What a Hassle...

So after about a week of messing around I have finally finished chapter three, which ended up being a lot longer than I anticipated. At first I had no idea to start it, since I wanted to flesh out some of the relationships between the characters, a lot of the backstory and some of what will happen in later parts all in one chapter. The end result was 1000 words over what my predetermined average was. The next chapter, thankfully, will be shorter and be almost an introduction to the first REAL mission my characters go on. Hilarity, hopefully, will ensue. I did not reach my goal for the end of the month unless I can pull two chapters out of my nether regions before midnight tonight.

In other news, my brother and I got my mother to play Call of Duty 4. Playing COD as a family is one of the most hilarious activities we have ever done. The only downside is my brother is about ten times better than the rest of us due to online play. I used to be able to beat him all the time in 1 vs 1. I suck at multiplayer. I can't micromanage or aim.

Current rough draft completion percentage: 16%

Overall completion percentage: 12%

If I'm not back to write more, it's because I didn't survive the brutalization of my second short story, which will take place this Tuesday night. My God have mercy on my soul.

Rail Gunz

Main character Ash has two primary guns, a regular pistol (black metal plating) and a handgun form of a rail gun (white metal plating). Due to the power of rail guns and the heat expelled, they haven't really been invented in a handgun form. They are usually huge, powerful and inefficient. This changes in the future. Ash's rail gun is much less powerful than a full-sized one, but he doesn't have a need to shoot at supersonic speeds. At most he only ever has to use the rail gun once or twice in a mission, which is enough of a strain on the metal rails in the gun as is. I'll post drawings later. For now, some links that give a little information on rail guns, mostly so I can easily access them. My bookmarks are a mess.



http://www.kitsune.addr.com/Rifts/Rifts-Equipment/Weapons-Pre_Rifts_British_Military.htm

http://science.howstuffworks.com/rail-gun1.htm

Need More Hours in a Day

Or at least the ability to go without sleep. That doesn't appear to be an option, especially since I seem to be getting sick. I knew eating that A&W at lunch was a bad idea. If it turns out to be the flu I'll be pretty pissed. Anyhow I haven't made much progress over the weekend. I had the house to myself, so I expected to get a lot done in my fortress of solitude. I however only wrote about 300 words of WMRR Chapter three a) because I had family members need somewhere to stay Saturday night, b) I had a ton of homework to do, which I am still working on, and c) I figured out how to use DOSbox and have been playing Warcraft 2 again for the first time in about 8 years or more.

Reaching my goal of five chapters (I actually had six marked on my calender, but that amount is near impossible considering I can seem to get too far on Chapter 3) will be difficult. I blame my short attention span and poorly timed assignment due dates. I at least know how to write chapter 3 now and have a good start on it. Motivation keeps wavering, a common problem with me. I'll go into writing all pumped up and excited, thinking the wording and plot line works and sounds good, and then I'll start to doubt, and suddenly all the work I've done is horrible. This goes in cycles, so I'm going to have to "crush my inner critic" and just get the stuff out before I give up again. I'll never finish if I don't.

Oy Chap, Her Too!

Yeah that was lame. So I finished my rewrite of Chapter 2 and it's just as god awful as the second version. It's done though, so I can move on to some new stuff and worry about fixing the crap later. Chapter 3! It's going to be interesting, because I'm not using any old material to write it. NEW STUFF. Well the concept and events are basically the same, but I'm writing the section completely different. I know how it will progress and how it will end, but I have no idea how I'm going to begin this chapter. Maybe I CAN use some old material and ideas after all...and by old I mean my original chapter 1 that I wrote back in 2006. I need to decide whether I want to use this material now in chapter 3, or later in chapter 8 (ish). Oh decisions, decisions...this shall be interesting.

Current rough draft completion percentage: 11%

Overall completion percentage: 8%

Now to ditch this for a bit and go write my second short story. Yay.

Chapter 1

I finally finished Chapter 1 rewrite. The ending of the chapter ended up being new material, because of the order change that I made. I think that this format works much better than the one I had before. This way the characters are introduced a little better and I can give the reader a better idea of what's going on. In the previous version the motives and general plot was much more ambiguous. A friend of mine pointed that out to me last summer, so I think this time I finally finished it. I'm on to Chapter 2 now, which was the original Chapter 1. Chapter 3 will be in the same place it always was. I am giving myself until the 30th of January to complete the first five chapters.

