Crystal Reflections

Onto Editing...For Now

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:01:08 GMT

Due to still not being able to come up with the new name for "Greenwich", I've decided that instead of doing nothing with The Storm's Edge, I'll go through the beginning and edit. There are so many dropped words that I hadn't seen, even when re-reading before, so this will be good. Though, I don't have the energy to deal with the prologue, I'm going to have to redo the entire thing. Ugh.

One great way I remembered for editing, is read it out loud, right? Well, I'm having my computer read it to me. heh :p Sure it can't exactly pronounce Gavia's or Aedaii's name right, but I just ignore those small errors and keep going. I'm rather surprised, there are plenty of names it can say correctly. Which is good. And I was able to get through several pages last night alone.

So...*sticks out tongue to Writer's Block* Can't keep me down. :p

Lost Mojo Found

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 23:29:29 GMT

And it's a good time too. Was starting to get tired of not writing. So, this morning I sat down and wrote. Sure, it was a future scene and goes in the notes, but it's still something, and I'm finally pushing into the funeral scene. I came up with a name for the Lord of Indielas - Renik, though I'm not too impressed with it, it'll due for now.

*sigh* I just wish I could move faster with writing this novel, but I guess it's fine for now since I don't exactly have a deadline.

Ugh! Just, Ugh!

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:47:20 GMT

I don't get it. It takes me only a few moments to think of The Hunt Is On character names, first and last, without any generator to twist around, and I still can't come up with The Storm's Edge characters? Besides that and figuring out how the funeral and coronation will happen (which honestly won't take me very long), I'm stuck. And it sucks.

Oh, and I sent The Hunt Is On off in the mail yesterday. *crosses fingers*

Phew!

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 22:38:53 GMT

Was able to manage printing it after going through and editing it. Everything is all set and ready, just need to get it in an envelop and get a stamp and send it off in the mail.

Wish me luck! :D

The Hunt Is On Is Finished

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:39:44 GMT

At 2794, the short story is finished. I thought I would finish at the limit, 3500 because I tend to do that with short stories, but I was able to end it just fine being shorter. Now it's onto editing and figuring out what's wrong with the damn printer so I can either get it in the mail today or tomorrow.

2794 / 2794 words. 100% done!

Can't believe the cover page is only in font size twelve. :p

New Short Story

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 01:02:52 GMT

After finally deciding on a story for the short story contest jpsorrow posted both in Novel_in_90 and his own LiveJournal, I was finally able to name it "The Hunt Is On" and I was able to get the character names finished today so that meant I able to finally work on the story. So far I've written a little over one thousand words and I only have about less than 2,500 left to do before I must finish it.

I just don't know how to make it such a short story. I'm used to short stories being five or six thousand words, but 3,500? It's going to be really tough, especially since I only have until the 15th to mail it off. Even if I do manage to finish it at that word count, it's going to be pretty awkward, I'm guessing, so that in itself is probably going to make me lose. *sigh* I'd love to win, not just for the prize money, but to get my name out there...as I'm sure the others would like as well. lol

I'm liking the characters and the story and I'm still going to attempt to finish it, but I don't think I'm going to be even close to winning. ...then again that could just be my low self-esteem of my writing, but it's probably true. :p Either way, I'm going to keep on trying and maybe looking for other contests to join in the future.

As for news on The Storm's Edge...still have problems with coming up with those damn names and that one city. *sigh* As soon as I'm done working on The Hunt Is On and when I get that sent in, I'm focusing entirely on The Storm's Edge.

LiveJournal Stuff

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 22:08:49 GMT

As much as I enjoy keeping memories, I think it's time to go through all of my journal entries and delete some and friend-lock most. Personal life posts will be, of course, friend-locked, and costume projects will also be friend-locked. This LJ will be mostly about my writing and novels.

If anyone wishes to see the friend-locked posts, leave a comment here about it. :)

So Far So Good

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 23:58:40 GMT

Was able to get to my first goal late last night being over 49K by a few hundred and today I've reached 50K. However, I'm in the middle of my writing session today, so I expect I'll reach at least 51K by tonight. Am now writing chapter twenty-one, but I still. Yes, still need to finish chapter ten...or was it eleven? :p

Got through a hard scene earlier, which finished off chapter twenty, though, I'm on an even harder chapter now. I've delayed creating character names and a town's name for a long time, but now...*sigh* I'm forced to come up with them and soon too if I'm to write more.

Ugh...

