Magic

It has been some time since I wrote anything, here or otherwise.  But my niece recently read the first 6+ chapters of my book and loved it.  Nothing like praise to motivate you to write.  But I remember leaving the Oak Wand because my inspiration had packed it's bags and headed to Bermuda.  So, to get back into it, I started at the beginning and reread the entire thing.  This ended at a sentence where I didn't know quite where to go.

I must thank JK Rowling because Harry Potter has afforded me much inspiration.  The Oak Wand is NOT like Harry Potter but a few of the situations are similar enough that how JK writes them, has helped me.  And so it was again.  I started with only a sentence at a time coming to me.  But they kept coming and coming and coming for 5 more pages.  I knew what the event was that would happen (sorry, no spoilers) and how it would be resolved-ish but I just didn't know how.  Now I do.

Sometimes when I write, I don't feel like this is really my story.  I'm merely transcribing the story someone else has is telling me.  I am surprised at how scenes unfold, at the reactions of the characters.  Is it because I'm a fabulous writer?  Or maybe I'm just suffering from fortunate inspiration.

This is the Novel Mage saying, *POOF*

Days go by

Wow, it seems like forever since I posted last.  Oh, look it has been!  No posts in July at all.  Much too busy lately with school and work and family and laziness to write.  I've also lost some of the fire I had before.  This saddens me but I have NOT needed one more thing to stress about.

The good news though is that I have started writing again.  I'm taking a story I wrote in high school, then rewrote 5 or so years ago and now rewriting it again.  It never ceases to amaze me how much my writing has improved.  As soon as I sat down, with this project in mind, and started reading the story, I couldn't believe how much 'telling' I did.  I didn't 'show' very much at all.  My dialogue was little and ....well, blah.  Then I remembered that this copy was still quite improved over the original.  EEK!  Luckily, I believe my sister is the only one with an original and it isn't a soft copy she can circulate easily.

Still, in my quest to be published is still moving forward.  Since I originally wrote this story in 3 parts, and now that I'm rewriting (page 1 is now pages 1-3), my plan is to release it in 3 parts.  So if all goes well, you can look for "Mysterious Prince Part I" by Christmas as an ebook. 

This is the Novel Mage saying, *POOF*

Time doesn't exist

This is a theory debated in a good movie called IQ.  Very funny and romantic movie.  But yesterday I had two separate conversations that seemed to highlight the calendar of my life.  I don't live in months, years, days or weeks.  My life has seasons: Spring (Jan 2-May 5), Summer (May 12-Aug 5) and Fall (Aug 19 - Dec 5).  I also call them semesters.  I'm currently 9.5 semesters old.  My spring starts cold and snowy.  This year my summer hasn't been very warm. 

What does all of this have to do with writing?  Well, when your life is broken down into such small chunks and you feel like you have thousands of things to do in those short periods but no time to do them, something has to be sacrificed.  In most cases, it's the stuff you like most.  In my case it's writing.  The world of the Oak Wand is calling me but I just can't seem to make the time to answer.  So time doesn't exist.

This is the Novel Mage saying, *POOF*

Dropped the ball

Well, I made an effort to get my piece ready for the writing club.  I even drew up a world map that those writing after me could reference and then things didn't work out for me to go.  Crappy.  But at least it got me to write, right?

But I did come to the realization that a round-robin would have taken all of my writing time.  Not that I have much as it is but I think I really needed the recharge to the creative batteries so I can tackle the Oak Wand again.  Maybe I should have put that in a round-robin.  "Read the first 90 pages and then add to it."  My goal this month is to spend time with my novel in hopes of moving it forward some more.  June is halfway done and the end of the month just gets hectic so I'm not even going to try and hope to finish chapter 7.  I guess we'll see.

This is the Novel Mage saying, *POOF*

Directional Drift

Writing club is coming.  No, I have not been terribly active in it.  Yes, I like the idea but school and slowly getting re-acquainted with my family are higher priorities right now.  But our fearless leader told me they are starting a round-robin again.  I can't miss that.  The first round-robin got me started on my novel.  Who knew that hastily pounding out a little over a page DURING the meeting we were supposed to have it done would turn into quite possibly the best writing I've ever done?

So what am I doing this time?  Well, I've found that now I'm getting story ideas like I used to get poetry.  They just begin flowing into my head.  Granted, with poetry I could have a finished product in thirty minutes but I find now that the ideas are not fleshed out.  They still come in flashes of images, blips of description without any obvious direction.  So it is with book one of The Phoenix Cycle.  I've created a world, a setting, a character, conflict and have absolutely no idea where it's going.  During the first RR, one of the writer's proposed a ridiculous situation in my story.  The dialogue was campy and awkward.  But I wondered what could possibly make that situation believable?  How could I make people believe this would happen and care about whether it works?

I'm hoping to find that same bit of inspiration this time around.  I'm not expecting to come away with a fabulous story already written for me.  But I do hope to find that gem of direction that will map the path of the main character and save him from my current directional drift.

This is the Novel Mage saying, *POOF* 

Reading the written

I decided to re-read my novel as it has been a while since I worked on it.  This proved to be fairly inspirational and I started writing again once I got to the end.  The only thing I realized is that as this gets longer, if I don't just sit down and write it on a regular basis, re-reading will take FOREVER!  I'm not sure how to remedy that until I'm done with school so I guess I'll just have to see how that goes.  But I recommend re-reading once in a while to make sure that you keep things consistent and who know what you may be inspired to add when you're done?!

This is the Novel Mage saying *POOF*

Curbed Enthusiasm

I spent the two weeks off from school doing very little writing.  Why?  I had a great opportunity to write in the evenings that were homework free.  But I didn't.  Well, first I had several home improvement/basement finishing jobs that needed to be done.  Alas, they took priority.  Second, I actually finished compiling my poetry book.  I just need to actually do the hard thing of putting up for publishing somewhere.  And third, I really kind of enjoyed NOT being on a computer every night. 

Thus, my writing has not progressed.  But don't worry.  It hasn't been forgotten.

This is the Novel Mage saying *POOF*