Walking in the Rain

I just got inside after walking around outside in the rain. It started out as a drizzle, and it just kept on drizzling and drizzling until it was pouring and I was soaked to the skin. It was like an all-natural shower (though I wasn't naked). Now I'm inside, snuggling up in a big turquoise sweater with llamas and snowflakes on the button bands and cuffs and wearing the most comfortable sweat pants. I've got a huge cup of hot chocolate to one side and a slice of cold pizza on the other (the two go together surprisingly well). I have a new pair of socks on the needles and a novel to write.

It's been a long time since I've done a 'random' post, hasn't it? I think my last truly random one was back in January! It looks like a lot of my posts about the weather seem to fit nicely into the random slot, I suppose because my mind tends to wander when it's raining or snowing out.

My sister is making muffins currently. If she doesn't share with me, a combination of the Hufflepuff and Slytherin inside me will force a few of those pumpkin cream cheese muffins into my stomach. On the topic of food, I have now finished my hot chocolate and pizza and I'm only somewhat full. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, because they were very liberal helpings of both. My stomach must be growing. Or these sweat pants allow me to eat more than I normally could.

And now I have to go and either do some knitting or writing. See you soon!

5K Saturday

a screenshot of my Camp Nanowrimo stats

In the past few days, I got a little behind on my novel. (In case you missed the post where I talked about it, I'm participating in Camp Nanowrimo this summer, which is a program that helps authors write a rough draft of a novel in 30 days.) Because I was a little behind, I decided to fix that and then some. I thought, I will write 6,000 words today and not only get caught up, but get way ahead!

So, I was doing great. I hit 3,000 words. Then it was time for me to make dessert, and do some crocheting, and dinner. Then my friend and I wanted to watch the Disney Hercules, and I had to be in bed by midnight, and I still had three thousand words to write. I wrote as quickly as possible, and in less than an hour, I hit 5,000 words. And a little message pops up on the screen that says: Only patrons can write more than 5,000 words per day (by the way, the site I was writing on is 750 Words, which used to be free but unfortunately is now only free for the first month; though that's perfect for the month-long Camp Nanowrimo). So, my 6K Saturday turned into a 5K Saturday, which still put me ahead about 2000 words.

And now, after a busy day of writing, I'm enjoying writing this blog post while trying to simultaneously pay attention to Hercules. So, I bid you all goodnight and apologize for a rather distracted post.

Congratulations!!

"GAAAAAA!" screamed Dimitri suddenly. "I HATE THIS STORY WHY DID I EVEN GO ALONG WITH CASEY'S IDIOTIC PLAN?" 

um... delete that bit. 

That is an excerpt from  my book, The Pandora. The book that I finished last night at about 12:30 am. That is one of the parts that I wrote when I was particularly angry with the book and did not feel like writing it. Sometimes having your characters rant about things you are unhappy about is the best way to get over writer's block.

The book is exactly 45,360 words long- about 170 pages, in non-writer terms. Hardly more than a novella, but I don't think I'll have any problem adding another thirty or forty thousand words to it during the editing process- reading through it today, I've realized that there's a lot of information missing.

I'm proud to have finished my fourth (!) novel, even if they are all only rough drafts. And I'm not going to start any new novels until The Pandora is completely edited. Which means no Nanowrimo this November, of course...


Also, I managed to skip the last two days of KCBW- understandable, considering I was struggling to finish The Pandora- so I apologize, if you were looking forward to those posts. They'll be there next year (probably).

Let it Begin!

It's officially April 1st. Which means it's the beginning of Camp Nanowrimo, which I have decided to take part in this year. I have 24,000 words of my novel left, and I am raring to go.

I only have to write 800 words a day to get 24000 words, which is pretty much nothing. I'm going to try and get a head start tomorrow (it's very late at night on the 31st of March as I write this) and write a couple thousand words, because it's always easier to write at the beginning of Nanowrimo.

