I have now build Kate into a character that is nearly breathing. I put the characteristics into Google and this is who they thought matched.
Babs or Cher, much younger. Kate is 25. And a bit chunkier though nowhere near fat. It is fun to play the random number game when trying to make a person. I am trying to do a character a day. Liz, April, and Kate are the main three from the first section of the book.
Violet popped up in the second section and I love her spirit but have no idea what she looks like. I need to work or her next. I’m thinking she is about 16 years old. Just discovering who she is and she is about to get huge!
Word count blossomed without any fuss today. 9,381 Today’s goal was to be 8335, so… I’m jazzed. Nothing like playing in another world while the one you live in is so full of angst!
I woke up with that witty or not so much on my mind. I wasn’t sure why. But it’s a one-liner of sorts. If it were on one line.
Anyway, I will be naming the town Violetsville, thanks to Willowdot21, who also did a beautiful one-liner. Click on her name.
I developed my second character today. When I was done pulling in the descriptions, I presented them to my husband. Who looks like that? I asked him. He suggested Felicia Day. April will have shorter hair anywhere from platinum blond to purple or even a Mohawk. So here is vaguely what she looks like:
The word count is 7,374. Moving right along. Despite what is going on in the world.
This One-liner Wednesday is the baby of Linda G. Hill. Click on the blue underlined title to learn more.
Well, the first is the temporary book cover for Pandamapocalypse my CampNaNo and NaNoWriMo novel. The second is a discovery from lots of work today developing my main character and as close as I can come to what Liz (the main character) looks like is Aisha Tyler. Except Liz likes to wear her hair in big Afro Puffs on either side of her head. I may have to draw my characters rather than have them look like celebs. But I like Aisha a lot so I could see her dragoning up and saving the world!
Oh, my word count is 5,665. That is 664 words more than I needed. I think spending the time developing my peoples helps me feel the story better.
I still don’t have the name of the town. Maybe I will name it after the hero of the day. Her name is Violet. Has there been a town by that name? It seems a little weird. I’ll keep working on it.
Yeah, that is an actual picture of me around 10 when I wake up. NaNo, this time, is turning me into a night owl. I spend my day developing characters and plot ideas and write a little. But real writing seems to be happening after midnight. I was up again past 3AM.
So, drumroll. My new total wordcount is 4,058 Once I start typing the story comes alive. Trouble is new characters that show up that need to flesh out. I even need a town name that is in the middle of the woods that no one knew about that is safe from the virus. I’ll do without it as long as I can put up with [town without a name] replacing a real name. Meanwhile, it adds three more words to the count that would have been just one word.
Isn’t it funny how fictional characters can come in and steal your life? They are just names until I imagine them more. Sometimes, heck, most of the time, I pick the name from WriteItNow, then I pull out my favorite book: Building Believable Characters by Marc McCutcheon and look up the characteristics I see for that person. Soon they feel real to me.
Well, time to get busy writing more story. So far, this one is fun!
At midnight I got into the Night of Writing Dangerously. That moment when Halloween is over, All Saints Day began and NaNoWriMo rings the bell to start. Well, I don’t know about the bell. It must be in my head. There are tons of writing groups that get together and type for a couple hours. I have done that a couple times. But usually, I just pretend I am with a group and get it going on my own. I will watch this when I finish here as I didn’t watch it last night. I just wanted to share the excitement and fun.
My theory is that if I can start large I will be slightly ahead when the mid-month slumps or people-time interruptions occur. But I managed 2,329 words last night. And like I said I will be doing more when blogging is completed.
As I have said I am continuing the novel I started way back in March (I think-2020 is hard to keep track of it after months of editing and rearranging bits and pieces, taking out all journaling, complaints, and prompts that didn’t work for the story I ended up–yesterday, at 25,172. So my goal is to add 50,000 to that this month. I know I said this in part last night but I felt I needed to waste some time spelling things out better.
So for the months between the writing of the beginning and now, I have been using three different programs, each featuring something unique to help the writing, editing process. yWriter is my favorite. I can outline on the fly, keep my characters, locations, and items up-to-date, etc. The biggest downfall, for me, has been that it wants to save locally. I learned long ago that computers break down and then where will your documents be? I tried saving to dongles, but that had its own problems. Finally, I started to export the project and save it in my cloud drive. But once you have a new machine you have to reset-up how you had it before the breakdown. That happened in September. My laptop nosedived and my husband loaned me his to try and keep up my writing. Good thing I had that export to rebuild from. Then my husband turned me on to yWriter7. Now we can save everything to Dropbox. I was new to it so Hubby had to teach me how that works. And it does! And I can open the project on my Fire or tablet or even my phone if I get the inspiration. Here’s a YouTube of how it works:
The second favorite that I use a lot at the beginning of a story and then just try to copy and paste to keep it updated is WriteItNowย It is great for setting up characters. You can do a random search of names or add ones you have already created. Then you can find personality traits, set up who is related to whom and how. I like the colors I can make the background and fonts. Anyway, here is a YouTube on this amazing program:
The last step for me is opening one of the latest exports from yWriter in good ole Microsoft Word, where I open Grammarly and do the editing. I don’t think I need an URL or YouTube on Word. But as I was writing this I saw a bunch of tutorials that I may want to stroll through and learn other ways to use what I have.
By the way, I have Scrivener but somehow in moving computers I can’t seem to figure out how to get it up and running again. I did find it had its uses but I often found it confusing. To each their own, I suppose.
