Writers: We're Often Inspired by...

Anything can inspire a writer.  But one place a writer can find a ton of inspiration from is his or her own life.

Hmm... ;)

NaNo, Day Twenty-Eight

Here we are, two lovely days away from NaNoWriMo being over for 2012.  And then we have another whole year to wait for it to come around again! :(

Last night, around 9 PM...

That's right, I won NaNoWriMo for my second year in a row!  And this time, I wrote 10,000 more words than last time.  I'm really proud of myself for getting to 50,000 words.

My book isn't done, though.  I'm just hoping I don't get into the same situation as last year where I didn't finish the book by November 30th, but I reached my word count goal.  Since then, I've only written 5,000 more words, and it's only 3/4 done.  Sigh.  I wish I could finish it. :P

Good luck, to all you NaNoWriMoers who are still writing!

NaNo, Day Twenty-Four

So, now I've officially raised my word count goal to 50,000...and I have to stick with that, because I'm pretty sure today or tomorrow is the last day to change it.

Word count: 44,127 words, and I think I might be done for the day
Song of the day: Still "Truly Madly Deeply".  I've listened to it probably about 50 times on YouTube today.

Not much else to say, except that we went to this little gift shop (it's kind of like a Hallmark) in our town, and I got a Christmas ornament.  My mom buys me one every year that kind of marks something important in my life since last Christmas.  This year's a silver, sparkly guitar with Taylor Swift's signature on it.  You press a button on the back and it plays "Long Live".

NaNo, Day Twenty-Three

Wow, NaNoWriMo is one week away from being over.  This month has just flown by!  Here are my stats since I last updated here.

Word count: 38,502 words (that includes some from today, but I'm not done writing yet)
Word count goal: 45,000 words (for a short time, I lowered it to 40,000, but when I wrote so much yesterday, I knew I could get 45,000 words easily by November 30th)
Song of the day: "Truly Madly Deeply" by One Direction.  Ever since I listened to this song, I've been like, "I don't know what life was like before this song..." I love it more than I love Taylor Swift's new album, and that's saying a lot.
Quote of the day: Black Friday: Because only in America, people trample each other for sales exactly one day after being thankful for what they already have.

Good luck writing, everyone!  I hope you had great Thanksgivings yesterday, and if you're going shopping today...here's to good deals and avoiding injuries!

Happy Thanksgiving

Hey, everyone!  If you're one of my American followers, I hope you'll have a happy Thanksgiving!  And if you're not American (well, don't live in the U.S.), then...happy Thursday, I guess?  LOL, got that from a friend. ;)

It's much quieter this year than it was last year.  It's just my parents and me, because my mom has to work tomorrow and Saturday. :( But hopefully, next year, everyone on my mom's side of the family will be here.

Any Thanksgiving traditions you'd like to share?  What's your favorite food?  I love mashed potatoes and pie.  And I think I mentioned rolls with melted (and unmelted) cinnamon butter last year?  Yeah, I'm so wishing we could have those here.  But they only have them at a bakery near my aunt's.  My cousin and I are begging her to bring them next year, though.

Happy Thanksgiving!  I can hardly believe 2012 is almost over and Christmas is just about a month away.

NaNo, Day Nineteen

Word Count: 30,010 words (75% of my word goal!), and 102 pages
Songs of the day: "Love Story" and "You Belong With Me" (I've listened to them a combined 30 times)
Problem of the day: I'm two weeks behind on Bible lessons.
Quote of the day: "If music be the food of love, play on."~William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

I'm doing pretty well with my NaNo novel.  I lowered my word count 5,000 words about a week or so ago, but I might end up increasing the goal this week or just not submitting my final count until I've surpassed 45,000 words or finished the book (whichever comes first). I want to encourage all of you NaNoers to keep writing!  This is usually the time of NaNoWriMo that you might get bogged down.  You need to plow through those tough spots.  Work on transitions, if you have trouble with them, and keep your story flowing.  Every scene needs to contribute to the plot in some way.  There can't be meaningless dialogue or action just to fill your word count.

Now I'm off to have a bagel and a Taylor Swift dance party to celebrate my successful day, writing-wise.
Fun fact: If this book is ever published, watch for all of the main character's (her name is Hannah) similarities to me, including her love for bagels. ;)

NaNo, Day Eighteen

Wow, this time last year, I was fighting my dad for use of the laptop.  Now I have my own... glad I'm not going through that again!

Word Count: 26,894 words (as of last night)
# of grammatical mistakes I've corrected today: 45 (not my own mistakes)
Hours I won't be able to write during: 3:30-? (It's my dad's birthday, and we're meeting my grandparents for dinner.)

I have one last guest post for everyone!

Hello, I’m emmainwonderland6, but please call me Emmy. I’m one of Emma’s NaNo friends. I’m doing NaNo Young Writer’s Project and my goal is 11,000. One of my major tips for YWP participants is don’t be afraid to change your word-count. Originally, I was going to write 12,000 words. However, when I started to get behind I changed my goal to 11,000. Although I’m still behind (boo procrastination!) I got my words up a bit so I can easily write a bunch of words and win easier. My other tip is to not overwork yourself! I know that you need to write a lot- but it isn’t that bad to take a little break. Don’t give yourself a huge goal if you know you won’t reach it because then you’ll just feel guilty for not winning.