My novel, The Pandora, is actually going wonderfully at the moment. The only problem is, I'm not sure I can stretch the plot to 50,000 words. Chances are, I have more left to write than I think and I'm worrying about nothing, but I'm still a little paranoid.

I have every intention to win Camp Nanowrimo this year. Because if I don't hit my lowly goal of 24k, I'll not only be sorely disappointed by I will be the lamest reacher of goals in the Universe.

Cheers, fellow Rhinos. And for those of you who aren't taking part in this with me, just so you know I'm kissing my social life goodbye for a few weeks.

Now, quick, I have to get in a couple hundred words before I go to bed!

Forever

The other day I was thinking, what if it all stops?

'It' in this case is all of the things I keep on getting obsessed with. I mean, how many things can there be that I can get into? There keep on being more fandoms to join when one begins to fade. Two and a half years ago, all that seemed to exist was Doctor Who. I didn't think there was anything that I would ever want to do over watch Doctor Who.

But then there was The Avengers this past May, and after that followed Sherlock during the summer - I wasn't obsessed with it but I still enjoyed watching it - and Merlin in the fall.

What would I do if all of these things stopped? Artemis Fowl is over, Harry Potter is over, Merlin is over, in two years The Hobbit will be over... what if all the new things stop popping up? Sure you can go back and reread/ rewatch things, which I do anyway, but eventually, that would get boring.

The nice thing is, though, it won't end. People won't stop having ideas, directors won't stop directing, actors won't stop acting and writers won't stop writing. If my own mind is anything to go by, then people all over the place are having a dozen ideas a day that are all potentially the next fandom. Who knows, maybe one of my own books will one day be as popular as Harry Potter.

(Yeah, I wish)

To Do Or Not To Do?

So, remember last November, I told you all to never let me participate in Nanowrimo again. That it really wasn't the thing for me, and my novel would be better if I wrote it in my own time.

When I got an email from the Nanowrimo staff announcing that Camp Nanowrimo was just around the corner, I immediately thought, no, not for me, ignore it, don't be tempted! Then, I read the email and saw that you can choose your own word count. Anywhere from 10,000 to 999,999. Doesn't that sound like a pretty good idea?

I know I'm trying to finish my novel, The Pandora, by the end of March. But since I said that, I've only written about 3,000 words. I'm not admitting defeat; far from it. But would it be such a bad thing to admit that trying to finish this novel by Easter is going to be pretty much like participating in Nanowrimo, but without the motivation? 

My idea is this: write as much as possible in March. I'm not necessarily going to try and finish The Pandora, because if I don't, then I can put however many words I have left to write into the goal for Camp Nanowrimo.

Sound good? I think so too.

Bookish Things

When I first started writing my current novel, The Pandora, back in July, it was going to be a 18,000 word fairy tale about a box that gets stolen, a Princess and her fiancé who have to get it back, and a sorceress/ movie star who reluctantly helped.  It was fun to write and the plot was actually pretty good. 

It's now turning into a full length novel, with the original protagonist completely deleted from the story, as well as her fiancé. In fact, only two things have remained the same: a box still gets stolen, and the thief is still a genius named Casey Kragnaugh (pronounced crag-naw, apparently). 

It's the novel I tried and failed to write in November, and the novel I'm still trying to write now. It's all there, the plot, the characters, every single inch of the story. Everything but the words. I've edited this novel more than any of my others and I haven't even finished the first draft. 

So I've made it my goal to finish it by Easter Sunday, March 31st. Telling people about this goal will probably make it easier for me to meet it, so wish me luck as I depart into the world of The Pandora. 

Don't worry, my avid readers. You'll still be getting daily posts for the rest of February. 

Full of Ideas

For my 13th birthday, my aunt and uncle gave me a notebook that has, in the last twelve months, become home to possibly hundreds of ideas. It's been my go-to place whenever I have an idea for a book or an image comes into my mind that I have to describe immediately. You could find bits and pieces of short stories that never saw the keyboard, snippets of dialogue I've used in my books, and random thoughts and ramblings from my never ending flow of ideas.