Here is the picture of my wall that I was talking about earlier:




Light blue is the main plot points, dark blue is the final segment of the story, purple is any extra notes I have on the plot points, the flags mark possible chapter divisions and the lined dark blue is a timeline. I like to colour code stuff.

My Wall is a Storyboard

I have converted the section of my wall that is above my bed into a giant sticky note infested plot line. I find this is the best way to make sure I don't lose my mind in the writing process. I will take a picture of it and post here when it is finished, because it's pretty epic (in my opinion).

In the meantime...characters! My favourite part of writing is creating characters, their personalities and how they interact. What I lack in the skills to easily make plots, I make up for in characterization (and dialogue but that's another discussion). I can't wait to completely flesh out each character in my book. Some of my favourite quirks and personalities are included in WMRR, so this should be tons of fun. Here is a good website to use when coming up with characters:

http://www.charlottedillon.com/CharacterChart.html

I found it one day after we discussed these types of lists in class. I thought it was a neat little site to use.

Another Few Contests

Though I probably won't enter these ones.

Short Story Competition using the idea of an "Un-Birthday". First Prize: $350:
http://dandelionmag.ca/cms/content/view/4/43/

The James H. Gray Award For Short Nonfiction. Prize: $700:
www.writersguild.ab.ca

Coffee Shop Writer Contest. Prize: A full-expense paid trip to Fernie, B.C. and a ticket to the writer's convention there:
www.coffeeshopauthor.com

These contests I believe are only for Canadians. If I find some other ones I'll post them here.


EDIT: My prof told our class about a contest for American and Canadian writers:

Grain Magazine "Short Grain" Contest. 1st Prize: $1,250:
http://www.grainmagazine.ca/contest.htm

Deadline

For the first time in my life I have set a deadline for my novel. My Fiction Writing prof sent our class an e-mail concerning a "First Book Contest" with the prize of getting published in 2011. I have decided to enter this contest, mostly just to prove to myself that I can finish a project of a much larger scale. The last day to enter is May 31. I'm going to aim for May 10th, so I have a time buffer where I'll be able to mail and make last minute changes. I also need to find someone to be a proof reader for me, though I doubt anyone has the time or ambition to do it. I am probably going to be alone on this, but I have my prof, classmates, family and close friends to turn to. Who knows? Maybe some will take a little interest.

My book will be closet to the limit of 90000 words. I will aim for 75000, which is 150 pages (on Microsoft Word). I'm aiming a bit lower so that I don't overwrite. So far I have 10 pages. I have a lot of questions to ask myself about the plot before I can really get into the story however. My characters are all finished in appearance, names, likes, dislikes, fears, and other traits. Some of their ambitions and motivations need to be figured out, but that relates to plot. A lot of the technical aspects have been worked out as well, though I do need to do more research into modern science and discoveries as well as fighting techniques. Overall I am about 60% finished the story in my mind. In terms of the actual writing I am at the 7% complete mark.

Here is the contest website for any other Canadians interested in publishing a first book. I strongly encourage my fellow Canadians to enter!

http://www.thewritersstudio.ca/news/1st-book-competition/

Italics Urinate on Fire Hydrants

Some of the rules from Fiction Writing 1 for better writing and critiques:

These words can be removed or replaced to make writing better. Usually in the narrative portion of a story. Dialogue is an exception (within reason) because a writer tries to emulate how people speak. Therefore these words can be said to me more colloquial in nature:

-thing
-A thing can be any object. These can easily be replaced with a noun.
-removing makes the writing more specific

-very/really
-better ways exist to convey emphasis
-ex. "Tina was very tired." vs "Tina was exhausted."
-both sentences convey the same meaning, but "exhausted" is stronger than "very tired"

-society/reality
-too abstract and broad of a concept, especially in papers

-adverbs
-some adverbs are obvious or make sentences repetitive
-ex. "The man crept quietly around the building."
-If the man is creeping, than it is obvious he is being quiet