Okay, I’ve procrastinated writing long enough. Hope you found something here that is useful for you.
Trick or Treat is nearly the exact term I would use for 2020. I have been keeping a journal and writing a book for first CampNaNo where I wrote about 25K and now starting at midnight plan to add another 50K. Getting ready for the start of NaNoWriMo this year required me to edit the spring start of the book and make sure all the journaling and whining and prompts not touched got put in the section of yWriter that keeps that count for being in the total word count. I want that count to be purely story.
All of that to say, I have now relived 2020 from March on. It has been a slow and boring rollercoaster full of angst and sometimes loneliness. Since my book is loosely based on the pandemic, it is titled Pandamapocalypse (I may have to rename it as I can never remember the way to spell it. Clue: There are Pandas and Ma’s but remembering is there an ‘a’ or an ‘o’ after the second ‘p’ and then after the ‘c’ has no hints to hold onto.
During this year I have watched more series than I think I ever have. It is curious how the writers come up with their plots. One thing I have noticed is that if it is a long series they resort to using the holidays as they come. Making sure there are tricks and treats for Halloween seems to give them lots of fodder for maybe even two episodes.
My characters have only experienced Easter and that was too fearful to do more than think it and move on. So they are going to get a treat both on Earth and on Haven as they all celebrate in ways to help them enjoy life again and yet stay to the mission to see why it is spreading and how they can help stop the process. My trick for them is how, now that the virus is human, things can get worse before it gets better while trying to keep it light enough that I want to write.
Well, I did manage to blog. Yay, me! Hope you all had a great Halloween and didn’t get tricked.
I hate to admit to not having anything finished today.
Remember the socks on the CinDWood X loom (what I can’t help but call X-wing)?
I decided that they were turning out too wide. So I frogged nearly all four and readjusted and started three from the beginning.
Remember the half-finger gloves?
I got down to just below the thumb and can’t understand the tutorial for the next couple of rows. I’ve sent out requests to the designer to see if she can walk me through.
I have made a couple more ear warmers but something you can make in half a day doesn’t make me nearly as happy with the finished project as the hats in the above picture.
I didn’t finish my editing for the four previous chapters of Pandamapocolypse. I hope to finish that by tomorrow afternoon. Then I need to get a vague outline for the next 50K to add to that story. And I will try to beef out the characters so as to have more to write about.
Oh, and I haven’t finished the fourth and last season of Hart of Dixie. It is winding down. It is light fun. And one episode recently actually made me cry, Mostly I find it fun/funny.
If you want to watch something to escape the news and anxiety, and fun background while you get something done, this is it.
Tomorrow I may not blog as I need to get NaNoWriMoing pregame workup and then living the night of writing dangerously.ย If you are joining me, good luck! And
I love me an Alice Hoffman book. I don’t what happened here. Okay, maybe I can make the allowance that reading this with text-to-speech makes the confusion of characters even more perplexing. There was a whole neighborhood of people with problems.
Maybe when you can read the book as a paper product, you can see whose point of view that you are looking through. Books with a lot of characters are hard when the author doesn’t give you a straight forward warning like the chapter name (character’s name) or first word (character’s name) of the new chapter. Especially with TTS.
Having read a couple of reviews, I found some who felt the story started with promise but went downhill. I was bewildered during the first part of the book. I just rode along feeling I would soon catch up. Sure enough by the end, I did seem to care about a couple of the characters and felt I was knowing who was who.
This book takes place in the late 50s early 60s. I didn’t need the author to spell that out as I recognized it right away. I remembered people saying and gossiping about the things included in the story. It is my least favorite part of my life. So it was painful to live it again. Still, I wonder how folks who are not of that era see all of this. Older women may see this far differently than Gen X-ers. I need to go read some other reviews to see if age affects the read.
Alice Hoffman writes so well that even when I am lost I stick with the book until the end. I certainly think others might enjoy this book thoroughly.
A friend and I discovered this book and decided to make it a book we both would read somewhat together. I got to it a few days ago and finished two days ago. And just a hint, I have already ordered book 2 of the series.
Now there are bad reviews for this book. I liked it. Not loved. Just liked. But enough to find out what happens next with the characters.
Yes, there are things that stop me while reading. One of the things is that it is written in the present tense. That is hard to pull off. And sometimes I don’t notice it. Other times the characters and plot put me back into the story.
Some have pointed out the problems of the characters being shallow or not living up to the situations they find themselves in. I can’t get that picky about it. I accept what the author has set them up to be and so I just hope for the best for them and try not to prejudge their behaviors. Though there is violence it isn’t gratuitous. It seems necessary for the moment.
This story is a bit different than other post-apocalyptic tales and is therefore fun to read without feeling the terror I felt in previous reads. I couldn’t put it down to sleep because I wanted to know what was going to happen next.
Working on my series: Haven.
Doodler (zendoodle.com)
Music major: voice and piano
Mom of four great adults
Reiki II practitioner
I have been on disability/retired for 10 years now from depression, anxiety and fibromyalgia.
Hi! my name is Sebastian (You can call me Seb!) ...welcome to my Blog. I'm a photographer from Worcester, Worcestershire, England. Thanks for dropping by! I hope you enjoy my work.
Books, games, music, and life โ filtered through the mind of a writer, drummer, and philosopher who thinks too deeply about all of it. If it moves something in your chest, I'm interested.
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