I had some fun with the camera, photographing different bits of different pages, comparing my handwriting over the months. It's all extremely messy, so I feel fine sharing a couple of my innermost ideas:

This is a bit of In Saint Helen's, the book I wrote in the June session of Camp Nanowrimo. I started it about five times in this journal, and all of the beginnings are relatively similar but at the same time are very different. 

Just an idea for a book that I'm not saying any more about. It'll probably never get written because the plot never got very far in my head, but maybe one day...

A snippet from a book I have yet to write. Once the whole thing is down on paper, though, I can tell you it's going to be amazing. 

This is more of the beginning of In Saint Helen's, describing the house the main characters live in at Christmas time. I actually based the exterior decorations off of those on my own home. There's an awful lot of real life in my stories.

This was just a funny idea that came into my head, pretty stupid but I thought it was amusing. The entire thing is:

"You can call a popsicle flavored ice, yes?" said the salesman. "But flavoring the ice is costly- meaning that it costs money, not that it's expensive. So this is my new product. I call it Flavor Lice."

He brandished a long ice cube on a stick. 

"What do you think?" he said.

"Flavor lice?" I replied, slightly disgusted. 

"Yes, it's a play on the words 'less' and 'ice.'"

"Makes me think I'm eating vermin."

Not really worth putting into a story, not really worth reading, but I rather liked it just the same. 

I had a include a little bit of the King Arthur legend in The Pandora, what with it taking place in the Middle Ages and all. This idea isn't actually going to make it into the Pandora, but it was a good tribute to Merlin.

From the short story I talked about a while ago. I started it on paper but quickly went to the computer with a slightly different plot in mind. 

So there's a little peek inside my head. My mind is busy, illegible, and sometimes rather insane when it comes to writing. But sometime, years from now, after I become a best-selling author and when I'm buried in my grave, someone will dig up this journal and publish it. A.T. Lowery's Journal of Ideas. 

Out With A Whisper

My Nanowrimo word count hasn't moved an inch in the last several days. The thing is, my novel's health deteriorated with mine over Thanksgiving, and though I'm much better now, the story has yet to recover. And I'm just going to give it time and wait for inspiration to strike. Perhaps it never will. Perhaps the novel will be finished in fifteen years after a lengthy hibernation.

Last year, Nanowrimo was a breeze. I finished a couple of days early, my novel was great, and it had another 30,000 words to be added on in the two months following. But this year, it took a decidedly nasty turn. My novel didn't want to be written. It was very shy this time around, and while it seemed to be going wonderfully its appearance was deceiving and it was slowly retreating into the cave of unfinished novels (I have quite a few residing in there). It came to a sudden stop and I was happy to let it rest.

So I'm going to lose Nanowrimo. Or rather, I'm not going to win. It doesn't seem to be the sort of thing you can lose at. But it's okay. Just remind me not to take part in it next November. Really. Do not let me participate in Nanowrimo in 2013. 

150

"150? Was I serious? Scrambling to complete that unrealistic goal would have been boring to say the least for my few followers." – It's the Thought That Counts, To Live a Life version no1, by Anya Lowery, on January 3rd, 2012.

Bam! Nailed it! 150 posts to To Live A Life 2.0! And in less than a year, too. I got a hundred posts in two years on 1.0. I think- should I do it?- 200 posts for my first year of blogging? (Ah but you see, as I started in February I really have all through January to meet that goal as well, right?) 

I suppose that was just a month before I started this blog, actually. How much things change. I went from posting once, maybe twice a month to an average of 15 posts per month. The writing has gotten much better too, complacent as that may sound. Although, the typos have not diminished. I'm a terrible proofreader. 

And my book reviews? Well, now they're something you might be able to get an ounce of information from. In my old blog, it was basically, This is a wonderful book and you should totally read it! It's too good for me to summarize. 

