There’s only so much upheaval, change, and spur-of-the-moment this Gold, chaotic-good, INTJ-Architect can handle before she blows her top. And said top t’was blown.
It took me about two weeks to settle in mentally to the new house. It wasn’t the constant beep-beep-beep of construction vehicles, nor the endless boxes, or the equally endless bear sightings that did me in. Nope. It was the fact that I couldn’t (and still can’t) find my UV nail polish.
Well #$%^! How am I supposed to get home now? (photo: author)
I know, right? Even I think it sounds silly to blame my mental health on nail polish. But here we are.
A sample of my nail polish collection. (photo: author)
A long time ago, in a province far, far away, I discovered that the key to wicking away my anxiety was to focus on doing my nails.
Again, I know, right? Anxiety is weird that way.
Not being able to sit down and focus on the one thing I knew could keep my anxiety at bay made me even more anxious. I won’t bore you with the details, but as mentioned earlier, it took me almost two weeks to settle in once we moved summer of 2021.
Truer words have never been spoken. . . or written in chalk. (photo: author)
Once the ‘settle in’ took hold, the writing bug came back. You see, I typically thrive off my daydreaming and imagination to figure out plot points, character development, and world-building. However, mundane tasks such as cleaning or organizing produced nothing during those two weeks. Like, a literal black hole. Even at night when I’d try to dream, I’d be able to focus for a minute or two, then… nothing. It was so frustrating. I wanted to write but I couldn’t.
I knew what was getting in the way, so out of desperation, I went online and bought some nail polish. It took two days to arrive, but once I did, I sat down, did my thing, and came back with a fresh manicure. It mani-cured what blocked my writing.
You don’t actually want to see a picture of my nails, do you? (photo: author)
Here I sit, shaking my head. My mental health is all in my head, and I know what, but what’s even worse, is that my brain is more stubborn than I am. Who knew. Paint nails equals creative block lifted.
Camp NaNoWriMo is just around the corner, and what better way to firm up that writing need with a goal to meet. I tend to work best when there’s a goal to hit, rather than just sitting at my computer and pounding away at the keys like some deranged woodpecker until a story comes out. Although I don’t plan to work on a single novel, I do plan to crank out another 50,000 words to make up for writing almost nothing for June.
The urge to write is once again coming out of hiding. The ideas are flowing. Between the boxes and the mess, I’m carving out my writing time and creating a few new habits and routines. Being in my own place and having my own space definitely put a cramp in my writing style. I look forward to pounding away at the keyboard again!
I’m late to the game on the whole New Year’s Resolutions thing, but I have a good excuse. With this most recent variant, the probability of catching the virus went up a substantial amount. Going by numbers in my city, it appears to be about a 20%-25% jump.
But more on that in a minute.
Story Time
For Christmas, we packed our bags, put the puppers up with a boarder, and hopped a flight (with a couple lay-overs) to Houston. Now that we’re east coasters, there are no direct flights, so we still have to transit through Calgary. It seems we still can’t escape that city!
Good ‘ol Calgary Airport
With our pre-flight COVID-19 negative tests secured, we took the plunge. Christmas Eve was spent cooking and wrapping last minute gifts. Christmas Day was spent with my not-so-little little bro & his family, tearing into gifts, eating way too much food, and polishing off several bottles of champagne. This was a Christmas we have missed for two years. Thanks, ‘rona.
All was going well, until one morning I woke up with a scratch in my throat and a cough. I thought nothing of it. Our pre-flight tests were all negative, and we hadn’t been anywhere other than my parents house after arriving.
The day came to take our COVID tests in order to get back to Canada. And who should test positive? Me! Long-story-short, I had to stay back for a week (with a wicked stuffy nose) before being able to come home. You might think that was a perfect time to write, but when you’re suddenly away from your family, it’s super stressful. So, very littler writing was had.
D’oh!
Luckily about 10 days later, my PCR came back negative, and I rescheduled my flight home. I’ve been home for a week now, being a good little girl and sticking close to home unless I need to walk Mochi. It took me a few days to calm down and catch up to the fact that I was actually home before I could start writing again.
From the plane – Mt. Rainier, an active volcano in Washington state.
What I did for 2021
This year, I’m going to do things a bit differently. For 2021, I tried to stick to the mantra “Write Every Day.” Long-story-short, I couldn’t stick to that for more than a few weeks at a time. My anxiety would flare up to the point where thinking about opening a document to write triggered panic attacks.
My goals changed at the beginning quarter of the year to hit an easy target: 5,000 words a week. That seemed to work pretty well, and there were weeks where I blew my target out of the water.
NaNoWriMo rolled around and I told myself to commit. Write every day in November, even if it’s junk, even if it’s gibberish. Just write. I didn’t have to stick to a single project, I could write whatever the heck I wanted.
And it worked! I slammed back NaNo in about 20 days. As December started, I was able to keep the momentum going. I think I had found my magic bullet.
Resolutions for 2022
This year, starting in February, I’m aiming for 10,000 words a week. That’s only 2,000 words a day for 5 of the 7 days. At my writing speed (or word vomit speed) I can crank out 2,000 words in about an hour. That’s not a big commitment at all. This is me writing while the evening news runs in the background.
I am also going to try to keep a separate writing journal aside from my bullet journal. I’m able to stick to my bullet journal, but the contents are all over the place. I’m going to separate writing completely, and leave my bullet journal for day-to-day and personal goals only.
