THROUGH 2009 AND WHAT I FOUND THERE

I cannot believe tomorrow will be 2010 (in fact I'm that for some people around the world, it is 2010). 2009 has flown by so ridiculously fast. Stuff has happened. More interesting stuff has happened. I've met amazing people, writers, more people and writers. I wrote a book (OMGLAIJSDFLJAKLFDAS!!!!), started a second book, lost it and started it again. I learned, I loved, I learned more and loved more.

So! Awesome things that happened in 2009.
1) Started The Pawn: Technically, I started The Pawn in 2008, but it didn't really kick off until 2009. Writing it was one of the best experiences of my entire life. I wrote nearly 100k of the story between June and August (THREE MONTHS!). Almost every night I stayed up until one or two o'clock in the morning chatting with the amazing people from Absolute Write here and here. I blasted music, sat in a chair or on the ground and made what had lived in my head for almost a year, appear in the real world. On paper. Do you have any idea how awesome that is?!

2) Finished The Pawn: It wrapped up at about 150,000 words. But still. It finished! It was a coherent (albeit really long) piece of fiction that had a beginning, middle and end in that order! It also is the reason I'm now an English major - it helped me decide what I want to do, for serious, for the rest of my life. I want to do this - make ideas real, type on a computer, consort with super awesome writerly types.

3) Found Absolute Write: If you haven't hit Absolute Write, you really should. Right. Now. I found some of the most amazing people - friends, really - who are not only so sweet you could make yummy cakes out of them, they also are amazingly talented and are going places. Fast. They also know, really, really know, what it means to be a writer. They understand the doubt, the process, the hardship and laughter and smiles and tears that all come with the job. It's not just a hobby and they get it. They really do. So to all my AW peeps (both OPWFTRS and TWIFTIES alike) thank you, thank you, thank you!

4) Made amazing friends in RL: I'm not a loner (most of the time) so yeah, I have friends in real life (I do. Really. Please believe me! :D). I started out the year, kind of a loner, freshman at college, and different. I ended the year being friends with some of the most amazing people you will ever meet in your entire life. Seriously. We're going to take over the world together. You'll see!

5) Realized (yet again) how Blessed I am: 2008 was hard. I started a new school, my father passed away; I just had a lot of crap to deal with. But with hardship comes ease. 2009 showed me that. I kept getting hit in the face over and over again with how amazing my family was. I have supportive, strong sisters. I have an empowering mother who doesn't let anything get in her, or our, way. I have cousins and aunts and uncles who believe in me, us and themselves. I have friends that care about and love me. So yes, a lot of crappy things happened that I may never recover from. But, a lot of amazing things happened, too. The most amazing of all is that I'm conscious enough to know that I'm and enjoy being Blessed.

Wow. That was way way longer than I intended. O.O Anyway - thank you all for making 2009 so spectacularly fabulous. See you in 2010!

I AM ALIVE

 

Firstly, Blogger should tell people that they have a new editor. I spent nearly an hour trying to make the old one work, only to realize it was obsolete. This was most upsetting. Secondly, I am still alive. I've just been preoccupied since school has just started, I'm meeting up with old friends, it's the month of Ramadhan and I'm trying to balance a life and an attempted career as a writer. This is not easy. As such, I haven't had much of a chance to read, write reviews or come up with an article to post for all you lovely persons. 

I have however, been editing The Pawn and coming up with new plots for new books to keep writing. Currently, I'm trying to figure out voice, conflict and plot for three new ideas that will all be HUGELY SEKRIT until I deem it an appropriate time to reveal them. I think I will even hold off on Teaser Tuesdays with these new TOP SEKRIT PROJECTS and stay away from Friday Night Writes unless it's editing The Pawn. 

Editing The Pawn has been going well. I've finished up revision notes on the first draft and am now working on the second draft. I'm hoping to have something ready to go out to betas by the end of September. I'm happy to announce that I don't have anything hugely wrong with the story, so there isn't going to be a massive rewrite. I have to tighten up the pacing, reorganize consistencies, unstickify the mythos and make sure everyone is doing what they want/need/are supposed to be doing. 

