NaNo, Day Fifteen

Sorry, everyone!  No NaNo updates from me.  I'm sick with a sore throat/cold/fever/etc. and I didn't even write yesterday. :( Thankfully, I'm ahead of schedule, so if I write some today, I should be okay.  But today's blogger is July A. Emmance, so without further ado, here's her guest post.

Hello everyone! I'm July from julyaemmance.blogspot.com and I'm sure you don't want to hear me ramble on while you have some major NaNo-ing to do, so I'll make this kind of short and sweet as some say.

I'm doing the youth NaNo for the first time this year! I'm about 34% done with my book so far, and I need to get writing! My word goal is not big this year, but that is because November is one of the busiest months of the school year for me and this is only my first time doing it. I'm gonna try to raise my word goal if I finish the one I have now, hopefully I can get past this awful case of writer's block and cruse along faster!

The book I'm working on for NaNoWriMo is called Galaxy's World and it's the tale of four futuristic girls who daringly outwit the government's Bureaucrats so they can live their own lives in freedom.

Galaxy Robins, an only child under the parenthood of a vulgar workaholic mother; Gemma LaFleure, a peppy girl with a mannerism of persuasiveness like no other; and Pine and Cedar Lenning, twins who are ready to get away from their large family and snotty sisters, will have to plan everything perfectly and be very careful about who they can trust along the way to liberty.

I posted an excerpt on my blog a while ago, you can read that if you want, and here's another short one:

At my house, the first thing we did was raid the cupboards to find food. There is never much food in my house because the food rations we receive every week are so small, barely even one person can live off it! I'm lucky because it's just me and Mother, but for Pine and Cedar, who have three other sisters, it barely keeps them living. Not like they're starving or anything, it's just that they're always hungry and tired. Since my mother isn't ever home to notice, I usually give them extra food to take home from our stash.

“Ooh, chips!” Gemma says.

Chips are a rare treat for us. The Bureaucrats measure our calories every month so we don't get overweight or eat unhealthily. We don't see chips, snacks, or sweets often.

“My mother must have picked up our rations today,” I said. “Let's have these, she won't care.”

We ripped open the reflective bag and indulged on the salty goodness that sat before us.

“So when is our official departure date?” Pine asked.

“Well, since there is just enough in the vile, we leave this Friday at midnight. There was barely enough in the vial and thankfully, we don't have to wait another six months before we leave.”

“Less than two days,” Pine murmured, “If today's Wednesday, we only have tomorrow and we leave the next day!”

“Remember though, only one small pack, and nothing unnecessary.” Cedar changed the subject.

“Wait, what about my makeup kit, and my flatiron, and my curler?” Gemma whined, somewhat playfully.

“Really, Gem, you don't need those. You can live without them. Either way, you wouldn't even be able to plug it in and actually use anywhere.”

“Ug, fine. But, then I get to bring my chocolate fountain.”

“Gemma,” we all chorused.

“Just joking, ladies, just joking,” she forced out, seeing our annoyance. She can be such a blond sometimes!

In reality, she's a golden blond, but she has to dye it because blonds aren't allowed besides the Bureaucrats, who bleach theirs don't want others to be like them.

Gemma, now a golden-tinted brunette, is very pretty. More than pretty actually, she is drop-dead gorgeous. Her hair is loosely wavy, like a model's, and her face is the clearest I've seen, very similar to a porcelain doll. She is skinny with extremely nice curves and you know when people just have this power in their voice when they tell you to do something? Well, that's our Gem. If she tells you to do something, you do it because you never know what can happen if you don't. She's not dangerous really, but if you were on her bad side . . . .

Pine and Ceder are identical twins so they basically look the exact same. Mostly clear faces, that smart, sophisticated look that makes them seem dignified, which they very much are. They are both thin too, but not as thin as Gemma. Their only obvious difference is their hair. Pine's has gorgeous, pin straight black hair, while Cedar has light brown ringlets that round her face off nicely. They both seem determined to be unique though, because they always make sure that they are wearing different things than the other or not fixing their hair the same way was the other. It's quite funny actually! One time, they had both worn the same color hair band to school and both freaked out so much that Cedar asked Gemma if she could borrow one just so that they weren't seen sporting similar accessories.

I suppose I could describe myself to you in detail, but, really, you don't want to hear all that. So I'll just sum myself up. Dirty blond hair with natural highlights that I always wear up in a ponytail, somewhat blotchy face, not too skinny and not to fat. I'm average I guess. The one thing that I really, really, don't like about me is my eyes. Blank, ugly, emotionless grey. I wish they were blue, or brown, or even green, I could be so much prettier!

I'm sorry if that is not your type of thing, it's something new for me too. I'm trying to get it all to work out, and please don't be mean about your criticisms, keep it constructive!

Since I've still got some work to do, I'll tell you my game plan for finishing NaNo.

1. Don't get myself too stressed out about it! If you get stressed, your brain will temporarily shut down and you won't get anywhere.
2. Always keep my creative ideas flowing! If you get a random inspiration at a random time, try to write it down right away so you will remember it. Write it on your arm, a sticky note, laptop, whatever you have handy.
3. Make sure I'm not being distracted by background noise. How can you work if you're listening to music at full blast? Keep the volume down and you're almost guaranteed to work better. If your little brother is making a racket in your writing area, move somewhere quieter.
4. Keep myself hydrated and full of food! I don't know about you, but I can't think straight if my stomach is rumbling the whole time I'm trying to write. You're thoughts will keep floating away from your novel and your work won't be up to usual standards.
5. In any spare time, write. Just write. An author once said, “When I wrote my book into a hole and didn't know how to keep going for the longest time, those are the parts that my readers said they liked the most!” Try not to stop writing for long periods of time or your creative “juices” will stop flowing.
6. Teach myself to go with the unexpected turns. Take the risk of totally changing things around! I took two NaNo dares and one of them is that I have to kill off one character and the other is to add a person who almost always lies. Both of them quite different from what I had planned, but I'm gonna do it because it will add great plot twists!