Reign Kissed

New Episode of Reign! I want to see some Mary/Bash swoon. Francis is kind of making me mad.

NaNoWriMo Tip Five: Don't Stop Writing

Today's post is about something I have experienced, and discovered helps me when I am doing NaNoWriMo and I am passing it onto you.

When it comes to people doing NaNoWriMo for the first time don't stop writing. You will be tempted to go and add other things you think will make the story perfect. Here's a word of advice, if there's a scene you want to add to the story, write it down in a spiral notebook or notepad, and leave it to the side. When you finish your story and you go back later to edit, you can easily read through and see where those scenes you wrote down will fit. I found this helps me a lot and I know of other authors who do this technique as well. It's a great tool for when you want to add more juicy scenes to the story.

NaNoWriMo Tip Four: Inspiration

Happy Fall!

So it's time for another NaNoWriMo is how to get some inspiration for when you get stuck writing the draft of your novel.  It has happened to me before and I have found some ways to get a small spark of inspiration.

Depending on what you are writing about you'd be surprised at the amount of things you can find on the internet.


Pintrest
Pintrest is a great way to get some inspiration for when you can't think of what to write next. I go on Pintrest a lot when I get stuck on writing and I can't think of what to write next, or how to keep the story going, or describe certain things. But be warned, Pintrest can get addicting.

Tumblr

Tumblr is also a good way to get some inspiration for the story you are writing. Sometimes just looking at a picture will remind me of what I wanted to write next, and I will get inspired by clips, music, or pictures. If you need a certain picture of your character you can find one on Pintrest, and the pictures you have of your characters can help you. I always find myself getting pictures of actors in my mind who resemble the way I see the characters. I'm a very visual person so having the Hollywood pictures of the actors help me with the story.

Even thought you should turn off the internet when you are writing, it can be useful when you can't seem to think of what to write next, or when you need a picture of someone who resembles the characters. The internet can give you some little sparks. Hopefully some of these tips will help you out during your writing.

Happy Writing!

NaNoWriMo Tip Three: Know Your Characters

Here is for the next tip in preparing for NaNoWriMo, your characters. Your characters are the most important thing in a novel. Before you begin your novel, you need to know them. So this brings me to the next tip

KNOW YOUR CHARACTERS

Readers want strong characters, sometimes a character they can relate to. You need to have your characters ready in your mind. If you want to change their personalities more later on, you can do that, there is nothing wrong with that. Just know the basics for a character. 

What if their personality; Snarky? Sarcastic? Shy? Angry?

What is their goal by the end of the novel? Is this a series, what will happen to the character by the end of the series? Will they overcome obstacles?

All of these are important facts when creating your characters. If you know your characters inside out, you can get that story down faster. While you're writing keep your character map next to you, so you can keep their personalities going. Remember your characters are the key to your book.

NaNoWriMo Tip Two: Don't Look Back

So today's tip is based from a writer who can write novels. He is considered legendary in the world of publishing, and writing, and his advice is not to be taken lightly. Today's advice is from Stephen King, and in his published work A Memoir of the Craft. His advice from the book applies when a writer is writing their novel during NaNoWriMo:

DON'T LOOK BACK

Yes folks, that is key when you are writing a novel in one month. Don't go back to the beginning Just keep writing and writing until you feel you have finished the story. Now you don't have a completed novel, you have a finished draft. Don't look back at the story.

This is the reason as to why you shouldn't look back at the draft. If you keep going back to the beginning, you end up editing. Before you know it, you end up changing every single sentence in the story, and you will  will not hit the finish line. I normally have the habit of editing as I go, but during NaNoWriMo I have to break that habit. You need to break it too.

If you want, after you type up each chapter you can print out each one, and keep them in a small folder. Once you finish NaNoWriMo, don't look at that draft for at least one month, or more. Some authors I know will leave their draft for three months, then when they open it back up, it looks so horrible to them that they end up changing so much, and before they know it half of their story is covered in red. So don't look back, just finishing writing the darn thing.