And during all of this, I shall try to work on one of my three TOP SEKRIT PROJECTS. :)

FINISHED & ALL THAT

That's right! The first draft of The Pawn is COMPLETE! -doeshappydance- I finished it up this morning at five AM, prayed Fajr and then knocked out on my bed. Today, I had a reason waking up at noon. :) It wrapped up at just under 145k which wasn't too far off my goal for the first draft. Now, I just have to get a cyber saw and chop it down to 90k. -.- Finding 50k to chop off of this thing might be hard. Anyway, I'm going to let it sit for two weeks, get some perspective, chill out before school starts, hopefully plan one of the SNI's floating around in my head, and then it's back to the The Pawn and editing.

In celebration of this auspicious occasion, I've changed the layout. Took forever to fix properly, but its working now.


*picture of the lovely tea set is property of `ArhcamtIlnaad of deviantart

I also made this, to celebrate the first draft's completion.

The Diary of Jane

I don't have anything spectacular to post today. So I thought I'd share this video with you guys. The song has been fueling the last couple thousand words of The Pawn which just hit the 101k mark. I don't know whether to be ecstatic or terrified about that.

Teaser Tuesday III

Another Tuesday Teaser. This is from just after Behzad (MC) meets Mihangel. It's shorter than what I usually post, but I figured if I keep posting long snippets, I'll run out of things to put up, lol. Anyway, enjoy!

Snipped.

Birthday and Public Enemies

I've been meaning to blog for the last few days, but life just keeps getting ahead of me or I get zilch when I open up the 'New Post' function on blogger. I figured I had better just sit down and do it. Yesterday was my sister's 18th birthday! It was a long day that started with waffles and whip cream and ended with going to see Public Enemies at the movie theater.

Three words: OH. MY. GOD. Public Enemies was simply amazing. If you follow my facebook or twitter you've probably already gotten an eye-load of how much I loved the movie. But really, I am so, so, so in love with this movie. Johnny Depp is simply phenomenal as John Dillinger, Marion Cotillard is equally amazing as Billie Freschette and the whole movie together was just fantastic.

Last Thursday I finally crossed the great divide that I've been talking about for...well, ever. I have finally started the Dark Years of Behzad's life. Finally! I'm so excited. I'm 2k in and I don't know how long it's going to be. It kept bothering me, because if this section was overly long, I'd have to cut everywhere. I've decided, though, that it's going to be how long it's going to be and either way I'm going to have to cut. So better to write it the way I think it should be written, let it sit for a while and then go back and start editing.

Also, I think I'm going to have to set a weekend aside so that I can go back and start editing the beginning a little. There are a few sections that need major rewrites because of plot holes and inconsistencies that I want to correct so that I can start sending out to beta readers and all that.

Now, to write.

Long Time

I did the Tuesday Teaser today, but I wanted to blog since I didn't get a chance to all weekend. Speaking of the weekend, it was INCREDIBLE. My sister and I volunteered at ISNA, a conference in DC and we had such an amazing time. We got to hang out with all of our friends, meet people and reconnect with people that we hadn't seen in five or six years! Eye Candy was rampant, fun abounded, and it was over all pretty great. Yes, it was. Naturally, as it was July 4th weekend in DC the crazies came out. White supremacists (complete with microphone and sandwich board) came out to protest against Islam (it was an Islamic conference), con men and women came out to steal our money and missionaries stood outside the convention center trying to convert us to all sorts of religions (they even had pamphlets in Arabic). Me and my sister are going to go again, next year, inshallah. It'll be in Chicago, but we're determined to save up the money for it. :)

As far as writing goes, I'm doing well. I didn't get much writing done during the weekend (I was at the conference from 9am to 9pm both days) but I'm trying to get caught up. I've been doing 1k a day, and hopefully I'll be able to make up the 2k that I missed over the weekend. I've got to close this last section before I can start the Dark Years section. I'm so excited, but I keep avoiding the scenes that I need to write because they're so intense. I think what I need to do is when ever the scenes start to scare me is put on good, angry music and write them anyway. And when ever I want to cut a scene to take a break and then come back. I really want to get to the Dark Years, but not at the expense of this section.

