TDN Writers Unite!

[Novelista]

I noticed there was a NaNoWriMo thread last fall, but there doesn't seem to be a dedicated writing thread, so...

 

 

I'm definitely inviting Angelo to contribute, since I know he's into writing. (Yay for the NT avvie!) And...I don't know who else...Leverhelven, maybe, because I like her to come along for everything? *laughs*

 

I know more people will come out of the woodwork when I post this, and then we can talk about whatever kind of writing we like. (So long as it's appropriate, of course!)

 

 

Who wants to go first?

[leverhelven]

Ooooh, my ears are burning! :D Thanks for calling, luff, but I don't think I know wha NaNoWriMo means... Could you sum it up for me? :)

[Novelista]

NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth, wherein you try to write a novel of at least fifty thousand words during the month of November.

 

I think I was originally planning to participate last year and work on Exilium all that month, but it didn't end up happening.

 

There's actually a NaNo website and writing bootcamps and everything! I've never had a local group, but I've had friends tell me that in college towns and major cities, there are big groups that get together solely to write.

[Lia Seeya]

Oh, I am so very tempted to join in this year with something. I used to join NaNoWriMo when I was younger (and had more free time), and I really enjoyed it!

 

I have no idea what I'm going to write, as the only story knocking around in my head is something Neopets-related. :P

[Novelista]

You have five months to decide, Lia...I think you'll be fine. :D

 

 

I'd just like to get a book published this year. I've done one every year since 2010 (with the exception of Eleven, but even then, I appeared in a literary guide), so to be on June 13 without being halfway through the first draft of something is horrible! *laughs*

 

I'd like to do an annotated edition of my poetry anthology, but I just haven't been able to move myself in that direction. (Addicted to a non-neopets game. :P ) My second compilation is poetry, letters to the editor, blog entries and essays (even though I don't have any of the latter yet)...I could work on the introductions/notes that go with each of those so far, but I haven't gotten there, either.

 

I can't help but wonder if I'm legitimately stuck, or if it's just because a psychic put it into my head last summer that I'd have a hard time writing until about July and I just can't get it out. x_x

[Lia Seeya]

And I will end up spending those five months yelling about headcanons rather than doing any actual planning. :P

 

A book every year? Oooh, that's so awesome! :D About being stuck, maybe some brainstorming will help? Or just opening a Word document and typing whatever comes to mind, removing mental filter and all that, then going back to look for ideas.

 

(Oh, addictions to video games. The bane of everyone trying to be productive. Not that I'm complaining much.)

[Novelista]

Mmm...it's more, "*starts writing* There's no spark. Dang. *moves onto another one*" and so forth. I don't know how writers with traditional publishing contracts force them to stick on one manuscript until it's done. Probably because they're guaranteed money and have editors breathing down their necks and I don't and I'm not. :P

 

I'd link you to my author page on Amazon, but I do not want to get into more trouble. So I'll just say, "My debut novel, Ophelia, in 2010; a poetry appearance in Olivet College's Garfield Lake Review in 2011; a second novel, Broken Road, in 2012; a poetry anthology, Barefoot on the Couch, also in 2012; and a novella, Early One Morning, in 2013.

 

WHEW!

[Lia Seeya]

Then before you know it, you've got a whole bunch of unfinished manuscripts just sitting around and waiting for you to pay attention to them. I have a few from years ago that are still unfinished.

 

If The Proposal has taught me anything, writers have people like Sandra Bullock's character breathing down their necks and making sure they churn out the best they can possibly do.

 

Oh my, that's quite a list! Kudos, Novelista!

 

(I feel quite bad that you know my handle as "Lia" but I'm not exactly sure what to call you.)

