What's Up Wednesday #3

What's Up Wednesday is a weekly meme, started by Jaime Morrow and Erin Funk, geared to help readers and writers touch base and let them know what's up. If you want join in, you can find the link widget on Jaime's and Erin's blogs!

WHAT I'M READING:

Still on the book Bloodfire by Helen Harper. It's alright, a fairly good read, but I'm not going to be reading the second book I don't think. The characters just don't have enough depth to keep me going. :/

WHAT I'M WRITING:

Yay! Today's the first day of Ready. Set. Write! For more info on that, check out Jaime's blog, it's a great kick-in-the-pants for summer writing and today is the first day! :)

I'm not going to go very big at first, so I'm setting pretty realistic goals considering how much I've got going on this summer:

I'm going to write AT LEAST two chapters a week

Yeah, not that impressive, but hopefully I'll be able to write more than that each week - and I'll be writing really, really good chapters instead of meh ones. :)

WHAT INSPIRES ME RIGHT NOW:

All of the wonderful people who came up with this great idea, and everyone participating! :) And the usual, music, life in general. 

WHAT ELSE I'VE BEEN UP TO:

Spending a lot of time with my family, going to a million graduation parties, and enjoying the nice weather! Well, some of the weather is nice, and some of it hasn't been so fabulous, but considering the weather we had for winter, there are no complaints coming from me! :)

Good luck to everyone else participating in Ready. Set. Write! and I'll see y'all next week. (:

Unplanned

As the title of this post may suggest to you, this post wasn't exactly planned. I've had a long weekend of grad parties and a dance recital and everything else, and today has just been a day to kick back and relax.

Which is okay. Every once in awhile, I think we writers just need to take a day off and relax. Otherwise we're going to burnout and our work is going to suffer. (Well, at least my work would suffer!)

So, my message to y'all today is, if you haven't taken a day off in awhile, thinking about taking one spontaneously and just relax. Go outside and ride a bike or take a walk, spend too much time watching TV, or catch up on your 'to-read' list. :)

What's Up Wednesday #2

What's Up Wednesday is a weekly meme, started by Jaime Morrow and Erin Funk, geared to help readers and writers touch base and let them know what's up. If you want join in, you can find the link widget on Jaime's and Erin's blogs!

WHAT I'M READING

Last night I started the book Bloodfire by Helen Harper. It's the first in a series and I'm on chapter three. So far it's fairly interesting - she uses whilst a lot - but I like the main character and the plot has managed to capture my interest so I'm giving it a thumbs up for now. We'll just have to see how much I really like it when I finish it in, hopefully, the next few days.

Along with that, I continue to browse through various writing self-help books, but nothing specific at the moment. :)

WHAT I'M WRITING

Same old, same old! Well, not exactly. I had to re-write the beginning of Consequences in accordance to my storyboard, and now it's coming along much more smoothly. But I still can't wait for Ready. Set. Write! What's that you ask? Well, I would probably forget something in the explanation if I tried, so I'll direct  you to this blog post. I think it's just what I need to get this first draft done before I start college - and then I won't be worrying over it in the middle of my classes! (Hopefully)

WHAT INSPIRES ME RIGHT NOW

Still a lot of music, TV shows, and now my storyboard and quotes from Jodi Picoult novels. I don't think I've mentioned this before, but I absolutely adore her. Nineteen Minutes will forever be one of my favorite-favorite novels.

WHAT ELSE I'VE BEEN UP TO

I've been going to graduation parties for my friends, (lots of food!) and Monday was my official 'first day' at the ice cream place where I work - which meant I got tips plus my normal pay. And as of yesterday I really buckled down and started going through all my stuff for my party later this month. I hadn't realized how much my mom kept until yesterday. I also don't remember drawing that many pictures of her and my dad. D:

Also, looking forward to Ready. Set. Write! And other things like that. :)

So how have your weeks been? :)

Plotting vs. Pantsing

Alright, I will be the first to admit that I see the value in pantsing. I've done it myself before, for my first novel, and though I'm not quite a fan of the writing in that now, (because it was from two years ago and I like to think I've gotten a lot better since then) but I think that the general plot came together very well. It isn't dull, (a few people have read it and told me that they liked it - not just my mom!) and it moves along at a good pace. All this is subjective of course, but for the purposes of this blog post, let's pretend that I'm right.

And yet, if anyone saw my post from Saturday, you'll know that I'm definitely not pantsing this new novel. Why? Well, I tried that. And it didn't work. I got to chapter four and suddenly I was like, hmm. I don't really know where this is going. And I don't really have enough for a novel. At best, I have enough for about six more chapters - if I'm lucky.

