In which I finally get around to updating my blog again. Anyway, since we've last left off, I finished Camp NaNoWriMo the 2nd (did I mention I did two of those? I don't remember anymore), headed off to college, and managed to win another November rendition of NaNoWriMo.
Now, unless I've messed up on my time keeping (not all that unlikely), that means I've edited one novel and written three more this year. At least. Well, I haven't finished last month's story yet, and I'm not entirely sure I'll bother with it. I had the goal similar to last year's NaNo that I wanted to describe the heck out of everything so I could actually maybe someday remember to describe the fun little worlds I come up with. I did ok, I think. Mainly I'm just glad I managed to win the challenge this year. My first ever NaNo in college, and it was killer; I don't know how you school people do it. I knew it was going to be harder than before, but I guess I wasn't exactly prepared for how much harder it turned out to be. I did manage to win, though, and I've also managed to keep my grades up, which was sort of the goal.
As for the other goings on, I was sort of keeping up on my Italian course until November hit, and then I don't think I did anything for the whole month. The goal for Christmas break is to catch up on that and maybe after that I can actually keep up with the system. I may wind up going through it again, just for refresher and the like. Or else I'll just move onto all native materials and forget courses altogether. I do feel like that will be the next step, once I finish this. After about B2 level (where I hope to be) it's not so much learning grammar rules or basic phrases, but it's building vocabulary and assimilating from whatever you read and listen to, naturally.
I say all of this, of course, but I don't honestly know, and I never will unless I get my rear in gear. The last week of school doesn't promise to be all that terrible, one paper due that I've got written, a rewrite to hand in, and preparation for finals. Oh, an essay test. That's the major point of stress, and probably why I keep forgetting it. Finals week will hold only two tests for me, and one discussion in the class that has the essay test next week. Oh, and one of those tests only requires me to get a 22% or better in order to get an A in the class. So there's that.
I was thinking today, though, how maybe it would be fun to write a single story in a series. As it is I sort of have a series thing going with my stories in Yavn, but they're all mostly stand alone, which I like, in some ways. But I think maybe it would be a good exercise to see if I could keep a storyline alive through multiple books, a sort of pacing exercise. I'm not sure how I would want to go about it, or if I even have the wherewithal to manage it, for that matter.
I might take one of my bigger stories, like Crystal Glare or Crystal Frontier, and expand it. As the plot is now, I guess I would make that my core plot. Then I take all the freedom I want to expound on some of the background characters, take a few rabbit trails, weave in more backstory, add more elaborate subplots. That means making several points of suspense, though, as each book in the series needs to sort of have its own climax and etc.. And it means about a thousand more strings to tie and probably retying all of the ones that I had before so they work with those thousand other strings. Yikes stripes. It sounds like fun, but I'm not sure I could ever make it through the drafting process, much less editing the set of monsters that will come from that plotting session. But it might be something to try, just to see if I have any interest in that direction.
Thoughts would be appreciated, if I still have any readers (I probably don't; that's ok).
No comments:
Post a Comment