我要飞Faye

I had Grand Plans! of making a 1 January post, but then I was too busy watching the countdowns. And then I had Grand Plans!! of finishing the novel before I went for my holiday, but I forgot that 15 days is not a lot of time, and then my brain kicked a fuss and only wanted to write 350 words a day...

So I tricked my brain a little by writing in ilys where my brain was convinced that I hadn't written anything because it couldn't see the words until I reached the word count of choice. Of course, that posed problems of its own, such as when my mom called me at the 200 word mark and then I completely forgot what I had written before and couldn't see anything because I had set the limit in ilys to 350 words.

With that, my progress isn't bad as the novel now stands at 45,898 words. I already know I have to hack it apart and put certain scenes in different order, but in terms of rewriting it actually doesn't seem as difficult as it sounds. Of course, we'll see if I say different after I get back from my trip, especially since I'll be starting a new assignment at work then. All of the things to do!

But first, holiday. I'm off to the very sunny Melbourne, which is only different from my current place in that the sun is even sunnier. 40 deg C sunnier. See you all in a week!

I thought I'd write this down before I forget. Recently, I read an article about "using the wrong words to capture the emotion, and searching for the right words later" (which of course I cannot find. So it goes).

Perhaps reading the article gave me some awareness of an intuitive process, because I found myself using the wrong words a lot, and actually having to think "do I want to solve this now?" It got to the stage where, when I was trying to figure out the chapter title for the snippet that had a lot of wrong words, I had to think "is it ok if I use the wrong word for the chapter title too?"

Chapter titles are a thing I like playing with. I had a novel once where the chapter titles were dictionary entries of words I had redefined due to a world building change. So I was less inclined to use the wrong word here. I felt that I had to convey the central idea of my chapter right so that while I continued to fill out the chapter, I would at least know where I was going.

The chapter title in question started out as something about the changing tides, because the previous chapter was titled 'Ebb and Flow'. I was pretty happy with this title, and I thought using something similar would work. But it was the wrong word. More googling led to change in the winds (wrong), game changer (getting closer), change agent (nope, totally cold) and finally phase shift.

The last was better than the others because the chapter in question isn't entirely a change in direction, just a little shift in thinking. Hence, 'phase shift', because it's a little shift of the wave to the right, but still hitting the same beach. We're still in Kansas, Toto.

The next supporting character of my novel, Dr Hashim, was actually inspired by multiple doctor friends. These were people I'd spent the formative years of my double digit ages with, so I like to think that I know them pretty well. Most of them were pretty ambivalent about religion when I first got to know them.

When they starting studying and practising medicine though, a lot of them started going to church. Bewildered, I asked them why they would commit a large part of their weekend when they were very busy. I got a lot of non-commital answers like, "it's something to do" (like they didn't have enough to do) and "I believe in God" (without wanting to go into why their belief flared up just about now).

Fast forward to my novel, when I'm thinking about a doctor figure. Because my novel is about meshing dreams and technology, I started to think about what other things that sound like opposites at first, but are actually pretty complementary. That's when I started to think about my friends who were doctors, technically science people, but also very religious.

Unfortunately, thinking of a Christian doctor didn't sound very extraordinary. But I knew my friends worked with Muslim doctors too. Add on the fact that I’d read a lot about advances made by Islamic doctors in the Middle Ages, I became intrigued by the idea of making a Muslim doctor one of the characters in my novel. That was how Dr Hashim came to be.

I only read about Ibn Sina after Dr Hashim’s character was fully formed, but I think it’s just proof that a person can be interested in science and yet consider themselves religious.

Sorry, I was so cheesed off by the movie I watched that I forgot I was supposed to be posting about my writing process.

For this novel, after coming up with the world I needed a story to set it in. The trouble was that I didn't have a story. I had a cool world, and a bunch of characters that said they wanted to be in it, but nothing for them to do.

So I decided to try the Snowflake method. The idea is that you have a central sentence as your seed, and from there you draw it outwards like a snowflake. So from a sentence you pull it out into four more sentences, then four paragraphs, then four pages with scenes that you can pull out into a spreadsheet if you feel like it.

Easier said than done. The central sentence must be concise and suggest the direction of the novel. The four sentences springing from that central sentence also have to be specific, following the structure of 3 conflicts and an ending.

Luckily, I came up with a kickass sentence: A girl temporarily breaks reality when having technologically amped dreams.

And what four sentences did I pull from this? You'll have to find out!

It's 1993 and I've just lost my 3rd tooth. I'm sleeping with it under my pillow when I smell the most incredible floral perfume. The smell is so intense that I dream of rolling hills of flowers and grass. When I wake up, the tooth is gone. My parents, who hadn't been shy about giving me money in the morning for the previous two teeth the tooth fairy didn't take, swear it wasn't them.

It's 1995 and my teacher is handing out personalised reading assignments. She makes the mistake of handing me 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. From then on she catches me reading it non-stop under the table, but can't confiscate her own book.

It's 1997 and I have a nightmare about a scarecrow. I hate it enough that I drag myself out of my dream. From then on, I've had some control over what I dream. People call it lucid dreaming.

It's 1999 and I've watched the Matrix and Serial Experiments Lain in the same year. I spent the time waiting for the second Matrix movie thinking about technology and minds and all the different worlds. I watch the other Matrix movies, get disappointed and drop the idea of virtual worlds entirely.