And that works out perfectly. For Christmas, my journaling-writer mum got me one of her favourite planner notebooks to try out. It’s called the Go Girl Planner , available also on Amazon. It’s built with three sections: Month-at-a-glance, week-at-a-glance, and free-form bullet journaling for jotting down ideas, maps, and anything else that comes about.
I set up my month-at-a-glance for now with things that are happening through the month. Come February, I will shift to only writing-related items, such as social media, targets for self-edits, and planning out timelines for my writing projects. More on that in another post.
My week-at-a-glance will be used to record and track specific goals that week. For instance, now that I’ve finished the first draft of my fourth novel in the Rose Cross Academy series, I need to self-edit the manuscript before sending it to my editor for her to chop to pieces. I will see if giving myself a goal every day or every other day to self-edit a chapter will help me through the process, or if I need less structured goals such as ‘self-edit 10 chapters this week.’
Writing Goals for 2022
As mentioned, I’ve finished the rough draft of my fourth book. By March/April, I want to have this book edited and ready for publishing.
Book #5 in my Rose Cross Academy series will need some work. I have a framework, I know the beginning, middle, and end, and I’ve written about 30%-40% of the novel. I’d like to work on this novel with the most focus.
I’d like to get my publishing schedule up to at least two books a year, instead of one.
My laptop keyboard, rainbow mode.
I have (what I thought was) a just-for-fun WIP that has grown into a monstrous novel nearing 150K words (code name GM). I think this novel has potential, and I’d like to clean it up and send it out for beta reading. Part One of this novel is complete and self-edited. Part two is 75-80% done. Whether I split the manuscript into two is still up for debate. This work deviates from my previous YA novels and comes in as New Adult LitRPG.
And finally, I have my 2021 brainstorm-turned-novel-series-idea I’m calling “Four Crows”. This is becoming New Adult as well—a pistol-and-petticoat Steampunk fantasy set in a post-apocalyptic late 1800’s North America. The premise is right before the 1890’s industrial revolution of North America, an apocalypse occurs which wipes out a chunk of the population, destroys emerging technology (such as the motor vehicle and industrial machinery), and replaces it with a watered-down form of magic. One hundred years later, as society has recovered and is gearing up for a second industrial revolution, events leading to the original apocalypse are rearing their ugly heads again.
To Wrap It Up . . .
I plan on 2022 being busy with ideas and finalizing drafts. Two of my projects are close to publishing, so I’m well on way to hitting my two-novel-a-year plan. And since loose daily writing goals worked well for me in the latter half of 2021, I’ll be experimenting on what goals I can set for myself that don’t feel like work. Life is stressful enough, I don’t want my writing to become one of them.
Sunrise touching the Coast Mountains.
As spring peaks over the mountains here on the east coast, I have high hopes and good spirits heading into the year. It’s a bit disappointing that COVID gobbled up half of January, but I have a whole year to make up for it.
How are your New Year’s goals looking? If you have them planned out, are you sticking to them?
I think we can mostly agree that COVID-19 has changed the landscape of the modern workplace. Whether that be office work, service work, or health and safety, where we work has changed. For me, the biggest change was going from working eight-to-five in an office to working eightish-to-sometime-in-the-evening hours from home.
For about thirteen months starting in 2020, Real Life Rissa (that’s me!) worked from home at an I.T. job in the Alberta environmental services sector. During these thirteen months, I went through various hardships, from dealing with a bloom in my anxiety, to struggling with immigration to the U.S. for my family, and the death of a family pet.
At least my home office had a great backdrop!
Then my husband’s company was acquired, and his job situation went into flux.
Then my company was acquired, and my job situation went into flux.
Then the capitol riots happened in Washington, D.C.
Over the span of a few months, our emotions went from “What are we going to do?” to “Okay, we better do something fast!”
The only good thing about lockdown was the daily walks.
Low-and-behold, the hubs settled into a new job with a real estate company that wanted him to work out of their Vancouver office in the lower mainland of British Columbia. Now, if you know me, you’ll know my family and Vancouver go way back. Naturally we jumped at the opportunity to relocate from the prairies to the west coast.
We sold all but one property in Alberta to afford the move to the Vancouver area. It’s frickin’ expensive to live on the west coast, but we squeaked into a new development in Coquitlam, one of the tri-cities of metro Vancouver. We secured a deposit on a temporary rental until construction on our townhouse complex could be completed.
We had the best view from the breakfast nook year-round.
Now, we knew well beforehand that we’d be moving from an estate home just under 3,000 sq-ft to a cozy little 900 sq-ft apartment for the next nine months of our lives. A sacrifice we were all willing to make to live in one of our dream destinations. And sacrifice we did.
About a month into moving plans, we lost our Boo. She had been battling untreatable kidney problems for years, and they all came to the inevitable end in June. I got to hold my Boo for one last time before the vet sent her off to that big scratching post in the sky one sunny afternoon.
She will forever be my favourite co-author.
So it seemed losing my country view and awesome writing space was suddenly no big deal. I had to believe we would make new memories in Coquitlam, we’d inherit a new view, and we’d adopt another cat.
At the end of July once all the frustrations of selling multiple properties finally worked out, we packed up the SUV (and boy did we pack the SUV) and hit the road.
Just enough room for 3 yahoo’s and a Shiba.
After battling through the height of fire season in BC and Alberta, three days later, we rolled in to our rental in Coquitlam and got a serious dose of reality.
A travelapse of our move to BC
We thought we had donated or sold enough of our belongings to downsize into our apartment, but three storage units and one crowded living space later, we came to realize just how much stuff we really owned. Fifteen years of accumulation . . .
