“Twilight” Draws Ever Closer

I can’t believe July is only 9 days away. I’m really looking forward to getting back to writing “Twilight Warriors” and PARADISE LOST in general. JulNoWriMo ought to turn out much better this year, and I’m thinking positive. I’m also looking forward to AugNo. It’s down right near impossible to believe that this time last year, I was gearing up to make my first attempt at writing “Twilight Warriors”. Even more incomprehensible is the fact that I am still working on the first draft of the same novel a year later. I’m still feeling daunted by the thought of editing Guardians, but  I know that I have to do it eventually.

On a different note, I’m currently reading the Guillermo Del Toro/Chuck Hogan novel “The Strain” and I have to say that it’s incredible. I’ve been engrossed by the story since the first page and have hardly put it down since, and I only bought the book a few days ago. It’s fast-paced and thrilling with a hint of morbid fancy on the side. I don’t recommend reading it at night, though, because this book will leave you shivering as your skin crawls. “The Strain” reinvents vampires with a vengence and really brings the old legends into modern times. Be forewarned, this book does have a good amount of adult language, but if you enjoy high energy, edge of your seat books, you’ll enjoye Gullermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s “The Strain”.

Returning to PARADISE

“City of Stone” got to 5K and then I had to take a break, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get to where I want it to be this month. That said, I’m still planning on working on it. This month, though, I’m going to try and dedicate my time this month to rereading Twilight Warriors and getting ready to start back up on it next month for JulNo and, hopefully, AugNo. It’s hard to believe that this time last year I was riding on the thrill of getting to the halfway point in The Guardians and I was planning to start working on Twilight Warriors. Harder still to believe is the fact that if I had followed through on my half-mad (half??) plan, I would be prepping to write the fifth book in the saga as we speak! I guess I was just kind of electrified by the thrill of writing the first book when I made that three year plan.

I still haven’t gotten around to editing The Guardians, but if I work hard this Summer, I may be able to get something together to start querying agents this fall/winter. I should probably wrap this up and get back to reading the first 50K of Twilight Warriors.

Tomorrow

I can’t believe it’s already the end of May. How has the month gone by so fast? No matter what the answer is, tomorrow is the first day of June and that means that I am going to begin writing “City of Stone”.  It’s definitely going to be a fun book to write, but I don’t want to reveal too many details. As I begin writing the book, I may post snippets of the excerpt for you guys, but I don’t know if I’ll ever really post it in full at this point.

I’m planning on the book taking up somewhere between 125K-150K. The first 50K will be written in June, the second 50K in July for JulNo, and then I’l work on the last 25-50K here and there until September, when I go back and finish it off. The only reason I’m taking August off is so that I can finish the first draft of Twilight Warriors. Then, for NaNo, I’m hoping I’ll have everything together to begin working on the third PARADISE LOST book, which I refuse to name at this time.

Also, I’ve been trying to get back to work on Guardians, but it just hasn’t happened yet. Sometime this summer, though, I promise. I want to have something to start sending out to agents in the Spring/Summer of 2010.

Returning

I just got back from my weekend in Washington D.C. I know, I should have posted about it, but life kind of got in the way of that. Anyway, while I was in D.C., I came up with an idea for a thriller/adventure novel called “City of Stones” which is going to, of course, take place in D.C. Yeah, I know, kind of an overused place for thrillers, but come on, it’s a mysterious city, there’s a certain appeal!

I also took a step back from Chronicles of Morivine while I was there and examined it, since I couldn’t write it. I found out that the story isn’t as great as I thought it was and that if I’m going to continue on with this series, I’m going to have to severely rework the novel And so, I have decided to focus on starting work on “City of Stones” in June and working on it for JulNoWriMo, and then finishing off “Twilight Warriors” in August for AugNoWriMo. I think it’s a pretty good decision, and I feel like it’s what I want to do with my time.

Continuing On

I’ll admit, I haven’t written much this weekend, only a couple hundred words between yesterday and today, but I’m still going to get this done. I may even write some more today. Besides, weekends are never my friend because I’m a procrastinator and when I have all day I always say “I’ll do it later, I have time” only to find it to be later and I have written nothing. I know, not a great quality to have as a writer, but I did get pushed up over the 25K mark on Friday. I’m glad I’m starting in on the bulk of the plotline, now, because I think that’s going to rejuvinate my interest in the project. Not that I’m not enthralled with the concept, it’s just that I feel like the story is a bit bogged down at this point. Ah well, that’s what editing is for!

I have also spent my weekend at the movie theater. Friday evening, I went to see Angels & Demons and decided to head back to see it again today at the matinee. Needless to say I loved it. So many people are slamming it because it’s a very streamlined version of the story, and it cuts out much of the subplots from the book, but what people need to realize is that there was no earthly way that a 400-500 page novel was going to fit in a 2 and 1/2 hour timeframe without some major trimming. Honestly, this was one of the best book to film adaptations I’ve ever seen. I’m not judging on the criteria of how closely it followed the book’s many subplots, I’m judging it on how well the story flowed, how well they made the film make sense around the cuts, and how good it was from the standpoint of time and plot.