Now, well, let's just say my mom complimented me highly on my review of Divergent. I would never get compliments on those old reviews. 

Okay, I think I've ranted enough about how awesome my blog is. Hope you have as good a day as I will! ('Cause if I have a terrible day, it really wouldn't be fair for you to have a good day, would it? Just kidding. Really. Have a good day.)

I'm A Rhino!

Nanowrimo participants are sometimes called 'Rhinos'. I am proud to bear this nickname for the coming month! My novel is coming along beautifully. 1100 words in and I started less that two hours ago! I was going to stay up until midnight last night but the evening was too long so I decided to go to bed and wake up early to write.

I've added a little word count widget to my blog so you can all track my progress. Don't eagerly await blog posts this month, because you will be sorely disappointed- nearly all of my writing time will be spent on Microsoft Word.

Happy Nanowrimo!

Ruffle Scarf

Ruffle Scarves seem very in right now- or maybe they aren't and there are just patterns left on Ravelry from when they were in and now they are most definitely out, to use Lemony Snicket's fashion vocabulary.

Even if they are out, I still like the way they look. However, with Christmas fast approaching (Less than two months! Good heavens) I didn't feel I had the time to knit one, not without risking an overload of guilt. But for some reason, crochet is placed in my mind as a craft used for creating circles and quick guilt-free projects. How can you feel guilty when what you're making will only take a day?

Actually my scarf took two days in all, but if I'd sat down and worked on it straight through without taking breaks, I could probably have finished it in just a few hours.

Is it not lovely? When my sister saw it, she said, "Did you make that?" and then a few hours later, she said, "You seriously made that?". These two comments lead me to believe that she was impressed. I would put a smiley face after that but sometimes I find emoticons beneath me. 

While I crocheted, I listened to a great deal of the book Coraline, by Neil Gaiman. I watched the movie Coraline a few years ago and was terrified by it, really really terrified, but despite this I picked the audiobook up from the library, because Neil Gaiman wrote an awesome Doctor Who episode and so I thought, 'surely his books are pretty good.' (He also wrote Stardust, the movie adaption of which is one of my favorite movies ever.) The book is read by the author, which is something one should always be wary of, but Gaiman does a surprisingly good job. Maybe it is the writing style, but something about the way he reads make the book seem very calming. I'll be doing a book review soon. 

There, this picture better shows off the twirly ruffles. 

Almost as soon as I finished this scarf and wore it for a few hours, I cast on for a new cowl. Which is really something I shouldn't do, but I struck a deal with myself: throughout November, I can only, only, only knit Christmas presents. (although I do have a sister whose birthday is in November and she has requested a hat, but that will be an exception.) This will ensure that November will be a terribly stressful month with no rewards (except for a novel and endless bragging rights, of course). Why do I do this to myself? 

Going To Nanoland

Almost exactly a year ago, I was scrambling to finish a novel that was then untitled. It is still untitled and unedited, though the file is (and has been for a year and a half) saved as simply 'booky.' This was the first novel I ever finished, and it was exactly 72,749 words. I'm still very proud of it, even if it is lacking in a few places. I've certainly gained confidence in my writing. I recall one scene that took place in a police station and I neglected to describe anything for fear of "getting something wrong".

I was in a rush to get it done in October because November is National Novel Writing Month, aka Nanowrimo. Nanowrimo is the month where you write a 50,000 word minimum novel in exactly thirty days. I finished my first novel with hours to spare and the next morning started another one.

I got to 50,000, but I wasn't nearly finished with the novel. Two months later, a few days before the start of February, I hit the end of my 83000 word novel. I am proud of this novel.

I wrote the sequel in June (Camp Nanowrimo) , and while I was definitely pleased with it the novel barely hit 50000 before I wrote 'the end' with relief.

When I finished that, I was like, I'm done, no Nanowrimo this November. I won't be able to manage, it's too exhausting, too much trouble, and I don't have a novel to write anyway.