It’s like one of those hidden objects game. Can you find the Shiba?
We’ve been here for about 2 months now and have settled in (not to mention organized a bit). Now that the relocation is complete, I’m hoping to dive back into my writing.
Although my main concern should be publishing The Rose Cross Academy book #4, I’ve had a sudden creative streak that’s put my time towards yet another WIP. That’s three I have going, now. And each one demands a different corner of my already crowded brain. I prefer to write whatever’s in my head so I don’t loose any ideas, but I’m also a year behind on my 4th Book. COVID certainly didn’t help with that.
With NaNoWriMo fast approaching, I’m counting on that being the kick in the pants I need. I want to get my 4th book off to my editor before November so I can focus on NaNo. 2020 was the first year I didn’t complete the month-long writing challenge, so this will be a redemption year for me!
Alrighty. So now that I’ve dusted off the ol’ blog, it’s time to get back to some writing!
I hope the last year has treated you well. Stay healthy everyone!
Strange things happen when you make a goal and stick with it. I can’t believe it took me ten years to figure this out!
The Backstory
When I set my New Year’s writing resolution for 2021, I vowed to write every day this year. I would allow myself to “skip” days only in extreme or special circumstances. Seemed simple enough.
Then, well-established crafter of words, Brandon Sanderson, released a video explaining how one could write a book a year just by writing every day. Totally coincidental, but this hit home so hard for me that I had to write about my experience doing just that in January: writing everyday.
January in Review
I’m happy to announce I only missed one day in January (and that’s because we suddenly had to buy a car… long story, totally uninteresting) Other than that day, I buckled down and committed. Every day I wrote.
Truth be told, some days were easier than others, some days were a challenge altogether. Some days it took me literally hours to write two paragraphs.
But I wrote.
Even when I wanted to throw an adult temper tantrum . . . even when I had to take a drink every time I churned out a sentence . . . even when I spent more time delaying the inevitable by cleaning, or making another coffee, or forcing the dog to play (no joke!), I wrote.
The first week was a breeze. I’ve got this, I thought. I’ve done NaNoWriMo for nine years in a row. I’ve got this!
The second week was a bit of a slog, but not too difficult. The writing quality took a hit, but still, I wrote.
The third week suck-didily-ucked.
But the fourth week. Eureka! Something clicked. Suddenly writing every day wasn’t like a chore. Suddenly I was cranking out 700-2,500 words a sitting as opposed to my measly 200-400.
So What Happened?
I developed better writing habits.
I turned off my phone and my tablet. At times, I disabled the wi-fi on my laptop.
I beat the sh*t out of my internal editor and told them to shut the eff up!
I didn’t worry about writing “crappy” sentences. I just wrote.
I became a willing participant in my ‘write every day’ goal.
I became a willing participant in my ‘write every day’ goal.
Throughout the day, I would think about the scene I wanted to write.
I stopped procrastinating and distracting myself with other work—cleaning, organizing, etc.
I set aside a specific time and dedicated that time to writing for one hour.
I stopped seeing writing as ‘work’ and turned it in to ‘fun.
I didn’t stick to one story. I mix-and-matched.
I allowed myself to write whatever-the-heck I wanted, even if it would never make it into a novel. (I even dabbled in Romance. Ooooh, the forbidden genre!)
I found music and other inspirations to keep things interesting.
As I’m writing this blog post, I have an ATEEZ dance mix playing on YouTube to keep things peppy and interesting.
What did I accomplish?
For months since pandemic lock down started in Canada, I’ve been in a creative rut. My next novel was supposed to come out at the end of 2019. Now I’m aiming for winter of 2021, a full two year delay! Ugh!
I got stuck in the middle of the novel while getting my characters to a critical turning point in the plot. I had written that plot point already, I had gotten my characters out, I had them suffer the consequences already. But getting them to that point had me throwing adult temper tantrums.
So for January, I was hell-bent on getting over this hump! It’s not like this point in the story was boring, far from it. Something in my brain kept me from writing this transition. So when I sat down to pound keys on Jan-One, I was determined to complete this scene, even if it was complete garbage.
And I did!
As I worked through my road blocks, the ideas started flowing. I hoped in January I could complete 3 chapters in my Fourth Book, and I did that and more. I figured out plot points in my epic fantasy, I reworked issues in a sci-fi/speculative fiction I had been writing. As January came to a close, I had written close to 9,000 words. Sure, that’s no NaNo, but I thoroughly impressed myself!
January writing progress as recorded in my bullet journal.
Plans for the Future?
Now that I know my crux and how to get past it, I think this write-every-day thing is gonna be a breeze.
If I could give one piece of advice that I’ve learned, it is this:
Even if it sucks, just write it. You can’t edit a blank page.
As we kiss 2020 goodbye (more like kick its sorry ass out the door), 2021 has a head start on being a better year for the simple fact that it’s a new year. We won’t get into the deets on why, that’s already been established. With a new year comes new chances, new adventures. And the dreaded New Year’s Resolutions.
To cut to the chase, this year I vow to write everyday—be it a sentence, a paragraph, an entire chapter. Every day I will write. Something. Even if it’s garbage. Even if it has nothing to do with anything.
At times, my writing may closely resemble this. (L, Death Note)
I vow I will write for ten minutes every day in 2021.
I will allow myself to break this resolution only in extreme circumstances—illness, special occasion, my birthday. This should be an easy resolution to keep. Every night I have my computer on my lap (I guess that’s why they call it a lap-top, duh). There is nothing keeping me from opening a new document and spilling out the digital equivalent of word vomit. Resolution met!