I'm still job hunting, but I've got two prospects that look good. Hopefully, I'll have something before the end of the month. I need to save up money to buy textbooks. I don't want my mom spending money on something that I had covered last semester.

AGHH! I can not believe I'm about to hit 89k in The Pawn. It's insane. -flails- Okay, I need to write. Ciao!

*The photograph above belongs to brocantegirl from flikr. It's lovely, isn't it?*

Teaser Tuesday II

It's time for another Teaser Tuesday. I decided to post something from the beginning. This is when Behzad and Styxx first meet. Enjoy!

Snipped.

Teaser Tuesday

So, on AW the YA Blogroll does Teaser Tuesdays where you just post a snippet of your current WIP. It's been going on for a couple of weeks, but I haven't had time to post anything (and I haven't had anything worthwhile to post, really). But, I'm going to start participating and what better way to start off then to give you guys a peek at the last part of the first half of the book! Enjoy!

Snipped.

Coffee fixes everything

No, it really does. Coffee (especially Starbucks coffee) somehow manages to jump start my entire system. Even if my hands are shaking, when I'm on a coffee induced caffeine high, I can write for hours at a time. Really. It's pretty awesome. Unfortunately, my doctor has forbade me from drinking coffee on a regular basis, and I've been forced to rely on caffeine laced tea. It's not nearly so potent, but he says that if I want my heart to not explode, it would be in my best interest to stop the coffee every morning routine. -sigh- How very unfortunate, right?

Last night I wrote nearly 1k, which I'm very proud of. And I've crossed from chapter 22, to chapter 23 which is the final chapter in this part of Behzad' s life! I'm so excited, and a little intimidated. Because, as soon as I wrap this chapter up (hopefully before the end of the month) there are going to be a sequence of torture scenes, one right after the other. I'm a little apprehensive. I've always been a little scared of writing really emotional material and I just want to be able to convey the horror and emotional trauma that needs to come through. Here's to hoping I can do it.

I was thinking of adding The Raven Desk @ Wordpress to thewrite.com to get some more traffic, but I don't want to until I'm sure I'm going to be able to keep up with it. Also, I need some more ideas I need for things to write articles on. -goes to brainstorm-

Rereading and future rewrites

So my sister got her first piece of university paraphernalia! It's going to be so weird with both of us in college next year. The youngest one'll be the only one at home and in high school. My mom's freaking out a little because she could barely stomach one daughter being out in the big bad world. She doesn't know how she's going to deal with two. But she'll be fine. Parents always know how to deal, right?

The reread is making me realize how much narrative and unnecessary padding I put into the story during NaNoWriMo to reach the 50k mark. I was really worried because I've reached the halfway point and I hit 70k and there's no way I'll fit the rest of the story in 30k - 40k. I feel much more releaved now knowing that I'm going to be able to shave off a bunch of stuff without loosing the story. I'm also realizing that in the rush to reach that 50k mark I neglected to make sure all my information matched up. The story evolved halfway through and instead of going back and making the changes I just inserted the changed information where it changed and kept typing. Which is going to make my job harder when I go back for editing in August (optimistic edit time). -sigh- At least I got my groove back. The writing funk has officially disappeared. :)

Questions

It's a pawn piece (obviously!). This post is just to ponder a question: when you have a secret as part of the story, that is part of a characters motivation, do you reveal to the reader what that secret is before you reveal it to the other characters, or is the revelation done at once so everyone is equally shocked (or not) at the same time? Hmmmm.

Location, location, location

Isn't that just beautiful? Can you believe that it's in a desert in Tunisia? I googled 'Oasis in Tunisia' and got the most stunning pictures! When I picture desert I think a small pond-ish body of water (or possibly no pond at all, maybe a well...), a few palm trees and a village built around it. Beautiful waterfalls, flowing water and wonderful rock formations never even entered my mind when considering how to imagine an oasis. This particular beauty is from a small village in the mountains of Tunisia (I didn't even know oasis could exist in mountains!) called Chebika. It has a population of a few hundred people.

Why am I looking at pictures of oases? Because, I need it for a little world-building for the next part of my book (which I'm supposed to be working on right now! eep!). Behzad and company go to vacation at an oasis in Tunisia, which in turn leads to much craziness and pain. But, I wanted the setting to be real, and to base my oasis off of an existing one. Chebika seems like the perfect place!