Haha. I don't think I can stay away from a novel. Just a few days into July, I began a novella, which I'm still working on; and will transform into a novel this November. Thankfully I have nothing to finish before November this year. Wish me luck...

Four Stories

I haven't been writing very much lately. Writing novels, I mean. (not that I've been blogging that much, either, come to think of it.) As I said a couple of days ago, I've been too busy knitting. Unfortunately, everything that I'm knitting is top secret (which explains why I've been working on it in the middle of the busy house all day) so I can't blog about it. I apologize to any followers from Ravelry who are only interested in the knitting posts; and bring good news to those who dislike my posts about all things knitting. 

Here's the plan. In September, I will write one short story a week. And post them here. Hopefully this will get me back into the groove of writing daily. And it has the added bonus of showing off my writing skills and making y'all happy. Well, some of you happy. 

I will have the first story out sometime next week, amongst the other posts I will (hopefully) write about other interesting (hopefully) topics. Such as school. :'( 

I hope that you eagerly await reading the stories as much as I eagerly await you reading them. Happy Friday! 

Ten Squared

I was just looking back at my old blog, and saw that I had exactly 100 posts. That is quite an achievement for only two years. I only hope I can come close to such success on this blog. It seems so insignificant in comparison... 


That was written back in February, from my post Will My Spring Break Ever Come?, the eighth post on this blog. Eight really is a very insignificant amount of writing. 

But that's ancient history now. I got 100 posts on my old blog in two years, and 100 on this blog in 7 months. I'm sure that my avid readers are appreciative of this.

coming home from camp

 

loss

Due to a 24 hour stomach virus, I failed to write for two (TWO!) days in a row. Which brings my stats to an even lower advantage... help....

I also lost my 750 words streak. 172 days of writing, gone. I'm also on the Wall of Shame. It's very, how else can I put it, shameful. 

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

This is a screen shot of my stats on Camp Nanowrimo. I've been focusing on the little number ten underneath 'Days Remaining'.

And on the slightly bigger thirty-three thousand, three hundred thirty-three underneath 'Total Words Written'.

And on the disheartening July 1st, 2012 underneath 'At This Rate You Will Finish On'.

July first, as most two year olds and older know, takes place after June. But I'm not fearful. Or disheartened. Or rather, I'm not very fearful, and I'm not too disheartened. I'm just 1667 words behind. No big deal, right? I've got five whole hours until midnight!

And yet I'm wasting my precious few hours blogging. Typical.

Finally, It's Picking Up

Tonight is a historic night. My novel has started to get easy and fun to write.

Technically, that should happen around day 1, but hey, I'm only 30 pages in. They say that week two is the hardest, in which case I only have two more days to have fun before the fun of the first week (which started four days late this time) fades and I have to start to work out a plot from all these Big Bend notes...

To keep my few readers interested (well, interested enough to not stop their email subscription, anyway), I've decided to post a picture of the first page. You know, the title page. I'm not showing anyone any actual prose until the book is published. Or at least finished. (Okay, so if you go to the Camp Nanowrimo website and search for riversong0045, you'll find me and therefore find an excerpt from my book, but hey.)

Okay, so I kind of fixed up the picture. The title page doesn't really look like that. But still, it's cool looking. 

8656 words and counting. Wish me luck. 

My Kind of Summer Camp

Camp Nanowrimo. A completely indoor, non-sports event. Perfect for people like me.

It's also the reason I probably won't be blogging nearly as much this month. I will be busy writing thousands upon thousands (okay, so it's only like 1600) of words every single day and won't have time to indulge my readers with almost daily posts.

50k, 30 days, not easy. At the end of June, I will have one more first draft, bringing my total up to 3... will I ever get done editing? I'm not so good with editing... I printed last November-January's efforts and still haven't started combing through it for plot holes, of which I'm sure there are thousands.

Aaa! How can it already be 11? I have to go get more writing done! Aa!

It's a very stressful month.