Read More
It’s gonna cost me precious writing time, but I’m gonna read more than I do already. I typically go through a book a month. I’m no marathon reader, for sure. This year, I’m going to try to double that.
So to meet that, what’s the first thing I did? I splurged. I bought myself a monthly subscription to a book box. I’m a bit bummed to see only YA available in monthly boxes, at least those that will ship to Canada at a reasonable price. So my monthly sub will provide my YA fix, and my monthly trip to the book store will have to continue to provide my Fantasy fix.
I chose FairyLoot‘s monthly subscription box, approx $36/month USD. Image owned by FairyLoot.
Dream More
80% of my ideas come in those long hours it takes me to fall asleep at night. Insomnia’s kinda a jerk that way. Since the pandemic began and I’ve been relegated to the confines of my house for medical reasons, my anxiety has shot through the roof. As a result, I’ve sometimes refused to dream up ideas for my novels.
This year, I’m going to throw that out the window. That is because I’ve figured out why I refused to dream. Fear. I was afraid that if I dreamed up a really good idea, I wouldn’t be able to write it. Working from home during the day means just that—I need to focus on the real world. I’ve learned that’s much easier to do in an office environment, but takes an effort at home where there are so many distractions.
My number one fear was getting a great idea and either shrugging off work to write it (and risk losing my job) or doubling-down on work and forgetting the idea completely.
Then I realized something.
Admitting my fear was the first step to getting out of this writing rut! From there, I could only go up. So once I get to spewing out the word vomit, I figure I also need to take care of the stuff I’ve already written.
Edit More
I have two novels that need to get out the door. They’re in rough draft-mode. I need to get them through self-edited mode and out the door to venture into the world of The Professional Editor. Dun-dun-dun.
Editing, especially the professional stage of the art, is something I’ve come to figure out is more like smoothing out the icing on the cake. It’s not meant to be hurtful or painful. It’s not meant to feel like you wrote a piece of crap. I’ve come to realize that I’m great at spilling out a story—I can mine the gems but I can’t polish them. That’s what my editor is for—polishing up the chunks I’ve dug out of my mind and organized onto paper, digitally speaking.
I need to get those novels out the door, and they won’t get anywhere until they’re edited. So above and beyond my reading and writing resolutions, I will also edit my novels and get them out into the world to be come grown-up novels.
Pay Attention to my Muse(s) More
Okay, okay. That is not grammatically correct, but nothing in my mind is. Least of all, my muses. And of those, I have an army.
Now, I’d like to think my army of muses is well-put together, mildly behaved, and perhaps just a little introverted. But in reality, they’re just as messed up as I am—prone to silliness, absent-minded, and definitely less mature than they should be.
One of the things I need to learn is how to organize my army into a strategic, plot-killing armada. When writing, I often pull out one muse at a time, put them through hell, and then put them back in their cage. I’m not too good with making them work together. Each muse is a one-man/woman-show. If my army is gonna write a novel, we all have to work together.
I suppose that means I need to start with organizing my own brain first. I’m far too obsessed with making lists, organizing things, and putting pen to paper. This is exactly the opposite of my pantser tendencies, and I’m fairly certain I do this just to procrastinate. So that leads me on to my last goal.
Ease up on the journalling
I have five writing journals. FIVE! I’m certain they’re enabling my procrastination and lack of actual writing. This year, I’m going to retire three of them and allow myself two: my reading planner and my writing-journal-slash-bullet-journal.
I’m keeping my reading planner as a way to organize my reading. If you’re interested in one, you can find one in your local book store, or download templates for free with a simple internet search. This planner is something I couldn’t come up with on my own (that, and I just love the quality of a mass-market planner).
I’m using OwlCrate’s 2021 Reading Planner, $14.99 on OwlCrate.com
I’m also keeping one of my writing journals for the sake of jotting down ideas when I get them. This journal will also double as my bullet journal to track my day-to-day. Keeping my writing journal whittled down will force me to type out more of my thoughts rather than writing them out by hand. I have so many ideas stuck in my journals that organizing them and typing them out is taking away from my actual writing time.
This one was a pleasant surprise for me. Although 2020 was the first year in a long time I didn’t complete NANOWRIMO, I did keep the wiki on my latest WIP alive and growing. One of the hurdles of picking up an old work and continuing it was trying to figure out what the heck I was doing in the first place. What is this character’s motivation? Why did I make this bird talk? Was Number Five really the shooter on the Grassy Knoll?
When I kept my wiki up-to-date, I found I wasn’t back-tracking as much to figure out what in the world I was thinking when I wrote scenes or chapters. It was also a place to keep track of the little details, like eye colour. As I wrote my scenes, I’d take notes on the purpose of the chapter, where I wanted to go, and any little Chekhov’s Guns that may need to be fired somewhere down the storyline.
I use an open-source product called wikidPad, available at SourceForge, which I think I’ve mentioned before. I believe there’s a scaled-down Android version but I haven’t used it. In any case, I love it to pieces. In place of my library of notebooks, I’m going to strive to use my wiki more often. Keeping things digital instead of analog will be a challenge in itself as I love writing things by hand. My pens and pencils will need to take a break this year.
Wrap it all Up
Finally, since I’m putting all my eggs in one digital basket—aka my computer—I’ll need that most important of regiments, the backup. With a Gmail account, that’s easy. Google Drive is an easy place to drop off files I’ve been working on. With that I need to keep in mind that Google’s cloud storage isn’t infinite as they’ve recently implemented an inactivity trigger.