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 05:18:41 GMT

Here I am, in the beginning of the main, main plot for The Storm's Edge and yet my progress rate is going so slow. Now that the characters are in a new city, Najict to be exact, I've lost most of my mojo. :p And my describing mojo as well. :| If only I can tell myself and actually listen to my advice, I could skip past the describing part of the city and get to Darithil giving the bad news to Gavia and co. But am I going to have trouble getting her reaction and shock out?

*sigh* If I was sticking with my daily goal, which is about two thousand, I'd be either on or past 50k. :| I really need to learn to stick with writing everyday. No matter what.

48359 / 95000 words. 51% done!

Even though it's almost 10:30pm here, I need to actually start writing for today. Will I get to 50k tonight? I certainly hope so, but maybe not. But at least for certain, my goal is to get to 49K by the end of the night.

Can't Believe It

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 05:33:59 GMT

I'm 50% done with my novel.

Yet Another Benchmark

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 01:07:29 GMT

But one of the hardest to pass yet. Though, I have a feeling the next chapter is going to be hard to make at least a medium length one.

I hate writing short chapters.

45171 / 95000 words. 48% done!

Overused Words

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 20:21:56 GMT

Everyone has one certain word or even a few, or at least, I do. The one I've been overusing is the word, "frown". I have never really used that too much a while ago, but while trying to expand my vocab in writing, I just got started using it too much.

I remember when I was fourteen-fifteen, my teacher would get slightly irritated at me because I kept using "suddenly" and couldn't stop. :p I guess I learned my lesson because I try to stay away from that word. :p

But this time, "frown" is starting to quickly become my enemy.

New Benchmark! Squee!

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 19:56:32 GMT

After trying, and failing, to stop exactly at 40K, my current total word count is 40030 words! :D And, I also jumped the final word count to 95K, so that's about an average adult fantasy book length! I just might move it up to 100K, but I'll see about that when I get closer to the end.

The reason for the jump, you say? After really discussing where my story is going to Patrick, he made me realize somethings that I had forgotten about and somethings I just plain missed. I changed the middle to the end quite a bit and I'm actually happy with where it's going. Not only that, but I have the entire book planned out now! That's right, from where I am writing in the novel right now to the very end! :D *happy*

40030 / 95000 words. 42% done!

Now that I'm starting to reach the dreaded middle of the book, I'm starting to crank up the romance, but just a dash. Chapter fifteen turned out to be quite the emotional chapter, and I hope I accomplished that. I read it outloud to Patrick and I think I hit the mark I was trying to reach. And the best thing is, it flows really nicely! :D Also, a small critical moment that will advance the romance on. Without it, I doubt the love could be cranked up.

It's starting to turn out to be a great thing...in my opinion. :p

Phew

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 19:08:33 GMT

So, I finally finished going through my entire novel and fixed all those annoying symbols and correcting the paragraphs and lines. Of course, I used most of that time to edit as well. Yay! I can multi-task!

What now you say? On to writing again.

I'm so glad I don't have a deadline for this novel.

The Storm's Edge

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:36:49 GMT

Although I haven't been able to write due to the recent computer problems was I complaining about a few days ago on here, my mind has been turning over idea after idea. As I had said in Novel_in_90, this unexpected and unplanned break in writing has been quite useful. Which means that my novel in progress, The Storm's Edge, is starting to slowly unravel and reveal what's going to happen to me. I have planned some interesting things to happening for the end, I just need to somehow bridge the gap from what I've seen in the future chapters than the one I'm currently on now.

The ideas are coming together now, all I need to do is write my best and I believe it will be a pretty awesome novel overall. :D

The only thing I'm worried about for now is my pace. I'm almost at 38K and my target goal is 80K, closing in on 50% done. And so far, I'm still in the "Mini-Prologue Plot" (named by Patrick.) He called it that because it's the plot that gets my MCs into the main plot. Some characters have died, more are about to. My worry is that I'm taking a little too long to get into the main plot, and yet at the same time, I'm not all that worried. If I extend my target goal, that's perfectly fine with me. I'd love to have The Storm's Edge turn out to be a 90 or 100K more than an 80K novel. So this may very well be just fine for this story. We'll see when we get there...Though, once I have my characters arrive in Najict, it's probably going to be smooth sailing from there until I reach the gap. :p