Now, to write this segment...

Art Project

So I said I would interview my characters and post up the polished version of them here once I was done. Didn't happen. Why? Because instead of interviews I ended up making poster boards for the three main characters: Behzad, Mihangel and Yara (who doesn't show up until later). It was fun - I got to play with markers and show how little artistic ability I actually have. :)

Chapter Twenty

I finished chapter twenty - which was (until I discovered that I had mislabeled my chapters) chapter twenty one. The story continues to move forward! Hurrah!

This Sucks!

I just realized that I misnumbered my chapters - so instead of being on chapter twenty one, I am actually on chapter twenty. UGH. This sets me two chapters behind schedule! :(

Interviews

I'm trudging through chapter twenty one, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. This chapter paves the road to a major transitional point in the book. So I just keep telling myself, 'You won't get to the fun stuff if you don't finish this up.' Wish me luck!

I'm going to be holding interviews with my characters this weekend and will post them up soon as they're done and typed up. This way anyone who's reading this little old blog will get some insight into who my characters are.

I also came across this pretty awesome site which I think will come in handy in the future:
http://archetypewriting.com/

It's the fiction writer's guide to psychology. So all you people who have crazy characters and you want them to be believably crazy, that's the place to go. Now, off to work on my website and finish chapter twenty one.

Writing Again

I have finally finished the scene chart! And three days ahead of the reworked schedule too! I didn't think that finishing the chart would make me feel so fulfilled, but it's great knowing that I now have a solid ending for my story and that it will (hopefully) make sense. I had to chop out a lot of things and rework scenes because The Pawn isn't what it was when I first started writing it. And not only is it different, it is also better. Thanks to the changes, the story connects much better, and now has a conflict that ties everything together.

With the scene chart done, I can no start writing again, which is really the best part. So yay for that! :)

Moving Forward, Stopping Time

Yesterday I went to bed thinking that my head would implode. There was just too much going on and not enough of it was about The Pawn (my work in progress) so I pretty much felt like a gigantic failure. The scene chart that I am writing to help me navigate the book was supposed to be done last night. I got to scene 158 out of an approximate 200. I was on 138 when I decided to finish it up and had to delete a bunch of scenes when I realized they were no longer feasible on Saturday. Last night, however, instead of writing more scenes and organizing my thoughts I decided to finish up the last season of Battlestar Galactica.

Can we say amazing? I finished it a few hours ago and I could not have asked for a better ending. The last few episodes introduced so many things and I was like 'There is no way they'll be able to wrap everything up.' But they did! In the most amazing way possible. There were no loose ends and every main character was taken care of with a suitable ending. And now that I've wrapped up that little bit of my life I might be able to focus on finishing this scene chart and pounding out a few chapters.

I've decided to put everything else that is going on in my not so exciting life so that I can focus on writing. (Note: nothing goes on in my life at this point, so I'm not really stopping anything.) Getting this book done by the end of August before I start my creative writing class in the fall is very important to me so that I can spend the fall semester editing it, deciding what needs to be added to it as a whole, what I should never have put in, etc. Then I'll be able to send it out to a few beta readers (I've already got one volunteer!) and then, depending on their responses, I'll be able to start querying like a mad woman. :)

And while the editing/betaing/etc is going on, I will (hopefully) start on my next project, The Mark.

half way point!

I realized that absolutely no one actually had wordpress and all my favorite bloggers that I've recently started following are all on blogspot. At first, I was bummed because I kind of hate blogspot's templates, but then I found btemplates.com! Which is where I found this little number :)

Anyway, I have finally reached chapter twenty! I am super excited because it doesn't mark the exact half way point, but it is pretty close. It's also very near the first major transititional point of the entire story. Right now, it's very important that I don't lose any of my momentum. It took me six months to turn out 70k words, and I only hope I can turn out so many words of equal or better quality before the end of the summer. If I can write 2k a day, or somewhere around that, I think I'll be good.

Considering that this is my first post, I don't think I have much to write. Its been so long since I've actually blogged, so forgive me if I'm a little rusty. :)