It's 2010, and Inception has just been released. After the Matrix I go into it with a doubtful mind, but find the movie enjoyable even though I know dreams can be pushed a lot further than what the movie showed.

It's 2013, and I watch Pacific Rim and Sword Art Online. The idea of the shared minds to drive the Jaegar and a game that traps minds makes me recall 1999. I mull over the idea.

It's 2014, and reading all these posts in quick succession causes the more distant Inception to crash headfirst into Pacific Rim and Sword Art Online. I flail madly as a world is born.

It's 2014, and I'm writing a novel about lucid dreamers who are the last stand between the waking and the dream world.

Dear reader,

Today I completed NaNo for the second time at 50,094 words.

It's a day early to boot! This experience was really very different from my last NaNo experience. I used to think that writing 2,000 words at a go was too hard, but that became my average towards the end. Which was good, because I had some very awful days in the middle of the month when I was too sick to write.

The methods that I used to write this round were very interesting. I more or less had a routine on workdays that went something like this:

( Daily writing process )

I also have to say I love technology. I wouldn't have been able to do this if I hadn't been able to load Evernote on my tablet, smartphone and office computer that I couldn't install anything on. There was sufficient web functionality for me to keep my versions straight, but also let me peck out words while the connection was bad without worrying too hard about losing stuff. I think the only exception was when my work computer couldn't connect to the internet for a good few days, but then I typed discreetly on my smartphone.

Weekends bizarrely weren't times for writing a lot, but instead for making sure that I kept my story straight. The idea of a puppy pound was also such a godsend.

I'm going to take a break by WRITING NOVEL RELATED PR0N. Which won't make it into the story itself, because I think that as much as I love pr0n, I don't want it to detract from the rest of my story. So it will only be as treats to myself =)

As for next month, I think I will focus on finishing the story. I'm up to Chapter 10 and one major reveal, but there's one more to go and a possible tonal shift in the final section. Other plans are: do a read through to fix grammar and spelling; start looking at reference images to bulk up descriptions and/or store for a novel related tumblr; record myself reading the novel aloud, and listen to it while editing to make sure there aren't any awkward bits.

We'll see how much of the last para gets done. ^_^

Not a good week this week, NaNo-wise. I'm behind by only a little on the word count, but getting there... might be a bit tough...

Distractions
This week was busy in Real Life, with a lot of life-changing decisions to be made. I'm tired of life-changing decisions.

I'm also experiencing moodswings as well. Sometimes I feel very happy but I'll get defeated and depressed just as easily.

Because of that, I tried out a Puella Magi Madoka Magica online game called Incubator. It's really really very fun - you run around as Kyuubey and contract girls and get them to fight witches and eventually WALPURGISNACHT. And Homura is the one-shot fairy.

I called it doing research at first, and it really helped to crystallise some theories that I've been having about magic in the Puella Magi universe. But it's a time suck, and my time would really have been better served by writing.

Resources
Still, not all research is bad. I managed to find an extremely good name generator: http://www.behindthename.com/random/

It generates all kinds of names (realistic and non-realistic) and you can even tell it what sort of nationalities/mythologies you want. AND it generates surnames too! For someone who finds name creation a bane, this is AMAZING.

Likes and Dislikes
I wrote three chapter this week, one which I'm fond of, one which I HATE LIKE BURNING and one that I've just started and am dithering on.

We're out of the stage where the story writes itself. I'm at the stage where I know where I want to go, but because of all the plot additions and new chapters, I'm a little at loss of how to get there. We'll see if the story starts to write itself again...

The rest
Mediums remained the same, though now I've upped my phone writing ability to 4 smses worth of fic each way on the train. I seemed to have sacrificed my eyesight for it though...


And for some reason, this was the only update to make it to LJ! So for what it's worth, here are the other two updates:

Week 1 update
Week 2 update

It's been a little more than a week of NaNo already! Time passes so fast.

I'd meant to write this update post yesterday, but a combination of social events conspired to keep me away from the computer. I even squeaked my NaNo into 750 words at 11pm last night, but at least I made it.

So, things that I learned from this week of NaNo:

Word count
I actually wrote 14,273 words to date! That means an average of 1785 words a day. I'm pretty pleased with myself. I do have a bit of an instinct to stop at 750 words (I blame that on the 750 words site!), but I bulk it up by writing in snatches.

Mediums
Again I used a combo of handphone, DW and 750 words. Sadly, I found that 7 smses are only equal to 200 words, but when I can I write on the train trip both ways that gives me 400 words. I also write in a DW post over the course of the day, occasionally copying and pasting to MS word to get some idea of the word count. Usually that averages around 1k worth of words.

Typing from the handphone to 750 words lets me do the word count immediately. Both that and c&ping from the DW post lets me edit as I go, which usually bulks up the word count. After that, it's an easy matter to bully myself into writing up to 1.7k worth of words at least to get the NaNo badge. It's amazing how having a token can inspire you.

Inspiration
That said, it also helps when your story likes you - there were times when I felt that the story was writing itself. Apparently if you want to write a lot and quickly, a crack pairing is the way to go. =D

Cheerleading
Oh, and when you're weary (feeling low) (XD) and you think that ALL THESE CREATIVE THINGS ARE A WASTE OF TIME, go read Bakuman. Seeing how enthusiastic they are about their manga makes you feel like doing something creative too!