the wings that you burn turn to ashes, my dear

I've officially changed my project for April's Camp NaNoWriMo.

One of my goals for 2021 was to get back to working on One New Message, specifically addressing it's structural issues. As the draft stands now, it's a great skeleton, but it doesn't have any meat on its bones. As I read through it again, trying to decide if I was throwing an "official" plot structure at it, I realized that, while I can save a lot of the dialogue, my writing has changed a lot since I wrote the original draft.

I started this novel in 2014, after I had a dream about Andrew McMahon, a girl working in the mall, and a fashion show (a plot idea long since abandoned). I finished it as part of NaNo 2015, and got about halfway-ish through its sequel, One More Song. I have a better idea of where this story needs to go now, and I'm going to take a crack at the rewrite.

I'm in the process of making a new Scrivener file for it, compiling notes from three different reviews (from Bailey, Meg, and Meghan - Matt read all of it while sitting in the lobby before work one morning and just kept coming over like, "AMIE WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU WANT TO RIP MY HEART OUT WITH THIS SHIT also I found a typo" so his review doesn't count) as well as the reread I did in 2018.

Yes, I let this shit sit since 2018. I am not good with second drafts.

But, with my notes for each scene, and being able to pull from the first draft when I need to, I feel like this is a suitable project for this April. I'm also going to be running write ins for my region, which we haven't done in the past for Camp, so I feel good about my chances of getting a lot done. Even if it's not finished on April 30, I haven't worked on original works in so long that it's an accomplishment either way.

I've also written a few original scenes for this round of Yahtzee at getyourwordsout. Those need some polishing, but I'll post those over here eventually.

Right now I'm feeling very productive, and surprisingly not harping on myself for everything I'm fixing in this novel. If this draft is successful, then I can look at improving it further in hopes of maybe getting something of publishable quality. We'll see how it goes. ♥

NaNoWriMo 2018!

Aka, I've probably bitten off more than I can chew. But would it be NaNo otherwise?

This year, I'm working on several small projects in order to make word count, rather than just one novel. I am scatterbrained by nature and thus I'm hoping this will work out for me, so if I get bored on one, I can easily swap to something else. RP tags will not count towards goal, unless it's part of Ghosts.

So, the projects!

- Ghosts on the Corner, a collaborative novel with Meghan. Written as RP scenes (which those are going to be a beast to edit) and solos scenes smashed together. It's a lot of fun, but having another project to work on at the same time will help me make word count in between tags.

- A new Highlander fic!, as part of hlh_shortcuts. It's my first year doing a fic exchange - the last one I did I was still on LJ - so I'm hoping I come up with something that doesn't disappoint its recipient. I figure that starting in November means I'll have plenty of time to iron out any potential kinks in the writing process and be able to get it to a beta long before its December deadline.

- The Elemental Story, which isn't its actual title, but it'll work for now. I had attempted this idea for one NaNo or another, but I didn't get that far, but I discovered what I had written, and... it's not too bad. Plus, now these muses have told me something of where to go, so I'm going to see where it leads me. If nothing else, it'll be some words to add to my total and I can figure out what to do with them later.

- Rivendale, aka the "make the RP muses play together until something happens." Still need to finish writing this beast, though I love it dearly. Need to plot a little more of how to lead up to the final confrontations, because jfc this story is going to be hella long before it's done.

- One New Message, which is in draft two. I know what I want to fix, just need to actually sit down and do it. In this case, I'm thinking 1000 words per hour editing.

I probably won't do daily word count updates on here, probably on Tumblr though. Wish me luck!