I'm really happy with the overall story and where I plan on taking my characters, I'm just worried that my actual writing is going to screw up how good it might be...am trying not to think about that part just quite yet. I'm going to try and wait until I'm done writing the story and worry about it during the quite annoying editing stage. 'Cause that's what it's for, right? Fixing the odd things and seeing if there's something you need to change. At that point I'm going to probably be going around and asking everyone I know to read it and see what they think! LOL

Talk About A Huge Relief

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 23:13:40 GMT

So, within the matter of a few hours, the main computer Patrick and I both use to work on our novels, short stories, whatever randomly started having major problems while we were trying to install a wireless PCI network card in order to fix the current and quite annoying internet problems it's been having. Overcome by stress, I immediately started worrying about all those documents, namely speaking of The Storm's Edge, which is nearly 50% done. The internet has been cut off from that computer since two days ago so even when it finally did turn on, I couldn't email myself my docs.

As luck would have it, Patrick's mom happened to have one of those USB disk like chips to transfer files and documents. We put it in and it took forever before it finally recognized it and Patrick set to work on trying to figure it out. After about a half an hour of worry, I finally kicked him off the computer so I could fittle around with it and not even five minutes later, TSE was sitting safely in it.

We put all the important docs on there and now we just need to wait for my computer to be shipped from my mom's house so we can put them on there. The laptop I'm using right now to type this post doesn't have enough free room to put anything more on there, especially TSE. I'm going to hope that my ol' Mac can read those files...

We're probably going to have to take the computer to the computer store and see if they can manage to fix it...it's going to be quite expensive, but we need to do it. It's seriously unstable and without internet. If only we had enough money to buy a flipping new computer Patrick and I would just get rid of the crappy thing right away.

So, as long as the card is safe...TSE and Onslaught at Charei are both safe! I'm happy now even though it's going to be hard to write until my computer gets up here. :p

Word Counts So Far...

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 01:37:25 GMT

Still not finished with the day's word count for The Storm's Edge, but so far, I've got:

33522 / 80000 words. 42% done!

I might jump up the final WC to 90 or 100K, but we'll see as I get closer.

And I haven't worked on Onslaught at Charei for sometime, but it's still in my mind:

2555 / 6000 words. 43% done!

Character Names

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:15:44 GMT

So here are the fifteen characters that I need to name and as Astres said, maybe some of you can give me some aid with the naming? :p I'll write short descriptions of each character.

Royal Advisor: This guy is the main advisor to Queen Gavia of Mirradath. Not much to say about this guy, but he's a good guy and has a straight-forward attitude with his work, though has his occasional argument with the second "unofficial" advisor, Darithil. To discribe his appearance, he has shoulder length, red hair and blue eyes, fair skin. I believe I only need first name.

Chaedirra's last name: Chaedirra is the lady of Nearon, a city that's allied to Mirradath (both good cities) and it's more in a desert and dry land. She's getting to be an "old" woman being in her late 30's, of course, in this world the average age these people die at is around 60. Her personality is fun, mostly care-free, but a great battle planner. For appearance-wise, she's got long blonde hair with some strands of silver in it and brown eyes. Very pretty, despite her age and stress-caused wrinkles. :p She is killed by a group of warriors.

Gavia's six guards: Just the first names for these guys. I'm not quite sure about their personalities yet, but they'd gladly give up their lives for their queen. Good guys.

Teralin's Older Sister: Being married, she has a different last name, but I'll worry about that one. I can see her name is a lot like her mother's, which is Iaida (I - a - da) and maybe slightly like her father's name, Talaren.

Aedaii (A - die) and Valira's last name: These two are the lord and lady of Thesiden. Also a good city. They're the southern most city in the Known Regions, but their city is nestled on top of a mountain. Thesiden is most well known for their greatly skilled warriors and wise battle tatics. Valira is also killed by the warriors, while Aedaii, who is also meant to be killed, survives.

The Lord and Lady of Windrea: I can't say too much about these two. They're also on the good side, but they're both killed in the attack. From what I can see (since the readers never get a chance to see how they are while they're alive) they have a bit of a tough side, seeing how Windrea is in the middle of Falwen (a leaderless city, which is completely ignored by the other leaders of the Known Regions) and Indielas (which is city of trouble makers, especially their lord and lady.)

The Lord and Lady of Indielas: Like I had said before, they're two big trouble makers and basically force their people to live and work like slaves, but they do it just before the point where the other leaders of the Known Regions are forced to step in and stop them. Their people will randomly attack traders who are traveling and steal their trade items.