[Novelista]

My name is Dayanara, but people call me Daya for short. (My Neopian profile is missing a comma...it should read, "Daya, CPhT", because I'm a certified pharmacy technician. :) ) Well, online they do. In real life, it's usually just D. (I've been cheating and looking at everyone's Neopian profiles for their real names. :D )

 

 

Anywho, yes, I do. I have an accordion folder with a bunch of unfinished manuscripts in it and a file on my computer that has some that aren't even in the accordion! My mom told me a long time back that I should stop chucking them out, so I did. At least until it got as bad as it currently is, at which point, I went through the accordion and tossed stuff I didn't think I'd ever write. I did that with the computer folder a few months ago and put the stuff that I liked--but didn't want to get rid of--into a folder entitled "Books That May Not Ever Live". (It's a subfolder of "On Hold".)

 

Ophelia, I'd been working on since about 2002...too many times writing fanfic, starting over and just working on other manuscripts. :P (I found an old FF.net profile the other day and I mentioned some manuscripts on there that, about twelve years later, I have no idea what they were even about!) I finally finished it on my mom's birthday in 2009. Long story behind that one.

 

Broken Road, I started in 2011 after I got out of the "funny farm" (self-check-in) and published in the spring of 2012. (My entry into "The Garf", as they call it, was submitted in 2010.) That was supposed to be the prequel to a rather adult oriented novel that I still haven't finished! (It's so steamy--or the second one is--that it's not even under my legal name!)

 

Barefoot on the Couch was a compilation of about fifteen years of poetry. Fortunately, I'd published about a half or a third of it on the internet when I was younger; so between that, what I had stowed on my laptop and fresh material (which was about a half to a quarter), I put together fifty poems, found photos on the internent to go with them (and cited them in the back in APA style, so I wouldn't get in trouble for thievery!) and made a book out of them. ^_^ | BotC is my favorite cover, even though it's so simple.

 

Early One Morning is probably the shortest I've ever written--and the first "vaguely Christian" book I've ever published. But that's why it's a novella.

 

 

I do my own covers and editing. I've even done a couple of book trailers, too. :)

[Duskitty]

Ooh, NaNoWriMo! I've heard of it, and I think I might like to join this year, though I have no clue what I'd write about.

 

I don't have any books published, and I have no novel-length stories, though I wrote a short story about my Pastel Xweetok here, if anyone is interested.

 

I'm really into sci-fi, mostly, and fantasy :D Those are pretty much the only kinds of book I read. I'm a huge sucker for fiction.

 

 

My writing process:

 

[Lia Seeya]

Anywho, yes, I do. I have an accordion folder with a bunch of unfinished manuscripts in it and a file on my computer that has some that aren't even in the accordion! My mom told me a long time back that I should stop chucking them out, so I did. At least until it got as bad as it currently is, at which point, I went through the accordion and tossed stuff I didn't think I'd ever write. I did that with the computer folder a few months ago and put the stuff that I liked--but didn't want to get rid of--into a folder entitled "Books That May Not Ever Live". (It's a subfolder of "On Hold".)

 

Very well, I shall call you Daya from now on! :) It's so weird when you go back and look at all the ideas that you've forgotten about. I feel like the writing mind can churn out some WEIRD stuff when desparate.

 

Ooh, NaNoWriMo! I've heard of it, and I think I might like to join this year, though I have no clue what I'd write about.

 

I don't have any books published, and I have no novel-length stories, though I wrote a short story about my Pastel Xweetok here, if anyone is interested.

 

I'm really into sci-fi, mostly, and fantasy :D Those are pretty much the only kinds of book I read. I'm a huge sucker for fiction.

 

Sci-fi and fantasy are awesome! <3

 

(Also hello Hussie, it's good to see you again not killing off all my favourite Homestuck characters.)

[Naamah D.]

I have my entire series as well as a side project planned out. My novel series consist of four books:

 

Incubi In One: A Demon is Awakened

Incubi In Two: The Demonic and Dirty South

Incubi In Three: Stalked, Hunted and Tracked Down

Incubi In Four: The End of an Incubus

 

In "The End of an Incubus" the main character dies so I have a side project about the character's best friend's past. The side project is called "Dirty, Filthy, Cambion". Some of the content in my series isn't safe for TDN. Bullying is a major theme in my first book, but the content gets more Teen plus as the series progresses.