I am not the only one who explains about not looking back. Check out this post from New York Times best selling author Veronica Roth of Divergent trilogy.

NaNoWriMo Tip One: Tune Off The Internet

Here is the next post I am putting for surviving through NaNoWriMo. (Once again these images I am using I do not own). When you start going into the writing cave for NaNoWriMo

TURN OFF THE INTERNET

Here is why I am telling you this, and I am speaking from experience. The first time I unofficially did NaNoWriMo in 2010, I kept getting onto twitter, and facebook, and I kept getting discouraged when I would see my friends getting such high word counts, and mine was incredibly low. I ended up writing half of one book, and half of another book, which I did end up finishing later on, I just have more tweaks to make to the characters to make them more original. 

That's one tip, don't get on social media too much. When you are in the writing cave, you stay in the writing cave. Turn off your cell phone, T.V., and turn off the internet. You don't need distractions when you are working on a craft. All it will do is distract you. You can pop in every now and then to wish your friends good luck and happy writing with their project, but try very hard not to get on the internet too much.

Prepare for NaNoWriMo

So in order to kick off the eve of NaNoWriMo, here are somethings to help the beginner get started. The key to NaNoWriMo is to write and don't go looking back at the beginning. Once Again (I don't own these images, no copyright infringement intended).

First off is know the audience you are going to write the book for. Young adult, Adults, or middle school. Then know what sub-genre you plan writing. If you plan on writing a historical book, you'll have to heavily research the time period that you plan on writing.

The second thing you'll want to do for your story is plot the actual storyline. Every author has their own way of doing their storyline. Some like to use the old English literary style that they taught us back in elementary school for writing stories, a plot flow chart.

Another way to plot is by making a big sheet of and making a nine box flow chart of the sequence of events to happen.

Some will even do it the old school way and a make flashcards, and post them on a board so they have something to refer back to as they are writing the story. I used to do it this way.

I normally write all of my stories in a word document, but this year I'm going to try something different, I have heard a lot of who use the writing software Scrivener for drafting their manuscripts, then exporting them to word to fine tune it. Since NaNoWriMo offers a discount to NaNoWriMo winners, I'm going give it a try. It's suppose to help writers, and it allows for us to to move chapters around easily, make notecards for plotting, and export into formats for self publishing.

When I start using it for NaNoWriMo I'll make a post about it with some pictures.

REIGN Snakes in the Garden

NEW REIGN EPISODE TONIGHT!

Countdown to NaNoWriMo

So now is the time for the writers who want to write novels but never have the time to finally get that story down on paper. I have done NaNoWriMo before. The first two times I did it I didn't officially register I did it on my own time, and I didn't even finish it. When I wrote in 2011, I got over50k and the story still didn't feel complete. Last year I wrote the first book in a new series of mine plus half of book two. I am debating onto whether or not I should finish writing book two and move onto book three to make sure the plot flows, or to write this other super secret project I've been anticipating on writing. I will keep blogging this week with tips on how to prepare, and to keep your little fingers hitting the keys as fast as you can.

Between the Lines by Jodi Picoult and Samantha van Leer

What happens when happily ever after... isn’t?
Delilah is a bit of a loner who prefers spending her time in the school library with her head in a book—one book in particular. Between the Lines may be a fairy tale, but it feels real. Prince Oliver is brave, adventurous, and loving. He really speaks to Delilah. And then one day Oliver actually speaks to her. Turns out, Oliver is more than a one-dimensional storybook prince. He’s a restless teen who feels trapped by his literary existence and hates that his entire life is predetermined. He’s sure there’s more for him out there in the real world, and Delilah might just be his key to freedom. Delilah and Oliver work together to attempt to get Oliver out of his book, a challenging task that forces them to examine their perceptions of fate, the world, and their places in it. And as their attraction to each other grows along the way, a romance blossoms that is anything but a fairy tale.





