It's Monday, Where The Hell Have You Been? [Nov 30, 2015]

Oh hey, guys. It's been a month and I've missed you and this blog so much!! I sort of disappeared without explaining myself, but if you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, you might have figured out that I participated in National Novel Writing Month! And last night I won.

Isn't this graph horrifying? I couldn't think of an idea for the first week. Then I was lazy for the second. So basically I participated in National Novel Writing Two-Weeks, which isn't nearly as catchy. But this was my fifth year participating and I couldn't break my win streak. No way. Anyway, my novel is called The First Abduction and it's sort of a blend of literary fiction and science fiction, and I'm genuinely really excited about working on it more!

Granted, that's not the only reason I disappeared. I was going through some personal stuff, I was working too hard and too much, I had anxiety about a lot of things, I suffered some heart break, and I tried really hard to pick up all of my pieces before they could hit the ground. Reading just wasn't happening for me and it hadn't been since like September. (To be fair, though, I've literally always disappeared from the blog in the fall, so I should have seen this coming). But the experience of letting go of most of my obligations in order to catch up in NaNoWriMo (I was writing 5,000 words a day at least) was pretty incredible and led me to realize what stuff I really do want to prioritize in my life.

I've been working out. I've been more thoughtful about not eating cheez-its for every meal. I made quinoa for the first time (still really don't understand what it is, but that's fine). I made a smoothie that was green AND drank it. So basically, I'm even more white than I was before!! I want to make more things. I want to spend more time with my friends. I want to finish knitting this god damn blanket that I've been working on for the past two years.

NaNoWriMo is also rekindling the little reading flame in me. I hadn't done any creative writing since, well, November of last year really. And now that I'm peeking into books again, suddenly they're enormously huge learning experiences for my own writing. That had been true in the past, but I'd forgotten that aspect of reading. Now it's like these overdue library books have a rich new layer and I have a lot more motivation to actually read them. It's pretty exciting, tbh.

THE PLAN

This December I'm going to focus a lot of my time on reading, because it's something I really want to do now. I'm going to participate in Shaina's 12 Books of Christmas challenge (you can still sign up today!). I'll most likely be jumping over to Andi's #AMonthofFaves for some blogging inspiration as I ease my way back into blogging. On Instagram I'll be doing a photo challenge about my favorite books of the year. AND my birthday is December 31, so maybe I'll do something related to that! Or you guys can just send me a million presents, because you only turn 23 once you know.

So...What did I miss?

 

Camp NaNoWriMo 2013

I'm doing something I really shouldn't be doing. April's going to be a busy month in school and I already have two novels from previous November National Novel Writing Months that I have yet to edit. But screw it. I'm going to participate in Camp NaNoWriMo next month! A little!

For camp, you can set your own word count goal, which takes the pressure off a bit. I still have my goal at 50,000 words, but I've decided to continue working on something that already has 25,000 words. It's the novel I started during last year's camp. I know I should really be working on the novels I already have finished, but I am just so attached to this story and really want to see it through. It's a lot of fun to write, even though I have no idea how it's going to end.

As of right now, the book is called A Blotted Isle. It's about an island that used to be on maps and suddenly was taken off of them with no explanation. The island sort of falls into legend until one day an expedition is made to find it. Because this is sort of a writing blog too (or it is now, at least), here's the first page of it:

************
When staring out a window, it’s almost like one has captured a piece of the world just for

themselves. Although incredibly severed from it when staying inside, the viewer tends to feel a

sense of ownership toward the scene framed by the window. Small snippets of day to day life

could be seen from Liadan’s seaside room. Very often, the landscape was grey and dreary in the

lowlands of her small country. The sky looked wet and morose, and a damp hush fell on the

rolling hills on these days. The grass was always a lush green, however, and soft pink flowers by

her home’s crumbling rock fence hinted a hopeful happiness in the land.

A road of pale grey and brown stones wound from behind the house and continued to

twist along the shoreline. Overgrown with weeds and too twisted to be traveled upon by large

carriages, the most activity Liadan saw on this road was generally a stray sheep moseying along

the countryside.

Gloomy blue green waves crashed and shattered against the rocky crags a stone’s throw

away from the small rickety home. However inspiring the scene may be from this window,

Liadan’s gaze always fell further across the deep and stormy sea. Off in the distance where the

sky and water meet, she searched each day. All she could ever see was perhaps the

shape of a jutting rock or just a sun blot upon her vision that would vanish immediately after an

eye wink. Most of each day, however, she saw nothing. The horizontal line of ocean was never

nicked or interrupted by any flaw, save for the occasional ship passing through. But on and on

she stared, due to a sight she once saw as a young child in the same cramped room of the same

house.

With a sigh, Liadan looked away from the window and dipped her coarse paint brush into

her small ceramic bowl of water. A crack danced across the bowl’s side, but didn’t drip often

enough for her to make an effort to make a change. She tapped the brush lightly against the bowl

to shed the brush of some water, then continued to dip it into a rich, creamy teal blob of paint. A

swift brush across her scrap of fabric created the edge of the ocean outside. It started to bleed

and soften across the fibers, and she watched contently.

After creating a wash of tumultuous sea beneath her line, she wetted the sky grey. Liadan

then dipped a smaller brush with coarse bristles into a deep brown black. On the middle of the

horizon line, Liadan blotted a jutting rock out of the painted water. She continued with a few

more vague shapes. Atop this, she pulled thin, pale brown trunks high out of the constrained

terrain. A tiny dense forest grew, Liadan dipped a low flying black bird near the edge of the

trees, and then she placed the brush gently next to the row of other brushes. Once the paint was

dry, Líadan picked up the small square and pinned it on the nearly covered wall next to identical

paintings of the same scene out of her window of the same island that was not there.
************

Any thoughts or critique are welcome!

For some reason I have a weird fear of rereading things that I write, so it's going to take a lot of effort to make myself get through what I have so far by tomorrow. If anybody else is participating in Camp NaNoWriMo this coming month, let me know! I'd love to talk to fellow campers. And I talk to, I mean cry and complain with. My two favorite activities.