For example: the first 20-30 chapters of the novel are spent at CERN, something that, if it had made it into the film, would have taken up 1/4th of the film. It just wouldn’t have worked, you would have spent far too much time setting up the story when you needed to be in Vatican City following the main plot, which makes up the bulk of the book. This film could have easily been longer than 3 hours, and in the rough cut, before any editing was truly done, it probably was. There were too many unnecessary factors that worked in the book which could not work on screen.

All I’m saying is that when anyone goes into a film based on a book, remember that these are two entirely different mediums you’re dealing with. What might work in one may not work in another.

Sorry for the rant, I just wanted to post my opinion on that topic.

Guess I had better wrap it up. Again, sorry for going off on a bit of a tangent there!

Halfway Through May? 25K!

Sorry I haven’t posted in the past week, but I’ve been busy with writing Eternal Light and life has kind of gotten in the a of writing a blog post. I can’t believe it, but on Tuesday I ended up writing over 4,000 words! That plus a 3,800 word   Monday helped me get back on track, and now I’m set to hit the 25K mark tomorrow! I’m really excited about it, I’ve been a bit worried that I might not be able to get to 25K on the 15th, but now I know that it’s going to happen, and I can rest easy.

I just can’t believe, though, that I’m almost 1/4th of the way through my 100K goal and my characters haven’t really started their journey yet! I think I budgeted my words wisely, it seems like I may be hitting that 100K mark sooner than I thin, as far as the storyline is concerned.

Anyway, I think I had better wrap it up. I’ll leave you with the last line I wrote today: “They’re people, Arch, not a bag of jelly beans.” Excellent place to start off from tomorrow, don’t you think?

Deadlines

I know, I know I haven’t updated my blog at all this week, but I’ve been consumed by my MayNoWriMo project, which is good! I didn’t write anything at all today thanks to my final day of work before summer break, but I’m going to pick back up tomorrow, and I think I’m ahead of schedule a little bit. Or I may be right on track. Who knows? Anyway, I just crossed over the 10K mark yesterday, and it’s such a releif to have a fifth of the month’s goal done!

Uh oh, bad news, I’m 3K behind schedule. I just checked, and I’m 3 K behind schedule I don’t know how this happened. Oh well, I can still make it up. There’s plenty of time left in the month.

In other news, I have set myself a deadline to finish the rough draft of The Eternal Light. I’m planning on having the entire 100K rough draft finished by June 30th. I figure that deadlines with the WriMos have worked so far, why couldn’t it work outside of the WriMos? I’m really trying to grow out of those and seriously become much more dedicated to writing, not that I’m not already dedicated.

Anyway, just wanted to post an update real quick. I may be a little bit behind schedule, but I can still bring it back around! Oh, and by the way, it’s been a year and four days since this blog was created! I just can’t believe it!

Kick-Off

Alright, so May has begun and that means I have started writing Eternal Light. I’m really proud of myself, I got 1,730 written and I’m shooting for a daily goal of 1,667. Yeah, the NaNo goal. I don’t know why, but it just works for me.  It’s an achievable goal.

Anyway, even though I didn’t end up doing any character development yesterday, I feel like I’ve got a good grip on the main character right now. Still, the characters do need development, and I’ll do that this month as well as writing the first 50K of the book.

Anyway, I just wanted to check in and say that I got my writing done for the day, and now I’m going to relax and enjoy the day.

A Developmental Day

Today I have one main goal: develop some of the main characters to the first novel in The Chronicles of Morivine. Firstly, in news, I have changed the name of the book from “Ring of Fire” to “The Eternal Light”. Ring of Fire just didn’t work, every time I typed it I just kept hearing the song…not what yo want to hear when your writing an epic fantasy novel.

I have installed Liquid Story Binder on my flash drive, so I can now work on my books anywhere I am without have to worry about transferring it later. Today I’m going to go in an pull up some character dossiers and get to work on fleshing out the characters and understanding who they are before I get to writing tomorrow. In hindsight, I should have been working on this a long time ago, but it didn’t really occur to me until today, so I’m just going to have to cut my losses and go for it.

I’m really looking forward to kicking off the series. I’ve just been itching to get writing for the past few weeks, and now it’s finally here! I’m hoping to have a mock-up cover for Eternal Light soon, so when I get that finished, I’ll post it here on the site.

I should probably get going, I have to start working on character development!

The 100th Post

Yes, it’s the 100th post on the One Writer’s Terrors blog! Not to mention that I’m baaack! Sorry, I had to take some time off from novel-writing to work on a script for Script Frenzy, which went well.

Anyway, I’m back and gearing up for MayNoWriMo. I know i said I was going to work on Kingdom of Dust this month, but I’ve had an incredible new idea that I want to play around with called “The Chronicles of Morivine”. God, I can’t believe it’s almost been a year since I started this blog. I can’t believe it’s been almost a year since I started working on PARADISE LOST: The Guardians. Speaking of which, I need to get back to editing that. I probably will this upcoming month. I’m just looking forward to kicking of this new year with “Morivine”.

I don’t think I’m going to reveal anything about The Chronicles of Morivine right now, but I can tell you that I’m looking forward to breaking some of the conventions of your modern fantasy novel.

I’m glad I’ve been able to get to writing on this blog, definitely looking forward to May! Here’s to our one, crazy, novel-filled year together!