So, now about my NaNoWriMo novel. It’s called ‘Little White Lie’ and is about a young girl named Maebelle. Maebelle is twelve years old, in grade seven at the worst school ever. She can’t read very well and her teacher and classmates are no help what-so-ever, because they put her down all the time. Maebelle, being stubborn, refuses to tell her parents. When they ask her if everything is alright, she lies and says it is. Throw in another event started with yet another lie and you have an ultra-big lying problem! When Maebelle’s house burns down and she is forced to move to Ontario, she is diagnosed with dyslexia. But, can a kind homeless woman as well as two new teachers and a friend help her be able to read?

Now one more thing I want to talk about- Inspiration. Now, how did I come up with all of this? Well, Maebelle’s school is inspired by the school in the movie ‘Won’t Back Down’. A lot of the characters names are based off people I know in real life. Maebelle’s name is inspired by my middle name (Mae) combined with Belle to create a better name. My point is, inspiration can come from anywhere- books, movies, songs and real life- so look around for it if you need it.

I wish everyone who is participating good luck and an amazing twelve final days doing NaNoWriMo!

-Emmy <33

NaNo, Day Sixteen

The halfway point of NaNo was yesterday, so I hope everyone is at least halfway to their word goal!  I'm currently 60% there.

Word Count: 24,212 words (as of last night)
# of times I've felt like an elephant stepped on me in the last 3 days: approx. 50
# of times I wished I didn't have to miss co-op: 15 :(

But now here's today's blogger!  She's one of my real life best friends. :)

            Summary: Saskia Zolten-Penn, a 19-year-old girl living in Budapest with her younger brother Juper, was orphaned years ago on a dark night that will forever haunt her memories.  She will never forget what she did that night and how it got her here.  Now a war is raging over Budapest and the government wants her to help them.  She has set her identity as a master assassin, and as she fights for her country she realizes the only way she will live is by letting the horrifying visions from her past die.

            Hey, ya’ll, how’s it going?  I’m hickchick (you can think of me as Rose, though).  This is my NaNoWriMo novel summary for this month, and so far I’m doing pretty darn good, excuse me, well.  I’m about 30% of the way through my novel.  I’d like to be moving along at a better pace, but life is busy and then there’s always the inevitable: the beast that causes all writers to shake in their shoes from fear, the beast that makes the boldest author want to slam his or her head against the wall until he or she passes out.  This beast attacks every writer at some point, and his name is Writer’s Block.  And if hearing his name doesn’t strike fear into your heart, I don’t know what will.

            Unfortunately for me, that is something that I’m dealing with right now.  That’s the reason the NaNo website is telling me that at the rate I’m going I won’t be finishing my novel until December 17.  Yeah, not good.  But I’ve been attacked by W.B. before and he has yet to completely deprive me of my creativity.  I’ve won the battle before, I know I will again, and long before December 17.

            Right now Saskia is the leader of a sniper unit on the Hungary border.  They just captured six enemy soldiers and the president has instructed Saskia to interrogate them.  So Saskia is walking toward the bound prisoners, but doesn’t know what she’ll say.  Kind of like me right now, haha.  She has absolutely no clue how to get information out of them.  Buying time, I had one of her comrades make a snarky remark so she could jack him in the face.  That was fun to type up, but buying time doesn’t make the cut.

            Even though I am under attack by W.B. right now, I still have tips for all of you writers out there who are also hopelessly stuck and are thinking, “I’m just going to give up on writing forever!”  That’s part of my first tip: Never give up and never say ‘forever’ in that context.  Forever is too long to not write and inspiration will hit you upside the head before you know it.  Second tip: Go somewhere inspirational.  I get inspired by lakes and mountains. Unfortunately, I don’t live anywhere near lakes or mountains, which is why W.B. is so scary for me.  But seriously, go somewhere you know you’ll be inspired.  Third tip: Talk to someone (who knows what you’re writing about) and they may be able to come up with an idea that you can manipulate.  Just be sure to give them a hug, thank them three million times, and dedicate the book to them.  Last, but definitely not least, eat some birthday cake flavored ice cream.  It always helps.  Enough said.  Writer’s Block is a scary beast for writers to face, but to quote an author I really like, ‘the first step to taming a beast is naming him.’

            Well, instead of writing to all of ya’ll about W.B. I should probably go face him and punch him into the next century.  I won’t be living in the next century where he will land, so I apologize in advance to all the writers who will be living in 100 years.  So, happy writing to you all and I hope all of you who are participating in National Novel Writing Month are scheduled to finish by the 30^th!

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!

NaNo, Day Thirteen

Word Count: 21,500 words (as of last night)
# of algebra assignments I've done so far today: 1
# of times I've thought about my fairytales: approximately 52

Today's guest blogger is another good NaNo friend of mine, BrookieBear! :)

Hello, I'm Brooke! I am very happy to be able to share about my book and some writing tips. My book is a fantasy about a girl who is trying to overcome sickness, take on responsibilities while becoming a princess, all while trying to solve the crime of who has been stealing treasures from the palace. I've been writing a steady 1,000 words per day, sometimes a little more, and sometimes a little less, but it all evens out. I definitely suggest that you try and space you're writing time periods out, rather than trying to write a whole bunch of words at once. I write a little in the morning, and a little late at night, because I have such a busy week every week. But it's actually best to just write whenever you have the time. Also, when you don't have access to a computer or anything, it's a good idea to be thinking about what you're going to write, and plan ahead. There's nothing wrong with being prepared, right? Have fun writing!

Thanks, BrookieBear. :)