News!

I’ll just go ahead and skip the usual speech about habits and wondering where they ran off to, shall I? In fact, I’ve been getting back into the habit of getting up early in the morning. I’ve written another story this summer, a worldbuilding exploration tour of sorts, and now I’m finally editing my story from last summer. Other than that, not a whole lot’s been happening. Language making has been going well enough, I keep coming up with words and idioms, if I can remember to.

The 10th-12th of this month I’m embarking on an insane weekend writing project. There’s a contest that evidently is every Labor Day Weekend, called the 3-Day Novel Challenge. It costs money to enter, but there’s a chance of getting the story you write published. Too bad for them, I don’t particularly care about that kind of thing. A few friends and my mom and I are going to give it a shot the weekend after. There’s no official word goal, only that the story be started and completed in the same weekend, but I’m going to try for 30,000 words. Yikes. I tried to schedule my time for when to write and when to break, but I don’t know how well it’s going to work.

This should be fun.

Looking for Motivation

Ideas have arrived, and yet I have this problem of getting up early in the morning. Again. It's like exercise. I hate starting, but once I get going it's not so bad. The first few days though... I have the hardest time convincing myself it's worth it. Surely I can get that writing done later in the day, it's Summer. I don't have a job right now, no school to speak of... I can do it during the day, or at night or something, right?

Of course not. While my parents will often retire earlier, my brothers don't, in typical teenager fashion. If I stay up I'll never be able to stand not to hang out with them... the only option is to either wall myself away for the months I write (which will drive me crazy) or I can learn to get up early again. Curses!

In other news, things are a bit better. Somehow I stumbled upon a Language Construction Kit (I make it a link so that I feel very fancy). I think it was something about wanting to make an alphabet for Yavn, and wand'ring round the internet for ideas, up comes a link for said kit. Now I'm obsessed with it. I really should learn another language before I try and create my own (say, finishing up my Italian course, or maybe getting my parents to help me learn Swahili or something), but be that as it may, I've already made up most of my grammar. Right now I'm trying to generate some semi-random words to get some vocabulary, so I can move on to translating and writing and speaking it somewhat to find holes in my grammar rules. I've eliminated or combined some tenses, and I'm hoping that doesn't mess me up terribly. I'll never know until I start using it. I found a handy program that will let me define catagories of letters and then put in patterns that I want, and it'll generate random words based on that. It's quite helpful. It could be as vague as just Consonants and Vowels, or as specific as typing the words yourself. I've got fricatives (M, N, V, F, etc.), vowels (vowels), plosives (P, B, D, T, G, etc.) and approximants (like R and L). Using names I've got so far, I'm generating words from their patterns. I can't replicate the entire dictionary in a day, and I've got to assign each word to an English word. The vocabulary of course will have fewer words than English (English has pretty much the most of any language I know of), but even so I'll need hundreds. I've got about 300 printed off on a sheet for easy reference, but I still have to find the best words to assign them to. Some are more important than others, and I'll probably do those first. Right now I'm picking out some for prepositions, and next I'll probably get nice words for the important ideas and objects in Yavn. Wow. Work.

I have another project to work on writing-wise that should help with world-building yet more. If I could just get work done on it... I'm slotted to start today, and I will do it. I didn't get my rear out of bed this morning? Too bad.

Well, no more procrastinating. Music, writing, work.

Ooh, it generated one that goes "umpyiu." How on earth do I pronounce that?

A Summary

It's strange how I never want to sit down at the computer and blog, and yet I'm perfectly happy blogging by sending a text from my phone (like I am now. My new phone has email!).
Writing has been slow lately. I took a break in December and managed with only marginal success to work on Crystal Glare in January. I'm probably still only... Three fifths through, at most. Had I been able to stick to my schedule, I would be done by now. But since NaNo I've not really wanted to get up early. It happens a lot in winter for me.
I'm still working my way through it, I have bad days and better days, but so far none that could be acceptable during November. But maybe I can't set all year by NaNoWriMo, however much I want to. When spring comes things nay get better.
In other news, I finished my Algebra 1 book, and now I can resume Geometry. I still have no idea if I'm behind or not. I probably am. At least I've made a little progress on Italian, if only I could build my vocabulary.
And that's the news!

It's a Little Scary

I hit 40k day before yesterday, and pardon me if I say I always find it thrilling and a little scary to have less than ten thousand words left until I reach the month's goal. I'm hoping to hit 45,000 today, and then it's just a short hop to the finish line!

