closer to 3000 words, honestly. But that’s just semantics because I just wound up writing a story anyway, and you can never hurt yourself by practicing more. Even if you break a rule or two.

This is the original page containing the challenge.

Here’s my Entry

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