And finally, the lord of Najict: Unfortunately, the readers don't get to see him while he's alive, as he is killed by the group of warriors as well. Najict is just as powerful as Mirradath and as well off. He is a good guy, simply enough.

Thanks, guys! Even if you only do one or two, it'll really help! And even if I don't use the exact name, I can easily change it around to fit the "style" of Senasta. :p

I. Loathe. Creating. Character. Names.

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:39:00 GMT

At first, I was heavily amused at myself for being so lazy with character names that I had twelve to do yesterday morning. I told myself to just bite the bullet and get them done. Just as I come up with two names, I realize, I have two more to add to the list, so as soon as it goes down to ten, the count jumps back up to twelve. Not too bad.

Not too bad until it kept growing. So far I've created four names (yippee :| ) but I've still got fifteen left to go! FIFTEEN! It's no longer amusing to me. :|

I hate character names. With a passion. Ugh.

Theme Song

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 04:23:23 GMT

Today, I found out the theme song for The Storm's Edge, "The Gravity of Love" by Enigma. Very good and has helped me remember something very important within the novel. Can't let those two off the hook while the villains suffer, now can I? ;) :p

After getting some advice from an actual author, I've decided that I need to bump up the final word count to 80K. I've never written anything that long before, but I think I can handle it. I'm getting more ideas about the plot and have been thinking a bit clearer on the story line. So that's good. :)

29077 / 80000 words. 36% done!

Writing

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 00:50:06 GMT

For any of you who read this post who are writers...this will give you a great reason why you should not skip chapters while writing them.

Thinking back to the second version of The Storm's Edge, which had to have been about three or four years ago, I wrote in order, like a good little author-wannabe. Now that I've started this newer version, several versions down the road, I can't help but need to not go in order. Either I'm not in the mood to write that chapter in question, or I need to get more information, like names (the problem I'm running into quite a bit) and so I move on to the next chapter that I can move on to. It works, for the time, because that way I'm not wasting the day and not writing.

However, the big however, not writing chapters in order can turn around and screw you royally, until you're so stressed and pissed off that you want to throw something at the damn computer. This happened today, not even ten minutes ago to me. How nice. :)

When you finally go back and fill in those empty chapters, you find out different reasons, different answers, different ways of how those characters get to where they're going. My mess up? Was the reason, that wasn't that much different from what I had it before, and yet, somehow, it still gives me the headache of a life time.

Therefore, my lesson of the day, try your best not to skip chapters, otherwise, it may bite you in the behind afterward...ungrateful stories they are. :p

The Storm's Edge Progress

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 02:07:11 GMT

23098 / 67500 words. 34% done!

Was able to get to 23K today and finished my word count. Now onto beginning Onslaught at Charei. We'll see how much I can get done, my eyes are starting to hurt and so is my back from sitting at the computer almost the entire day, writing.

Yet Another Short Story

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 00:26:34 GMT

I'm just getting all the information ready, such as names, creatures and plot information. This short story, however, is a sequel off of Crystal Within the Forest. It'll be called, Onslaught at Charei, and the series title will be, The Vendiss Tales.

I've been thinking about a sequel to CWtF for a few days now and I'm glad I finally got around to thinking it out a bit more. The word count will either be the same as CWtF or a little bit more, we'll see how it turns out.

Now that I've worked on it a bit, I should really get back to working on my Christmas pillows, I have until tomorrow to finish my third pillow and then on sunday I have to start and finish my fourth pillow. Ugh. Luckily I have until the 19th to get my fifth and final pillow (of this year anyway) finished and wrapped.

...I'm starting to hate sewing pillows.

Novel Benchmark!

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 01:28:45 GMT

Yep, you heard it, folks. I finally reached my next bench mark, 15 thousand! I would have done it sooner, but I've been busy trying to sew pillows and embroidery and bead them for my family for Christmas and recovered from a sprained ankle.

15,000 / 67,500
(22.2%)

Woo hoo! 22%!

Ugh To Names

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 20:15:49 GMT

I loath trying to come up with new names in my novels or even in RPGs. I don't know why, but I'm worse than I ever was. I could take about five minutes to come up with a good solid name, but now it takes me all the longer. I'm using name generators and adjusting what I see, but it's harder than ever lately. Good thing my boyfriend just loves coming up with names.

Oh, which reminds me, I still have to come up with "Advisor's" name and "Greenwich", a city toward the southern part of the world I created. Oh, and poor guys. I keep forgetting to name and talk about the six guards. hehe *blush* Sorry, guys! :p

Naming...blah.