I have been anxious to get my hands on this book. I have been a big fan of Jodi for years, and now she co-wrote a book with her daughter. Basically, Delilah falls in love with the character of a book. Being an outsider in school, she's only found comfort in books.She finds herself attracted to a guy in fairytale Prince Oliver. When a person reads the book, the prince speaks out to them. 

I liked how the main character Delilah was able to escape to books, much like myself, I never felt like I fit in with other kids at school, I only hung out with a few groups, but I always had my nose buried in a book in order to escape the world, so that was my personal connection to the book. The book like all of Jodi's other books is told in multiple point of views, this one is written in three point of views. Some parts of the book tended to be a tad bit dull, but other parts were starting to get into the real fantasy aspect of it. I like Jodi's other books, but I thought the book was alright.

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

A dazzling novel in the most untraditional fashion, this is the remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap, and it is Audrey Niffenegger's cinematic storytelling that makes the novel's unconventional chronology so vibrantly triumphant.








Claire is an artist, and as a child she stumbles upon a man in the forest near her home. While she's there she seems to finds a man who can time travel. Throughout her life Claire finds herself running into Henry at different times and in the strangest palces. Claire doesn't exactly get to have a traditional normal relationalship with the person she loves.

I had seen the movie previously, and I normally don't do that, but I had wanted to read the book for a long time, and I finally found the time. I don't want to sound too biased, but I like the movie better. When I was reading the book, I found myself getting confused. I normally don't mind books written in multiple point of views, but Claire's personality was really irritating. I also kept getting confused when it would come time to read Henry's point of view because it would flop around between different time frames. The story is good, but it needed more editing.

Back Again

*Dusts off blog*

I've been a bad blogger. I know, I know I haven't blogged in a really long time and for good reason. 

You know the whole saying about kids fresh out of high school, and wasting a lot of money and time because they can't figure out what they want to major in, that pretty much happened to me. 

My first four semesters at the university, I was bouncing around still finishing the core because I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I mostly just wanted to major in English and be a full time writer. Realistically, it's hard to break out as a first time writer, and even P.C. Cast has said so when I went to her book signing, she was a high school English teacher for forty years before her work was published. Forty years?! But that was back when the only way to publish was through the Big Six publishers, and publishing has changed.

Anyhow, so I finally decided on two careers/majors, nursing and music education. I know it's a weird combination, but the way I see it, if I can't find work in one field I have something else I can live off of, until I get my foot in the door of the industry. Since I'm doing nursing I have to do A LOT of science courses, two anatomy classes, one microbiology course, two psychology courses, one nutrition course, pathophysiology, chemistry, so yeah it's a lot of work.  

Then one of the new school advisers told me the wrong science class so I had to retake a biology course. Not to mention I have to take statistics, and whoever came up with the crap of statistics better be dead. Statistics is a freaking pain in the a**, it literally takes you about half an hour just to figure out the answer to one stupid math problem. I have never liked math and for that reason, too much work just to get the answer to one problem. My hatred for math will never die. 


So since I've been taking so many science classes this year I haven't been able to read as much as I normally do, as to book blogging that may die down as well, but I will still participate in blog tours and cover reveals. Now I will mostly blog about my writing and hopes that I get something published, and probably an occasional book I read. One series I completed, it just needs to be polished but because of the elements I have not been able to sell it to anyone, but I have another idea itching in my head and I hope to finish my idea for it.

Reign Series Premiere

Tonight was the series premiere of Reign! Oh my god I can already tell you that I love this show more than anything. 

Mary Queen of Scots has been living in a French Convent since childhood waiting until the day she will return to the French Court to marry the future king of France, Francis. After a failed attempt to kill her the nuns send her off to the French Court for her protection. here she is reunited with her friends.

At court Mary starts to feel separation from Francis but finds herself bonding to Francis half-brother Bash. As Mary lives in the French Court Darkness starts to surround.

HOLY FREAKING CRAP! I just loved this episode! And you can tell from the script that is is enough room for the plot to evolve into later chapters! Can't wait until next weeks episode!

2013 World All Around Champion

CONGRATS TO THE WORLD CHAMPION SIMONE BILES!