And then there was this weird scene with an imp and the medical examiner and I just got really confused very  quickly.

Consequently, I turned to the book Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success by K.M. Weiland. It was either 3.99 or 4.99 on Amazon for kindle, something around that, and it was worth every penny. In the book she goes in depth on her kind of outlining and how she treats every step of the writing process. Now, as I was reading, I knew that it wouldn't all work for me, but a good amount struck me as pretty easy and not complicated, so I started doing it.

And, voila! I have pages in a notebook on my M.C. Blaire and everything I could possibly need to know about her, another notebook with pages of handy 'What if...?' questions that I can use to explore other subplots or richen my current plot, and my handy-dandy storyboard with all my scenes on it, in sequential order. (But if the mood strikes me, I can easily move them around).

Because of all this, I feel fairly relaxed, and able to focus a lot more creatively on this first draft instead of having my inner-editor beat me over the head with a frying pan for every misplaced comma.

I think this firmly places me on the plotter side of this debate - though I do have a soft side for pantsing. And who knows? For my next novel, I might pants the whole thing. :)

So what about you? Where do you think you fall? Plotter, pantser, or maybe somewhere in the middle?

Sharing Saturday

What I Did Today:

Made a storyboard for THE CONSEQUENCES OF A CORPSE.

Spied some adorable little kid picture of

two of my best guy friends. (The first and the last one)

And hung out with one of my best friends!

What's Up Wednesday

What's Up Wednesday is a weekly meme, started by Jaime Morrow and Erin Funk, geared to help readers and writers touch base and let them know what's up. If you want join in, you can find the link widget on Jaime's and Erin's blogs!

What I'm Reading

A lot of writing help books. I just finished an awesome book by K.M. Weiland titled Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success, I am not a plotter by nature, but this book has completely changed my opinion on outlines, and I've even used some of the techniques in the book to outline my current WIP. (This means I had to start over, but more on that on Monday during your regularly scheduled blog post).

In my fun reading, I just finished Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare. Like the first two books in the trilogy, it was fabulous and I loved it. She has this amazing talent with dialogue. I don't know how she does it, but it's always good! And the ending was satisfying no matter if you were on Team Will or Team Jem. No spoilers though!

What I'm Writing

I'm currently working on what is temporarily titled The Consequences of a Corpse. It sounds awfully grim, doesn't it? It's really not - at least I hope it won't be! It's an Urban fantasy about a type of Fae called a Fyglia. It's traditionally a protective Native American animal spirit, so I've tweaked it a bit and put my own spin on her to make her up to date and relatable. But that's all I can say for now!

What Inspires Me Right Now

A lot of music, like usual, especially 90's pop. That might have something to do with The Backstreet Boys concert I'm planning on going to this August. Along with that, I've been watching a lot of Bones and Supernatural, which I can definitely attribute at least some of the inspiration for my WIP to.

What Else I've Been Up To

Other than writing, I've been working and getting things around for my graduation party later in June. It's very involved and time consuming, so I've been putting it off, but I have a lot of scrapbooking to catch up on. Who knew 19 years of life would take up so much space? And pictures? My mom's been going a little crazy over the food too, but I'm crossing my fingers that everything will turn out okay.

Along with graduation party prep - I've been prepping for college! That huge step in life. I'm so excited though. I can't wait to go shopping for my dorm room, and for school supplies, and new clothes. It's the best adventure ever. I'm going in blind, so there's another adventure. I'm crossing my fingers for this one too, and hoping it doesn't turn out like the movie, The Roommate. But as long as I'm in the Honors dorm, I should be fine! (Maybe my roommate will be a little nerdy - but I'm okay with that because I'm a little nerdy too!)

So what's up with y'all this week? :)

Happy Memorial Day!

I don't know what Memorial Day means to you, but to me it means something special. Both my grandfathers served in different wars (one WW2 and the other Vietnam), my uncle is a retired Air Force Vet. and my cousin is a private in the army. Today is a wonderful excuse to celebrate our veterans and  current armed forces - but I believe they should be celebrated every day.

After all, they are risking their lives for our safety every day. And while I may have some problems with the way our government is run sometimes, (or often) the one thing I can't have a problem with is the people who choose to serve our country. I know I couldn't do it, so that makes their job even more amazing to me.

What does Memorial Day mean to you?

Writing Update:

Currently I'm on Chapter Five, page 33, and word 8,425 and I'm hoping to get to 9,000 before the end of today but I'm not going to push it because I've gotten this far in just four days. (Which is a lot faster than normal!)

Quote of the Day:

“Maybe who we are isn't so much about what we do, but rather what we're capable of when we least expect it.” - Jodi Picoult: My Sister's Keeper