8 days and 6 hours. ARGHHH.

What the hell, where did the days go?! It only feels like I posted like... 2 days ago, but in my last post I said there was 21 days? So where the hell have I lost nearly 2 weeks?!

*le crie*

I can't really tell you right now how much I love Catherine Noble (@Catherine_Noble - Go follow her, she's awesome). Reading through her few latest blogs, I (well, Catherine, obviously) stumbled across this beauty;

This is part of J K Rowling's plans for 'The Order Of The Phoenix'. I honestly wish my plan looked like that.
Now, I'll be the first to admit - I don't like Harry Potter. I'll be truthful, I got bored after the 2nd book. That doesn't take away from the fact that she's an incredible writer. She came from a one-bedroom apartment with next to no prospects in life, and she made herself a multi-millionaire through her own imagination. That's incredible, isn't it? Perhaps that gives us a bit of hope in the long run - you don't have to already be a somebody to become a somebody.

Back on track though, that is (supposedly) part of Rowling's plans for The Order Of The Phoenix. Pretty impressive, huh? To know your characters and plot inside out and back to front, just like that, must be such a rewarding, calming, easing feeling.

Haha. That makes me feel slightly better. It makes it all seem less real! Okay, so it's not that I don't want NaNoWriMo to be real, of course I do, I'm super excited for it. I just want my plan to be a bit more... planned. That's all. But I can't find it in me to plan it all out meticulously because I'm not a planner. In the slightest. I live life one day at a time. I don't plan ahead. I can't. It's not in me to do so. And usually I'm cool with that. But this is the one time I wish I was a bit more organised.

Haha! I love memes. They make me so happy. I would honestly just flood my blog with random memes if I knew it wouldn't annoy the hell out of 99% of people who may ever stumble upon this.


But anyway, this is a pretty pointless post really, isn't it? There's nothing much constructive here ... I do have a constructive thing to post, but that'll need a completely new entry now that I've essentially wasted half an hour of my day making novel-related memes.

And since I'm a procrastinauthor, I'm not sure when that blog post will come. ^_^


-Panda

21 days to go (3 weeks)

21 days! :O

3 weeks! I've completely procrastinated for an entire week! Seems like only a few hours ago I was all like "Oh yeah mate I've got like 4 weeks to plan, it's cool". NO!


Arghhhhh.

Okay, so the first thing I wanted to say is that I'm doing NaNoWriMo postcards. If you're participating in NaNo this year and would like a postcard, e-mail me your address to Pandrawr[at]live[dot]com and I'll send you one out! Don't worry, I'm not a mad stalker, if I'm being completely honest, I am FAR too lazy to come and track you down, even if you lived 8 doors up from me I'd still think it a bit too far to walk just to stalk you :P I'm posting across the UK and internationally, anywhere in the world, America, Australia, New Zealand. Norway, wherever you're from, I'm posting there. I've got 5 postcards and a tiny little postcard sitting about doing nothing, so in total 6 people. Obviously if I get more, I can go buy more :)

Anyway. I'm still dilly dallying between 1st and 3rd person for my novel. One of my writing buddies (@Catherine_Noble on Twitter, go follow her, she's awesome!) linked me to a great article, but she also gave me the idea of writing my novel from a few different perspectives... So for instance, one chapter could be from the point of view of my MC, but the next chapter could be the point of view of another important character, for example, Jake's mother. That makes a lot of sense to me. I haven't completely trashed the idea of first/third/first/third yet though...

So yeah, postcards and what person to write my novel in, that's literally about all I have to update about. I think I sorted out pretty much all of my characters, but of course my boyfriend switched my laptop off so I'm kinda hoping that the Dramatica file saved. =/ I'm going to go check that right now. Haha.

-Panda-
x<3x

Just a quick update, I guess.

I let my mum and dad read my synopsis. My dad says it's "grim", but my mum likes it. :)

I have a quick question though; I already asked this on Twitter and I got one reply which gave me a bit of hope, but I'm kinda hoping to get a wee bit more insight on here (140 characters on Twitter doesn't leave much room for thought, eh?)

So, here's my questions;

1. Should I write my novel in 1st or 3rd person? With some aspects of it I can see it being better written in first person, but in other aspects, I see it being better written in third. Which you prefer?

2. Taking the above into account, how would other people feel about reading a novel where the first chapter is in 1st person, second chapter in 3rd, third chapter in 1st, fourth chapter in 3rd, and so on? Think about it for any kind of novel - not just mine (or not even mine, if you like). How would you, as a reader, feel about reading a novel set like that? Do you think it would be confusing, or would it add to the story?

So yeah, if any of you amazing guys could get back to me on that one, I'd much appreciate it :)

Thanks!

-Panda-
x<3x

The Loss of a Great Man, and Awful Dreams.

I'm just going to get straight to the point; when I heard Steve Jobs had died yesterday, I felt really, genuinely sad about it. I'm not overly sure why, I just felt incredibly saddened by the news of his death. I remember watching Apple conferences with my Dad (a huge Apple fan) and watching Steve Jobs wandering about the stage, talking about all of the new exciting pieces of technology being brought to the world in the next year or so.