 

If my series had a soundtrack, I'd look for a CrunkCore, old school Goth, Rap/Rock and Synthrock/Darkwave playlist.

[Novelista]

Whew, Naamah...I'm guessing it's not like Charlaine Harris's "Southern Vampire Mysteries", then either, is it? O.o

[Naamah D.]

Whew, Naamah...I'm guessing it's not like Charlaine Harris's "Southern Vampire Mysteries", then either, is it? O.o

 

I've never heard of that before. I don't write about vampires though. Mine isn't about blood and gore. It more follows real life problems that go on. Bullying is the main theme in my first, the second deals with stuff like racism, animal rights and religion, the third deals with even more racism (their are two characters of different racial backgrounds) and the fourth...I'll try to explain.

 

The main character is an incubus. The entire series he tries to hold all of his temptations in, but then he takes a turn for the worst. His father is a Biomedical engineer who insist on creating a drug to basically make his son no longer functional as far as his temptation to drain women. His mother doesn't want to see her son basically become a vegetable. That doesn't start until the end of my series.

[Novelista]

*borrows one of your rusty spoons to eat that up with* Wow, that sounds interesting!

 

Charlaine's books are what the series True Blood is based from. Vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters, fairies, witches...oh my! (There may be more...I stopped reading before the end of the series and went to start over again and am just reading everything else instead! :P ) Oh, and the main character, Sookie Stackhouse? Not only does she later discover she's part fae, but before she's informed of that, she struggles with telepathy.

 

 

The thing I struggle with most isn't so much cover design (although that can be difficult)...it's writing the "back blurb" that describes my books. :P

[nightfall8705]

I've written a few things in my day, and have ideas for a book of my own, I just never get around to writing it. My writing mojo is finally coming back after being in remission for the last couple of years. I have so many ideas, just not the right words to describe them all. :)

[Novelista]

I can never get the idea factory to stop spinning. In fact, I'm starting to wonder how long it's been since I laid down (for a nap or regular sleep) and didn't brainstorm for my current piece! Sometimes, I do it far too frequently and have to tell myself to quit. :P

 

I've noticed a lot of famous (or rising star) writers say, "Read, read, read!" That's never been an issue for me...I was a bookworm long before I started writing! I'd say my writing efforts started in earnest about 1996-97 and I was reading Babysitter's Club books by the end of Kindergarten/beginning of first grade. It's weird to think that I've been writing as long as some of y'all have been alive! :laughingsmiley:

 

*checks profile ages* In the case of Duskitty/Loop, I've been writing about three years longer than she's been around! O.o

[Lia Seeya]

It's so nice to get your writing groove back after years of being dormant, isn't it? :) It's like throwing yourself into a whole new world again.

[Novelista]

Tiny Writer's Grumble: when you use a historical figure and there's an insufficient amount of information, such as birth/death dates.

 

I don't mind making things up (why would I? hee hee), but I'm such a perfectionist that if there's facts to be had, I want to use them. xD

[Duskitty]

*checks profile ages* In the case of Duskitty/Loop, I've been writing about three years longer than she's been around! O.o

:P I'm quite young compared to lots of people on these forums.

How long, exactly, has everyone been writing/reading? I discovered that I really liked writing and was good at it when I was about eleven or twelve. I started reading when I was two or three and was reading chapter books by five.

[Lia Seeya]

I have no idea when I started reading. Some of my earliest memories involve my books and I. As for writing, I think I started writing my own stories early in high school? I loved writing compositions in English class when I was younger, but high school was the time I started writing with my own characters.

[Novelista]

Creative writing (in high school) was an easy A for me...one of the easiest grades I've gotten! I don't want to brag, but the only way I could've failed that class was not doing my homework. I love writing that much!

 

(I took English 9-11 {no English 12}, creative writing, world lit and AP English...I believe drama also counted as English. ^_^ | the only subject I took anywhere near as many classes in was science. :D )

[Angeló]

i just noticed this thread and my name in it ... i will get back to reading everything tonight i promise (after the germany x portugal game)