My Android tablet will serve as a secondary back up and will also double as a portable version of my works should I find myself stuck in . . . well, I dunno. In the “new normal” will we still be allowed to loiter in doctor’s offices and watch our children in karate classes? Those are questions for future me. For now, I’ll consider that as a ‘piece of mind’ back up.
I’ll set a schedule for these backups. Depending on how much I write, I’ll backup to the cloud at least once a week and backup to my tablet once a month. Backups won’t be limited to just my word files. I’ll back up my wiki and any Photoshop files I have on the go, such as cover art ideas and maps—betcha didn’t know I do my own cover art! Five years in website design before my current adventure in environmental services has taught me well.
Have you set your goals for 2021 yet? My advice would be to not go all-out. Start small. Make a small goal you know you can meet every day or every week. Write ten words a day, or write for ten minutes a day. Do ten sit ups a day or exercise for ten minutes a day. Small things. Baby steps. I find if my goals are too big they start to feel like work and obligations. My inner teenager rebels against those societal strangulations outside of my adult world and actual paying job, in which I thrive on deadlines and obligations.
Geesh. It’s been ages since my last blog post! Since my last check-in, our brutally-hot summer has changed into an unusually cold and rainy autumn. Granted autumn is my favourite season, but I can’t help but feel we’ve been cheated out of summer. Well, maybe it was just me who was cheated.
Autumn, how can I stay mad at you?
A bout of rather nasty warm-weather pneumonia at the end of June rewarded me with a fractured rib. That took away most of my summer activities: hiking, camping, and general out-and-about-ness. Three months later I’m still tender and unable to do much more than my weekly walk to the corner store for Doritos.
My Real Life Job in the oil & gas industry has become exciting. We acquired another company, went public, and are in the process of replacing everything in existence in our business. Lots of fun, lots of work, and lots of long hours.
Leaving not many hours for writing.
Then, as if I already didn’t have enough to do, we got a dog. Meet Mochi, our red sesame Shiba Inu. One look at her little face was enough to melt this stone heart and forget the fact that, not only did I have troubles finding time to write, I also had to find time to take care of her.
Having an 8-week old puppy in the house is a lot like having another child. We fuss over her when she’s awake, bend over backwards for potty training, then tip-toe around when she’s napping so we can have a few minutes of peace. So far my obsessive hovering abilities have kept her from chewing the house apart and using Boo’s cat post as a toilet. Perhaps one day my two fur babies will make friends, but for now the Boo is content to just glare at Mochi from a safe distance.
… always.
I mentioned my weekly walks before. It’s something I’m trying to stick with. No phone (other than to hatch Pokemon eggs, lol!), no music. Just me and my over-active imagination. The walks help to keep me moving and active, and they also give me a chance to think through my writing. On my walks, I’ve figured out character backstories, schemed-up plot twists, and found ways to link scenes together.
One thing I’ve realized is when life dumps dead leaves on you, you make a big-ass pile and hop in! I took my pneumonia as a chance to get to know my writing again. I took my fractured rib as a chance to find low-impact exercise that will keep my body moving. I took the hectic work life as a chance to refine my leadership and organizational skills. So far, I’m still in one piece and kicking this year’s butt.
Although I don’t see Real Life settling down any time soon, this is nothing I can’t handle. And with autumn bathing my countryside back yard in colour, I’m finding it easier to deal with the things life throws at me. My anxiety has been quiet for a few months. My last psychedelic head-trip (aka ocular migraine) was over six months ago. I’ve been watching my diet in hopes to keeps those attacks at bay.
In the world of writing, Book #4 in my Rose Cross Academy series is still truckin’ along. I have a few scenes to hammer out and link to the rest of the story line. The story is written, beginning to end, it just needs a little TLC. I’m almost done the cover too!
Book #4 cover … under construction!
With NaNoWriMo coming up, I already have my project for November in mind and I’m actually planning things out. Lately I’ve been reading fantasy novels, which are a deviation from young adult, paranormal, and horror novels. In reading fantasy, I’ve thought up my own novel and I’m going to use that for November. The story will follow a young girl who is the only non-magical member of her magical village. In my world, magic is the norm and not the exception, but to the ho-hum extent—lighting fires for cooking, growing seeds into plants, filling a glass of water. The great magic died out hundreds of years ago during a war that attempted to expunge the higher magics from the world. That great magic hides in books throughout the world, and she’s determined to find all these magic books.
So as I sit in my messy corner of the couch in which I have penned three novels and am working on about a billion more, I watch the first flakes of winter meander by my window. Really, I’m making it sound more ethereal than it actually is. In reality, I’m cold, I want a cup of coffee, and the smell of burning dust from the first furnace run of the season is making me sneeze.
Yes. Winter is coming.
And there’s a puppy chewing on my toes.
Whatcha lookin’ at?
Welp, nothing for it. Time to get back to writing. And I’ve gotta get this puppy to stop using me as a human chew toy.
Holy cow! It’s been a while since I provided a general update on all things Rissa. My last post revealed all is not so rosy here in Oil and Gas country. The low price of WTI (oil), coupled with a bad world-wide economy, mixed with the horrible fires in Fort McMurray have made Alberta a pretty grim place as of late. Layoffs in the industry means a higher workload falls on me and my team, taking away from the time I devote to writing.
Less time writing often means when the ideas hit, I’m also not sleeping. Long nights or early-morning wake-up calls to write creates a vicious cycle that eventually beats me into a pulp. The only upside is that I now have better control over my anxiety. Now, I just need more time to write!