Nobody can deny that Steve Jobs changed the world. I mean, who goes out nowadays without saying something like "I can't go out without my iPod!"? Even those die-hard Windows fans can't deny that Steve Jobs did so much for technology (my boyfriend is having an affair with Windows 7 - and even he admits that Jobs did a lot for technology). I learnt last night that the Westboro Baptist Church intend on picketing at his funeral. I genuinely hope there are some die-hard Apple fans lingering about to give the WBC a good slap. The best thing is? The WBC updated this on twitter (or facebook.. I can't remember which), and under that update, clear as day, "Updated using iPhone" .... I'm clearly missing something, but I genuinely do hope that there are people attending his funeral that will batter the absolute living shit out of WBC if they decide to be retarded and picket. It's disgusting.

But that's another topic. In short; RIP Steve Jobs. He changed the world, and thanks to his creativity and innovation, Apple will continue to change and update technology in a far more sophisticated manner than Microsoft could dream of.

Anyway, back on subject, I had an absolutely horrific dream last night! I had a dream that I entered my NaNo plot synopsis into a school competition (despite the fact I'm 21, nearly 22, and have been out of school for 5 years..) and I won, I got an awesome certificate and my parents were clapping, tears in their eyes, and I felt awesome. Then November 1st came round and I eagerly started tappy tap tapping away on my keyboard, only to find.... I got completely stuck at a ridiculous 300 words.

Yes, 300 words.


And every single day in November, I opened that Word doc and stared at those 300 words and just could not do anything with it.

It was horrific. I woke up this morning seriously doubting my plot and characters, despite the fact I know they're strong. I now have the insurmountable task of attempting to gain as much faith in my synopsis, plot and characters as I had 7 hours ago before I went to sleep. :(

Anyone else ever had a NaNo dream that really threw them off course? Just out of curiosity..

-Panda-

Finally! A title, some characters, and a synopsis!

YES!!!


I got a title, my characters, and a brief synopsis FINALLY sorted out! :D


AND my NaNoWriMo forum sig banner!


The title is.... Only Human


Here is my NaNoWriMo Forum sig;

And my brief synopsis!

"Jake is a young man with a lot of problems, and even more anger at the world. Raised on a diet of abuse and neglect at the hands of his father, his view of the human race becomes twisted beyond repair. He longs to eliminate what he perceives to be the fundamental differences between genders; men abuse power, and women are weak, and he’s angry at both for being this way. When his mother moves him away after realising the detrimental effects his father is having on him, he refuses to make a new start. However, when his mother leaves him behind to go back to his father, he realises that his theories of men and women were right all along. Plagued by the heartbreak of his cheating ex-girlfriend and the nightmares of hearing his religious mother praying to God as his father took his drunken rage out on her, he embarks on a task he believes only he is capable of doing; completely rearranging the human race, and punishing them for their sins. Combining psychological torture with physical pain, completely lacking any emotion or compassion, Jake sets out to make each human being equal. Where many have failed before him, Jake fully intends to succeed, through any means necessary, regardless of the outcome."

I feel I can finally start getting somewhat excited about my novel. :D

Any thoughts/opinions...?

Panda

xxx

28 Days to Go

I finally wrote up the very basics of my main character! And I mean, the VERY basics. But at least I finally have a NAME for him! That makes me so incredibly happy.

So I've been browsing (read: lurking) the NaNoWriMo forums lately, especially the writing buddies/newbies topics, because I'm desperate to find other writers writing ANYTHING along the same lines as me (psychological, thriller, anything mental health related etc) but alas, I've yet to find a single person :( On the one hand, it sucks, because I don't really have anyone I can relate to right now, I don't have someone that can help me or critique. But on the other hand, that must mean that my idea is at least somewhat original and unique, I hope.

Well, nobody else is doing it.....

That's if my idea even all comes together before November 1st. I have my MC lined out and I know him, but I'm not even sure how many other characters I need in total. I haven't even began to think about individual chapter outlines yet.

I feel I'm a little behind, NaNoers. A slight cause for concern, but I'm not going to get too flitzy ditzy about it all just yet....

well this is a new experience.

This is a completely new experience for me.

I'm using Dragon NaturallySpeaking to update my blog. I'm not typing anything, I'm just using voice commands and speech to update.

Has anybody ever thought about writing and will purely through speech, instead of actually writing?

This is something that might actually be of interest to me this year, as I'd be able to do it in the car instead of having to type everything I think of and having to constantly think about how I'm going to word something. This could be a very handy tool for the novel writing process. It provides plenty of opportunity to speak what the mind is really thinking, instead of having to think about what you're writing and then typing it down.

Has anyone else ever thought of actually speaking their novel, instead of typing gets into a Word document or actually writing it?

I think it does have one downfall. Sometimes with novels, especially the kind of novel that I'm writing, there is a lot of things involved that you don't necessarily want to say out loud, even if nobody is around to hear you speaking. It just seems quite awkward talking about some of the things I want to write about in my novel, even if there is nobody about to hear it.

let me know what you think.

By the way, I haven't really figured out all of the command yet, so please excuse any grammar mistakes or rogue punctuation (or lack thereof) LOL.

(How cute is that? It knows LOL!)

-Panda-