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Writing Updates for 2020

Happy Leap Day, everyone! I”m back after a long hiatus.  I was inspired to update this page after a speaker came to our writing group  called Saturday Writers speaking about marketing through social media. My book is nowhere near done but I think it’s wise to have a presence online, interacting with all of you as I go through the writing process with it and my other projects.

I’m finishing up with worldbuilding with Sands of Chaos. I will start character work and outlining on Monday. I will be working on outlining through the end of May. This will be my project for Camp Nanowrimo in April.  In June, I will begin to write the rough draft which I will work on through the end of August, including Camp Nanowrimo in July.

Also, last year, I won a short story contest that Saturday Writers had for children’s writing. I won with a young adult fantasy short story called Shadows of Her Father. It’s about a girl who finds out her father, the king,  is not who he seems. It will be in the Saturday Writers anthology titled The House that Writing Built which will be released sometime in March. Preordering will will open up soon online at http://saturdaywriters.org/2019-anthology-preorder.html.

Shadows of Her Father turned out to be the spark for another novel project which I will be writing for Nanowrimo in November called Kingdom of Shadows. I will be working on its worldbuilding and outlining in September and October respectively. This will be a busy writing year for me. Wish me luck.

Mock cover for Kingdom of Shadows I had made.
Mock cover for Sands of Chaos by darkcherry

 

 

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I’m Back and Writing Updates

Sorry it’s been a while since my last post. Hopefully I can be more regular in the future. My novel for this year’s NanoWriMo is Sands of Chaos. This is something that Song of Chaos morphed into the more worked on it. It just kept changing to the point of becoming an entirely different novel. The characters have changed so much to the point of changing the plot. Even their names are different now. I’m currently working on the outline in preparation for Nanowrimo. Here is the synopsis:

Meryt is a King’s Daughter and songstress with the ability to talk to gods and spirits, abilities she wishes she didn’t have. Not because she hates the gods, but because she doesn’t like being seen as different by her father and all in the royal court. Her father uses this ability to free a goddess from the realm of the damned, who they believe to wrongly sent there by her divine ex-husband. Not long after freeing her, the ex-husband god contacts Meryt, revealing the truth about the goddess. He asks her to send the goddess back before her strength fully returns as well as free him from the same realm. Her father has a reason for freeing this goddess that is only known to her as well as her desire to be his heir, an impossibility due their word for king being male-oriented and sends her to a distant province or so the reason seems to be. Will she be able to free this god and re-imprison his wife? Will she regain the trust of her father and his court and be able to become the first female heir? Or will she be caught in a civil war of both gods and men?

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The Blank Page

I am taking a mini break from planning my novel and I am attempting to write a short story.  I haven’t written a short story since high school, so I am a little rusty. Especially when it comes to ideas.  This short story is for an anthology on a writer’s website I’m on called Forward Motion.  This would be my first attempt at having something published. The problem is I’m having a difficulty fleshing out an idea for the anthology’s prompt. I got a base idea, but it doesn’t seem to want to grow from there.  I’m just sitting at my computer staring at a blank page and it’s frustrating. Even walking away for a bit doesn’t help. Even in the shower, nothing comes; the one place I normally get a ton of my ideas. I have a feeling that maybe this story isn’t ready to be written. I probably should wait, but I can’t wait too long. There is a deadline.  An idea will come eventually. I just hope that it’s soon.

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World Building

World building has been slow so far. As many know, I am a procrastinator (as one can tell by my blog posting regularity). I have had a few good days of world building. So far I got a rough idea where the towns are in the world.  I also figured out some of the geography and their weaponry. I think I got the mythology figured out although I have been considering tweaking it a bit as some of it does have a tie in to  the story. I am currently working on the world’s religious practices. The world is a polytheistic society with a few similarities to ancient Egypt. Unlike ancient Egypt, there are much less deities. This world is limited to ten deities, with only nine of them being acceptable for worship. Why only nine? Because that last one rebelled against the other gods and is considered a god of all the bad things in the world. He is not without his followers, although they are relegated to one part of the country. Worship of him anywhere else is banned and is a punishable crime. I have yet to figure out what is the punishment for that is. I will figure that out when I get to it. I hope to be done world building by the end of February at the latest so I can start figuring out my characters and to get an outline done. I would prefer it to be done sooner so I can start the working on my characters and outline and have those done so that I can start the rewrite for CampNanoWriMo in April.

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Happy New Year! And Updates

It is now 2016. It is that time once again when I look back on the previous year and look forward to the year ahead. I’m sorry I have not been on here in a while. One of the things I do resolve to do in 2016 is keep up with this blog more. I successfully completed NanoWriMo. Now I am redoing my world building. Why? As I was writing my Nano novel, I realized how little I knew of its world and its customs.  I also knew little of its geography and how the towns are arranged. My characters also need more work and depth. I realized I knew very little about them going in. However, I did discover more about them as I wrote the story. I got a lot of planning ahead of me. I hope to have a rough draft done by the end of this year. I also plan to write a few short stories somewhere in between. May all of you have a great 2016!

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Going Away for a Few Days

I will not be able to access the Internet nor work on my writing from the afternoon on the 16-19. I will be on a spiritual retreat and will be focused on building my relationship with God. I am currently at 33,384 words on my word count, so I should be good for the next few days. I will probably squeeze in a few more words before I leave tomorrow. I will be back on Thursday afternoon and I can return to my Nano novel.

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NanoWriMo is Coming!

National Novel Writing Month or NanoWriMo for short is fast approaching. Every November writers of all stripes make a mad dash to write 50,000 words of a rough draft in a month. Some write more. I’ve participated off  and on since 2006. I’ve won twice. Nothing publishable came out of either one. I’ve pantsed both years, meaning I was writing without a plan. This year, I have my characters, setting (sort of), and plot planned out. I’m currently working on a skeleton outline for my novel so that I have some idea where I’m going. It’s about a girl who is trying to escape a cult of a chaos god, but those in the cult and the god himself won’t let her go so easily. The working title is Song of Chaos. I’m hoping and praying that this is the novel that will eventually lead me to publication one day. I hope I actually finish writing the rough draft this time, even if it takes more than November to do it. I have an extra challenge this year because I have less days to work with. I’ll be going on a spiritual retreat for a few days next month, plus there’s Thanksgiving. I just need to write a few hundred more words minimum than the average 1,667 daily words. I need to write 2,000 words minimum daily to reach 50k by the end of November. I can write more, but we’ll just see how November goes. I’ll be happy with the minimum 50k by the end of the month. Wish me luck!