The Gamemasters Trilogy
March and April brought about something completely unexpected; an entirely new novel series! Way back in 2013 when I participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time, I had written a fanfiction-esque novel called Eternal Horizon Online, which was based loosely around video game-centric anime’s like and the .Hack series, Grimgar, and the ever popular Sword Art Online. My story mushed all three of these anime’s together and I was decently happy with the final product. As The Rose Cross Academy series came to the forefront, this story went into a drawer on my computer to be forgotten, like so many of my one-off stories.
The in-game menu system of Sword Art Online
On a whim one afternoon, I picked this story up again (this is one of my writers block “unblocking” techniques – to work on older stories to get the brain going again) and started to polish up the prose. After working with the original story for an hour or so, I figured out everything was just ‘all wrong’; the story was flat lacking purpose. Instead of setting it aside like so many unblocking project, I found myself obsessing about the plotline all day. While doing laundry, it hit me! A completely new cast of characters and a totally different story line later, I had a new novel. Instead of everyone knowing they’re participating in a game, a situation occurrs where a group of beta testers wake up in virtual reality having no idea where they were or how they got there. And thus, The Gamemasters Trilogy was born, of which I’ve almost completed the first book and have already starting on the second.
Main character Michael Cavanaugh is the kick-ass black magician of the series
I wrote like a madwoman on this new series, quite literally. I barely slept, I barely ate; every spare second I had went into this new novel. I wrote an astonishing 100,000+ words in just under two months. When the dust settled, I had about 70% of the first book completed, and soon realized I had created a monster of a novel. I imagine I’ll be pushing the 150,000 word threshold by the time the first novel is complete.
Grimms and Garms
Add to that Book 2 of the Rose Cross Academy series, Grimms and Garms, is heading towards completion as well, and I’m thinking that come the fall, I’ll have two books to publish! This novel is also well above the 100,000 word mark and may squeak by at 130,000. That’s fifty percent larger than the first book in the series, Risers and Dreamers. Eek! Makes me a little nervous to think the next 3 books I have planned in the RCA series might start to balloon out of control.
You’ll meet two Grimm’s in Grimms and Garms
Grimms and Garms sees the return of the cape-and-hat man, Mr. Grimm, lurking around to taunt June and lead the evils of Below straight to him. Add in two more of the series antagonists, Morghen and Ehrin Faust, and poor June just can’t catch a break. His only saving grace could be that he’s finally starting to notice Petra.
I’m also playing around with a different cover design; we’ll see where that goes.
Wattpad
And finally, I’ve been reading a lot on Wattpad lately, and decided I should start publishing some tidbits on there as well. It’s a great place to advertise your works and generate interest in your writing. I’ve started posting my short stories (ghost stories) from NaNo 2015 under the collection Through Your Soul, Darkly. If you’re interested in a chill down your spine, go have a read!
Through Your Soul, Darkly
And with that, another month has come and gone. I’m hoping the spring and summer months will bring some relaxation to the hectic-ness of life in Alberta, and allow me some quality time with my novels. All I can do is hope right now.
It’s almost here! The publishing date is almost here! I’m tying up a couple of loose ends such as photography and defining samples and previews of book one. Worst of all, though, I’ve flip-flopped on the title for book one, and I’ve come to the conclusion that sometimes too much feedback is not a good thing.
I love this gif thing
What’s in a Name?
Waaaaay back when I first put together the idea for the series, I bounced book titles off some friends and settled on Risers and Dreamers, describing the two classification of students who attend my fictitious Rose Cross Academy. We threw around other titles, which may have been more striking to readers, but in the end, the book title came down to recognition. By this, I mean when you hear a book title such as Prince Lestat and Throne of Glass, you immediately know the author’s name. I wanted that sort of recognition to follow my titles.
After seeking more feedback around the time I started to prepare to publish, I was inundated by suggestions. Opinion was split between following one-word titles, like Below, and the two-word titles I had originally put on the books. I flip flopped even up to as soon as last week! Until I finally buckled down and decided to go with my instinct.
What mainly made up my mind was down to the title recognition, even if the title seems amateurish. For instance, if you throw out a title like Below, I didn’t feel like you could have the same immediate connection to my series as you would with a title like Risers and Dreamers. Having a unique title at first may not be a bad thing; it’s recognizable. Potential readers will see the title and read the description and go “Oh, okay. I get it.” That connection will be made, even if the title is not a gripping as some of the other options.
What’s in a Cover?
The other thing that has flip-flopped on me is cover art. I’ve gone through four iterations so far and it’s down to two possible covers; one of a school hallway which ties into an invasion which happens in Chapter 8 of the novel, and one of a pair of blue eyes which hints at one of the antagonists of the series. Both have their positives.
With the school hallway cover, I already have in my mind scenes I want on the covers for the next four to five books in the series. These covers are more time consuming and difficult to produce, but would make visually appealing covers.
Almost there!
The blue eyes cover works well, as for each book I can increase the sets of eyes to correspond to the chronology of the book. It will be perfect if the series stays to 6 books as there will eventually be six blue-eyed baddies. But if I can’t wrap things up in 6 books, then I’m in trouble. And this is a big unknown as I only have clear beginnings and endings figured out up until book 4. There’s a battle to write as well, but whether or not I can fit that all into Book 6 is a big question mark now. So with that, the blue eyes covers are out.
NaNoWriMo 2015?