As for my story... I have twelve (long) chapters, and so far I'm on the... fifth or sixth? I'm not sure anymore. It's nowhere near done, wherever I might be. I did accidentally get the wrong character mad at someone, but I managed to turn that around into being some sort of practical joke/helping out thing (with some help from my wonderful mother).

I have another write-in with a friend today, and hopefully I can make some more of that number go up. To 45k and beyond!

Oh, in other news, while I was writing I decided that the word "glew" should be used as the past tense of "glow" instead of "glowed." I just don't like the way glowed sounds, when pretty much every other word in English with that structure doesn't use it. The exception being "hanged," but then, that's only used when referring to a hanging, when you're executing a person, anything the word "hung" is used.

So there! Glew it is! Unless you're referring to a "glowing," where you uh... hm. When you're dumping a person into a vat of radioactive waste in order to give them glowing superpowers? That's a "glowing," and then you "glowed" someone.

NaNo Time is Here...

...and I guess I should post something. Not that I don't like NaNoWriMo! On the contrary, it makes November one of my favorite months of the year. It's just I haven't been feeling the bug for blogging lately. It's my problem I guess.

Anyway, for a recap: I did very little plotting the rest of October, because it was virtually all done back in June (note to self: do not do that again. EVER). As a result, I had trouble getting all excited and happy like usual. My mom helped me out with that though, whens she finally signed up for NaNo and took me goodie shopping. I got candy (of course) and some fluffy socks for writing. After that... I dunno.

Day one of NaNo was rather interesting. We were out of town for Halloween to see family, and it was me, my parents, my two brothers and a friend of my brothers all staying in this one room guest cabin. I somehow manage to get my Neo and such early in the morning and go out to the car, in the cold, writing by flashlight. The worst part of this was I had caught a rather nasty cold the afternoon before, so I was rather unmotivated. I didn't get all of my words that morning, and had to finish them later. It was cold!

The whole first week I either couldn't get up early like usual, or if I did I couldn't get as many words as I'd like. On Saturday, I didn't get up early, and we mowed on top of that, but from four to seven in the evening I wrote like mad and got a good 3,000 words done. Spurred by this, I managed to write 5,000 words yesterday. 2k in the morning and 3k afterwards. 5k people! On Sunday! With church and junk taking up my schedule! So there! I'm happy.

Victory! Though a Small One

I actually did some plotting today! I have most of it done already, and I've just been trying to remember what in the world I was doing when I left off. New rule: no major plotting until October 1st ever again. At least I need to plot straight through and then start writing that same story not too long after that.

At any rate, my timeline is finished and my story is divided into chapters accordingly. All that's left is some character polishing and sub-plot that should be added. I need to think of some for that. But that's a job for tomorrow morning.

Let me see, I also have to stock up on candy and other treats, I might write myself a few letters again, and then there's always the getting ahead in school that I'm so happy I can do. Hooray homeschooling!

Of course, getting ahead on school requires me to do at least what I'm supposed to...

Vote for OLL to get $10,000!

I feel strange plugging such a thing, but I'll get over it I suppose.

All of you fans of Office of Letters and Light (bringers of NaNoWriMo and the Young Writer's Program and Script Frenzy and the like) need to go here and nominate them to win $10,000! Whichever charity gets the most votes wins that cash, runner up is $5,000 and the next ten charities after that each get $1,000.

As for my NaNoPrep, I uh... hmm... haven't really started yet. I was out of town Friday and Saturday, and of course Sunday is a day off... but I did some worldbuilding over the weekend, and tomorrow I'll do more yet, or plot, or something. I have to get my head into that mode. I've been writing on one thing for so long, and now I have to skip forward some 800 years in my world, and there's quite a bit of change between there.

A while ago I got so far as plotting out my timeline, but I'm not sure if I should return to it stright away. Those only seem to work if I have the plot in my head anyway. I'll have to read through my notes - and probably rewrite them - before I remember what's going on. Oh well, I could use the practice. I quite enjoy plotting mode when I get into it. And then there's the cleaning and organizing and setting up and various other things to be done... It's really more fun than it sounds. October is full of anticipation for November, and it's all part of the NaNoWriMo experience. I can't imagine November without any of this. Woo October prep + November madness + December relief!