-there
-this is called a "ghost subject" in that it doesn't refer to anything specifically
-ex. "There was a man on the building." vs "A man stood on the building."
-There doesn't refer to any one place. The second sentence is more direct and sounds stronger

-it
-difficult to know when to remove because the word "it" can be both specific and ambiguous
-if "it" refers to an object or creature previously mentioned, then the word can be kept
-ex. "The woman ran towards the wall. Thankfully she got behind it in time."
-In this case "it" refers to the wall
-if "it" refers to nothing than it can be replaced with a noun
-ex. "The woman ran towards the wall. It was too late."
-Here "it" refers to nothing specific.
-A good way to tell if "it" is ambiguous is to ask the question "What?"
-ex. What was too late?

-love/like/enjoy
-referring mostly to critiques and reviews of work
-these words do not help a writer. Yes you "liked" the story, but we want to know why. The same applies to hate/dislike. Writers want explanations to know what they are doing wrong and right

-the verb "to be" (is/are/was/were)
-a strange word to try and get rid of since the verb is such a large part of our vocabulary. The reason is that many times a better, more descriptive verb can be used in place of the verb "to be". Sometimes it can also weaken a sentence.
-ex. "Martha is a great leader." vs "Martha leads us better than anyone else."
-ex. "John was jumping through the arena." vs "John jumped through the arena."

-seem/appear/understand
-more strange words, but they are often over used in writing. Much like reality and society, these words are a little abstract or broad



The following subjects should be avoided (at least we were told to avoid them in class). Rules can be broken and all subjects can be used, but they have to WORK:

-E-mails, letters
-Guns/Knives/trains (essentially the act of killing/dying)
-Internet references, Facebook
-Princesses/castles/dragons/knights
-Sex
-Avatars (as in people or entities working through other sources)
-Vampires

All these subjects were listed due to clichés, overuse, current popularity and abuse. For example: too many people use death as a cheap way to end their stories (same with: "Then she woke up. It was all a dream.") Subjects like "vampires" should speak for themselves...*cough cough TWILIGHT cough*

As I said, all rules can be broken and subjects used if and only if they work (well-written, creative and differ from current norms).

The Title

What I named my project after:



The song I originally heard had no lyrics (was classified under "Immediate Music"), but when I found this not too long ago, I decided I liked the music so much more with the lyrics.

Motivation...

I need to finish this stupid novel. I've made it to the halfway mark once and then I scrapped it. Five years I have put it off and let the story fester in the back of my mind, so I decided the time has come to clean it up, write the rest of the story and finally give it a go. I am making this log to record my "progress". I'm going to post here once every week, updating what I've done and so help me it better be at least a chapter. I'm not sure if threatening yourself actually works...but I figure I'd try. Hopefully it will give me the motivation I need. I'll also post portions of my Deviant Art journals here, since I tend to update that weekly (ish).

I have begun to rewrite my first four chapters of WMRR that were also a rewrite. My original work was 17 chapters in length, my estimated "halfway mark". That first edition was horrible. Second edition, which I am rewriting now and used to get me into a fiction writing class was a lot better, but definitely needed a little buffer and polish. The Prologue and half of Chapter 1 are currently done. I am also switching Chapter 1 and 2 around. I am hoping that by the end of this week I will finish up until Chapter 2.

I will have a busy last four days of holidays. Thankfully I'm not needed at work being "on call" and can focus my time on writing my novel, writing an English paper (a nice little holiday treat from my prof), editing the first 70 pages of my friend's novel, finding 5 research materials for a group project, collecting and organizing my group member's research materials, reading two books of short stories, reading the first 10 chapters of Don Quixote, gutting my room, buying my books for next term, a day trip to Banff and finishing Assassin's Creed II (which is an amazing game by the way). So much for the rest of my "holidays". Unfortunately I will have no time to start a new video game nor record any new videos for my "Walkthrough of Extreme Boredom series: Overlord Edition" (obviously because I'm FAR from being bored).

My Deviant Art Account: http://drschwa.deviantart.com/
My YouTube Account: http://www.youtube.com/user/OnyxArdesco