I’m gonna try for it this year with Becca; a schoolgirl with Downs Syndrome survives a new high school by summoning nightmares to antagonize her tormentors. I’ve thought up a few chapters and scenes, but I’m not sure if I’m going to have time to put it all together, or to reach that magic 50,000 word mark. Either way, it just doesn’t seem right (or write?) to not participate in NaNo this year as I’ve participated for the past 3 years. And my mom has joined this year, so I have a double incentive. I’m gonna be a published author during NaNo 2015 – I’m gonna be busy!
On to the Updates!
Hey, have ya heard? I’m publishing! I’ve only mentioned it a billion times! And I’m also finding that I have no creative talent whatsoever in the visual realm. I’m seeking help with the website, I’m having photos done professionally, I’m having the book cover done. It’s a bit of a setback, but since this is my first book, I’m not under the gun to get things out on a schedule. I’m trying to organize everything that needs to be done while at the same time not letting the list of to-do’s overwhelm me. And the extra distractions this time of the year like NaNo and the holiday rush are definitely chewing into my time.
But through all of this, I’ve finished the rough draft of Book 2! It’s a whopping 100,000 words, and that’s after I’ve cut out two chapters. Yikes! This book had been my NaNo2014 project and it’s since grown a little too big for its britches. I’m going through the rough draft and trimming down more . . . well, at least I’m trying to trim. I’m finding that once I’ve finished a chapter, the word count actually goes up again. Whoops.
I have the series ending figured out as well. Currently the series is sitting at 5 books and I know I can’t fit everything I need to into Book 5, but I haven’t had a moment to chop things apart into a Book 6 yet. So, that’s till up in the air. I’m a bit torn. It’s a little sad that I have the ending figured out. I’ve grown to attached to this series, and even though I still have four or five books between now and the end, I’m a little sad that it will have an ending.
Welcome November
With that out of the way, I need to get writing … and editing … and socializing. Oh good grief, there’s so much to do, and I have to hold down a full time job at the same time!
You can feel them: the winter winds, creeping over the mountains hoping that you won’t notice them. Outside my window, it’s snowing. But in these parts of Canada, it always starts snowing in October. There’s no reason to believe this year will be any different.
This is the Year
But for me, this year will be so different than any other year. For this year is the year I become an author! As I eagerly make my way through one of my favourite books – Clive Barker’s The Thief of Always – I find my spirits lifted despite the fact this is a dark tale of childhood. For you see, only Barker’s tales have been able to give me the chills since I can remember. And it’s this beyond-the-pages touch that I hope to convey into my readers. If I can give them the chills or influence them after they’ve set the book down, then my work here is done.
This month, I’ve spent my time in the R&D side of writing – I’ve read more ghost stories and horror than I can shake a stick at. In fact, I crashed my Kindle (twice) with overuse from the books, and read more Wattpad entries than I care to admit. All in an effort to find one thing: lines, passages, statements – anything that sent a shiver down my spine.
My Plan for Thrills and Chills
With Below written, edited and waiting patiently for cover art, Book 2 (title: Whole) is a hair’s breadth away from first draft. My goal for the series is to take the underlying tone from dark paranormal fiction into horror. I told myself to wait until the third book before I let loose with the true horror genre, and I’ve been writing those horror scenes in handfuls lately. Using the books and stories I’ve been researching, along with a love of Asian horror movies, I’ve been piecing together the remaining three to four books of the series using skipping stones of stories that either struck fear into my bones or sent a shiver down my spine.
Passage from Servant of the Bones by Ann Rice (and my vulture talon fingernails)
Needless to say, I haven’t been sleeping too well these days. Whether it’s ghastly children hiding under the tablecloth, or a frightening spectres crawling out of the television set, or a vampiric house trying to eat its occupants alive – they’ve all left their mark, and they all made me sleep with the bathroom light on more than once. It’s such an interesting concept – being able to influence the reader or watcher so deeply that they’re effected even after they turn off the movie or put down the book. And that’s what I want to do: to be able to continue influencing my readers even after they’ve put down my book.
I know it’s vain of me to compare myself to other established and well-published authors, but those are the ones I strive to be like. Stephen King, Clive Barker, Ann Rice – these are all horror-genre writers I’ve loved well before I decided to be a writer myself. Stephen King instilled in us a raw fear of clowns with It, Clive Barker taught us that the whims of childhood can lead to horrors beyond our imagination with The Thief of Always, and Ann Rice was rockin’ the vampires well before they sparkled and in-explicitly kept repeating high school with her Vampire Chronicles series.
These are my role models; these are the authors whom I strive to become.
The NaNoWriMo question
With my goals set firmly in my mind, there’s still another question which plagues me: to NaNo or not to NaNo. October is NaNoPlanMo – National Novel Planning Month, though I’m more of a pantser than a plotter by nature. I’ve NaNo’d for the past 3 years now, finishing two of those years with novels (one of which is Book 2 in my almost-published series, The Rose Cross Academy). This October, I’m still struggling with whether I have enough time to compete in NaNo, or whether I should focus my energy on publishing my first novel. November is, after all, my goal publishing date for Book 1.
An idea popped into my mind while watching the news, of all things. This idea I thought I could take to NaNo in November and give it flesh and bones. It’s a modern take on Stephen King’s Carrie but told in novel form. My main character, Becca, is an outcast at school and gets her revenge on the classmates who torment and torture her by calling upon ghosts and nightmares to do her bidding. I’ve chosen the title as simply Becca, also as an homage to King’s Carrie.
I like the concept and I’ve planned out a few scenes, but I’m still on the fence about whether I will have enough time to write the novel in November. Nothing’s stopping me from giving it a shot, but at the same time I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. It’s a tough story to write, and due to some unique reasons.
NaNo 2015: ‘Becca’ (maybe!)
I want the tale of Becca to be a unique one, and I want the horrors to happen during the day. Night time haunts are cliché-ic and predictable; the dark figure in the window, the screams in the nights. But when was the last time you were scared in the daytime? I want the horrors to be everywhere; no where is safe from Becca and her nightmares. You’re not safe shopping at the mall, you’re not safe walking home from school on a busy street. Right in broad daylight is where Becca will strike, which is where I want the thrills and chills to live. You’ll never know if it’s safe to take that selfie or open the mailbox. You’ll never know if one of Becca’s horrors is coming after you.
And then he blah’ed all the way through the plot
But then what happens at night? This is where I’m tripping up, actually. It’s easy enough to instill a sense of uneasiness in a dark house at night, but that’s too predictable. I struggle with how to make the night just as chilling as the day without getting into the corny aspect of the horror genre. I don’t want things hiding under the bed or in the closet – these concepts have been done to death, pardon the pun. And you’ll expect to see reflections in the mirror or the darkened windows of night. But what about a dark figure in the hallway? In the reflection of your soup spoon. Would that be out of the ordinary enough to bypass the horror cheese-and-wine platter? We’ll see.
There’s also the problem with proving to the world I’ve actually written this story. I’ve juggled with the idea of uploading the story chapter-by-chapter to Wattpad. I could do that as well with past NaNo projects, I guess. My only issue is uploading anything which isn’t edited or proof-read. My first pass at the draft is straight-forward: ‘he did this, then he did that’ – with no emotion and very little narration. Then there’s the bullet points left over from those rare moments of planning. Oh! And let’s not forget the “blah” entries which need to be fleshed out. All of these things I can’t in good conscious upload for public consumption.
The Updates
Too late!
And so with that, we come to the end of what has been a long and rambling blog post. I’m still in wait mode for cover art for Book 1 (Below), and Book 2 (Whole) is still growing past my initials estimates. I’m really delving into the horror genre, so I’ve been reading all my old horror faves from my teenage years as a form of research. Half our jobs as writers is to read, and that has been my job this month.
October will be a month of many decisions and many milestones. I want to try to make another YouTube video, as painful as the first one was. Here’s hoping the stars align enough for me to get some work done!
Halloween is coming! (Let’s avoid a corny Game of Thrones reference here)
Phew! August has come and gone so quickly. So much has happened this month. The last week of the month was spent home-bound for much of southern Alberta, which unfortunately didn’t translate into a lot of writing time. It’s strange – when you’re bored out of your skull because it’s too unhealthy to go outside in the middle of summer, it’s amazing how much you don’t do.
We Didn’t Start the Fire
Smokey City
The biggest life event of August was that the city survived horrible smoke levels that were off the charts. Fires in Washington State and British Columbia socked in much of southern Alberta. At one point, air quality in Calgary was a whopping 28 on a 1 to 10 scale (methinks the scale needs to be revised, n’est pas?) Many of us were relegated to homes and offices with the ventilation turned off while temperatures ran up into the mid-to-high twenties (75-80F). Smoke choked the skies and choked our lungs, and I’m not even kidding about that. I couldn’t go outside without a scarf tied around my face. And even then, I would cough for half an hour once getting back in doors.
Websites!
Sometimes we have bad dreams…
I’ve launched my author website, www.rissarenae.com . Whoo hoo! The blog is up and I’ve put up a little teaser for Book 1. Still lots to add to the site, but I’m taking it all in baby steps. I’m kicking around the idea of starting a vblog on YouTube, and I’ve already set up a Facebook page. Social media is a lot to keep up with, so this is gonna take some getting used to.
Rose Cross Academy website
In addition to the author website, I’m setting up a website for the series I’m writing. The series is called the Rose Cross Academy series; central to the storyline is the aforementioned academy – a high school which trains its students to hunt and extinguish demons. I’m building up a university-esque website, www.rosecrossacademy.com, to serve as both a marketing tool and an informational site for the series.
Book 1 is still waiting patiently for final artwork. In the meantime, I’ve been polishing up Book 2. I’ve hit my word count, which I’ve been using as a basis for determining how complete the book is. But at 83,000 words, the manuscript is still not complete. This was something I was hoping to finish up in August. Now, I’m thinking this book may hit close to the 100,000 word mark (my editor better prepare herself!)
There will be a Book 6!
Book 5 Storyboard Snipit
Book 5 grew an ending this month! So now that means I’m going to have to write a Book 6 in order to end the war that’s brewing all the way back in Book 1. I’ve also come up with an ending for the series. When exactly the series will end in its entirety remains to be seen. Six books? Eight books? It’s strange to be thinking about the end of the series when I’m still waiting to publish the beginning of the series. However, when you take into account the fact that I’m a Pantser and not a Plotter, having a goal is a good thing: the light at the end of the literary tunnel is no longer a freight train.
The Statistics
I love my statistics – that’s the Gold in me coming out. I know it bores the snot out of most people, so I’ll try to contain myself. Other than Book 2 hitting the word goal of 83,000 words, most of the effort this month went to the websites and my experimenting with whether or not I’m going to be starting a vlog.
It’s looking like September may be fairly quiet. Still, I haven’t made a decision on NaNoWriMo 2016 yet as I’m aiming to publish Book 1 in November. Ahhh, so many decisions to make, and I still have to remain gainfully employed through all of this. I don’t know how most authors do it.
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